Create Word Clouds using Wordle

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from any text. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. The cloud can be tweaked using a range of different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images created with Wordle can be used in a variety of ways. They can be printed out, or saved to the Wordle gallery to share or reuse.

Link to Wordle

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: a Study Guide.

This study guide of Roland Barthes seminal essay Camera Lucida, is based on a series of blog posts by Andrew King. In my opinion it has to be one of the best interpretations of this frustrating if not opaque piece of writing. Having read Camera Lucida at least 3 times in total and an untold number of part readings, not to mention a variety of reviews and analysis Andrew Kings study guide has completely blown apart my supposed understanding of this classic text. A text that has been and will continue to be essential reading for innumerable undergraduate art, design and photography students. Readers struggling to get to grips with Camera Lucida will find this guide extremely useful, although no substitute for reading the text in its entirety. Even those who feel familiar with this small but taxing piece of writing will find Kings guide of interest and possibly enlightening.  

Who would have thought that  Camera Lucida bore any resemblance to the classical Roman epic poem, the Aeneid, by the poet Vergil.  King suggest comparing the story-line of Camera Lucida with Book VI of the Aeneid.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The guide is based on the 2010 issue of Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Roland Barthes; Translated from the French by Richard Howard; Foreword by Geoff Dyer published by Hill and Wang. However for those based in the UK the Vintage Classics published version has the same page layout and numbering but not the forward by Geoff Dyer, no great loss, and is available from Amazon for less than half the price of the USA version

Another useful review of Camera Lucida by Kasia Houlihan can be found here.

Originally read on the Greenwich English Prof blog.

The Writers Diet

The Writers Diet Test is a diagnostic tool that assesses whether your sentences are flabby or fit. Originally developed for academic writers, the test has also proven popular with students, technical writers, business analysts, journalists, and even fiction writers. 

Based on a simple algorithm, the Writers Diet Test calculates the fitness of your writing sample in each of the five grammatical categories. The higher the percentage of highlighted words, the flabbier your score.

I tried Writers Diet when I was writing the abstract for a paper, the first time I had undertaken such a task. Using this tool I managed to get my writing from the Heart Attack zone into the Lean (best) and Fit & Trim zones. I learned more about the correct usage of words by analysing those 500 words than I learned in 5 years of English lessons. Analysis reduced the number of "flabby" prepositions in this piece making it Fit & Trim!

This is a display of the analysis of these words.

PhD Thesis Practice Based or Practice Led?

One of my concerns since starting my PhD is to understand how a Practice Based PhD differs from other PhD's particularly a Practice Led PhD and what format should my thesis take.  My thesis is split 60:40 between writing and practice. I shall expand on my findings in other posts but this Thesis by Erik W. Borg raises some interesting issues which I will expand on in future posts.

Update 5.10.14

I found an interesting series of papers from a conference hosted by University of Hertfordshire -  Research into Practice conference 2000 - in 5 volumes, follow this link. Volume 1  - The foundations of practice based research.

• Edward Bird – Research in art and design: the first decade 
• Neil Brown – The representation of practice 
• Fiona Candlin – A proper anxiety? Practice-based PhDs and academic unease
• Anne Douglas, Karen Scopa and Carole Gray – Research through practice: positioning the practitioner as researcher
• David Durling – Reliable knowledge in design
• Jill Franz – An interpretative framework for practice-based research in architectural design
• Sophia Lycouris – The documentation of practice: framing trace
• Katie MacLeod – The functions of the written text in practice-based PhD submissions
• Steffano Maffei and Francesco Zurlo – Designing as a competence: design process as the result of a 'learning by interacting' practice. Evidence from Italy
• Tim Marshall and Sid Newton – Scholarly design as a paradigm for practice-based research
• Jules Moloney – Studio based research in architecture: the legacy and new horizons offered by digital technology
• Terence Rosenberg – 'The reservoir': towards a poetic model of research in design
• Jane Webb - Research in perspective: the practice of theory

Editing locked PDFs

Blogged from PC Pro Magazine

It’s worth noting that the PDF specification includes some security features that allow a document creator to forbid others from doing certain things, such as saving, printing or editing a PDF. Should you need to make an edit to a locked file, a quick web search should turn up plenty of free tools and websites that will unlock PDF files for free.

