I already drew a map which tells a story, so when TDC 1237 challenged us to make a map which explains nothing, it seemed like a fitting challenge. I was inspired by the map of “Super Bowl Wins By Country” on the TDC page, so here’s:

Change in MLB Batting Average by US State 2005-2014

(Edit: this used to be an interactive map. But Google killed the product. So here’s a screenshot.)

This map is made with Google Fusion Tables. The team batting average data comes from Baseball-Reference.com; the state shapes are a resource file within Fusion Tables. (This introduces the one unintentional inaccuracy in the map – I couldn’t quickly find a shape file including both U.S. states and Canadian provinces, so the Toronto Blue Jays are just left off the map.)

More importantly, its story is a mess. For starters, who would compare team batting average over 10 years? There are so many differences in lineups and managers (and probably even park effects) that it seems like a pointless comparison. (My baseball geek friends are welcomed to debate that point.)

“Batting average by state” is almost as meaningless as “Super Bowls by country” – maybe more so, because it suggests specificity. But if there’s a useful reason to compare the average batting average of the 5 teams in California with the 1 in Maryland, I’m at a loss to explain it. (And you can barely see the poor Nats in DC.)

The state statistics are actually an average of team batting averages in the state, but every team doesn’t have the same number of at bats, so that introduces a little inaccuracy. Not much, but it would show up out at the 4th digit.

And then there’s design. Google only labels the top and bottom of the legend, so we know the bounds, but not what the middle colors correspond to. I picked a green color for half the scale, on a map which is mostly green – very bad for readability, especially in the Satellite view. I also set green to correspond to the biggest declines, and red for the biggest increases, which I think is the opposite of American expectations.

But I did learn a little about Fusion Tables, and practiced normalizing data, so that was fun!

A visiting faculty member in Music found out that, back in high school, I played the flute. He fixed me with a stare like a dog gives someone who doesn’t play with a ball and said “well, why aren’t you in my wind ensemble?”

I said “I used to play. It’s been 20 years!”

The corner of his mouth rose. “And tomorrow, it will be 20 years plus one day.”

I’m still not in the Wind Ensemble, but the phrase has stuck with me. And so, before the cobwebs on this blog are “2 months plus one day” old, a few short writeups.

I made this one for TDC 1051. The create starts with exploring Unsplash, looking for a photo which seems to want a DS106-themed caption.

Well, I can’t help it, I’m a punster from way back, so this is the one which spoke to me. A dad joke for a picture of dad’s workbench.

That leads to the visual challenge – where and how to place the text. I still have a lot to learn about color palettes and tricks like drop shadows which can enhance the visibility of text. I remember that brighter colors popped on this image, but they also looked cartoony, fighting with the detailed photo. It was also tricky to find the location – the light and shadow in the upper right, the diagonals of the folding rule, the bright light on the lower left. Ultimately, all those restrictions led to their own solution – if the caption doesn’t fit in a single block, where do two smaller blocks fit?

I’d welcome any comments which might help me think about this kind of design.

I must really be #4Life if I’m ready to suggest a new Daily Create.

CALVINBALL! Mashup the pieces of at least 2 unrelated games into a new game. Take a picture.

This picture actually comes courtesy of my son, who is seven. At that age, if Settlers of Catan Junior takes place on islands, then of course we should get the shark from Get Bit! And if the game is good with a little plastic figure of a Ghost Pirate, of course it would be better with a LEGO General Grievous. The robot from Get Bit! is my addition; the rainbow coloring was his.

He once called this ability “connectionation” – which is, of course, the imagination which sees new connections. I vaguely recall it being his kindergarten teacher’s word. It puts me in mind of the Stephen Johnson video about the birthing of good ideas, from week 1 of the Open DS106 syllabus. Admittedly, his mind doesn’t do anything slowly as Johnson describes, but it’s fascinating to watch the way his mind lets different ideas bump into each other and riff freely against each other.

It’s inspiring… and occasionally infuriating. The true story of that photo is that I missed the chance to get it some months ago. So this time, instead of explaining why there can only be one thief on the board, when he introduced General Grievous as the second Ghost Pirate, I got up and got the Get Bit set. Immediately, I was having a better time imagining new play than being the rules lawyer, and he pretty quickly estimated that we’d have a board full of Ghost Pirates if we didn’t pull back inside the magic circle just a bit.

Should this be accepted as a Daily Create, I’ll leave my first attempt at this shot here:

I don’t like the lighting on this shot, but it does capture some of the feel for the game. Compare and contrast with a better lit and composed overhead, which unfortunately loses all the detail of the toys: