My buddy Hiller sent me this today. What a rockin’, “kick-ass blaster,” ride.

If watching this doesn’t get your blood pumping with a deep desire to ride this course, then you must be dead!

On Building

Cross-posted on Humanities 340: The Muses and the Web.

As many of the students in Humanities 340 have come to understand, one of the key issues in DH revolves around a continuing effort to define what the digital humanities is or are. One aspect of this almost perpetual debate that seems to crop up consistently is the issue of building. Some students have wrestled with this issue of building: do I have to know how to build to do DH? do I have to build to be a DH’er?. I would argue that you do not need to know how to build to do DH as the class has practiced DH—Information Trapping—over the last six weeks. Defining “building” is not an easy task, but one I think it is worth considering for a moment, read or re-read Ramsey’s post and pay particular attention to the comments to get a deeper sense of what building is or is not. Just to weight in on the debate, “building” is the act of making, whether you use methods and OTS tools—search methods + Zotero + visualizing tool—to do some humanistic project; whether you build a tool, or create a plugin, or an archive, or even a website to serve some humanistic project or goal.

Nevertheless, regardless of how one defines “building,” I believe that “building” is a fundamental component to doing DH. As such, over spring break and continuing for several weeks upon our return from spring break, we are going to “build” a personal identity website using web best practices. The rationale behind this building exercise is based in the challenge Dr. Tom Scheinfeldt issues in “New Wine in Old Skins: Why the CV needs hacking,” and as Adam Crymble does with “My CV.” We will do our best to meet this challenge given the timeframe and the level of technical expertise we gain during our building section.

I do not expect you will be coders/programmers at the end of this section. That is not our goal. The class goal is to familiarize you with the process of building in general by having you build a website, though I hope that some in the class will find coding and programming as rewarding as I and others have found it. Regardless of whether or not you come to find programming rewarding, I know that you will come away with 1) a greater appreciation for DH and the possiblities it offers for doing humanistic research and 2)enough of an understanding of programming to collaborate with those who are programmers.

Building

There are many different aspects of building a website and we will cover what I consider the most important aspects: from project management to content strategy and information architecture from coding and programming to testing.

Over the course of spring break, I would like the class to tackle what I often consider the hardest aspect: what to build, what content should be included, and how can or should the end-user interact with information. To help guide you through this aspect, I offer the following steps.

First:

1. Read: Dr. Scheinfeldt’s post “New Wine in Old Skins: Why the CV needs hacking”;
2. Read: Adam Crymble’s post “My CV is Better Than Yours”;
3. View: Adam’s CV;

Think: about Scheinfeldt’s challenge. Did Adam meet that goal? How did he meet it? Is there anything he did not include that he might have that would have gone even further in hacking the cv?

Second:

1. View: Dr. Char Miller’s CV;
2. View: Dr. Janet F. Brodie’s CV;
3. View: Dr. Tom Scheinfeldt’s CV;
4. View: Jeremy Bogg’s CV.

These are more traditional CV formats (though I would suggest digging around Jeremy’s and Dr. Scheinfeldt’s websites). Your CV or resume is probably somewhat similiar.

Third:

1. View: Jeremy Keith’s Website;
2. View: Dan Cederholm’s Website;
3. View: Douglas Bowman’s Website.

How do these sites compate to the traditional CVs listed above? Think about the similarities and differences? Could you translate your traditional CV into something similiar to the web portfolio’s? Again, do they include a semi non-traditional format (think: blog)?

Fourth:

1. Read: Bogg’s post “Digital Humanities Design and Development Process”;
2. Read: Croxall’s post “12 Basic Principles of Project Management”;
3. Read: Bogg’s post “Part One: Figure Out What You Are Building”;
4. Read: Lovinger’s post “Content Strategy: The Philosophy of Data”;
5. Read: Halvorson’s Post “The Discipline of Content Strategy”;
6. Read: Kahn’s post “Strategic Content Management”—paying particular attention to links he includes;

Reflect on what you learned from these posts, compare that to the traditional CV examples and the designer portfolios.

Next:

1. Think: What is your project? What is the rationale behind it?;
2. Map: Your project out, briefly, on a piece of paper or using a digital tool if time permits;
3. Think: What content do you have? What content do you want? What content do you need?
4. Generate: That content digitally—e.g., write out some “About” text, write up your “Projects” or “Research” text, etc..

As you are thinking, mapping, and generating your project and content, remember:

• You are hacking your CV;
• You are adding that material to a blog, with posts that can and should be considered a part of your New Skin CV, incorporate that blog aspect into your thinking, mapping, and generating regarding the content you have, want, and need;
• You are building this site, you make the decisions on what you have, want, and need, and how much you want to include; the length, the amount, of material you use and include is up to you;
• Think not about “who you are,” but about “what you do” as you go through this project management and content strategy process.

Last:

1. Read: Rohde’s post “Sketching: the Visual Thinking Power Tool”;
2. Read: Bogg’s post “Part Two: Information Architecture and Organization”;
3. Sketch: out on paper first, before you employ a digital tool, your personal identity site, incorporating both the blog and the CV content you developed into that sketch.

