behind AotW

I was clued to a marvelous local history blog today. Sandusky History is …

… dedicated to the discussion of topics relating to the history of Sandusky and Erie County, Ohio; inspired by the collections of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center and Follett House Museum. A service of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.

By way of example of the quality of the material here, a post about early German-language newspapers in Sandusky and connections to later Civil War soldiers caught my eye. Vis:

Sandusky Intelligenz-Blatt, 1851 (Sandusky Library Archives)

Apparently on the air since June 2006, the blog boasts a large collection of posts about the people, places, and things of the region. They feature snappy writing, widely ranging subject matter, and plenty of related photos and other artifacts.

The post authors are not identified, which would be my only complaint about the blog: somebody deserves more credit than they’re getting. Two thumbs up!

Thanks to Dorene Paul, Reference Assistant at the Library and blog contributor, for the email tip about their site this afternoon.

Or Google serendipity.

Simply watching the internets for Antietam references can yield surprising results. Today I stumbled over a gourmet fountain pen ink maker called Noodler’s. They’re known for durable “fraud proof” varieties. One of the many colors offered is “Antietam”, seen here.

Noodler’s owner Nathan Tardiff says of the ink:

Antietam has a certain burnt orangy red aspect to it that can be missed even if the batch is off only a fraction of a single percentage point! It also represents a copy of the oldest colored ink bottle in my vintage collection - a dip pen ink from the Civil War era that was rehydrated…the name was chosen for similar reasons as well as historic significance…

I think I’ve found something for my Christmas wish-list.

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Notes

Color smudge, above, from Noodle’s vendor The Writing Desk’s website. Mr Tardiff is quoted on Pendemonium. The Boston Globe featured him in September 2005.

Google originally found me the Noodler’s reference in a soup-to-ink post from Ink Quest in which the Antietam color correlates with tomato soup. The Seinfeld Soup Nazi is invoked. How’s that for a far-ranging Antietam thread?

Noodling, after which the ink company is named, is an interesting way to catch catfish. Another wild ride if you’re pulling threads today.

Copying and pasting somebody else’s HTML into your blog may not be the best idea.

Case in point: earlier today I followed a link from Dan Cohen to the new Digital Scholarship in the Humanities blog. I’m always glad to read of new exploration in the field. At the bottom of a recent post the author displayed the following badge suggesting the reading level of her blog:

This is an attractive gimmick from a site called Critcs Rant. On their Blog Readability Test page you can enter any site’s URL to have it evaluated. I jumped on this myself, testing my own blog and several others. I don’t know that the results meant much, but it was briefly amusing.

The good news: you can easily and quickly rate your site and paste the pretty badge on your blog. HTML code is provided for copy-and-paste convenience.

The bad news: in addition to linking the badge back to the Blog Readability Test page, the supplied copy and paste code contains a text link to a site called cashadvance1500.com. Do you really want sleazy advertising on your blog? Our digital humanist cleverly removed that link from the HTML before she posted the badge. Would you have noticed it?

The tip-off: there is no information provided either at the Critics Rant or Readability Test websites about the method used to determine readability or who’s behind the sites. Hardly scientific. Or inspiring of trust.

Looks like a clever way for someone to make money on the web at our expense. I’d avoid these folks.

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Added 12/6:  behind AotW scoops the (Manchester) Guardian   :)

Apologies to both our readers: due to an intensive work-related training period, culminating in a frightening certification exam Friday (9 Nov), I can’t get a decent post out this week. Thanks in advance for your patience, and I’ll see you Saturday. With my shield, or on it.

A digital history grail, anyway.

Yale Computer Science major Sam Strasser has started blogging about his Senior project at Visualize History.

Visualize History will attack the general problem by presenting that multi-dimensional story in multiple dimensions. For example, many key events are directly linked to a specific geographic location and all are linked to a specific time or time period. The application will therefore provide a way to navigate through both time and space. However, the logical relationships are just as important as the temporal or spatial ones, and the application will also provide a way to navigate from an event to other related events.

I’ll be very interested to see how this goes.  I expect he’ll find the deeper he goes, the bigger it gets!