Month: October 2014

After reading Data + Design, I immediately remembered an example of a particularly effective combination of data & design I had seen several months ago, an interactive map of major South Asian migration flows. What particularly makes this infographic effective is it’s place within the context of the entire website. Striking-Women, “an educational site about migration, women and work, workers’ rights, and the story of South Asian women workers during the Grunwick and Gate Gourmet industrial disputes,” seeks to highlight a facet of history that is not well known or often discussed in mainstream circles (Striking-Women). The homepage of the site highlights four distinct issues: migration, women and work, rights and responsibilities, and strikes. Each section includes an introduction, relevant historical background, and present-day issues. The migration section is the only one with an infographic. This infographic allows the user to explore various migration flows by allowing users to click on a specific migration flow to learn more about it. For example, by clicking the solid blue arrow that leads from South Asia to Canada, a webpage replaces the map and details the history of “Post 1947 migration to US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.” I found the map not only educational, but visually striking as well. I could see why “Maria Popova…said that data visualization is ‘at the intersection of art and algorithm’” (Data + Design). Laid out like a physical folded map and highlighting several specific countries, the different colored arrows illustrate movement otherwise invisible or ignored. In many ways, this map harkens back to the “native essence” of data visualization—especially answering questions of “‘Where am I?’ [and] ‘How do I get there?’” This map and it’s included informational pages helps to illuminate the reasons why one finds large numbers of South Asians in the UK and the Gulf States, among other countries.

Finishing Data + Design helped me understand the sheer amount of work that must have gone into the map of South Asian migration flows, as well as the well-thought-out nature of it’s design. The reasons the site creators chose specific colors, fonts, and arrows became clearer to me after completing the design section of the book, as I never would have thought serif would be more distracting to readers than san serif! I also was able to note the slightly 3D nature of the map after reading about the dangers of using 3D. However, in this cause 3D seems to help solidify the nature of the map as a map creating the appearance of folds. I am now excited make my own data visualization!

As I click on the tab to open David M. Kroenke’s book Database Concepts, I began to digest the concepts he is creating and lying down for his audience. He uses phases like the key component and the heart of organization operations, to describe this concept we know as databases. This is one of “those” words which is commonly used but when trying to establish a definition comes across as quite difficult, but for the most part it can be looked at as a type of program which is uniquely and strategically designed to interact with users organization needs, or a personal filling system. Naturally my next step is to find ways I use this tool in my everyday life, which unfortunately in my case I use on a daily bases. I say unfortunate not because of the product but just the thought of how much data I personally am responsible for up keeping.

At this very moment, I am sitting in front of my computer with all of my data up on the scene, and with all honesty don’t know how I would be able to upkeep my responsibilities without all of my electronics keeping these data in a very approachable way. But with that, the fact that my life is this way because of these staple pieces and their uses. Now this is the point in my thoughts were I fight my internal struggle with technology, and I sit and ponder about all of the possibilities I now have at my finger tips, but out of laziness I choose to search though Pinterest, which is too a database all of its own! It really is funny how it all works like that.

My current occupation is a student, but what that entails is completely self-determining. I currently work as a Student Supervisor at an on-campus restaurant called Feast. Many of you may know of it for our all you can eat pho and sushi, but because of my job I know more than I will ever what to again care about food and hourly wages. And this is point were my job begins a.k.a the databaser. Every person that steps into the restaurant, counts as 1 patron, every plate counts as 1 serving, and each food item is measured out for portions per plate. The service runs for 3 hours as each headchef keeps a record of product and plates taken, and at the end of the shift provides me with a the number of portions served at each station. With new information, I divide the product taken to the amount of patrons who visited, to come up with a take rate per dish. This number is then recorded in a database, which will tell us a ton of information about what we can do for the next shift, such as cost and preparation, and  while also keeping record of what items the students do and don’t like. Now this is only the beginning tasks of my job and only one of the ways a database is used in our restaurant and in my life as its user. And if you were curious, one of our most popular item is California Rolls, and once I calculated had a take rate of 232%, now that is 3,480 sushi plates given in one 3 hour shift! Our lives currently go back to these technological programs, which is one reason why it is so awesome to find small these connections between technology and its creators.

