Don’t play data roulette

In the wise words of Lil’ John, “back, back, back it up.”

Yes, turn of the decade hip hop music can teach us quite a bit about making sure our files are safe.

Tomorrow, a freak lightning strike or rouge water spout could possibly bust through your open window and wreak havoc on your computer! Don’t lose data in hard drive that goes kaput, back it up. You may have missed all the freebies on national data back up day in March (yes it’s real) and are left without sufficient funds to dump on an external hard drive. However, thanks to the efforts of new cloud storage start-ups, there are plenty of affordable back-up clients to choose from. I’ll highlight two free ones, because free things make me all fuzzy inside.

I personally use Spideroak, a free service that provides users with two gigabytes of space. It’s a neat little application that automatically backs up files to an online cloud server directly from your computer. Spideroak’s application runs in the background amidst all your other processes and takes up barely any of your CPU, backing up files like a cloud storage ninja.

Another nifty storage client is CrashPlan. This one’s a wee bit of money for an online back-up package, but it allows you to do a free offsite back-up. Basically, if you have multiple computers on your home network you can easily back-up files from grandma’s laptop to dad’s laptop and vice versa. This keeps the data backed up around home machines, but doesn’t back it up online. The application is useful and free with options to upgrade. However, you have to make sure all of your machines don’t crap the bed at the same time. What’s really cool about CrashPlan is that it encrypts your precious documents. Even better, it’s Linux friendly!

Would you play data roulette with your two-hundred page thesis paper, landscape design plans, baby photos, or cute pictures of cats? No! Don’t take a chance on your files, back it up.

But If you do lose everything in a tragic computer crash, here’s a button for that.

Narrative science?

What? This is the name of a Chicago-based company that has been making some waves by programming algorithms to write news stories. For those unfamiliar with what algorithms are, they’re basically rules for a computer to follow when data is sent to it. Recently, narrative science gave an iphone application a handful of journalism tricks of the trade and programmed it to write sports stories. This application went to a bunch of parents who were told to input data from their child’s game. After submitting it to the application, a news story was generated in seconds. Believe it or not, the story doesn’t sound too bad.

Now before we all ditch our dreams of becoming reporters or paid writers, consider the advantage of this sort of technology. New York Times already ditched their obituary and metro section reporters ages ago because of budgeting, but the canned writer’s duties went to other staff members. If a computer could write a sports story, then an obituary or metro story shouldn’t be too much more of a hassle. Not saying go and purge newspapers of all the sports, metro, and obituary writers, or even that their trade doesn’t take skills. Rather, for the papers who have ridded those positions already, implement computers to write those pieces and let other staff members have a freed-up schedule so they can start doing more investigative reporting.

Still, I have a feeling some people will be upset.

Remember that diving into the field and uncovering the story is something that the computer can’t do. Notice that I never called Narrative Science’s program a reporter. Although, it would be comical to see one of those violin playing robots asking questions at an art gallery or interviewing Oprah. That’s the beauty of the human genome in any anxieties surrounding this quasi-HAL 9000 sports writer program: we have the ability to point out the inlets of a place and time that a computer can’t quite explore.

The company is still small and hasn’t gone public yet. No contracts as far as I’ve read, but don’t be surprised if you were to see them working with small town newspapers in the future. Figure if they started with little leaguers, before we can say “Garciapara” they will be up working with the big leaguers of the newsprint trade in no time.

A hiatus you say?

That’s a good term for the past few weeks. My on-going experience with grad school material has been quite the undertaking and seems to have consumed everything to do with socializing during it’s totalitarian reign. However, like John Milton during the Protestant Reformation, I fell into a sea of productive exile from the outside world. While I didn’t manifest a modern day “Paradise Lost” to show for it, I did manage to spew out a hefty term paper ready for editing (lots and lots of editing).

During my periodic coffee and aspirin breaks I was either participating or presenting at an arts festival on my campus. A real treat between piles of research was meeting Grant Barrett, co-host of the NPR show “A Way with Words.” The lexicographer and author of numerous dictionaries on slang was quite the conversation at a lunch for my English department. He delivered an excellent Q&A talk on trending topics in language along with the origins of idioms, provincial accents, and foreign roots of slang words we use daily. His show on NPR is an excellent morning coffee listen and after tuning into a few episodes I’m hooked. The most entertaining part about talking with Grant was hearing his take on a wide breadth of topics on just about anything from South American cuisine to French Canadian dialects and even what was on Reddit this week. Come to find out, he was a DJ at his college too! Who knows? Maybe I’ll be on NPR someday…

I also had the honor of reading one of my short stories “Playing with Wax” at a creative nonfiction event along with a few other student writers. The event had a lot of really solid pieces and an awesome vibe during the reading. My piece was about DJing in my bedroom back in New York and I plan to make it one installment in a larger short story collection about vinyl and DJing in the digital age.

