Angry Cat, originally uploaded by RumAli.

The day was April 2, 2010, and I was set to go to Madison, Wisconsin to spend the weekend with S. I knew that she would like to have the cat, Chow, to be with her, too. I had been taking care of Chow for nearly a month and this was the best opportunity to bring her back. I was mentally prepared to deal with the cat’s protestations once in the car, but I had never actually put her in the travel carrier.


Here’s what I did:


1. Position the travel carrier with its mouth open and facing upwards.
2. Close all escape routes from the room. (I didn’t know what to do if she ran underneath the bed.)
3. Take cat by the scruff of the neck and carry her to the travel carrier.
4. Put cat, feet first, into the travel carrier. The cat’s front legs will splay out and grab the opening of the carrier. The cat’s hind legs will reach out and touch the inside-back of the carrier.
5. Once the cat’s front legs are inside, let go of the cat’s scruff and close the door.


This was enough of a “first” to go in the list of firsts, which, so far this year includes:


01-19: Playing outdoor hockey in Cedarburg, WI.
02-11: Speak at the College Art Association’s annual convention.
03-28: Cook with asafetida (aka “devil’s dung”).

#26 @ Mike’s Noodle House, originally uploaded by RumAli.

This was the fifth meal of the year 2010 that included meat. And boy did it include meat. Unfortunately, the meat did not add that much to the meal. I made a chart recently (unpublished as of this writing) that indicates that the few meals I ate that contained meat had a higher enjoyment rating than those meals without. Definitely needs more analysis.

As for this one. I ate this meal, I’m going to number it meal # 20100326, in Seattle’s International/Chinatown District. S and I had recently missed our flight out of Seattle, a mistake that would cost us the equivalent of about 23 servings of Sesame Bean Curd from East Garden in Milwaukee, WI. The stereotypical Pacific Northwest rains returned that afternoon, accompanying us on our tired ride back to the center of the city on the light rail. We had arrived at the airport, in a rush, by cab.

Luckily, friends were still in town, so we met up with a couple of them and searched for this one sushi restaurant that of course was closed. Thus, Mike’s Noodle House. The restaurant with the steamy window into the kitchen that you can see from the dining room. The restaurant where, through this window, you can watch the elderly cook stir the somewhat horrific meat pot with a little wooden paddle. It’s also the restaurant where the couple next to us thought that we employees of IMDB.

Frank and Me

The ceremony occurred back on June 26, 2008. Despite all the screw-ups and difficulties, it proved to be a fun event. Frank won.  The photo above was taken by John Myers, 9th-place DIWITTY-getter.

My cousin took photographs, many of which can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=125010&id=700215827&ref=mf

A full summation of the night is coming.  Thanks to all who voted on the website, and all who attended, and to everybody I spoke to.

My prediliction towards perverting the use of surface area charts continues, this time at the service of visualizing the number of times certain politicians have been named in another project of mine, “I Learn Something New Every Single Day.”

Charts 54 and 56 are the same as 55 but visualize different sets of people. I had been wanting to make sparklines for the longest time and had envisaged a poster comprised totally of sparklines. But I could not figure out a way to display the data in the dimensions I needed (basically 14″ x 11″). So I introduced other elements: the red bar, the text, and the surface area chart. To shift the surface area chart to a more abstract level, I removed the y-axis labels.

All three charts are printed and on display at the Guenzel Gallery in the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, WI. They, along with my interactive work “I Learn Something New Every Single Day”, are part of a show called Flickers of Recognition: Technology and the Self-Portrait.

One of the reasons I haven’t posted a new visualization in a while is because of The Chain and other musical projects. Suffice it to say, these people, three of whom were Top 10 People I’ve Spoken To in previous years, are getting tons of DIWITTYs.

The place and date of the 8th Annual Umali Awards is set:

Green Gallery (West)
Milwaukee, WI

June 26, Friday
sometime around 7 PM

Formal announcement will come soon.