Alternatively, as long as the document isn’t locked for printing, there’s another trick that can be used – so long as you have both a PDF creation tool and the Microsoft Microsoft XPS Document Writer installed on your system as virtual printer drivers. All you need to do is print the document using this latter driver, to create a copy of it in XPS format – then open this document in Reader or another application and reprint it as an unprotected PDF. You should then be able to tamper with it as you choose.

Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are an aspect of academic life that has passed me by despite suffering from Mind Map envy. I have tried paper, white board and a variety of software options without any enduring success. I was particularly envious of my 8 year old granddaughter who the other evening proceeded to explain the complexities of falling in and out of friends at school by means of a series of graphic Mind Maps on my white board. Very impressive and so natural. Whilst browsing a link from a PhD Blog that I subscribe to, I found myself sympathising with a fellow dysfunctional Mind Map drop-out on The PhD Pimpernel Blog. PhD Pimpernel Blog however, seems to have discovered an answer to the Mind Map dilemma, a piece of software for the iPad, SimpleMind. I was reminded of the occasion I was first introduced to Mind Maps, it was 1974, a programme on BBC TV Use Your Head by Tony Buzzan. I was amazed to discover Tony is actually 2 years older than myself, he seemed so young on the TV!

But what of SimpleMind,  The PhD Pimpernel Blog seemed so enthusiastic about SimpleMind and how is its simple functionality broke through the Mind Map logjam, I just had to have a try. There is a free version but I discovered that this did not allow me to do what I wanted to do (crafty) so I had to splash out the grand sum of £2.99 on the paid for version SimpleMind+.

In part 2 of the post, Mind Mapping II, the discussion tales in the various Mind Mapping options, paper, white boards etc and then moves on to software. Finishing with a very enthusiastic plug for the SimpleMind+ app for the iPad. First impressions are quite favourable. There does seem to be sparse support in the way of help FAQ's,

The SimppleMind software is also available as desktop option for Windows and MAC based computers and tablets and so as not to leave anyone out there is an Android app as well. It must be said the Desktop options are very expensive compared with the iPad  app price.

Choosing a Thesis Title: The relationship between topic, title, thesis and hypothesis

You probably gave your thesis a title when you wrote out you PhD application proposal, but you are now 18 months into the task and your research has turned up all sorts of interesting stuff and your original title doesn't seem that relevant.  What do you do? Well I am at that point, my title changes almost daily. I came across an interesting post on The Thesis Whisper blog whilst looking  for stuff about Mind Mapping. It was a blog post about the book  ‘Mapping your Thesis’ by Dr Barry White.  Thesis Whisperer had been given the book to review and was struggling (a) to read it and (b) deciding if it was a book a PhD student should purchase. After much deliberation she suggested that to her it was becoming increasingly useful as a source of material for courses she presents and was prompted to share an example.

Thesis Whisperer found the Chapter "The relationship between topic, title, thesis and hypothesis" proved useful as a source of information on how to come up with a title for your thesis. She uses an example based on her sons hypothetical interest in doing a PhD about rocks! As follows:

 Thesis Whisperer Jnr (aged 10 and 1/4) wants to do his PhD about “rocks” (with a side interest in gold). “Rocks” is a topic area, but there are a range of theses Thesis Whisperer Jnr would write on this topic depending on how he phrased the title, to whit:

• As a question: “What do school children know about rocks with gold in them?”
• As an exploration: “Rocks in ‘scrap heaps’ found in the Victorian gold districts”
• As a statement: “Why most school kids are not interested in rocks (even if there’s gold in them”
• As an investigation: “Rocks with gold in them: places they are most likely to be found”
• As a hypothesis: “If rocks have gold in them, they are more likely to be dug up”
• As a thesis: “rocks are cool, especially if there is gold in them”

I have since used this example to help hundreds of students re-write variations of their thesis title in my workshops and it’s become a crowd favourite. It’s amazing how simply re-writing your title can help you refocus and give direction to a paper, a chapter or even a whole thesis. Ever since I have used this book to help me make all kinds of workshop material. In fact it has become my ultimate authority on everything thesis related, up to and including supervision and presentations.

I found this simple example quite helpful in rethinking the title for my own thesis:

• As a question: Why do we take snapshot photographs?”
• As an exploration: “Snapshots in family albums.”
• As a statement: “The reason we take snapshots is to remember.”
• As an investigation: “Snapshot photographs: why do we take them?”
• As a hypothesis: “If snapshots are memories can we forget them?”
• As a thesis: “The snapshot is a sociotechnical construct.”

Time will tell...