Pete Hindle

Pictures and stuff from a guy who likes coffee.
January 24, 2009

American Ride Temperatures as Spreadsheet Examples

(click image to see large/download)

Following on from the last post, I just quickly wanted to post this image of the last database and spreadsheet work I did, which was featured in a magazine called ‘Esc’. This is a list of the average temperatures of all the Critical Mass locations in the USA, which I threw together using a variety of sources for weather across the states.

After throwing all the data I could find into a spreadsheet, I managed to make this fancy layout within Numbers, Apple’s spreadsheet program. The only problem with that is that exporting the file is quite a bugger; for some reason, it only wants to output A4 pages, which makes exporting my nicely laid out page a pain in the ass.

Here are the files for download:

PDF file of above image, with links: american-rides (pdf)

Just the spreadsheet: american_rides (csv file)

Image download: american_rides (png file, used above)

Feel free to download, remix and restructure this information to your hearts content: I’m licensing it under an Attribution CC license.

Creative Commons License
American Rides by Pete Hindle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at unnamedlaboratory.org.

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January 24, 2009

Databasing the Hackerspaces

As part of my research, I’ve been maintaining a list of Hackerspaces, Medialabs, and other related initiatives. But the problem of storing the data about them is one of storing it in a useful manner – how can I create a relational database of my research?

Thankfully, I have two database experts on hand. My parents – even my mother is known to crack the odd database joke (most often at the expense of Microsoft). And as far as I’m concerned, that’s awesome.

One of the things I was concerned with was putting multiple entries into a single field, and how that would affect my dealing with those entries in the future. And, as soon as I starting thinking that relational databases of my research were a lot more possible, then I started realising that all my research could be put into relational databases.

Of course, I do have some previous experience in databases…

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=146296&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1
Spreadsheets and Databases – An Informal Lecture from petehindle on Vimeo.

(RSS subscribers go here to see the video)

Now I should have to ponder the question of sharing those databases… it’s possible to embed them, of course, in frames, but is that the best way? Ben Fry likes to share his as CSV format, which is a pretty standardised format. We’ll cross that bridge later though: it’s time to start pounding the spreadsheet program first.

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