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HOW I FOUND DATA VISUALIZATION ♱
part 1: BIRTH
First, I was born into this world.
I loved pretending to know how to read.
I definitely could not read any Chinese characters at this point.
Maybe I could manage some Dr. Seuss. (This was also when my terrible posture began.)
I have no idea what's going on here.
insert image of me drawing as a kid (or my earliest drawings)
part 2: I LIKE DRAWING
Here are a few sketchbooks for proof.
I do it for 18 years, go to an arts high school, and deck out my grad cap:
Here are a few of the drawings I've made over the years.
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Drag Click a drawing to enlarge, and read more about it.
OK, at this point it's probably time to go to a 2-year art college, right?
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part 3: I DO CODE STUFF INSTEAD
I go to UCLA and major in Data Theory and Cognitive Science.
It's pretty cool; I learn stats ➗, I learn to code 🧑💻, and I learn more about our nervous system 🧠.
As I learn to code, I consider the possibility of making a website for selling art.
"And I get to tend the rabbits." "An ... Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the place." - Of Mice and MenI haven't figured out the selling the art part yet, but at least I learned how to make a website.
part 4: I QUESTION EVERYTHING
Mid-undergrad, the pandemic happens and I start to reevaluate what I want to do.
- I make a blog.
- I try writing. Not writing well exactly, but writing nonetheless.
- I learn to make pixel art. It's kind of fun.
- I make random websites for various purposes:
Random sites
Unfortunately, all of these were hosted using Heroku when it was still free (no longer the case now), and I've been too lazy to migrate them to other free services like Vercel. But maybe one day ;)
ABCD AlBum Cover Downloader
Used spotify API to create a tool for artists and music enjoyers to easily download album art.
softNBA: An NBA Shot Chart Visualizer
Basically used Bokeh (a Python data viz package) and Flask to create an online shot chart visualizer.
NASHboard: A Fantasy Basketball Dashboard
I started playing fantasy basketball and wanted to create a dashboard tool to facilitate decision making.
Tools
UCLA Library Business Services: Invoice Automation App
Competitions
CalHacks - Most Fun Award: 2023
More projects on my Github
part 5: I MAKE A LOT OF GRAPHS
I decide to give this "visualizations for the web" thing a try
I was able to build some freelance visualizations on this here blog, but a good amount were also made collaborating with a lot of other talented people at the Daily Bruin and Daily Californian -- UCLA and UC Berkeley's student papers.
Regardless, I made a lot of graphs:
An interactive map/calculator that helps Berkeley residents determine if the upcoming BayPass is worth purchasing based on their travel patterns.
A plot that shows different tortoise stats (age, size, and/or habitat) as scatter plots or bar plots.
A histogram showing TheNeedleDrop's distribution of ratings in his album reviews.
A box plot graph showing TheNeedleDrop's distribution of ratings by genre
A lollipop chart that compares language used in reviews for male and female professors at UCLA on the site Bruinwalk.
A stacked bar chart that shows the different designs for Berkeley's pedestrian-heavy Telegraph Avenue.
A map that shows the valuations of construction projects in Berkeley (between 2019-2022).
A bar chart that shows the different types of construction projects going on around Berkeley recently (2023).
A line chart that shows how my roommmates' NYT mini completion times changed over time.
part 6: I FIND PURPOSE?
Ideally by the time you're reading this I've found purpose.
One way I recenter my purpose is to be inspired.
So I'll end with some of my favorite graph/multimedia makers:
(There are many more to add, LA times, SF Chron, NY Times, WaPo, etc..., but I think I have a cool viz in mind for when I do add all that.)
If you've made it this far, here's a lil piece of bonus media from one of my favorite games: Mini Motorways!
Mini Motorways is a game about building roads to connect homes to destinations, and the game lets you export a gif of your completed map. So this is the result!
(I forgot to do that with Tokyo, so you get a boring .png for now).
Beijing
Los Angeles
Munich
Lisbon
Zürich
Wellington
Moscow
Mumbai
Manila
Dar es Salaam
Rio de Janeiro
Reykjavik
Vancouver
London
Chiang Mai
Busan
Tokyo
New York City
Mexico City
Dubai
Warsaw