Another week down and getting closer to summer! Finally. Although I will miss the old Potsdam campus. I’ll be doing a series of posts this summer about my experiences at the camp I work at because it’s always quite the adventure.

For now, I’ll leave up this nifty photo of some really interesting stairs that combine a wheelchair ramp into its structure. Reason be, I’m on a committee that’s assisting in re-designing our library for student accessibility. My goal is keep in mind students of all capabilities, along with environmental sustainability. Our library needs more plants and ramps!

The scrutiny of digital readership

I just can’t buy into the idea that e-readers are spiraling out of existence or having a negative effect on readership. If anything, they are paving new directions for future digital reading formats just as hardcover books gave way to paperbacks in the 1800s.

Booksellers and authors alike were terrified at the prospect of paperback books because of the cheaper costs and the assumed data rot that was perceived to follow a cheaply printed medium. Authors banished the idea of paperbacks because of the notion that they wouldn’t outlast the century and were merely a trend ready to die off (Wordsworth was just one of these authors). However, after the stream of revolutions in the later part of the nineteenth century book publishers began sending paperbacks around to readers who couldn’t afford the hefty prices of hardcovers. They were able to subvert the costs of post by labeling these books as periodicals and the smaller paperbacks were easier for chapmen (travelling salesmen essentially) to deliver to countryside customers. Paperbacks reached a growing literate population through availability and cost effectiveness. This took place in an era where the works of Shakespeare were beginning to switch from ballad to play format, pamphlets on the French revolution were mass produced, and the once expensive works of Walter Scott and Coleridge were produced at a higher volume for a lower price. This shift in medium led to an explosion of reading!

E-readers are met with relative scrutiny in today’s context, yet paperbacks still exist along with hardcovers simultaneously. Content doesn’t change from the book to e-reader and the legitimacy of this content shift boils down to personal preference. In today’s marketplace regarding readers, dedicated e-readers statistically sell better than the multimedia ones. Clearly, people are still reading. The Kindle Fire saw lower holiday sales than expected while the dedicated readers sold much more than anticipated. Amazon’s intentions with the fire was an attempt at entering the tablet market, which Apple has an unfortunate upper hand in, and with companies like Acer releasing tablets as well I feel like the market will see more attempts from various media companies. The e-reader brings accessibility of up and coming works along with growth in author-controlled sales more so than what’s allowed in the paperback market. With e-books at $969.9 million in sales (a 117% increase since 2010) for the 2011 fiscal year and adult paperbacks at $1.16 billion (a 15% decrease since 2010) there is still a market that supports paperbacks, but e-books are slowly gaining force in today’s marketplace.

For authors just starting out in genres that are over saturated with many amazing and undiscovered authors (historical fiction, young adult, non-fiction, etc.) e-books are the perfect place to start for exposure. Many authors make a debut on e-book sales and then sign a deal with a large publisher after an agent sees their unsigned e-book making waves on the marketplace. The days of sending a manuscript around to overworked and underpaid publishing agents are coming to a close, which can be a good thing for midlist authors. The process for publishing a book is a long and variable one and after a book finally hits shelves it can be hard for an author to make bank because of fees to a publisher and manufacturer (book sells for $15, author sees $4). Managing this process is a hefty one, discouraging when first starting out, and weening new books into an e-marketplace that can be completely controlled by the author is now possible thanks to e-books. Self-publish on a digital format and advertise it for free via social networking, that’s the new trend that gets the top indie authors on amazon high dividends. Authors can maximize earning potential and build a name for themselves at a lower cost than traditional publishing, like Amanda Hocking (see hyperlink above).

Figure with six million kindles sold in just over a month in 2011 (which was during the pre-fire release) the market is bursting with readers gobbling down books at a rapid pace, most of which are indie authors who don’t have a print deal. E-markets are bursting at the seams with amazing books not otherwise available on print. But who knows? Maybe technology will take a turn for the worst and we’ll all be reading books bound with moroccan leather next to candlelight like they used to. The future of e-books cannot be predicted no matter how many statistics or testimonies skeptics throw out there, but for today’s trends it’s a solid business to latch on to.

We’ve come a long way in format and throughout time the author’s adapt to new mediums as well as readers. Neither audience has seemed to be in agreement since the dawn of print.

