Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

Check this out: Scott Reynolds has posted his OPML file of the blogs he reads. Download and merge it into your RSS reader–it’s extremely well organized and full of resources.

In a deperate grab for attention, Scoble wants more bloggers to hate him. Scoble writes:

It influenced me to start my own “hate Scoble” campaign. Only 98 Scoble haters? Come on, there must be more!

He seems to take excessive glee in citing other bloggers whom he believes harbour him animosity. I find it hard, though, to hate Scoble, someone I’ve never met. I even read and enjoy his blog. How would I hate Scoble? Rather, I pity you, because….

Scoble, I think you might have a negative-reinforcement Narcissistic Online Personality Disorder. Rather than puff up with pride at your enormous readership and internet authority, you seek out those who hate you, dress in their insults, and encourage hatred towards yourself. I know it’s hard being at the top, but you shouldn’t want to be hated, Scoble!

/* end parody */

As promised, I’ve got the cleaned up US state boundary data, perfect for creating visualizations in Excel or Matlab. It’s a dataset of (x,y) points for each state, cleaned so that all of the state boundaries lie exactly on top of each other. So, the map is a continuous set of polygons. Here are a couple pictures:

Download it in Matlab .mat or Excel .xls, and feel free to use it in any projects.

Microsoft Excel, by default, produces fairly ugly graphs and visualizations. Unfortunately, it’s used for lab reports, business presentations, classroom work, inventories, and everything else under the sun. “Blue on grey” is ubiquitous. There’s no reason why Excel graphs have to be so bad. With a little work, you can turn boring Figure 1.a into a masterpiece.

Here is some sample data that looks like lab-data for a titration, visualized on the x-and-y axes in the default scheme:

First, let’s change that awful background color from flat grey to a lightened white -> grey gradient:

Second, the lines are too thin, and too dull. Let’s improve the color and thickness of the line and bullets:

Third, the axes need some work. Add minor tick marks inside, and lighten the obnoxious gridlines. Excel graphs are for showing patterns, not reading off data, so those gridlines just get in the way of presentation:

Fourth, the title text is far too small–and boring. Fix it up with 14pt Century Gothic Bold, and increase the size of your axis labels from 6 to 10:

Finally, remove the border to suit:

Isn’t that a lot better looking than the Microsoft Excel default? By making your graphs and visualizations more appealing, you will be able to better communicate your message. You’ll have more interest from your audience, more eyes on your data, and no bored businessmen falling asleep.

Update: It seems that portions of smchyrocky aka Rachelle Ann Monica Waterman’s journal have been deleted…but not before I archived everything. Here’s a cache of her livejournal and comments from last night: smchyrocky.zip (6.4mb).

Pundit Guy, Ace of Spades, FED, and apophenia all have something to say about Rachelle Ann Monica Waterman, the “LiveJournal Murderer” as they’re calling her. Her last post, on Thursday, November 18th, 2004 at 10:56 AM:

Just to let everyone know, my mother was murdered

I won’t have computer acess until the weekend or so because the police took my computer to go through the hard drive. I thank everyone for their thoughts and e-mails, I hope to talk to you when I get my computer back.

has received more than 5000 comments. The name of her blog, “My Crappy Life: The Inside Look of an Insane Person” certainly makes you doubt her general mental state. The MSN username “narcissa_21″ also gives me the impression that Ms. Rachelle Waterman might have an unhealthy preoccupation with herself.

There’s an official report from Alaska State Troopers:

[CUT]

A Detachment

Location: Thorne Bay
Case number: 04-89156
Type: Homicide/Murder I
Text: UPDATE: Lauri Waterman murder investigation, Craig AK

On 11/19/04, the Alaska State Troopers in cooperation with the Craig Police Department arrested two additional suspects involved in the death of Lauri Waterman, age 48, of Craig. Jason Arrant, age 24, of Klawock and Rachelle Waterman, age 16, of Craig were taken into custody after follow up investigation revealed they were involved in a conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree.

