Visualize History

Just decided officially to make visualize history open source.  The reasons are numerous and fairly complex, but basically the reason was that my gut told me it was the right thing to do.  So, I proudly unveil: http://code.google.com/p/vishis/ where you can check out what’s in my informal queue of things to do, or you can admire the actual handiwork itself: http://vishis.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

Notice that I use Google’s free open-source project hosting, which is very kind.  Through them, I use Subversion, which is very cool in and of itself. 

Lastly, don’t expect frequent posts anymore.  I’m out of the “thinking aloud” phase and am now fully into the “roll up your sleeves and do it” phase, during which I’ll have little or no time to think brilliant thoughts or to write crafty words. 

So see when I see you.

I’m taking a quick break today to talk about Gapminder, an application which does an unbelievable job of presenting data that would otherwise be impossibly dense.  I know I will fail at explaining the app, so I’ll let its creator explain instead:

It’s basically the coolest thing in the entire world.

I typed my first line of JavaScript today.  It’s funny how much you figure out once you sit down to type the actual code.  So you will probably see a whole ton of changes happening all the time over at visualizehistory.com.  If you can’t interact with some part of it, that’s ok, since I will be making changes in what might seem like an arbitrary manner.

If, on the other hand, you have comments or suggestions, let me know.  The blog is a great place for that.  I’ve also just added a wiki to the site, where I will keep updating some of the info.