Noise in the Middle: Movie Review

I've been on a horror movie kick for a while (as I've said before particularly here and here, I love a good horror movie, and I also think that after the last year+ of insanity, nothing really scares me anymore, or at least fiction doesn't scare me more than reality). I've been checking out every horror movie I can find on my various streaming services and, well, I've definitely watched some crappy ones. Maybe I'll blog about them sometime.

This evening, I watched Noise in the Middle, the story of a grieving widow and his daughter with severe autism, who seek out an experimental treatment (what appears to be transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy or something like it). What he doesn't realize is that the house he rents is haunted by an occult-loving sadist and the ghosts of the children from his poor house/orphanage that he bound to be trapped in the house after their death. Or something. It's not completely clear but it apparently involved branding the children with an infinity symbol and also the children killing him and themselves with a fire. Or something. 

The concept was promising - although I find the "kid with autism has special powers (in this case, is a conduit and can see spirits)" concept to be problematic, just like I found the "woman with dementia is actually possessed" concept to be problematic in The Taking of Deborah Logan - and the movie started off great. We established the background, got some ominous shots and glowing eyes in dark rooms. We also saw some really interesting symbolic imagery after Emmy's (the daughter) treatments with TMS, very Ring-video type images, which could have been used more fully in connection with the haunted house and the concept but sadly was not. We even had the "person randomly finds occult shop/enthusiast who believes the main character and helps them" trope used for more humorous and uplifting effect. 

In the middle, things began to drag and become more convoluted, which I thought might be used to tie in the symbolic imagery from Emmy's sessions, but sadly was not. The end was just a big old mess. It felt like the writer had a great idea, spent lots of time on the beginning, lost steam in the middle, and then had to just finish the damn thing by the end. The movie toyed with so many horror concepts (haunted house starts to bring out the darkness in/infect the father, like The Shining; seemingly random images have more concrete meaning for the mystery, like Ringu/The Ring; grief manifested as a spirit or entity, like The Babadook) but never really fully committed to any of it.

Overall, I'd say don't bother with this one. The beginning made me have high expectations that this movie would be good/meaningful/even a little scary, but I ended up with "WTF did I just watch and why?". 

Super Bowl Reactions

 I watched the Super Bowl tonight rooting hard for my Chiefs - I was even wearing a Mahomes jersey (full disclosure: it was supposed to be a Kelce jersey, since he's my favorite player, but due to a royal f-up by the post office, that jersey never arrived, so I was able to get a quick backup Mahomes, my second favorite player, jersey). I was disheartened that my Chiefs lost, but am happy for the Buccs to make an amazing comeback as a franchise (except you, Tom Brady, I still don't like you).

So my reactions:

America the Beautiful by H.E.R., the National Anthem by Eric Church and Jazmine Sullivan, and the poem by Amanda Gorman were wonderful. Honoring our frontline workers and the message from our President and First Lady - beautiful. Plus the first female ref at the Super Bowl - all the feels.

The penalties were a bit ridiculous, and mostly being called on the Chiefs. It's ballsy to call pass interference on an uncatchable pass. I understand that many penalty calls in football are based on what we scientists call the counterfactual - what would have happened if a condition (such as, a defensive player pushing a receiver out of the way) was not present - but when a call equals free yards or another try at a down, they need to be used thoughtfully. The penalty calls felt very one-sided. Yes, the Buccs finally got their own "unsportsmanlike conduct" call as well as a much-needed "roughing the passer" (but it took 3 guys hitting Mahomes in much the same whiplash way that caused a concussion 2 games ago). They say homefield advantage doesn't exist in playoff games. I beg to differ.

I'm surprised at the hate I'm seeing about the Halftime Show by The Weeknd. I went into halftime knowing a couple songs by him, and finished it as a fan. We're used to these blow-out halftime shows with 3 big-name artists plus 10 high schools worth of marching bands and drill teams on the field, but in COVID-land, that's just not possible. Instead, we got an artist who was able to showcase choral and dancing talent while still respecting social distance and safety. The dancers wrapped in face bandages for "I Can't Feel My Face" was super clever - guys, those were face masks! (NOT JOCK STRAPS, as some have joked.) They were able to have dancers in close quarters wearing face masks in a way that made sense with the song. In fact, they looked so little like face masks that... see jock strap comment. I was super impressed!

