From the post:
What would happen if you were to connect all the ZIP codes in the US in ascending order? Is there a system behind the assignment of ZIP codes? Are they organized in a grid? The result is surprising and much more interesting than expected.
The idea for the ZIPScribble came from playing with Ben Fry’s excellent zipdecode. That little applet allows you to explore the ZIP codes interactively, and reveals some very interesting patterns. What it does not give you, however, is an idea of the overall structure of the ZIP space. Jeffrey Heer has reimplemented zipdecode using his prefuse toolkit, and provides a file containing ZIP codes and coordinates. So off I went on a little programming exercise to see what simply connecting the dots would do.
Not recent (2006) but an interesting exercise. Serves as encouragement to map data to see what, if any, interesting patterns result.