Graduation

Thursday, May 28, 2009 – 7:05 PM
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I suppose I should probably write something here to mark my graduation from Cornell, but since it’s still so fresh in my mind and there’s still so much going on around me I really haven’t found time to sit back and let it all sink in just yet. Instead I’ll just post a slideshow of photos from the weekend:

I leave for Madrid in 6 days so my life is pretty much consumed with getting everything in order for that and my move out to San Francisco in August at the moment. Hopefully I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks other than “I’m going to miss the place, but I SURVIVED!!!”

Commonality

Sunday, May 10, 2009 – 11:08 PM
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This semester I’ve been working on an independent study project that can loosely be described as “impact and effectiveness of digitizing cultural heritage artifacts (namely photos) in creating a broader sense of culture, informedness, and community.” It’s taken many forms over the course of the last few months as I tried to figure out exactly what I wanted to tackle and what I could feasibly accomplish in one semester.

It came in baby steps. I knew I wanted to do something with the Flickr Commons so the first thing I did was write a few scripts that would pull a bunch of data via the Flickr API and stick it into a database that I could hopefully do something useful with. A few days and a lot of queries later I had a solid database of just about 19,500 photos, over 40,000 unique tags, and nearly 210,000 tag instances. I haven’t worked with that much data before and it was certainly intimidating!

We all know that I’m not a huge fan of having to code anything. And that part was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as narrowing down this giant concept into a few research questions and then devising a way to actually go about testing them. I read everything I could find on the topic in hopes of finding something that piqued my interest yet was specific enough to turn into an actual project - still no luck.

After meeting with Evan Earle, a masters student here who, it turns out, is also working on a project involving digitizing archived photos, specifically with the Cornell University Library (he showed me a bunch of photos from the archives and Ezra Cornell’s wedding socks. Yes, his wedding socks) I walked a way with a bit more direction and a few ideas for things that I wanted to test.

commonality

A few nights of coding away until 5AM and I had it: commonality. The system is intentionally vague to avoid priming and bias and all of that fun stuff, but it’s essentially a data collection tool that will hopefully help me to prove (or at least better understand) my hypothesis about tagging these types of images.

commonality photo page

The system is pretty straightforward and I like to think that I picked a decent selection of photos that will keep people interested as they tag. It takes about 10 minutes to complete depending on how quickly you click and how thorough you are in filling out the survey afterwards. Have 10 minutes? Give it a shot!

There’s still a lot to do: I need to collect as much data as I can (read: get as many people to use the system as I can) and then I need to actually analyze the data and write a paper about it, but I’m already really happy with having managed to complete this much! Depending on my level of senioritis after finishing the paper I might post it here, or I might just go out and celebrate having finished college. Whichever.

Two finals, this project, and five days to go!
(please please please go try out commonality!)

Almost There

Friday, April 17, 2009 – 4:14 PM
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37 days until graduation.
48 days until I fly to Madrid.

Getting down to the very end.

Most of my time these days is spent enjoying what I can of Ithaca before it’s too late. I’ve been out taking photos, just walking around campus, hanging out with friends, and I suppose doing some actual school work too. Actually I lie. Most of my time is spent working on the finer details of my summer adventure. I’ve been blogging pretty consistently at Notes from Abroad a domain that I’d forgotten I’d bought until recently when I was trying to decide what to do about blogging while I’m gone.

I ordered my plane tickets this week and have been doing a lot of logistics type things - looking for a backpack, figuring out what to do about a laptop, finding some decent shoes (I think I’ve decided on the obvious: tevas) and stuff like that. I suppose I should start to decide about my Eurail pass soon…

We’re down to the last few weeks of actual classes here at school. Apart from the weather getting better, it really doesn’t feel like the end of the year (I say this every year). This year every once in a while I realize that not only is it the end of my school year, but it’s the end of my schooling. Period. (Yes, grad school is always an option…). I’ve been in denial for the most part, but have been using the trip and virtual apartment hunting on craigslist to keep my mind on the light at the end of the tunnel. There was one place that I really loved but it was a bit pricey and I would really like to see it in person.

It’s crazy to me that only a few months ago my major concerns were the paper I had due the next week or some sort of Sun-related and now they’ve morphed into things like traveling for 2 months by myself, finding an apartment and moving across the country. Things have gotten a lot more “grown up” around here. It’s about time, too. I’m ready for college to come to an end. I feel like I’ve already moved on, but I’m just here going through the motions so that they’ll hand me my diploma. I’m not exactly ready to part ways with the friends I’ve made and all that, but it’s time for the next chapter.

One month and one week to go!