"Brain on drugs" pun intended, perhaps. I like D3.

A lot.

And use it for juuuust about everything.

In that vein, I gave a talk late last year on "Building apps with D3.js" at CascadiaJS 2013. Personally, I um can't uuuuuuh stand um uhh to watch um, myself uh talk. But I did have several people tell me the presentation was nonetheless encouraging/inspiring (thanks!) so I guess I should promote it a bit…. You can find the video here and I've also posted my slides (pdf).

CascadiaJS (and CouchConf the day before) was great, by the way. As I nervously suspected, I had to give my talk to an audience that included the very people who are busy making frameworks actually intended for building entire web apps. But once that was over I could sit back and enjoy a fantastic time with friends old and new.

You might remember that last year I also started writing a book on D3.js, but couldn't afford to finish it. Well, I recently got official notice from the publisher that they have voided the contract! So that work is now mine to do with as I please. Since I still don't have enough time to make a proper job of it, I'm simply sharing what I had started when I stopped.

Ironically [or perhaps unsurprisingly?] enough, I've recently been asked to do a technical review on someone else's D3.js book. It is indeed a lot easier to critique than to create!

Anyway, last year was a big year for D3.js adoption. It will be interesting to see what comes in 2014 out of Mike, et al's great little library.