SSH “randomart”

 

Not really sure what it is, or how to make it happen, but apparently OpenSSH creates a visualization of the random, hex-format authentication “fingerprint”, easier for humans to identify than a random string of characters.

Some details via: Krispy and SuperUser

 

Alex Dragulescu’s “Malwarez” series

From  Alex Dragulescu‘s series “Malwarez”, visualizations of computer viruses using Processing.

According to his site, the “disassembled code, API calls, memory addresses and subroutines are tracked and analyzed. Their frequency, density and grouping are mapped to the inputs of an algorithm that grows a virtual 3D entity.”

Click for full-size.

“Hip-hop Word Count”

The image above (50 Cent and Jay-Z) are from Tahir Hemphill‘sHip-Hop Word Count” project.  Using seven criteria, the software:

…estimates the education level needed to understand each rhyme as well as, rates the artistic sophistication employed through the metaphors, similes, cultural references, consonantal/vocalic alliteration and overall pattern of each rhyme. We calculate the final score by averaging the syntactic (readability measures) and semantic (artistic sophistication) scores of each rhyme. On a scale from 0 (illiterate) to 20 (post-graduate degree).

The result is tabulated into a form that looks like this:

Interestingly, President Obama’s energy policy speech ranked lower than a Jay-Z album.

US strategy in Afghanistan and water current

afghanistanStabilityDiagram

Above is a diagram, released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in late 2009, showing the “surge” strategy for Afghanistan.  Primarily criticized as a demonstration of how complex (read: impenetrable) our strategy for Afghanistan is (and I certainly find it difficult-to-impossible to decipher, when seen at the small scale above it has a certain water-current quality.

Perhaps like this drawing by DaVinci, which I love as a kind of early data visualization (not to mention amazing drawing):

DaVinciWaterEddies

Image via: MSNBC (thanks for the tip, Aaron)
Click on image above for full-size