Final Note:

1. Do not: spend more than a few hours—though you can spend as much time as you would like—reading, reflecting, and generating your content;
2. Enjoy: spring break, take a break from the digital, do some research, do some writing;
3. In short: Relax.

Quick Lurker post on collaboration in the humanities from the AHA president in the March 2011 issue of Perspectives on History: “Loneliness and Freedom.”

One of the ideas behind “The Lurker” category revolves around how we find things in the digital realm and how we make connections amongst the items we find. Specifically, I am intrigued with how we come to find and make connections amongst the vast array of posts, videos, images, maps, and other digital objects we find that relate to our fields of study and that of our colleagues?

I have yet to completely reflect on what I found over the last week of February and the first week of March that relates to my interests in DH and the interests of the students in Humanities 340, and how to visualize and map out those connections. My efforts at using VUE to help me figure out the connections between what the students were posting as well as the comments those posts elicited did not pan out as I had originally thought it might. So I am back, literally, to the drawing board. Over spring break, I hope to find a better way to map out and visualize the connections between the seemingly random and at times disparate items I find that relate to DH (and quite possibly EH).

For now, however, click-on-through and see what connections you think might be found, or not, if there are no connections to be had.

Open Data/Access & Visualization

Alexander, Bryan. “Data Analytics in Education: Emerging Trend?” National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, February 28, 2011.

Allosso, Dan. “Visualizing Historiography.” The Historical Society: A Blog Devoted to History for the Academy and Beyond, December 18, 2010.

Alpers, Ben. “Technology and (Intellectual) History Open Thread.” U.S. Intellectual History, February 28, 2011.

Carr, Leslie. “Open Access — Who Calls the Shots Now?” RepositoryMan, February 27, 2011.

“Data Visualization Meets Game Design to Explore Your Digital Life.” Flowing Data, February 23, 2011.

“Learning How To Visualize: Behind the Screens of Information is Beautiful.” Information Aesthetics, February 22, 2011.

“Trash Track wins NSF Visualization Challenge 2010.” Information Aesthetics, March 2, 2011.

“Twitter Dots: Mapping all Tweets for a specific Keyword.” Information Aesthetics, February 16, 2011.

Warden, Pete. “Gadhfiʼs Speech Transcript.” PeteSearch, February 26, 2011.

———. “The Portraits of Three Novels.” PeteSearch, February 23, 2011.

On Writing & Writing

Houston, Natalie. “On Writing Longhand.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. ProfHacker, February 21, 2011.

Grimsley, Mark. “At the Blogging Crossroads.” Blog Them Out of the Stone Age, February 22, 2011.

McNeill, Graham. “Talking It Out.” Graham McNeillʼs Weblog, February 28, 2011.

Shawn. “Blogging Archaeology at the SAA – Why Blog?” Electric Archaeology: Digital Media for Learning and Research, February 28, 2011.

Williams, George. “A Simple Hack for Productive Collaborative Authorship.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. ProfHacker, February 28, 2011.

Random Bits

Hacker, Prof. “How to ‘Gamify’ Your Class Website.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. ProfHacker, February 21, 2011.

Mann, Merlin. “Procrastination hack: ‘(10+2)*5′.” 43 Folders, October 11, 2005.

McGowan, Susannah. “Building an Understanding of Digital Humanities Through Teaching.” HASTAC, February 26, 2011.

“The Digital Humanities: Beyond Computing.” Culture Machine, 2011.

Young, Jeff. “‘Embedded Librarian’ on Twitter Served as Information Concierge for Class.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wired Campus, February 25, 2011.

According to the “Lurking” entry on Wikipedia:

In internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively.

I am a lurker. From Prof Hacker to William J. Turkel, from Smashing Magazine to 456 Berea St (Roger Johansson), from A New Century of Forest Planning to Can Enviro Rock? (Lauren Wheeler), I traverse the world wide web via RSS and links as a lurker, rarely participating, but always learning and collecting via PinBoard, InstaPaper, and Zotero, and hereafter on this blog under the category: “The Lurker.” The majority of those items collected under “The Lurker” are related to the Digital Humanities, Web Design and Development, and Environmental History. It is probable that the act of posting collected items will negate my self-imposed moniker, but I hope not. I like being a lurker regardless of how “internet culture” regards the lurker.

On with the lurking …

Readability is a tool that allows the user to turn any web page into a:

comfortable reading view right in your web browser. Too busy to read right then and there? Readability makes it simple to save your favorite articles for reading later.

Readability is available for Firefox and Chrome as an extension. For Safari, Readability comes as a core component called “Reader”—a button located at the end of the URI bar. Reader for Safari, however, is “available only if you have Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard or later, and “the Reader button appears only when a web page contains text-based articles.” For other browsers, like Opera, one may also install Readability as a Bookmarklet.

I have used Readability extensively since it came out, and have found it particularly useful not just for reading regular web pages, but also when saving web pages and blog posts in Zotero. Until the other day, however, I did not consider any of the broader implications of Readability. Beside just improving the readability of a text–based page, Readability also impacts how we read, how we use a web page, and how we interact with not just the visual design of page but also with the writer of that web page. As Jeffery Zeldman argues, Readability is disruptive because

Readability focuses the user’s attention on the content, creating an enhanced–and often much more accessible–reading experience. It also subverts the typical web browsing design paradigm, where each website offers a different visual experience

Zeldman also argues that Readability disrupts not just “typical web browsing design paradigm,” but also because it disrupts content monetization.

