Author Archives: (Martha) Joy Rose

CUNYcast #ShoutItOut

Every week is an adventure in DH-land. This week was no exception. As our team scrambled to put the last minute touches on our presentation. We continued to quibble over gorilla suits, guerrilla radio, and whether or not a sense of humor should be included in presentations to the provost? The jury is out on this.

So, all the more reason to attend events on May 19th and see for yourselves. Many people in the Graduate Center community have told me they read these posts on the blog. So, if that’s true and this is a place to reach out (in addition to report) — here goes:

Digital Praxis Project Launch at the Graduate Center, CUNY

New York, NY- On May 19, 2015, students in the Digital Humanities Praxis course at the CUNY Graduate Center will launch four new projects. The evening will also include presentations from the Graduate Center’s Digital Fellows, the Provost’s 2014-15 Digital Innovation Grant Winners, the Futures Initiative, the New Media Lab, and the Graduate Center Library.

Digital Humanities Praxis is a two-course sequence that introduces students to the landscape of digital humanities tools and methods through readings, discussion, lectures, hands-on workshops, and culminates with students collaborating in groups over a single semester to build and launch working prototypes of Digital Humanities projects. The instructors for DH Praxis are Stephen Brier and Matthew Gold (Fall, 2014) and Amanda Hickman and Luke Waltzer (Spring, 2015).

This year’s DH Praxis projects are:

@DigitalHUAC: http://digitalhuac.com
Consolidating thousands of hard-to-find #HUAC testimonies into a single, searchable, interactive archive. http://digitalhuac.com

@CUNYCast: http://cunycast.net
Broadcast classes, conversation & controversy with online radio at @GC_CUNY. Shout it out http://cunycast.net #CUNYcast

@dhTANDEM: http://dhtandem.com
Simplify text & image data generation with @dhTANDEM, a unified #Djangoapp that combines #OCR, #NLTK, and #OpenCV.

@NYCFashionIndex: http://nycfashionindex.com
NYCFashionIndex scrapes fashion imagery from @instagram for tagging and analysis, building a real time social index of fashion. http://nycfashionindex.com/

This event is sponsored by the Graduate Center Provost’s Office and the GC Digital Fellows Program.

Event details:
Tuesday, May 19, 2015, 4:15 pm
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue between 34th and 35th Street
Room 9205

Open to the Public

Contact: Matthew Gold
Contact email: mgold@gc.cuny.edu
Public course blog: https://dhpraxis14.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
Course Hashtag: #dhpraxis14 @DigitalHUAC @CUNYcast @dhTANDEM @NYCFashionindex

SEE YOU THERE!

The Gorilla in the Room at CUNYcast

This week CUNYcast went from 12 followers to 43. We broadcast live on April 30 and May 1st from the 10th Annual Academic MOM Conference at GC and Manhattan College. I organized the broadcasts on my cell phone using KoalaSan with minimal interruption with Julia listening online and testing audio quality. Outreach included my personal FB, newsletters, and The Graduate Center electronic signage. Additionally, WGS put up a link on their page advertising the MOM Conference would be broadcast by CUNYcast.net. We do not know how many people tuned in to listen, but the experiment went well.

We are preparing for our final presentations, James is putting the finishing touches on the tutorials and Julia will update the website pages. We aim to have these tweaked by the end of next week.

Since our experiment began, we’ve been fond of saying that CUNYcast is a good platform for “Guerrilla Slamming,” meaning an audio ambush of sorts. We envision tagging interesting people mid-conversation for a broadcast on campus. I even went online to Amazon.com to order a mask for our year-end presentation.

GorillaHowever, as soon as I began to research “Guerrilla” based on the “Guerrilla Girls,” an arts activist group that seeks to bring awareness about social inequity to the broader public discourse, I realized that “Gorilla” mask and a “Guerrilla Slam” have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Which begs the question, why do the Guerrilla Girls wear Gorilla masks? As of this writing, I do not know. But, we do have one frightening gorilla mask droning its way to us as I write.

