GTP - Perhaps I Will Become and Elite Warrior or .. e-Warrior

Countless hours of training (gaming) can help hone my killer instinct. Now I just need a controller shaped like a gun.


...game transfer phenomenon 


Choice quotes


 "I had made that emergency steering movement, after all. I had done so countless times before, but on those occasions the wheel in my hands had been a white plastic controller. I had been saved by Mario Kart."

"The brief reality excursions that characterise GTP, by contrast, take place in broad daylight in the middle of other activities. "Some instances of GTP are closer to synaesthesia," she says, in which two or more senses are involuntarily and automatically scrambled."

"One thing is for sure: we are spending an increasing amount of time in a digital space, the rules of which don't entirely mirror those of reality, so Ortiz de Gortari expects more of the virtual world to leak into the real one."

Protesting Protesters

Ah, here's an example of that corruption I was talking about!
As the digital realm becomes all pervasive we must be aware that there are strings that can and will be pulled behind the scenes. This is actually pretty damn awesome! In a scary way, that is. And leave it to those crafty Russians to be the ones behind it.

"we can now see how social media has become the battlefield of a new war for freedom of speech"

Here's the story of  PROTEST!

We've seen social media at use in the Arab spring and it looked like it would play a role in Russia as well; as people have been calling out their leaders for rampant corruption. BUT they've figured out a way to negate protesters social media advantage. By inundating twitter with information they've drown out the relevant and made it useless.

I believe this was one of the worries I had voiced in our distance reading seminar... the availability of all this information isn't necessarily a good thing. We lose sight of greatness. With the so much text available to us as scholars perhaps we're just burying what's important. Too much information can be a bad thing.

Beware the dangers.
It was noticed this time but I doubt that will always be the case. Thing can and will be subtly guided from behind the scenes.

Farewell DH

Our time together has been wonderful. Sadly it is now at an end. I will shed a tear or two. But I will remember the advice of one Dr.Suess

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Goodbye Digital Humanties!

I leave you with this musical outro.

And the Sticker Goes to...

To date the most useful tool I have picked up through my exposure to the digital humanities has been, without a doubt, the acquisition of Adobe Acrobat Pro. As a student in history I have worked with PDFs for years now and the lack of interaction with them has definitely been an issue. Now I can do all of my note taking and highlighting right there on screen and save it as a part of the file. Not to mention actually being able to search the text now! This is most beneficial. The process of reading and note taking used to be extremely jerky for me. Where I would read and stop to take notes. (I'm clearly too cheap to be printing off all of my PDFs) Now the process has become quite smooth. And when I can actually bring my laptop to class, all the better. There no need for highlighters, pens or paper.

....although I am still going to use the pen and paper method when it comes to essay prep.

Not only can I interact with PDFs on a whole new level I can actually create my own PDFs! I've already done this with a few websites. It's just so much easier to make 1 PDF of the various pages on a website that I can highlight and comment on. This in combination with Evernote could be a particularly formidable combination in the repertoire of a grad student. Although, to be perfectly honest Evernote has not at this point in time made it into my daily useage. I need to make it a habit somehow. It should be something I use without thinking and this isnt the case. I often forget that I have it at my disposal.

And of course there are other methods I utilise, such as dropbox, Zotero and blogging ... and in the future I expect to use in some form or another all of the methods I've been exposed to except the Mac exclusive ones. At time point in time however I award my gold star to.... Adobe Acrobat Pro!

I will NOT support discrimination!

What didn't work for me...

Well ... the short answer is anything for Mac. For obvious reasons I can't rally behind any of these tools. Personally I think, and I'm sure Robert will agree, that they are too limited in their scope. Discriminatory in their very nature. And elitist. I can never endorse such discrimination.

Personally I dont think I'm missing out too much on DevonThink. As I've mentioned in previous blog posts I'm not the most organized person, I've adjusted to the chaos that is my work space. And to be perfectly honest I think that organizing and keeping my work organized would just end up creating more work for me in the long run. It might not be pretty but I get things done. Being able to cross reference all my work would no doubt be neat but it's not essential for what I do... in fact it might just end up being a distraction for me! So DevonThink Im sorry to say that you and I weren't meant to be!

