Essays and ephemera
Years in the making, Metra is about to implement positive train control (PTC) and its first installation will be on its busiest line – the BNSF. Doing so will require changes to the train schedule. A public records request for the comments reveals that the train riders of the BNSF are generally not happy about the proposed changes.
Continue reading “The Public Does Not Like Metra’s Proposed BNSF Schedule”
I just finished Miles Davis’ autobiography and it was insane. It’s easily one of the best autobiographies I’ve read and it is certainly the most entertaining biography I’ve read. Other than the excessive profanity, my favorite part is all the great names of people in his life. These are my favorite names from the book.
Continue reading “The Best Names in Miles Davis’ Autobiography”
It’s bittersweet for me to announce that I will both be leaving Rightpoint and the realm of SharePoint consulting too. I’ll share more details in the coming weeks, but I want to make one request to clients before I go: please don’t display the weather on your intranet’s homepage.
As I was reading Edgar County Watchdogs today, I came across an article that mentioned Illinois Governor Rauner being nominated for a“Black Hole Award.” There in the body of the article is my name and nomination for the Office of the Governor submitted to the Society of Professional Journalists. Awesome!
In honor of this nomination, here are the Office of the Governor’s FOIA logs from 2014-2017 that I originally sought and prompted my submission to SPJ’s Black Hole Awards.
I was only able to obtain these through an appeal to the Illinois Attorney General. The process took about three months from request to records produced. Three months isn’t as bad as some horror stories I’ve heard, but I believe the only reason I have the records now is because of my appeal. I encourage any readers out there to do the same: don’t hesitate – appeal.
I make a lot of reports and I’m always looking for ways to make better and more efficient reports. I recently read The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte and found it illuminating. Although the book is often heavy in theory, its use of clear prose and myriad of examples – both historic and present – made me more introspective about the reports I create. Anyone who uses visuals in their work could benefit from reading Tufte’s book. In this post I’ll talk about my takeaways from the book.
Continue reading “Let’s Get Visual! Visualization Best Practices”