Attack of the Infographic, or, Break the Creative Block Before it Breaks You

"How Can We Overcome the Creative Block (Infographic)"
Spyros Thalassinos, make your ideas art (December 3, 2012)

"Creative block is the inability to access the flow of inspiration and creativity. It can last for days, months, and in some cases years. See how you can overcome it, with this cool infographic: 10 Fun Ways...."

Some of the advice could be over-budget for the Lemming, like "take a vacation."

It's like the 'how to manage your money' books that start out by suggesting that you sell one of your yachts. Oh, well: the "vacation" thing says "roam around your town," after "visit another country:" maybe the Lemming is being too harsh.

"Doodle and collect" sounds like what we called "goofing off" in the Lemming's younger years. Come to think of it, anything creative was often called "goofing off." Maybe the author/artist is on to something.

"Diversify interests?!" More often, the Lemming's problem was sticking with one interest long enough to write a coherent paragraph: which might or might not have anything to do with coherent light, or "lasers;" or tasers - - - you see what the Lemming means?

Then there's "follow the stars," which may or may not refer to movie stars whose talents are - - - no, the Lemming really doesn't want to be too harsh. Aha! "In your industry," so "star" means someone who actually is competent: not an astronomical body characterized by thermonuclear fusion and lots of really hot gas; which reminds the Lemming of Congress.

Where was the Lemming?

Point number nine is "be a kid again." "Again?" Chronological progression notwithstanding, the Lemming never stopped being a kid. Then there's the distinction between being childlike and childish, and that's yet another topic. Topics.

One more thing: the actual infographic is a bit over twice the linear dimensions of the copy in this post.

That makes it over four times the size in terms of area, but quite a few folks would say 'about twice as big' anyway, without specifying what "big" meant in that particular context.

Then there was the textbook that said "diameter," when the dimension was obviously circumference: and that's - what else? More topics.

A tip of the hat to Steve Farnsworth, on Twitter, for the heads-up on that infographic.

Allegedly-related posts:

• "Another Blogger's Readers Opine on Writing"
  (June 25, 2011)
• " 'My Dog Ate My Blog?!' "
  (December 13, 2010)
  • The Lemming's micro-review remains
  • The URL is one with Nineveh and Tyre
• "Making a Work Space that Works For a Writer"
  (July 28, 2010)
• ""Monkey See, Monkey Blue" - Who Knows? Somebody May Try This"
  (April 2, 2010)
• "Blogging to Boost Creativity"
  (November 17, 2009)

Technical Difficulties: Looks Like I Must Change the Look of A.L.N.

I haven't wanted to do this: but it looks like Blogger no longer supports the old "Harbor" template I've been using. The only modification I'd made was to swap out some of the graphics.

9:55 p.m. November 16, 2010:

Or, maybe not. As of this minute, I'm able to view the blog normally.

We'll see how long this lasts. And, I'm going ahead with work on creating a 'look' with the new-and-improved stuff that's consistent with the existing Lemming look.

Cartoon Avatars: They're Now, They're Wow!

"Cartoon avatars are back in vogue"
CNN (August 9, 2010)

"Editor's note: Damon Brown is a Northern California-based freelance writer and author of books, including 'Damon Brown's Simple Guide to the iPad' and 'Porn & Pong: How "Grand Theft Auto," "Tomb Raider" and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture.'

"If recent trends are any indication, cartoon self-caricatures are becoming more popular than the clichéd photo in the mirror headshot. Cartoon avatars, both classic and new, are hot right now.

"The cartoon-spawning series 'Mad Men' is back. The critically and commercially successful AMC show about 1960s ad execs has revived its popular 'Mad Men Yourself' campaign, which lets you create an animated doppelganger that smokes like a train and wouldn't be out of place in a film noir.

"Since 'Mad Men Yourself' launched a year ago, thousands of people adorned their Facebook profiles with the retro caricatures. The trend was not unlike the personalized knockoffs of Shepard Fairley's striking Obama Hope design during the 2008 presidential election...."

I'm inclined to agree with the writer, that this is a fad that will end as soon as folks get tired of seeing their 'unique' avatar repeated with minor variations on social networks.

Clichéd or not, I think that a clear photo of a person's face is generally the best avatar. Or, in my case, part of the face: That big eye is mine. Most folks are able to distinguish faces, almost without effort. The trick is to pick a relatively high-contrast, sharp-focus photo with a neutral background.

The biggest drawback, as I see it, to using something that's popular as an avatar is that - it's popular. Standing out from the crowd takes work online, and blending in with everybody else who's following a current trend doesn't help.

