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I recently got an iPad 2 and am still discovering all of the ways that I can make use of it. In addition to being a “bigger iPhone without the phone” (how I initially conceived of it), I’m discovering just how useful it can be for research.
I have been playing with a number of different note-taking and “productivity” apps, but so far my favourites are Evernote and Penultimate. Evernote is kind of tricky to describe because it is just so darn robust. Think of it as an updated, improved and digital version of that big notebook/day timer/coupon holder/place to shove a photo of your cat that many of us lugged around in the 1990s. In the few short weeks since I signed up for my Evernote account (which is free, although you can upgrade to premium for more features – something I did pretty quickly once I figured out just how fabulous this software is!) I’ve used it for taking notes, for “clipping” sections of webpages I need to refer to later, and for storing photographs and documents. I’m sure there are all kinds of other uses for this software that I haven’t yet discovered. Penultimate may be easier to describe, but it is no less awesome. Basically it allows you to handwrite notes on the iPad. You can use your finger, but I like the stylus that I picked up for $15. You can scribble, doodle and erase to your heart’s content on pages that look like an old-school notebook. Why not just use a notebook? Well, this way all your scribbles and doodles are all in one place and not as likely to get misplaced. You can share your scribbles and doodles via email or save them as photos.
I just discovered today that these photos of your notebook pages can, in turn, be inserted in to your Evernote notes. These two applications work amazingly well together and I can see them really changing how I approach research. Today, for instance, I was trying to summarize a Sherlock Holmes story, so I whipped out my handy-dandy stylus, opened up Penultimate and scribbled down a few thoughts. I then saved it as a photo and popped it in to a larger Evernote note that I had started on the broader project I’m working on. Seamless. Easy. No more scraps of paper to lose. Yay!
I’m looking forward to seeing how the built-in camera in the iPad 2 works for taking photographs of documents in archives. I’ve got a few research trips planned this summer so will be trying it out soon!
After many years and many rounds of revisions, my book has finally been published.
I can’t wait until this crazy end-of-term pace comes to an end and I actually have time to look at it!
Stay tuned for book launch news. (Did someone say party?! 
)
The Brock Review
Call for Papers: “Animals in Human Societies”
The Brock Review is seeking scholarly essays and creative pieces for an upcoming issue on the theme of “Animals in Human Societies.” This issue will focus on changing ideas about the use and treatment of animals in contemporary societies and the ethical, economic and political significance of animal rights. This issue will be co-edited by Dr. John Sorenson (Department of Sociology, Brock University), author of About Canada: Animal Rights and Ape.
Possible topics might include:
-Animal/human bonds and mutual aid
-Representations of animals
-Animal rights and social justice
-Veganism, abolitionism and the rise of “happy meat”
-Normalization of speciesism
-Animal rights and anarchism
The Brock Review is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University. Scholarly essays submitted to The Brock Review should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages in length. Essays should adhere to the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and include endnotes (where necessary) and a bibliography.
Manuscripts should be original works and should not be published (or under consideration for publication) in another format. Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal website by the 16th of July, 2010. Each submission must be accompanied by a 100 word abstract, and a brief biography of the author. It is the sole responsibility of the author to obtain any necessary copyright permissions for images accompanying an essay. If your essay is accepted for publication, you must provide copies of these permissions before your essay can be published.
Creative work (i.e.: paintings, photographs, poetry, short fiction or other types of work suitable to the online format of the journal) will also be considered for publication and should be submitted in an electronic format by the 16th of July, 2010. In the event that your submission is too large of a file to send submit online, CDs or DVDs can be sent to the address below. Creative work must be accompanied by a statement indicating the creator(s) of the piece have given consent to have it included in The Brock Review.
Dr. Keri Cronin
Editor, The Brock Review
c/o Department of Visual Arts
Brock University
500 Glenridge Ave.
St. Catharines, ON L2N 4C2
CANADA
keri.cronin@brocku.ca
Well, sabbatical hasn’t started off as I’d hoped. I got walloped by a nasty cold/flu thing this past week and spent 4 full days in bed. *blech* Much TLC, hot tea, and the occasional Chocolate MoMint biscuit have helped me beat it, so I’m back to work today.
