I wanted to test some ideas brewing around.
As an example this is a useful model for repeating. More to learn here but this is curious.
##Background On Sunday, February 25, 2013, the White House released documents detailing the projected costs to states of the upcoming sequester. Several news outlets carried the story - see this Washington Post article. However, only the Huffington Post had links to each individual state document.
Surprised at how these documents had real data, but were presented in pdfs, a colleague, @LearonDalby, and I were discussing how this data could be much better presented. We decided late Sunday night to enter the data into a machine readable format and begin a small project for visualizing the data.
##How We Did It We began by first looking at each of the pdfs for a repeatable pattern in the data. We decided to enter the data into a Google Spreadsheet. My colleague began reading these numbers as I typed them into the Google Spreadsheet. We listed each state in the first column, and then added columns for each of the areas listed in the pdfs (e.g. Teachers and Schools, Clean Air and Water, Public Health, etc).
When this was complete, I exported the data to this csv and read that into a PostgreSQL database. My intent was to make a geojson file of this data, so I joined the data to a table containing state centroids as point geometry and a common state name field in our table. I then used this sql script to export the data to geojson. I then created this gitrepo, turned the repo into a gh-pages branch and began committing these files.
I also engaged another colleague, @qinxiaoming, asking him what he could come up with. Completely on his own time he developed the above example in D3. In parallel I developed the above example in Mapbox.
##Results
####Data
####Visualizations
##Costs
####Software
####Hardware
####Total
##Notes I think there is a repeatable process here that people should know about.
September 24, 2019
in reflecting, no single thing could possibly capture what i felt in '89 or after this weekend, but for me i gathered a handful of themes.
September 24, 2019
government is the best place to work. the people are amazing and i have never met any their equal. i am proud to have had a service career.
October 02, 2018
government is the best place to work. the people are amazing and i have never met any their equal. i am proud to have had a service career.
March 24, 2018
Changing the federal acquisition regulation would require an inordinately large shift, likely an Administrative Procedures Act rulemaking or perhaps even legislation, both of which are very unlikely scenarios.
December 04, 2017
i hope that there is a slim chance my children can experience some mountains or canyons, without handrails.
May 11, 2016
these charts help illustrate the mortgage landscape
February 18, 2016
tonight i have remembered the night it shook my bones. i just wanted to write about it for its own sake.
April 15, 2015
it is the opportunity to reflect that everyday activities are the most important thing. it is a milestone that the kid got back to the court from the darkeset depths of therapy, of surgery and of unknown and fear.
February 26, 2015
be very careful of any IT bandwagon, because in reality, it might be a fake band
November 01, 2014
i am so amazed by my uncle. my uncle paul, a stalwart in boulder colorado, has recently had a rebirth of music.
July 29, 2014
it gave me chills because i could hear the dedication in the voice of antero garcia, the teacher, when he asks "how could i have reached out to you better?"
July 12, 2014
I owned and road my first fixed gear bike in the winter of 1985. I was a member of my high school cycling team back then in Fall River (pronounced fall reeva) Ma. Winter's in south eastern new england are a little harsh, there is a good mix of snow, freezing rain storms, north-easters coming in off the atlantic which make for extra salt corrosion see rusty jones.
July 08, 2014
This is an ignite talk i gave at a staff event about american cycling and innovation.
May 24, 2014
Writing out the names of the people who made the success at the fcc. what they did. the real rock stars
November 09, 2013
its been eating at me. the constant tech news. the constant headlines about failed government IT contracting.
October 07, 2013
good design integrates multiple technologies, and highlights the issue, rather than the implementing technology.
October 03, 2013
The antideficiency act is the law currently being invoked for having government employees not work.
October 02, 2013
yesterday was my 2nd furlough day in the 2013 government shutdown. three small things happened to me personally yesterday
October 01, 2013
yesterday was my first day of furlough in the 2013 government shutdown. during the day i did the following things
June 15, 2013
Why the recent GitHub release making geojson files automatic web maps is disruptive.
April 12, 2013
Recently at the FCC, we held an unusual day. We call it D(f)evEx (pronounced as either devex or fedex) Days, and this was our first ever.
March 22, 2013
Working on a previous conclusion that perhaps PDFs are not a great way to release data.