What’s epic?

It’s been a while! Strapping down on big projects at school and what not, so free time is a bit limited these days.

Yesterday, while I was hanging around my usual perch on campus I overheard two people talking about the nice weather we had last week. Fun fact, people will most likely discuss the weather when they have nothing else to talk about, some psychologists believe it’s our most common conversation starter. Anyways, one of the converser’s sentences sounded a little something like this: “Oh yeah, I had some epic sunburns on my face from being outside…” (I didn’t pay attention to the rest).

I’ve taken courses in classical literature and we read epics. Homer and Virgil wrote their mammoth poems for political purposes and Homer was blind during the oral tradition of his work. There were battles pitted against Trojan armies and a Cyclops, legions of bloody combat spilling across page after page of genius verse, and these stories had been passed down for generations since the time period when men fought with scarcely any armor against Persian forces. Sea voyages that spanned across miles of treacherous oceans was how these mighty armies got from place to place. Do you think they got sunburn? I’m almost sure of it, but that wasn’t the epic part!

I have nothing against those who misuse this once scarcely conversational word that at one point had a little more gravity to it. It’s just I feel like this phrase is entering our casual lexicons in a way that doesn’t phonetically make any sense. ‘Awesome’ had the same fate, along with ‘righteous.’ Thank the 80s for that. I can admit to using these words out of their context, but I wonder why and how it got there. Popular culture could be the culprit, for most trendy words come from misuse in the media. Maybe the internet got us there, or surfers, or bill and ted, who knows?

Bottom line is knowing what’s epic and what’s not epic. Sure, it can vary from person to person as with most words but let me expound upon what comes to mind when I think of the word ‘epic’ (besides mythology from early civilization).

Pictured above is a kid, yes a kid, holding a trained hunting falcon in the mountains of Mongolia. That’s how he catches dinner for his family. Those garments he’s wearing? Probably killed the animal himself. Look at that proud complexion. He’s on top of the world eyeing out dinner with a highly trained bird perched on his gloved hand. Now that’s epic.

See this? That’s literally the sky opening up and taking a dump on the midwest. A concentrated powerhouse of F-5 force winds and enough rain to drown out a year’s worth of crops. This type of thing happens in very precise conditions and wrecks everything in it’s path. I don’t know the technical name, but for lack of a better term I’ll call it a “hellstorm.” The person taking this picture? I bet after gawking at the sheer force of mother nature on her monthly cycle, they called this monstrosity ‘epic.’

That’s just two things that came to mind, neither of which have to do with overexposure to ultraviolet rays while lounging around outside. The two images deal with forces beyond what we can fathom sitting behind our laptop screens and book brims. Epic can mean something totally different to the next guy, but I’m sure these two images can make just about anyone’s list of ‘epicness.’

So what’s epic to you? Share below and maybe attach an image or two. 

Have a great week and put on sunscreen!

The Perpetual Planning Board

On break this week and finally getting a chance to relax a bit before going back to campus for round two. I’ve been thinking about all I’ve done in the past three years for my undergraduate degree along with what’s in store for the next year or so. Man, does time moves fast. Just this time last year I was settling in with a new campus finally and picking courses for my junior year. Now, I’ll be mapping out my senior year along with what’s in store for after graduation (which will be graduate school for me).

It’s a scary world out there. No matter how optimistic you make it out to be it’s still going to be a vast field of uncertainty coupled with challenges that are just unfolding. I’ve personally seen far too many freshly minted bachelor’s degree holders thinking the world owes them something. Four years down and a degree to prove it? You’re not the only one. However, this doesn’t mean defeat. That’s not an option for those daring to get ahead of the pack in not simply job hunting, because anyone can fire out a resume and score an interview. Overall mindset is what makes the person count, the day worthwhile, the   goal setting a success. This is a conclusion I drew some time ago and am slowly realizing is true.

Sure, I’m just an undergraduate who hasn’t “been there yet.” I have a long way to go and each day is a new experience leading up to the big day where I plan my roots in the professional world. This isn’t everyone’s goal, but it happens to be mine. The problem is I plan too much. I’m a chronic planner. I want to have everything mapped out in an order that appeals to me, is secure, stable, and can be fool proof for the road ahead. Fool proof or not, hardly anything goes as planned. Which is why I’ve decided to make a pact with myself (you can try it too). I’m going to get each day down and pat before I consider next week, which means finishing up today with more satisfaction than the day before. I look ahead to the future like it’s all set up, an absurd notion seeing as the future hasn’t happened yet. That’s the beauty of it! If it hasn’t happened, you haven’t experienced it yet, and it’s hardly within your control.