Details of the investigation revealed that Rachelle Waterman approached Arrant and solicited him to kill her mother, Lauri Waterman. Arrant agreed to kill Lauri Waterman and enlisted the aid of Brain Radel, age 24, of Thorne Bay. Between the solicitation and the actual murder, Arrant, Radel and Waterman plotted several murder scenarios and aborted one attempt to carry out a plan in September 2004.

On Tuesday, 11/10/04, Rachelle Waterman told Arrant that both she and her father would be out of town for the approaching weekend. She and Arrant agreed that it would be a good time to attempt to carry out their plan, because Lauri Waterman would be home alone. Rachelle Waterman told Arrant how to enter her house without being detected.

On Saturday, 11/13/04 Arrant and Radel made preparations to carry out their plot. During the early morning hours of Sunday, 11/14/04, Arrant dropped Radel off near the Waterman residence in Craig and drove to a prearranged meeting place. Radel entered the house. He abducted Lauri Waterman out of her bed and forced her into her mini-van that was parked in the garage. Radel drove Waterman out in the mini-van to the vicinity of Main Line Road Bridge over the Yatuk Creek, in the central part of Prince of Wales Island and met up with Arrant. Their plan was to murder Waterman and to stage what appeared to be a fatal drunk driving motor
vehicle accident, but after Radel had murdered Waterman they changed their plan.

They loaded Waterman?s body in the mini-van and drove to the end of the USFS 3012 Road, a remote and deserted location in the vicinity of Thorne Bay. Once there, Radel soaked the body and the van in gasoline and set it on fire in an effort to destroy evidence. After the van was burning, they drove in Arrant?s truck to another remote location near Hollis, where they attempted to burn and destroy other items of evidence.

On Sunday afternoon, after Rachelle Waterman returned home, Arrant contacted her and reported that they had killed her mother.

This account was developed during interviews with the three defendants over the past four days. During the interviews all three made admissions as to their involvement in the murder. Physical evidence recovered at the various crime scenes collaborated many of the defendant’s statements.

Radel, Arrant and Waterman have been charged with Murder in the 1st degree. Due to the severity of the charges, Waterman has been waived into adult court. Additional charges of Solicitation (for Murder), Conspiracy, Tampering with Physical Evidence and other charges are pending. Arrant and Waterman will be arraigned in the District Court in Craig this morning.

Author: Trp Robert Claus (RCC2)
Received and posted Saturday, November 20, 2004 1:35 PM

[/CUT]

So, we have a blogger calmly reporting her mother’s murder–which the Alaskan Police say she was directly responsible for. We’ve gone from sex scandals to murder. And, in the previous blogger sex scandals (Queen of the Sky, Jessica Cutler), we’ve seen a huge increase in popularity. Nobodies have gone to A-listers, in one swoop. Check out the comments on Rachelle Waterman’s livejournal this month:

This is the best measure of interest in her blog, since I don’t have access to site’s statistics. However, I don’t think this kind of interest will live very long–in fact, I predict a curve like this:

A murder is a news item–after the initial shock and news dies down, interest will fall to a level only slightly higher than it was previously. Yet, the scandal around Queen of the Sky generated persistent traffic to her blog. Why is sex more interesting than murder? Probably because Queen of the Sky is writing new content, and Rachelle Waterman is not. Let’s say the golden rule once more:

Blogging is all about content

In light of this interesting scandal, I have made a complete archive of her livejournal. Currently I’ve saved 96mb of uncompressed html–soon enough, I’ll have a full backup of the blog, in case it goes offline. If you want a copy of Rachelle Waterman’s archived blog, here it is: smchyrocky.zip, comments included. It’s about 6.4mb.

Additional Resources:

• GirlKilledMom Livejournal community
• Browsable Archive of Rachelle’s LJ
• The Blog as Criminal Evidence
• CSI: Livejournal