Author Archives: Zico Abhi Dey

Update for the week 9

Along the way to finding the solution of search engines that incorporate XML, I discovered many gems. To clarify, the amount of solutions within scope is not abundant, and on top of that, it is constrained by the financial backing allocated for the project and also its future viability. Furthermore, the time for implementation is so limited!

I want to build something that remains functional for years to come, no matter who maintains the project or not!

I am thinking outside the box right now. Try to come up with something that is unique. The idea is rather simple and seamless. The design concept is so Apple: as long as it gets the job done, why build something novel? More coming in the next week!

Update

A lot has happened over the last few week. I lost home and found a new home in DirectHERS!! I will take this opportunity to show my gratitude towards Miaoling, Maria, Gemma and JP for including me in the process.

So what is my role? I hold a floating role in the group which is just perfect for me. This will provide me the opportunity to involve in every process where contribution is required.

So what have I done so far? I attended a media and outreach plan rehearsal presentation of Maria. Provided my feedback on the plan and contribute with some written on technical aspect. Wrote a twitter scrapper. Also, I found a way to scrape linkedin in case the group requires.

So what the future holds? I am in the process of designing a workshop for the group which I will briefly present on Wednesday focusing on how to scrape twitter for mentions and hashtags. I will meet Gemma Tuesday to figure out about the searching of xml. Also, I have already worked on a resource what Filipa has forwarded for us to publish xml in the web. I have a demo for that as well, would present if necessary. Last but not the least, I will write a Instagram scrapper whenever I can.

In a nutshell, I am here to help the group in every way possible. I got their backs!! In the process, it is a great opportunity for me to see the whole project unfolding and gathering expertise that I do not usually excel.

Zico – Bio and Contribution Statement

I am a tech nerd with tech skepticism at core, an open source enthusiast, avid bug hunter, a privacy concern citizen of the world trying to manage my digital footprint carefully, always glued to my computer with an attitude to help others not to mention spread knowledge that I possess to anybody who needs it. On top of all these, I am fond of learning new things and stand in solidarity for a cause dear to my heart whenever I can.

I hold a bachelor and a master in Computer Science. Right now I am in DH. I have tons of experience doing projects. I worked as an Android System Engineer a while back. I love fixing electronic devices although I lost touch dealing with electronic circuits. My first android phone is the HTC Hero. I compiled android for my phone. De google my phone!! Last few years I worked mostly as a teaching assistant.

My research interests are computational photography, neural networks, financial market analysis, consumer behavior and human psychology. I am fond of analyzing bad data visualization and designing bad experiments to show everyone what not to do. 

I joined Kristy’s project idea with a goal to find a unique challenge that a creative medium like Zine imposes. I am here to test the limit of my ability and handle challenges. I am hoping to have a lot of fun while producing something scholarly.

Since, just the two of us have been working on this project, I do not hold a specific role. We have tons of shared roles. However, I will be the one who will mostly work on the analysis and putting the results out on the web. In that sense, I am the Core developer. We have progressed a lot in the last few days, Thanks to Kristy for all her outreaching effort to reach out to the experts of the field. She is amazing!!

Right now, I am playing the second fiddle. Soon it will be my time to shine!! I have a lot of exciting ideas. I can’t wait to share all my exciting experiments with Zines with you all.

repreZINEtation : Work Plan

In Details Work Plan:

Week ending Feb 24:

    • Personal bios and contribution statements by DUE 2/21/23
    • Revised Proposal and Work Plan DUE 2/21/23
    • Kristy visit ABC No Rio 2/21/23 
    • Kristy and Zico will make the final decision on a dataset by 2/23/23. 
    • Schedule an appointment with Filipa to discuss Text Analysis with Zine Corpus 
    • Find a time and schedule an in person appointment with Jenna at Barnard
    • If imported from another resource, data will be reviewed and cleaned.
    • If the dataset is manually created, Zico will start from the top and Kristy will start from the bottom of the list to organize and clean. 
    • In person meeting at the GC on Feb. 22nd from 2-4pm
    • In person meeting at GC to complete the dataset Feb 25th at 12pm-?
    • Discuss data management plans and finalize 
    • Group Data Management Plan  DUE 2/23/23

Week ending March 3:

    • Personal journal entries reflecting on how data management can improve your research practices DUE 2/28/23
    • Project presentations discussing data management plans IN CLASS 3/1/23
    • Begin to analyze and interpret the data
    • Decide what the criteria will be and identify trends that the user will find helpful
    • Discuss outreach and social media plans and branding
    • Begin thinking about audience and the user experience for the project 
    • In person meeting at GC March 1st 2-4pm
    • Group Outreach and Social Media Plans –DUE 3/2/23

Week ending March 10:

    • Personal journal entries DUE 3/7/23
    • Project presentations on outreach and social media plans IN CLASS 3/8/23
    • Continue working with data
    • Explore which tools will satisfy the goals of the project and select the platform and begin development
    • Create logo
    • In person meeting at GC March 8th 2-4pm
    • Website draft (basic landing page, about page; methods; social media)- DUE 3/9/23