For the first time, content monetization is no longer the problem of content creators. Writers can stop being salespeople, and focus on what they do best: creating compelling content. The better the content, the more people who engage with it via Readability, the more money writers will make–with no bookkeeping, no ad sales, and no hassle. This is a huge subversion of the ad paradigm.

I was struck by the issue of content monetization that Zeldman brings up. Based on my experience, most humanists on the web seem to be very much behind the idea of open access and open publishing, and content monetization does not seem to have been issue, or at least not one that I have seen considered in discussions revolving around issues of publishing and authority. Readability, however, does strike me as having some place within this discussion. I could be wrong on this point, seeing something that is not there, but just out of curiosity: How should humanities scholars—and academics in general—view Readability and its subversion of not just the typical web browsing experience but that of content monetization? Comments, thoughts, issues?

The underlying rock of the Puente Hills from the Bedford and Southern California Batholith basement to the Miocene and Pliocene sandstone, siltstones, and shale tells us a story about the natural history of the Puente Hills, about how they were made and how they came to be Hills.  This was not a short process. Time passed slowly but surely for millions of years, tectonic plates floated on molten rock, bumping and grinding against each other. Where two pieces rubbed edges, the earth twisted, slipped, folded, and buckled over and up. The land was, for the most part, covered by an ocean. Water creatures lived in forests of seaweed, and when the creatures and the forests died, their bodies settled to the bottom. When mixed with sand and mud, and heated and pressurized, they became the thick layers of rock and oil underlying the Hills. This happened for 245 million years, and some hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Puente Hills emerged from the ocean, as it followed one of its many ebbs and flows, slowly becoming dry land ¹.

As the Hills emerged from their oceanic existence, wind and water immediately began to shape them.  The soft sedimentary rock underlying the Hills would ultimately combine with the climatic effects of wind and rain and the surface streams and creeks, resulting in the deep erosion evident in the Hills today.  Ultimately, the rock and water would combine, creating the landscape natural history of the Puente Hills.  Wind and rain and streams carry their own stories of the natural history of the Puente Hills.

Excerpted from Richard H. Ross. “From Rock, Wind, and Water: A Natural History of the Puente Hills.” Claremont Graduate University, 2006.

The third event recorded in the rock of the Puente Hills is the laying down of thick rock layers, which were subsequently uplifted. For over 10 million years in the marine basin opened by the rotation of the Transverse Ranges, the Los Angeles Basin and the nascent Puente Hills accumulated thick layers of sedimentary rock.  The most important of these layers is the Puente Formation, named after the Puente Hills where these sedimentary deposits are thickest. ¹  These rock layers are thick units of sandstone and siltstone and are easily seen in outcrops throughout the greater Puente Hills. This marine basin had varying water depths throughout the years with the deepest being about 6,000 feet around four million years ago. The rock that forms these layers was washed and drained off the highlands and mountains surrounding the marine basin. In this marine basin lived creatures, small and large, from whales, squid, and sharks to mollusks, oysters, microscopic floating plants called diatoms, and tiny single-celled organisms called foraminifera.  When they died, their carcasses sank to the sea floor, and the rock, being washed in, overlaid these organic remains. This alternating process continued until roughly 27,000 feet of rock was accumulated. The weight of these layers combined with the Earth’s heat rising from below stewed this rock and organic material together for some 8 to 10 million of years, creating the sedimentary rock layers and trapping within those layers: oil—“black gold.” The nature of the subsequent uplift of the Hills is revealed in the buckled, cracked, and folded nature of the rock. ²

The uplift of the Puente Hills is the result of the Pacific Plate and its parallel movement to the northwest along the North American Plate, which began to squeeze the Los Angeles region and its thick marine sediments between the Transverse and Peninsular Ranges.  The Pacific Plate caused this big squeeze as it dragged its newly acquired chunks of crust along the transform boundary formed between it and the North American Plate.  This forced the Peninsular and Transverse Range blocks up against the deep granite roots of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The intervening basinal regions between the Transverse and Peninsular Ranges were squeezed together as though in a vise.  This compression took place along the joints—“zones of crustal weakness” ³ the most significant being the San Andreas Fault and the recently discovered Puente Hills Blind Thrust Fault ⁴—formed in the plate collisions over the past 240 My between the various chunks of rock that underlay the Puente Hills. ⁵

The most important of these joints in the Puente Hills was the Whittier fold and fault thrust system which runs their entire length on the southern side of the Hills. ⁶ Thrust faults result from the movement of one block of rocks being pushed up and over another. Generally, fold and thrust faults are the result of compression. In the case of the Puente Hills this movement and compression forced the rock material on the south side of the greater Puente Hills under the material on the north side, folding the bedrock and sediment of the northern side upward—not unlike an errant foot kicking up a rug. Not only were the Hills uplifted but this uplift also allowed oil to migrate through pores and cracks in the buckled rock, to collect in traps within the folded rock of the Hills.  Where the rock layers were broken by faulting or breached by erosion, the oil escaped to the surface forming oil and tar seeps. These events, these deeply folded and faulted rocks and Hills, are the results of two massive plates colliding. ⁷

Excerpted from Richard H. Ross. “From Rock, Wind, and Water: A Natural History of the Puente Hills.” Claremont Graduate University, 2006.

