I'm about to start my last class in my masters degree and am faced with the decision of continuing on or stopping here. I don't know yet. I want to move forward, but i also want to do some other things that stopping would free me up to do. We shall see.
]]>I'm even happy with what I accomplished over the course of the class. I still have a to-do list of stuff to do over the summer. Themes and documentation are at the top of that list. I'll deal with that stuff later. It might be time for a vacation. ;-)
]]>I should have the theme and plugins documented and polished to submit to the omeka repository next week.
Funny thing is that even though it's "finished" (meaning I hit the goals i set for this class) I see a lot of places to polish the layout and stuff to add.
Isn't that how it always is?
]]>For the scope of the assignment, I am turning in Http://curiosity.depressoboy.com page, http://curiosity.depressoboy.com/collections.html, http://curiosity.depressoboy.com/curiosities.html, http://curiosity.depressoboy.com/div-1.html , and the http://curiosity.depressoboy.com/div-1_page1.html pages.
I look forward to discussing this tonight.
Matt
]]>The document can be downloaded here
I have a separate post about the readings brewing.
]]>I modified a wordpress install located at Http://historytest.depressoboy.com. After installation, I applied a basic 2 column theme that reflected my interests. After installing the theme, I modified the Page.php, header.php, footer.php, single.php, and archive. php files.
In the page, single and archive.ph files I removed the calls to the sidebar. In the header file I added the archive page/tab. Finally, I moved the archive navigation into the footer.
Using CSS, I adjusted the content to display on the left and organized the navigation elements in the footer.
I opted to remove the sidebar to streamline the reading experience. I also wanted a rich(er) footer to aid in the navigation. I am having an issue in the CSS getting the elements in the footer to line up correctly, but I believe that is an issue with the way I have attempted to modify the theme using floats to order the elements as opposed to locking each element in a table.
Using photoshop, I modified the header graphic. I added some Japanese to the tag image. I modified the text to have it match the line in the image, resaved it as a jpeg and uploaded the modified file.
This is a basic modification of a wordpress theme that is mostly presentable for a weblog focused on presenting content with little to distract from the main content areas.
In a different wordpress installation, I set up a basic e-commerce site utilizing the Krafty Cart theme and 2 plugins provided by wordpress. Using Photoshop, I redid the navigation images. I replaced the clickable title with a clickable logo image, and replaced the background tile image. I removed the "blog" functions and front page where the posts would normally go. The theme provided a "products" page that is now the front page of the site.
With minimal modifications, I was able to set a functional e-commerce site in a short time frame.
In both cases, I was able to take the basic wordpress install and with some modification I have been able to present two sites for two different purposes.
The scope for this class is as follows:
Scope:
The Curiosity project is designed to provide scholars, students, and teachers with a way to access, explore and carry out research with a virtual copy of Charles Hindley's Curiosities of Street Literature, a collection of broadsides, "cocks", "Catchpennies," and ballads from the 18th and 19th centuries published in London in 1871. The originals were printed on single sheets and sold for a penny by urban street sellers and itinerant rural peddlers. The format goes back to the 15th century. It became the most popular form of printed matter for poor and working-class audiences in the wake of the so called "Taxes on Knowledge" imposed during the panic about popular radicalism in during and after the French Revolution. These taxes were repealed starting in the 1850s; their total elimination by late 1860s set the stage for the rise of modern tabloid newspapers in Britain. Once the tabloid press developed (The Daily Telegraph began publication in 1871), the street literature Hindley collected lost its threatening qualities and could be marketed to more upscale readers and collectors, The edition we are reproducing is separated into four "divisions" and includes a general introduction as well as introductory material for each section, a cancellation notice, and some replacement pages. This organization is based on classificatory models from 19th century natural history.
