Intro to Digital Humanities – Day 3

I am back to the “Introduction to Digital Humanities” course @edx.org.

Today, I learned about “Building and Using Collections” (lesson 1.3).
I consumed the following lessons:

  1. Van Gogh’s Three Pairs of Shoes
  2. Collaboration in Digital Museum Scholarship
  3. Benefits of Technology in Museum Scholarship
  4. Digital Access and Museum Curatorial Practice
  5. New Approaches to Museum Scholarship
  6. Harvard Art Museum and Open Access

At some stage, the student is asked to “recall the way in which Jeffrey Schnapp described two categories of digital humanities projects: those that identify and study large scale trends and those that focus on smaller, specific examples or exceptions. How does his perspective relate to Martha Tedeschi’s study of James McNeill Whistler or Francesca Bewer’s study of Van Gogh’s painting Three Pairs of Shoes?”

My answer follows.

Title:
I see Tedeschi’s study as a “specific example”, and Bewer’s as identifying a “large” scale trend

Body:
Martha Tedeschi’s study of the James Whistler letters, was done on location, at the University of Glasgow, before the letters were digitized and made available online. It is reasonable to assume that her research required an increased relative focus, more time and money, and it did not nurture as many opportunities for comparisons and other forms of bridging to other works, as current conditions potentially allow. Her research conditions absorbed the object of study itself, and its content, but also its tangibility and even properties not yet digitized (such as weight, feel, smell, etc.). In other words: Tedeschi’s study is intensely focused on the Whistler letters, which I consider to fit Schnapp’s “smaller examples or exceptions” category, more than it can fit the “large scale trends” classification.

These days, with many more collections available online and technology assisting in time and costs cutting, maybe with existing or with custom software tools, researchers can find the opportunity to leverage or complement their findings from any particular case study with chapter(s) framing their main object in “alternative perspectives”.

Regarding Bewer’s study of Van Gogh’s “Three Pair of Shoes”, the same argument of fitting Schnapp’s “specific” category could be made, but in this case, the usage of several technologies (X-ray fluorescence analysis, X-radiography, spot analysis, etc.) which when applied to other Van Gogh’s paintings, highlight evidence of a larger scale pattern (materials reutilization) in Van Gogh’s art, and the way such techniques can be used to study any other creators’ creations, makes it closer to a digital humanities project with contributes to the identification of “large scale trends”, with “large” being the more subjective word here.

I published my answer as a new post at the following URL: https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:HarvardX+DigHum_01+1T2019/discussion/forum/19ca7036f6396a5f53af59c9a65c8d6169564b93/threads/5d84e0a584452a07b1002914



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Technical Details

Netflix suggestions 190918 – and my opinion of "Stranger Things"

Some of Netflix’s original content investments might be rewarding and effectively bring new viewers to the network, but others push me away from my subscription, making me question “why do people watch this crap?”.
The most obvious name in making me want to terminate the service, is the world-wide-adored “Stranger Things”, which was actually fun in its first season, weak on its first return, and a complete disgrace on its current third season. “Stranger Things” is zero innovation, and 100% tried and tested vulgarity, crammed with (not so young) kids and adults hysterically screaming and swearing all the time, trying to please a ridiculous spectrum of audiences.
In “Stranger Things” each targeted audience segment is given a small obvious something that they – the producers – expect to be enough to capture them, but that to me feel nauseatingly forced, fake, plastered, just there because someone identified a commercial positive in it. This applies to kids swearing and drinking Coca-Cola, adults smoking non-stop, top-of-the-pops vinyl music of the 1980s, and people stereotypes so eroded that it is frightening to think that someone agreed to finance such a production, saying no to others.

Fortunately, the Netflix network (still) has captivating content, not trivial to find elsewhere. Here are some mostly international suggestions: a doc on the harsh reality of some Afghan kids, a Korean documentary, a doc on rat killers in Mumbai/India, and a doc on the Internet and the connected world.

For each suggestion, I include its Netflix and IMDB URLs.

The Land of the Enlightened (2016) – 7.1 * (508 votes)
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80097375
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2338774/
Afghan kids from the Kuchi tribe digging and selling Soviet mines.

I Am Sun Mu (2015) – 7.2 * (172 votes)
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80154179
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4722674/
A North Korean defector and his art.

The Rat Race (India / Hindi)
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80145085
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2308985/
@Mumbai/India, some people make a living as rat killers.

Lo and Behold (2016) – 7.0 * (10K votes)
https://www.netflix.com/watch/80097363
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5275828/
Werner Herzog on the Internet and “the connected world”.



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Technical Details

If you can NOT play remote audio, locally, via RDP, using Firefox

I connect to many different computers, using Microsoft’s “Remote Desktop”, using “RDP” (Remote Desktop Protocol). It is not common for me to need to play, locally, the audio from the remote computer, but sometimes I do.
Today, I successfully played, locally, remote audio using the Chrome web browser. Unfortunately, when I tried to do the same using Firefox, I only got silence.

