Friday, January 20, 2006
1/20
I’m pleased to say that I was able to complete half of the bibliography formatting today, from Aaresth to Huth, which took about 6.5 hours work time without distraction. Of course I’d be happier to say that I’d finished the thing, but since it is a 24 page document, with a lot of minutiae to deal with (MLA handbook is not prepared to handle all the varieties of digital documents I’m dealing with, so have to be inventive and academically precise simultaneously), it is very time-consuming. For instance, how do you cite something like Sandy Baldwin’s “New Word Order,” an unpublished piece of software he created by usurping the code of a popular computer game? AH! It’ll all be done Soon enough.
Pleased to receive important permissions today, to use works by Jackson Mac Low, Ernesto Melo e Castro, and Baldwin, so the list of unauthorized work is down to four with just over a week to go before everything needs complete. Will be psyched to FedEx all of those letters to Tuscaloosa. My MySQL account at NJIT has been set up and is just sitting out there, waiting to be used…
One thing I forgot to mention earlier in the week is that I made my first (abbreviated) visit to the MMU library, to check out books that Amy might use for some art work; she asked me to pick up books on Malay architecture and gardens. I’d been in the library briefly before, with the rest of the family, but had never delved into the stacks. Searching for books is a bit complicated by the fact that the holdings of the library contain publications not only in English but also Malay and Chinese (each of which apparently has its own section?). The fact of the matter is that a large majority of the books focus on computers, so few books were available for the subjects Amy had asked me for. When I did a catalog search for architecture, 95% of the titles had to do with systems architecture! In any case, I decided—as is my wont in any library—to try and find a couple of specific Dewey decimal references, then scour the shelves to the left, right, above, and below that title for interesting books. Well, the books I was after (for which I’d only written down the number, and not the title), were not available, but as usual using this process I was able to find quite a few interesting books nonetheless(and discover a few surprises too). Instead of a book on gardens, I found a book on Malay ferns, which were near the animal reference books, where I found a kids book on pond life for Stella. Then, looking for books on buildings I ended up near the art and music books. I did obtain a couple of great illustrated books on Islamic art & architecture, and skimmed through the music books enough to want to know the process by which books are chosen and acquired. I was looking for books on Malaysian music and was shocked to find only books on Western music, including obscure titles like M. Stipe’s photo-documentary of Patti Smith, and books on the Velvet Underground and Sex Pistols, which was pretty strange. There were plenty of cool art books, which I’m sure we’ll go back to later. Had I had more time I would have just wandered up and down all of the stacks just to see what was there. Alas, since school is not in session the building closes at 5 p.m., and I’d arrived at 4:30 or so, so this investigation will be continued another time.
Short meeting today to further deliberate about the lectures I’ll be giving to students and campus community, and things seem to be working out to the satisfaction of everyone. Interestingly, one of the charges that emphasized today was the need for me to lecture to grad students about conducting research, which surprised me a bit. I take for granted that everyone uses a combination of WWW and book research, and that such leads to the production of text, but forget that not everyone has had the nearly two-decades of university meanderings that I have. So, because the students (and apparently faculty) are not producing a lot of pages, they want me to share my insights as to how to transform interest and ideas into solid writing. This should be an interesting task, to articulate my free-wheeling, intuitive research methods, and one that shouldn’t be too much of a problem once I put my mind to it, since if there is one thing I have done during the past decade, it is research.
Well, we’re heading to KL tomorrow for some more exploration and hopefully some relaxation too. I’ll transmit again when I have a chance.
CF
I’m pleased to say that I was able to complete half of the bibliography formatting today, from Aaresth to Huth, which took about 6.5 hours work time without distraction. Of course I’d be happier to say that I’d finished the thing, but since it is a 24 page document, with a lot of minutiae to deal with (MLA handbook is not prepared to handle all the varieties of digital documents I’m dealing with, so have to be inventive and academically precise simultaneously), it is very time-consuming. For instance, how do you cite something like Sandy Baldwin’s “New Word Order,” an unpublished piece of software he created by usurping the code of a popular computer game? AH! It’ll all be done Soon enough.
Pleased to receive important permissions today, to use works by Jackson Mac Low, Ernesto Melo e Castro, and Baldwin, so the list of unauthorized work is down to four with just over a week to go before everything needs complete. Will be psyched to FedEx all of those letters to Tuscaloosa. My MySQL account at NJIT has been set up and is just sitting out there, waiting to be used…
One thing I forgot to mention earlier in the week is that I made my first (abbreviated) visit to the MMU library, to check out books that Amy might use for some art work; she asked me to pick up books on Malay architecture and gardens. I’d been in the library briefly before, with the rest of the family, but had never delved into the stacks. Searching for books is a bit complicated by the fact that the holdings of the library contain publications not only in English but also Malay and Chinese (each of which apparently has its own section?). The fact of the matter is that a large majority of the books focus on computers, so few books were available for the subjects Amy had asked me for. When I did a catalog search for architecture, 95% of the titles had to do with systems architecture! In any case, I decided—as is my wont in any library—to try and find a couple of specific Dewey decimal references, then scour the shelves to the left, right, above, and below that title for interesting books. Well, the books I was after (for which I’d only written down the number, and not the title), were not available, but as usual using this process I was able to find quite a few interesting books nonetheless(and discover a few surprises too). Instead of a book on gardens, I found a book on Malay ferns, which were near the animal reference books, where I found a kids book on pond life for Stella. Then, looking for books on buildings I ended up near the art and music books. I did obtain a couple of great illustrated books on Islamic art & architecture, and skimmed through the music books enough to want to know the process by which books are chosen and acquired. I was looking for books on Malaysian music and was shocked to find only books on Western music, including obscure titles like M. Stipe’s photo-documentary of Patti Smith, and books on the Velvet Underground and Sex Pistols, which was pretty strange. There were plenty of cool art books, which I’m sure we’ll go back to later. Had I had more time I would have just wandered up and down all of the stacks just to see what was there. Alas, since school is not in session the building closes at 5 p.m., and I’d arrived at 4:30 or so, so this investigation will be continued another time.
Short meeting today to further deliberate about the lectures I’ll be giving to students and campus community, and things seem to be working out to the satisfaction of everyone. Interestingly, one of the charges that emphasized today was the need for me to lecture to grad students about conducting research, which surprised me a bit. I take for granted that everyone uses a combination of WWW and book research, and that such leads to the production of text, but forget that not everyone has had the nearly two-decades of university meanderings that I have. So, because the students (and apparently faculty) are not producing a lot of pages, they want me to share my insights as to how to transform interest and ideas into solid writing. This should be an interesting task, to articulate my free-wheeling, intuitive research methods, and one that shouldn’t be too much of a problem once I put my mind to it, since if there is one thing I have done during the past decade, it is research.
Well, we’re heading to KL tomorrow for some more exploration and hopefully some relaxation too. I’ll transmit again when I have a chance.
CF
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 6:13 AM 