The second event recorded in the rocks of the Puente Hills began some 23 million years ago.  The trench system, which had for so long dominated the formation of Southern California, ended around 28 Ma, when the Pacific Plate transform convergence replaced the Farallon Plate trench system.  As the “trailing edge of the Farallon Plate entered the subduction zone,” ¹ the Pacific Plate was brought into contact with the North American Plate.  The Pacific Plate’s collision, in contrast to the Farallon Plate, which had collided with the North American plate almost perpendicularly, was “nearly parallel” ² to the North American Plate.  This new transform fault—the “notorious San Andreas Fault of California” ³—would live up to its name; it would transform the greater Los Angeles region and give rise to the greater Puente Hills.  This story is recorded in the thick marine rocks that underlie the Hills and in the volcanic rocks that form the boundary between the old plate subduction system and the new plate transform system. When the Pacific Plate slid in behind the remnants of the Farallon Plate, it made contact with the North American Plate, broke off slivers and blocks of continental crust, and began dragging them away toward the northwest.  Thus, as the Pacific Plate moved almost parallel to the North American plate boundary, it picked up and began to drag Southern California and the greater Los Angeles region to the northwest. ⁴

The first result of this northwesterly transfer and subsequent dragging of chunks of crust caused the Western Transverse Range ⁵ to break away from the Peninsular Range.  At one time the Western Transverse Range had lain parallel to the Peninsular Range with its southern rim, the Channel Islands, lying near San Diego. When the blocks and chunks of crust forming the bedrock of Southern California were transferred from the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate picked up the Transverse Range blocks.  In effect, the Pacific Plate, scraping against the North American Plate, violently wrenched the Western Transverse Range from its position next to the Peninsular Range along the continent, rotating it clockwise 110 degrees to its present east to west configuration. ⁶ This block rotation stretched, thereby thinning, the remaining crust, drawing lava and the lower basement rock up to fill the gap. This process of rotating is known through the volcanic rocks—the Glendora and El Modeno volcanic rocks—which spewed out of the cracks that had opened in the bedrock of the newly-opened marine basin. These formations were directly laid over the bedrock formations; their story is one of rifting, rafting, and rotation, which would ultimately result in the opening of the Los Angeles Basin and the formation of the thick marine sediments that constitute the roof rock of the Puente Hills. ⁷

Excerpted from Richard H. Ross. “From Rock, Wind, and Water: A Natural History of the Puente Hills.” Claremont Graduate University, 2006.

The first event recorded in the rock of the Puente Hills began in the Mesozoic Era, some 245 million years ago (Ma). These rocks were formed when an oceanic plate called the Farallon began to slide underneath the North American Plate. Volcanoes erupted on the continental margin, and oceanic sediments were compressed up against and thrust onto the continent, adding chunks of crust to the North American continental margin.  This rock, compressed, wedged, and thrust onto the continent was recorded in the depths of the Puente Hills and Santa Ana Mountains as the Bedford Canyon Formation (160 Ma). While the Bedford Canyon Formation was deposited in the subduction trench and then compressed up against and thrust onto the continental margin, volcanoes were erupting—as recorded in the Santiago Peak Volcanics (135 Ma).  Deep below the volcanoes, a thick, viscous molten rock was drawn up from the upper mantle and cooled in gigantic granite masses, creating the Southern California Batholith (ca. 120–95 Ma), which forms the backbone of Southern California. These formations are the rocks of a trench system, and they “form the basement of the area now occupied by the Whittier fold-fault system.” ¹  These basement rocks are in turn overlain by a series of marine and non-marine trench type rocks, known as the Williams, Ladd, Trabuco, Santiago Silverado, Sespe, and Vaqueros Formations (ca. 90 to 16 Ma). The visible parts of these volcanoes, rock layers, and batholiths have long since been eroded away, but their roots are still with us, deep underground, forming the Puente Hills bedrock.  The final formations, the Sespe and Vaqueros, record the final stages in the life of the Farallon plate and its descent into the mantle below the North American Plate. These rocks mark the end of one story of tectonic upheaval and hint at the beginning of a new one.  The rocks of the Puente Hills of this new era have a different story to tell. ²

Excerpted from Richard H. Ross. “From Rock, Wind, and Water: A Natural History of the Puente Hills.” Claremont Graduate University, 2006.

