Graphic designer creates “Annual Report” on his life in 2006

Designer Nicholas Feltron has created a 13-page annual report for 2006 — offering oodles of maps and graphs outlining how he lived, what he did, and what he consumed in the last year. The design is spectacularly cool, and the concept totally cracks me up: It’s such a neat riff on the glossy corporate annual that all companies produce each year. Yet it’s also a quite interesting way to take stock of one’s life, eh? That graphic above details his drinking in a “beverage by type” pie-chart. A few other of stats that caught my eye:

Number of New York bars visited: 94

Last photo taken: Daybreak, December 31

Digital vs. Analog photo ratio: 37:1

Number of issues of the New Scientist read: 31

Animals eaten, in the “legs” subcategory: Cow, deer, horse, kangaroo, lamb, pig, rabbit

I don’t know how accurate this info is — i.e. how much of it Feltron actually rigorously collected, versus how much of it is a guesstimate — but either way it’s impressive. He’ll even email you a print copy if you email him.

Update: Felton emailed me to clarify that indeed, his data are pretty solid. As he wrote:

in response to your post, the numbers stand up to scrutiny. For example, I saved the cover of every magazine I read all year, tallied my t-mobile bills to learn how many sms I used, used last.fm to collect my itunes listening habits. The only thing that took a few minutes a day was writing down my drinking habits, which I acknowledge may be off by a few % (for comedy and accuracy’s sake).

(Thanks to Greg for this one!)


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I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”

Gay squid sex

“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912

Hacking the Model T

“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex

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May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM

From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.

July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S

July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM

My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.

June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM

On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.

June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM

I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives. 

According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable! 

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