The project is displayed using the Omeka Content Management System created by the George Mason University Center for History and New Media. This content management system was chosen for maximum flexibility and extensibility. The current version of the Curiosity project is built upon version 0.9 of Omeka and exists in a proof of concept stage. The Curiosity project is currently deployed on a customized version of the Omeka system that has been reworked to include new navigation functions and the option to open a larger image for download and/or reading. Each page of the book has been scanned into archival quality tiffs and uploaded into the Omeka management system using a standard image compression algorithm.
Targeted users of the Curiosity project include:
• Teachers
• Students
• Researchers
Target Functionality:
We will attempt to replicate the navigational structures of the book using the Omeka system. To accomplish these goals, we will upgrade to the most current release of and create a plug-in that will allow us to add previous page and next page buttons. To utilize the plug-in, a new field will be added to each item. This will allow us to assign a unique identifier to each item for the plug-in to utilize in navigation functions. The project will rely on existing Dublin Core Metadata for metadata searching as well as content-specific tagging of each page to enable additional search functions.
Layout:
In order to replicate the structure and navigation of the book, we will recreate the book as a collection, uploading and creating each page as an Item in Omeka, and then assigning each division of the book as an exhibit. Utilizing CSS, the layout and display of the project will be modified to display the image on the left of the screen and either commentary on the displayed image, or the full text of the image on the right. Included at the bottom of each page will be a previous and next button, a first and last button, a link to the table of contents, as well as a link to open the full size image in a new window. If necessary, the images will be converted to from the archival tiffs to a new format using a standard compression algorithm and re-uploaded in to the Omeka system.
Time Line:
The final project will be completed and turned in on May 10, 2009. Milestone dates are as follows:
• March 15: upgrade to Omeka v. 10 or 1.0 (if available)
• March 30: images uploaded and additional field added
• April 15: plug-in coding completed
• April 30: Plug-in and system testing completed; system deployed.
• May 10: documentation and testing completed. Final project turned in.
The final document doesn't resemble the starting point at all, but it was nice to have that safety net to fall back on. As a contractor to the fed, they have templates and forms for everything. In some respects it makes it very easy to knock out a document in a short timeframe, and makes it easy to convey information in a particular fashion.
This is something we may want to consider in the digital humanities A set of templates for documents that we will need to submit for grants, project proposals, etc. if nothing else it enforces a set level of professionalism and a standard for document submission.
Just a thought.
]]>In other news, I've met with my partner to try and chart a course for the semester and for the future of the project. It was a productive meeting and I believe we have some interesting and good ideas about how to move the project forward, but i'm still a little unsure as to what can be accomplished within the scope of this class. Hopefully we'll get that nailed down today. In a perfect work, the class and the future of the project will dovetail nicely and be a seemless transition.
]]>I had a decent grasp of what was going on in 3.2 and how it handled templates, CSS, and rendering themes. At the time I had rewritten the templates to do the changes I wanted and left the rest of it alone.
Fast forward to monday night and Jeremy's suggestion that we code a page to see what we can do with it. I need to put together a site for my son's cub scout pack anyway so this dovetails nicely. I sketched an idea out and sat down to knock it out. I thought I could save myself some trouble by utilizing an exisitng theme and template set from movable type.
So when I code, I try to remember to put in comments so that the person that comes in after me can see what I was doing, what I intended to do and can rearrange as necessary. Simple things, right?
Not so much.
The new templates are full of MT specific code and applying any sort of theme is still constrained by the base css. This does make it trickier when trying to understand how the screen layout is accomplished. I was able to find lots of good resources for MY 3.2 and how to modify layouts, but the information didn't always seem to translate.
Comments in the code would have helped.
This is not an uncommon problem. I've worked in QA work for 10 years and most of the engineers I've worked with hated writing comments in their code. This made it kind of a pain when they left the project and someone else had to pick up their code to fix it or when I have to read the code to try and figure out the source of an error or defect.
I know HTML and CSS don't require code comments for that matter, neither does any scripting languge, but I'd hope that we will adopt comments as a "best practice". It's a bit of extra effort up front, but I believe the benefits outweigh the negatives.
