3D Modeling

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While looking through this week’s articles, Diane Favro’s, “A Personal Walk Through Historical Simulation Modeling at UCLA,” caught my eye. In her article, Favro describes the history of 3D modeling at UCLA and its functionality in an architecture project of recreating the Roman Forum.   Favro’s project, Visualizing Statues, “takes the reader on a tour through a simulation of [Rome] in the late antique period…demonstrating how inscriptions, sculptures, buildings, and monuments in Rome forged enduring memories and transported the reader beyond the here-and-now.” As seen through Favro’s project, 3D modeling allows one to “[exploit] movement as a way to generate a narrative, to explain contemporary monuments and, ultimately, to animate history and convey values” (Favro). Beyond Favro’s project and arcitecture, 3D modeling has many other uses including in other industries including film, animation, medicine, etc. 3D modeling can be described as sculpting vs. painting—It allows one to create advanced graphics that enables one to view images from a different perspective.

Although a lot less practical, I have experienced 3D modeling through many computer games, most notably Zoo Tycoon and Roller-coaster Tycoon. Zoo Tycoon and Roller-coaster Tycoon are simulation video games where the “player must build, expand and/or upgrade a zoo [or theme park] by purchasing animals, creating suitable living environments…allocate staff and resources for their maintenance and care, provide…visitors [with] food and drink stands, sanitary facilities, picnic areas and an aesthetically pleasing environment (Wikipedia).

These games allow the player a lot of room for creativity to create a 3D world. When you start the game it is a completely empty patch of grass, but little by little you can create semi-lifelike roller-coasters or animal exhibits. With each new version of the games, the graphics became more and more realistic. You were able to have a 360 degree view of your structures and theme parks as a whole.

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As seen above, in the earliest models of these games, although there were still 3D images, the picture quality was not very realistic and the user could not get as much mobility throughout the games.

_-Zoo-Tycoon-2-Ultimate-Collection-PC-_Zoo-Tycoon-2-exe-has-stopped-workingRollerCoaster_Tycoon_2_-_Interface_and_Rides In the second version of these games, the images became a lot more realistic and more three dimensional, although they were still pixelated. The graphics in these versions were a vast improvement from the previous technology.

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In the latest version of Zoo Tycoon, the 3D images are extremely life like. The detail provided on these images shows just how advanced technology has gotten now a days and it will only continue to get better.

Works Cited:

Diane Favro, “Meaning in Motion. A Personal Walk Through Historical Simulation Modeling at UCLA,” in Visualizing Statues in the Late Antique Forum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_Tycoon_(series)

Eight Golden Rules

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In Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design” he explains the elements that are necessary in creating a visually appealing interface. His rules are as follows: (1) Strive for consistency; (2) enable frequent users to use shortcuts; (3) offer informative feedback; (4) design dialog to yield closure; (5) offer simple error handling; (6) permit easy reversal of actions; (7) support internal locus of control; (8) reduce short-term memory load (Shneiderman). These rules function almost as commandments and greatly help “to improve the usability of an application.” To examine these rules in real time I looked at the website Nasty Gal—an online clothing retail website.

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Starting with (1), Nasty Gals functions highly on consistency. The controlled vocabulary on the website is blatantly apparent. Each item page has the same format where is lists the sizes, colors, quantity, etc. available, all in the same area for every item. For (2) shortcuts, frequent users of the site will notice that each clothing item image on the main page offers a “quick view” where a user can add an item to their “tote” without loading a new page, which allows a quicker shopping experience.

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For (3) informative feedback, at the bottom of each clothing item page, there is a section that says “other users bought”, which suggests other items of clothing or accessories that would work well with the item you just viewed. This form of feedback helps users create trendy and unique outfits. Whenever you add a new item to your “tote”, a bubble will pop up on the screen that says, “item successfully added to tote.” This satisfies rule (4) yield closure—it lets the user know that their action was successfully completed. Nasty Gal’s system is also well designed so the user cannot make a serious error (5). When filling out information on sizing, quantity, etc, if a user forgets to mark a category, then they will let you know something went wrong. The system also alerts users when there is an error in their credit card data, shipping information, or any other aspect involved in the checkout process. If a user does make a mistake, Nasty Gal allows you to easily reverse your actions (6).

