Presentation Review – Alex Roibas

Alex’s project documents the historical progression of the guitar as well as associations shared between specific guitar models and musicians. The project is accessible to the public through a website, which uses a number of pages to chronologically separate guitars. Each page heading is labelled to identify the identity of that era, i.e. the 1950’s-1964 are labelled “Rise of Rock”.

    The site is very well done for a variety of reasons. When you are first brought to the home page there is a simple explanation of what inspired it and what the site hopes to accomplish. Also, it is very easy to navigate. The sites simplistic layout makes it such that a less than average user would not be intimidated or have any issue with exploring its content. The styling is nice and there is a uniform consistency to formatting which makes its presentation seem more professional. Alex states on the home page that he hopes the site will inspire others to learn the guitar. I think that his use of historical moments and historical icons of the guitar in the sites content was an effective way to accomplish this goal. 

    Although I did enjoy the textual content of the website, I did feel this is an area which could use some bolstering. Although the historical moments were great for the sites mission, I felt as a user that Alex’s site had piqued my interest and now I had even more questions. I would like to see some more information on the guitar models, specifically, what defined their specific appeal. Throughout the presentation it was repeated that it was focusing on big moments in musical history and guitar models; not the specific used by the musician in the historical moment. This had me asking the question, why? What separated the Fender Stratocaster from the Rickenbaker 235? What defined their appeal? As a person with limited knowledge of the history of guitars, I found the site in some ways bred these questions.

    All in all it is a very good site. It’s easy to navigate, clean, professional, and has lots of interesting content on the history of the guitar. Alex mentioned during his presentation that he had an interest in eventually including sections on the bass and drums, and I think that’s a great idea. 

Still Moving Along – Improvements to be made

    Once I had completed my data models last week for each lockout, I ran them through geocommons to get a better idea of what they’d look like when the site was up and running. I ran into one issue: My data appeared in a far too uniform fashion. That is to say, regardless of salary, country of origin, etc. my plotted points appeared as little more than blue pins. This made identifying trends very difficult.

After reading through the geocommons user guide to get a better understanding of how to customize the various aspects of my data, I decided that the easiest way to differentiate my data and thus improve its ability to be analyzed was to revisit the drawing board with how I constructed my maps.

After some frustration attempting to work within the geocommons parameters with which I have become quite comfortable, I decided to get creative. Essentially, I broke my data sets down once more into separate files as dictated by the player’s country of origin. This allowed me to layer my map and individually style players based on where they came from. This also allows me to control which layers of my map I would like my audience to focus on. That being, rather than simply provide an image with statistics written below explaining what percentage of those plotted points are from which country, it is now fully distinguishable to the naked eye. Although this was a time consuming process, I feel it is going to be a tremendous improvement to the clarity of my project.

    I have also decided that as a little piece for interaction with my audience, once my maps and data have been publicized through geocommons, a link to that more interactive map will be provided. Although it is disappointing that one can only access this material by having a geocommons account (Finger’s crossed my audience members sign up), the hope is that by making the data public, individuals who would like to see the impact another factor I had not discussed had on player travel patterns. They would simply be able to add it to the data I have publicized and regenerate the map I had initially published. 

 

 

    

The Final Stretch

This past week was very, very stressful. After completing my data sets and beginning to focus on the format of my project, specifically how it will be presented to the public, I found myself with more questions than answers. I decided to go see Professor Ross last week for some help, and it was a tremendous aid to the direction of my project. I have now decided to scrap the idea of building an entire website from scratch using the University provided web space, and will instead be uploading my material to a public blog site, just like this one.

    The major issue I had encountered was how I would effectively communicate the data in my GIS model, given that I had built my model in geocommons and was having a difficult time getting the map embedded. Then Professor Ross introduced me to an amazing piece of software online that Vince had discovered while attempting to resolve the same issue for his project. Essentially, the program allows you to screen-shot videos on your computer screen and create voice-overs throughout them. I feel as though this will hugely simplify things for me, as well as improve the manner in which I’m attempting to communicate my findings.

Came across a couple more issues last week with my data. Unfortunately, hockeydb.com was not able to provide me with all the information I required (Specifically player salaries), and so I had to begin barking up other trees. I have been using capgeek.com and hockeyzoneplus.com together, as at times one or the other is missing financial information on a given player for a given year. I emailed both sites on Thursday of last week without response. However, I have read through the Terms of Use and do not feel as though my project will violate any of their expectations of me as a user.

Time to get back to prepping my blog, incorporating my maps and improving the context in which my data can be interpreted.

Talk again soon. 

Moving Forward with My Project

    Last week I did not accomplish everything I set out to do, so I’m hoping to complete some of those tasks this week. Specifically, I want to clean up my blog a bit. 

