Better Living Through Introspection

This is one of the more interesting uses of javascript I’ve seen to date: a tag cloud generated from presidential speeches from the late 18th century to President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union. Below the cloud is a slider so that as you drag from left to right (i.e., from past to present), the cloud particles change — the big difference I noticed immediately was how the emphasis on “constitution” was gradually replaced with an emphasis on “economy” or “economics”. I don’t think there are any conclusions to draw from this, but the project itself is thought-provoking.

This app is cleverly called a Tagline, and the sourcecode (PHP, hurray!) is freely available.

via O’Reilly Radar

For those of you who might not understand the significance of the upcoming Patriots vs. Colts game (and I know you know who you are), take a second to read this decent description of why things are the way they are, courtesy of the paper I love to hate:

If there is a game that requires a day to be circled on the calendar, a practice largely forgotten in an NFL that now seems to favor parity over dynasties, it is Sunday night’s AFC title game between the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts.  — Howard Bryant, “Colts Will Face a Familiar Hurdle,” Washington Post

And for that particularly fiesty, Peyton-loving, Irish lass (yes, she knows who she is, too) who claims that the Colts have homefield advantage, please take note that Brady is 8-0 in domed stadiums (including a Nov. 2003 win at Indianapolis).

As a bonus, read Peter King’s summary of the Pats/Chargers game, “Why New England Beat A Better Team” on SI.com.

(Both links via my contact in Boston.)

Having long been genuine admirers of the United States Postal Service (USPS), which gives amazingly reliable service especially compared with many other countries, our team of investigators decided to test the delivery limits of this immense system.

The USPS appears to have some collective sense of humor, and might in fact here be displaying the rudiments of organic bureaucratic intelligence.

via Firewheel Design’s Sparkplug

I first noticed this blog tag thing going around in late December on O’Reilly Radar and mentally dismissed it as another flyweight meme. But, now I’ve been tagged, so instead of trashing it from the lofty heights of my soapbox, I’ll participate kindly.

For the twelve of you who haven’t seen it elsewhere, this particular blog tag (reminds me of the early days of blogging (that’s right, the late 90’s, when a ‘blog was still a web log) involves the tagged blogger saying five things most people likely don’t know about them and then tagging five additional people to do the same. Web circles being what they are, some people end up getting tagged more than once. I give it another month before the entire universe is tagged.

I haven’t found the person resonsible for starting this viral waste of time, though many people are crediting one guy who neither confirms nor denies starting it — though his language suggests he saw it elsewhere prior to initiating his own tag chain.

Okay, without further ado, here are the 5 things:

**Five Things About Me That Relatively Few People Know**

1. I’m a fan of the (three-time world champions) New England Patriots. Not rabid. I don’t memorize stats. But I’ve followed them on and off since Steve Grogan was a household name…err, at least in Cow Hampshire.

2. During the relative calm between the two Gulf conflicts, I was a 95-Bravo. Look it up. I was sent nowhere. Dullest enlistment ever. I’m not complaining.

3. For fun, I run a web site about living in Washington, DC. Though, I haven’t updated it in…half a year? Anyone want to take bets on whether it survives 2007?

4. Courtesy of a clerical error at the DC Board of Elections and Ethics, I was temporarily an official member of the Green Party. Aren’t they like hippies or communists or something? Thanks, DC BOEE!

5. I secretly enjoy the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother. It’s guy humor wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of relationship comedy. Muah-ha-ha-ha!

Let’s see now…seeing as how I rarely consort with other bloggers (this blogosphere thing can be so tedious sometimes!) my tags might be in vain, but here goes. Tag, you’re it:

• John at Daily Vespers
• John at Sodium Chloride
• Josh, John, and the gang at Firewheel Design
• Brian and Jennifer, somewhere in New Zealand
• Emily and Austin at Coffe Break Revolution Studios

If you like news (serious or fluffy), take a moment to visit Daylife. It’s “a new way to discover the stories that matter to you” — and I have to say, it’s a very interesting interface to the top stories from around the world. Essentially, you browse through stories (from conventional news media as well as blogs), and when you see one you like, clicking on it will reveal a main headline frome one source, quotes from other sources, stats on the story (such as how many blogs have posted about it), as well as links to related stories. It sounds not very groundbreaking, but the presentation is the key, so check it out yourself.

In addition to the related information, stories can be explored and discovered in other ways. Let’s take a broad topic like, say, Wal-Mart. You’ll see a graph of mentions in the last 30 days (infoporn!), a nice photo gallery that scrolls through topics and related images as you watch, a list of articles mentioning Wal-Mart in the last 24 hours, related “Players” … and on, and on, and on…if the site wasn’t so well-designed, in fact, the information load would be overwhelming.

In a sense, as founder Upendra Shardanand described it to O’Reilly Radar’s Marc Hedlund, Daylife is “like IMDB for news.”

The one drawback is that — at least for me right now — the pages are loading sloooooowly.