Drupal Downunder 2012 -- registrations and call for sessions

Drupal Downunder is being held in Melbourne from 13 to 15 January 2012, and is now open for registrations and session proposals.

Couch-to-5k; brief thoughts on running and life

This morning I completed the Couch-to-5k running plan. In a perfect world, this would have taken nine weeks, but I stretched it out over ten and a half weeks, due to repeating some days, and losing some time to the flu. Considering that I hadn’t run or even owned a pair of trainers since high school, this is a major achievement. I didn’t reach 5k on my last run, only 4.9k including warmup and cooldown walks, so my next goal is to actually run 5k.

My grand life plans for this year didn’t work out. Instead of completing an honours thesis in the middle of the year and completing an MDiv degree by the end of this year, I have put all study on hold until 2012. In summary, it’s been a case of burnout and misdirected ambition. I have spent most of my life (since I started school) developing my intellect at the expense of everything else. I’ve found, rather late in the piece, that intellectual achievement on its own is not very satisfying. My major project for the latter half of this year has been to learn to live with and like myself, and running has turned out to be a counter-intuitive solution. Going outside for a walk has often been my first remedy for stress or confusion. It’s been relatively easy for me to turn to running - in a sense it’s just extreme walking - as it doesn’t require the coordination or learning of rules that most sports involve.

I didn’t have to learn how to run, in the sense of propelling myself forward with my feet. I did have to start learning to run well, and I haven’t mastered this yet. I have had to learn to accept slowness because I simply cannot run fast at this stage in my life. Confronting and accepting the limitations of my physical body has taught me humility on a daily basis. As I’ve had to go slow physically, it’s become easier to accept slowing down in life. At this rate, I probably won’t complete a PhD by the age of 40 (I don’t even know when or whether I will start one), but this doesn’t feel like a disappointment now. And I have a new, non-intellectual practice to help me slow my mind when it starts overheating.

[Previously posted on Tumblr; I’m now making this blog my main blog.]

Writing in small bursts

I am in the final stages of writing a 12,000 word thesis (in ecclesiology, in case that interests you) and one method of procrastination has been to write a little about some of the software that is helping me keep going.

OmmWriter Mac app. This is one of the many apps that seek to remove the distractions that are so much a part of modern computer desktop environments. This app takes over the whole screen, turns off notifications from other programs, and plays some non-intrusive background music (I use earphones to minimise external noise). At this stage in the writing process, I have all of my sections planned, with various stages of drafting, from almost-complete drafts to bare outlines. However, when I am writing, I write everything in one single text file, with notes to myself to indicate where the small snippets I write belong. Afterwards, during dedicated editing time, I will incorporate these into the master document in Scrivener (that’s a whole other post).

Nag iPhone app. This is simply a timer with various buttons for preset alarms. Twenty minutes for a writing dash, five minutes for a break. I’ve become so much more focused and productive knowing that I have fixed periods for writing and for resting (or browsing the web, or writing blog posts, or …)

The Ada Initative

THATCamp Melbourne 2011 -- wrapup

The first THATCamp Melbourne was a success! I think it was the first digital humanities gathering of this kind in Melbourne, and the second THATCamp in Australia (there was one in Canberra last year, which I did not attend; another Canberra camp is currently being planned). This event was sponsored by by VeRSI and held at the University of Melbourne, and many of the campers were from Melbourne. Here are lists of campers and sessions. A wide range of projects and interests was covered, including history, film, literature, art, geography; and methodological issues to do with archives, social media, and crowdsourced research.

THATCamp was a strong antidote to my sense of professional isolation. I met other practitioners of Digital Humanities around Australia and a few people praised the Founders and Survivors project. Somehow, this appreciation feels more valuable to me when it comes from other technical people. While our volunteers and other non-technical users also (sometimes) show their appreciation, they often do not understand the technical challenges of the project and either take things for granted or regard our website as almost magical.

I didn’t do a headcount at any point, but I think this event had the best gender ratio of any technical event I have attended. This doesn’t surprise me; most of the campers came from the humanities or the GLAM (Galleries/Libraries/Archives/Museums) sectors, which don’t suffer the same kinds of gender inequality that one finds in strictly technical fields.

I did not end up proposing a session on AwesomeChix because there were already too many good sessions I wanted to attend. Besides, AwesomeChix doesn’t pose much of a technical challenge; I just need to pull my finger out and make it happen, or persuade someone else to make it happen. (Watch this space.)