ADHO 2015 Paul Fortier Prize for Early-Career Scholars
I am touched and honored to be awarded the Paul Fortier Prize for best paper by an early-career scholar at DH2015, this year’s Global Digital Humanities Conference in Parramatta, Australia. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Darug people – the traditional custodians of the land in which I have received this honor. I would also like to pay...
ACH 2015 Lisa Lena Opas-Hänninen Young Scholar Prize
Thank you to the ACH (Association for Computing in the Humanities), the ADHO (Association of Digital Humanities Organizations) Awards committee and the CSDH (Canadian Society of Digital Humanities)/ACH 2015 Joint Conference Awards committee and organizers for this great honor. I am so touched by this unexpected and very meaningful award. Having asked a few of those lucky...
When ‘Retro’ was ‘Nowtro:’ Restoring the Apple II Plus
I have been into computers since I was young. A prescient gift from my parents to a restless pre-teen, my first computer was (I am convinced) instrumental in both productively occupying my time and absorbing my boundless hyperactive energy, but even more, it served to stimulate my imagination. The logical systems of a personal computer...
Speaking of ‘Speaking in Code’… Part 2
As noon approached, lunch beckoned and the discussion became atomic, situational, one-on-one. Folks began following each other on Twitter, gathering their thoughts, etc., and just then I heard fellow historian Lincoln Mullen mention casually that as the users who comprised the ‘#codespeak’ hash-tag’s ‘network’ on Twitter began following each other, the diversity of the network actually became...
Speaking of ‘Speaking in Code’… Part 1
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to participate in the Speaking in Code conference at the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a summit on the use of technology alongside humanities research run by the Lab’s director Bethany Nowviskie and her unbelievably talented, incredibly helpful and congenial team. The conference was a good...
Interface to Face: Touching with Technology
I have always been a musician. From banging pots and pans on the kitchen floor as a toddler to mauling my first guitar at age 9, making music has been one of my primary creative outlets. While music truly has a timeless and primordial quality, perhaps even more than language itself, it is also inherently...
Downtime is the Best Cure for Downtime
During nearly every software project or coding effort I have ever undertaken there has usually been at least one moment of ‘downtime’ – an interminable period during which the machine seemingly acts in what appears to be complete defiance of the behavior desired. No matter what I would try to do in order to accomplish...
The Lost Art of Spaghetti
When I was five years old I took apart an old rotary telephone. Actually I didn’t just take it apart – I dismantled it entirely. My youthful fingers, newly skilled with pliers and screwdrivers swiped from my father’s tool box, utterly decimated it. I was unstoppable. Every curly, colored wire was traced and pulled from...