Blogs of Interest (updated daily), by

Melissa Terras

Where were you? (probably online)

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:22:00 +0000

when the news broke, the Internet slowed down.

I was actually in the hotel lobby at UMUC, just waiting to leave from DH09. Someone came into the lobby and screamed the news - and everyone turned to the web to verify, amongst a chorus of "no ways!" and some screams.

twitterlash

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Its worth reading the comments on this guardian story, asking people to "share your novel in 140 characters or less!" to see just how over twitter some people are getting.

whoa, dh09

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:16:00 +0000

Just going out to the banquet at DH09, so this will be a quickie. Its been a great conference. Lots of attendees, and a good energy. The stand out thing, though, has to be the amount and detail of blogging going on (see this synposis of my paper. Hmmm, I thought I had at least two or three months to write it up - and here it is already in the blogosphere!) and the overwhelming use of twitter before, in, and after sessions (search tag #dh09. I'm @melissaterras).

Check out the feed whilst it is still rolling - at around 100+ tweets an hour. The challenge for the organisers will be how to archive this resource usefully for future reference!

Matthew Kirschenbaum

Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use

2009-05-11 14:40 mgk

A 12,000-word white paper from this recently concluded project that I directed is now available....

Hello Worlds

2009-01-21 22:09 mgk

I have a new essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education (January 23rd edition) called "Hello Worlds." The reference, of course, is to the canonical Hello World program which we've all probably written in one form or another. The subtitle...

No Round Trip: Two New Primary Sources for AGRIPPA

2008-12-09 15:37 mgk

So here's something pretty exciting . . . Agrippa (a book of the dead) appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr. On December 9, 2008--the sixteenth anniversary of the...

Geoff Rockwell

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Grand Text Auto

Blog-Based Peer Review: Four Surprises

Tue, 12 May 2009 22:20:02 +0000 Noah Wardrip-Fruin

Last year we undertook an experiment here: simultaneously sending the manuscript for Expressive Processing out for traditional, press-solicited peer review and posting the same manuscript, in sections, as part of the daily flow of posts on Grand Text Auto. As far as I know, it became the first experiment in what I call "blog-based peer review."

Over the last year I've been finishing up Expressive Processing: using comments from the blog-based and press-solicited reviews to revise the manuscript, completing a few additional chapters, participating in the layout and proof processes, and so on. I'm happy to say the book has now entered the final stages of production and will be out this summer (let me know if you'd be interested in writing an online or paper-based review).

One of my last pieces of writing for the book was an afterword, bringing together my conclusions about the blog-based peer review process. I'm publishing it here, on GTxA, both to acknowledge the community here and as a final opportunity to close the loop. I expect this to be the last GTxA post to use CommentPress — so take the opportunity to comment paragraph-by-paragraph if it strikes your fancy. (more...)

My New Blog

Mon, 11 May 2009 04:05:23 +0000 Nick Montfort

I have a new blog: Post Position. Here's my welcome post.

1st International Conference on Computational Creativity

Fri, 08 May 2009 04:34:50 +0000 Nick Montfort

ICCC X, the First International Conference on Computational Creativity, will be taking place January 7-9 in Lisbon. The X, I believe, indicates the decade of workshops and symposia leading up to this conference. Here's the scoop:

Although it seems clear that creativity plays an important role in developing intelligent computational systems, it is less clear how to model, simulate, or evaluate creativity in such systems. In other words, it is often easier to recognize the presence and effect of creativity than to describe or prescribe it.

The purpose of this conference is to facilitate the exchange of ideas on the topic of computational creativity in a cross-disciplinary setting. It will bring together people from AI, Cognitive Science and related areas such as Psychology, Philosophy and the Arts who research questions related to the notion of creativity as it relates to computational systems. This focus on creativity in the context of computational systems has the potential for increasing innovation in existing fields of research as well as for defining new fields of study, including:

1. Artificially Creative Systems: development of computational systems that produce or simulate creativity. These systems may be inspired by human creativity or by the possibilities of artificial systems beyond human capabilities.
2. Computational Models of Human Creativity: construction of cognitive models of human creativity that can be the basis for computational creativity.
3. Computational Systems for Supporting Creativity: production of user interfaces, interaction design, decision support, and data modeling techniques that lead to the development of intelligent assistants that support the user in being more creative.

While the submission deadline is not imminent (it's September 21), you should check out the CFP and see if you'd like to share your work in this context, which is open to work on creativity across many different media.

Stéfan Sinclair

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities and High Performance Computing (HPC)

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:43:11 -0400 sgs

Applications are invited for a one-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities and High Performance Computing (HPC), under the supervision of Dr. Stéfan Sinclair from Communications Studies and Multimedia at McMaster University. The focus of the research will be large-scale, on-demand text analysis, and especially the development of HPC modules that can operate in a web-based context. McMaster University is internationally recognized as a leader in digital humanities scholarship and tool development.

This position is made possible in large part by Sharcnet, an HPC consortium in Ontario, as well as McMaster Libraries. The postdoctoral fellow will work closely with the supervisor (Sinclair), Sharcnet, and the Libraries.

Successful candidates will have experience working on textually oriented projects, strong Java and system administration skills. We are seeking an individual who can bring strong interest and enthusiasm to an area of research ripe for innovation, and someone who will be able to integrate well into a larger team.

Salary: $45,000 plus benefits

By July 31, 2009, applicants should send a full Curriculum Vitae, letters from two referees and a cover letter highlighting their prior achievements and a brief summary of their statement of their interest and experience in this area. Electronic submissions will be accepted. Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact Sinclair as early as possible to express interest and to ask any questions.