Week ending March 17:

    • Personal journal entries DUE  3/14/23
    • Group project updates DUE 3/16/23
    • In person meeting at GC March 15th 2-4pm
    • Finalize the platform 
    • Import the data to the platform

Week ending March 24:

    • Personal journal entries DUE 3/21/23
    • In person meeting at GC March 22nd 2-4pm
    • Group project updates entry Project updates: Are you hitting your milestones? Why or why not? What adjustments have you made? DUE 3/23/23

Week ending March 31:

    • Personal journal entries DUE  3/28/23  
    • In person meeting at GC March 29th 2-4pm
    • Project presentations (choose a standard background design for slides, 5-minute talks) IN CLASS 3/29/23
    • Group project update entry: Are you hitting your milestones? Why or why not? How will your group manage the upcoming hiatus over spring break? DUE 3/30/23

Week ending April 7 and April 14 (Spring Break):

    • Meet in person to tie up loose ends dates TBD
    • Are we missing anything or can we improve the project?
    • Test platform
    • Look at past Digital Showcase events and discuss our roles 
    • Reflect on what we will consider a success and what we have learned or would have done differently know what we know now

Week ending April 21:

    • Personal journal entries  DUE 4/18/23
    • Group project update entry: Are you hitting your milestones? Why or why not? What adjustments have you made? What adjustments have you made as we enter the final stretch? DUE 4/20/23

Week ending April 28: 

    • Personal journal entries  DUE 4/26/23 
    • Group project update entry DUE 4/28/23
    • Kristy makes tshirts with the project logo for Digital Showcase 🙂 

Week ending May 5:

    • Personal journal entries DUE 5/2/23
    • Project launch dress rehearsal. Invited guests TBD will visit class to offer external feedback. IN CLASS 5/3/23

Week ending May 12

    • Public project launch at the GC Digital Showcase, 5/10/23  Segal Theatre

Blog 1: 1st of many

Great start for a semester-long project!

Let me just express gratitude for the DH curriculum in GC. It is so practical, open!

With a lot of enthusiasm, I signed up for this class, and last week I decided to be part of Kristy’s project. I am captivated by the community-driven approach that goes with my primary goal of joining DH, i.e., the storytelling of the unheard, the outliers. To me, a zine is a space for creative storytelling that has a lot of room to grow.

Now comes the brainstorming! We had a fruitful meeting during the weekend. I am amazed by Kristy’s passion and knowledge of zines. We talked about different aspects of the projects, such as different forms of storytelling, visualization, doing multimodal analysis of Zine, focusing on the final output from this endeavor, making the website community-facing, i.e., allowing people to submit Zine, considering GC as a community to begin our experiment, and so on and so forth. There was a lot we brought to the table. We eventually decided to start with the GC community, and we are currently in contact with GC librarian Alycia Sellie, who has extensive experience in the field and is enthusiastic about Zine.

Here’s my thought! There are some questions that must be addressed.

  1. Since Zine often has multimodal content, like a comic, can we interpret Zine to bring the creator’s story and emotions to light? We are still unsure whether we should ask for participants’ motivations behind their zine. We do not want to put a boundary on creative thinking.
  2. Can I do any computational analysis for Zine? 2D shape analysis may be
  3. How do I compress a zine during digitization to maintain maximum quality at the smallest possible size?
  4. Can I build a dataset of zines to train a convolutional neural network (CNN) to generate zines?
  5. What is the best visualization of zines?
  6. Can Turtle be used to draw digital zines with Python?

I would love to follow up!

Skills – Zico has to offer

Hi all!! It was great to see so many familiar faces after the break.

I am Zico, a DH practitioner by trait, a tech nerd by nature. Below are some of the qualities I have to offer.

Developer: I do a fair bit of programming whenever I can. Got rejected by DRI Summer Institute because the selection committee thinks that I am over qualified. I consider this as a recognition. Hey, at least somebody thinks I am good at programming!! This is probably my strongest suit i.e. learning programming languages and building projects. I use Python a lot because of its versatility and simplicity. Apart from that, I am interested in the web. Last semester, I designed websites using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This semester I am planning to level up and learn a JavaScript framework like React with a vision to break into the decentralized web. I have a growing number of Github repos. 

Project Manager: Although I lack experience, I typically manage my projects quite well. Managing resources, judging feasibility are some of the things I am good at. In addition, I am pretty good at maintaining deadlines. Being a developer myself, I am blessed with the ability to work closely with developers. This allows me to make time sensitive decisions. I am looking forward to leveling up my communication skills as a project manager with the non tech people.

Designer/UX: I love minimal design concepts. I have not done any professional designs. However, I have used photoshop and after effects based on demand for my project.

Research: Although I suffer from laps of concentration, my management skills always save the day. Pretty good at finding data and resources based on requirements.

Outreach: Not a social media person. I suck at convincing people buying into my ideas. I am trying to improve in this regard.