Life Is Not Still

Save the Planet with Century Gothic

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:58:08 -0400

The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing - September 25, 2003

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:32:58 -0400

The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing - September 25, 2003:

Chun the Unavoidable: Scholarly Publishing: The Invisible Adjunct has a post on a recent Chronicle article by Cathy Davidson on the crisis in scholarly publishing. Those of us in the field have been hearing a lot about this lately, from Lindsay Waters, William Germano, Stephen Greenblatt, and pretty much anyone else with an interest and/or brain. As I understand it, all research institutions and an increasing number of liberal arts colleges and comprehensive universities require assistant professors to publish a book before being granted tenure. Academic books do not sell, of course, and the university presses which publish them are coming under increased economic pressure….

Open Data in Archaeology

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:47:12 -0500

Open Data in Archaeology:

Stefano Costa shares his view on open archaeology. We have a long way to go.

Landscape compositing

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 12:36:26 -0500

Landscape compositing:

Very cool. I can show how to do this in Keynote or Final Cut.

Nick Bantock - Griffin and Sabine

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:15:30 -0500

Nick Bantock - Griffin and Sabine :

In 1991 Griffin and Sabine became a worldwide phenomenon, and I was catapulted (kicking and screaming) into the limelight. However, for the twenty odd years that lead up to that rollercoaster ride, I’d been a full-time artist. So, in a sense, creating books was a sidetrack from my primary means of self-expression. Hence, in 2007 I decided to return to my painting roots. I opened my studio-gallery ‘The Forgetting Room’ here on Saltspring Island BC and set aside the pen.
During this passed Autumn and Winter I’ve been working on much larger paintings, partly because I now have the space and partly because it just feels good to open my wings. Some of these pieces have been under commission, others are simply for hanging in the gallery.

Stereo Photogrammetry

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:24:11 -0500

I added to the DropBox technote published by the BLM, authored by Neffra Matthews and Tom Noble. It describes aerial photogrammetry techniques and is simply rad.

CHI - Portugal 2006 Rock Art : Piscos Man. Reflectance Transformation Imaging

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:41:21 -0500

CHI - Portugal 2006 Rock Art : Piscos Man. Reflectance Transformation Imaging:

To create the interactive images on this web site, Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI) works with polynomial texture mapping (PTM), which uses reflection transformation imaging (RTI) technology. For more RTI and PTM details, visitCHI’s Technology section.

BART Subway Station - Greg Downing 3D Model

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:39:19 -0500

BART Subway Station - Greg Downing 3D Model:

Greg Downing. You need to know about this guy.

This movie is a 3D model of the Berkeley BART station created from 4 digital panoramas.

A virtual set of the BART subway station in Berkeley California. A 12 second 8MB QuickTime movie.

This movie was created by taking 4 panoramas in the bart station. I created 3D models from the photographic panoramas and then textured the 3D models with the photographs. For more info on this process please look at my Tribunal Plaza.

Aproximate time to complete project: 5 days.

1 day photography and panorama stitching
1 day calibrating cameras
2 days modeling and texturing.
1 day editing and rendering

High dynamic range imaging

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:33:53 -0500

High dynamic range imaging:

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminances between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. This wider dynamic range allows HDR images to more accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to faint starlight.^[1]

The two main sources of HDR imagery are computer renderings and merging of multiple photographs, which in turn are known as low dynamic range (LDR)^[2] (also called standard dynamic range (SDR)^[3]) photographs.

Tone mapping techniques, which reduce overall contrast to facilitate display of HDR images on devices with lower dynamic range, can be applied to produce images with preserved or exaggerated local contrast for artistic effect.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Auto-Blending Focus Tutorial

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:25:17 -0500

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Auto-Blending Focus Tutorial:

Krishna Mohan explains how to use Photoshop CS4 to achieve focus stacking. Very cool.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us Mike Wesch,...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:00:00 -0500

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Mike Wesch, assistant professor at Kansas State University. His take on how the Internet and Web 2.0 have changed everything.

