In my previous post, I noted the low median income in the census tract surrounding the Sedgwick stop on the Brown and Purple Lines. That the median income in that part of the city would be less than $20k went against my own experience of Chicago—as well as my prejudices about the North Side. How [...]
Pete sent out this New Yorker interactive web thingy that handsomely redraws each MTA line as, instead, a graph of median income rising and falling as the trains move between poorer and richer neighborhoods. I figured it would take only a few hours to throw something similar for Chicago, and I was right. Below are [...]
[I was going to save this post until the new year, but the recent appearance of @10print_ebooks, the Markov chain bot for the fascinating (freely-available) book 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 made me eager to unveil this a bit earlier.] you are literally deconstructing century+ old text and still finding meaning (a response to [...]
Over a week has gone by since THATCamp Paris ended (for me) with a CodeSprint at 190 Avenue de France. So I suppose it’s finally time for me to sort of put some ideas together about it. First, I’m very glad I went. I have never been to a THATCamp before, and the last time [...]
One of the neat things about my personal web site, I think, is how it refuses to dump a bunch of information at you at once. Because there are effectively no graphics on the site, it could very easily serve up pages that are nothing but giant blocks of text, which is something I have [...]
Continue reading about Sinatra gets all jazzed up with splats
Twitter blew up over the new year because, apparently, among other texts, Ulysses finally made it into the public domain in the EU. And there’s a copy of it on Project Gutenberg. Despite what I saw that some were saying, I have been using that electronic version of the novel for a while now to [...]
Continue reading about Do bot characters from Ulysses dream of electric Blazes Boylans?
Why is it that when I search for a specific article on Google Scholar, all of the first hits lead me to pay repositories, despite the fact that the journal, published by the U.S. government, is free for all?
Continue reading about Google and publishers vs. free stuff from the Feds
After my maps of public transportation distribution in Chicago and Paris got a bit of publicity, people started asking for more. Here, I try to consider issues of population density as well as the role of buses.
Continue reading about On comparing Paris and Chicago public transit
When I made my Paris Métro map, the joke was that the next step would be the leap in order of magnitude between subway stations and Vélib’ stations. For those who don’t know what Vélib’ is, it’s the Parisian bike-sharing system that I’ve already described in great detail. But I knew there was no way [...]
The last time I rapped at you, I talked about Métro coverage in Paris. I felt like Paris was exceptionally well covered by the Métro, and I used math to prove that basically one is never more than 700m from a Métro station in the city. How, though, does that coverage compare with Chicago? Would [...]