2008 Election Results & Maps

I love maps. I have been called "Map Boy" more than once... and I liked it.

I came across some really cool maps of the 2008 US Presidential election results the other day on Strange Maps, a blog I check regularly. And Strange Maps provided a link to an even more comprehensive collection of maps of the election results put together by Mark Newman, Dept. of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan. I am including a few examples here, just because I think they are cool to look at... but you can check out the whole smorgasbord right here.

The two maps I am including here are:

1) Election results by county

2) Election results by county on a population cartogram (i.e. a map in which the sizes of counties are rescaled according to their population)

What initially looks like a lot of red counties turns out to be a lot more blue voters. Phew!

California Election Widget

We might as well keep an eye on our homegrown issues here in California as well.

I Am Proud To Be A Participant In This Election

I'm going to try and add this MSNBC 2008 Election widget to my blog. Let's see how it goes.

Build Your Own 3D Theater

As some of you may know, I am a bit of a stereo (a.k.a. 3D) photography fanatic. One of these days I'll have to actually get around to putting together some of sort of slide show and show off some of my work.

In the meantime, however, this article on the Vizard Viewer caught my eye (yup... yet another article in the September 2008 Wired magazine - issue 16.09). Seems like a fairly inexpensive way to create a home 3d viewing experience.

If anyone else is interested in collaborating on this project sometime in early 2009... let me know.

Yo Gabba Gabba?

Oh no... I'm going to be stuck singing this damn song under my breath for the forseeable future.

But yo... any show that has a Biz' Beat of the Day gets my vote any day! What the hell happened to Biz Markee's teeth though? Get some dental assistance, bro!

And who is the crazy DJ guy with the orange fro and jumpsuit? That's who I want to be for Halloween ;)

A Better Place

I originally read about Shai Agassi and Better Place in the September 2008 issue of Wired. I was floored by the overall concept, to be honest, and bookmarked my magazine so that I would remember to dig deeper into the subject matter. Well, I just saw another amazing article about Better Place last week -- Australia has endorsed the concept of deploying an electronic vehicle network powered by renewable energy.

So now they have Israel, Denmark and Australia all lined up to revolutionize how people drive.

When are we getting this here in California? Come on Gavin... surely you must be drooling to get this here in San Francisco.

Seriously... this is cool stuff. Read up on it and get psyched about the Future.

In addition to the articles, go to the company website: BetterPlace.com and see how it works.

Zack de la Rocha Back in this Mutha!

I had almost given up on my boy, Zack de la Rocha. Sure - he and RATM have been playing together for the last year (saw them at the 2007 "Rock the Bells" show in SF). But whatever happened to the promised solo work back after he and RATM went their separate ways back in 2000?

Well... he's back. One Day As A Lion is a collab project featuring Zack and Jon Theodore (Mars Volta drummer), with Zack taking a turn at the keyboards. 5 song EP comes out later this month on the 22nd. The only cut I've heard is "Wild International"... and it got me psyched.

Don't sleep on this one, folks.

Obama Art Report

Do you ever cut out articles from the newspaper (or just keep a whole section) because some article caught your eye and you think it will come in handy down the road? Well... I do it all the time, and I end up with random piles of yellowing newspaper strewn all over my home office.

I decided from now on, I'm just going to blog about this stuff. You get to see what sort of weird, twisted stuff gives me a boner, and I have an easy reference for it down the road. Besides Evernote - which I'll write about later!

The San Francisco Chronicle had an interesting article on the amazing volume of Obama inspired art that has been coming out over the last year or so: Message of Hope Inspires Campaign of Creativity (published on 08.02.08 in the Datebook section). A great online reference, which also resided here on Blogger, is the Obama Art Report. Check it out... there is some really cool work up here.

Also check my homey Zoey's recent play off of Shephard Fairey's Obama "Progress" piece called "Hopeless". Break him off some, Z.