The solution:

  1. In Firefox’s address bat, enter “about:config”
  2. Accept that you understand the “risks” of configuring Firefox
  3. Change the value of the security.sandbox.content.level setting to 2 (in my case it was set to 5
  4. Restart Firefox

URLs "p1" 20190913 – 71 fine resources

I am an avid WWW surfer, with hundreds of websites visited each month, sometimes daily. I bookmark them all, at least for logging purposes. These posts having the "urls" category, capture what was on my browser on a specific date. I hope you enjoy some of these shared resources.


URLs "p1" 20190905 – 77 great reads

I am an avid WWW surfer, with hundreds of websites visited each month, sometimes daily. I bookmark them all, at least for logging purposes. These posts having the "urls" category, capture what was on my browser on a specific date. I hope you enjoy some of these shared resources.


My favorite MP3TAG scripts

I use the free (as in “libre”) “mp3tag” software for tagging my music.
I was having a hard time with the file names of certain tracks with many artists and/or with too long album names, so I had to figure the internal scripting mechanisms of the software, for adequate file naming, from the music-embedded tags.

Fortunately, this open source tool provides good and succinct documentation for the task, available @ http://help.mp3tag.de/main_scripting.html

What follows, are my favorite naming strings. You enter them from the “Convert” menu, “Tag – Filename” option.

If you want to make sure that an album’s name is never longer than 32 characters, use this code for the album’s name part:

$if($geql($len(%album%),32),$left(%album%,32),%album%)

If you want to make sure that an artist’s name is never longer than 24 characters, use this code for the artist’s name part:
$if($geql($len(%artist%),24),$left(%artist%,24),%artist%)

In case of multiple artists for a single track, if you want to take only the first artist name, assuming the tags separate the names with commas, use:

$if($eql($strchr(%artist%,’,’),0),%artist%,$left(%artist%, $sub($strchr(%artist%,’,’),1))))

For the track numbering, if you want to force a specific number of digits, say 2, use this:

$num(%track%,2)

Now, combining all the above, here are the full scripts I actually use.
For the format “first artist name – album name no longer than 32 chars – track number with 3 digits”:

$if($eql($strchr(%artist%,','),0),%artist%,$left(%artist%, $sub($strchr(%artist%,','),1))) - $if($geql($len(%album%),32),$left(%album%,32),%album%) - $num(%track%,3)

For the format “artist name up to 24 chars – album name no longer than 32 chars – track number with 3 digits”:

$if($geql($len(%artist%),24),$left(%artist%,24),%artist%) - $if($geql($len(%album%),32),$left(%album%,32),%album%) - $num(%track%,3)

For the format “album name up to 32 chars – first artist name – track number with 3 digits”:

$if($geql($len(%album%),32),$left(%album%,32),%album%) - $if($eql($strchr(%artist%,','),0),%artist%,$left(%artist%, $sub($strchr(%artist%,','),1)))) - $num(%track%,3)

It may be helpful.

My plants, the 2nd batch is on

I keep experimenting with growing some plants, using a very simple “AeroGarden” hydroponics system, which consists of no more than a 2.1 Liters water tank with a water pump, plus a full spectrum LED light, of variable height, which I have set to turn-on for 16 consecutive hours, starting at 16:00, every day.
I am on my second harvest. The first harvest was done using the six plastic pods that came with the system, pre-seeded. Success was 100%. When the plants got big enough, it was my decision to take them out of the “incubator” hydroponics system and plant them on earth or on special self-watering vases, which have an independent water chamber. After the transfer, the system’s pods were free to receive new plant species.

This second time, I got the seeds in bulk, and dropped them into a funnel shaped sponge, long enough to dive into the water + nutrients solution. All the seeds were successful.
The video shows the three weeks old results of the new harvest. I am not entirely sure about all the plants’ names and even species, but this description is accurate enough:

  • Strawberries, not visible, still a very small plant, sitting at the back-row, left pod. I used 4 minuscule seeds.
  • Tomato, "RAF" variety, enormous and growing at an unbelievable speed, occupying the back-row, right pod. I used 7 seeds.
  • "Mooskrause 2", on the middle-row, left pod. Growing strong, and about to be eaten :). I used 5 seeds.
  • "Fitness Mix", on the middle-row, right pod. Growing very slowly. I used 4 seeds.
  • Tomato, "Sweet Italian" variety, on the front-row, on the left. It is growing slower than its “RAF” sibling, but still obviously alive and healthy. I am not sure on this one, but I suppose I used 4 seeds.
  • "Krauter Vielfalt" (Herb Variety), on the front-row, on the right. Seems to be a mix of dill and parsley. I used 7 seeds.

Video titled "My plants (2nd batch) growing 20190829 – 24 hours in 1 minute: "

URLs "p1" 20190902 – 63 good reads

I am an avid WWW surfer, with hundreds of websites visited each month, sometimes daily. I bookmark them all, at least for logging purposes. These posts having the "urls" category, capture what was on my browser on a specific date. I hope you enjoy some of these shared resources.