Our assignment last week was to use Foursquare to log our daily travels. This week, we were asked to use a classmate’s Foursquare check-in history as the source of our visualizations. I was given Bryan Lence’s data and set off to see what was there.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been teaching myself the R “environment for statistical computing and graphics“. It’s an open source project and has a doubly steep learning curve (for me, at least) of an unfamiliar syntax and medium (statistics). I can see it’s power for visualizations, however, when used to reveal interesting associations which can be further refined in other graphics software (in this case, Illustrator).

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This assignment was to develop a concept around a two-screen, live event experience; specifically, using TV and computer via internet. Our group’s concept was a variety-style, Gong Show inspired show with binary voting from viewers to determine via aggregate whether a performance was Fly (a rousing success) or Pie (a miserable failure) which received a whipped cream pie in the face. (We’re a classy outfit here..) (more…)

We’re using Foursquare as a data logger for one of our assignments in the Telling Stories with Sensors, Data and Humans class at ITP. As an aid to begin understanding the relationships between venues for our tracks, it’s helpful to munge the KML into CSV so it can be plotted and played with in a spreadsheet, Illustrator, R, Processing or whatever…

Below is a short python script to parse a Foursquare KML file into a simple CSV file. It outputs the check-in name, description, timestamp and location (as lat, lon). The Foursquare KML feed is available at the Feeds page on their site. (more…)

Yesterday I released a small web app; it was my first using the Sinatra microframework for Ruby: http://qwerty.robertcarlsen.net

The app arranges illustrations of animals wearing lettered t-shirts to create user-supplied messages. Kara Schlindwein created the illustrations as part of her project for the 6th Annual Fun-a-Day project in Philadelphia, and I wrote the first draft of the app while sitting in a chair at the show a couple of weeks ago, still nursing my broken ankle. (more…)

I fractured my ankle in a hard snowboard crash a couple of weeks ago and of course I was data logging the accelerometer forces. I was using the iPhone app developed last fall for the seismi{c}ycling project; while riding the phone was in my jacket’s internal chest pocket.

A group from ITP was enjoying the bitter weather at Mount Snow, in West Dover, VT on our (now annual?) Snowbunnies trip. This crash was late in the day on a wide open trail. I accidentally disengaged my heelside edge for a moment, causing me to rotate slightly clockwise and slide laterally. Moments later, my heelside edge caught again, now on the downhill side, causing me to quickly flip backwards onto my head … thankfully I was wearing a helmet. After that I can’t recall what exactly happened, but I know that it involved a lot of tumbling which my right ankle just couldn’t weather. (more…)

The 2009 ITP Winter Show is Sunday and Monday, December 20–21. The first visualization of my ongoing bicycle data logging project is on display under the title “seismi{c}ycling“.

This visualization traces the routes I rode throughout the fall, highlighting big bumps. Areas of New York which caused me to experience lots of bumps begin to glow bright red.

The show is a great time; I’d highly suggest coming to see the myriad of projects this year. There’s a online guest book with project map at ITPGuestbook.

[written for Media Economics & Participation at ITP]

Slashdot users are seeking karma. However, gaining positive karma at Slashdot is just a means to an end; Slashdot users are seeking (limited) power and status among their peers in the form of fleeting moderator access for the vibrant comments component of the highly active, technology-focused news aggregation site. Moderators are chosen from among the registered users using a somewhat obscure algorithm which incorporates each user’s karma rating (a scale of Terrible, Bad, Neutral, Positive, Good, and Excellent), length of membership and randomness. Selected moderators are given special status and 5 mod{eration} points with an expiration window of three days. The moderation status ends when the points have been used in the act of moderating comments or have expired.

The moderation system has been borne out of necessity as the Slashdot community has grown large, bringing the signal-to-noise ratio down and decreasing the satisfaction in reading the raw comment threads. “Flamebait” and “trolls” contribute little more than instigation for starting arguments and fights among the users with typically strong opinions on matters which usually appear on Slashdot. Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot, explains this phenomenon on the Slashdot FAQ: (more…)

Initial presentation of my final project for the Rest of You class at ITP.

I’m logging forces experienced by a bicycle {rider} when traveling through an urban environment. Many of these forces go unnoticed by the rider focused in the action of riding.

I’m looking to utilize mobile GPS-enabled handsets as a central part of the sensor platform to take advantage of their increasing ubiquity and a natural tendency for riders to carry a handset at all times. External sensors and hardware may be connected to these handsets to measure specific metrics, such as light and sound levels, air quality, proximity, heart rate, stress, breathing, work, attitude, speed and vibration.

after a couple of late nights, i have a proof-of-concept in the real-time cycling-related datalogging. the reasons behind the project are still getting sorted, but lately my interest in ubiquitous urban sensor networks has been piqued and this is a tentative exploration in that area. sensors don’t have to remain static as part of physical infrastructure…millions of people are carrying millions of sensors around with them daily. (more…)

This tutorial describes how to set up Eclipse for Arduino (AVR) C/C++ development. Eclipse is a full-featured Integrated Development Environment with modern editor features such as syntax highlighting, code completion and error checking. I became interested in using Eclipse for Arduino development as I’m often simultaneously developing firmware for the chip and visualization software in a Java / Processing applet. Since I’m already using Eclipse for Java / Processing, it’s nice to be able to work in the same environment for both.

The Arduino site has a decent walkthrough, but I found some of the steps to be confusing or outdated. Hopefully, this will get you up and running quickly. (more…)