Instead of spending any more time going down the rabbit hole of image permissions and copyright, I’m going to finish up the text portion of my manuscript and send it off. I’d like to finish it today. Then I can get back to dealing with the images. I love, love, love studying visual culture. I couldn’t imagine working in any other field. And yet, the frustration and stress around securing image copies and permissions, etc. is enough to make me lose my mind. I wish there were a straightforward checklist that one could use for this kind of activity, but it seems that every image I want to use (and those that my friends and colleagues seem to use too) is anything but “straightforward.” Ah well, it will be a learning experience I suppose.
In other news, I was delighted to see this article in the local paper today — I’d love it if St. Catharines became a hub for the GO train! Oh, and on the car-free front, I am not at all regretting my decision to “retire my ride.” I was a little worried about the hassle of cancelling my insurance — the last time I had to do that it was a royal pain in the neck and I got dinged several hundred dollars for “early cancellation.” It seems that this time I need not have worried. The good folks over at CAA have been super-duper helpful and, in fact, I received a refund cheque in the mail today. The only hitch is that I’m still waiting for my $300 from the “retire your ride” folks — it has been nearly 2 months since they picked up my car. I’m going to have to call and see what’s up.
Ok, time to get on with these final manuscript edits!
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Brock Review is seeking scholarly essays and creative pieces for an upcoming issue on the theme of “Communicative Lands, Community Landscapes.” This issue will focus on the perception, representation and phenomenology of landscapes as communicative devices and as centres of community. Submissions may focus on any historical era and/or geographical region. This issue will be co-edited by Dr. Katharine T. von Stackelberg (Department of Classics, Brock University).
Possible topics might include:
• political landscapes
• subjugated landscapes
• landscapes of subversion
• landscape and change
• storied landscapes
The Brock Review is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University. Scholarly essays submitted to The Brock Review should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages in length. Essays should adhere to the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and include endnotes (where necessary) and a bibliography. Manuscripts should be original works and should not be published (or under consideration for publication) in another format. Manuscripts should be submitted via the journal website (www.brocku.ca/brockreview) by the 14th of May, 2010. Each submission must be accompanied by a 100 word abstract, and a brief biography of the author.
It is the sole responsibility of the author to obtain any necessary copyright permissions for images accompanying an essay. If your essay is accepted for publication, you must provide copies of these permissions before your essay can be published.
Creative work (i.e.: paintings, photographs, poetry, short fiction or other types of work suitable to the online format of the journal) will also be subject to peer-review and should be submitted in an electronic format by the 14th of May, 2010. In the event that your submission is too large of a file to send submit online, CDs or DVDs can be sent to the address below. Creative work must be accompanied by a statement indicating the creator(s) of the piece have given consent to have it included in The Brock Review.
Dr. Keri Cronin
Editor, The Brock Review
c/o Department of Visual Arts
Brock University
500 Glenridge Ave.
St. Catharines, ON L2N 4C2
CANADA
Today marks day 1 of my sabbatical. Well, technically it kicked in on January 1st, but last week was all about recovering from the holidays, doing laundry, making soup for friends and family who are sick (and to help keep me healthy!) and other such projects. I am operating on the assumption that sabbatical really kicks off on the same day that the semester starts.
I am already in a bit of a panic about not get everything done that I want to get done over the next 6 months. And, yet, as I sit here this morning — sipping my 2nd cup of tea in a now empty house — I feel unsure as to where to begin. No meetings, no admin, no teaching, no grading, no course prep. It is just me and my research and writing for the next 6 months. This is what I’ve been waiting for, right? So why is it so daunting? Does everyone feel like this as they begin their sabbatical?
I begin my sabbatical with a bit of good news. The manuscript I have been working on for years (yes, THAT manuscript) has been accepted for publication. So, while my sabbatical is meant to help me get a jump on my new research project, first up on my “to do” list is finish up the final round of edits and deal with image permissions/copyright. Eeep! Wish me luck!
As I’ve blogged about before, I’m not all that big into making New Year’s Resolutions on and around January 1st. For me — and for many other academics I know — it is the start of the academic year that gets me thinking about what I would like to do differently, areas I can improve in, etc. The fresh start of a new school year always seems to me like a much better time to make these sort of grand plans than the snowy, cold days of early January do.