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When looking at your tote, you can change the size and quantity of any item there. The users shopping on the website are in control of every action that they make (7). And finally (8), the website is created with short term memory in mind, by creating an easily accessible website, without too much clutter, and visually pleasing displays. Nasty Gal passes the “Eight Golden Rules”.

Works Cited:

Ben Shneiderman, Eight Golden Rules

http://www.nastygal.com

Web Mapping Technologies

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Throughout history maps have been an integral part of society. It is an innate aspect of human nature to want to document the world around you—to make life easier to navigate and explore. Obviously, since digital technology didn’t exist back in 600 BCE. the earliest world maps were paper maps. These early maps were hand crafted as opposed to digitally created maps we have today. The vast advances in technology today allow us to create extremely detailed and informative web maps. Once the Internet was created, using the Internet to publish maps has become very advantageous. According to Jim Detwiler, in his article “Introduction to Web Mapping,” “Among these advantages [of mapping on the Internet] are that they are usually cheaper and less time-intensive to produce, easier to distribute to a wide audience and easier to update and maintain… they allow for the possibility of interactivity…and connections to related information though hyperlinks.” Maybe most importantly, as stated by Detwiler, “One could also argue that Internet-based maps have increased public awareness and demand for maps.” This increased exposure to maps, because of access to the Internet, has led many innovative minds to create new apps, programs, and advanced technologies, which benefit our inventive, resourceful, mechanized society.

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Because of innovative mapping technologies, today we have apps like Google Earth, Google Maps, and Waze. Google Earth is an advanced mapping tool that “is a virtual globe, map and geographical information…It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and geographic information system (GIS) 3D globe” (Wikipedia). One of its most interesting and useful features is that it “displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth’s surface, allowing users to see things like cities and houses looking perpendicularly down or at a bird’s eye view.”

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Google Maps is a service that I personally use almost every day. As many know, it is a “desktop and mobile web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, offering satellite imagery, street maps, and Street View perspectives, as well as functions such as a route planner for traveling by foot, car, bicycle (beta test), or with public transportation” (Wikipedia). This application is extremely useful for me personally, since I am not from Los Angeles and when I need to go somewhere I’ve never been before it provides me with a route for car, bus, or foot.

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Waze is an app that is extremely useful in cities with high traffic density, like here in Los Angeles. Waze, according to their website, works by “after typing in their destination address, users…drive with the app open on their phone to passively contribute traffic and other road data,” which then provides users with new routes to avoid traffic, police traps, etc. These three apps, along with the multitude of others are prime examples of the impact of web mapping.

Works Cited:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

https://www.waze.com/about

Six Degrees of Separation

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Scott Weingart in this week’s reading “Demystifying Networks” discusses the basics of networks. He describes networks as “a net-like arrangement of threads, wires, etc...It later came to stand for any complex, interlocking system.” Networks cannot stand on their own; they are interdependent on connections between all of the little parts that make them up. Weingart further explains, “Network analysis generally deals with one or a small handful of types of stuff, and then a multitude of examples of that type.” In Weingart’s example, he uses books and authors as his nodes—which are basically an assortment of stuff. Nodes also have attributes, like page number, title, birth and death, etc. The combination of books and authors makes it a bimodal network and if we add publishers, then it is multimodal. By doing this, each book is connected to an author, who is then connected to one or more publishers (Weingart). Ultimately, as expected, these connections form relationships and, in this case, an authorship relationship.

This concept of networks and everything that they are comprised of (nodes, relationships, types, etc.) immediately made me think of six degrees of separation. Six degrees of separation is “the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps” (Wikipedia). Everyone is essentially connected to each other through a vast web of friends, acquaintances, and strangers. The creator of this theory, Frigyes Karinthy, proposed that “the modern world was ‘shrinking’ due to [the] ever-increasing connectedness of human beings…He [believed] that despite great physical distances between the globe’s individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller.” This was back in 1929 when the “technological advances” in communication and travel were far less developed than they are today. Due to the progress in modern technology, the six degrees, nowadays, is probably more around three.

