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Katrin Hieroglyphs.
23. Februar 2024
Yes, that would sort of fit that aspect - but you can also go from bits of woods to sticks if you ar...
Bruce Hieroglyphs.
23. Februar 2024
I think the closest English equivalent would be 'Down the rabbit hole'. It has one entrance (No, not...
Harma Spring is Coming.
20. Februar 2024
I'm definitely jealous! Mine disapeared except for one pathetic little flower. But the first daffodi...
Gudrun Rallies All Over Germany.
23. Januar 2024
Vielen Dank für den Beitrag. Ja, wir müssen darüber reden, gegen das Vergessen. Zum Glück haben mein...
Anne Decker Aargh.
17. Januar 2024
This is less likely to have an effect on your personal samples as you likely wrap the same way for a...
FEB.
27
0

The Joys of Co-Authorship.

A good while ago by now (I can't believe how time flies!), Gillian Polack and I co-wrote "The Middle Ages Unlocked". A few days ago, we got asked if we'd contribute to an article about co-writing at Artshub, an Australian website, and of course we said yes. There were a few questions to answer, and it was lovely to re-visit, in my mind and memory, those wild and fun times writing the book together with Gillian. 

The finished article is now up at Artshub, and you can read it here. I really enjoyed it - it's a very good one, and if you are thinking about co-writing something with somebody, you will definitely find some interesting advice in there (even if I say so myself...)

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DEZ.
16
0

Slowing Down.

The year is winding down, and while there's a list of things still to do before 2022 ends, there's only one larger and hard-deadlined item left on the list, with a "finish before winter break" tag on it. That is a really, really nice thing... and I very much enjoy the feeling of winding down and slowing down a bit too.

The one item? I have (not too foolishly, I hope) agreed to write a little article about tablet weaving. It's actually two, but one is finished, and there's only one left to do... so I've made some photos, and something vaguely resembling a plan, and there's an outline, and hopefully there's an article soon.

The really fascinating thing about this is that every time I look at the topic, there's another little aspect that I can see. Especially when I try to explain something, or describe something. This sharpens the eye in a way that nothing else does. There's a German idiom that more or less says "you learn when you teach", and that is really true. (Well, provided that when you teach, you try to explain things so that the audience understands them, and not just teach the motions and rules to be learned by heart and followed... because then, you will learn nothing.)

For the tablet weavers among you: The two middle images show the same setup and were woven the same way - only on top, the tablets are threaded alternatingly s and z, and on the bottom, all are threaded the same way. Like all of you, I know that the s and z are important and will change how the black and white line up. But I still find it amazing how much the alternate threading changes the line-up and the optical impression of the band. 

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DEZ.
08
1

Blogiversary!

It's hard to believe, but it's blogiversary day again. And, even harder to believe, I am actually remembering to write about it on the very day itself!

Back when I started this, in 2008, I started out writing on the blogspot platform, and stayed there until 2015 - which was when I made a new website on Joomla, pulling everything together in one spot. 

There's been a lot of writing over the years, and there's been a lot of years since 2008. This blog is turning 14 today. FOURTEEN. Please excuse me while I am not believing this for a while. 

I've tried to find out how long the average lifespan of a blog is, and it seems to be somewhere around 3-4 years, but that's from an older blogpost... somewhere. Anyway, I think everything over ten years makes any blog some kind of dinosaur. In a similar line of thought, these days, I sometimes feel like I'm very old-fashioned, still doing a blog, while so many others have switched to (mostly) Instagram, or are on tictoc (I am so old I haven't even visited that yet), or somewhere that I haven't even heard of. While I'm also on Instagram, the blog is still my main thing. It's easier to search through the old entries than Instagram is, and for the instances that I feel like writing a lot, it's better suited to that.

Though admittedly, a lot of the entries are short, and sometimes it feels like I've written about everything at least once. From time to time, that means I sort of run out of steam, and wonder about whether I should stop or not - but then there's this link or that interesting article or something I feel like I need to rant about, and on it goes.

And then, from time to time, I get an utterly nice email telling me that someone stumbled across this blog, and found so many interesting things there... which always makes my day, and is the best reason for me to carry on a while longer. So there we go.


Blogiversary! Coffee and chocolate for celebration!  

1
FEB.
15
2

Ouch. Open Access, yes, but...

I had originally planned to share a Call for Submissions with you here today - for a special issue of a magazine about digital cultural heritage.

Information about this came to me via an e-mail, and so I clicked the link for the "learn more" (even though the mail seemed to have listed everything), and then I scrolled down a bit, and then I found this small note about the APC. That's the "article processing fee". Which, in that case, is the utter pittance of approximately, converted, 1550 Euro.

Ouch.