Databases are the ultimate archive. They allow for efficient storage and retrieval of information on a simplified level, and provide comprehensive lists of data that can be processed, updated and maintained by a variety of users. Databases serve the purpose of holding data in an organized and highly structured manner for easy search and access actions. Some of the most important documents and data can be found in database-like formats such as encyclopedias and telephone books. As more and more information is accumulated overtime, strategies and formats for organization change. What is important to note, is that although databases come in a variety of formats, the system of order is based on similar relational models and terms in order to create some level of consistency.

Although I enjoy technology and consider myself mildly tech-savvy, the information presented in A Companion to Digital Humanities was quite overwhelming, so I sought to incorporate my passion for photography into my research in order to make it more relatable. The Photography Database provides factual information about photographers, public photographic collections, commercial galleries, photographic exhibitions, and citations to the many published sources used to compile biographical, collections, and exhibitions data. The database contains over 97,000 entries and is updated on a continual basis.

I decided to do some site searching to see what would come up when I entered my favorite photographer, Vivian Maier. The results listed her birth and death dates, her hometown, her nationality, her active photographing years, her website, and a link to the galleries and exhibitions her work has been shown at. Although the website is not as aesthetically pleasing as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, it serves its purpose as a functioning and organized database.

Through further exploration of the site, I found a significant reoccurring, problem; one that could proposes major challenges for users. The database provides information on galleries and photographers, but only once the user searches for specific gallery titles and names of artists. It doesn’t allow for alternative search options for those not as informed on the happenings of the photography world. Even as an experienced photographer in both academic and photo-technical settings, I minded very much that there weren’t filter options available to search for unfamiliar photographers and exhibition names. That being said, I think it is a useful resource for students, amateur photographers, and professional photographers alike who wish to learn more about an artist and his or her background, all while conveniently providing an external web browser link to conduct further research if desired.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Derpes

http://www.yelp.com/biz/sushi-gen-los-angeles

http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=dinner+date&find_loc=Santa+Monica%2C+Los+Angeles%2C+CA&ns=1&ls=18a1fe2a08cbb764#attrs=RestaurantsPriceRange2.2&l=p:CA:Los_Angeles::Santa_Monica

Stephen Ramsay’s “Databases” in A Companion to Digital Humanities is a technical description of what databases are and the progression of the design models there have been. Database systems allow “for the efficient storage and retrieval of information”. Without databases, we would have an enormous amount of unsorted data with so much potential, but with no easy way to access particular datasets.

One early problem with databases was that they carried “inefficiencies that often resulted from redundancies in the underlying data representation”. For example, on Urban Dictionary (urbandictionary.com), a open-source dictionary for slang, there are multiples of every word available because everyone has different definitions for the word. The word “derpes” is, according to the first result, is a transmitted disease, but according to the third definition is “a contagious form of right-wing rhetoric”.

Yelp does a fantastic job of eliminating these redundancies. Because I’m from NorCal, I use Yelp every time I want to find a new place to eat at in LA. My boss recommends me a place and I search on Yelp and never find two or redundancies of whatever he suggests. I recently went to Sushi Gen (which I highly recommend), and before I went I yelped it. Sushi Gen popped up as my top search, and when I click on the restaurant, its page comes up with reviews, tips, location, pictures, etc. Every piece of metadata relating to Sushi Gen is attached to that one Sushi Gen; there are not multiple Sushi Gens.

Additionally, “the purpose of a database is to store information about a particular domain (sometimes called the universe of discourse) and to allow one to ask questions about the state of that domain”. Going along the idea that everything is correlated to what you search for on Yelp, you are able to ask questions about the state of that domain. Let’s pretend that I want a solid dinner date place in Santa Monica that is relatively cheap. Yelp’s efficient metadata filters allows me to search “dinner date” and filter it to Santa Monica and two dollar signs. I have many options – “The Misfit Restauarant + Bar”, “Upper West”, “Fritto Misto Italian Café”, the list goes on. Sushi Gen, for example, would be a search result of a highly rated “sushi” place in Little Tokyo that is on the more expensive side. Yelp is a great example of a successful, user-friendly database.