Worried about failing that midterm? Have you taken it yet? Scared you won’t find a job with an arts degree? Have you even finished it? Hardly anything is pre-destined (the only thing I can think of as being already in place is your shoe size) and we’ve been told that since day one. Not knowing is scary, wanting to control it can be worse. Enjoy the ability to be versatile!

Taking this into account, I plan on finishing a to-do list with no more than ten things on it per day. Seems like a lot, but considering those ten things don’t have to be colossal undertakings I feel like it’s a pretty liberal number. Who knows? Maybe after getting ten out of the way there’ll be room for one more, or two. Today is important, tomorrow is secondary, and now I have to finish my tea before it gets cold. Then I’ll tackle a few more things, along with a few things after that. That isn’t so bad.

Quoth be the translator

I’ve been doing research on translation practices and techniques in early American print culture for the past few weeks. My focus has been on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s translation of “The Divina Commedia” by Dante Alighieri. This is what I consider fun, and it sure is! Nestled up with a good book on Longfellow, who was a native Maine poet who had quite the reputation in the mid-19^th century, I’ve discovered that he was one of the pioneers behind translation practices that was devoted to not simply bringing the translated author to the reader, nor vice versa. Instead he was determined to provide a translation that best captured the essence of the foreign language author in hopes of conveying those works most effectively to English readers. This isn’t to say that he lost the spirit of the author in translation. Nay, he actually gave readers unfamiliar with a particular foreign language a better sense of the author’s verse (he primarily did poetry translations) rather than a literal or interpretive translation. To call it interpretive means that it has the translator’s voice taking the place of the translated author’s voice. Which in the Michel Foucaultian sense of the term would go against the true “voice of the author” as noted in his essay “What is an author?” A major point that he states relates to translated voices, “it is not enough to declare we should do without the writer (the author) and study the work itself.”¹ Foucault can be a toughie to truly grasp and his works really captivate some early critical responses to reader-author relations. That essay in particular points out Barthes claim that author’s are “dead” is too rash and that while readers are essential to the transmission of knowledge in a work, it’s the author who creates new discourses (or units of knowledge) for the reader to decode. French theorists aside, the translator’s major function should be to best convey the foreign language to match the reader’s looking to decode the original author’s ideas. Isn’t that the whole purpose of translating a work? Function over precisely translated language?

 

Take a look at these lines from the 1867 Longfellow translation:

“These words in sombre colour I beheld

Written upon the summit of a gate;

Whence I: “Their sense is, Master, hard to me!”

-Canto III, “The Inferno”

 

Compared to the same lines in the Charles Eliot Norton version from the 1880’s:

“These words of color obscure I saw written at the top of a gate;

whereat I, “Master, their meaning is dire to me.”

-Canto III, “The Inferno” ²

 

Eliot had a more literal approach to his translation published after Longfellow’s death. It’s also interesting to notes that they both actually worked on Longfellow’s edition in what was called “The Dante Club” at Harvard. These are two language scholars are very familiar with the same work, but utilize different translation techniques. Longfellow sticks with the more contextual use of words common in his era, “sombre” being one of many examples. Dante wrote the work in the early 1300’s and the term “sombre” etymologically comes from the mid-18^th century in usage, the spelling Longfellow uses is phonetically British. Why stick with the modernized spelling? Reader’s connected better! Staying true to his goal, Longfellow wanted to make Dante accessible to those who didn’t know the original Italian. He also sold editions of his translation at a decent price, which was roughly three dollars a volume in his three volume set of the “Divine Comedy.” In the late 1800’s that wasn’t a terrible price. These “octavo” (folded over eight times in the binding process) were portable too, beautifully crafted, and compared to the steeper prices of Norton’s edition had sold better long after Longfellow’s death. In fact, after Matthew Pearlman’s recent release of The Dante Club, a fictional mystery novel based around the literati circle, Modern Library Classics released a re-print of Longfellow’s translation. Norton’s hasn’t had a re-print since the 1920’s, just to put the legacy of Longfellow’s translation into perspective.

I’m uncovering many new and interesting things regarding translations of “The Divina Commedia” and reading three different translations alongside each other has been quite the undertaking. I’ll be diving into some archives over the next few weeks to uncover more data on publishing practices, maybe I’ll even post some pictures from the digging. Dante’s epic certainly has outlived his expectations, written 1300 and still going strong! I’m thankful for the bearded bards like Longfellow for continuing the legacy of great poets far before our time.

¹ Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” The Book History Reader, 282

² Danteinferno.info