McMaster is committed to Employment Equity and welcomes applications from all qualified applicants, including women, members of visible minorities, Aboriginal persons, members of sexual minorities, and persons with disabilities.

Dr. Stéfan Sinclair (sgs [at] mcmaster.ca)
Communication Studies & Multimedia
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, ON, L8S 4M2, Canada

Twitter

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:15:59 -0400 sgs

I’ve finally taken the plunge into Twitter. I have to confess that I do so a more out of academic curiosity than real interest, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll enjoy it, at least for a while. I’m not sure I’ll ever get into the groove of divulging details of my personal life, but I think it might be an interesting medium for exchanging interesting nuggets about research and teaching activities. My first instinct was certainly to look up colleagues whose work interests me, rather than looking up friends and family.

Soon after creating my account I found a very simple Quicksilver ActionScript for posting tweets. I also found an updated script for Growl notifications, but what I really wanted was to be warned when tweets were too long (over 140 characters). After trying a few variants with more or less success, I settled on this script (though I made the failed Growl message a bit more noticeable).

Text Analysis in the News

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 21:21:25 -0400 sgs

A neighour and friend said he thought of me when he read an article about researchers doing text analysis to study the possible effects of Alzheimer’s on the vocabulary richness of authors. I asked to see the article and was very pleasantly surprised to see our TAPoR colleague Ian Lancashire prominently featured in a recent Maclean’s article (Ian has been a wonderful pioneer and leader for the text analysis community in Canada and beyond, earning him an Outstanding Achievement Award for Computing in the Arts and Humanities). The study was looking at longitudinal trends in the writings of Agatha Christie. Among other notable findings, the study identified a 30 per cent drop in vocabulary leading into Christie’s penultimate novel Elephants Can Remember. The Maclean’s article is a wonderful example of the potential for text analysis to be accessible and broadly relevant.

Romantic Circles

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Stoa Consortium

Digital Classicist seminars update

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:37:26 +0000 Simon Mahony

We are now about to hear from the speakers in the fourth in this excellent series. For those of you that are unable to make the seminar itself, we are again recording each event and podcasting it along with slides on the DC website seminar page.

In addition to this we are also featured along with some discussion (and pix where possible) on the arts-humanities.net community blog.

We now have a Twitter hash tag (#digiclass) which means you can follow what’s new there as well. Just put #digiclass in your Twitter search box.

Digital Humanities Conference Schedule

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:12:17 +0000 Dot Porter

There are a number of sessions and individual papers that will be of interest to Digital Classicists scheduled for the Digital Humanities 2009 conference, next Tuesday-Thursday, June 23-25 at the University of Maryland. There are many, many more than I’m listing here, the complete schedule is online: http://www.mith2.umd.edu/dh09/?page_id=89

Tuesday, June 23
11-12:30

Benjamin Banneker Room
Chair: Dot Porter

Towards an Interpretation Support System for Reading Ancient Documents
Henriette Roued Olsen, Segolene Tarte, Melissa Terras, Michael Brady, Alan Bowman

Image as Markup: Adding Semantics to Manuscript Images
Hugh Cayless

Computer-Aided Palaeography, Present and Future
Peter A. Stokes

2-3:30

Margaret Brent Room
Chair: Patrick Juola

Medieval scribes in parts of speech (paper #3)
Karina van Dalen-Oskam

Benjamin Banneker Room
Chair: Paul Caton

Creating a Composite Cultural Heritage Artifact - the Digital Object
Fenella G. France, Eric F. Hansen, Michael B. Toth

On-site Scanning of 3D Manuscripts
Timothy H. Brom, James Griffioen, W. Brent Seales

The Ghost in the Manuscript: Hyperspectral Text Recovery and Segmentation
Patrick Shiel, John G. Keating, Malte Rehbein,

Juan Ramon Jimenez Room
Chair: Elisabeth Burr

Integrating Images and Text with Common Data and Metadata Standards in the Archimedes Palimpsest (paper #1)
Doug Emery, Michael B. Toth

Wednesday, June 24
11-12:30

Juan Ramon Jimenez Room
Chair: Dino Buzzetti

MAPS: Manuscript map Annotation and Presentation System
Charles van den Heuvel

Manuscript Annotation in Space and Time
Erica Fretwell

The Atlas of Early Printing: Digital History and Book History
Gregory J. Prickman

Thursday, June 25
11:00-12:30

Charles Carroll Room

Digital Classicist: Re-use of Open Source and Open Access Publications in Ancient Studies
Gabriel Bodard, C. W. Blackwell, Tobias Blanke, Tom Elliott, Sean Gillies, Mark Hedges, D. N. Smith

4:00-5:30
Charles Carroll Room

Funding the Digital Humanities
Moderator: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities

Discussion with officers from the NEH, Mellon, IMLS, SSHRCC (Canada), NSF, DFG (Germany), AHRC (UK)

Posters
Session #2, 3:30-4:00pm, Tuesday June 23rd

Implementing Greek Morphology
Helma Dik, Richard Whaling

Digital Editions for Corpus Linguistics: Encoding Abbreviations in TEI XML Mark-up
Alpo Honkapohja

Digital Classicist seminar update

Fri, 29 May 2009 13:49:19 +0000 Simon Mahony

There has been a small change to the programme for the Digital Classicist/ICS Work-in-Progress seminar series.

The earlier post has been updated with the full details.
See: http://www.stoa.org/?p=909

Simon