In the second half, we saw a bit of the old Chiefs, but sadly not enough to score a single point. The Buccs' defensive line was just too good - I mean, they ran a blitz on every f***ing play, and our offensive line couldn't hold them back long enough to give Mahomes as much time in the pocket as he's used to. This is something to work on for next season. Mahomes is an amazing quarterback but he's used to hanging in the pocket long enough to survey the field, pick his receiver, and pass; let's work on decreasing the time he needs in the pocket. And let's work on an offensive line that can predict how the blitz is going to work and knock those guys down. Yeah, a team that blitzes on every defensive play is unusual, but as we saw tonight, IT HAPPENS! Practice defusing a blitz from every angle.

Also, WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOW US AN INSTANT REPLAY ON THE RANDOM FAN ON THE FIELD?! I wanted to see that again/closer up.

Overall, I'm sad the Chiefs lost and annoyed at the one-sided-ness/overeagerness of the penalties. I enjoyed the game, the commercials (ALL the celebs came out for those, including a Wayne's World call-back with Cardi B???!), and the performances. I'm happy for the Buccs and hopeful for the Chief's next season (I mean, winning Super Bowl last year plus being AFC Champs again this year is nothing to sneeze at). And okay, Tom Brady proved that a quarterback can still be good and (pretty much automatically, because we always honor quarterbacks and ignore the other positions - like how about TE Gronkowski?) be Super Bowl MVP at 43. You're on top, dude; how about you retire?

Some Music for Your Holidays

Hey everyone,

One thing I've been doing during the pandemic is making music on my own. For our holiday season, I dropped my very first album: Winter Delights. You can read about the album and download tracks here or stream me on Soundcloud. I'm working on more arrangements (and upgraded my audio recording equipment) so I'm hoping to drop a full album early in the New Year!

And to give you a little extra something, here's a selection of performances from my choir's annual cabaret benefit, Apollo After Hours:

Creating Things

 Normally, this time of year, we'd be getting excited for my choir's new season and rehearsals to begin in early September. Sadly, with the pandemic, it's unlikely we'll be getting together then, and I'm not sure how long it will take before it's safe and people begin feeling comfortable gathering in such a way. So I've been seeking out ways to keep some creativity in my life.

I've started drawing again, something I haven't done in years. I'm a bit rusty but hey - practice practice, right? I started with some pretty flowers from my parents' backyard, in a combination of soft chalk pastels (my favorite medium) and colored pencil:

And my next project is going to be a self-portrait, something I've never done before. Some early work with pencil that I'll fill in soon (thinking again a combo of colored pencil and chalk pastels):

I also had some fun putting together a Lego Architecture set of Paris:

What mainly sparked this round of creativity was writing and recording an arrangement for my choir's virtual benefit. I had so much fun with that, I'm going to keep doing it! I'm planning to share that video soon, and have also started recording some other a cappella arrangements I plan on sharing. 

And lastly, because I needed to bring Zep into the fun too, I've finally set up an Instagram for him. If you're on the 'gram, you can follow him here: https://www.instagram.com/zeppelinblackdog/

Space Force: A Review

I've continued to work from home during our shelter-in-place (something my boss recently told me we'll be doing for a while). During my copious downtime, I've gotten to watch a lot of things I've had on my watch-list, including the Netflix original series, Space Force.

I've made my way through season 1 of the series, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was surprised to learn - partway through watching - that critics did not enjoy the series nearly as much as I did. I'll get to that shortly.

I loved the political satire element of the show, that it was inspired by statements by our buffoon of a president. And I loved the periodic texts and tweets they referenced from a character they only referred to as "POTUS" (although, we all know who they mean). But really, I felt the critics were expecting something very different from what the show gave us, and that is the reason for their negative review.

While the concept is hilarious, and Mark Naird (Steve Carrell's character) is often a buffoon, the show is really a family drama framed by absurdist comedy. General Naird is a single father of a teenage daughter (Diana Silver, from Booksmart, which I also thoroughly enjoyed), after his wife (played brilliantly by Lisa Kudrow) is imprisoned for an unmentioned crime (which earned her 40-60 years, so clearly really bad). The show deals with a variety of family issues, not just the aforementioned single parenthood, but also teenage rebellion and substance abuse, fear of abandonment, and a parent who often feels married to their job. It dealt with the concept of an open marriage in a way that was authentic, while also being heartbreaking and funny at the same time. The show made me cry just as often as it made me laugh, and I could often relate to Mark's character - his heartbreak when his wife suggested an open marriage was so real, I bawled. It poked fun at the full political spectrum, as well as at Boomers, X-ers, and Millennials alike.

