One of the best books I read in 2009 was Miggy’s copy (presumably from his MIT days) of Edward R. Tufte’s Envisioning Information. The book is a plethora of infographics — both gorgeous and terrible — spanning the history of modern man. In as little as the 2 months I’ve spent with this treasure, I learned many of the principles that have helped me understand what makes a great representation of data shine and how to avoid the pitfalls of those that leave users confused or misinformed.

So today, when Awesome Jon told me about this one day course with Edward Tufte, I couldn’t help but start planning my trip to the Big Apple for a day of cartography, statistics, art, complexity, symbolism and cognitive science explained by a master Information Designer.

New York, here I come.

In our quest to track down a copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Wii last weekend Jennifer, Tona and I were reminded of just how close we are to the subtle, western beauties that I wish were more discoverable in and around Denver, CO.

We never did get a copy of the game but our travels gifted me this snapshot of our diminishing cow town aura. Yeehaw.