BBC 'Map' Video: Digital Worlds

"The Digital Worlds - The Beauty of Maps - BBC Four"
BBC, YouTube (April 23, 2010)
video, 2:38



"More on this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s2w83

"This film looks at the way cartography has changed and entered an age of digital map-making.

"Denis Lawson explains how digital mapping is shaping the future, letting us see into virtual spaces and into the infinite unknowns of outer-space.

"Each image is a breath-taking first look at the world today, showing the extent of human endeavour in the most beautiful ways possible."

There's a bit of the familiar old "once it was believed, now we know" attitude in the video's introduction - but there was an enormous increase in how much data we have, and the power of our tools to analyze the data, in the 20th century.

A nitpicking detail: The "dark side of the moon" isn't any darker than the side that faces us. It goes through the same day-night cycle. What's "dark" about it is that it was, until we started sending ships out there, unknown territory. So, as a metaphor, I suppose "dark" is okay.

The video has remarkable graphics, presents a lot of information (and a perceptible attitude) quickly - without seeming rushed. In my opinion.

If some of the graphics look familiar, you've probably checked out "Data Driven Art..." (January 27, 2010)

Related posts:

• "Vespucci: Not Bad for a Son of a Notary"
  (March 9, 2010)
• "Data-Driven Art: For an 'Overwhelmed' 'Hive Mind???' "
  (January 27, 2010)
• "Photo Map: 99 Percent of Earth"
  (July 1, 2009)
• "Map of Humanity: World of Concepts, People, and Imaginary Places as Geography"
  (June 13, 2009)
• "Happy birthday, Giovanni Schiaparelli: Observer of Canali on Mars"
  (March 14, 2009)
• "Maps: Lots of Little, Tiny, Maps"
  (November 9, 2008)
• "Maps of Military Encounters from Ancient to Post-Roman times"
  (August 26, 2008)
• "Historical Maps - No, Really - This is Cool"
  (July 18, 2008)

Or, click "Maps" on this blog's Label Cloud.

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A tip of the hat to timethief, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this video.

A Light Look at the Future, With Wired Magazine

"Found: Amusement Park Ride From the Future"
Wired Magazine (November 17, 2009)

"Click on the thumbnails below for a closer look at amusement park rides in the year 2019.

"What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years? We need your help creating a new artifact from the future for every issue of Wired magazine. Each month, we'll propose a scenario and ask for your prognostications. Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. Check out this month’s challenge...."

We've got your "Space Falcon Interstellar Rocket Coaster" - and that's not a typo.

And, perhaps more believably, "resuscitation equipment embedded in the ride" - in another decade or so? This may not be any less likely than the idea that airports will have do-it-yourself defibrillators scattered around, the way fire extinguishers used to be.

Ultradramamine hypospray? In a way, I'm surprised we don't have that now. Or maybe I've missed something.

This month's challenge is "Found Photoshop Contest: The Future of Over-the-Counter Medicine"


(Photo Illustration: Jon Snyder, via Wired Magazine, used w/o permission)

It looks like fun: and I'm glad to see that Wired seems to be taking this spate of (goofy?) predictions as light entertainment. Futurologists notwithstanding, I haven't seen all that much to indicate that we're particularly good at telling what's around the corner.

Vaguely related posts, about The Future: imagined, and in the R & D stage.

• "The Robots are Coming! The Robots are Coming!"
  (November 4, 2009)
• "The Future: Just Like Today, Only Different"
  (October 24, 2009)
• "Good News, Neural Devices Connect Brain, Computers: Bad News, Same Thing"
  (July 11, 2009)
• "Clothing of the Future: 2000 as seen in the 1930s"
  (June 26, 2009)

Bats in Space! Cassini Team Sends 'Bats Wishes'

"Happy Halloween"
NASA (October 31, 2009)

"The Cassini team sends 'bats wishes' for a happy, healthy and fun Halloween.

"The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C."

That image is 400 x 300 pixels, half the dimensions of the smallest copy on the NASA website. They've got the picture at Full Size (3600 x 2400), 1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768, and 800 x 600. It'd make pretty good wallpaper - and the NASA website gives instructions for using the image that way, for most sizes of the image.

Enjoy.

Lunchbreath's Girlfriend-On-Vacation Food Pyramid

"Girlfriend-On-Vacation Food Pyramid"
Serious Eats (September 30, 2009)

"Girlfriends, this is what your boyfriends eat when you're not around. The Girlfriend-On-Vacation Food Pyramid illustrated by Lunchbreath gives us a peek into the nutritionally decrepit wasteland of boyfriends...."