I think a lot of people were expecting Michael Scott as a general, but Mark Naird - though often a goof who really didn't understand science, which was an important part of his job, personified by his chief scientist (played so wonderfully by John Malkovich: better casting does not exist) - showed a surprising depth and understanding of people, in ways that both surprised and confirmed the conclusions of his scientists. Michael Scott seemed oblivious to the people who worked from him and showed zero understanding of people skills, while Mark Naird thought first and foremost about the people, and spoke eloquently on the topic.

I especially loved the character of Captain Ali (played by Tawny Newsome) and look forward (hopefully) to learning more about her character. Of all the characters on the show, she's my favorite.

It was also a joy to see Fred Willard as Mark's elderly father, who since filming his role has passed away. He will very much be missed and I'll be interested in seeing how they deal with the actor's death (since season 2 has not even been greenlit, let alone filmed). My only complaint was with the cheap jokes at his elderly mother's expense, including at one point showing the caretaker giving her CPR while Mark's father obliviously (and jovially) spoke on the phone. Mark's mother obviously has both lung (due to her being on oxygen) and heart (due to the CPR) issues, and as the daughter of a man with similar issues, I would have wished a show with so much heart had been more delicate with these conditions, rather than using them for cheap laughs.

My only disappointment with Space Force (other than my complaint above) is with the critics' reaction to it. I sincerely hope there is a season 2.

Zoomies

Check out this adorable Zoom meeting:

Still having the company meetings online. pic.twitter.com/aR3LfuSdKl

— Andrew Cotter (@MrAndrewCotter) May 11, 2020

Clean (Don't) Freak

Cleaning your place can be boring, but with a pandemic going on, it's important to keep your living space clean, even if you're the only one using it. Plus, when you break things up into manageable tasks, cleaning can be fun, meditative, and a nice break from work (especially if you're working from home). So here are some cleaning tasks to pick from that can be done in 5 minutes or less:

• Vacuum your living room rug/carpet - move any furniture that gets shuffled around regularly (like that end table you use to eat dinner in front of the TV - no judgement, I do it too - or the chair that gets brought in for extra seating or the ottoman that goes wherever you feet are) but don't bother with any furniture that isn't moved often
• Sweep or vacuum the bathroom floor (if you're lucky enough to have more than one bathroom, pick the one most frequently used)
• Wipe down the kitchen counters with cleaner spray or a warm, soapy rag; if you have a big kitchen, choose the counter(s) adjacent to the sink or the one that gets used most frequently (for me, it's the counter between the sink and the coffee maker)
• Clean the bathroom mirror(s) with glass cleaner
• Vacuum the office floor/rug
• Clean your cellphone screen with rubbing alcohol or screen cleaner (even a warm washcloth is better than nothing)
• Dust your bookshelves with a warm, soapy rag or duster (you can push the books back, but don't worry about moving them; it isn't dusty underneath them)
• Sweep or vacuum under your dining table; move the chairs out, but don't worry about moving the table itself
• Wipe down the fronts of your appliances (like your microwave, dishwasher, or oven) with a warm, soapy rag or cleaning spray

If you have some extra time, pick one:

• Wipe down stove cooktop (move burner grates if you have gas, or just spray and wipe for electric cooktop; and if you have gas, throw the grates into the dishwasher)
• Strip your bed and wash your sheets and pillow cases (I know it's a hassle, but trust me: clean sheets feel wonderful)
• Dust tops of shelves, above trims, and/or the tops of picture frames (a duster, like these Swiffer Dusters I absolutely love, makes this task even easier)
• Move the houseplants off the window ledge or the stuff that accumulates on your dining table or desk, and wipe the top down with a warm cloth or cleaner spray (I use a disinfecting spray for just about everything, except my dining table, which I clean with a warm, soapy washcloth or wood cleaner)
• Move the end tables that generally stay in place and vacuum the living room (but don't worry about moving the couch, unless you have help and somewhere to put it)

Though some of these tasks take longer than others, none take very long; you could pick one or two of these tasks a day to tackle.

Meet Zeppelin!

I recently spent a couple weeks visiting my family. While there, my mom found a lost dog with no tags or collar. She brought him home and we set out to find his owners. The vet found no microchip and didn't recognize him. Walking the neighborhood, I found no one who knew him and he didn't act like he recognized anything. And I had no bites on posts in lost dog Facebook groups. The vet suspected (as do I) that he was dumped. So that's how I got a dog. Meet Zeppelin!

