Hey, as I have told you guys previously, I am currently enrolling as MFA-DT (Master of Fine Arts, Design & Technology) student at Parsons The New School for Design, NY. I have just been through one hell of a Bootcamp, which is a super intensive summer course where we learn the basics of Web, Design, and Code for 3 weeks. It has been quite a long time since I work with code back in my Comp. Sci undergrad, but apparently it feels more like a nostalgic thing now. Thus, here I am announcing that I will be starting another blog to cover the geeky side of mine, and I promise I won't mix them up with food reviews! (Except if the result is something that has anything to do with food :)

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As a short update, I started learning to code with Processing 2.0 about 3 weeks ago, and I just realized how beautiful data-visualization can be. I had like, the BEST Data-Viz teacher ever, Gabriel Gianordoli and I wanted to share my first ever attempt on it. So, here goes:

1. IDEA + BACKGROUND

In my first two weeks attending Bootcamp, I had one major issue: Finding cheap places to eat near school. Ever since my friend introduced me to Yelp, I realized that I am now relying heavily to that website every time I'm feeling a bit adventurous. As a pure Asian breed, I am never the type to eat only sandwich, bread and pizza all day, all week. I need rice, noodle, some bold tangy flavors. I NEED TO KNOW MY OPTIONS! HELP.

2. GOAL + PROCESS

The goal is to make an interactive data visualization about Cheap Eateries near Parsons DT building, which is 6 East 16th Street, NY. I scrape the data from Yelp website using Kimono Labs, a Chrome plugin to create APIs. I only filter places that have one or two dollar signs ($ - $$, which means it should be 'cheap' enough), and dividing the grouping based on their distance to the school building, which is categorized into 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 radius.

3. RESULT

The result is below. I run my Processing code, screen-captured the data-viz and attach them to a whole list of cheap-eats places at the bottom to turn them into an infographic, along with how accessible the place is by either walking or biking. Each of the places is represented by a bubble, different color subject to their own category. The bigger the bubble, means that they have higher amount of Yelp reviews. For example, the biggest one in a lime-green bubble below is Shake Shack, which apparently have over 4000 reviews on Yelp.

And yes, the main objective of this post is to introduce you to a new Category, "Cheap Eats Near School", in which I'll review some of the restaurants I've tried basically because of the existence of this small research. I'll start with a new post after this!

Cheers :)