So tomorrow I am off to Cyprus. I have been running around for the last few days tying up loose ends, such as graduation ceremonies, entering grades, and buying personal supplies. The final few days snuck up on me and I can't find a few things I need. That's what I get for procrastinating. Anyway, since I leave early tomorrow for Philadelphia I won't post a new blog until probably Wednesday or Thursday of this week. So check back in a few days.
RSM
The countdown to my leaving for Cyprus stands at 5 days. I realized today that I need to work hard if I am going to be ready to leave next Tuesday. This morning I talked to Bill on the phone, called David, and then met my students to divide up supplies. Fortunately this year, between my students and David's students, we have 7 students who can help carry supplies to Cyprus. I then had lunch with a colleague who is coming to Cyprus for a week to visit family and checkout our project. This afternoon I spent some time scanning in stuff I will need in Cyprus and tonite I worked on logistics. The week before leaving for Cyprus is always so busy and then the first few days in Cyprus (before everybody arrives) seem to be very calm.
On the Second Life front, a few minor things to report. First, I was given an IUP Senate grant to facilitate the construction of ancient Greek and Roman buildings on Archaeology Island. Second, Archaeology Island is nearing completion and should be open to the public soon. Finally, there was an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education's The Wired Campus that addresses Second Life - "Co-Founder of Second Life Says Academics Are Biggest Trailblazers in Virtual Worlds."
RSM
Sorry for missing yesterday, but the days are getting more and more packed between graduation upcoming and gathering up my supplies for Cyprus. I am always paranoid that I will forget something crucial. Today I practiced with the 3D scanner and finally decided to bring it to Cyprus for a tryout. I came to this decision because I have an undergraduate anthropology student who agreed to haul it to Cyprus for me, and I am going to bring an extra laptop for running it so that we can have a separate GIS laptop. I also talked to a former PKAP student who is now working on her MA in Geography at IUP. She has a project that she would like us to gather data for this summer, so we spent some time talking about where she wanted the data collected from. She is interested in line of sight and from how far away structures on Vigla would have been visible.
As a non-Twitter user, I keep finding lots of mentions of Twitter in the news. The Chronicle of Higher Education's The Wired Campus has another article about it - "Twittering During a Campus Lockdown." I guess I ought to join. So.....I actually just took a minute and joined. Now I need to find some friends on Twitter and that may be the hard thing for me, due to a lack of friends and technologically savvy ones at that.
RSM
Well, my departure for Cyprus is now only 8 days away. I managed to finish up the PKAP supply list today by buying plumb bobs at Lowes. This turned out to be harder than I thought since the first 3 employees I talked to did not know what a plumb bob was. My next step is to divide up the supplies I have among the 4 IUP students going to Cyprus with me so that I only have to worry about the GIS equipment which is bulky and unwieldy.
I read a very interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education's The Wired Campus about a paper which takes the position that using current leisure activities, such as iPods and online discussions, actually corrupts the learning process. The article, "Learning to Leisure? Failure, Flame, Blame, Shame, Homophobia and Other Everyday Practices in Online Education" by Juliet Eve and Tara Brabazon, appeared in the Journal of Literacy and Technology's April 2008 volume. It was interesting to read since so many people are eagerly adopting new technologies as soon as they appear. The article, I believe, goes a bit too far in its conclusions.
RSM
I spent some time today tying up loose ends by grading some exams, finishing some paperwork, and straightening up my office. I also started getting my computers ready for travel to Cyprus. My laptop has had some minor issues and bugs. I have managed to fix most of these issues by running a few utilities and have also started clearing off hard drive space. Tomorrow I plan on checking for updates and installing a few new programs for GIS work. I am also going to practice some more with my GeoXH and Trimble Terrasync in the back yard, and work with manipulating the data. On Monday I will work on setting up my extra laptop as the project's laptop and make sure it works with the 3D scanner. I am starting to feel like I am running out of time before I leave.
Things I am now checking everyday when I log on:
Days before I leave for Cyprus: 11
Exchange Rate for Euro: $1.54 (a good downward trend)
High in Larnaka, Cyprus today: 75 Fahrenheit
RSM
As my day winds down, I am excited that I am going to finally going to get some breathing space for a few days. Today was my last very full day for awhile. I still need to buy a few more supplies, such as plum bobs, but the majority of the PKAP supplies have been ordered and received. Now that I have some unstructured time, I can finish up a few projects, such as scanning and photo organizing. I have also had some time to catch up on my leisure reading, including catching up on current Cypriot news. I knew that Cyprus was in a drought, but I did not realize exactly how bad it was until I read a Reuters article on it. Since they have started water rationing, this could make for a very interesting field season, and perhaps a very smelly one if we have to cut down on showers.
RSM
The final episode of Emerging Cypriot, PKAP's 2nd documentary, is now available for viewing on-line. This episode, "A Note about Survey," is the most unusual of all our archaeological shorts - it is the most light-hearted short, and serves to remind us that while we are doing research, we are also having fun. Some of this fun, was provided in musical format by a University of New Hampshire graduate student Brice Pierce. (For more about Brice and his band Drake's Folly, check out their Myspace page). Brice was an IUP undergraduate, and a student in one of my very first classes at IUP.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in this project, some more willingly than others. This project was made possible through the generous financial support of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Dakota's Office of University Relations. Special thanks needs to go to Joe Patrow of PatrowVisual, the creative mind that designed and shot this project, and Dr. Bill Caraher, the driving force behind this archaeological documentary.
RSM
Today was a day devoted to GIS/GPS. I started my day with a phone conversation with Bill about our GIS plans for the summer. We made some decisions about computer and software needs. Our biggest decision (in my mind) was that we will go with Terrasync instead of ArcPAd for our Geo XH handheld. This afternoon I went with a colleague in Anthropology down to Blairsville and used the R8 to take GPS readings on her summer field school site. While she practiced with the R8 I tried to take points with the Geo XH in Terrasync. I quickly learned one valuable lesson, it is not like ArcPad and I will have to take some time and read the manual for it. I hate doing that, I always feel that I should be able to pick up a program without much work, but I can't afford to make mistakes with our data, so off to the manual I go.
RSM
Sorry for the break in posting, but the end of the semester is always a very busy time. The end of the spring semester also signals for me a change from IUP focus to PKAP focus. My committees are finished meeting for the year and, other than massive amounts of grading, there are only a few administrative things to take care of. PKAP, on the other hand, takes up more of my time each day. Take today for example.
So, as you can see lots of small PKAP issues are cropping up, and it is my signal that I leave for Cyprus in only 2 weeks - the summer field season is almost here.
RSM
I have been putting off ordering the majority of the PKAP supplies until we finalized our list and some of my funds came through. Well, this happened yesterday so for the last 24 hours I have been ordering, ordering, ordering. It is at a time like this that my appreciation for the Internet grows. I have been able to find practically everything we need on-line, and usually I can even comparison shop - except for some of the more specialized items. A procrastinator like myself would have been in trouble without the ability to complete my shopping on-line in the late hours of the night. The only drawback to this is that to order these items on-line I have to create an account with a password and email address. My amount of incoming spam will grow exponentially over the next few weeks due to this spending binge, this happens every summer after I order supplies. The problem is that I don't use my primary email for these accounts and often forget to check on the other email account for weeks, resulting in exploding email inboxes. I am down to my last items which are requiring some searching to find, so that will be my primary task tomorrow between student conferences.
RSM
