Brainstorming

So my original plan, which I am currently debating if I am going to attempt or not, was to make an animated short about what historians do. However, the historian would have been a NINJA! Obviously, historians are pretty balling in all, but a ninja historian is as cool as it gets.  

My ninja historian has many arch-foes, which would be the living embodiment of what historians face in real life. So far the one villain I have fully developed is (well I am still working on the name) a gigantic ten foot octopus that plagiarizes.  Currently, my vision is of the octopus causing mayhem in the library. The octopus is using all of its eight tentacles to spread throughout the library and take the knowledge out of the books. Imagine books and shelf’s crashing to the ground as the octopus absorbs all the knowledge in them and does not even reference. To battle the plagiarizing octopus, the ninja historian will use shuriken (throwing stars) that are shaped as a FN, for foot note. When the ninja historian throws his FN shaped stars at the octopus they will cut off his tentacles ending his plagiarism. Further, the FN will clamp onto the severed tentacle, and when all eight have been cutoff the octopus will begin to shrink into a first year student who was overwhelmed because he did not start his essay early enough. When the first year student is all sad and nervous that he got caught the ninja historian will throw him a Rampolla writing guide, and then magically disappear (because he is a ninja and they are all stealth and all) until the next history crisis. However, after examining the website my Proff emailed me I am a bit nervous.

My back-up idea that I just started to think about, so it’s not really developed enough is to make an interactive maze. I don’t know if you have been to Ontario Place. But my favorite thing there as a child was the Maze. I knew where everyone of the polls was to swipe your card at. And since I was always trying to improve my time, and since I am really short, I used to run under the boards instead of running among them. I was obsessed with going to the Maze from ages 5-12. I would continuously go through the maze, my parents must have loved this because they got to just sit there while I tired myself out.

My idea is to build a maze that has interactive stops where you have to complete an action to be able to get your card swiped. As a warning my maze might take-up the whole class room.

On a sad note, as I was trying to find a picture of Mega Maze I discovered they have replaced it :(.

Hopefully a change of feelings

Currently, it’s a few hours before our second class and I am sitting in Weldon waiting for the time to pass so I can put down my readings and build something. I honestly did not understand everything we had to read for today’s lab. I enjoyed reading the blog post “Transduction, Transmateriality, and Expanded Computing” by Mitchell Whitlaw. I am kind-of scared of my computer for a variety of reasons: will stop working and I will lose essay just before I press print, can’t figure out how to do very much on it, and I tend to drop my knapsack when I get home from school so I think my computer hates me. I liked Whitlaw’s comment “literally and figuratively cracking [the computer] open, hooking it up to new inputs and outputs, extending and expanding its connections with the environment.” I think a major reason why I am scared of my computer is because I feel disconnected from it. I know what I want it to do most of the time, but I just can’t get it to do it. And its usually the simplest things that frustrate me the most; such as just wanting to move a line over an inch on a graph your making but every time you click its never in the right spot. And then I get so frustrated and feel disconnected because I know this is a task that could be easily done in my real world, but is driving me Fing insane in the virtual world.

(Read this with the boxing ring announcer voice.)

 

On the right side of the ring we have Hilary the Historian with her primary documents and her Arduino set ready to take on the champion, the Silver Dell Computing Machine. The two have fought numerous battles, with the Silver Dell as the winner. But Hilary the Historian has been bulking up in the library typing vast computer script. Who shall win? Tune in at the end of the semester to find out.

Jumping into History

Dear my vast audience that has probably been waiting in anticipation for my first blog of 2012. Or maybe just Professor Turkel. I shall pad my ego with the pretend notion that people read this. Because that’s really what I am looking forward to as a public historian, that my work, which won’t only be essays, will be appreciated by an audience outside of academia. My little frozen Grinch heart swelled a bit when the little old ladies at the town hall meeting were excited by my research.

 

When I think about things lying around my apartment the first thing that comes to mind are books. If I bought a second book shelf this problem would be fixed. But I really do not want to schlep back that much furniture to Toronto. I am actually quite neat; these are very organized piles in the corner of my room. (That sentence has been added so that future Historians don’t write in my biography that I was  messy.) 

So what I have always wanted is a hologram book that you can jump into. I have always wanted to be able to emerge myself into an image by jumping into it since I saw Marry Poppins. It’s the scene where Marry and the children are on their way to the park when they bump into Burt who has drawn a row of beautiful chalk photos of different scenes. They then jump into the picture of the English countryside. During their adventures in the drawing Marry wins a hoarse race on a carrousel hoarse. After which she sings Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Hopefully this has rejuvenated your memory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b-Z0SSyUcw&noredirect=1

I love reading historical fiction. I am currently reading The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli. The book is about a female photographer for Life magazine during the Vietnam War. Well, I would not want to be able to jump into the war scenes; however, I would love to be able to walk around the streets of Saigon. (I just started the book, so it’s only 1963 so far, so its not a completely unrealistic notion.)  

My hologram book would work by opening any ordinary book of one’s choosing and then the individual would place “The Button” on the page they would like to enter the story at, smack in the middle of the spine. Once one pressed “The Button” a rainbow hologram image would appear covering the page. Then you would place the book on the floor, and step into it. Though the weird feeling often associated with Disapparating might be a side affect; I have not worked out all the kinks yet. Once you have arrived in the image you would have the ability to explore the historical backdrop of the book your reading. However, the experience only lasts for twenty-five minutes. One should not escape reality for too long.