Doctor Who Time Travel Timeline. Yes, enjoying all the hype myself for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who. Accordingly, posting an animated graphic—after two last spring—visualizing the travels through time per story over the span of the program.

The turquoise ring spans time from the Big Bang in “Castrovalva” through the heat death of the universe in “Utopia”. Time is measured out logarithmically centering on 2000 AD, so as to afford more visual space to contemporary times. Outside of the wheel of time are the stories, seasons, and Doctors queuing up at top as the animation plays through, calling out the current story with it’s known time stamps. The dates display darker for times pictured but not active in the episode, blue for parallel universes, and red for negated timelines. The journey through time traces in red, with main stories taking place in the TARDIS/Time Vortex in the center and unspecified dates (of which there are many) at the left offset pinwheel with Gallifreyan timelines at the right.

While the design and animation are mine, I can’t claim credit for the music. Whovians might recognize the track as “The Mad Man with a Box”—one of my favorites, and apt for the graphic.

Top 25 Technology Stocks. Working with technology companies, I was taking a little time to satiate some curiosity of the industry’s top stocks contrasted with their gross earnings and profit percentage. No surprise that Apple sits on top on in market cap, revenue, and gross profit, with Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard having runner-up rankings. I’m interested to see Adobe (a client of mine) having the highest percentage of gross profit to revenue among the group. Twitter has already made the list with it’s IPO a couple weeks ago and not too surprising that Facebook is in the cluster as well, though I’m seeing both in addition to LinkedIn aren’t currently paying dividends, Intel is currently sitting highest there.

Salt Lake City Neighborhoods. Moving to Salt Lake City last year, I found my new neighborhood referred to as many different neighborhoods—15th & 15th, Wasatch Hollows, Sugarhouse, Yalecrest, and East Bench—hence, a neighborhood boundary map.

I used the broader limits, gleaning information from the city planning councils, historical neighborhood definitions, and real estate boundary specifications. There are a few areas, such as Gilmer Park—which is also within 9th & 9th, East Liberty Park, and Central City—that overlap up multiple areas. Most locales I was already aware of as they’re well-known such as the Avenues (apparently officially the Greater Avenues), Foothill, Downtown, Capitol Hill, Rose Park, and Marmalade, but it was interesting to come across other district definitions and stories in Swede Town, Forest Dale, Poplar Grove, Rio Grande, and Highland Park. There are also neighboring precincts such as Olympus Cove and Millcreek that are spoken of as though they’re part of Salt Lake City proper, while being autonomous townships.

The map displays Salt Lake in red, and the neighboring communities in cyan overlapping the neighborhoods with the population dot map from the 2010 census created by the University of Virginia. Cities are in caps, townships in parentheses, and neighborhoods in title case. Freeways and major streets also displayed with some labels for reference along the sides.

As with so many infographic projects, I’d considered involving other dimensions—income, zip codes, and landmarks, as examples. However, there’s a point where adding is complicating, and data for another time.

Halloween Costume Trends. Despite some excellent distractions last week, I decided to finish up this graphic and post it anyway, we’re only a week out from Halloween, right? While we may all have been thinking about Christmas for a month now, maybe we’ll just call this an early posting for next year.

The data on this one comes from the National Retail Federation charting the most popular adult and children costumes over the past nine years. I noticed a few trends while building. Firstly, zombies gaining in popularity. I’ve read that zombies do well in poor economies, but the costumes could be more symptomatic of our entertainment trends. Though even children gain a little undeadness in 2011.

Also note 2006’s reversals in the top 20 only for that year, no idea what that’s linked to. Many of the top positions are occupied by feminine costumes—witches, princesses, cats, nurses, fairies, and vixens—in particular the first rankings for both adults and children across all the recorded years.

The kids have a larger spread of superheroes than adults, gaining in the comic books later while dropping Hannah Montana and Dora the Explorer. I did notice quite a few supers in my own neighborhood last week. I answered the door as Spiderman, noticing that’s a high trend with children and a slight blip with the adults. Guessing I’m still a bit of a kid.

One year in the house. A year ago today, I signed the lease on my 1922 bungalow in the 15th&15th neighborhood in Salt Lake City. Being an atypical renter, I repainted the entire upstairs and some of the basement level, recarpeted, replanted parts of the yard, and added a couple light fixtures and other details, realizing that there’s not actual monetary ROI for this effort. Despite that, I wanted to enjoy making some cosmetic changes to a house without getting tied into a mortgage and a specific location.

The attached pictures show the house when I signed at left and the current appearance at right. The last images are the dining room and hallway which have no unfinished counterpart image, though the hall was painted only in primer. The top image is obviously Halloween this last week. One of my favorite transformations was the guest room which was brown and orange, including the ceiling, at the southwest corner of the house, increasing the hot feeling. It’s now one of the most restful rooms in the house. I also enjoy how the hall became it’s own space with it’s own furniture and the darker paint (a shade darker than the dining room, which in turn is a shade darker than the living room). The accent wall of the living room also anchored the windows and the dark paint in the bathroom offset the white porcelain and tile, and though the kitchen is small, the darker paint in there against the cabinets kept the far end of the room from feeling disassociated.

There were many spaces after signing that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to change as much as I’d like, but found that getting furniture and lighting into the space can change everything. I recall fretting over a basement I wasn’t going to spend much time in with empty space I didn’t want to be in and was glad for a roommate that made it all very livable—particularly in the 100-degree summer. Still many details I’d like to build up as long as I’m in the house, but I also get excited about another location at some point in the future.

Devil Map USA. Yes, this is a repost of an info graphic from last year, but noting another very flattering and enjoyable article from John Metcalfe from the Atlantic Cities. Accordingly, I think I’m going to need to move up the complementary infographic up in the queue—Hell needs a Heaven.

Not all points are labelled because of design space limitations. I called out the major points and isolated locales and most of the unlabeled points are repeated names such as “Devil’s Backbone” of which there are many or names that are repeated for different features in the same neighborhood, such as “Hells Canyon” which is applied to the canyon, park, and roads. There is a selection to design.

Utah Haunted Houses. Halloween is rapidly setting in and that begs a seasonal infographic. Mapped here are the Salt Lake City area haunted houses and a few such Halloween-related venues ranked by overall social media popularity. I would like to have noted the most visited venues, but that information isn’t available. Many spots still lack much social media presence—good to just get out and enjoy the night, not post about it constantly, right?—though the most overall checked-in are typically the ones most attended such as Nightmare on 13th, Fear Factory, Castle of Chaos, and Strangling Brothers Haunted Circus. There are also a few difficult to rank the same way as they’re hosted by year-round venues and indistinguishable online, notably Frightmares, Red Butte Garden, and This is the Place. Remembering Rocky Point and the Mental Hospital in Provo, I feel a bit dated. The information is current to 10 October 2013 with website and twitter links. Where are we all going this year?