Overhead the sun coursed, time passed slowly but surely and underneath, tectonic plates floated on molten rock, bumping and grinding against each other, trying to fit but always failing. “Where two pieces rubbed edges, the earth twisted, folded, buckled over,” slipped up and down, and sheared sideways violently. That happened here for millions of years, and underneath the Hills reared up, while wind and rain cut them down, washing the dirt into the surrounding ocean. Eventually, this landscape came to look like what we know today, a wedge shaped mass of low, domed, gently rolling uplands, dissected by steep, deeply eroded canyons.  The rocks of the Puente Hills can reveal something about the history of the Puente Hills. ¹

Plate Tectonics Overview

The absence of rocks indicates that for most of their natural history, the Puente Hills, the greater Los Angeles region and Southern California existed somewhere far off the west coast of the ancestral continent of North America, called Laurentia.  Had one stood on the tallest peak in an ancient mountain chain located in eastern Nevada, one would have looked out over the open ocean. There would have been nothing of the greater Puente Hills, just the ocean, slowly taking on a greater and greater load of sediment sluiced off the continent and into the ocean deep. This coastline—running roughly from the Mojave Desert through eastern Nevada into northern Utah—was a tranquil and stable place. This tranquility and stability remained for much of the long history of the western North American continent.  All things geological come to an end sooner or later however, and around 245 million years ago, during the Mesozoic era, the western margin of the North American continent underwent a series of significant tectonic upheavals as two different ocean plates collided with the ancestral continent of North America. ²

Today, geologists have divided the Earth into about twenty crustal segments called plates.  These plates are thin, rigid pieces of crust that are always in motion, floating on the heat currents of the inner Earth. ³ Like bumper cars they bump and grind against each other, and when they collide, new chunks of crust and mountains are created.  When an oceanic plate collides with a continental plate at a perpendicular angle, the denser oceanic crust will slide under the lighter continental land mass. As an oceanic plate plunges below the continental land mass, creating a trench, some of the oceanic plate melts becoming lighter and rises to the surface—“white-hot and violent” ⁴—creating volcanoes; or, when the molten rock is cooled below the surface, it forms thick, massive deposits of granite called batholiths.  Often this sequence of events—volcanism on and below the surface—is coupled with another crust forming event.  As an oceanic plate plunges below the continental mass, sheets of oceanic crust are shaved off; they become compressed up against the continental landmass and sometimes can be thrust up, over, and onto the continent itself. This process is called subduction and was a major component in the formation of Southern California.  Evidence of all three of these subduction events—volcanoes, granite batholiths, and the crustal shavings—are found buried deep beneath the Puente Hills. ⁵

Another type of oceanic and continental plate collision results in creating a large fault as an oceanic plate approaches another plate, where both share the same direction of travel. Geologists call this a transform convergence. These two plates will grind and slip, often violently, against each other. Sometimes at the site of these parallel plate convergences, one of the plates will shear off a chunk of the other plate’s crust and carry this newly acquired landmass with it.  The rocks that underlie the Puente Hills reveal what occurred when two massive oceanic plates collided with the western margin of the ancient North American continent.  The rock record helps separate these very complicated collisions into three distinct events; the Farallon subduction, rotation of the Transverse Range blocks and the opening of the Los Angeles basin, and the uplift of the Puente Hills. ⁶

Excerpted from Richard H. Ross. “From Rock, Wind, and Water: A Natural History of the Puente Hills.” Claremont Graduate University, 2006.

Overhead the sun courses, time passes, and on those rare clear days in Southern California when the wind and rain have washed the sky clean, what appears on the southwestern horizon from the upper reaches of Claremont, California, is a line of low slung hills that characterizes the geographical basin and range topography of the greater Los Angeles region.

The basins are, from west to east, the Santa Barbara Channel, the Ventura Basin, the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles Central Basin (including the coastal plains), the San Gabriel Basin, the San Bernardino/Chino Basin, collectively called the Upper Santa Ana River Basin. The Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Chino Basins are transitional between the east-west tending Transverse and the west northwest tending Peninsular Ranges that form the northern and southern geographical borders of the greater Los Angeles region. ¹ The eastern Los Angeles Basin features two ranges of low hills (100-500m) that “loosely connect” the western Transverse Range and the northern Peninsular Range: the San Jose and Puente Hills. ² The Puente Hills, which extend west northwest from the Santa Ana Mountains, may be sub-divided into three segments: the western Puente Hills (also known as the Whittier Hills), the Puente Hills, and the Chino Hills (see Figure 2). These three segments form one continuous geographical unit and are referred to as the greater Puente Hills, and they have, like all of Southern California and the greater Los Angeles area, a rich natural history. ³

This natural history, however, usually only comes to us in the form of a simple line map on the inside of a book, corresponding not to the natural history itself and its geologic, climatological, and ecological boundaries but to human defined political boundaries.  This results in the natural history of a place, like the Puente Hills, being understood as a given, for “history begins when people come on the scene.” Often, our short view of time causes us to lose sight of the role that Earth’s geology, climate, and ecology have on our history; they are not simply a given nor a backdrop but are an active part of the history of a place.  The natural forces of geology, climate, and ecology are a part of the history of the Puente Hills. ⁴

This natural history of the Puente Hills is a dynamic one, always in motion, always undergoing transformation. The Hills were formed from rock thrown up in tectonic collisions, which were continually worn down through the corrosive action of wind and water. Then the vestiges became rounded and deeply eroded hills, mantled with rock outcrops, soil, sagebrush, chaparral, oak, conifers, and grass, occasionally beset by and regenerated from fire.  They were trod upon by the mastodon, mammoth, bison, dire wolf, saber-tooth cat, Teratornis, and blow-fly. This natural assemblage reflects the rich natural history of the Puente Hills. A story of rock and water and what comes from rock and water—erosion, soil, flora, fire, and fauna; each molding the other, this is the natural history of the Puente Hills.