Is this a problem, or should we just ignore it? Write me with your opinion at CUNYcast@gmail.com

For more on Gorilla vs. Guerrilla read on:
Gorilla and Guerrilla are completely different from each other. Gorillas are basically great apes, whereas Guerrillas are members of a group of irregular soldiers.

http://www.differencebetween.info/difference-between-gorilla-and-guerilla
http://guerrillagirlsontour.com/
http://www.guerrillagirls.com/

#CUNYcast #DHpraxis14

Wanna “Cast” ?

Q. What did one graduate student say to the other graduate student?

A. Wanna “cast”???

Go ahead…. we dare ya. Shout out loud! (and if you’re still not sure, stop by the front lobby, we’ll be demo-ing from 1:30-7 on Monday and Tuesday April 20 & 21st in front of the library)

Cast_1

Cast_2

Cast_3

Cast_4

Back 2 Werk

Hope everyone had a great week away from classes.

We have approval for tabling in front of the library on April 20 & 21st to get the word out about CUNYcast (Thank you Matt G. for getting permissions). We hope to sign up casters at GC and share information about our initiative with the rest of the student body.

Our first big event will be attempting to broadcast the Annual Academic M.O.M. Conference which is being held at The Graduate Center this year (as well as Manhattan College).

WGS tells me that they have organized electronic signage and the event is posted on their website. (Read more about the launch on my blog last week). Or, our blog posting here on the Commons from April 5 here to see what our upcoming work schedule looks like.

See ya’ll in class. Onward.

Moving Ahead with CUNYcast

We were really excited to meet with Liam after class last week. In case you don’t remember Liam was part of our original team, and looks forward to coming back to the DHpraxis class in the spring of 2016. In the meantime he’s learning lots of cool code over at the School of Journalism, and stopped to chat with us and see how our progress is going. Below is our work schedule posted online.

Martha Joy Rose, Liam Sweeney, Julia Pollack

Martha Joy Rose, Liam Sweeney, Julia Pollack

CUNYcast Schedule

April 7
Julia & James – Java script for the schedule widget, get the play button working on the website
Julia – get brothers audio 1 hour
James – program audio to play on the site non-stop until someone else interrupts it with a show; and then make it auto play again after the interruption. Decide about what kind of license we want to have/ Creative Commons?
Joy – post blog and edit audio

April 14
Joy – create Process Reports in PDF, Joy create the google slides for the presentation. Confirm tabling opp by library in front lobby. (I’ve written Matt about this). Organize more sessions to train CUNYcasters (we didn’t succeed in our first tutorial, so more clarity is needed)
Julia – figure out how to upload PDFs; Drop down menu for Tutorials, or clickable pages, PDF or what?
Add to Pedegogy explanation: Professor Cheryl Smith.
Organize tutorial notes on how to build the website.
James – collect and organize tutorial notes on how to build the airtime project, widget, hosting, icecast, duplicate what we did….. Stream a cast or upload a prerecorded cast. Joy will send Liam’s interview for uploading. (Check FILE SIZE restrictions)
All – plan on staying after class to test broadcast, buttons, widgets, etc. and generally make sure all kinks are ironed out.

April 20 & 21
Joy – make flyers and distribute at tabling opportunity to gather CUNYcasters outside the library Monday and Tues (please join me if you can for any or all of it)
Julia – provide tutorials for those wanting to build a website for CUNYcast. Update Pedegogy explanations
James – 1) provide tutorials: General CUNYcast user, a) how to do a livestream b) how to post a show
2) tutorial for those who want to create their own CUNYcast website for their university
All – class presentation on Tues- tutorials ready to go and present to the class

April 28
Julia – Make more art for website, and provide documentation for creative commons and create licensing notice as well as waiver for broadcast ie: Permissions [LINK] and add into main website. Ad any credits and build out pages for additional Tutorials and PDFs.
James – work on archival calendar, and RSS feeds ask about ARCHIVAL LIVE STREAM?
Joy – make preparations for first day-long broadcast of Annual Academic MOM Conference at CUNY, CG. test, and prepare to go live on April 30th. I’ve asked for electronic signage for this event that advertises CUNYcast.net

May 5
Clean up any issues

May 12
Class Preso

May 19
Giant Preso

CUNYcast Progress

Exciting to share our report in class last week. The google slide show is posted online here for anyone who missed it.

Now that we know we can create actual working audio our task continues to be sorting out the specifics.