Michael Christie’s article, “Databases and Aboriginal Knowledge,” brings up an important point that technology has become so important in categorizing and providing people with information from databases and internet sources; however, not all cultures are exposed or a part of this collection of information using technology phenomenon. Christie discusses a few Larrakia women’s desires to preserve the knowledge of their elders through digital technology. They have concern that the children of the Larrakia community do not want to learn anything from their elders. Perhaps technology is the only way to pass down aboriginal knowledge of tradition and identity to the Larrakia youth.

It is interesting to me that those few women from the Larrakia community seemed so willing to expose their culture to technology and potentially become more involved in the technological world. But then I asked though about it how else does one store and collect information in an extremely efficient and accessible way? It makes sense to consider making a database with information for the Larrakia youth and community, but the issue is that is could take away from the methods of literacy and discourse in preserving their identity.

This article reminded me of my experience with a nomadic tribe in Tanzania. During my trip in Africa, the school group I was with ventured off into the mountains of Tanzania at 3:00 a.m. to find a tribe. Since this tribe is nomadic it is extremely difficult to locate and track their whereabouts. We picked up a civilian from a random village along the way who was our guide to find this tribe. He grew up in a village in the mountains, and when he played in the mountains of Tanzania as a child he stumbled upon this tribe. He continued to venture into the mountains and secretly learn about this tribe and their language. Not many people know about their existence or understand their culture. My guide told us he was one of the very few who understood their ways of life because he grew up interacting with them. He explained that the tribe struggles to exist because of the issues of incest and their youth dying from birth defects. He also explained how they regard marijuana as something with that provides strength and spiritual value. They hunt for all of their food and often get sick from certain diseases found in wild African animals. The culture obviously has different values to those of western values, but the idea that their tribe is slowly dwindling and has the potential to become extinct with very little knowledge of their identity is extremely unfortunate.

Aboriginal knowledge is something that should be regarded as more important and collected in certain ways. I believe that technology can provide cultures with the resources to store information about tradition and identity. I think it is unfortunate that the Larrakia women feel that they do not have much choice but to start using digital technology to preserve their culture. However, I also find it unfortunate that cultures like the nomadic tribe in Tanzania do not have resources to preserve their culture. It is difficult to say what the right thing for indigenous cultures is to do in order to pass down their knowledge, but it is a matter of if they are willing to change their processes of discourse and literacy in order to hop on to the technology train.

This week’s readings really opened my eyes to the role databases (and data) play in my day-to-day life. I didn’t know much about data management, but now that I do, I have a greater appreciation for DBMSs and back-end developers.

The idea that nearly every aspect of my technological life is recorded, classified, and then organized in a meaningful way is mind-blowing. Big data can be intimidating; creating an efficient, flexible, and secure database to handle big data is a daunting task, especially when the data is inconsistent (it always is!). How would our lives be different if databases didn’t exist?

Apple’s iCloud database ( https://help.apple.com/icloud/#/mmfc0efea4 ) is one of the most important databases in my life. Its contents include personal information (photos & videos, contacts, geotags, etc.), account information (passwords, credit cards, etc.), and backups for electronic devices and apps (iPhone, iPod, etc.). What makes iCloud so powerful – and dangerous – is that all of this information can be accessed with one user account. Also, because this database is stored remotely (in the cloud), I can access the information anywhere and on any device.

iCloud backup is one of the most compelling features of Apple’s cloud-based database system. It keeps all of your data up-to-date and secures the most recent version in their remote servers. For example, iCal data can be synced across many iCloud enabled devices. I love this feature because I can set an event with reminders on my computer and when the event rolls around I will receive notifications on my phone as well. This approach to database design is very convenient, but it definitely has it’s problems. For example, when I change the login info to one of my email accounts, the database has trouble updating the various instances of this data across all my devices. This may be the cause for the server and login error messages I receive every once and awhile.

