10 days in Germany (and Austria): Frankfurt for a conference, followed by Salzburg for Mozart, Munich for Oktoberfest, and Dachau. I can’t wait, although I have the beginnings of a cold. Please, gods, let it not be H1N1.

See what two weeks can do to my reading list? Of course, it doesn’t include Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which I haven’t yet purchased. (Suffice it to say that my shoulders are still sore from carrying around The Baroque Cycle.)

Good, I’ve been eyeing a certain bookshelf or another.

With gorgeous Dakota sandstone dipping away from the sunset.

I recently attended Edward Tufte‘s Cincinnati lecture on Presenting Data & Information and interviewed him for VizWorld.  The post and audio interview are available here.

Who is Edward Tufte? In the immortal analogy of @polarisdotca, “Tufte : graphics :: Feynman : physics :: Gretzky : hockey.”  Recommended by computer science and art professors alike, the dog-eared works of Tufte have graced my bookshelves ever since I was a wee computational sciences graduate student.

That reminds me to frame and hang up the print of this amazing infographic created by Charles Joseph Minard in 1812.  I love it when history and the principles of good information design come together to tell a compelling story.