Getting there by train

Mixed media sonification, train maps, and command line hacks

Hello,

It’s been a few weeks since my last edition. A couple things are happening which I am a) excited about and b) potentially relevant for you readers. Rather than re-hash them all (which would take too long) I’m opting for a short list. Otherwise this newsletter would never get sent!

Here it goes.

Things that have been/will be happening

1// In preparation for an upcoming show at my local farmers market, I started experimenting with a new way of documenting music notation. I basically wanted to create a visual encoding system for keeping track of loops and sequences in electronic music. Calling it “loop notation” for now. Wrote a short post explaining how it works on my notepad. Would love to explore this concept further in the future.

These symbols tell me what to do and when to do it while playing a live set!

2// I am once again teaching at Northeastern University! This term I’ll be teaching Visualization Technologies 1, which serves as an intro coding class to creating data visualization on the web. This year I’m very interested in using Glitch.com as a friendly way to introduce coding concepts. We will see how it goes!

3// My work team, Pattern, is hiring for a designer and front end developer. We specialize in scientific data visualization, so preference shown for those with visualization experience and/or interest. The job spec isn’t officially approved yet, but if you want to get in on this early, drop me an email at bcooley@broadinstitute.org.

Ok that’s it, here are some cool links from my archive.

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Read

Sonification and sound design for astronomy research, education and public engagement

I got some time to read this paper about how data sonification has been used in astronomy research. For anyone interested in mixed media data communication, I think this is a fascinating read. The paper is open to the public. I also documented a few thoughts I had as I read in this Twitter thread:

Ben Dexter Cooley @BenDexterCooley

still thinking about this 'cocktail party' analogy... "We can also perceive several sounds simultaneously, meaning that we can listen to different sonified streams in parallel and our hearing can focus on one of many audio streams, which is related to the ‘cocktail party effect"

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Explore

How far can you go by train in 5 hours?

One of my favorite maps over the past few weeks. It is both useful and a telling story about which countries have invested in their public transit. Plus, the author just open sourced the code!

Amtrak Explorer

A train map by Rachel Binx which absolutely puts the Amtrak website to shame. Rachel’s is far more usable and beautiful. Rachel also included some useful links for people interestd in making similar visualizations, like this GeoJSON file of all the routes.

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Learn

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Command line hacks

Ok so normally I really hate the “Here are 10 things to change your life” clickbait-y genre of Twitter thread, but this one was actually very useful. And not just if you write code; for computer people in general! I have used a few of these commands before, but learned some new ones that are super helpful.

Sam Tsao @sam___tsao

I think everyone, including people who don't code, can benefit from using the command line. Here are 6 command line tools that can help you do simple tasks that are otherwise annoying to do:

That’s it for this edition. Till next time,

Ben