    This week I need to do a little more tweaking to my data set. As I poured over my data last week, I began to realize I may have forgotten a detail in my data. This is because I came to the realization that my map might be more useful if it were to accurately reflects dates of movement by each player. For the purposes of my map, this would obviously improve the portrayal of data and information that would be plainly visible to the naked eye, such as months which saw accelerated player relocation during the lockouts. Obviously this is something that I can manage so long as I am able to find dates of contract signings, which might prove difficult. I have been searching through NHL.com which has a great deal of information, however I am unsure if it will possess information such as this on less popular players. There have been other sources which have offered some details, however at times this has been spotty. Luckily, as has been the case through much of this project, some of the players did not relocate at all during the lockout which spares me the task of seeking out the same kinds of information on them. s

    The learning curve for this project and class has been extremely slow, however I am becoming only more and more optimistic as time presses forward. Having selected a topic which truly interests me was definitely a lifesaver, at times this project has proved to be very monotonous and time consuming with little progress. However, at other times everything seems to go very smooth. This seemingly constant battle has been very frustrating, but at the same time I feel I’ve learned a great deal more through the process than I knew previously about IT and the field of digital humanities.

Copyright Developments

    As I have previously blogged about, I recently ran into some trouble regarding copyrighting data, specifically with reference to Mr. Ralph Slate and his online hockey database site. Mr. Slates concerns regarding my initial project idea were fair and understandable. His greatest concern being that the creation of my site may hinder his online traffic. 

    After carefully modifying my project in such a way that I accomplished two things, 1) I wanted to salvage as much of my already mapped data as possible and 2) I had to tweak my site to destroy any possible competition it may have created with hockeydb.com.

    As mentioned last week I have changed my project to more so encompass travel patterns for players during the lockouts of 2004-05 and 2012-2013. I was very excited because I thought I had accomplished what I set out to do.

    I emailed Mr. Slate regarding my project changes and he responded that he is no longer concerned by my project idea and that I may use his site as a data reference. This access does however come with two stipulations. The first is that all data borrowed must be properly accredited as having came from hockeydb (In such instances). The second is that I not use any program which can automatically skim data from his site. I believe his concern may be that too much data be borrowed from his site, however this is no concern of mine as I have reduced my relevent data to two seasons of NHL hockey and had already begun mapping and transferring this data manually.

    This weekend I have continued to work on my project and build my site. I’m becoming more excited as the conclusion of the semester draws near, as I can’t wait to see my finished product.

    This upcoming week should be much of the same. I also have some plans to do a little blog sprucing, as I’m beginning to feel it looks a little drab. Time for an update? We’ll see.

Project Development: Eureka!

I believe I may have had the breakthrough I was looking for with my project. I am very relieved, as this has been extremely stressful throughout this semester, and I finally feel as though I possess an idea that accomplishes everything I wanted to: Uses GIS, encorporates hockey, effectively illustrates an idea, and makes my data set perfectly manageable.

To this point I had considered several different ideas all relating to hockey. I considered doing a project similar to Vince’s illustrating player origin. That had since evolved into an idea which plotted those players as well as their journeys throughout their careers, looking at trade deadlines and player impact on new teams. This was going to be a tremendous amount of data and was something that had been plaguing my nerves.

I also had a personal qualm with that project idea: I had decided to cut off any data from my map before 1980, contending that this data would be far less useful to my project then the data from years after 1980, as player movement during that time was far less. I like to be able to justify, in a sound manner, reasons for why my projects relating to academia are crafted the way they are. I was not sure that I had achieved this with my 1980 cut-off, as even to me that seems somewhat arbitrary. My train of thought was that if I felt this way, and I was the project creator, I should likely try to address that.

Then I got an idea! 

I started thinking about what had happened in the hockey universe lately. Things like, who has been winning and losing? How have drafts affected team performance? Things like that. Then my brain said: Steve, you’re an idiot. Lockout. Duh.

Ofcourse! The lockout!

I have decided that what I will do is map the movement of each player who was in the NHL during the lockout. This will be similar to my original project idea, which saves me some of the work I’ve done, as well as the skills with GIS I’ve been slowly and painfully developping. 

Essentially, my map will consider things like players age and political climate when mapping player movement. Were younger players more likely play in Europe? Did governmental structure change appeal to players as indicated by the map? Did players select leagues by which paid the most money? I’m sure that I will bring this into greater focus as we draw nearer to the conclusion of the semester, but my excitement is buidling. This is primarily the result of having addressed what I felt were the most difficult obstacles standing in my academic path: Proving something and avoiding an arbitrary launching point. 

In other news, I continue to be in contact with hockeydb.com regarding the use of their database as the primary resource tool for my project. As mentioned during my presentation, the primary concern of hockeydb.com is that my site will be competitive with theirs, disturbing their traffic and business. I feel that this new information about the tweak I’ve made in my project will be to their relief, and secure their blessing. That is the next objective.

Presentation Review: Vince Fecteau

This week we began to present our project ideas and bring one another up to speed on where we’re at, and where we’re going. During this time, Vince presented his project idea, which combines GIS and hockey history. Vince’s project essentially consists of the construction of an Internet database of hockey players, mapping where they were born using GIS technology. 

     Vince also presented the data sheet which he will be using as the basis for his mapping. Thanks to help from Professor Ross (Collaboration), Vince is well equipped to successfully complete his map of hockey players, of which there are a resounding 6400. At the completion point of this project, Vince’s project should in some ways resemble something like this.

