OMFG! Excel kungfuporn!

via lifehacker, comes this SWEET little excel tip:

a clever little Excel trick that creates a bar graph inside cells using the repeat (REPT) function.

REPT looks like this:=REPT(text,number_of_times)For instance, REPT("X",10) gives you "XXXXXXXXXX". For in-cell bar charts, the trick is to repeat a single bar "". When formatted in 8 point Arial font, single bars look like bar graphs.

to get this:

In-excel music visualizer can't be far off!

Visualization Porn

I'm probably the last peron on the internets to link to this Periodic Table of Visualization Methods. (originally seen, I think, on BoingBoing)

I agree with Seth Godin's thoughts on it:

"I love the spectacular use of technology on this web page. I hate the twisted use of the periodic table (because the relationships between the types isn't natural or elegant the way chemicals are) but it's worth it, because it will certainly inspire you to figure out how to get out of your text rut."

After reading it, you can kind of grok why they placed things in the rows/columns they did, but it doesn't intuitively leap off the page as to why they are related. Feels like some were kind of 'plugged into leftover spots'.