Friday, February 11, 2005

 
Gainesville

Introducing Lil Suzy

In addition to Everquest and Everquest II, Bill has been playing an online game called City of Heroes. One of the characters he created is based on me-- he calls her "Lil Suzy". She is so gosh-darn cute, I love her, and I hear that in-game she kicks serious butt. (Everyone in the game is a superhero of some sort.) I'm going to use a screen shot of her as an "avatar" in a couple of online bulletin boards, including the one I'm creating for the library.

So, here is my attempt to display her here, via URL:

posted by Suzy 11:52 AM

Friday, January 09, 2004

 
I realize I never mentioned that I actually was awarded the sabbatical I applied for at the end of 2002, largely as a result of musings I did here in this blog. Seems only fair that now that the Sabb has officially started, I keep some record of its progress here. I've kept notes this week on each day in a Word document. For now, I'm just going to transcribe that here.

Sabbatical Journal

Day One (January 6, 2004)

Task: Take 15 minutes and reconoiter.

Went through files. Looking for most recent work. (Can it be August? Nah...) Much sorting needs to be done. Chaos.

Sub Task: Take another 15 and continue

I need paperclips! [purchased stripey ones!]
Found most recent stuff, Dated October 29. I had drafted an email to John Walsh with questions about CBML, and a sample of what I had done to convert my work to that format. However, the sample turned out to be incomplete and incompletely tested. I now need to find the online documents for my sample, and see what I need to do about completing it, so I can get this long overdue message to JW.

Sub Task: Look for online files (30 minutes)

HOME MACHINE:

Found: \My Documents\Sandman\MSN -- folder within called "DRAFT TWO" includes p. 1-22, most recent date September 19. All this is in the original ComicsML format. I thought I had put it all together at some point and run it through a parser, but can't find this yet.

Found: \desktop\short cuts\web development -- folder called "CBML" It contains another folder called "TEI" and also a draft of my questions to JW dated November 5. However, I have a more recent printed draft of an email containing the questions.
In same folder, a file named "xml version" dated 22 oct, that is my "sample-- but it only goes through page 1. (Have print of this dated 23 oct). Attached to the printed version is page 2 code, dated 29 oct.

Sub-Task: Search for more recent files on Outlook (30 minutes)

Moved "CBML" folder (above) to Sandman\MSN. Everything in one place now.

Found: in Outlook shortcut "Sandman" newer version of the "sample" file, named
msn-cb.xml, dated 29 Oct. This looks to be the one I had printed out. I coped that into a new folder within CBML called "From Outlook" so I wouldn't accidently clobber anything else of the same name. So.

Found: in Outlook Drafts: text of email to JW with my questions.

Okay! I think that finishes up the recon mission. It took about two hours in all. Not quite the original 15 minutes I had scheduled.

TASK: Parse the two page version of CBML sample (1 hour)

Note to self: the parsing of most of this file was already done on another version. It seems simpler now to just redo the parsing rather than try to match up the various parsed and unparsed versions.

Parsing complete. Copied parsed file (msn-cb.xml) to Sandman\MSN folder.

TASK: Edit the JW message (30 min)

Done. (Took 45 min).

Tomorrow: search for online copy of ComicsML version of MSN.

Day Two (January 7, 2004)

TASK: Find online copy of ComicxML version (15 min)

Done. Found it at: http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/staff/s-shaw/xml/sandman/msn.xml

TASK: Finalize email to JW and send it (15 min)

Done. Took 45 minutes-- discovered I don't have the correct pointer set up for my personal folders on NT2, and that setting up PF's is way different in Outlook XP. So I put that off, since I had a paper copy of JW's last message to me in August. I made an Outlook contact for him in Outlook. Now realize I'll have to check Outlook mail more frequently now. Too bad that with the advent of VPN, Outlook and OE (my atlantic account) will no longer play nice together.

