Running with data (and Dave and Ben)

Map and profile of Saturday's run

Recently, I received a GPS watch as a gift for anniversary #1 from Meg. It's been quite fun wearing the watch, downloading the data, and looking at the topography of each run. Even a quick 5 miler around the neighborhood features short climbs that I'd never considered. I look forward to gathering more data about each outing to get an even better feel for the terrain in and around Anchorage. In the future, I hope to know as much about the routes near home as other outdoor enthusiasts living in Alaska. Perhaps inspired by this video, I've become more intrigued recently about getting out and "mapping" the surrounding terrain via trail runs. The data featured here is from a trip over Powerline Pass with Dave and Ben this weekend.

Data Viz

Soon before the blog took a 6 month sabbatical I added a few sites to the blogroll on the right. And you, the reader, might ask, "what are these blogs and why are they there?" Well, I maintain a bit of a fascination with data visualization - using thoughtful representations of information to tell an interesting story. More than just a colorful pie chart or nifty scatterplot, data visualization, or data viz, done right can distill large sets of data and provide an elegant view of patterns and trends. Some even argue that journalists will need to become more adept at narrating with data. As it happens, I get to do a bit of data viz in my job. It's quite a rewarding process. Here's part of a data viz project from work. And don't forget to check out the sites to the right.