Deleted Theory

Archive for May, 2008

Radiohead, Weird Fishes, and Data Visualization

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

Being a computer scientist / computer geek I have a craving to visualize data. I construct models, graphs, maps, and charts to gain a logical understanding of information. Bringing these visualizations into real life is simple, but it is challenging to design a composition which is creative, beautiful, artistic, fun and informative. Excel charts don’t cut it.

The RaceDV videos we developed are a form of data visualization which are informative and fun, but they only begin to scratch the surface. I have since found that there is a thriving community of creative thinkers, artists, programmers, mathematicians, and statisticians who are redefining the data visualization landscape.

Now what does this have to do with Radiohead? Today I came across a very inspiring project called Visualizing Radiohead by Robert Hodgin at flight404 which he submitted to a Radiohead video contest. His blog post explains how he encoded the audio information of the song Weird Fishes into an animation. This entire video is an experiment in programming and data visualization and did not require editing or post processing.


Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo.

If you want to see some more data visualization projects, check out the site Visual Complexity.

I can’t wait to try some experiments of my own.

Hello WordPress, my name is Rob.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Just upgraded my blog from SubText to WordPress 2.5. So far I am impressed. Good thing because I will be working with WordPress at 76design and it would not be cool if I hated it already.

Status Update :: 76design

Monday, May 19th, 2008

Most of you know that my work at deleted theory is collection of side projects which feed my need to build web apps, explore technologies, and to help out my friends.

A few weeks ago I jumped at the opportunity to work full time with a company I really admire called 76design. Located a few short blocks away from my apartment in downtown Ottawa, 76design is talented design & web development agency with a nose for clean designs and a passion for social web applications. With their sister company Thornley Fallis, a full-service communications and public relations agency, a symbiotic relationship has formed where teams from both companies integrate on a variety of projects.

I am only a couple of weeks in but I can already see great potential, and already there are exciting projects coming down the pipe. Looks like I am going to have to hit the ground running, but I always welcome fun and exciting challenges.

Now if you will excuse me, I have some new programming languages to learn.

Spring Cleaning – Web Dev Style

Monday, May 19th, 2008

It is time for some spring cleaning, and switching hosting providers gave me a chance for a fresh start. No more lingering databases, websites or DNS entries… I get a chance to upgrade all the third party services to the latest version, re-configure my backups and making sure everything is working neatly and properly. Should be good for another few months at least.