As I take stock at the end of the summer I am, for the first time in my academic career, pleased with the amount of work I did over the past 4 months. Did I get everything crossed off the very ambitious list I made back in May? No, but I got quite a bit of it done. I finished up a couple of very big, daunting tasks that have been hanging over my head for…oh…well, quite some time. I also got some new writing done and have reconnected with the research I’ve been wanting to work on for a while. I took a couple of vacation-style trips (camping and hiking! yay!), but didn’t travel extensively for research this summer. I stayed home and processed/worked on the research I’ve collected from places like the British Library and Library and Archives Canada over the past few summers. One of the things that was giving me a considerable amount of angst over the last few years was that I’d gathered all this great stuff but have not found time to really work with it. It was really great to get in to this material in a meaningful way this summer. I was chatting with a friend and colleague about this a few weeks ago, and she said that she thinks this is pretty standard. That you either have to commit to travel and visiting archives/research sites in a summer OR commit to writing and processing the research previously gathered.
At any rate, I’ve begun working through the material I collected over the past few summers and am starting to see the work I want to do on this subject come together in ways that continue to excite me. My resolution for this academic new year, then, is a simple one — to keep this momentum going through the fall term. In order to do that I know I need to protect my research days with as much vigour as I can possibly muster. Term started this week and I’m happy to report that I stubbornly clung to this plan in spite of the whirlwind of meetings and back-to-class activities that are taking place right now. Let’s see if I can make it last right through until my sabbatical begins in January!
-Last night I watched the first two episodes of CBC’s The Great Food Revolution. I hadn’t intended to watch it, but the TV stayed on after Jeopardy and it only took me a few minutes to get hooked. In two hours this show covered many interesting topics — cooking schools, celebrity chefs, how sushi became popular in North America and the “behind the scenes” processes that go into the development of President’s Choice products. (and, yes, I’ll admit I’m a bit of a slave to the PC brand). Anyhow, this was a very interesting 2 hours of TV-watching and I’m looking forward to the remaining two episodes.
-I have finished the latest round of edits on a major research project that I’ve been working on for many, many years. I packaged it up and sent it off this morning. I’m still thinking of ways to celebrate the occasion. Suggestions welcome.
-I am supposed to be getting a new hot water tank today. Why does this fill me with dread? I think I’ve convinced myself that it will be more complicated that it is supposed to be. This aspect of home ownership (the upgrades and renovations that I can’t possibly fathom doing myself) freaks me out. Still, I want to avoid the situation that happened in the last rental house I lived in. In that house the bottom of the old hot water tank rusted right away and flooded the basement. It was an old house, so replacing the tank was not a straight-forward job (something about an old chimney and no chimney liner) and we were without hot water for days. I sincerely hope that I got all of my bad hot water tank karma out of the way that time and that things will be uneventful on this front today.
[Update: so, when the LivClean guy was out here setting up this whole new hot water tank dealio the other day I specifically asked him about the chimney liner, given the last experience I had with a hot water tank. He, apparently, checked and said I have a proper liner and everything would be fine. The technicians just stomped in and out of my house and couldn't do the install because, you guessed it, I didn't have a chimney liner. Whatever.]
The Brock Review is seeking submissions for an upcoming general issue (Volume 11, Number 1). Articles that focus on any research topic in the Humanities will be considered for publication, but articles addressing interdisciplinary topics are especially encouraged. Creative pieces will also be considered for publication in this issue. Deadline for submissions to this general issue is September 30, 2009.
Please visit the journal website for article guidelines and submission instructions.
The Brock Review is an online refereed journal published by the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University.
I continue to plod on with the manuscript edits. Plod, plod, plod.
I have spent the entire day on a paragraph. An innocent-sounding query by one of the lovely people who reviewed one of my manuscripts ended up sending me on quite a fact chasing mission. The idea was that I needed to add in a sentence or two to an existing paragraph, you know, to clarify things and add in a little factoid. Searching for this particular factoid seemed like it would be a straightforward research question, but it ended up being anything but.
Imagine, for instance, that there existed a law banning, say, eating ice cream cones in public. But this imaginary ice cream cone law had different clauses for, say, sugar cones vs. regular cones — maybe one was banned earlier. And would frozen yogurt count? And what if different branches of the legislating institution had different laws on the books about eating ice cream cones in public? All of the sudden it becomes quite difficult to offer up a straightforward factoid-laden sentence explaining the imaginary ice cream ban. Yeah…that is about the size of the research/writing I did today, substituting, of course, the imaginary ice cream ban with the actual subject of my research. The digging I did today revealed some really important stuff and this will certainly strengthen this section of the manuscript, but I would really like to have more than a single paragraph to show for about 9 hours of work.
Slow and steady wins the race and all that jazz. I feel like I’m running through jello right now.
