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To go with the session on playing with non-textual data, Peter Leonard, Lauren Tilton, and I put together an interactive browser for images. Using d3 and html5, it lets you take a large set of images and their metadata and arrange them graphically in the browser. It adds local hosting, mouseover effects, and (most fun) animated transitions to its inspiration, Lev Manovich’s ImagePlot.

We can’t link to it right here because the prototype runs on some highly copyrighted Vogue covers. We’ll set it up to work with open Library of Congresses images later.

The next step will be to automatically pull in some makefiles so you can run it on any arbitrary, medium sized (50-5,000) collection of photos.

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For the Maker Challenge, I present two network graphs of Isaac Hull’s correspondence. These graphs are a visualization of the letterbook of Master Commandant Isaac Hull, of the U.S. brig Argus, from 1803 to the end of 1805, when Hull was stationed in the Mediterranean and was part of the capture of the city of Derna (the engagement from which the Marine Hymn takes its phrase “to the shores of Tripoli”).

I built these network graphs in Gephi.

Here is a network graph depicting the correspondence of Hull using his correspondents as the nodes. The major correspondent, you’ll notice, is William Eaton. This isn’t surprising, considering that Eaton was the major American diplomatic player in the Mediterranean at the time, and also the mastermind of the capture of Derna.

The second network graph is a little more interesting. This graph shows connections not between people, but between places. I used the places as the nodes instead of the correspondents. I did this in order to demonstrate first, how much the same people moved around, and second, the potential problems encountered when a correspondent tried to write an important letter to a ship captain on the sea or military commander on the march.

Using the geographic indicators from the letterbook and other published papers from the Barbary Wars, I recorded the location of the sender and the probable location of the recipient. I geocoded these location markers in R and then uploaded that file as my nodes worksheet. Though the time constraints of the Maker Challenge did not allow me to layer this graph onto an actual map (besides the problem of finding a map that can distinguish between locations 12 miles apart and locations over a thousand miles apart), I did form the layout in a roughly geographical arrangement.

What you’ll probably notice is that no one place is extremely prominent. The US Navy used ports and consulates all over the Mediterranean for their operations, and as a result they communicated often with a wide and varied geographical area.

Just imagine the Mediterranean Sea on the right third of the graph, and the Atlantic Ocean on the left two-thirds.

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At THATCamp Prime this summer, I considered entering the Maker Challenge with this very problem.  Four months later, I’m still working on it, so why not try again?

During DorkShorts on Saturday, I’ll present the current version of Encodinghfrs.org, the website I am building with the goal of developing a community of practice focused on markup of historical financial records (HFRs) within the international Digital Humanities community.

My goal for this site has always been to include an Omeka-powered library/repository of things like the white paper for our 2011 ODH Start-Up grant and the ODD file for the TEI model we are trying out.  (Oh, and limericks.)  It would be possible simply to post these files using WordPress, but I want to use Omeka because of its facility for recording metadata.  Given the choice, I always prefer to be able to include more information than less because I can’t know how others will be interested in using my stuff.

I also want to be able to pull links to the Omeka objects into the WordPress theme because I’m now happy with the look of the website.  This summer the whole website (version 0.1?) was made from the Omeka theme “Thanks, Roy,” and I just did not know enough about Omeka to make a site that satisfied me.  Sigh.

To date, I haven’t had time either to learn enough PHP to write code myself or to find the best of all possible code on GitHub that I can just tweak….  So.  I’m using the maker challenge as incentive.  Because needing a stable url for a publication (by like, yesterday) just doesn’t seem to be enough.

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Are you up for a challenge? Heard of the Maker Challenge? At THATCamp CHNM (Prime) this summer, there was the hugely popular Maker Challenge. All campers were invited to make something over the course of two days, with prizes awarded for the best three entries. Guess what? THATCamp New England 2013 @ UConn has decided to sponsor a Maker Challenge.

What’s Involved?

• You (or a group) will make something (a plugin, an app, a document, a website, a Twitterbot, an ebook, an Omeka.net archive, a Zotero bibliography, a Wikipedia page, even a project plan or a PowerPoint presentation or what you will).
• You (or a group) will post a link to and description of your project in a blog post on this site and categorize it under “Maker Challenge” (the category exists already).
• You (or a group) will show what you’ve done in 3 minutes or less than 5 minutes or more on Saturday October 19th at the last session (details will be coming soon). If you have already left, this session’s moderator will present it for you.
• Anyone with a THATCamp account can vote for your project by logging in at newengland2013.thatcamp.org, then navigating to the blog post for your project and clicking “Favorite”.

More details coming soon…

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In her contribution to <em>Debates in the Digital Humanities</em>, Lisa Spiro called for <a href=”dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13“>”Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities.”</a> This session proposal stems from a question I recently asked on Twitter: Has anyone followed up on this idea? I received answers indicating that no explicit, wide-ranging response has been undertaken, though some (individual, small-group, institutional) value statements do exist. The discussion on Twitter also indicates that there is interest in pursuing the question further.

I propose to build a platform for promoting, collecting, and showcasing DH values statements, to be hosted by the UConn Scholars’ Collaborative and open to the entire DH community.

Here are some initial questions that I have to get us started:
<ul>
<li>What is the best type of platform for this project (e.g. wiki, collective blog)?</li>
<li>What are the values we might adopt as a group creating this platform–values that can serve as one contribution to the project?</li>
<li>How will we promote this project and gather contributions?</li>
</ul>
These are only a few questions, and I’m interested to see what others come up with as we discuss, plan, and get this project started at THATCamp.