Tag: visual models

Wanderlust

/ Derek Mueller
⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

I’ve downloaded Google Earth.  It’s loaded with visual-planetary wonder:  fly-overs, angular adjustments, and surprisingly clear shots of the terrain.  The upgrade, which allows annotations (something I might use) and .csv or GPS imports, tech support and crisper printing (stuff I might not use), is tempting for just twenty bucks. But for now I’m content to mess around with the free version. (via)

Here’s a look at the main interface (simple, easy to use) and, in it, a from-above view of SU’s main campus.

CMap Tools

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

Have I mentioned that I recently subscribed to a couple of tag-based RSS feeds
from del.icio.us? 
Right, I know…nothing shocking about it.  With the semester winding down (just a bit of grading still to do), I haven’t
explored the bookmarks as closely as I would like, but I did run across a prize
the other day through the feed for "infographics."
CMap Tools, a
free, cross-platform
mapping application, lets users draw maps better than any other software I’ve
tried.

The CmapTools program empowers users to construct, navigate, share and
criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps. It allows users to,
among many other features, construct their Cmaps in their personal computer,
share them on servers (CmapServers) anywhere on the Internet, link their Cmaps
to other Cmaps on servers, automatically create web pages of their concept
maps on servers, edit their maps synchronously (at the same time) with other
users on the Internet, and search the web for information relevant to a
concept map.

It’s simple.  Plus, it allows the easy placement of background images in
nodes, so it could work to develop visual maps.  I like it, too, because it
has some sharp auto-align tools; you can select two or three nodes and space
them out relative to each other, moving them collectively together/apart. 
What else?  It appears to have server function, but I haven’t tried it yet. 
The html export basically produces an html page referencing a jpeg file. 
But by setting up a server account, it looks like it would be possible to
collaborate on mapping project.   The only feature I’d improve is the
automatic and unavoidable link labels.  The labels are removable, but they
leave a gap in the line. 

I’d include a map, but I’m busy watching the Detroit get roughed up by
Indiana.  Dang it! Sample’s in extended entry, now that the game’s through.

Continue reading →

Trails of Activation

/ Derek Mueller / 4 Comments

⏳ Approximate reading time: < 1 min

No, I really don’t have time for puttering around with graphing software, so
that’s exactly what I did for a brief while yesterday, an insignificant gesture
of defiance at my own focus and production obsessions.  It is spring break
after all, a period of regenerative slothfulness.  Yet knowing that I have
to ease into slothfulness to avoid system shock, I watched a little basketball
while reading, trying to get ahead of the post-break reading load to avoid any
related trauma on down the line.  It all folds together–the slothful
regression, the read-ahead and NCAA hoops–this way, in what I’m calling trails
of activation.  Just a quick graphic generated by software from a
randomized list of stuff from Saturday.  I’d offer claims toward
intelligibility, but that would require effort and, therefore, undermine my
attempts to enjoy some overdue rest and relaxation. 

Through Drawring

/ Derek Mueller

⏳ Approximate reading time: 2 mins

I’m giving another 5-10 minute spiel on Foucault Monday evening (bc Barthes:
canned).  This time, I’ve committed to map-charting the model(s) spelled
out in the last chapter of TOOT.  I’m fairly satisfied with what I
have so far, but a few cues in the last parts of the chapter still have me
scratching my head.  I’m not sure how best to represent history as a
concept that pre-existed the modern human sciences; I have no idea how to fold
the strict ethnology-psychoanalysis model into the countersciences scheme
I have here; and, I haven’t decided what to do with the problem of
linguistics–the grand dilemma of the whole book. 


"The domain of the modern episteme should be represented rather as a volume
of space open in three dimensions" (346).

"In relation to biology, to economics, to the sciences of
language, [the human sciences as configured] are not, therefore, lacking in
exactitude and rigour; they are rather like sciences of duplication, in a ‘meta-epistemological’
position" (355).

"But when one follows the movement of psychoanalysis as
it progresses, or when one traverses the epistemological space as whole, one
sees that these figures are in fact–though imaginary no doubt to the myopic
gaze–the very forms of finitude, as it is analyzed in modern thought"
(375).

Please let me know if you see anything disastrously wrong with
any of the models. My renderings are best guesses, and my expectation is that
we’ll process ’em into distortion through the group-fueled critique machine
Monday night.  In case you think my day was a total waste (if this is all
I have to show for it), I’ll have you know I assembled a kitchen countertop
island thing’mabob with wheels *and* watched a few minutes of SU’s impressive
win over the Rutgers Scarlet Knights *and* hanged a fresh clothes bar in Ph.’s
closet.  The old bar just wouldn’t bear his weight when he climbed for
something way up on the top shelf–rather than asking for a hand–last
night.  Like the modern episteme spelled out by Foucault, it all crashed, a
structure-less rubble-heap of fabric and debris.