Conroy’s Corner

This picture is so I have at least some digital image posted before class. I forgot that I am on a different computer that doesn’t have a scanner, so I’ll try to do my JOT! game scan from work tomorrow.

This picture is of my roommate and I at Carcasonne Castle in France. It was used in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Theives as the castle Robin Hood and Morgan Freeman break out of in the beginning. This is the type of picture I would like people to submit to my website if I did something involving monuments and travel. It was fairly easy to digitize, all though I now wish I had done it at a higher resolution. It is a little grainy for my taste.

Below, I will post the digitized directions to the game JOT! and hopefully an image of the board as well. I know that this was supposed to relate to our project, but everything I have relating to the project is digital pictures, so I wanted to try something else instead. Images will be added as soon as I determine how best to digitize a game board

Results from above effort:

Jot directions in both image and OCR (without any corrections…eww) and the game board

                     OCR0001.rtf          

Having experienced the loss of a website, I will definitely be more aware of preserving my creation the next time I design one.  I feel the “backing up” section of the chapter was rather self-evident and has been beaten into our heads by so many people by this time (although I certainly still don’t back up everything, it is a conscious choice).  However related to those preservation concerns and using the right software and everything, I had a question the reading did not address.  Does anyone know how much it costs now to get your own website?  I understand that the software I use will determine readability in the future, but I also need a space on which to keep my work.  My AU webspace, I assume, will be reclaimed by the university after I graduate.  Could there be an EdConroyisAwesome.com?  I remember when websites were first coming out and everyone looked into buying them, but today is that a realistic option or do most people lease space from someone or something?

One thing that I found very pertinent in the Margaret Hedstrom article was her concern over the lack of standards and the question of readability in the future.  The Digital History text also brings up this point.

Standards for digitizing I think are particularly important if people are going to be utilizing them more frequently as resources.  One should be able to critique how a website came into being with the same critical eye with which one examines the construction of a book.  If XHML is the best style for website designs, people should spend the time and effort (and money) to publish them in that style, assuming they want their work to be judged as professional.

That being said, I do not understand why XHML is better than HTML or other forms of web programs.  If anyone has more knowledge, please enlighten me; otherwise, I’ll look forward to asking about it in class.

First, I would like to say that if I could outsource my ideas, I would.  I am an idea man who has little knowledge of how to put those ideas into action except by enlisting capable friends.  I guess I have never quite outgrown that 1-800-Inventions type mentality that riches lay just out of reach of my half realized ideas.

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I think it would be fun, useful, and marketable to create a map of Washington, DC with popup images of monuments and linkable pages to information about them.  This fall, I took a Civil War tour of Washington, DC that took us to neat historical places that I had no idea existed (because they were off the mall and don’t appear on tour maps).  In addition to visiting the place where Lincoln was almost shot during the war (Ft. Stevens) and Lincoln Park, the instructor, Prof. Ed Smith explained how the monuments in Washington, DC are laid out in very meaningful and well-researched lines.  For example, the President of the United States in the White House is constantly under the watchful eyes of Thomas Jefferson in the Jefferson Memorial.  Abraham Lincoln watches Congress from the far end of the Mall, while Grant, mounted on his horse, looks at his Commander and Chief and protects one side of the Capitol whilst Armed Freedom watches over the other.

I think it would be very interesting and effective to show those connections on a virtual map.  I have been told that it is a very daunting task to combine some sort of GIS and images and links because of all the coding, but until I actually know how much it is, I will not be flustered.

Please give me feedback and suggestions about this idea.

I was happy to discover that we had a connection to the Washington Post archives through AU.  I was woefully ignorant of that fact before class.  I love using the New York Times Historical site to research things.  I find that newspapers, especially the further back one goes, are great sources of gossip and reveal the feelings of the common citizen.  I honestly feel that any boring paper could be livened up by some sensational newspaper headline about the topic or some tangential hook to begin a paper.

Although I generally understood the section on digitizing images, I am unclear about the TIFF, JPEG, and GIF formats in relation to digital cameras.  Does one have to have a special digital camera or scanner to get a TIFF format?  I highly doubt that my canon powershot can take things at a high enough resolution to meet Library of Congress standards.  How defined do pictures on a website need to be if they will only be viewed over a small area?

WARNING: If you are looking for a post related to the readings, this is not it. You will have to scroll down the page to find course related material. This post contains my personal ramblings…

Some members of the class have taken to going out for drinks and/or food after class on Tuesdays. It is a very fun time and an excellent opportunity to get to know one’s peers better. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the local bar scene is rather limited, although we are attempting to expand it. I personally am no longer content with venturing to the over-priced Guapo’s or to the Dancing Crab (formerly the Malt Shop). We went to Armand’s Pizzeria last week and that was excellent! A $7.50 all-you-can-eat pizza buffet (Tuesday special) and fairly reasonably priced drinks. Armand’s is currently the front-runner on my “going out after class” list. That being said, I encourage, nay, I demand additional options! Washington, DC bars and restaurants should be explored for the common good of all graduate students.

The unfortunate drawback to bars and restaurants (even the best of the two) is that they are expensive. Due to that regrettable fact, I propose a humble solution for this week’s quest for a going out location. You are all invited back to my house after class for some beer and chips (unless I eat them between now and Tuesday). I live a mile and a half from campus (2818 North Glade Street NW, Washington, DC 20016) and will drive to class for those who would like a ride.

The current selection of drinks are Bud Light, Corona, Root Beer, and water. If people would like to bring additional beverages or food, they are more than welcome. I will see you all in class on Tuesday and hopefully many of you afterwards chez moi.

After viewing the websites from this week and last week, I feel that when I create a website, history-based or otherwise, I want to include a section where people can contribute their own stories. While I found many of the stories to be rather run of the mill and not that interesting, they were still oddly addicting. I spent way more time reading the stories on the website than actually exploring the website. A lot of the additional exploring often came from someone referring to something in their story and instilling a desire for me to go look up similar things on the site. The personal anecdote has always been a great hook in my mind to draw people to a topic. To have a section on a website of only personal stories is brilliant (If you did not read this and immediately say it again in the Guinness voice, please try again…Brilliant!). Did anyone else feel the same draw to the personal stories? Did they influence you in exploring the website further, either positively or negatively?

In Digital History, the authors site a statistic by the Philadelphia Inquirer that “only about 10 to 15 percent of their 300,000 registered users had entered bad email addresses.”  What I want to know is what qualifies as a bad email address because that statistic seems skewed to me.  I always give real email addresses, but they are rarely email addresses that are “mine” (I always give the screenname + aol.com address even though I can never check it).  Also, I think that people do not have as big of concerns giving email addresses and other information to newspapers.  It would have been a truer statistic to have used an internet-only site that did not have a repudiated business attached to it.  What are your feelings on email addresses and giving yours out to websites?