I came across an interesting question on twitter a few days ago that sent me spiraling into a brief bout of research. Via Matthew Kirschenbaum, Matt Schneider posed the question of when the greater than (>) and less than (<) symbols first appeared on keyboards. I managed to come up with two contenders.

Above is the 1955 Olympia SM3 De Luxe (with science and math keys). It seems that typewriters beat computers to the punch, as there were some early keyboard layouts that included mathematical symbols at a time when computers were programed in assembly languages that were coded/punched on...

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Hello Internet, I made you something. There seems to be a lack of a basic wget cheat-sheet. Today I got tired of referring back to the usual sources, which tend to include all possible flags, most of which I never use. Here’s a .pdf you can print and hang at your desk.

-e robots=off -m --mirror -r --recursive -p --page-requisites -k --convert-links -l depth --level=depth (5 is maximum) -o logfile --output-file=logfile -i file --input-file=file --random-wait -nd --no-directories -nH --no-host-directories -E --html-extension (apends .html) -U agent-string --user-agent=agent-string -A acclist --accept acclist (comma-separated extensions) -R rejlist --reject rejlist (comma-separated extensions) -D domain-list...

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Trevor Owens of NDIIP and the Library of Congress recently interviewed me for The Signal about Rhizome & the ArtBase. Here’s a bit where he asks what exactly my title (digital conservator) means:

full interview here

full interview here

full interview here

Trevor: I don’t think there are many people out there with the title of digital conservator. Could you tell us a bit about how you define this role? To what extent do you think this role is similar and different to analog art conservation? Similarly, to what extent is this work similar or different to roles like digital...

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Recently I’ve been building out my arsenal of virtual machines. I simply couldn’t help but admire the illustrations that the various Windows 95 & 98 installers and wizards display. Good stuff.

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Alexei Shulgin’s Form Art in Netscape Communicator 4.08 (top) In Chrome 20.0.1105.0 dev (bottom)

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Here are slides from a presentation I gave last night, providing an introduction to some basic digital preservation concepts. I focused on the Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification criteria, Archivematica as a manifestation of the OAIS model, some historic examples, and recent projects in web based emulation of obsolete systems. Nothing new here for practitioners, but ok intro for the curious.
PDF warning » download here

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I have a rocky relationship with the practice of maintaining a personal blog. There are plenty of people I admire in academia, the arts, and tech, who blog as a form of scholarly communication, yet I have been hesitant to throw my hat into the ring. Fermenting one’s ideas in private is important, and I don’t fancy a public archive of my own evolving naïveté. Yet I envy the masterful and careful bloggers in our midst who have amassed deep compendiums over the years. As someone who spends a good portion of his day pontificating on the web’s history, I...

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“The most accomplished way of using books at present is twofold: either first to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance; or, secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door.”

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Gargoyles, Chimeres, And The Grotesque in French Gothic SculptureBy Lester Burbank Bridham, with an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram
Copyright 1930, Architectural Book Publishing Co., Inc.
108 West Forty-Sixth Street, New York

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Today at the library while perusing the catalog – I stumbled upon this. It is a bound pamphlet published in 1945 (original printing), and is a fantastic source on the mysterious Hex, the circular patterns that traditionally adorned Pennsylvania Dutch barns. They are popularly thought of as possessing mystical powers, perhaps to protect livestock, or protection from fires. He dispels any mystical notions other than a christian one, and illustrates how these symbols evolved from early christian symbolism. The color illustrations in the spread are simply gorgeous…

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