I’m hoping that little Spore-like creatures appear, or at the very least, the water will turn green. Sometimes it’s nice to let go and let nature do its thing. I’ll post close-up photos of the jars in four weeks.

My schedule is very much in flux. For the latest and the greatest, I recommend following along on Twitter.

These videos are a couple years old but worth rewatching. Ira discusses the building blocks of storytelling with broadcast in mind (tv and video), but most of what he talks about isn’t tied to any medium. I’ve included some notes be I jotted down below each video.

Part 1

Building blocks of stories in broadcast :

• Anecdote - Simply a sequence of actions. Audience feels momentum. Builds suspense. The story is taking them to some final destination.
• Moment of Reflection - Explains the big point. Why am I listening/watching this?

Raise lots of questions. Use them as bait. It is implied that questions you raised will be answered.

Part 2

You thought a story was going to be good, but the feeling you had about it isn’t in the footage. Be super-ambitious, kill your medicore work.

Part 3

You have good taste but for the first couple years the stuff you’re making isn’t so good. You recognize this. Do a huge volume of work to close the gap between the quality of your work and your ambition.

Part 4

What’s interesting isn’t just a person’s take on things, but their interaction with others. Interaction creates drama.

More Ira Glass

This American Life Radio Show - Listen to 14+ years of material in the archives.
This American Life TV Show - Plays on the pay-channel, Showtime.

Bonus: Kasper Hauser’s This American Life Parody

Inspired by the Apps for Democracy contest which encouraged developers to build useful applications from DC’s Data Catalog, I built a Google Maps mashup which displays bike lanes and signed bike routes. Use the map as a starting to point to plan your ride through the city.

Tech Notes

The ‘Bicycle Lane‘ and ‘Signed Bike Route‘ KMZ files from the DC Data Catalog are used. Data is pulled daily. Before displaying, the files are filtered to display only existing bike lanes.

It was made this year, though it collects a few places I’ve visited on trips to Baltimore in the past three years. It’s a log: a list of places I want to remember and maybe revisit. And a map: showing me where things are relative to each other. Its not for driving directions. There is a ‘to-do’ list in the left column, which I’ve discontinued using.

It’s big and I can hang it on my wall, which I can’t to do with a Google Map or Yelp. See it on flickr and direct link to full-size image (1 MB)

More importantly, I’m back from my blogging hiatus. I’m hoping to average a few posts a month. Sounds reasonable. To start, here are the books on my shelf right now, all recommended:

• 101 Things I Learned From Architecture School by Matthew Frederick
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
• Visualizing Data by Ben Fry
• The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher

No more months of inactivity! More posts to come shortly, stay tuned.

• Homicide by David Simon
• How to Conquer The New York Times Crossword Puzzle by Amy Reynaldo
• Robot Building For Beginners by David Cook
• Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky
• Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton
• Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman

Idea for the post comes from poetpainter.

I initially set out to capture the speed, break, and movement of the pitches in a single diagram for each pitch, showing the trajectory from the catcher’s perspective. As I got further along in the process, some pitches become harder to identify, because I had trouble distinguishing movement and break (splitter and forkball were particularly difficult to render). Movement being the general direction the ball is moving and break being a sudden shift in direction. This led me to add small profile views that help make the difference in break more apparent. It can still be quite subtle.

From the previous post, here is the final work including all twelve pitch diagrams:

I‘m a baseball fan. I’ve watched my share of televised games and attended a few handful. After all this, I was still in the dark about the difference between pitches. I knew a curveball broke downwards, but what exactly was a circle changeup?

The diagrams below are the results of skimming through baseball books and doing online research. This is not a complete guide. I’ve picked twelve of the more common pitches:

• Fastballs: Four-seam, Two-seam, Cutter, Splitter, and Forkball
• Breaking Balls: Curveball, Slider, Slurve, and Screwball
• Changeups: Changeup, Palmball, Circle Changeup

Learning to Identify Pitches

The list of pitches might seem like a lot to keep track of, but remember that each pitcher utilizes only a selection of these pitches. For example, Pedro Martinez throws a curveball, circle-changeup, an occasional slider, and a fastball. Do a little research on the pitcher before the game.

Things to watch for that will help you identify a pitch:

• Speed
• Movement - the general direction the ball is moving
• Break - a sudden shift in direction

There are a few other things that can help you identify a pitch: ball rotation, point of release, and grip. For a casual fan though, it might be a bit much and I don’t illustrate or discuss any of the latter three items.

Reading the Diagrams

Take note of the speed, movement, and break of the ball. Don’t worry about where the baseball is shown in the the strike zone. You can throw a fastball in the middle of the strike-zone like the one illustrated, or you can throw one high and away from the batter. It’s still a fastball. Location doesn’t determine the pitch.

I’ve collected all twelve of the pitch diagrams below, minus the text notes, into a single PDF:

Four-seam Fastball

85-100 mph

• Fastest, straightest pitch. Little to no movement.

Two-seam Fastball

80-90 mph

• Also known as a Sinker.
• Moves downward, and depending on the release, will sometimes run in on a right handed hitter (RHH).

Cutter

85-95 mph

• Breaks away from a right handed hitter (RHH) as it reaches the plate.
• Mix of a slider and a fastball. Faster than a slider but with more movement than a fastball.

Splitter

80-90 mph

• Breaks down suddenly before reaching plate.

Forkball

75-85 mph

• Like a splitter, but with a less dramatic, more gradual downward movement.

Curveball

70-80 mph

• Commonly called a 12-6 curveball. The 12-6 refers to the top to bottom movement (picture a clock with hands at 12 and 6).

Slider

80-90 mph

• Breaks down and away from a RHH.
• Between a fastball and a curve.

Slurve

70-80 mph

• 11-5 movement. Similar to a curve but with more lateral movement.

Screwball

65-75 mph

1-7 movement. Opposite of the slurve.

Changeup

70-85 mph

• Slower than a fastball, but thrown with the same arm motion.

Palmball

65-75 mph

• Ball is gripped tightly in palm.
• Just like a changeup, this pitch is slower than a fastball, but thrown with the same arm motion.

Circle Changeup

70-80 mph

• A changeup with 1-7 moment like the screwball.

Answering requests, I have setup a Cafe Press store which offers the nine coffee cup illustration printed on all sorts of things. I have never purchased anything from Cafe Press, so fingers crossed the quality is decent. I bought myself a mug.

If you’re simply looking to print up a copy to fold up in your wallet, I’ve created a PDF file which contains all nine images.

Source File

If you’d like to extend or localize the illustrations you can grab the Adobe Illustrator source file. You can also open up this file in Adobe Photoshop, without the vector data, as a bitmap..

License Information

I’m offering the illustrations under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. What this allows for is the use and modification of the work for noncommercial purposes. I chose a non-commercial license because I do not want people to sell the image. If you want to use the image for educational purposes in a commercial space such as a website or cafe, you have my permission to do so. As for attribution, I ask that you leave my name and website address in the fine print.