Excerpted from Richard H. Ross. “From Rock, Wind, and Water: A Natural History of the Puente Hills.” Claremont Graduate University, 2006.

In general, this blog is ostensibly about environmental and digital history. This post, however, marks a brief divergence from those themes, mainly in the interest of getting something posted in June. As such and as a long time science fiction fan, I cannot resist posting these trailers for Halo: Reach:

This last one, of course, has noting to do with the Haloverse …

Cottonwood Grove in the Fisher Pastures. Photo by: Richard.

People, outside of academia, often ask me what Environmental History is and why I study it instead of, say, the Revolution, the Civil War, or World War II (the most commonly referenced histories). Most of the time, I am at a loss about how to respond to their questions. Generally I mumble something about the environment as playing a very important and specific role in shaping our American History and leave it at that. Of course, this is not necessarily fair to them, or me, or for EH in general.

Now I have an answer … memories of my childhood, roaming the Diamond 4 ranch with my border collie, Mark, in tow and a .22 in hand. Those memories remain with me always, and thus I have a strong connection to my history and the very important environments that shaped that history. This photo, taken last October while hunting with my Dad, I think best describes that connection. I spent many hours and days wandering through those trees under sunny, blue skies. To answer the question, I study what I study because it connects me to my past and thus our past.

Ruger .270. Photo by: Richard.

Last Thursday, Dave, John, and I went shooting. We a great time and poked numerous holes in targets (60 down–range myself) on the 100-yard range. After shooting, John took us to Pho Ha for huge bowls of Vietnamese noodles and we followed that up at Dave’s house with a few beers while we cleaned the rifles: .270, .223, .25–06, .65–06, .30–338 (x2), and a wildcat .458 Vincent. You can view other photos from this set on Flickr.

With this post, I think I need to put together a post on Sport Shooting, Hunting, and Conservation in American History.

Here is a selection of notable links from the design and web development front. For those working with type on the web, I highly recommend the following 24 Ways article written by Richard Rutter: “Compose to a Vertical Rhythm.” I also recommend Meagan Fisher’s 24 Ways article“Make Your Mockup in Markup.” Are you exploring progressive enhancement in your designs via CSS3? Then CSS3 Please! The Cross–Browser CSS3 Rule Generator is just your ticket. For some POSH (Plain Old Semantic HyperText) design, I think the following articles on markup and semantic class names are quite useful:

• “The Elements of Meaningful XHTML,”
• “Competent Classing,”
• “Keep Your Classes Clean,”
• and “A Touch of Class.”

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not provide a few notable links from the digital history front. To that end, I suggest George Lakoff’s articles on “Gulf War Metaphor, Part I” and “Part II” as well as Cameron Chapman’s “Applying ‘A Pattern Language’ To Online Community Design” as worthy reading. Both Lakoff’s and Chapman’s articles made me wonder about the of role language—both used and constructed—in digital history? I think this is a particularly intriguing question when one considers how digital historians use one language—e. g. POSH—to construct digital history tools and another language—e. g. English—to develop and promulgate (the language of?) community and collaboration via digital history tools. Finally, on a “non” digital history front but engaging nonetheless is Paddy Donnelly’s “Learn To Fucking Spell.” His post is engaging not only for its subject matter but also how that subject matter is effectively communicated through the lush illustrations—another language in its own right—that heavily inform the post.

The smartphone, in my case the iPhone, is the marvel of the digital/personal front of the early 21st century. I feel that I have now—as a purported digital historian (though I think that is a suspect term in its own right)—finally engaged the 21st century in its potential. Of course, as with other tech breakthroughs of the past (the auto, the radio, the movie, etc.) this too shall pass and to so firmly state that the smartphone is the “marvel” is more than likely too strong. I do, however, strongly feel that it is one of the most remarkable things to impact our lives, particularly as the POSH semantic web emerges with greater force. For me, it is the beginning of a “true” realization—at some level—of the cyberpunk dream: cowboys, black ice, wilsons, and AI whispers in the dark.

In the modeling/hobby realm KitBashing “is a practice whereby a new scale model is created by taking pieces out of commercial kits.” I would imagine that in the digital humanities, the process of KitBashing is equivalent to hacking, remixing, and the Mashup. I am working on a hand-rolled custom theme, but that is several long weeks away as I do have grad work to complete. As such, I am temporarily KitBashing this site using hand-rolled CSS/CSS3 on top of the WP-Framework theme I am currently running. Ultimately, this means that there are/will be things broken and non-functional for awhile in Firefox, Opera (upgrade to Opera 10.51 for increased CSS3 support), Chrome, Safari, and particularly IE (read: IE[vi]L).

Thank you in advance for your patience as I KitBash my way toward a new site, and please accept my humble apologies if you have problems or are unable to view particular pages/items on the website. If you have questions or comments, please contact me: richard { at } goatrockresearch { dot } org.