This week CSS for the Airtime widgets was successfully updated and our webpages went live. Also Julia has a lead on some original ambient music that does not require licensing. We’d like to be able to have stuff playing all the time, even if we only have a few casters to start.

Our security certificate is now 100% working and the url to www.cunycast.net links seamlessly. Audio connections still have to be resolved and that will be James’s focus this week.

widget pic

The app required for recording on iphone is KoalaSAN app which is a $6 purchase from the itunes store.

Installation is pretty easy. We downloaded it to our phones and ran tests. Anyone wanting to create a cast with us will need a few coordinates from us, and can write us at CUNYcast@gmail.com so that we can provide the necessary info. Then tabs should be configured thus:

unnamed-1

Recording device on the phone is pretty sweeeeet (Screenshot):

unnamed

Right now we have two potential casters (one is a special surprise guest) coming to our tutorial Tuesday night, March 31st at 6:30 in room 4108 at the GC. “Shout it out” if you know anyone else who would like to attend for a 45 minute “Introduction to CUNYcast” on Tues. to learn the basics and find out more.

Our new branding acknowledges the fact that we are focused on students, faculty, and staff at The Graduate Center: We are “CUNYcast for the Graduate Center.” Subsequent projects may focus on “CUNYcast for Hunter,” “CUNYcast for Baruch,” and “CUNYcast for Queens College,” etc.

Thanks for your support and your tweets :-))

#CUNYcast

Trouble in Paradise

The internet is a paradise of open-source code, shared information, and technology tutorials. Right?

But, what about the obstacles we’ve all come up against? Whether problems present a steeper learning curve than we expect, a tiny piece of missing information, or a techie dead end, these issues can result in lack of sleep, brain overload, or simply “giving up.” Our team has been working diligently throughout the last many weeks on three major fronts:

  • Identifying exactly what our project is, and how to model it.
  • Grappling with the technology in all its various aspects: broadcast & web building.
  • Overcoming what appears to be inherent issues with the systems we’re working with.

We are presenting in class this week. So, we’ll share many of the details of CUNYcast’s progress then. But, for the weekly blog we’ll divulge one particularly annoying problem.

When you contact us to start a cast, we provide a url. Making an attempt to create a broadcast using the information we currently provide leads to one of two things:

www.CUNYcast.net leads to:CUNYcast_NAA search for CUNYcast.net leads to:

CUNYcast_safe?

Which will prompt a potential CUNYcast user to contact our developer who will respond with kind encouragement to just ignore the warnings and go ahead (see the nice red arrow):

unnamed

For potential casters this might be a sign to give up or walk away. The lack of security certificate is a problem. We’ve made inquiries but we just don’t know how to fix it yet. Until we do, inviting potential casters to get on board might be a mistake. We don’t want to turn them off before they begin, and ultimately many of the casters may not be techie types at all. The whole process has gotta be super easy. That’s why we’re working so hard– so it can be super smooth to Shout It Out with CUNYcast in the future.

NEVER GIVE UP!
@CUNYcast #CUNYcast #DHPraxis14

 

THE CUNYCAST COMMONS GROUP IS NOW OPEN TO ALL

Welcome to our world. The CUNYcast Commons Group is now open to all!
Shout it out. #CUNYcast

We started this project in earnest weeks ago. But, looking back to March 1st when we posted our second process report for the DHpraxis class (after we went from a four person team to a three person team), we have definitely made headway. (Bad Shark. Go Away).

We are ready to start opening up the group to others who may be interested: 1. in signing up to produce future CUNYcasts, 2. techie-types who may want to submit their opinions as we build out this platform (Speak now or forever hold your peace). We are currently working in Bootstrap to configure our WordPress site and hope to launch by the week of April 1st.

Yesterday our site template went from this (see below) to next slide. Julia and Joy worked in tandem (get it; ha.. ha- we luv you classmates :)) on several agenda items:

Web_Page

To this:

unnamed

Next we have to wrestle with remedying the code for the header on the new pages. Go to our CUNYcast Commons Group to view this daunting (and hysterical) code.
[or you can download FULL DOCUMENT w/HTML CODE HERE]

James configured widgets and generally dove into Icecast and airtime.

