An incredible collection of work by a designer known as 9000 has wowed me today. A huge body of work that he’s put up on Flickr has just floored me with it’s depth, it’s variety, and it’s subtle humor.

You just must go here and see just some of the great work he’s producing.

I’ve been long fascinated with data visualization and the growing field that it’s becoming. With the amazing amount of data that’s being collected and stored with the advances of technology, new ways to derive meaning out of data beyond simple bar graphs and pie charts are needed.

Here’s a collection of links that marries my love of sports and a number of great visualizations of different aspects of the sports.

A favorite?

Baseball – Salary vs. Performance – Showing how much a payroll vs. wins and losses shows up. The Mariners do not fare well here.

Been looking forward to this movie from Spike Jonze for a while now. Looks incredible so far.

Click on the little different color bars for the different songs. The title track is great. Chiptunes made on hacked up old Nintendo’s. Wonderful.

So far everything still weeks. I’m working on few side things. Now Reading has broken with the new updates and won’t let me search for and add new books. Hopefully an update will be coming for the plugin soon.

Otherwise, I’m still alive and kicking. Honest.

- Coffee shops in Tacoma – I’ve got a number that I need to visit and write up and I plan on getting another one up here in December soon. Either the excellent Blackwater, one of the many many Forza Coffee Companies or possibly one of those new odd places like Cafe Muse on 6th a try.

- Blogging Quest – I know I need to continue. I’ve been distracted, and frankly lazy when it comes to continuing my quest to save the queen. I’ll work on it.

- Cave Story for the Wii! – It’s coming soon! I’m very excited for this one. The people behind the port to WiiWare are working with Pixel, the original author, to design a graphical update, along with a bit of remixed music. They are keeping a blog with updates on what’s going on, as well as comparison’s of the updates! Like the update below to the enemy Balrog.

Supposedly some great new features to help keep Cinder Inc. running strong. Already I like the new dashboard improvements in the content managing side of it. Hopefully it’ll make updating even easier so I can keep Blogging Quest actually updated.

If you find anything that’s broken just let me know.

According to the comments, the current owners Chris and Dawn are looking at selling the place, and that a possible new owner will regut the thing and start fresh with a new name, and new decor. Best of luck to the new owners, and I look forward to visiting for a cup of coffee sometime.

Two that are updated most frequently are Kevin Freitas’s Blog and Exit 133. Both talk about the development of Tacoma’s business and residential landscape, and also how they are changing with growth, development, and destruction.

Take for example their coverage of the spontaneous collapse of the Eagles building here just a few blocks away from me.  It’s great to see a few local blogs covering things you wouldn’t expect to see covered in a small city.