Abby Mullen

Author: abbymullen

  • Academic Hardcores and Academic Farbs

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    In the book Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz encounters Civil War re-enactors of varying levels of seriousness about their craft. They divide into two main categories: hardcores and farbs. The hardcores get into their roles as accurately as possible, even starving themselves so they look like haggard Confederate soldiers. They eat, drink, and breathe the…

  • Lessons from a Google Fusion Table Graph

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    Armed with new and improved service record data, last night I set out to create a new network graph in Gephi, to see whether just new data would help to mitigate some of last time’s problems. To be frank, Gephi beat me. My graph is so small, and my screen is so small, and the…

  • DigiWriMo Halftime Report

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    Today is November 15, the halfway mark in DigiWriMo/AcWriMo. It’s time to check in and see how my DigiWriMo goals are progressing. Here are the goals: 1. Write one officer bio every day for the first 17 days, taking off Sundays. I’m happy to report that I’m right on target. Today, I completed the last…

  • The Lessons of a Bad Network Graph

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    Spurred by our DH reading group at Northeastern, as well as my general tendency to jump into things before really knowing what I’m doing, I decided a few weeks ago to download Gephi and see what sort of rudimentary networks I could create. I’d been cataloging the service record of each of my Preble’s Boys…

  • Masks

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    Today is the second anniversary of my mom’s death from cancer. She fought it over the course of more than a decade using almost every weapon in the oncology arsenal.

  • WriMos

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    I remember the first time I heard the word(?) NaNoWriMo. First I thought: What in the world does that word(?) mean? It sounds a bit like an alien planet. Once I found out what it was, I thought: You people are insane. Write a novel in a month? That’s crazy. I still think NaNoWriMo is…

  • THATCamp New England Roundup

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    On Saturday, I went to THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) New England at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I’ve known of THATCamps for several years, but this was my first chance to actually attend one. I went to four sessions: Libraries, Archives, and Museums; Customizing Omeka; Doing Digital History with Non-Digital Sources (link to…

  • Omeka Development Plan

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    In their book Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig advocate that digital historians should have a well-defined plan for their websites before they start. So I thought I’d share my ideas about Preble’s Boys here, and perhaps get some feedback from others about the plan.  …

  • Curiouser and Curiouser

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    Today I installed WordPress on this site, my very own site, and made this blog. I also installed Omeka. Hooray!