On the iPad for Research

I love my iPad.  Really.  It’s become the most valuable research tool I own.  I use Evernot

A New Website and Beginning?

Julie, my wife, was setting up a professional website for her work on fashion sustainability.  She&

May 2011

The first six weeks of the survey have brought a great deal of interest from musicians on various li

 

On the iPad for Research

September 16, 2011 in iPad, Slideshow, Technology

I love my iPad.  Really.  It’s become the most valuable research tool I own.  I use Evernote to keep track of data, Goodreader to read journal articles, Reeder to keep track of new and interesting articles, Instapaper to read longer articles I’ve found online… the uses to the humanities researcher are endless.

So, I was intrigued when one of my staff wandered in with a keyboard for his iPad.  This turns it into a really micro computer, sort of a hip version of the Mac Air.  You put it in the keyboard, and it becomes a sort of computer, and you take it out and you can read with it.  Bliss!  I wondered if it could be used for my research trip instead of the bulky laptop.  (Who knew we’d be calling laptops bulky in 1999?!)  So I bought one, and also a copy of QuickOffice, and gave it a test run.

The keyboard does make it seem like I’m using a real and hip computer.   However, QuickOffice is a little too light for me.  It does make word documents, but in reality, with Evernote’s new rich-text documents, I’m fine with just using that.  I’m perfectly happy using LibreOffice’s spreadsheet program, and with the lack of animations in QuickOffice, I may as well just create an Impress or Powerpoint document, save it to pdf and use that.

The real killers for the iPad as a writing tool was the lack of Zotero interface.  I’m a big fan of this open-source bibliographic tool and the fact that there are no Zotero tools nor plans for integration mean that I’ll probably stick to the laptop for some of my writing.

However, there are some tools at which the iPad-with-keyboard will excel. I’m doing some interviews at the moment, and will be doing a lot more in the next month.  For transcription, it will be great.  I can take my new Zoom H1 (a look at this tool soon) and transcribe to my heart’s content.  Writing thought pieces and mindmaps will also be useful.

Thus, at the moment, will I change to writing academic papers on the iPad.  No.  But I think the day is coming when computers will start to look like this.

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A New Website and Beginning?

September 11, 2011 in AIM, Cruise Ship Research, Slideshow, Wordpress

Julie, my wife, was setting up a professional website for her work on fashion sustainability.  She’s something of a technophobe, and I’m the reverse.  We decided to set her up a WordPress site, something I’d never done.  It was so easy that I decided to migrate my website from Joomla as well.  The result is more blog-like, but it should encourage me to post more often.

I also need to apologise to the many musicians who’ve helped me by completing the Musicians on Cruise Ships survey that was online between May and July, 2011.  I’ve been so busy writing that I’ve not been keeping you up to date with my findings.  Some surprises, and lot of confirmation of what we already know about cruise ship employment.  I’ll put up a few findings over the next few days, gleaned from the initial data.

One interesting point is that I’m undertaking a research trip to Miami and London in a month.  As it cheaper to get a round-the-world ticket, we’re also throwing in a trip to Delhi, much to Julie’s delight.  She’ll be conferencing in London and Delhi for her own research.

At work, a new trimester, beginnneth.  I find myself asking “hey, didn’t I just get all those marks in?!?”… and I did of course.  The never-ending cycle of teach and mark, teach and mark that comes with three semesters.  Still, I love my job and wouldn’t be doing anything else.

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May 2011

May 1, 2011 in AIM, Cruise Ship Research, Slideshow

The first six weeks of the survey have brought a great deal of interest from musicians on various lines in various capacities.  I want to thank every person who has sent in a submission, and to encourage people to continue to do so.  I’d intended to get the Russian and Tagalog versions up by now, but my professional and personal lives have kept interfering.  I’ll start to put a few stats and responses from the survey in the next little while (de-identified of course), but will continue to collect information for a while..

This week, marking for the end of Semester 1 is taking my attention. As usual, the various smatterings of Credits and Distinctions, the odd High Distinction with the majority of Passes.  A few things we’re going to try differently next semester, but generally good marks.

Despite this focus, I’m also aware of the upcoming Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICRI) conference at which I’m presenting in June.  This paper, which is coming along nicely, is on music/dance cultural representations of Tahitian culture on ships.  Lots of postmodern tourism theory and ethnomusicology combined.  Hyperreality and semiology combined with Polynesian music and dance history, which is a remarkable story in itself.  Will tell you more as the paper progresses.

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Brief Hiatus

March 18, 2011 in Cruise Ship Research, Research, Slideshow

At the wedding...

After a terrific start to the survey, With close to 50 responses in the first ten days, I’m having a short break over the next couple of days.  But there’s a very solid reason for doing this – I’m getting married on Sunday 20 March.  However, I’ll be back on the case early next week.

This week has seen the start of translation of the survey into Filipino and Russian to access these two groups of cruise ship musicians.  You’ll already notice the Filipino version on the website.  There’s more to come though, so check back occasionally.

In my next post here, I’ll summarise some of the initial impressions from the first couple of weeks of research.

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A positive sailaway for the research

March 10, 2011 in Cruise Ship Research, Research, Slideshow

(cc) tom.snaps

The first week of the survey has seen very positive.  Support has arrived from several sources, expected and unexpected.  For all of this support, I’m extremely grateful

Firstly, the musicians themselves.  I’ve had some good response from among cruise ship musicians, both known and unknown to me.  Musicians, it appears, are keen to tell stories about the lifestyle, and document the industry.  I’m keen, however to encourage people to continue to fill in the survey.  The more data I have, the better the overall view of the industry.

I’ve also received encouraging support from several cruise lines and agencies.  I think a trip to the United States and Canada to meet these people will shortly be undertaken.

Some media interest has also been forthcoming.  David Hahn of MusicianWages.com has been nice enough to do a write up on the research, with some resultant interest from musicians.  Further, Michael Dwyer of The Age in Melbourne has done an interview.  Hopefully, there’ll be something in Monday’s Arts section.

Thus, an exciting start to an exciting project.  Keep passing on those flyers!

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