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I have personal experience in this “six degrees of separation” phenomenon. Because of the multitude of social networks available on the Internet it is hard to not be constantly in contact with people across the world. When I was accepted into college and looking for a roommate I was contacted by and put into contact with many friends of friends, or many “my best camp-friend’s older brother’s ex-girlfriends” who I happened to know of through seeing pictures of them on Facebook. In the ever-increasing technological world, instances like this will only become more common and maybe even one day there will only be a two or one degree of separation.

Works cited:

Scott Weingart, “Demystifying Networks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

Data Visualizations

Johanna Drucker’s article Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display discusses the importance and usage of data visualizations in Digital Humanities—in particular, why we need a humanities approach to the “graphical expression of interpretation.” Visualizing data allows the viewer to actually see and understand data instead of just looking at numbers on a spreadsheet. Drucker continues by explaining the difference between data and capta. Drucker wants us to “reconceive all data as capta…Capta is “taken” actively while data is assumed to be a ‘given’ able to be recorded and observed.” This distinction is important because it leads to how we represent and display this capta. Drucker explains, “The representation of knowledge is as crucial to its cultural force as any other facet of its production. The graphical forms of display…and the common conception of data in those forms need to be completely rethought for humanistic work.”

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An issue presented with data visualization is the desire for it to “look cool”. The person creating an infographic can become side tracked in the hopes of creating an interesting looking image that they forget to actually convey any information. In the image above, “Top 10 Salaries at Google,” the graphic designer attempted to display the salary ranges for those who work at Google. While trying to make the data appear more interesting by using a pie-chart format and crazy colors, the chart actually obscures the data, making it inaccessible. Although a table format is boring, it is more efficient, in this case, in making the data understandable for everyone. Making the data appear more interesting doesn’t necessarily make it easier to understand.

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Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez, in her article, “All That Glitters Is Not Gold: A Common Misconception About Designing With Data,” gives an alternate example of what the data could look like. Her version is a much better representation. Gonzalez explains, “With the linear organization, the viewer can understand at a glance what the data is showing, without having to work too hard. In stark contrast to the original, this graph makes the data instantly accessible, allowing for easy comparison between the jobs.” Her version might not be as visually appealing as the original, but it definitely makes a lot more sense.

Works Cited:

Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” Digital Humanities Quarterly5, no. 1 (2011)

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/07/29/common-misconception-designing-data/

Blog Post Week 4

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This week I first read Stephen Ramsay’s “Databases” in A Companion to Digital Humanities. Ramsay states that “databases are an ubiquitous feature of life in the modern age, and yet the most all-encompassing definition of the term ‘database’.” Database systems, and in particular computerized databases, have allowed digital humanists to compile mass amounts of information available for easy retrieval. After Ramsay’s work I then explored Emory University’s “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”. This eye-opening database has 
information on more than 35,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the
Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is described as “[offering]
researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the
reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history. After observing both of these works, my mind began to wander towards another unfortunate period history where people kept extremely detailed records of the movements, ages, deaths, etc. of their victims—the Holocaust.

During World War II, the Nazi’s kept meticulous records about their Holocaust victims. They kept track of every body, every murder, every age, location, and movement of each prisoner in their concentration camps. They treated the horrible acts they committed like a business operation, where everything had to be recorded down to the very last detail. When I went to Poland last spring, I saw first hand just how detailed and comprehensive these records actually are.

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These documents were collected after the War, and allowed the public to discover not only the atrocities of what happened, but also enabled them to track the movements of their family members. Recently, my grandmother longed to find out where her extended family ended up after the War (her side of the family immigrated to Brooklyn, NY after World War I after feeling escalating resentment towards the Jews in Poland and Germany). To find out this information, she went to a Holocaust museum and searched through their databases for her family name. She discovered that the family members who did not make it out of Europe during the War perished in one of the concentration camps. Because the databases that organizations compiled from the Nazi’s extensive records, people today can discover what happened to their ancestors.