   The most difficult challenge I believe Vince will encounter is that of finding a way to make the map display or communicate something specific. The creation of a database, though difficult, is essentially the visual display of raw data, and the project is meant to prove something, similar to an academic paper. 

    I do not feel that this will be an insurmountable obstacle for Vince, as it is likely the deeper he delves into his research, the greater the likelihood of patterns emerging and being recognized. It seems very likely that time lapses of hockey players could illustrate the progressively international reach hockey has endured since the inception of professional hockey. 

For example, Vince could choose to combine his project with other data to illustrate relationships between the growth of hockey popularity in various countries with things such as economic expansion or political climate. 

All in all the project seems very interesting and it should be exciting to see the end product and how Vince geared the data. GIS is a very effective tool for data display such as this, and I feel Vince was very wise in selecting it as the format for his database.

Project Update

After a great deal of research, thought and consideration, I feel as though my project idea is beginning to gain clarity, at least with myself. This week I read a short article discussing the use of GIS technology for the purposes of studying sports. The article primarily focused on peripherals of sport, such as broadcasting patters, which fall somewhat outside of the intent of my project. My project is looking to concern itself far more with the actual sport aspect of hockey. That being, player statistics, game schedules, etc. However, as I read through the article I had somewhat of a eureka moment. 

    The article discusses using GIS as a tool for examining travel distances in game schedules, specifically how this dictates how broadcasters will determine rights and territories. I have other plans for this however. What I would like to do is map a season of NHL hockey for a given team. I want to document the journey of the season, with each stop identifying a game number and game statistics. My hope is that will create a catalogue of hockey information which can be referenced and examines for patterns and tendencies. 

For example, I have been considering taking the Toronto Maple Leafs. In order for this to produce any practical application, its likely that I will have to do multiple seasons; 10 seems like a nice round figure. The idea is that players have individual tendencies. I would like to use travel distance as a barometer for performance, and potentially a gauge for forecasting how a certain individual will likely perform in similar conditions. The primary factors I will consider will be the age of the player and other players, as well as statistical performance on a trend and total distance of the journey to each point. 

    Some of the findings I hope to see are things like declination of performance based on distance travelled and age. My theory is that players who are over 30 years old will show a less moderate deterioration in their effectiveness on the ice as say a 26 year old. 

    The biggest challenge I encountered this week as researched and pondered was redundancy. I do not want to simply make a project, or reformat information that’s ubiquitous online. I want my project to serve a practical application. Obviously, forecasting the performance of a player in an absolutely correct fashion is impossible. My hope is simply that my project can serve as a tool to illustrate some patterns, and from those make a reasonable prediction about how the games will go and who will perform best. 

I have been thinking all week about how to create this, and it seems that creating some kind of website, which incorporates GIS is the best avenue. Preferably this would be of the sort which people could contribute too, however this is simply another hurdle I must overcome. I have considered the amount of data I have saddled myself with, and although it is vast, I do not believe it will be overwhelming. I have kept in mind things such as shutouts, which will require zero data inputting depending on who was shutout, which should help me.

    I feel as though, with this project I have confronted my biggest fear which was redundancy. Differentiation is paramount on my checklist of project requirements, and that has been difficult to address considering the plethora of information, statistical databases and web sites covering and analyzing sports online.

My Digital Humanities Project: Getting down to Business

This week seems like the perfect time to really invest myself in the project work load. I’ve begun with some simple steps and am hopeful that as my project gets more in depth, my comfort level with the software should rise which should allow me to continue to improve it as the semester progresses to conclusion.

    Today I decided that simplifying my approach to the project may be the best way of having it gain traction as I move forward. I started with some very basic data, taking a few hockey players and plotting their addresses on google maps and attempting to connect their path of travel to their respective teams once they became pro’s, and where their amateur venues of play were. I am also attempting to find a way to incorperate year-by-year statistical progression into the project, however this is proving to be a challenging task and something I must overcome should the project not want to seem hollow.

Project ideas continued

Having continued to sort through the data that is NHL hockey players, hockey statistics, minor league affiliations, draft records etc i continue to find myself overwhelmed by the material available.

 

In turn I have made a few decisions. My project will either focus exclusively on players from Guelph, or the Guelph-Kitchener-Waterloo area as I feel this will provide me with enough data to illustrate the utility of my assignment while leaving myself with a manageable amount of data. I have also decided that my assignment will map out each players journey throughout hockey, from minor, to junior major/NCAA to professional. To feel that being able to see the journey each player has taken groom the area will create appreciation for just how long a task achieving the NHL dream is. From here I have some decisions to make. I would like the players journey to potentially incorporate statistics for each place they played to illustrate each players trajectory through their careers. Depending on how much data is available there is.

i have however been considering another approach using a similar project idea. I have considered doing essentially the same thing, however mapping the journeys and career trajectories of players from any given championship team. This would be very similar to my initial idea only illustrate the convergence of hard work in one year resulting in a Stanley cup.

Any thoughts on which framework I should pursue and why??