TASK: Map out Project

Some things that need to be dealt with soon:
Bibliography. Software (EndNotes? ProCite?) Help from Jana
Annotations. (Online. Bender. Lanier. Collins.)
Other scholars (Neil?)
Problem of copyright text appearing online?

Trying to find Jana's email from July about online searching. Can't get access to my personal folders because of the snafus with network access, so can't get to that. AAArrrggghhh! This means I'll have to go into work, plug my computer in, download a zillion patches, access my PF's and try to move stuff I'll need into a new sabbatical folder.
I've wasted 45 minutes on this so far.

Ah. I did turn up a hand written "SANDMAN MSN Plan". I transcribe:

background & action [done]
notes
page layouts * size?
page header banners [done]
xml header - join pages [done]
parse for well-formed [done]
make DTD [obviated by using CBML]
validate against DTD
make style sheet
see how it looks
construct queries
decide how/who writes code
*** CODE ***
test code

[issues to address]
* off-panel text
* on-panel, silent [solved in CBML]
verify [Shakespeare] line numbers - choose version

Strange little list. But it's pretty obvious that what I need to tackle next is the notes thing. Although choosing an authoritative edition of MSN for line numbers might not be a bad idea either.

Of course, I chose the latter: I wrote an email to Sid Homan of the English Dept. which took about 30 minutes. Rest of the time was spent thrashing around looking for the online xml version of MSN. No luck. Found my printout of it, but it has no page numbers anyway.

Reply from Homan:
I'd use the Houghton Mifflin Shakespeare, general editor Gwynne Evans.
Susinct, to the point!

Day Three (January 8, 2004)

TASK: Identify and locate "Houghton Mifflin Shakespeare" (15 min)

Proved harder than I expect, more like 45 minutes. Research on amazon id'ed it as The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. by G. Blackmore Evans. Bibliographically tricksy! I filled out a retrieval request form, my first. We'll see how well THAT works out.

TASK: Bibliography set up/find Jana's email (30 min) ON HOLD

Which means, get personal folders set up. Which means a working shortcut to NT2R
Nope. No luck. The shortcut is demanding a login/password, and when I try to use suzshaw, it comes back with PUPPY/suzshaw as the login name, and refuses my password.

TASK: Start work on Notes

Sub-Task: Find a copy of MSN online annotations (15 min)

Done

Worked for rest of time on Notes, mostly from Bender. Started three documents: General Notes, Notes on Characters and Notes on Panels. Trying to identify book Gaiman cites as a source about "Shakespeare as an Actor." Neither of two I found seems right. Have a Kipling/fairies thing to find. Did find W.S. Gilbert source of the "pork pie" joke.

Worked an extra hour today. Put in retrieval requests for two Kipling collections of short stories for children, Puck of Pook Hill and Rewards and Fairies, both written while he lived in Sussex, and probably one is the source of the "fairies abandoned the cities" citation.

Also found some web info online about the Long Man of Wilmington, and located Sussex on a map on England.

Day Four (January 9, 2004)

Late start today; slept late, then had to catch up on some of yesterday's FL tasks.

Let's continue with the notes. (Bill will pick up the books I had paged yesterday: the Riverside Shakespeare and the two Kipling fairy tale books.

TASK: Continue work on notes

Which is what I did for the whole four hours. I did take a side track to look for a poem by Ben Jonson about Robin Goodfellow (found on Google), looked him up in the Encycl of Lit, and then remembered that Ben Jonson appears as a character in The Tempest. I reread the Tempest, and then Bender's annotations of it. I should probably think in terms of "the Shakespeare Trilogy" and work on that story next-- or at least start complining a list of characters for it.

posted by Suzy 10:47 PM

Friday, May 02, 2003

 
And here it is, some seven months later... that miserable Two Flies (now expanded to Four Flies) ate this blog for breakfast! Very sad, since some of the most interesting ideas I've had in a long time were getting stockpiled here. It seems I might only have the energy for one blog. I try to limit that one, which I share with my mother and my sister, Sandy, to things FlyLady plus cooking and lately, the memory blurbs, and I barely find time to do that daily, usually late at night. But it's surprising how much of my life IS taken up by those quotidienne things. I need a little more balance in my life.

