So, forget what I said about my plans; they didn’t come anywhere close to fruition. I didn’t do any work on the Polish results (even though most of them would be really easy to get) and my work on the new election overview pages sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to make my own generic map of Austria. I gave up on that approach (although I did draw a few more rivers) and used an image I found online.
It wasn’t all unproductive, since I did finally write the first parts to the Austrian overview. These are going to be a bit of a slog to get through, since there’s a lot of information to communicate and I don’t always have the data to make nice visuals. My dislike of writing for being slow and tedious doesn’t help either. At least it’ll be another opportunity for writing. As they say, practice makes perfect.
Other than the Austria map, I got distracted by yet another semi-new project. Last summer I had started working on a fair redistricting map for the Wisconsin State Assembly. It’s a lot of time and effort to draw 99 districts throughout the state that represent cohesive communities while also being proportionally partisan. Motivated by a conversation I had on Twitter, I decided to go back to it and finish the map.
Once I finished drawing and adjusting the districts, I downloaded the data to make a map of various recent elections to see how my map held up under scrutiny. Matching the data and making a simple map was trivial; making a professional looking map that included all four sample elections in one image was more difficult. Well, it wasn’t difficult so much as tedious, since I have to tweak and adjust the text and images to make sure they look good. Then I had to do it three more times, while keeping the other maps locked. I also included insets, which are themselves finicky. This extra effort is worth it though and I’m pleased with the result.
It would be beneficial for me to focus up and at least start pages for my various projects and publications. One of the main reasons for starting this website was for it to be where I could better organize and store my projects. Each page doesn’t need to be perfect and complete, just a title and a short overview of the project. Unfortunately, my fatal flaw is never executing my plans, so don’t trust me when I say I’ll work on this or that project, or add this or that feature.
Aaron Moriak 