Missed Practicum 9

Just the charts that I never actually completed… oops. But I am finally getting the chance to play with the tool. Yay.

Final Project

Oh yeah, before I forget what I was supposed to do. My final project topic: Coffeehouses in London and their effects on Britain 18th century and forward. Still only inspired by a deep desire for a good cup of coffee (which I have still yet to find).

 

maybe they know where to get one

Preservation Path Practicum

So… I guess preservation is important. Personal preservation though? Well, I personally think I’m wasting my time for reasons I’m not quite certain of. But when asked to pick out what I would preserve, I have to answer: I already have.

I figured instead of going through a way of how to preserve forever, I’d start with what I’ve already learned a lot of the do’s and don’t’s in digital preservation. Then I can tell you all about my newest plan to keep my personal information always updated.

I’m a packrat sort of person. Its inherited. My house is filled with old pictures of people my grandfather couldn’t even tell you who they were. Lots of old documents from way-too-long ago fill even more boxes.

In my own closet though, I have one box near and dear to me. My journals. I’ve kept journals since I was 9. Some are about my life, but most entries are actually short stories, prose, and poetry that was inspired by events in my life. Its better than a normal journal for me.

When I got my first laptop at 11, I started to type them all out. I went digital and never looked back. The first time I ran into a problem was when my old iBook died and I had to upgrade to a gateway. Yes, a spiffy new computer with a whole new OS. All my .cwk Appleworks files were jumbled code. Its when I first started to really dig into how a computer formatted documents and how to keep that from happening again.

I switched to text files. Plain and simple .txt. Its the easiest cross-platform file format that was good for absolutely nothing but old fashioned text. It was so simple, so easy, so… easily destroyed. A corrupted BIOS ended the life of my computer and all my hard work was ruined. It hurt, it killed, I was ready to kill. I ended up finding a way to get most all the files back with the help of a friend and a drive reader, but even my text file data had been corrupted a bit. It sucked.

After that, I decided the computer was not my friend. It was an enemy that I had to fight against. I started a constant backup scheme, keeping everything on external harddrives set up to update every week, ‘cloud’ storage to keep things accessible from anywhere, but… for the important things, I went back to pen and paper.

Yes, I gave up. Data is just so fragile, like crystal glass. No matter how much you wrap it up in tissue paper and cloth, no matter how many packing peanuts you add to the box, it can still get damaged. Sometimes, having a printed copy of the important stuff, nicely put into a page protector in a binder is the only way to really keep the stuff that matters preserved. Sure, one day it’ll be gone, but at least I won’t be the one crying over ‘lost precious information’.

Practicum 10

So for this week’s assignment, the focus was on creating a sort of chart that tells a little something about our final project topic. If you haven’t noticed the trend towards coffee, maybe this post will help. Its got really nice graphs and stuff. Everyone knows graphs are fun, right?… right? Well, even if you don’t like’m, I got’em!

Coffee is something we don’t associate with the Brits much, but it did have a fairly influential effect on the British in the 1600s and forwards. Coffeehouses in particular. The coffee may not have been grand, but for men with too much time and lots of opinions about every subject out there, there was no better place to spend your day. Among intellectual men interested in discussing politics, social rights, and philosophical debates over a cup.

As this new scene for social interaction grew, so it did in books and literature as well. It even encouraged the newspaper genre to grow. Papers, pamphlets and other sorts of newsletters became a popular way to keep conversation growing and to get ideas out there.
So, to show this, I made a very basic search for the word ‘coffee’ through the British English search. The graph pretty much shows exactly how interested people had become in coffee… and maybe a little bit about how addictive coffee can get.
So here’s the graph I promised:

And a fun little wordle too. For this, well... let me explain. I couldn't find a good article about the coffeehouses, least, not one that I wouldn't have to hand-type out as it was an image. Wasn't about to try and do that. Instead, I found this. An article by the Spectator. One of the early newspapers that began its circulation in coffeehouses. The two main writers of this rag actually met in one. Makes it a good enough fit to what the purpose of these places was. This is from Volume 1, 1711.

Practicum 9

So… sadly I realized I had skipped over a practicum. I plan to make that up just for consistencies sake. But right now, I want to get this powerpoint slide example finished.

So here’s a link to the completed slideshow.

Just in case it doesn’t show up right in your browser.

