Another Another Week!
Okay, and then we get into the next week.
Visionary Cross–wise, I was a little lost. I think I did all the memorable tasks on my list and was left to my own devices. I started revising the Stolen Blogs/Scanning information, but then I decided to email Marco to ask if he had any notes or remembered anything.
I also did some reading on the Ruthwell Cross. Initially, I was trying to add sources to the scanning section, but then I decided to cut that first paragraph (which really would have required the most sources). I read, although not too thoroughly, Catherine Karkov’s article Thinking about Stone and skimmed the parts that looked interesting in Kerstin Majewski’s book about the Ruthwell Cross. Many moons ago, I wrote an objectively bad unessay about runes, and I know it wasn’t great because I actually learned a lot just from skimming this book.
I organized the Obsidian notes based on what I had written on a Canva after our last meeting, and it’s looking good. Weeks 1–7 are very solid (except I fear the first two weeks might move too quickly). After that, it falls apart a bit, but the beginning is strong. I also reorganized Dan’s grammar lessons. I moved the inflection lesson after parts of speech and grammatical function. I just feel that parts of speech is the easiest topic and should come first, while inflections is the hardest and should go last, but I’m sure there’s a reason for the original order which will be explained tomorrow.
Now, let’s talk about the information I’ve been gathering. Dan emailed a colleague in the Netherlands, which sparked a very long email chain filled with lots of useful information. Some labs build their own widgets, but keeping old projects streaming is a challenge. That’s not great for us, since I doubt we’ll be building custom widgets. Some groups work with their own servers. One person suggested looking into the capabilities of Dataverse and Knowledge Commons, but when I skimmed those, they seemed similar to Borealis, and I couldn’t find any 3D data stored on them.
Dan also sent me more resources. There’s the Smithsonian Voyager platform, which hosts a bunch of very cool 3D models, and Pure3D, which specializes in publishing 3D scholarship and editions. Pure3D even streams from some of the old famous projects, like The Battle of Mount Street Bridge. I’m not sure if he wanted me to email those people or find out everything I can about the programs, so I await instructions.
Also, I got an email from the research office because it’s time to fulfill my deal with the devil. When I accepted the funding to be a research assistant this summer, the only condition was that I present at the Summer Research Symposium. And now they’ve come for me.
I’ve been preparing my poster, but I’m feeling really conflicted. Do I just use the presentation from the CSDH-SCHN poster? I already have a 3,500-word script for it, and it would be so easy. Or do I stick to the abstract I originally submitted? The problem is that the abstract is so bland and vague. I had a 250-word limit, and even the full proposal, about two pages long, doesn’t say much in terms of argument. It’s mostly just a description of the project and its goals. But doesn’t a poster or presentation need to say something interesting? Otherwise, I’m just a used saleswoman reciting information you could read on the website.
I feel like I need to have a point beyond “This is the Visionary Cross Project. They pay me, and I do stuff. I’d show you the stuff, but this is a physical poster so I can’t show you the model—here’s a picture of it.” And showing a picture of the cross is defeating the whole point because what if someone asks me “why does the edition have to be 3D if you have a picture of it there?” I will have to just walk out.
Also, I don’t want my poster to be too similar to the others in the hallway. One summarizes the scanning process (I should go look at it and pull info for our scanning documentation), and another is about the Zenodo linking, which fell apart a few years ago. If I need to spice up my poster, maybe I can bring my computer, place it on a stool in front of the display, and let people play with the models. I could put the crosses on my VR machine to distract from the lack of a strong argument in the poster. I don’t know.
I also got my computer fixed.
