Why Havn't I Posted in a Long While?

Thanks to nobody for playing Risk with me.

Regular Roads

Just in case it's not self explanatory, this map depicts the roads I drive along weekly, and how much I use them. The thicker and lighter the road, the more I use it. If I travel on a road an average of less than one times a week, I have not included it on the map. I also haven't included city roads on the map, as they don't really fit into the space I have available, here. But other than that, this is basically everywhere I go in a week. My life exists (mainly) around these roads. And as I made this image, I was shocked to realize how contained my day-to-day experience of the world actually is.

It seems that my travels hover between work, church and my fiancé's, and all these places are within twenty minutes of my home. It really makes me wonder what my friend's Regular Roads maps would look like. And then wonder about the equivalent maps of other cultures and countries. But these are some wonderings for some other time. A good wondering for now might be trying to work out which roads are which, since I didn't name any of them.

Basketing Balls

Yesterday I finished my first ever season of basketball. Previous to this, basketball and I have had quite a sour relationship for more than a few reasons, but at the opportunity of playing alongside friends I cast this baggage behind me to give it a go. This timeline shows simply when I scored goals, committed fouls and shared a victory during our season. As it was my first run at the sport, there isn't all that many of said events, however I assure you I was at least helping out the team in other, less recordable ways. Next season, there will be a million more of everything.

Word of the Rings

Perhaps it is worthwhile noting that I have not included most verbs, adjectives, pronouns and the like in this graph of words used throughout the entire Lord of the Rings film trilogy script. Otherwise, these are the most commonly spoken words by characters in the Lord of the Rings. I hope it is obvious that the bigger the word is, the more often it is spoken throughout the movies. If this is not so, then complain in a comment on this post and I will try to feel sorry for you.

It's Not About Winning

This weekend was spent at State Youth Games, a popular Christian sporting event where it is well understood and well insinuated that fun—rather than winning—is the aim of the game. Meanwhile, I am one of the most competitive people I know, and struggle to compete without wanting to win.

And so I thought it would be good to take a few statistics during the weekend of how my sporting success affected my mood. I took some basic number notes after each match of the four sports I played over the weekend, and came up with the following results. Note that I've rounded off the would-be ridged line to give a more realistic interpretation of the two variables measured.

But this graph doesn't really answer the question of how much winning affects my mood. So I've taken these raw results and shuffled them onto a new plane. On this graph, the closer my measurements are to the diagonal line, the more related my happiness and success apparently are, or in other words, the more important winning is to me.

It seems that I don't stick too much to the diagonal line, but definitely do hover around it. I guess this means that winning helps my mood, but doesn't control it. There are many other conclusions that can be drawn from this chart, but I'll leave you to make them. I'll just note one thing I find particularly interesting, and that is that my mood seems to be most happy when I am at a particular level of success. So too much winning equals bad. Who would have thought?

Around the World

When it comes to world travel, I've only really occupied three major islands. Nevertheless, today I've deemed it necessary to document my various globe trottings. I've plotted here the places on Earth that I've been in terms of how many times I've been there and how long I was there for. Enjoy!

In a way, you'd think I would have visited a larger area of my own country during my twenty-one years on Earth, let alone the world. Apparently not.

Guitar Sound Desk

I was trying to explain to a friend the other night about different electric guitar types, how they vary and what you'd use them for. It is things like this that really need to be explained with a diagram, and so what better way to set off on this blog adventure than by doing just that.

The information graphic above exhibits the five most common electric guitars that you can buy, and demonstrates how they sound in both tone and clarity. These include the the two most popular Fender and Gibson models respectively, followed by a generic hollow-body guitar (since the hollow-body guitar isn't a style of guitar particularly characterised by a specific brand).

In addition to the guitars shown, I've plotted some of the most common electric guitar genre zones within the diagram. These zones indicate where you would want to find a guitar if you were wanting to play that specific genre. As you can see, many genres overlap around where the Stratocaster is, which is probably why it is the most popular model of electric guitar around. However, it can also be noted how far away the Strat is from the metal zone. This means that as far as metal guitars go, the Strat sucks.

Please get angry if you disagree with my knowledgeable interpretation of guitar sounds. I would love to have an argument with you about it, and would be happy to adjust this diagram if you defeat me in said argument. This, however, would require commenting. So please comment. Don't bottle it up. That would be bad. Sad bad.