So. Here's what I think: I'm all for open access and free access to knowledge, research, and research articles. I also know that there's some things that can be done for free, and some things that can't be done for free. I do firmly believe that if someone is spending their workdays doing work, the money that comes out of said work should be enough to live on. So yes, paying for work done on editing, layouting, and (if it's a physical thing) printing and the paper - that is something that has to happen.

However... a lot of the academic journals will ask a really hefty price for reading them, which in a lot of cases can (or will) only be paid by institutions. If I'm charged 30+ € for a 30-year-old article (to download the pdf, mind you, not a physical copy) my understanding of the pricing is somewhat challenged. I would have more understanding if I knew that the paper authors and the peer reviewers would actually see some of that money... but nope. Academic articles, and academic review work, is entirely unpaid.

Some journals have started to offer Open Access publishing in the past few years. The money, in those cases, is then asked from the authors of the papers - called "open access fee" or "article processing fee" or something along those lines. Yes, there are costs to publishing, even if it's only online and there are no printing costs... but really? I'm not able, nor willing, to pay more than a thousand Euros to publish an article.

There's so much public money wasted on so many stupid things. Sigh. Some of it would be well spent on making research more accessible to everyone...
0
MAI
27
1

Peer Reviews.

Once upon a time, I gave a presentation about spinning at a conference, and now that presentation is being turned into an article. A peer-reviewed one... and I'm currently working on the peer's comments and input.

If you're not familiar with this process of peer-reviewed publishing, let me give you the quick rundown. You hand in your paper, the editor reads it and comments on it (though that stage is optional), and sometimes you're then asked to change/expand/amend things. After that, the draft is handed on to one or more reviewers; they usually get a list of questions to help them evaluate the paper, and to help the editor(s) evaluate the peers' feedback. Those questions usually include things like "Is the paper well-structured?" and "Does the paper add to scientific discourse on the topic?". Once the reviewers have sent back their feedback forms and the paper itself with their comments and suggestions for changes in it, you'll get the whole load back from the editors, without any indication of who your peer reviewers are. Then it's up to you to go through the feedback forms and comments, and use them to make your paper better.

If you're lucky, you are getting solid, constructive feedback on your content, pointing out where things are still unclear, or where something is missing. A peer review can also show how different views on a single topic can be, depending on the individual and their area of specialisation, or their academic background. Archaeologists, for instance, will look at other things, or at the same things differently, than historians or art historians.

In any case, once you've tweaked and added and changed and wrote your replies to comments for the editor to read, you send your paper back again. Then you might hear back from the editor once more, if there are still some things to resolve; otherwise it will go into the process of typesetting. Then you will see it once more for the final proofread... and after that, it's finally all done.

The peer review process is not perfect, but it will definitely help make a paper better by pointing out things that you have missed as an author. Whenever I get the reviews back, though, it takes me a while to process them before I can really get to work on them... it's critique, after all, and that always tends to hurt a bit, no matter how well-deserved, well-meaning, and well-phrased it may be.

After that initial bit of deep breathing and letting it sit for a day or two (or three), though, I've always ended up with a paper I felt was better than before. And, hooray, I'm almost done with the current one!
0
OKT.
19
0

Proofs!

To my and Heather's great delight, we are in the very, very last stage of getting Ancient Textiles, Modern Science 2 all done and set - the last proofs have arrived, and it's only a matter of giving the book a very last read, catching the very last typos, before it's all good to go to print.

Yay! Getting this book done was a string of pitfalls and delays, due to all kinds of things - crashing computers and illnesses only being two of them. So I'm really happy to get this to a close, and consequently proof-reading is what I am doing now!

If you want to have a look at what the book will contain, it's already listed on the Oxbow website, and you can even pre-order at a special price!

 
0
JUNI
25
0

Things going on.

Things currently going on here: Writing, and researching, and reading.

I found that I've not done proper, longer research on a topic for quite a while, and it actually took me a bit to get back into it - especially back into the mindframe necessary. Also, there's reading and reading and not necessarily real results from what you are reading, as it might not have the information needed, or goes off on a tangent, or...

So just like making textiles takes time, and sometimes more than expected (or, well, usually), with a lot of the work in the preparation, the very same is true for researching things and writing articles. And just like making a textile, the prep work remains rather invisible for most people, even though it is crucial, and can be really, really time-consuming.

That all said, I'll return to my reading and writing and thinking, after sharing with you my bonus insight for the day:

If you are parceling out wool and take out stray bits of vegetable matter and put those bits right next to your coffee cup, one of them might end up inside it, making for a nice little wake-me-up spike of adrenaline when it tickles your tongue. I cannot recommend this as a coffee enhancer, though.
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