If only he knew about ANSI art...
While unpacking from a move the other day, I flipped through a copy of my first book, Financial Modeling Using Lotus 1-2-3. Published by Sybex McGraw-Hill in 1986, it explained how to create reports and analyses I had developed in 1984 and 1985 while working as a small-company CFO.
Spreadsheet Dashboards Before Excel: Mini-Graph Reports in Lotus 1-2-3
I just found out today that one of my client's is Tone Blind. I have heard of tone deaf people (I'm one of them) but this was a new thing to me.
Apparently she can't see certain shades or text with fills. This just goes to prove that accessibility is in the eye of the beholder, and there are no good presentations, only the appearance of good presentations for certain audiences.
Color used well can enhance and clarify a presentation. Color used poorly will obscure, muddle and confuse. While there is a strong aesthetic component to color, using color well in information display is essentially about function: what information are trying to convey, and how (or whether) color can enhance it.
What does a Graphic Fellow at Microsoft look like?
That's exactly what I pictured.
Jim Blinn's home page at Microsoft Research has some interesting papers from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Seems like a brilliant guy.
Visualization is good. Visualization is valuable. Let's have more visualization.
Back in 1979 he was looking at Realism in Computer Graphics. What was one major application of CG in 1979?
One major application area of shaded computer graphics is in real time flight simulation systems. Such systems are designed to train aircraft pilots by allowing them to fly a simulated airplane complete with a view out the window of the surrounding terrain. In such systems, a new image must be constructed some thirty times per second in synchronism with a television based display device. It is the job of the system designer to provide the best possible picture consistent with these time constraints. This severely limits the sophistication and thus the accuracy of the models used in the simulation. Even so, it requires approximately a million dollars worth of special purpose hardware to construct images at the correct rate.
I picked up FSX & my new PC for under $1000. How times change...
He's the "second" MS Graphic fellow. Who's the first?
Dr. Alvy Ray Smith, cofounder of Pixar.
Jim & Alvy worked together in 1979. Small world.
Dr. Smith seems to have an interest in genealogy based on the papers being published on his site. Perhaps we're related? My great-grandmother was a Smith.
I wonder if he had a hand in Microsoft Family.Show?
I would have placed pineapples in the untasty/difficult quadrant, and bananas above.
Maybe things will change in 2008 with further fruit/vegetable market consolidation.
Before visualizing data, you need to understand the level of "truthiness" available in the data vs. the actual truth. Questionable data can immediately discount its effectiveness.
Data Quality Solutions
SQL Server Technical Article
Elizabeth Vitt, Intellimentum
Hitachi ConsultingTechnical Reviewers
Donald Farmer
Microsoft CorporationStacia Misner
Hitachi ConsultingJuly 2006
Applies to:
SQL Server 2005Summary: This white paper describes how application developers can incorporate data quality into their Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Integration Services solutions. (22 printed pages)
I managed to squeak by the fairly new Visio exam, released last September, so I am now a Visio Application Developer.
The exam was fairly straightforward, multiple choice as usual. I was surprised there were no exhibits or case studies in my version. Finished it in about 30 minutes, after going over the marked questions a couple of times and kicking the PC with the loud fan next to me at the test centre.
Why is it that test centres have the crappiest PCs?
Couple of hints - know MSI and everything else around deploying a Visio solution, stencil, or template. Another one that came up a bit was how to reference certain properties and respond to events. I was a bit surprised at how specific the code examples were, and how much the exam focused on deployment rather than solution architecture.
Know your events & how to create masters & stencils.
Also know the differences between the new Linked Data feature and the old Database Wizard feature.
There are also some integration questions related to VBA in Visio and other Office applications.
I used my usual method (documented at SqlServerCentral) of studying with OneNote. Downloading the SDK helped. So did reading www.visguy.com and the MSDN/Technet articles. If I could only figure out how to get OneNote to write the exam for me...
There was also some good content from the various Visio Conferences which posted lots of PowerPoints (oddly enough no Visio diagrams instead of PowerPoints).
I hope that the next version provides a better way of interfacing with the Shapesheet and Formulas, and gives easier access to stencils & templates. Better integration with Reporting Services & the filesystem would be interesting.
And add some Access-style form layout functionality. (size similar anyone? shrink to fit? align lefts?)
Next step is to check out the Visio to XAML functionality for some Silverlight mashups...
If you do end up getting your Visio Developer Certification please let me know what you do with Visio.
If you know what XMLA and DMX are, then this is for you.
Last updated by DMTeam on Tue 11/20/2007 @ 05:01
This sample allows you to generate Data Mining Prediction statements on the fly.
To launch the sample, click here.
This sample allows building DMX (data mining prediction) statements on the fly. The statements are encapsulated in XMLA (XML For Analysis) packages and sent to the Analysis Services server. The server response is also an XMLA package. The sample application parses the response XMLA and displays the result in a table.
Poor man's MOM. Add some integration features to check for SQL Backups, software versions, and this could be one amazing tool.
Near Real Time Monitoring (NRTM) Connector of Disk Space uses the new Data Graphics feature of Visio 2007 to display the results of server monitoring. This application enables effective integration of Visio 2007 with the service management solution System Center Operations Manager 2007. The connector helps to view the results of monitoring servers as a clear, comprehensive Visio network diagram.
myITforum.com : Integrate Visio 2007 with System Center Operations Manager 2007
