If the world were a village of 100

I‘ve seen the ‘If the world were a village of 100 people‘ stats before, most notably the animated Miniature Earth site. But Toby Ng has taken these stats and produced a series of 20 infographic posters to re-tell the story in a simple and effective way. Check out his The World of 100 here »

Via: One Floor Up.

Always with honor

I came across the work of always with honor on Cargo. It’s a collaboration between Tyler Lang & Elsa Chaves (whose personal sites are well worth a look), they specialise in simple/fun icons and infographics.

Alpine Pass Route

Probably the most common questioned I get asked is – what have you got planned for your next walk? Well I’ve booked some cheap flight to Switzerland (£40 return, can you believe that? – Aer Lingus), ordered some maps and have been planning the route all weekend :) Click the image for a bigger map of our planned route.

I haven’t been to the Alps since ’95 (I used to go just about every year) so it’s about time for a visit. I’ve been keeping my eye on a new series of long distance trails crossing the Alps called Via Alpina. They just updated their site with lots more info on the routes and handy download-able section pdfs. There’s 5 trails in all, the daddy being the Red Route which is 1500 miles. Also found the site of Judy Armstrong who did a loop mostly on the Via Alpina trails, crossing the Alps twice in a whooping 3,300 mile single season trip!

I’ve a picked a little section for me and Nicky across Switzerland (Bernese Alps), mostly on the Green route, but with a bit of the Red at the end. As well as being part of the Via Alpina, (most of) the route seems generally known as the Alpine Pass Route. I found a site – Activity Workshop, that has a lot of online information about the walk, they also plotted the route on google maps which I’ve found quite handy. Also there’s a Cicerone guide of the Alpine Pass Route, by the legendary Kev Reynolds.

Can’t wait till the end of June now, I’ll be blogging as we go as usual. Hopefully if Nicky enjoys herself, we might plan a full traverse of the Alps in 2010 :)

Done Manifesto

Some wise words about getting shit done – The Cult of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark, illustartion by James Provost.

There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you’re done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.

Via: Frank.

Analogue weather report

I‘ve got nothing against those iconic weather symbols, but it’s nice to see a weather forecast presented in a different way. See all the different weather images here »

Via: Hell Yeah Dude.

CDT section planner / overview map / rough schedule

CDT Section Planner, overview map, rough schedule

Imade this map of the CDT split into each section with basic info like how far it was in between towns, what I thought our daily mileage would be based on the terrain and estimated date we’d be getting to each place. We found it incredibly useful to visualise an overview of the route ahead and get a quick mental summary of the next state etc.

I hope that someone planning their future CDT hike will find this post and find the maps useful. I’ve made 2 new version for you to download (both zipped files contain a jpeg & pdf version):

First map – with blank labels for you to print out and write in your eta.
Second map – with the our actual daily mileages and dates that we walked the CDT to use as reference. (I’ve fudged a few figures to make it more consistent). I would say that our pace was fairly ‘average’ our target was 20 miles a day, which seems to be most peoples target.

For more more info on our hike, see our ‘proof that we actually did it’ site here »

Oh and of course the base map is courtesy of Monsieur Google (his terrain view is kick-ass).

Peter Grundy

Just been looking through Grundini, the online portfolio of Peter Grundy. A lot of the work feels familiar then I read he’s been doing his stylised infographics, illustartion, art and type since 1980 and still going strong. Made me think about the future of my career and where I’ll be in 2030?! I’ll I hope I’m still designing and drawing, and I hope that it’s as good as Peter’s work! Anyhow, be sure to check out his hi-res downloadable book.

One year of Monster Munching

I‘m sure that most of you are aware my girlfriend Nicky writes a blog called Monster-Munch. Well it was the blogs 1st birthday over the weekend, to mark the occasion she’s produced a round up of the year in numbers. Slightly depressing for me as her stats far outnumber mine ;) but if you have a moment pop over to give her a pat on the back and tell her to keep up the good work.

Data Visualisation

Flowing data have published their 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year. I hadn’t seen the stuff from BBC’s Britain from Above before (pictured), you can view them on their YouTube page, awesome work.

DAYTUM

Idon’t think I’ve ever been quite so excited by the prospect of using a website before. The damn thing’s in private beta, I’ve submitted me email, but how long is it going to take before I gain access? I don’t think I can stand the suspense! I’m sure you all know of Nicholas Felton’s dedicatedly detailed and beautifully designed annual reports. Well he’s gone and teamed up interactive designer Ryan Case and built an online version – DAYTUM – for us all to track our daily data.

I can feel that this is going to be massive, as a serious tool and for comedy value (spoof stats). I hope it does well and they’re able to keep on developing it, there’s massive potential here. Get on there now, sign yourself up and have a look though some of the beta testers stats.

Update: Nicholas kindly got in touch and sent me an invite, just been adding my stats (mostly of a booze related nature), you can now see all my 2009 data here. Also the Feltron 2008 Annual Report is now here.