Absolutely awesome DIY Guardian article by noted pioneer and leader in the field of data journalism Paul Bradshaw from how to source, munge, and report the facts in a coherent form from oceans of available data. Facts are sacred.
I love this article and the Guardian, who does wicked work in this area, for being awesome enough to publish it and to show people how to do it themselves. Very, very cool.
Can’t remember who I need to give props to for pointing me at this, but absolutely love the work on this video and the movement. Serene and amazing. And the music matches it perfectly.
The American Book Review has compiled its take on the 100 best opening lines from novels .
Anybody think they missed any? Or think some of them don’t deserve to be there?
I’m actually chuffed I’ve read more of these books than I haven’t.
via Neatorama .
Second absolutely phenomenal video from The Girl Effect project. Love the work these guys are doing and love their video and online style.
If you’ve never seen the first video they did explaining the idea behind the charity , do so. It’s simpler, but just as inspiring.
I think the only way Australia could be more fun for me is if it actually did still contain 7 foot tall kangaroos and giant wombats (and there’d be something able to take down the roving giant spiders).
NatGeo has the lowdown on the giants of days gone by . Some nice photos too .
via BoingBoing .
By Implication’s Wildfire recently won at the Game Design Category of the 2010 Imagine Cup. Designing a game inspired by volunteerism, they focus on the MDG goals as the basis of what you’re trying to accomplish in your city (and apparently inspired by Filipino volunteerism after the 2009 Typhoon). Sadly, Windows only (boo!), but the video of gameplay mechanics is giving me idears.
Love the mechanics of play, if hard to tell I’d like the game itself. We talked at work once about a game to teach people organizing and campaigning (part of our job helping build a more progressive Australia) and would kinda love applying these mechanics ideas to that. Hmmm…
National Geographic has an amazing 50 year retrospective on the incredible life’s work of Jane Goodall that she’s done with chimpanzees at the Gombe Reserve. So impressive and inspiring. Seriously, I saw her speak in Toronto once (one of 8 guys in a huge “wimmins issues” conference) and I want her as my adopted GrandNan. She kicks ass and does fantastic work.
And keep in mind, she started Gombe at a time when women seriously didn’t do this sort of thing. Here’s to passion, courage, progress and pushing forward the boundaries of what people believed was possible.
Euthanasia is a contentious issue in Australia and currently illegal under law. Opinion is divided on it, though even the current federal Labor government has let the statutes stand. A move, for example, by the Northern Territories government here to legalize euthanasia a few years back was overridden by the federal Howard government of the time.
More troubling, Exit International recently tried to air this ad on Free TV but had it yanked at the last minute in what, in my opinion, is a serious violation of free speech.
First off, I should probably tell you that I totally ♥ Heroku . I run a bunch of little apps off it and at work believe it’s production ready for our main platform. A while back someone posted a nice little snippet of how to get a static site working on it in two lines of code on heroku, however, with some change in heroku, gem packaging or the like (or fact I added in multiple custom domains for the site), these static served pages suddenly stopped working. Counterintuitive when looked at, and even @radar and I together looking at it couldn’t figure it out. Anyhow, I puzzled the following out. Probably a few of the gems can be removed but this definitely worked for me.
Love Amnesty using Allen Ginsburg’s “A Prophecy” for its latest ad campaign. Inspiring.
via Osocio Weblog .