ConEd Outage Visualization

My little neck of the woods.

After Hurricane Irene swept through the New York area, many of my neighbors and I lost power for several days. This is my attempt at graphing the number of households who lost power / regain power over time.

As ConEd stated during the power lost, pretty much everyone regained their power by September 1st.



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Stealing Mona Lisa: A Mystery

Stealing Mona Lisa: A Mystery by Carson Morton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was happily surprised that how much I enjoyed this book. This period novel built around the events surrounding the theft of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Some of the events and personalities in the novel were directly from the true event. Other characters were made up for artistic enhancements. The author also move other events in that time period to create drama in the novel.
I'm willing to give the author's artistic liberty because the plot works. It was entertaining and still somewhat educational. I didn't know that the Mona Lisa was ever stolen or that there was a great flood in Paris in the early 1900s. "Stealing Mona Lisa" was a entertaining read.



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The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution

The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci's Arithmetic Revolution by Keith J. Devlin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was definitely an interesting read. At 150 pages, it was just the right length to learn about the man who introduced the Hindu-Arabic number system to the western world. Without his practical instructions, the advances in the western civilization definitely would have been delayed.
This was also a very educational read. I learned many facts about Fibonacci that I didn't know or wouldn't know to ask. Such as Fibonacci is not his real name, it's Leonardo (another talented Italian Leonardo). Or that he's from Pisa (just like Galileo Galilei). Or that this Lenardo didn't invent anything per se, but made a new and difficult concept palatable for the masses. Many of these facts are trivial, but someone who loves random knowledge, it is a worthwhile read.
I wished the book delve more into his famous numbers sequence, but the book is titled The Man of Numbers. I will have to go read up on the Fibonacci sequence in another book.



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