The Cobbgoblin speaks on Digital History

SO, let me start off by saying I received NO belated birthday wishes today… its alright, you all will get yours in the end.  But now, the in class lecture today seemed to take about an hour and fifteen minutes, yet only about 5 or 10 minutes of the lecture seemed relevant to our projects.  Its just kind of frustrating to be, like I said before, shown all of these tools but not really have any idea how to use them in our projects.  Dr. McClurken is, at the moment, refuting this post and pretty much making it debunk.  But we’ll see what happens on thursday I guess.

No zen for today.

  As the title suggests, yesterday was indeed my birthday.*  I am now 22. That, however, is not the purpose of this post. **  The purpose is for me to speak on the tools used, and how much I’m impressed with them, or how I’ll think they shall be used.  I’ve already started using del.icio.us to bookmark sites for my senior thesis, so I guess that’s started to come in handy.***  What really baffles me is Omeka.  Actually to for me to be fair,**** this class as of now just feels like we’ve been thrown a ton of tools and are now expected to use them.  I’m not sure how everyone else feels, but I kind of get the sense that we’re all just talking like we know what we’re doing.  I have an idea of what my group is going to be doing, but projecting those alumni****** online into a time line without a greater understanding of HTML code******* is a daunting task.

That’s all I have for now.

And now for your moment of zen.

Excelsior!

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* I expect belated birthday wishes in class

** To be fair, it really was.

*** By started, I mean, thought about using it

**** I never really play fair, life to me is a lot like monopoly*****

***** Or as I call it “How Much Can I Cheat and Get Away With It”

****** Yes, the “Close Talker” from Seinfeld is a famous Mary Wash Alum

******* Nerd speak

As I wind down my college experience, my largest concern pertains to the daunting task of writing my senior thesis on a popular culture topic.  So I figured with all of us crawling* the web doing our other school work**, that if any of you come across links that pertain to my topic I would really appreciate it if you could send it to me via delicious.  My topic is looking at American single life from 1970-1990’s through the sitcoms that portrayed it, Three’s Company, Cheers, and Seinfeld.  Yeah, that’s pretty much it, thanks guys!

And now for your moment of zen.

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*  Or surfing, or trolling, or as I prefer going on a “Web Safari.”

**  Lets be serious, we all do this… in fact, I’m almost certain that some of you have that window open right now.

  So I’m going to start off this process with being honest.  I took this class because after speaking with Dr. McClurken* about the class I was informed that the class would not have as much reading as the other seminar classes offered.  Also, Digital History has a base in American History, so that’s like a two-fer for me.   But now after two classes I can honestly say that I am interested in the work we’re going to be doing.  Even if I have no idea how we are going to publish our thoughts, processes, or actual work.  But that’s kind of what makes the entire process exciting and fun.  Either way there’s a good chance I’m going to learn something here, which makes everything alright in my book.**

  So, what I plan on getting out of this class?  Well the answer is a better understanding of Digital History, as well as an even greater ability to use the new “Web 2.0″.***  But the real question I know all of you are asking is, who is this mysterious Cobbgoblin, and why do we want to hear his thoughts on Digital History?  Well, I’m Austin a senior History Major**** at Mary Washington.  I am a part of the swim team, show choir, and fraternity.***** Also I enjoy; the occasional video game, reading a book, and doodling when I’m supposed to be taking notes.  Also, I tend to reference wikipediain most of my history classes, I feel as its my way of making the site a tad more credible.  So I hope y’all have enjoyed getting to know me and my thoughts on this class so far, as I have creating this post.

And now for your moment of zen.******

Excelsior!

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* This picture is in serious need of an update. 

** My book being titled I’m Kind of A Big Deal: Life and Times of Austin Cobb by Austin Cobb, that’s a patent pending by the way folks.

*** Web 2.1 is still in Beta.

**** You kind of hafta be, to be in this class right?

***** Stalkers, fans, and mothers’ daughters take note, because I’m not repeating this again.

****** This is the part of the post where I show you something interesting or funny that I found on my travels on the world-wide-web.