Over the last week or so I’ve started pushing a little thought tool/influence experiment I’ve set up called Elect or not? I’m trying to gently nudge people into thinking about why they vote for who they vote for while hopefully gathering some data on the halo effect while I’m at it. I’ll write more about the science behind it when I get some more time.
Out of curiosity I just crunched the numbers for the results I’ve had so far and thought I’d share… Bear in mind that this is people saying who’d they vote for based on looks alone, without knowing who the candidate is, who they represent or what their policies might be…
- 32% Conservative
- 25% Labour
- 24% Liberal Democrat
Compare these results to some of the proper polls…
- 34% Conservative
- 27% Labour
- 31% Liberal Democrat
- 36% Conservative
- 29% Labour
- 26% Liberal Democrat
- 33% Conservatives
- 28% Labour
- 30% Liberal Democrats
Tweetminister (experimental):
- 35% Conservative
- 30% Labour
- 26% Liberal Democrat
It’s a little bit scary but my numbers don’t seem too far removed from these far more sensible and official polls… See the data for yourself on the Elect or not? Parliament page.
Foreign & Commonwealth Office Travel Advice map
4 April 2009 · project · travels · web development · mashup · data · fco · travel
A couple of mates of mine recently came back from Tanzania and looking at their photos, particularly the ones of Zanzibar with the beautiful mix of what looks like Arabic, Indian and Roman architecture, got me thinking. I know very little about Africa between Egypt and South Africa. So I bought a couple of books. But they all strongly advice checking out current travel advice before making any plans. Over on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s website they have a nice long list of places you should and shouldn’t go… Which is great except that I discovered that my geography is patchy at best and I can’t place half the African countries on a map.
I decided that what I really needed was a map. A little scraping, some geolocation (with a manually added exception for Georgia to make sure it got pinned next to Russia and not South Carolina) and a Google Map later I had something working. Nothing too fancy but it’s already proved to be dead handy for me so I thought I’d put it live. And thus I present the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Travel Advice map.
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