Multi-Timeline
Over the years, I’ve started recording more and more things. We already know I have a list of all of the concerts I’ve gone to. I also write down when an album has “peaked” for me, since that’s usually when an album has become the soundtrack to that slice of my existence. I went to a lot of seminars in graduate school, and there was definitely a time I thought I had seen someone give a talk (Don Ganem from UCSF?), but couldn’t actually confirm it b/c I couldn’t find any record of it online. Thus, I’ve kept a pretty meticulous list of scientific seminars that I’ve gone to during my postdoc.
With all of these separate lists in hand, I figured it could be worth putting them all on the same plot, so I could compare between all of them (eg. See what album X I was listening to around the time of my life when I went to some concert Y after seeing some scientist Z give a talk about something). I figured I’d round out this plot by making a final timeline of important life / work events (redacting some things, b/c I do have my limits on what I’m comfortable sharing). Here’s the resulting plot.
PS. Also, I still totally wish I had kept a record of seminars I went to during graduate school; the Harvard med school campus was certainly not lacking for amazing / famous scientists coming and giving talks.
PS2. I realize this plot is super clunky. I think it begs for some interactive functionality (eg. selecting certain points or segments to reveal the label). If I ever have the free time again (becoming less and less certain), I’ll try to set that up as a D3.js or Shiny plot or something.