Thursday, March 20, 2008

This is my second blog for the Web of Mind project. I started working on this project again and came into a few concerns. I am not sure with the five links we are suppose to have, how I should incorporate outside sources into it. I feel that there is nothing in particular within the text, except for characters and where the story takes place, is relevant in anyway. This is a huge problem that I am facing. I was thinking about doing a link on love, but how do I incorporate an outside source? This project has just gone way past easy into confusing.

If someone just so happens to read this blog and decides to check out "The Two Brothers" site, PLEASE let me know if you see something in the text that I could use as a link. This is the last part of this project that Kira and I have left to do and we only have two sources. I will be so happy when this project is done for good and I am sitting in Jamaica with a drink in my hand....lol

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The Web of Mind project started out to be very confusing because I wasn't sure how to do all of the codes. I had to look at other peoples projects and go into their edit page and figure out how to do everything. I am pretty confident in my technological skills because I figured out how to do everything after playing around with it for a few hours. It took some practice and some mistakes in order to form the page according to our guidelines.

My partner for this project is Kira and we have been working really well together. She and I have put a lot of time into this project. We choose the story out of The Keepsake called "The Two Brothers." It is a great story that is full of family drama and has a lot of foreshadowing. One problem with the story we choose is that the author is unknown. This causes a problem because we can't provide any information on the author. There is no way that we can connect anything from the author's life to the stories overall meaning.

We started out are web page by scanning all of the pages. This was a pain in the neck for us because the reference guy at the library told us to convert it to a pdf file because it would take up less space, well unfortunately, he had no idea what are project was. Kira and I ended up scanning the pages 3-4 times. It took forever and we didn't get much accomplished. This left us with the feeling that this was going to be a lot of work then we orignally thought.

However after getting all of the pages scanned and learning how to do all the codes, it was a smooth process from their on out. We are almost done with our project, except for a few links, introduction information, and the bibliography. We are over half way done and are going to hopefull have it done soon.

This project is useful because it brings together both literature and technology. The technology has helped incorportate several different elements into our project. Overall, working with Kira has made this project a lot more fun then it would have. We have worked really well together and created something that will be of use to anyone reading from The Keepsake.

Monday, March 03, 2008

The technical part of this project has been pretty easy thus far. I haven’t had much trouble with putting my research up on the internet, especially with some of the models students have already made.

The only issue I am having thus far with the project is finding information on the author. I became intrigued with doing this after reading some biographical background on Lady Blessington on Wikipedia. I tried to match up all Wikipedia’s sources so that I could use direct sources when relaying information to the Wiki. The problem was a lot of it seems to be hidden in Project Gutenburg.

I found a lot of similarities within her life with the story “Remorse” that I want to cross check and make sure they are true. One in particular that I found interesting was that she married Charles John Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington, a man whose wife had left him with four children. This directly parallels her story of the woman who returns to see her life ten years later and the children have a new mother, being Lady Blessington.

The problem is although she was the editor of The Keepsake for numerous years there is not all that much information on her. I recommend to everyone in class to at least look at Project Gutenburg, it helped me find a lot of information on an author I thought was going to be hopeless.
After taking a break from the project for a while, I have now returned and successfully completed the transcription process. I was surprised, it didn't take me as long as I thought it would. Much to my disappointment, I think that the easy part is now behind me. I have a feeling it is going to get more complicated from here on out. I am now starting to research. I have found C19 very helpful. There is a ton of info on there about my author which is lucky for me. Now I just have to wade through it. I was waiting to start uploading information on the Web of Mind until I had thoroughly researched and knew what I was going to link. I am hoping to get a lot of work done over break and really get a handle on this project and others. Happy Break everyone!

Sunday, March 02, 2008

So far this project has been tricky for me to figure out. The actual research behind it is interesting and the tale my partner and I chose (The Two Brothers, a Tale) was a fun and easy read but I am not strong as far as my technical skills go and trying to figure out, use and understand the website has been tricky! Simply figuring out how to post this blog was confusing. I'm not a computer savvy girl. I like the idea behind it all, researching texts that may otherwise have been discarded and forgotten is a valuable thing. No literary work, from any era should be lost over time. I feel modern day writers grow off of works previously published. However, the project itself would be miserable for me did I not have a partner more apt at computer programs than I. I feel like I have to ask for her help every step of the way and although I'm finding the facts and putting in a significant amount of work I feel left out of the creative element of it by not being able to play with the website more. I feel more class time spent on it would be valuable. It would give me a chance to ask the professor any questions I had and to be able to work the website with her around should any technical problems arise. The project is neat but incredibly frustrating.