OMG, YOU KILLED CHERNOFF!

I'm a fan of Chernoff faces (though I've never seen them used in anger) and I've always wondered why there aren't any Chernoff face generating algorithms that use the type of graphics you find in, say, the character generation portion of Elder Scrolls, or avatar creation in Second Life.

I would do something like this myself, but I'm rubbish at 3D graphics. I can, however, copy and paste images from the South Park Character Creator, so here's an implementation that uses South Park characters instead of just faces. Yes, it's a bit crap.

The input data is the stats from the top 36 blogs in the bioinformatics category at Postgenomic (have I mentioned the Postgenomic API before? :) ).

Variables include:

Eyes: number of posts. More posts means eyes wide open.

Clothing: more expensive looking clothing means that blog has a higher rank in the overall Postgenomic blog rankings.

Mouth: indicates the average number of words per post, i.e. open mouth means wordier posts, on average, than blog with closed mouth.