The Nerd Venn Diagram

Yep…I’m a geek.

From Matthew Mason on his blog, sed contra.

Thanks to Ken (LibertySquare} on TGM for the link!

xkcd: Geek attempts a Visual Valentine

In the recent xkcd comic, a geek attempts a visual valentine.

101 Muppets of Sesame Street infographic

Mahna Mahna!  Not always about using new programming languages to plot massive amounts of data, infographics can be fun too.  From the National Post comes the 101 Muppets from Sesame Street.  Who would want to read a boring Cast of Characters list.  Visualizing the information is what makes it fun as you try to recognize some of the more obscure characters.

The muppet who sings Mahna Mahna is in there, can you find him?

Some Muppet faces are more familiar than others, so here’s a handy guide to some of our favorites in celebration of Sesame Street’s 40th year on the air!

In celebration of Sesame Street’s 40th season, Steve Murray created this visual of 101 of the most used characters over the years using data from muppet.wikia.com.  The infographic was made interactive with the help of Rebecca Yanovskaya, so when you mouse over any muppet you get a popup with their name and a little history.

Don’t forget to check out the new Muppet videos on the MuppetsStudio channel on YouTube!

Mega Shark infographic

I love it when someone just decides to create their own infographic.  Stivo (Stephen Taubman) created this Mega Shark infographic to demonstrate the physics behind a giant shark taking down a commercial jet airplane in the movie Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Last year, I discovered the wonderfully cheezy and sharky movie: Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. While it certainly appealed to a more straight-to-DVD niche market of creature-feature enthusiasts, it wasn’t half bad. Pretty laughable in parts…well actually, in most parts when you consider the wooden acting and crap computer animation. However the most ridiculous scene has to be when Mega Shark takes down a commercial jetliner that is cruising over the middle of the ocean. It was this moment that took the movie from being a little ho-hum to “holy shit, did that shark just eat a plane!?”. Check out the clip for yourself on youtube here.

It’s pretty incredible when you think about it. I mean, how the hell did it do that? What would it require for a shark the size of a plane to launch itself out of the water and take down a moving aircraft? After reviewing some of my basic physics calculations (thanks SUVAT!) I came up with some pretty startling figures. However, it didn’t feel like I would be doing such an epic event justice with just a basic blog post, which meant it was time to do what I love most: an infographic! I had been itching to do one for a while now, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. So with all that said, check out the resulting design below. Oh, and just click on the image to download the full size PDF version for the smaller details.

Great job Stivo!

The Electromagnetic Spectrum - infographic comic

I recently found a great old infographic from xkcd.com visualizing the Electromagnetic Spectrum.  Check out the detail in the larger version on the xkcd site.

Visualizing Gravity Wells - infographic comic

 

Another great new infographic comic from xkcd.com.  A mix of real science and humor, this one plays on the words “gravity well” by visualizing the strength of each planets gravity as the depth of a crater scaled to Earth’s surface gravity.

The chart shows the “depth” of various solar system gravity wells.

Each well is scaled such that rising out of a physical well of that depth - in constant Earth surface gravity - would take the same energy as escaping that planet’s gravity in reality.

Click on the image to go to the xkcd.com site to see the high-resolution version.

Thanks for sending in the link Ruben!

Holiday Cliché Find-It Graphic from Xplane.com

Check out this fun Holiday Cliché Find-It graphic from Xplane.com!  It's available as a 11x17" sized PDF so you can view or print it out.

“Get your ducks in a row” so that you aren't “caught with your pants down” this holiday season! After all, it can be like “herding cats” out there this time of year, and you definitely don't want to get stuck “in the weeds.” So, go ahead and take a minute to “shop this around,” “see if it sticks” and celebrate from a “10,000-foot view.” It's all “blue sky” from here on out, nothing but a “win-win situation!”

Think you know your business clichés? Find where they're hiding in this holiday XPLANATiON™ created by your friends at XPLANE! Just click the image above to download the tabloid-sized 11x17" PDF.

Thanks to Parker at Xplane.com

The Simpsons 20th: Comedy [Family] Tree

The Simpsons celebrate their 20th anniversary this week on Thursday, and CNN Entertainment published this chart "The Simpsons Comedy Tree" on Monday.  A combination Nightingale Rose Graph (also called a polar area diagram), family tree and timeline, this simple chart connects the influences that impacted Matt Groening and the creators of the Simpsons as well as the shows that came after.

"The Simpsons" stands on the comedic shoulders of many that came before -- and has influenced countless works that have arrived since. Here are just a few of the roots of the "Simpsons" comedy tree and the branches of those it gave life to. (The following, illustrated by the doughnut at the top of the story, is by no means complete, and each member has its own, sometimes overlapping influences.) 

Thanks to Tony Hendra's "Going Too Far" for inspiration and cartoonist Art Spiegelman for having his fingerprints all over the place.

The article also includes descriptions of the actual influence for each of these shows.

Thanks for the link Matt!

Also:

For those Simpsons fans of you, here is also the poster created exclusively for Entertainment Weekly celebrating the release of the 20th season DVD set on Jan 12.  Dude, make sure to go look at the large, scrollable version.

XKCD: Movie Narrative Charts

Great post by the XKCD online comic series!  They occasionally post a infographic-style piece, and this one doesn't disappoint.

Created by Randall Munroe at XKCD, the Movie Narrative Charts plot the interactions between key characters on a timeline, grouping the character lines together when they are interacting in the movies.  He obviously spent some time working on these, and be sure to check out the detail in the full size version.

The last two are jokes, but the ones for Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars Trilogy and Jurassic Park are real and very well done.  I love the Primer chart poke at trying to follow the movie!  Not as mainstream as the other movies, but it's definitely appropriate.  I'd love to see how Randall would chart Memento!

Thanks Tom for the email link!  Popular on the blogs, this was also found on Infothetics, FlowingData, SimpleComplexity, VizWorld and Fast Company.

What's a Gruzzle?

So, what's a Gruzzle?  With extensive use of Venn Diagrams, GL Hoffman often posts these visual blog posts on his blog, What Would Dad Say, and Fast Company has also started pubishing them as well.

So back to the original question, What's a Gruzzle?  Here's a really good answer, by one of his readers:

But here's the official answer:

You can also follow @GLHoffman on Twitter