At any location on earth, as the rock record goes down into time and out into earlier geographies it touches upon tens of hundreds of stories, wherein the face of the earth often changed, changed utterly, and changed again, like the face of a crackling fire. The rock beside the road exposes one or two levels of the column of time and generally implies what went on immediately below and what occurred (or never occurred) above. I wish to make no attempt to speak for all geology or to sweep in every fact that came along. I want to choose some things that interested me and through them to suggest the general history of the continent by describing events and landscapes that geologists see written in rocks.

– John McPhee, Basin and Range, in Annals of the Former World, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998: 37.

In my research, I want to suggest, as McPhee does, something about the nature of places by describing the the events and landscapes—both natural and human—recorded in the rocks, climate, soil, flora, fire, fauna, and suburbia found in the Puente Hills of Southern California.

Armistice Day the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month … when major combat ceased on the western front (fighting continued on other fronts). Armistice Day was officially amended in the USA to Veteran’s Day in 1954 to honor all those who had served. To those of you, especially my Dad, that served, thank you for your service.

From Awaiting Armageddon:

U.S. paralysis on civil defense could be credited to an inability to face the prospect of nuclear war or simply to a sense of futility. … Intellectually, Americans knew the hazards of nuclear war, but America was not ready [during the Cuban Missile Crisis] … The United States simply had refused to accept that war might erase or, at the very least, devastate the future. As a result, civil defense was kept on a back burner, partially because the nation’s leaders failed to tell the public the truth that the United States had little means of protecting its citizens from total war. This disconnection in the American psyche an inability to face the loss of the future that could result from rabid anti–Communism left the nation vulnerable to war and to false claims of safety. Cold War culture taught Americans to fear, but it did not offer a refuge from the deadliest threat, nuclear attack (61).

From “When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction:”

In November 1983 a routine NATO nuclear readiness exercise code-named Able Archer could have led to a Soviet nuclear strike against the West. What is remarkable about this possible Soviet strike is that it was perceived by the Soviets as a defensive and pre–emptive strike. Therefore, the Soviets somehow believed that there was an impending Western nuclear attack that they had to pre–empt. American rearmament, NATO missile deployment, and Reaganite rhetoric somehow convinced the Soviets that the nuclear endgame was near. These fears climaxed in November 1983 during a seemingly innocuous nuclear-readiness exercise by the West. It has been described by historian Christopher Andrew as one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War.

How many other such “moments” exist?

I am participating in a panel discussion on “The Public and Private in Media” as a part of an art exhibition: The New Normal. The New Normal examines the issue of private information becoming less private in our technological society. Regardless of how well I present/discuss today, this exhibition has made me reexamine my ideas of the private as increasingly public beyond that of  identity theft and and the Patriot Act to include that of the culture of privacy surrounding humanities research. This is a topic that I have struggled with: expressing my thoughts in an open forum via a blog and the “publishing” of my research library via Zotero (see this post by Mark Sample for a thoughtful reflection on publishing your Zotero library).

I choose to publish a blog and my research—to make the private public–for two reasons. First, an online identity is fast becoming a prerequiste in the academic world, and while it may be one that is not necessarily our choice or under our control we can make it our choice and control it by doing. Second, as Cameron Blevins and Mark Sample have effectively argued, making one’s thoughts and research public offers scholars a new, important, and powerful way to collaborate and contribute to humanist scholarship at a greater level that ultimately makes one’s own work as well as that of other scholars better. The kicker, however, is that while I control—choose—the dissemination initially, what happens to the private made public may quickly leave my hands. The question is, then, is this necessarily a “bad” thing (maybe despite using a Creative Commons license)? The essays by Michael Connor (curator of The New Normal), Marisa Olson, and Clay Shirky, I think, point out that the private made public is not necessarily bad or good only that the individual must become evermore aware and proactive in managing the private/public (Skirky’s idea of the “opt-in, opt-out, don’t ask”?).  This is not to suggest that there are not “bad” aspects; one need only have followed the controversy over Facebook’s Term of Service (also see this short Flash presentation), let alone the issues surrounding the Patriot Act. Nonetheless, I think the issue of the private made public as contained and examined in The New Normal is examined as a complicated issue that is as much grey as it is black and white, and that, ultimately, the issue becomes one of choice, of control and when we have control over the private made public and when we do not.

I must admit that I feel that I will be out of my league during the panel discussion, that I have not had enough time to internalize the material and the idea of the way in which the private is becoming increasingly more public. I do, however, know that my participation, the airing of my private thoughts in a public space even if incomplete about the private and the public is good: good for furthering collaboration; what I can learn from the other panelists and the audience; for furthering my own work in the digital humanities; and understanding the issue of the private and the public as it relates to one of my digital projects, the Oral History Catalogue.

In response to my last post on “the Stream,” Cameron Blevins (History-ing.org) pointed out that one “issue with the stream is the seem­ingly eter­nal one of breadth vs. depth,” and that one of the “biggest” chal­lenges for a user was the “transi­tion from hori­zontal skim­ming to ver­tical bor­ing down” into the stream. I agree with Cameron that transitioning from one level to the other is a fundamental skill and a challenge to learn and practice. I do, however, believe that these are skill sets humanists already use/practice to a greater (or lesser) extent. I had to develop both skills, especially the skimming technique, for history grad seminars: 1 monograph (+ any needed supplementary material) / class / week @ 2 — 3 classes / semester. In fact, I am still developing these skills as I prep for quals this spring.

