a digital scrapbook

So it was one hot weekend to be sure. 90′s in Seattle? No thanks.

On Friday I took a ferry home to my parents house and spent the evening with family. I made cupcakes my cousins. Or rather, ate cupcakes my cousins made. My Dad even busted out the sparkling cider for the ocassion, hah. It was a nice chill night in PO. (Albeit I was panicky at first with nothing to do before cousin Mia showed up. ;))

Saturday I went to my Kung Fu studio early in the morning. This is the second weekend I’ve commuted back for class after almost a two-year hiatus. I finally decided to take one course there this summer: Knife Defense. It’s been very challenging but fun…we’ll see how this quarter goes. Afterward I went home to have lunch with my parents before taking a ferry back to Seattle. Once there, I met up with Ryan and we went geocaching! It was a lot of fun, but soon we were hot, exhausted, and hungry. We ended up going to Rusty Pelican in Wallingford for a pasta dinner and ended the night watching West Wing. We’re finishing up Season 2 right now. (No spoilers, please.)

On Sunday we went out to dim sum @ Purple Dot for Ryan’s birthday. (See previous entry.) And then left with Darrin and Bree to Safeco to watch the Red Sox game. It was our first game in sunny weather so that was really nice and our shade in the stands was great. So were the garlic fries. The game was actually the best we’ve seen so far and they actually won this time, so double plus. We had to leave a bit early though to return to the car, although it was starting to get wicked hot where we were anyway. Afterward we went on a Costco run and I got a haircut (which was refreshing after a day under the blazing sun). Later that afternoon we ended up getting some Red Robin to go and watched s’more West Wing. Good stuff.

Then Monday was Ryan’s real birthday (and a golden birthday at that) so we made use of his new grill and had a pretty sweet steak dinner, complete with potatoes, grilled corn on the cob, salad, and lava cakes. It was muy fantastico.

Now the weather’s thankfully cooled down. I have a feeling I’m going to melt though when I go to MN next week!

“…the nature or matter of the Milky Way itself, which, with the aid of the spyglass, may be observed so well that all the disputes that for so many generations have vexed philosophers are destroyed by visible certainty, and we are liberated from wordy arguments.”

Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius (Venice, 1610).

As mentioned earlier, I attended a one-day course taught by Edward Tufte on Tuesday. I had been signed up for this training a few months in advance, but for some reason, it wasn’t until I arrived to the event that I began to realize he was one of those “Informatics-celebrities” I had read about in college. The course was titled “Presenting Data and Information” and it was hardly what I expected, but in the best sort of way.

The course emphasized the importance in visualizing data in its ability to reveal truth. This is the type of stuff I get excited about. (Well, information dissemination in general, really.) This is why I like usabilty in how it enables users the get information they want, why I tear out cool charts from magazines, or why I love learning about a new way someone’s conveyed information visually (think tag cloud, sparklines, etc.). Essentially, this is what makes me an INFO-nerd.

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I went to an Edward Tufte seminar today at the Westin for work. I completely geeked out; it was a lot of fun. More on this later (after I consult my notes).