Digital Humanities and the case for Critical Commons

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0500

Digital Humanities and the case for Critical Commons

Reimagining Learning MacArthur Competition

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:04:16 -0500

Reimagining Learning MacArthur Competition:

The 2010 Digital Media and Learning Competition challenges designers, entrepreneurs, practitioners, researchers and young people to put participatory learning to work on behalf of science, technology, engineering, math and their social contexts in the 21st century. Awards will total $2 million.

The Digital Media and Learning Competition is funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to the University of California Humanities Research Institute and Duke University and is administered by the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), a virtual network of learning institutions. The competition is part of MacArthurs digital media and learning initiative, which is designed to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life. Answers are critical to education and other social institutions that must meet the needs of this and future generations.

Lola Papazoglou anthropologists and filmmakers, check out lucien...

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:13:56 -0500

Lola Papazoglou anthropologists and filmmakers, check out lucien taylor’s new film:

The Official Sweetgrass Trailer

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:10:34 -0500

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines:

Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines.

The full report can be accessed at: http://escholarship.org/uc/cshe_fsc

Since 2005, the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE), with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has been conducting research to understand the needs and practices of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication.

The final report brings together the responses of 160 interviewees across 45, mostly elite, research institutions in seven selected academic fields: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music, and political science. Our premise has always been that disciplinary conventions matter and that social realities (and individual personality) will dictate how new practices, including those under the rubric of Web 2.0 or cyberinfrastructure, are adopted by scholars. That is, the academic values embodied in disciplinary cultures, as well as the interests of individual players, have to be considered when envisioning new schemata for the communication of scholarship at its various stages.

Links to the complete results of our ongoing work can be found at the Future of Scholarly Communication’s project website.

Top 10 reasons why the iPad is not on my shopping list

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:23:00 -0500

In progress…

1. No Flash. This is being worked on my Adobe, but no flash is a deal breaker. 75% of video content on the web is Flash based.

2. No Camera. This means no video chat, no quick notes, no using the apps that require visual input.

3. No Ports. Other than the propreitary apple usb 30 pin connector, no way to put things ‘in’ to the iPad than wireless connnections.

4. No OS X. Yeah, it’s kinda OS X, but it’s iPhone OS, and won’t run Photoshop anytime soon. Or any of my other apps for that matter.

5. No multi-tasking. The iPad is a big iPhone, and like it’s little sibling, can’t do more than one thing at a time. So you can’t work on your iWork presentation and listen to Pandora at the same time.

6. Closed for development. Typical Apple, the platform is locked down and the only way in is the app store. Granted, the app store is very cool, but the iPad is not going to be a laptop replacement for any serious computer user. Fine for the MS Office and email crowd.

Video

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:23:56 -0500

I am in the midst of reprising our VAST 2009 paper on the Last...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:21:00 -0500

I am in the midst of reprising our VAST 2009 paper on the Last House on the Hill project and was inspired by the, er, vast amount of media on the web about Catalhoyuk. I desperately needed to procrastinate, so made a quick ScreenFlow video about the 28,000 Google Images on the site. Try the video search, too.

Holy Crap. My name is #17/#18 on the dumbest password list....

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:47:59 -0500

Holy Crap. My name is #17/#18 on the dumbest password list. Awesome.

Check the NY Times article here.

As we went through the Anthropology 230 course themes for Doing...

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:26:00 -0500

As we went through the Anthropology 230 course themes for Doing Audio-Visual Archaeology, a couple things came to mind that would be fun to think about, or act upon. In my other work, I’m tracking the techno-trend of better/bigger HD content on the one hand with smaller/mobile content on the other.

For digital archaeology, there’s never been a better time to experiment with both. Digital cameras, still or video or hybrid, produce spectacular quality content with relative ease. Editing tools such as the free iLife suite installed on every Apple Mac are super easy to use. iPhone apps are location aware, so pictures and videos can be geolocated automatically.

I’d like us to consider adding a theme on Mobile Archaeology, and how mobile technology can be used to both ‘do’ and ‘talk’ archaeology.

The app warning parrots Ruth’s sentiments and aims for this course, and for our discipline. The more we can ‘do’ audio-visual, mobile, multi-sensory archaeology, the more it will be OK and the less authoritarians will be able to disallow the rich and creative possibilities to happen. Mobile Archaeology puts the message right in front of our audiences, so it’s worth exploring how we can package our efforts for this medium.