Recently
This month I worked on geojson.io, a tool for drawing, changing, and sharing GeoJSON map data.
Along came geojsonhint, a JSON and GeoJSON validator that works in browsers, node.js and your command-line. The wheelie is that it spits out line numbers, thanks to an experimental jsonlint fork that adds __line__
members to the objects and arrays it parses.
At MapBox I improved internal tools, splitting out open-source modules (superenv, generate-geo-testing-data, basic-queue, log-reader), improving our deploy binary, and adding continuous integration testing to core code. The eventual goal is something like etsy’s level of deployment nirvana to enable more of the MapBox team to see the core product as changeable.
With 33 people at MapBox and 121 public repos on GitHub, it’s about time to work on scale problems. This is one tool for that
- a Sankey diagram that pulls recent activity for everyone on all projects and shows what people are working on. I mulled over the representation for a while, thinking that a co-occurrence matrix or just ‘groups of names’ might work, but the Sankey seems like a good compromise. Especially when you can represent a value like ‘amount’ spatially rather than with color, it’s an instant-understanding win.
Up in New York City, I presented on d3 to the GothamJS conference. It went pretty well; the talk was mostly about using d3 in iD and how it’s not just for visualization - basically ‘d3 for HTML’ with voicecracks.
On the bus ride home, I wrote webstickfont, which notably includes a crude SVG data attribute parser and can render fonts via d3.svg.line.
Teen Mom played a show at the Far Out House in Silver Spring, MD, then released a song and our Daytrotter session went live.
Friends held a ‘solidly summer meal’ that was delicious and perfectly coincided with one of the most beautiful days of summer, sunset and all.
Stephen launched yankeepope.com and posted many great things there. Follow along at @yankeepopes.
Reading
- Jesse Kriss’s ‘Move Fast and Don’t Break Things’ is intelligent and beatifully concise.
- Wikipedia Thinks I’m a Lesbian — And This Bisexual Is Okay With That
Listening
- Mac Demarco 2
- Alt-J - An Awesome Wave. The idea of Alt-J being a reference to a key combination you need to type to output their real name, ∆, is something.
- Tame Impala - Lonerism
- Kanye West - Yeezus
- Chestnut Collection posted Filled In: Short Songs, which are great, especially You’d Never See the Day.