He's a terrier mix between 1 and 2 years old and a total sweetheart. He's my little shadow, following me around since I first met him. His name is thanks to a comment from my mom. She was describing the dog to someone, in an effort to find his owner, and mentioned he was a black dog. I remembered the Led Zeppelin song, Black Dog, and thought Zeppelin was a cute name. It was also one of the few names I tried out that he responded to in some way. He's also sometimes known as "Zep," "Zeppie," and "Z-Man," as well as "little shadow."

He likes anything that squeaks, especially soft toys. His favorite is his monkey that I've started calling Van Gogh, because Zep chewed its left ear off.

He also likes anything ball-shaped and his rope for tug-of-war. Food likes include chicken, cheese, cucumbers, and blueberries. He adores people and other dogs; the only dog he isn't sure about yet is the one he sees in mirrors and other reflective surfaces (though I think he's learning that dog is him). He prefers to sleep on a blanket on the floor but every night and morning, he hops up on my bed with me for belly rubs, and only jumps down when he feels sufficiently petted. He knows "sit," "drop," and "leave it," and we're working on more. I can't take credit for all that, because he already knew "sit" when we found him.

We also play a game where I put his toys away in his box while he's sleeping, and he immediately wakes up and drags all of them out onto the floor in a span of about 30 seconds.

He loves to be sung to, and while he likes his namesake song, he also really likes music by female artists. He seems to especially like Taylor Swift.

Welcome Zeppelin!

In case you missed the State of the Union (on purpose)...

here's one way to watch it without having to actually listen to a word Trump says:

Long Time, No Write

Wow, it's been way too long since I've posted anything! Lots of life changes recently, including moving to a new place and fighting with Comcast to get internet there. I still need to set up my office, and I plan on doing lots of writing in my new dedicated space. I'm planning on more statistics posts and a few more surprises this year.

Work has also been busy. At the moment:

• I'm working on three content validation studies, including analyzing data for two job analysis surveys and gearing up for a third
• I've wrapped up the first phase of analysis on our salary and satisfaction survey, and have some cool analysis planned for phase 2
• I finished a time study on our national and state exams
• I'm awaiting feedback on the first draft of a chapter about standard setting I coauthored with some coworkers
• I'm learning how to be a supervisor, now that I have someone working for me! That's right, I'm no longer a department of one

Once I get through some of the most pressing project work, I'm going to take some of my work time to teach myself data forensics as it applies to the testing. In fact, this book has been on my to-read shelf since my annual employee evaluation back in November. Look for blog posts on that!

Moving: A Haiku

I swim in boxes,
A sea of cardboard, where I
lost the packing tape

150 Years in Chicago

This morning, I joined some of my musician friends to sing for a mass celebrating the 150th anniversary of St. Thomas the Apostle in Hyde Park, Chicago. In true music-lover fashion, the mass was also part concert, featuring some gorgeous choral works, including:

• Kyrie eleison from Vierne's Messe Solennelle: my choir is performing this work in our upcoming season, and I give 4 to 1 odds that this movement, the Kyrie, ends up in our Fall Preview concert (which I unfortunately won't be singing, due to a work commitment)
• Locus iste by Bruckner
• Thou knowest, Lord by Purcell
• Ave Verum Corpus by Mozart
• Amen from Handel's Messiah (which my choir performs every December)

The choir was small but mighty - 3 sopranos, 4 altos, 4 tenors, and 5 basses - and in addition to voices, we had violin, trumpet, cello, and organ. The music was gorgeous. Afterward, I ate way too much food at the church picnic.

I'm tempted to take an afternoon nap. Instead, I'll be packing up my apartment.

Loving the View

A friend of mine started a new job not long ago. Today, I got to check out his new office and the view from the 41st floor of his building. Here's the view looking South/Southeast:

The view to the north is pretty nice too:

And hey! I can see my office from here!

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day.

Diagramming Sentences

Confession: I never learned to diagram sentences.

Second confession: I'm really upset about this fact.

Solution: This great article taught me how to do it!

Last confession: This GIF came up when I searched for "Happy nerd"

Fun Weekend

I had a full, fun weekend, hence no Statistics Sunday post.

Saturday, I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire - the theme was magic and monsters, so I dressed in shades of blue (water) and perched my knitted Loch Ness Monster on my shoulder. Only a handful of people got my full costume but I still got lots of compliments on and reactions to Nessie.

