Monthly Archives for December 2012

Reveille Ranks

Today I’m experimenting with seeing whether I could use Tableau for a fairly non-Tableau task: Presenting a searchable, sortable list of reviews built from the entertainment reviews at the Reveille. Initially, I didn’t think it could be done at all. However, after some experimentation, I am starting to wonder whether it might, in fact, be possible. There would be some elbow grease involved, but not an excessive amount.

I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet with some reviews in it, and will include a link to the Tableau display based on it. Please bear in mind that this is a work in progress – if you’re looking at this display early on Tuesday, odds are it’s not done yet. Pretend you didn’t see it.

Tableau Table of Daily Reveille Reviews

Soon I’ll start training on all the things I’ll need to do to handle my new job as Web editor for the Daily Reveille. This Tableau data is a side project as part of that job. I doubt it’ll end up being incorporated, but we won’t know if this is a good approach until I explore it.

The War On Happy Holidays

Feeling like writing something topical and funny, I thought I’d take on the War on Christmas by comparing newspaper references involving Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas during the first week of December. I went back almost 40 years, until I got bored with the scarcity of results (that far back you only find New York Times references while using the “Major U.S. Newspapers” search on LexisNexis.

Here’s the link to the Tableau version of the data I put together:

My Tableau chart based on holiday mentions in U.S. newspapers

I’m not entirely sure how I plan to use what I’ve got, but my general plan is to put together a Redshtick article where I discuss the War on Christmas and the collateral damage it has inflicted on innocent Kwanzaa. We’ll see how that goes. Enjoy!