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Thank you for visiting FogBone.

One of my interests and passions is business intelligence—making strategic decisions with no, some or excessive data.

War is Hell. The Afghanistan Stability diagram (left) throws all the data at the audience. The audience is forced to digest it and come up with a course of action. Here is the thirty-page report (download)! Minard's 1869 graph of Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign (below right) plots army movement, fatalities and drops in temperature. The diagram on the left makes no statement, but Minard's graph proves "War is Hell" and his graph is not in English!

Converting data into brief and accurate information is essential. The leader in the field is Edward Tufte. Tufte advocates that the information should be presented neatly, provide all the details and leave no question about what action should be taken. Tufte explained that the space shuttle Challenger disaster was caused by poor decisions based on data being depicted in an overly complicated manner. The key question engineers faced before the launch of the Challenger was if icy conditions would cause an O-ring failure.

The data on O-ring damage and temperature were represented by rocket boosters that looked like a box of crayons; the flight controllers could not see a critical failure from the information presented on the two charts. Tufte created a chart plotting O-ring failure versus temperature—making an extrapolation of the January 28 launch temperature. The decision to postpone launching would have been obvious using Tufte's chart.

Not all decisions are life and death. Removing an executive's "hunch" versus information presented briefly and accurately, during several months of research from different locations, could save a company millions of dollars. Hunches based on information are good, but strictly relying on hunches can be disastrous.

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of being invited by Dimensional Insight (link) in Guangzhou, China to give a talk about Web Design. I prepared a Powerpoint presentation (download) and a hand-out (download). During my research for the speech, I downloaded the entire Dimensional Insight web site (public) to my computer. I found some images of a video library web page that underwent several formatting changes before a final version was added to the website. I added the content to my Powerpoint presentation and my audience was impressed because I presented like an insider. In addition, I realized most of my audience was Chinese and prepared accordingly.

FogBone.com reflects the style and element issues I learned over the years. All HTML and CSS code has been validated. In specific locations, FogBone uses HTML5 and CSS3, but these elements are few and will not hinder the site. FogBone was created using all open source products--Gedit, Gimp, Inkscape and Linux OS. I have been designing wep pages since 1997.

When not coding, I enjoy outdoor activities--photography, camping, running and bicycling.