Widgets

We have a custom icon now too:

CUNY_cast_Logo_2

We got a little blog action goin’ on by way of a shout out here too.

Next up, we gotta get the website uploaded to the server, make some adjustments to the pages, and get the flow between airtime and our site ironed out. These are our major goals right now.

Process Report CUNYcast

CUNYCast is an online experimental broadcast in the Digital Humanities. The CUNYcast site will model Ds106 Radio. It will also document the process, and create a “how to” manual for future CUNYcasters.  A link from the CUNYCast group page on the Academic Commons will lead people to an external site where content will be streamed. CUNYcast is a live online radio stream that anyone can take over and populate with their own DH audio radio broadcast. Cunycast is a non-archivable broadcast that will be accessible on the web. CUNYCast’s aim is to empower a DH guerrilla broadcast community.

Our team’s goal this week was to test an audio upload to Ds106 Radio, and begin to build out our WordPress site, while documenting and reporting on our process and our progress. *Note: although documentation appears here, it has not been verified between team members. Please do not attempt or post until we have completed final edits on the manual. Thanks!

Process Report 2/25/15:

Joy edited in-class audio from DH Praxis 2014-15, added music, and recorded an introduction.  James’s task was to upload that content in order to better understand how Ds106 radio works.

  1. Using edited audio recordings of our in-class conversations James converted ab .m4a, (advanced audio coding (AAC) file format) to an mp3 file.
  2. Using online converter media.io took about three minutes to convert, reducing its size from 28MB to 19MB.

Note: James chose 128kb/s as the quality, remembering that Ds106 radio has a 128kb/s stream. Next, we needed to figure out what would come first, the ds106radio how-to, Airtime, or Icecast? Airtime has a giant button on their landing page that says START NOW, so that seemed like a good place to begin. 30 day free trial, otherwise it’s 9.95 a month.

Question: If we do work with Ds106 we’ll have to get them to “grant a login, we think? Though it also possible that when we are preparing our radio station, it might cost us $10 monthly to maintain it via Airitme?

  1. Ds106radio is located in the interwebs, and how to access it via Icecast, it links to here: http://networkeffects.ca/?p=1478
  2. Download Icecast here: http://icecast.org/download/
  3. Start Icecast. It launches a console.
  4. Follow instructions by typing the address into Chrome.

Note: If I we were hosting Icecast via our local machine, this is how it would be controlled.

  1. Go to the Icecast installation directory and find a .xml doc.
  2. Open with my text

Note: This seems like it will be very important later, but we’re not sure that it will help complete the goal now. The next thing we attempt to try is looking at “Broadcasting Software” in the ds106radio how-to. We come across this document. We go for Mixxx; another broadcasting tool.

  1. Download Mixxx. Mixxx is 85MB: It does audio editing, mixing, broadcasting, recording.
  2. Enable Live Broadcasting

Note: It began importing James’s whole audio library. He loaded a song and just played with some dials. He encourages everyone to do this.

  1. Open up our cmd (command prompt and type in some commands for installing the codec:

Photo:James_Broadcast

Note: Watch for compatibility issues. We had a 64-bit version of Mixxx that was accidentally installing the 32-bit encoder. Some folders are inaccurately named. For Macs, this process seems smoother.

  1. Load up the audio for broadcast on ds106radio into Mixxx, by dragging and dropping. take
  2. Take the server info from ds106radio and put it into Mixxx:

Name: ds106rad.io / Server: ds106rad.io / Port: 8010 / Mountpoint: live / Username: source / Password: ds106 / Codec: mp3 / Bitrate: 128 (or less) / Protocol: Icecast2 / Stereo: Y/N

  1. Success = playing live audio from our class on Ds106

Process Report 2/28/15:

  1. This week Julia went to a workshop on “Bootstrap”http://getbootstrap.com/
    It is a model for a responsive website.
    2. This is our template:http://getbootstrap.com/examples/carousel/#
    Note: We have had some concerns with the constraints of wordpress. This will aford us more freedom although it may require a bit more now to update and change the site = More freedom less of a fancy wordpress back end.file structure
  2. Download Bootstrap; accessed here:http://getbootstrap.com/
  3. Use textwrangler (a bare bones html building editor) she saved the document as a .html file like (index.html).
  4. Place the file in the same folder on the desk top that held the Bootstrap.