]]>I really liked the bulletproof book for its clarity. A lost of what we have read has clarified the stuff i've been muddling my way through for the last few years. The challenge is to remember the right terms and assign them to the bits and pieces in my head. Should be interesting.
I need to go dig around the backend of Omeka again and experiment with the stylesheets. Hopefully, i'll have a fuller understanding this time.
My next goal is to write the scope document. I'm sort of bolting this onto an existing project, which exists in the proof of concept stages, so the tricky part is figuring out what really needs to be fully implemented, and documenting that. Then, hopefully, it's just setting a schedule and set of requirements and sticking to it.
]]>To me, this seems to be the point of what we are doing. Finding new ways to discuss and explore historical events. It could be exploring Tiananmen Square via Google Earth, or presenting an old book of broadsides as a transitional document in a way that allows access to the average student across the world.
The challenge, as I see it, is to create something that provides a conduit for meaningful dialog with the past, or at least, with our abstraction of the past. A problem I have run into during a previous project of this type is that it still ends up being a linear exploration of an event or document. This is solvable, but requires some additional thinking and analysis on how to present the project.
I liked the discussion of symbols and our attraction to them. I think this is pertinent not only in branding our projects, but also in fostering a discussion of the "halo effect" of meanings that symbols, like words, suggest.
An additional note on the McCloud book; I've been reading comics and graphic novels for years. Scott McCloud has been bouncing around the periphery of my readings for a while. I'm glad I had a chance to finally read his book, as I enjoyed his exploration of comics as a medium and a way of communicating information. I'm curious to see how those ideas that he and Staley have presented can be applied to this and future endeavors.
Gagnon, V.P Jr. "Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia"
International Security, Vol. 19, No.3. pp.130-166
Gagnon asks if "Ethnicity affects the international systems" and "what causes violent conflict to arise along ethnic lines?" (p. 130) The article, written in 1994, presents a framework for analyzing ethnic conflicts, as well as an analysis of Serbia and the conflicts that have arisen in the Balkans after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Gagnon argues the existing approaches to ethnic conflicts, where such conflicts arise as a result of existing ethnic sentiment or where national decision-makers have decided to stir up such sentiment, are incorrect. He posits that "violent conflict is not caused by ethnic sentiments, nor by external security concerns, but rather by the dynamics of within-group conflict." (p. 131) He clarifies that in this case "ethnic cleavages are provoked by elites in order to create a domestic political context where ethnicity is the only politically relevant identity." (p. 132) To support this argument, Gagnon presents a theoretical framework where based on four premises.
* The domestic arena is of central concern for state decision makers and ruling elites because it is the location of their power bases.
* Persuasion is the most effective and least costly means of influence in domestic politics
* Within the domestic arena, appeals for support must be directed to material and non-material values of the relevant target audience
* Conflict over ideas and how they are framed is an essential character of domestic politics, since the result determines the way political arguments can be made, how interests are defined, and the values by which political action must be justified.
After presenting the framework, he presents a list of nine hypotheses about the conditions under which national leaders will resort to conflictual policies that are described and justified in terms of threats to the ethnic nation. Using the presented frame work Gagnon explores the case of Serbia. He argues that the “violent conflict in the former Yugoslavia was a purposeful and rational strategy planned by those most threatened by changes to the structure of economic and political power.” (p. 140) He presents an analysis of the threats starting in the 1960’s through 1991.
He argues that the Serbian case shows the importance of recognizing that political rhetoric is political behavior, and that conflict taking place along ethnic lines, may be about ethnic issues, but may be caused by issues that are not related to ethnicity. Gagnon concludes his argument by stating that “the current major conflicts taking place along ethnic lines throughout the world have as their main causes, not ancient hatreds, but rather purposeful actions of political actors who actively create violent conflict, selectively drawing on history in order to portray it as historically inevitable.” (p. 165)