I had to do a bit of supplementary research on databases this week. I wondered what made databases more important, or even what distinguished them, from archives. Using http://www.archivists.org/archivesmonth/whatisanarchives.pdf, I deduced that an archive contains real sources of information, where a database shows you where you may go to find the information you may require. Of course, data bases are indispensable resources of history. According to http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit04/primer04_01.phtml a database can be anything from a phone book to US Census Data. They can even be sources of inspiration: in “The World According to Garb” by John Irving, Garp, a writer, gets inspiration for his next book by looking through the White Pages in the phone book. I feel that the Slave Voyages Database might be important in the same way: it is impactful to see the sheer number of names and cases, and even the countries of origin compared to the ports where they disembarked, but the database does not give us the humanizing aspect: the faces behind the names that tell a story. The same goes for the example in the XTF database article, which gives the names of books, authors, publishing cities, but does not necessarily illuminate the reader to what the book may be about.

A database is  the bones of a story, a bare outline that must be fleshed out. The Quantifying Kissinger blog is much more effective in telling the story of Kissinger’s years in government, using audio recordings and “meeting memorabilia” to show not only the dates of the meetings but to tell a tale of a man’s personality in government. On the contrary to the databases mentioned above, this Kissinger database logs real information, instead of simply being a list of titles.

This also makes me think of the US Census Data, which collects information about people like names, race, income, etc. This data is used to “to determine the distribution of Congressional seats to states, to define legislature districts, school district assignment areas and other important functional areas of government, make decisions about what community services to provide” etc ( according to http://www.census.gov/aboutus/). This is another example of a data base being used as a baseline to decide what to do, the actual Census data must be interpreted and expanded upon to achieve the goals of the Census (name and exonomic standing alone will not do much, it is much more meaningful when as many aspects of people’s lives as possible are outlined). Or, going back to my original example, a database can mean more when the reader is able to fill in those cracks for themselves.

This week, I learned about databases by reading about that chapter in Stephen Ramsay’s A Companion to Digital Humanities. In short, a database is like a computerized filing system. As mentioned in the reading, the purpose of a database is to store information about a particular domain or subject. The reading gave us an example of a database that contains information about American novels. A table was given as an example of a database design that included a list of the author’s name, year of birth, year of death, title of the book, publication year, publisher, etc. This example reminded me of databases that hospitals have to use in order to speculate patients and their past medical history.

In my previous part-time job, I worked as a blood donor recruiter for the UCLA Blood & Platelet Center. The UCLA Ronald Reagan Hospital would contact us daily letting us know which blood type they were in need of, and it was my job to make sure we meet that demand by calling, emailing, or going out on blood drives to recruit new donors. I was trained to use the MediTech system which was the hospital’s database of all the patients’ information. One of my responsibilities were to make sure that the donors were indeed eligible to donate. First, I would search the donor’s name in the database. When I do this, I’m able to see the donor’s basic information such as birth date, gender, contact number, address, etc. In addition, I can view the donor’s blood type, the last time the donor donated blood or platelets, if he or she traveled to a foreign country that is a high risk area for malaria, if he or she has tattoos or piercings that would make the donor ineligible to donate for a year, or if the donor is taking any medication. Moreover, there were various tags or acronyms that we would have to decipher because some of them meant that the donor could never donate or that he or she would have to talk to a charge nurse first before being approved to donate blood. By navigating and investigating the hospitals database of patients and donors, I’m able to determine if a donor is eligible to donate blood on a certain day.

If it wasn’t for this donor database, it would be next to impossible to recruit a high volume of blood donors because it would be difficult to keep track of all of the donors’ information, especially the aspects that would make them ineligible to donate blood or platelets. Therefore, databases are extremely crucial in the digital era where quick retrieval of information is ideal.