Note: We are assuming that this series of files will be able to be uploaded to a server so they may become live. There may be a few steps missing that we’re unaware of since we’re not directly familiar with server setups.

5. Using Textwrengler to build the site; start with a blank text editor. Go to the template mentioned above (http://getbootstrap.com/examples/carousel/#) and open the site. It is a browser and look at the view page source option.

6. Copy and paste the page source from that page and place it into a plain text document.

Note: CSS of this document was all whacked out at first. The file connections to the rest of the folders would be different if they were sitting on the desktop.

  1. Go through the preliminary documentation to fix the <!DOCTYPE html> heading issues in the .html file.
  2. Screen shot of the website displayed in a browser on her computer. It is bare bones but it does display.CUNYcast_Web_SampleNote: Julia will next play with the style of CUNYcast site to reflect the new direction of the project. Barbara Kruger is a visual inspiration since we’re going guerrilla.

Please join us at our new twitter account @CUNYcast #CUNYcast
Also, we’ll be making our group page public on the commons this week.

CUNYCast PROJECT MAP

ABSTRACT:

CUNYCast is an online experimental podcast in the Digital Humanities.  Project organizers will record content, make it available online, document the process, and create a “how to” manual for future podcasters, eventually encouraging others to contribute to a network of podcasts. CUNYCast is free, open sourced, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and shared. It is more than a single project; it is an initiative that offers students and faculty the tools and knowledge they need to share their work through audio. It can be used in classes, workshops, clubs, or as a stand-alone project to enrich not only the community at the Graduate Center but also the community across all CUNY schools. A link from the CUNYCast group page on the Academic Commons will lead people to an external site where content will be hosted. Links will also connect participants to resources that encourage information sharing, and cooperative production through CUNYCast. The CUNYCast site will be hosted via WordPress, which supports audio, video, and a number of other easy to use plugins. It will also implement source code from ds106 radio, and be powered using Icecas; a streaming media server. CUNYCast can enrich the long commute to the city, whether it is by train or car, or can be enjoyed from the comfort of home, when one is sick and unable to get to class. It is a low cost project capable of producing content and knowledge for individual classes in the future while encouraging community connection. CUNYCast’s aim is to empower a DH community on demand; one that anyone can participate in.

USER STORIES:

Digital Humanities student:

In the new world of multimedia scholarship students are looking for new modes of production. They may ask themselves, “How can I reach a larger audience with my academic work and discoveries?” Publishing in academic journals is an integral part of academia but in an increasingly open source world how do graduate students reach out to wider communities to create digital content? A digital humanities student can tap into the CUNYCast web presence to learn how to make a high quality audio/digital repository. The student will learn different ways they can host their work, including requesting a block on the CUNYCast site. The student can also browse other CUNYCast programs (or more directly, ds106 programs) to see the open and conversational ways Digital Humanities scholarship shows a process-documented approach to scholarship. The WordPress production and code will be shared and easily accessible for student learning.

CUNY Faculty member:

The CUNY faculty member is interested in opening up digital publication opportunities for their students. Instead of a traditional end-of-class paper, the professor may want students to produce something that will exist online so that students can share their scholarship in a wider community and create their online academic persona. This faculty member would use CUNYCast to show students how to produce and post their podcast final project. The CUNYCast would also include documentation about the pedagogical practices being formed around digital media production in the classroom.

Outside Non-Affiliate interested in Podcasting:

Academic publishing and information has historically been a closed system where information seeking community members and independent scholars have to jump through hoops to get access to the most current and revolutionary scholarly work. This non-affiliate could look toward CUNYCast, and learn how to create his or her own online digital podcast publication. Here, they would be able to see how investigative and scholarly podcasting practices have their techniques outlined.

Technical Specs:

  • We are building an open online course in Digital Humanities. Documentation and technical explanations will be available to GC users via the Academic Commons.
  • Web hosting
  • Icecas Account
  • WordPress A/V Plugins, including Soundcloud
  • RSS
  • Airtime
  • ds106 Radio
  • Recording Equipment
  • Audacity (open source audio editing software)

Cunycast