By request, an analysis of Top 5 XKCDs on data visualization. Statisticians and Data Scientists to note-
1) DOT PLOT
2) LINE PLOTS
3) FLOW CHARTS
4) PIE CHARTS and 5) BAR GRAPHS
I am not going into the big big graphs of course like the Star Wars Plot data visualization at
http://xkcd.com/657/ or the Money Chart at http://xkcd.com/980/ because I dont believe in data visualization to show off, but to keep it simple simply 🙂
Now I gotta find me a software that can write my blog for me 🙂
Here are some cool games I like to play on my Ubuntu 10.10 – I think they run on most other versions of Linux as well. 1) Open Arena– First person Shooter– This is like Quake Arena- very very nice graphics and good for playing for a couple of hours while taking a break. It is available here- http://openarena.ws/smfnews.php ideally if you have a bunch of gaming friends, playing on a local network or internet is quite mind blowing entertaining. And it’s free! 
2) Armagetron– This is based on the TRON game of light cycles-It is available here at http://www.armagetronad.net/ or you can use Synaptic packages manager for all the games mentioned here 
If violence or cars is not your stuff and you like puzzles like Sudoko, well just install the application Sudoko from http://gnome-sudoku.sourceforge.net/ Also recommended for people of various ages as it has multiple levels. 
If you ever liked Pinball play the open source version from download at http://pinball.sourceforge.net/ Alternatively you can go to Ubuntu Software Centre>Games>Arcade>Emilio>Pinball and you can also build your own pinball if you like the game well enough. 
5) Pacman/Njam- Clone of the original classic game. Downloadable from http://www.linuxcompatible.org/news/story/pacman_for_linux.html 
6) Gweled– This is free clone version of Bejeweled. It now has a new website at http://gweled.org/ 
http://linux.softpedia.com/progDownload/Gweled-Download-3449.html
Gweled is a GNOME version of a popular PalmOS/Windows/Java game called “Bejeweled” or “Diamond Mine”. The aim of the game is to make alignment of 3 or more gems, both vertically or horizontally by swapping adjacent gems. The game ends when there are no possible moves left. Here are some key features of “Gweled”: · exact same gameplay as the commercial versions · SVG original graphics
7) Hearts – For this card game classis you can use Ubuntu software to install the package or go to http://linuxappfinder.com/package/gnome-hearts 
8) Card Games- KPatience has almost 14 card games including solitaire, and free cell. 
9) Sauerbraten -First person shooter with good network play, edit maps capabilities. You can read more here- http://sauerbraten.org/ 
10) Tetris-KBlocks Tetris is the classic game. If you like classic slow games- Tetris is the best. and I like the toughest Tetris game -Bastet http://fph.altervista.org/prog/bastet.html 
Even an xkcd toon for it 
Using WP- Stats I set about answering this question-
What search keywords lead here-
Clearly Michael Jackson is down this year
And R GUI, Data Mining is up.
How does that affect my writing- given I get almost 250 visitors by search engines alone daily- assume I write nothing on this blog from now on.
It doesnt- I still write what ever code or poem that comes to my mind. So it is hurtful people misunderstimate the effort in writing and jump to conclusions (esp if I write about a company- I am not on payroll of that company- just like if I write about a poem- I am not a full time poet)
Over to xkcd
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| libre office | 818 |
| facebook analytics | 806 |
| michael jackson history | 240 |
| wps sas lawsuit | 180 |
| r gui | 168 |
| wps sas | 154 |
| wordle.net | 118 |
| sas wps | 116 |
| decision stats | 110 |
| sas wps lawsuit | 100 |
| google maps jet ski | 94 |
| data mining | 88 |
| doug savage | 72 |
| hive tutorial | 63 |
| spss certification | 63 |
| hadley wickham | 63 |
| google maps jetski | 62 |
| sas sues wps | 60 |
| decisionstats | 58 |
| donald farmer microsoft | 45 |
| libreoffice | 44 |
| wps statistics | 44 |
| best statistics software | 42 |
| r gui ubuntu | 41 |
| rstat | 37 |
| tamilnadu advanced technical training institute tatti | 37 |
YTD
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| libre office | 818 |
| facebook analytics | 781 |
| wps sas lawsuit | 170 |
| r gui | 164 |
| wps sas | 125 |
| wordle.net | 118 |
| sas wps | 101 |
| sas wps lawsuit | 95 |
| google maps jet ski | 94 |
| data mining | 86 |
| decision stats | 82 |
| doug savage | 63 |
| hadley wickham | 63 |
| google maps jetski | 62 |
| hive tutorial | 56 |
| donald farmer microsoft | 45 |
or Surfing the Net Anonmously and Having some Fun.
On the weekend, while browsing through http://freelancer.com I came across an intriguing offer-
http://www.freelancer.com/projects/by-job/YouTube.html
Basically projects asking for increasing Youtube Views-
Hmm.Hmm.Hmm
So this is one way I though it could be done-
1) Create an IP Address Anonymizer
Thats pretty simple- I used the Tor Project at http://www.torproject.org/easy-download.html.en
Basically it uses a peer to peer network to connect to the internet and you can reset the connection as you want-so it hides your IP address.
Also useful for sending hatemail- limitation uses Firefox browser only.And also your webpage default keeps changing languages as the ip address changes.
Note-
Check your IP address at http://www.whatismyip.com/The Tor Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based in the United States. The official address of the organization is:
The Tor Project
969 Main Street, Suite 206
Walpole, MA 02081 USA
2) Creating a Bot or an automatic clicking code ( without knowing code)
Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3863/
Remember when you could create an Excel Macro by just recording the Macro (in Excel 2003)
So while surfing if you need to do something again and again (like go the same Youtube video and clicking Like 5000 times) you can press record Macro
see screenshot below-
Note I have added two lines of code -WAIT SECONDS= 6
This means everytime the code runs in a loop it will wait for 6 seconds and then reload.
However I recommend you create a random number of wait seconds using Google Spreadsheet and the function RANDBETWEEN(5,400) (to limit between 5 and 400 seconds) and also use CONCATENATE with click and drag to create RANDOM wait times (instead of typing it say 500 times yourself)
see https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tr18JVEE2TmAuH5V8fzJLRA#gid=0
That’s it – Your Anonymous Bot is ready.
See the analytical results for my personal favourite Streaming Poetry video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5yReaKRHOM
Easy isn’t it. Lines of code written= 0 , Number of Views =335 (before I grew bored)
Note- Officially it is against Youtube Terms http://www.youtube.com/t/terms to use scripts or Bots so I did it for Research Purposes only. And the http://Freelancer.com needs to look into the activities underway at http://www.freelancer.com/projects/by-job/YouTube.html and also http://www.freelancer.com/projects/by-job/Facebook.html and http://www.freelancer.com/projects/by-job/Social-Networking.html
The final word on these activities is by http://xkcd.com or
DECISION STATS 