We held out almost 6 hours in the 95+ degree heat - LOTS OF WATER. While it may have been silly to go to Faire on such a hot day, I was happy at least that it wasn't raining. And between sunblock and my parasol, I made it home with no sunburns!

After, we dropped by Mars Cheese Castle to cool off and stock up on snacks, meat, and cheese, and I picked up a couple bottles of beer to take home.

Sunday I had some friends over in the afternoon. Their son is really into trains, and a train line runs right behind my house. The back gate opens up right onto the tracks, so we have a great view. After chilling on the grass for a shockingly long time waiting for trains (they usually run almost constantly on Sundays but not yesterday for some reason), we got lucky and had a Metra followed immediately by a freight train.

Last night, Endless Summer wrapped up in La Grange just a few blocks from me, so I watched the fireworks display from the comfort of my place.

Posting may continue to be sporadic for a bit longer, but stay tuned.

New Twitter to Follow

If you enjoy Flash Fiction as much as me, you definitely want to check out the Micro Flash Fiction Twitter account. Here's a taste:

"Hello! Do you have a minute to talk about Dracula?"
"No- wait, Dracula?"
"Yes!"
"You're vampires?"
"Yes. We have pamphlets."
"Vampires have missionaries?"
"Where else would new vampires come from?"
"I assumed you bit people."
"There are many hurtful stereotypes. May we come in?"

— Micro Flash Fiction (@MicroFlashFic) July 26, 2018

Someone liked this one so much, they illustrated it:

Had to illustrate @MicroFlashFic 's tweet about missionary vampires, too funny to resist! pic.twitter.com/2nmkNjayzS

— EmRyLoCu🌈 (@SillyGuySayings) July 28, 2018

Blogging Break

You may have noticed I haven't been blogging as much recently. Though in some aspects, I'm busier than I've been in a while, I still have had a lot of downtime, but sadly not as much inspiration to write on my blog. I've got a few stats side projects I'm working on, but nothing to a point I can blog about, and I'm having difficulty with writing some of the code on projects I've been plan on writing about. Hopefully I'll have something soon, and will get to back to posting weekly Statistics Sunday posts.

Here's what's going on with me currently:

• I had my first conference call with my company's Research Advisory Committee last night, a committee I imagine I'll inherit as my own now that I'm Director of Research
• I submitted my first novel query to an agent earlier today and received a confirmation email that she got it
• I've been reading a ton and apparently am 5 books ahead of schedule on my Goodreads reading challenging: 38 books so far this year
• The research center I used to work for was not renewed, so they'll be shutting their doors in 14 months; I'm sad for my colleagues
• Today is my work anniversary: I've been at my current job 1 year! My boss emailed me about it this morning, along with this picture:

Working with Your Facebook Data in R

I recently learned that you can download all of your Facebook data, so I decided to check it out and bring it into R. To access your data, go to Facebook, and click on the white down arrow in the upper-right corner. From there, select Settings, then, from the column on the left, "Your Facebook Information." When you get the Facebook Information screen, select "View" next to "Download Your Information." On this screen, you'll be able to select the kind of data you want, a date range, and format. I only wanted my posts, so under "Your Information," I deselected everything but the first item on the list, "Posts." (Note that this will still download all photos and videos you posted, so it will be a large file.) To make it easy to bring into R, I selected JSON under Format (the other option is HTML).

After you click "Create File," it will take a while to compile - you'll get an email when it's ready. You'll need to reenter your password when you go to download the file.

The result is a Zip file, which contains folders for Posts, Photos, and Videos. Posts includes your own posts (on your and others' timelines) as well as posts from others on your timeline. And, of course, the file needed a bit of cleaning. Here's what I did.

Since the post data is a JSON file, I need the jsonlite package to read it.

setwd("C:/Users/slocatelli/Downloads/facebook-saralocatelli35/posts")
library(jsonlite)

FBposts <- fromJSON("your_posts.json")

This creates a large list object, with my data in a data frame. So as I did with the Taylor Swift albums, I can pull out that data frame.

myposts <- FBposts$status_updates

The resulting data frame has 5 columns: timestamp, which is in UNIX format; attachments, any photos, videos, URLs, or Facebook events attached to the post; title, which always starts with the author of the post (you or your friend who posted on your timeline) followed by the type of post; data, the text of the post; and tags, the people you tagged in the post.

