A Spiritual Journey with Nature and Data (idk man it's Sunday)
Happy Sunday! The days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder which means that there's more time for Googling random stuff on the internet. I did a lot of the past two weeks. Some of my searching was inspired by projects I'm working on and others were just random finds that I hope you enjoy!
In this issue
⛪ A pilgrimage through Europe
🖼 Beautiful photojournalism about a ranch
📊A great lecture about data..pretty cool stuff here
🕹 pixelUpdate.007
Camino de Santiago
Have you ever heard of that The Alchemist? It's a book written by Paolo Coelho that is not the topic of this paragraph. That's just his most popular book. Anyways, that guy also wrote another book called (in English) The Pilgrimage which is about a guy who goes on a long journey in order to join some secret order (I forget the details). It has plenty of religious/spiritual/mystic undertones throughout and the main character is told that he must do a pilgrimage to St. James Cathedral in Spain.
It's a pretty neat book that I was reminded of because Google did this awesome interactive site that I got stuck reading the other day. It's all about the many routes throughout Europe that all lead to St. James Cathedral. It's called "St. James Way" because it is believed that the bones of St. James are kept at the church. I'm not very religious, but I love learning about religions and the myths and legends that different cultures hold. This is a pretty quick read that made me want to travel all over again.
The Forever Ranch from Patagonia
Don't sleep on Patagonia. It's more than a clothing brand. It's also a quality content machine. Patagonia is a fairly progressive company when it comes to climate issues (I say fairly because it's still not perfect) that also invests heavily in pumping out beautiful documentaries and quality photojournalism to bring certain niche stories to light. This one stuck out to me.
This piece is called The Forever Ranch by Louise Johns and it tells the story of a ranch in Montana that has been passed down through generations. That alone would be a fairly compelling story I'm sure, but she goes one level deeper and discusses what the family goes through in its efforts to live with the land instead of exploiting it. Again, this is another quick read and it isn't super in-depth with science or mechanics and all the other things that I typically like. It's just a wholesome story beautifully told through words and pictures.
The beauty of data visualization
I'm on a forever-never-ending-quest to learn R, Python, SQL, and data viz in general just as a massive flex, and needless to say it's difficult. I'm a few months into my courses and online studies, which means that motivation is waning. That means it's a good time to stop and look for some inspo. Luckily, this video by David McCandless came along.
It's a fun, clever, mildly depressing, and very inspirational talk about (you guessed it) the beauty of data visualization. He does a good job at showing how so many unique and interesting questions can be thoughtfully answered with aesthetically pleasing visuals and mean absolutely nothing. It's all about context and going deeper into the whys and hows of what the data is telling you.
pixeUpdate.007
It's October, and I went pumpkin picking yesterday. So here's a pixel pumpkin!
