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!

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.

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.

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!