Practicum… lost count

So for this continued part of the overall final project, we had to overlay an old map over one in Google Maps.

So I found a map large enough to cover all the areas I had marked in the previous assignment. I got Rocque’s Map of London off wikipedia (such a convenient source). So… yeah, here are the images.

—

might help to put them on here.

 

Practicum 6

So for this map project practicum, I decided to focus on a topic I’m not sure where I’m going with. Mostly this was inspired by a desperate need for coffee.

Coffeehouses in London, and really throughout Europe in the 18th century were the place to be. It was the center of most intellectual debates and was were many would meet to conspire social reform. It even worried Charles II so greatly he called them “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”.

Their locations are pretty centralized. Interestingly, the places most frequented by certain groups became the central area for that trade.

Link
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&mpa=0&ctz=240&mpf=0&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=51.511843,-0.143741&spn=0.001335,0.023732&t=m&vpsrc=0&msid=205130232147424270429.0004afa9c5f980fa9d1ec&output=embed
View Coffee Shops in a larger map

Practicum 5(?)

Ethics and Legality Practicum
So… in the technological age, people are incredibly familiar with copyright laws. Its just so easy, and sometimes so much fun, just to grab things off the internet and use them. And its way too easy to just claim ‘educational usage’ protection as a student.
But from this, there have been a lot of websites that popped up supplying these ‘law-exempt’ properties. Most of the time, yeah, they’re right and the material provided isn’t infringing on intellectual property rights. But for every website that doesn’t, there’s always some that leave you questioning whether you should download that file.
Of the three links provided for this practicum, the Teachers Pay Teachers site and Internet Sourcebook Project seemed entirely legit, following proper protocols and having copyright disclaimers and seem to truly want to know if they’ve broken any laws. That said, the last link to History in Photographs of the California Gold Rush didn’t seem so concerned.
In fact, they seemed more concerned about t-shirt and coffee mug sales than copyright. Sure, in some of the pictures there is a note saying “photos may be downloaded at no charge for use in non profit, educational research project”, of course one must email them for permission and make sure to credit “historichwy49.com”. This seems entirely legit, but… still.
I searched through their website and couldn’t find any sort of backing up of how they’ve received these pictures (through donation, records-searching, etc) and what their rights are. There’s no little footnote about legit ownership. Nothing. Under their web credits is a thank-you to their benefactors and the companies that they’ve listed as part of their provided ‘tour of Hwy 49’, but I failed to find anything talking about the picture.
If they have fair use, that’s great. Does a picture from so long ago really need to be worried about? Well, not really. But if we’re supposed to worry about the ethics of it all, some sort of credentials should be provided. Especially if I can go and buy a shirt or poster of this funky chick:

 “Photo Credit: historichwy49.com”

 

Reading response

So, this weeks reading covered the danger that is copyright and plagiarism. It’s a scary thing. Almost any idea one has these days, you need to worry about the source of it.
It seems silly. Most days, I spend scoffing at the copyright labels on anything.
Even personal pictures online people are putting their own copyright label on it. Small works of poetry from unknown people posted on a blog is left with a copyright. Heck, even this blog is the intellectual property of myself. (though hey, if you want anything on this, by all means PLEASE take it).

It’s true that the digital age has made it a lot easier to accidentally break these laws. Just being able to have instant access to almost anything means that not thinking about citations and disclaimer labels is all too simple. But it doesn’t make the laws any less true.
I know that it’s important. That its the only thing that can keep companies in business, that people want to know that their information is safe from being abused by another. I understand this concept. I understand that the idea of keeping things open-source and completely free for use is naive.
But a small part of me wishes that if I wanted to grab a picture of some silly Disney character for public usage, I didn’t have to worry if I’d be receiving an email threatening law suit or pulling the site down.

Post 4

So for this weeks practicum, article, I pressed the random page button and landed on an article about Louis Pouzin.

The main point that encourages a belief in validity for this article is the discussion page.

Some articles are marked as “WikiProject Biographies”. These articles are held to different, higher standards.

One of the rules of this is that these articles must adhere to the following rule.

“Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous.”

This part is important to keeping out false information from the page.

If anyone ever needs reliable information on the man who invented the datagram and created one of the first versions of command-line, Wikipedia is a reliable source despite it’s deceptively small size.