As a member of the other sex, I would like to defend my fellow-men, pointing out that when left unsupervised we do not normally eat a whole block of cheese; "impulse pancakes;" an entire pie, or a vodka + root beer (1 to 3 pint ratio) every hour. Well, not that vodka and root beer mix, anyway.

Funny? Yes! The 'food pyramid' is a version of those charts you've seen - the old ones that reflect what 150-pound opportunistic omnivores like homo sapiens sapiens actually eats, and the newer ones where meat is a condiment and we discover that humanity should have been living on tofu for the last 20,000 or so years.

I think the "boyfriend" part is pretty accurate: I suspect that if a woman has committed to house-training a man to the point where she marries him, within a few years she'll have him trained out of some of the worst of his bachelor habits.

Which may explain why I've heard that men live, on average, about ten years longer if they're married.

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A tip of the hat to williamcooks, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this post.

'About Us' - Why It's Important, How to Design Yours

"The Essence Of About Us Page With 12 Captivating Showcases"
Oneextrapixel (July 31, 2009) (I know, but that's what the date stamp says.)

"The previous post about Establishing a Brand for your site is one of the many methods to build trust and establish a relationship with customers. This post covers another way of building trust, and that through the About Us page.

"Have you wanted to find out more about a particular website but there is just not enough information for you? About Us page might just be an ordinary page however its significance should not be overlook.

"It is a page that provides information about the company or the people behind the web site, including basic real-world information, such as mailing address, phone number, and fax number, as well as background information on the company and the people in the company. This pattern describes how to organize this information in the About Us pages of your website...."

I'm pretty sure, judging from syntax in the second paragraph, that whoever wrote this post did not speak English while growing up. Don't let that bother you! The post is clearly written, with a very sufficient number of illustrations.

This is a pretty good introduction into the whats, hows, and whys of 'About Us' pages, with examples from Google, Us, MailChimp, and other more-or-less well known outfits.

The post is divided into sections: "What Information Should Your About Us Page Contain?" and "12 Captivating About Us Showcases". The latter is worth a visit, just for its eye-candy value, I think: but I did 10 years in graphic design, and may find this sort of thing more interesting than you will.

Overall, this post won't tell you absolutely everything you need to know for designing you own 'About Us' page - but I think it's a pretty good place to start.

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A tip of the hat to yellownerd, on Twitter, for the heads-up on this post.

Unreal Architecture: a Thesis Project

"Thesis Projects // Arts & Architecture"
Evermotion Forum (thread started June 6, 2008)

"This my Thesis project thread .My subject is Graphic design & Architectural Illustrastion.[!]I wanted to show you how to combined graphic design & architectural visualization.Backgrounds are retouched photos.I use Maya mental ray for renderings.Comments are most welcome.Hope you like it.

What follows is a collection of very, very, impressive renderings of fantastic architecture.

Kouzou Sakai Illustration: Beautiful Graphics

"Kouzou Sakai Illustration"
www.kouzou.org

You need to know Japanese to read this website: but the graphics are beautiful.

Don't Drive, Drink - Funny T-Shirt

"How I stopped driving and learned to love the beer"
BretBouchard.com Freelance PHP Web Design and Graphics blog (undated)

"Most people in the northern states of the US are usually a little bit put off by Nascar. But this shirt pretty much sums up a few thoughts that are universal about rising gas prices ...."

Funny, I wasn't aware that we sophisticated northerners were put off by those people down south who like NASCAR.

It's a funny T-shirt, though.

---

NASCAR: Something those people down there like?
A little reality check:

	Regions		U.S. Population	NASCAR
	Northeast		20%	20%
	Midwest		23%	24%
	South		35%	38%
	West		21%	19%

(Source: Fraternal Order of Eagles "NASCAR Fundraising Resources")
(You'll find a few colorful pie charts at "NASCAR Goody's Dash Series.")

Video Game System Selection Flowchart: Biased, but Funny

consolechartyr2.jpg

This highly biased and opinionated flow chart helps you decide:
"What Video Game System Should I Own?"

It's also rather funny.

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Update (December 18, 2009)

The original URL now redirects you to - I'll get to that in a minute.

The "What Video Game System Should I Own?" graphic seems to have gone viral - I found it, and variations - elsewhere. This seems to be a fairly stable source, as of today:

• "What Video Game System Should I Own?"
  Hawty McBloggy Invites You to Play (June 26, 2008)

About the original URL:

following this post's original link would have ended up redirecting you to an utterly irrelevant page. I'm pretty sure, now, that the original graphic and the current redirect were part of the 'clever' marketing that's earned entrepreneurs a bad reputation.

