Category: School Work

The stuff I’ve done in school.

Aaaargh…. maps.

Well, all of my time tonight was spent on drawing and re-drawing most of the country outlines in order to get the effects that I want. I didn’t get much done on progression of the movie/intro, but I figured a few things out… Like draw with the paint brush instead of the pencil.

I went to a meeting with Mills and others about the ‘tools’ for the 1989 project. The part that applied to me, is a better and distinct idea of what my project will do. It is three parts:

  1. Create a flash movie (the very thing I’m working on), that depicts certain key events that led to the fall of communism. This will have the main purposes of presenting the events on a map and time line so that students can get better place the events in time and place. The movie will also show how the movement to end communism started in the north and moved south. This movie will just be an intro, available as a resource.
  2. The second part of the project (the internship) is to create a way to display the objects that a student has selected as their ‘My Favorites’ on a map and/or time line.  There are some key technical issues that must be addressed before this can really happen. Firstly, none of the objects in the database have geo-codes associated with them.  Secondly, the code/program that is going to be used is not finished yet, and won’t be until the summer. So that means this part of the project will be a simple page that pulls data from the database and plots it on a map. More a proof of concept, than a working prototype.
  3. The last part is to create a map (either an image map, a flash map, or something like that) for navigation and searching the database. When a country is clicked on, all objects in the database associated with that country are returned. Using Flash would enable the user to zoom in on a country and select a city or something.

Anyhow, here’s the newest version of the 1989 intro movie.

A better looking map

Wow. That took a long time! I spent the whole evening working on making a better looking map. I almost had a bit of a scare as well, that all the work I put into tracing the outline of the land masses and the country lines would not turn out. My Flash skills are quite rusty. But thanks to a few tutorials from WebWasp, I figured out the need to draw in ‘Merge Drawing’ mode rather than ‘Object Drawing’ mode. I had drawn all of the lines with the paint brush using ‘Object Drawing’ mode. This made it impossible to use the paint bucket tool to fill in with color. Fortunately, WebWasp came to the rescue with a tip on how to overcome that problem. I simply selected all of the paint brush lines which were objects. Then in Modify->Combine Objects, select ‘Union’. This makes all of the objects into one object. Then in Modify menu again, select ‘Break Apart.’ This makes all of the lines behave, and I could use the paint bucket to fill the land masses with grey and the water with blue. It look pretty snazzy now.

What did I learn of historical importance today… Well, it struck me how arbitrary the dividers and barriers are that humans place on each other. There are divisions such as speech, but really, why did the border between Norway and Sweden end up where it did and not elsewhere? Only because that’s where humans decided it should go. The only real border is between water and land. I thought back on a geography class I had as an undergraduate. That was a really cool class. I love maps. I’ll look at them for hours if I could. That class would totally have convinced me to switch majors to geography, if it wasn’t the very last class I had to take to graduate with my BA in History AND BA in German. It was the only class I had that semester, too. Despite the great temptation to goof off and just get a passing grade, I worked hard and pulled my overall GPA up by enough points to graduate Magna Cum Laude. Well, I digress…

Next step… Probably put some real data into the map. Have the flash points line up with real events. Then add a bubble of text to explain which event the flash point refers to. I’ll change the flash point too. Perhaps I’ll use the hamsickle (the hammer and sickle).

Ah, yes. Almost forgot. Here’s the next version of the 1989 map.

Making a map, part 2

So, I spent another 4 hours working on the Flash map. Mills showed me some really great Flash maps for inspiration. They live at MapsOfWar.com. I like the History of Religion map and the Imperial History map for their use of the timeline and map to convey the information. I want the 1989 map to be similar. The MapsOfWar maps are great reference points, and good examples from which to glean style ideas.

I must say the hardest part of this project so far is the design. I’m no graphic artist, for sure. My attempts at creating something that looks cool are quite pitiful. I can copy and mimic other people’s works, but trying to put my ideas into something concrete is difficult. I should take some art classes.

Anyhow. I worked on Scene 2 of the Flash intro. Getting a decent looking timeline took little effort. Creating the hammer and sickle (the hamsickle) that moves along the timeline was a bit time consuming. At first I used an image from Wikipedia (it was free). But scaling that in the timeline made it distorted and choppy. So I redrew the whole thing in Flash so that it is made from vectors, and scales nicely.

Then I decided that using a single color map with the outline of the countries would work better than using the map I borrowed from the CIA (found it at the Library of Congress’ online map collection). So I started tracing the country outlines. Soon I’ll have a decent looking map of East Europe that I can copy and manipulate in different ways.

I also added some flash points to the timeline. They’re nothing fancy, and don’t correspond to any real data. I’ll get that stuff later.

View the progress so far.

Notes from Kenny “A Carnival of Revolution”

A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989

by Padraic Kenney

ISBN-10: 069111627X

Publisher: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition (August 11, 2003)

Intro:

Three common explanations for the fall of communism:

  1. Gorbachev inspired and encouraged change which provided the atmosphere for revolution.
  2. Economics – The communist economy was bankrupt and no longer able to support their facade. Mass emigration showed public disapproval. Some governments experimented with free-market economies even before their collapse.
  3. Intellectuals – Intellectual opposition ideas were cultivated from Western ideas and local tradition and culture. These ideas were disseminated widely and a great percentage of the population had access to them. This could be a reason for the non-violent revolutions.

Continue reading Notes from Kenny “A Carnival of Revolution”

Map research

GIS and Google:

GIS would be a bit complex for this project. It is mainly used for displaying geographic data (ie. population density, economic diversity, elevation changes, etc), rather than pinpointing an items’ location.  While GIS does make some really cool maps, it is beyond the scope and needs of this internship.

Google maps, on the other hand, are more in line with things we would like to do. There are already many similar applications found throughout the web. Some examples are “home grown” at CHNM, like the Hurricane Archive, and 911 archive.

The deciding factors will be the options that work best for our needs (which are outlined in a previous post).

Discussion of Stokes The Walls Came Tumbling Down

Why did communism fall?

Some points Mills and I discussed:

  • People were fed up with many aspects of life and began to support the dissidents.
  • Gorbachev began changes in the Soviet Union and allowed and encouraged changes in other communist countries.
  • Economic issues. All countries were in debt.
  • The government could no longer afford to support the fictional deal.
  • Regime supports the people with health care, housing, work, etc, and the people give up liberties. Once the basic needs were not being met, it was no longer worth living without liberties.
  • Reagan – noticed it was an economic issue and out spent the Soviets in the arms race.
  • Soviets and all countries just didn’t have he resources and money to support their ideals.

In regards to the website:

  • We talked about what kind of maps are available (GIS, Google, Flash).
  • Keep a national narrative.
  • Make the application personable. Users able to select their own sources and be able to view them geographically.
  • Also have sources which apply and are viewable under umbrella issues.
  • Students should have the ability to select their own sources and view those sources on a map.

First meeting

I met with Mills to discuss the scope and hope of the project. Basically, I’m going to try to create a map and timeline interface for the website and the objects. When a user of the site selects the objects, they’ll be able to view them on a map and timeline. The initial thought is to use Google Maps and the Similie Timeline.

Mills also gave me a couple of books to read to help me understand the history of the fall of communism.  I’ll meet with Mills a couple of more times to discuss the books, and many more times after that (I’m sure) to discuss the progress of the maps and timelines.

I’m excited for this project/internship. Not only does it complete my MA in History, but it’s a great way to combine my love of history and web stuff.  Usually I spend a lot of time on the web stuff, and not much on the history side of things. I’m hoping I’ll have time to focus on some historical analysis and interpretation too.