Was Santa good to you this year?

Blogging is tough! Yeah i know its only been 3 posts and i am complaining already...problem is that i cannot just kill the blog (does it actually qualify as a blog if you have only posted 3 times?), there are 2 reasons for this:

1. They are going to put a link to this on our company website

2. I actually like the idea of blogging

When i started the blog I intended to write a post every friday that was somehow related to something i had been considering over the course of the week. Over the last week there have been no trips to the office, no laptop and no business books. However my most favourite attribute of the Christmas season can act as a stimulus...presents!

So thank you friends and family for the very cool scarf (i surely cannot lose it again!), the engraved pen and the tabletop basketball game. I have to say that i couldn't wait to get back from the trip to the relatives to pick up a book entitled "Pop Charts" which essentially takes all your favourite tunes and creates graphs that depict their sentiment. This book brings out two of my major loves music and being a geek - Genius!

I have to start here; I have always been a big fan of Prince (except when he went through that whole 'sqiggle' phase) and this was an absolute classic!

Everyone loves a map and this has been executed so so well. The beauty is the simplicity

Growing up in the '80s and considering what i do today I have to include this...although fairly generic this has been nicely over-engineered

I nearly choked on my milkshake when i saw this - funny as hell even down to the unformatted excel chart:

Lastly 'The Greatest Rapper Alive' destroyed the UK Glastonbury event in 2008 but the collaboration of chart and lecturer below destroys even Rick Rubin and Jay-Z....love it!

www.GraphJam.com has been churning these out (you can even upload your own) all year long. I urge you all to jump to that link. I have been spending the last 2 hours working my way through the site and i cannot get enough if them. Those of you who want to see the genre amped up should check out The Village Voice's hilarious analysis of MIMs - "This is why I'm hot"

http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-03-06/music/hot-hot-heat/

Perfect in the sense that the song itself is so poor that the graphs took longer to create than the song took to write, produce, release and hit the Billboard Top 10

Please feel free to comment and upload your own "Pop Charts" - enjoy your holidays and have a happy new year!