An undeserved one, in my opinion. But then, I'm biased. I'm an entrepreneur of sorts, myself: one of those who thinks that a sensible way to succeed is to:

• Offer a product or service
• Let people who might be interested know about it and
  • Show how your product or service
    • Entertains
    • Helps
    • Informs
    • Solves
    • Whatever

Sure, that's nowhere near as 'clever' as putting naughty words in HTML tags; setting up 'bait and switch' websites; or disabling the "back" button. But I'd rather get an audience by producing something people like, than redirecting traffic to a rather dull page about -- marketing, I think it was, in this case -- and trying to sell space to the page to gullible advertisers.

Oh, well. Not everybody defines "success" the same way.

A Cute Kid Dancing - Animated GIF

z97349830-1b.gif

A small (142 x 160 pixel) animated GIF of a very cute little girl, dancing with one of those wind sock puppets.

Enjoy.

Download Free Printable Paper?!

"Free Printable Paper"

"Hundreds of papers you can download and print for free. We've got graph paper, lined paper, financial paper, music paper, and more."

When I saw the title, I thought it was a gag: like Dilbert's manager telling Dilbert to send a fax on green paper.

But, this looks like a pretty good idea: commonly used patterns to print on paper, provided free: with advertising to cover the costs.

Photoshop Tutorials: For "Better Navigation"

"45 Photoshop Tutorials for Better Navigation" Vandelay Website Design (March 3, 2008 )

"Navigation is obviously one of the most crucial aspects of web design in terms of usability, but often it is also a focal point of the design’s appearance. Navigational buttons, bars and menus provide the designer with an excellent opportunity to be creative and add some style to the design. What better tool to use for this purpose than Photoshop?"

No question about it: the samples shown are attractive navigation elements.

Whether pretty buttons means "better navigation" is a debatable point, at best. It certainly means better-looking navigation.

Although I've used Photoshop, and am impressed with the software: "What better tool to use for this purpose than Photoshop?" deserves an answer.

If money is no object, you actually need the wide range of advanced features that Photoshop offers, and you need to impress clients (or your boss) with the word "Photoshop," then Photoshop is the better tool.

If you don't have transfinite financial resources, your graphics software has to do about 95% or so of what Photoshop does, and you don't have to impress someone by saying that you use Photoshop, I'd go for another package.

I use Corel products: when I bought the package that included "Photo Paint," that, and the other software, cost about half of what I'd have paid for Photoshop.

Still, those are cool graphics. And, the tutorials probably have knowledge that can be adapted to whatever graphics software you use.

Toyota's Power Split Device (PSD) for Prius

"Toyota Prius - Power Split Device (PSD)"
eahart.com

"The Toyota Prius is packed with some pretty high-tech stuff, but at the heart of the Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) is a simple little device called the Power Split Device, or PSD. The PSD is a planetary gear set that...."

Graphics, one of them animated, description, and links.

This is a pretty good place to learn about the Toyota PSD - and mechanical transmissions.

A Collection of Very Strange Technical Documentation

"Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness"

With graphics of bizarre documentation, like:

"Ambidextrous Knife
"Apparently from instructions for a left-handed kitchen knife. It's odd, then, that it's a right hand in the picture. (From--also ironically--Dirk)"

"Bathroom Advice
" 'No leaves in the toilet, no swan dives off of it.' (Thanks, Anne)"

A word of caution: some of the humor is mildly risqué. And brings up an interesting question: what were the people who designed these (real) signs thinking?! Like this sign in a Japanese subway: "Confusing japanese subway signs" College Humor (March 9, 2004). This one is risqué, and genuinely funny.

(If this looks familiar, it should: This is one of the websites mentioned in a previous post, "Ten Really Odd Websites" (March 25, 2008).)

And Now, for Something Completely Different: A Recursive Paradox

"A Picture is Worth a Thousand Time-Space Paradoxes"

Take a good look at the newspaper this woman is reading. Enjoy.

Moscow's Crystal Island Project Approved

"Crystal Island Receives City Approval" "The Moscow Times" English (December 18, 2007)

"World’s Biggest Building Coming to Moscow: Crystal Island" inhabit.com (December 26, 2007)

The Crystal Island near Moscow will be the largest building in the world, when it's completed in 2014 - if all goes well. Apparently, it's a very "green" building with solar panels, a small carbon footprint, and windows to let light in.

It looks like a gargantuan cross between a washing-machine agitator and the Eiffel Tower.

Impossible Machines, the Animated GIF

"impossible-machines.gif," a large animated GIF, filled with, well, impossible machines.

See how long it takes you to see where the image's edges are: the display is tiled.