First, I converted the timestamp to datetime, using the anytime package.

library(anytime)

myposts$timestamp <- anytime(myposts$timestamp)

Next, I wanted to pull out post author, so that I could easily filter the data frame to only use my own posts.

library(tidyverse)

myposts$author <- word(string = myposts$title, start = 1, end = 2, sep = fixed(" "))

Finally, I was interested in extracting URLs I shared (mostly from YouTube or my own blog) and the text of my posts, which I did with some regular expression functions and some help from Stack Overflow (here and here).

url_pattern <- "http[s]?://(?:[a-zA-Z]|[0-9]|[$-_@.&+]|[!*\\(\\),]|(?:%[0-9a-fA-F][0-9a-fA-F]))+"

myposts$links <- str_extract(myposts$attachments, url_pattern)

library(qdapRegex)

myposts$posttext <- myposts$data %>%
  rm_between('"','"',extract = TRUE)

There's more cleaning I could do, but this gets me a data frame I could use for some text analysis. Let's look at my most frequent words.

myposts$posttext <- as.character(myposts$posttext)
library(tidytext)
mypost_text <- myposts %>%
  unnest_tokens(word, posttext) %>%
  anti_join(stop_words)

## Joining, by = "word"

counts <- mypost_text %>%
  filter(author == "Sara Locatelli") %>%
  drop_na(word) %>%
  count(word, sort = TRUE)

counts

## # A tibble: 9,753 x 2
##    word         n
##    <chr>    <int>
##  1 happy     4702
##  2 birthday  4643
##  3 today's    666
##  4 song       648
##  5 head       636
##  6 day        337
##  7 post       321
##  8 009f       287
##  9 ð          287
## 10 008e       266
## # ... with 9,743 more rows

These data include all my posts, including writing "Happy birthday" on other's timelines. I also frequently post the song in my head when I wake up in the morning (over 600 times, it seems). If I wanted to remove those, and only include times I said happy or song outside of those posts, I'd need to apply the filter in a previous step. There are also some strange characters that I want to clean from the data before I do anything else with them. I can easily remove these characters and numbers with string detect, but cells that contain numbers and letters, such as "008e" won't be cut out with that function. So I'll just filter them out separately.

drop_nums <- c("008a","008e","009a","009c","009f")

counts <- counts %>%
  filter(str_detect(word, "[a-z]+"),
         !word %in% str_detect(word, "[0-9]"),
         !word %in% drop_nums)

Now I could, for instance, create a word cloud.

library(wordcloud)

counts %>%
  with(wordcloud(word, n, max.words = 50))

In addition to posting for birthdays and head songs, I talk a lot about statistics, data, analysis, and my blog. I also post about beer, concerts, friends, books, and Chicago. Let's see what happens if I mix in some sentiment analysis to my word cloud.

library(reshape2)

## 
## Attaching package: 'reshape2'

counts %>%
  inner_join(get_sentiments("bing")) %>%
  acast(word ~ sentiment, value.var = "n", fill = 0) %>%
  comparison.cloud(colors = c("red","blue"), max.words = 100)

## Joining, by = "word"

Once again, a few words are likely being misclassified - regression and plot are both negatively-valenced, but I imagine I'm using them in the statistical sense instead of the negative sense. I also apparently use "died" or "die" but I suspect in the context of, "I died laughing at this." And "happy" is huge, because it includes birthday wishes as well as instances where I talk about happiness. Some additional cleaning and exploration of the data is certainly needed. But that's enough to get started with this huge example of "me-search."

Beautiful Visualizations in R

I recently discovered the R Graph Gallery, where users can share the beautiful visualizations they've created using R and its various libraries (especially ggplot2). One of my favorite parts about this gallery is a section called Art From Data, in which users create works of art, sometimes with real data, and sometimes with a random number generator and a little imagination.

Last night, I completed a DataCamp project to learn how to draw flowers in R and ggplot2. Based on that, I created this little yellow flower:

Not only was the flower fun to create, it made me think about the data and how it would appear spatially. As I try to create new and more complex images, I have to keep building on and challenging those skills. It's a good exercise to get you thinking about data.

Bad Lip Reading of the Royal Wedding

The more I learn about Megan Markle, the more I love her - especially when I read about her rescue Beagle, Guy. (Thanks to the lovely weather in Chicago and the many people out walking their dogs, I've gotten to pet many puppies over the last couple days, including an incredibly sweet 12-week-old German Shepherd mix this morning.)

And on the subject of Megan Markle: whether you watched the Royal Wedding or not (and no judgment either way), I highly recommend this hilarious Bad Lip Reading of the event: