Post from the grave

It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a post here. I have been tinkering around with concepts for redoing the site, but for now I am mostly happy with the way this works. Of course the appearance isn’t great, but that can be fixed with some CSS, once the underlying HTML is doing what I want it to do.

Since this is a log, I should be announcing what I’ve been up to. I’ve been considering how to add a mailing-list version of these posts, but that will take some time and study. My main project has been polishing my use of Emacs’ bibtex options (for example, there’s a utility to generate a bibtex entry from a DOI and download the associated PDF if it’s available, which is quite useful). This has been in service of tightening up my research process, with an eye towards further graduate study. It would be nice to get everything under control, but it’s a never-ending project.

I’ve been considering the Gallatin Master of Arts program at NYU, which is an interdisciplinary program that allows individualized study: you propose a course plan to your advisor and put together your own master’s degree. It feels like a stumbling block to take another master’s, but it would be nice to have practice with writing a thesis and to get more involved in the specific scene I’m looking to work in.

The digitial humanities have become mired in conceptual issues and haven’t reached the promised land of objective literary studies, but I think we have also been overwhelmed by the possibilities and lost track of the true value of the thing: the computer’s exhaustive examination of all extant evidence. The kind of minute counting work that occupied Strong for a long time could be done trivially by a computer in moments. This is the power of the thing, not the higher-level magic promised by tech magnates.

I’m just rambling, but I want to get some words in the file in the bloggist’s voice — this isn’t how I usually write, but it’s nice to have the venue to be this person: the person who writes in this style, about these things, thinking in this way. I don’t feel the need to promote myself, and I share my blog slowly, but that’s okay. I’d rather have it and have people stumble across it when they find it, than promote it and have nothing to show. It’s not as if I’m trying to gain anything by having people read this, and the people who do read it are enough for me.