The deep drilling is, I would agree, the hardest to negotiate. The question, at least for me, is how digital tools may help us with deep boring the ever-thickening data stream–particularly with respect to the point Dr. Cohen made in “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History”  about research and drilling deep in a research project. What the tools are/is/will be is an open question, at least for me.

I think that the API Workshop hosted by NiCHE looks very promising in helping the digital humanist find and/or create such tools:

Historians and other humanists now have access to digital primary and secondary sources on an unprecedented scale, but almost all of these resources are delivered through web browsers with the assumption that a person will be plodding through them one at a time. What we need now are ways to make these sources readily available to computer programs: intelligent agents, machine learners, adaptive filters, data mining packages, you name it. We need to be able to recombine information from multiple sources in a way that supports the discovery of new information. And we need to provide tools that allow networked collectives to work together and leverage the power and diversity of the individuals that comprise the group.

– William Turkel

Our ability to tap the stream, whether on a horizontal or vertical level, as Cameron noted, is the one area “that has the great­est poten­tial for real advance­ment, especially in the dig­i­tal human­i­ties.” Our skim v. bore skill set honed in seminars, quals, and research in general gives us (I think) a unique perspective in developing or realigning existing digital tools to address this issue.

What are your thoughts on this issue? What other issues exist for the humanist with respect to the real-time stream? What are the tools that exist or should exist for  deep boring this stream?

I spent yesterday trying to catch up on my feeds and found my reading taking me down the “stream.” Here are some links to yesterdays discoveries:

1. The Evolution of Blogging
2. How Internet Content Distribution & Discovery Are Changing
3. Why Blogs Need to be Social
4. Distribution… now
5. Dimensionalizing the web
6. Welcome to the Stream: The Next Phase of the Web
7. Mining The Thought Stream
8. Towards a Programmable Web

What relationship/role/understanding/use of the stream should the digital humanist develop?

I have wanted to blog for some time, but I have not had the courage to do so, at least until now. I have had a RSS reader for several years now (make that 6 years) and have followed many in the web standards and digital humanities spheres. I think fear was the biggest stumbling block for me, fear of judgement, etc. However, this year I asked my digital humanities students to blog. I could not in good faith require my students to blog if I did not blog myself. Thus, I bit the proverbial bullet and added a blog to my site. So far, I am finding it a rather enjoyable experience (though one I have not had much time to do).

Many of the students in my class have also found that blogging was not something they had considered before, but are now finding their blog an intriguing addition to their work as scholars (as well as anxiety producing one): What to Write, Entering the Blogging World, Posting, and Coming to Terms with Blogging. In addition to these posts, Cameron Blevins recently made some very good points about blogging as an important part of his intellectual and community building experience within academia and digital humanities in particular.

Only time (and good posts) will tell if I, too, find blogging helpful in connecting me to a wider world. Ultimately, I hope that the students from my class find blogging as good a tool as Cameron does in building intellectual and community connections within their own respective spheres as well as outside those spheres. So far, it appears that they are finding it so.

This is the first post in a series about the role of html and css in the digital humanities.

As I was finishing up a lesson on html and css for class today, I was, again, struck by the thought that html and css are primarily geared, it seems to me, around creating a digital edition. This is, of course, a necessary thing, but is it really digital humanities? Does teaching html/css come at the expense of other languages and skill-sets that are better suited and important in the digital humanities. I am and am not sure.

Ultimately, html’s place in the pantheon of digital humanities skill-sets/languages is assured, but are the students missing out on other more important aspects of digital humanities? Or, as I am now beginning to think, are html and css the gateway drugs to the wider world of digital humanities skill-sets and languages that might make one a “digital humanists”? Could there be others as significant, if not more significant, in making one a digital humanists (if there really is such a thing)? Any thoughts, suggestions? For or against?

Digital humanities is about many things: the infinite archive, programming, markup, style, knowledge production, collaboration, and graphic design. I believe that graphic design is a key element in understanding and doing digital humanities because design is a core part of our modern experience as citizens and as humanists. Understanding the elements of design, from color to typography, is an important skill for digital humanists to acquire. Of course doing so requires us to become familiar with the elements of design. One of the best ways to do so is to view good design.

One of the best graphic designers I know as well as a good friend is Hiller Higman. Hiller’s work is unique and original, but his work is also (so it seems to me) derived from the the everyday world around us, both related and unrelated to design, as is our own work as humanist scholars. How we view the world around us and our humanist scholarship through design can teach us something about how digital tools are shaping the very act of doing humanist scholarship. Exactly how is a question I do not necessarily (yet) have an answer to, but I believe that it is true. I hope that during the Humanities 340, we can come to an answer or maybe better yet, develop a better question to ask about the relationship between humanist scholarship and design.

For the time being … take a moment to view Hiller’s portfolio—NBC, Bridger, Web—in addition to his inspiration blog @ Northside #3.

(Shameless plug: if you are looking for a graphic designer look no further than Bootleg Enterprise . I need say no more, his work stands on its own.)

Hello World. The first official post from Richard @ goatrock Research.