Works Cited:

Stephen Ramsay,  “Databases,” in Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Professional, 2004)

Emory University, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

Week 3 Blog Post

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After reading Alexis C. Madrigal’s article “How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood”, I began to think about how well the Internet knows us. Madrigal, in her article, describes how she uncovered Netflix’s 76,897 unique movie genres, which, initially, does not appear to have much significance besides a good laugh over the ridiculous genre titles. However, this discovery provides insight into how Netflix uses their “hybrid human and machine intelligence approach” to provide movie suggestions to users based on the tags attached to each movie in his or her viewing history. Madrigal explains, “the underlying tagging data isn’t just used to create genres, but also to increase the level of personalization in all the movies a user is shown. So, if Netflix knows you love Action Adventure movies with high romantic ratings (on their 1-5 scale), it might show you that kind of movie, without ever saying, “Romantic Action Adventure Movies.” I know that I, along with every other Netflix binger, have fallen victim to their recommendation feature—It is simply too hard to pass up.

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Soon after reading Madrigal’s article, I began to realize that a majority of the websites and apps that I use on a daily basis attempt to manipulate their users in similar ways. Facebook, Instagram, and iTunes all employ specific methods to recommend certain products to their users. On Instagram, there are two different methods. First, after following a high profile page, immediately a tab drops down recommending three other possible pages that you might be interested in. The other method is on the explorer page, where they display pictures based on who your friends follow, or pictures you’ve previously viewed or liked. iTunes recommends music in similar ways; at the bottom of every page there are “Listeners Also Bought” and “Genius Recommendation” sections, which suggest music based on your purchase history.

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Facebook, comparably, recommends pages to follow but it also utilizes cookies as well. Cookies are “a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while the user is browsing that website. Every time the user loads the website, the browser sends the cookie back to the server to notify the website of the user’s previous activity (Wikipedia). The usage of cookies is easily noticeable by the advertisements displayed on your Facebook Newsfeed. I’ve always noticed that after I browse certain websites, my feed suddenly fills up with advertisements from that particular website and those similar to it. It is crazy to think just how well the Internet knows you.

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Works Cited:

 

 

 

Metadata in Everyday Life

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While doing this week’s readings, the article introducing metadata immediately caught my eye. I had always heard references of this abstract concept known as metadata, but I never truly understood what it was or how it could possibly be relevant in my own life. In Anne J. Gilliland’s article “Setting the Stage” from Introduction to Meta, Gilliland describes the “big picture” definition of metadata as “the sum total of what one can say about any information object—[anything that can be addressed and manipulated as a discrete entity by a human being or an information system]—at any level of aggregation.” At this point, I still was not completely positive what the purpose of metadata was. As I read further, Gilliand explains, “Cultural heritage information professionals such as museum registrars, library catalogers, and archival processors often apply the term metadata to the value-added information that they create to arrange, describe, track, and otherwise enhance access to information objects and the physical collections related to those objects.” Finally, this I could understand, since I do exactly this everyday.

A fun-fact that you may not know about me is that I run a “food-blog Instagram” account. Basically, twice a day I upload deliciously sinful food pictures onto an Instagram account, which I use solely for this purpose. In each post, I geo-tag the location of the restaurant where the food is from, tag the restaurant’s own account, use specific hashtags to describe the food, and tag the user who deserves photo credit. Every step of this process categorizes each specific picture into its own unique domain on Instagram. As seen in the image above, the picture is geo-tagged at Novel Café in Westwood and the restaurant itself is hash-tagged (#novelcafe). In every picture I also include a “hashtag overload,” of other food-blog accounts’ personal hashtags. This allows other accounts access to my photos and have photos appear in their own Instagram domain. All of these tags on Instagram contain photos compiled into an archive from all of the different users who utilized the same tags, which allows easy access to specific images by searching for the desired tag. These tags allow users to archive, arrange, describe, and track the progress and information provided in each image.

My food Instagram provides me with a glimpse of the importance of metadata in everyday life. According to Gilliland, “Medata establishes and documents the context of the content; identifies and exploits the structural relationships that exist within and between information objects; [and] provides a range of intellectual access points for an increasingly diverse range of users.” As seen, metadata is essential in supplying a resource to create structure in our digital world.

Works Cited:

Anne Gilliland, “Setting the Stage,” from Murtha Baca, ed., Introduction to Metadata (Los Angeles: Getty, 2008)

Waffle w/ bananas and strawberries from @novelcafedtla 

 

 
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