What prompted me to return here was something that simply did not fit into FF: a musing on Neil's blog this morning about blogging itself; seems William Gibson thinks blogging is "incompatible" with the process of writing a novel, which got N to wondering about it. As he did so (in his unfailingly cheerful and charming way), I felt the world go slightly darker, like that scene in Bab5 "Signs and Portents" where Delenn first meets Morden and the triangle appears on her forehead: the world suddenly grew slightly darker, as if the color were draining out of it. And I'll bet I'm not the only one who felt that way-- he's going to be deluged with teary testimonials begging him to continue. I imagine he will-- he's been at it for over two years, and has written a shitload of stuff of all kinds since then. But still, it is troubling to realize how addicted I've become to reading his thoughts on a daily basis. Blogging may be the most significant thing that's happened on the Net since the web. I'm sure I only scratch the surface of it here, as I'm not part of any network and don't provide any method of feedback or dialog. And I still don't understand RSS.
posted by Suzy 8:29 AM

Monday, September 23, 2002

 
Happy birthday, Brucey, baby. You are 53. In the old days, I would celebrate with hot dogs and Twinkies, but who knows what you eat now?

Tonight I had the most amazing email message from KB. He sent me lyrics to a song he just wrote, saying that I am "walking in this poem." Oh my. He is undoubtedly the most talented musician I've ever known personally, and such a gentle, etherial soul. And yet another sign that I need to make contact with MS.
posted by Suzy 11:06 PM

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

 
So today I have voicemail from my boss saying she was wrong, the sabbatical deadline HASN"T passed. So looks like I will be submitting it after all. And after I'd pretty much divorced myself from it emotionally. It's going to be hard to ramp up the enthusiasm again. I need to break it down into tasks. It occurred to me this morning that I am headed down a path with has ruined projects in the past: getting carried away with data gathering and the expense of making a small chunk of it actually work. I need to get at least a small demo of the thing working as a proof of concept. And it is going to be hard.

This morning when we arrived on campus, the carillon was bonging ver-r-r-r-ry slowly-- about one bong every 20 seconds. Had been doing that since 8:46 AM. It really affected me. It brought back the feelings of last year so vividly. I was surprised that there was such an emotional wallop still locked in there. I can hear the carillon perfectly from my office, so it just went on and on. It was a relief when it finally stopped at around 10:30 so I could concentrate on work.
posted by Suzy 12:20 PM

Tuesday, September 10, 2002

 
Poor Swamp Oriole. You are suffering from sibling rivalry with my other blog (which shall remain nameless here, for now). And I'm afraid I've let the sabbatical deadline fiasco dampen my enthusiasm for the project. I haven't heard anything more about the Eisner Symposium for next year, which I could use as a deadline if I were sure it was going to happen. And then today, I found something on the web with a whole lot of disjointed Sandman information that needs to be taken into account, but which will be very hard to pin down. This was in one of Neil's FAQ;s. If I were smart, I'd put the URL here so I could find it again easily. But I'm feeling rather dim at the moment.

posted by Suzy 10:05 PM

Friday, September 06, 2002

 
Today is the 24th anniversary of the first time I saw Bruce live-- the Uptown Theater in Chicago. The 6th row (thanks to Wayne and Bob W). A momentous turning point in my life, if there ever was one. I believe that my life was saved by rock & roll in general and Bruce Springsteen in particular, and the saving of it (which began when I heard "Badlands" on Radio Luxemburg while in Reykjavik that summer) really took place that night, when I heard a shout from a darkened stage: "Well have ya heard the news..."
posted by Suzy 1:41 PM