As for methods outside the Mac exclusive ones that I most likely won't be utilising... well wordle and Ngrams are fun... but I don't see myself using them for any serious purpose. But aside from that I'm sure in my professional career I will be using many of the tools, methods and general conceptions that I have been introduced to (ever so briefly) this semester. My only regret is that digital experience has to be cut short so soon! I'm sure I could have been converted with regards to some of the methods I didn't take to initially.

Dragon dictate.

I've downloaded the program and have spent a little bit of time speaking to it in order to train it up. Turns out that it doesn't like to listen. After spending about half an hour reading to it it decided that it didn't want to remember. So I had to retrain it with far less enthusiasm.

While I havent fully explored all the program has to offer I have used it the only capacity I probably will in the future. I used the program to take notes for me. Instead of writing out the bits of text I've highlighted I can just read outloud while continuing on. This is awesome as it doesn't interfere with my flow of concentration. I doubt that I will use the program for anything serious as it is prone to making mistakes and completely misinterpreting me.

At least with note taking it can take down the jist of what I'm saying and I don't have to worry too much about the editing process.

I have found, though, that it has the ability to make me rage. I can't help but get frustrated with my dragon when it doesn't listen and repeating myself doesn't help. Hopefully with more training it will be better at listening to what I have to say and will be less inclined to do its own thing.

Overall this will be a useful program for me in the future, if only in a limited capacity.

One Piece of Rotten Fruit Can Ruin My Appetite

Oh Mr. Gee, such an idealist! I wonder how the weather is up there on your high horse?

I don't know why I've got my back up after reading his two posts...I agree with pretty much everything he's saying about the current state of education. 

Money is ruining education and it shouldnt be. Universities shouldnt be job training. High school should suffice for employers. You tell em sister! But as long as we're talking about things that shouldnt be. Well, Paris Hilton shouldnt be famous and children shouldnt be starving in Africa and I should be married to a rich supermodel who wants nothing more than to support me.Why does the ideal world elude me?!

I think perhaps why I've got my back up is because Gee is condemning what I'm living through right now.

It's all well and good to question the system, but c'mon Mr.Gee! We haven't had a say in the design of the education system. We've just been a product of it and we still need employment afterwards. So, I'm sorry but I still believe that what universities do and teach must be applicable to todays society. Sad as that is. Unfortunately it's not an ideal world we live in. Your time has past, you're in a wonderfully secure position where you can criticise and lament the fact that university is a bunch of useless hooey detracting from the overall state of academia and human knowledge.

Honestly, even as I'm taking issue with the postings I realize it's ridiculas because to such a large extent I do agree. And I understand that it's useful to question. And people should be educated for a love of education and knowledge.

I think perhaps he's come across a little bit elitest to me? I dont know what it is. But I know I'm sufficiently torn.

As for tagging in museums ... I understand the appeal. You can draw people in, they become more invested and have a deeper experience. But this seems so very dangerous to me! Simon did make a note of trolls and I was extremely happy to see that in her article. But despite this recognition she seemed to gloss over it. Saying ah, well... it's not as big a deal as you'd think.

Madam, I am going to sabotage every interactive museum piece I can. Irrelevant and offensive tags all day long. Because that's what trolls do and they delight in it.

I'm a jerk, I shouldnt have access to metadata.

And if the solution is to screen the user input... doesn't that just negate all of the openness and accessibility appeal? People don't like doing things that are pointless (in general) so if they realize that the time they spend tagging things might not be used in anyway they are far less likely to become engaged. And what about the stupid or pointless tags that will sure result from well intentioned but less insightful patrons? If you decide to remove them have you not just alienated those who contributed those tags? Or even those who might have had similar reactions or ideas for a tag but did not themselves tag? To allow that access and interactivity only to revoke it could potentially be more damaging than to have never allowed user input in the first place.

What of professionalization? The curators and archivists and catalougers? Are we just saying eff em? Applying web 2.0 concepts beyond the computer screen? Anarchy! I understand that curators are fast becoming obsolete but let's not insult their profession before we throw them out onto the street!

Me to we, personalized experiences and deeper engagement.. I'm all for. But we should be wary how we accomplish these things. There has to be a better way than letting the general public screw with metadata.

As Simon says in her conclusion 'it's a trust decision' and that's why I think it's so scary. I know that there are people like me out there who take great pleasure in duping the unwary and overly trusting.
What's that thing they say about bad apples?... The troll will always prevail.