Class Blog 1

Google Books Ngram Viewer

~ Annie Swafford

The first 3 terms I decided to look up were “Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, and “Werewolf”. I chose these 3 fictional characters because they were very popular among fictional stories and folklore between the time periods of 1800 and 2000. More so during the 1800’s though, when superstitions were high among villagers and there was still a lot of unexplored territories and the fear of the forest. I also picked these three terms to look up because I am a fan of old and new horror movies. The three different characters are some of the more notable in the horror genre. However, it’s odd to see that “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” increase in popularity in the 1970’s then peak around the late 1990’s and “Werewolf” remain low in the rankings through the years.frankenstein

The next three terms I decided to look up were “Ford”, “Cadillac”, and “Dodge”.  I chose these three because they are very different from the previous graph I looked at. I also chose these three because practically everybody drives nowadays and I wanted to compare how popular 3 of the oldest car companies were. Obviously Ford is the most popular and mentioned the most because it is the oldest company. However, Cadillac and Dodge are very popular today and with Cadillac being a luxury car I was surprised not to see it higher up on the graph, not the lowest out of all 3 of them. It was odd to see the drop in Ford’s popularity though during the 1950’s. I suppose it had something to do with newer manufacturers coming into the marketplace and consumers wanting more variety. It is also weird to see that they reached their peak in the mid to late 1970’s then decline after that until the year 2000.

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Book Traces

~ Annie Swafford

During the book tracing assignment I though it would be a good idea to first try and look on the 3rd floor of the library near the movable stacks. I figured that the oldest books in the library would be on the bottom most floor. At first I looked for books based on year alone and had trouble finding most of them. I then switched my search method to try and find books on certain topics such as music, Shakespearean literature, and old folktales. I found a lot of old books within these categories but none that were between the years of 1800-1900. Most of the books I found were between the years 1920-1960 and a lot had some marginal writing and underlining within them but were too recent to be posted Book Traces. The book I did find though was from 1867. It was one book taken from a catalog of french geography textbooks. There wasn’t much marginalia in the book I found. Not much was in there besides some underlining of a few sentences on a couple of pages. What I took from this though was that whatever was underlined must have been important to whoever was reading this though. I had a hard time understanding what was being said though because everything was in french. Overall though I felt that this was a entertaining and educational assignment.  It let you realize how old certain texts are and what books were in print between 1800-1900.

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Book Traces: Searching for My Past

~ Annie Swafford

“March 3, 1963”

My Nanny’s handwriting stared up at me from the book my Poppy had placed in my hand. I had never seen anything quite like it.

“My Johnny,

Lines of verse last a long time, but sometimes even those we love best of all, can be forgotten. But, you know, love lasts a lifetime, and even a lot longer, something called forever. With the help of God, our love will last even longer than forever.

Happy Anniversary John.

As always yours, Mary”

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Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved finding writing in books. My mom and Nanny are both English teachers, so searching through the family library is like looking through a whole collection of personalized books, with notes in the margins, and lines under the words which give you the key to the tragedy of Hamlet, or a map to Watership Down. For me, there’s nothing like seeing a little smiley face in the corner of a page, my Nanny’s signature move, which tells you something either funny or heart-wrenchingly happy is about to happen. I mark up my own books too. So you can imagine my excitement when we were introduced to the Book Traces project in my DH class. Sitting in the library, I was ready to go and find that book I knew was waiting there for me. I looked up a couple of titles in the directory, but I just wanted to shuffle. I wanted to search aimlessly. That’s when you find the best stuff, right? I start pulling books off the shelves. Blue with brilliant gilded engravings, re-binded red with regular binding, green and brown and falling apart to the touch, I was loving it. Then, I happened upon it. An old copy of Hamlet with some sonnets in the back. I flipped through and found exactly what I had been looking for. A copy of Shakespeare With Notes, Glossary Etc. Volume X from 1900.

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Someone desperately trying to make sense of Shakespeare (I know the feeling). But what really struck me were the obviously erased pages. It ripped a page out of my heart. Why would someone erase the notes that might help future readers? It didn’t make any sense to me…and the I realized why it hit home so hard for me. When I saw that, I saw all of my Nanny and Mother’s notes slip away. All of those notes left in a tree for Scout to find disappeared like Gatsby’s count of enchanted objects. I suddenly realized the importance of these marks in this book, the importance of any marks in any book: They are who we are. They are our reflections on the text. everyone brings something different into a story with them when they read, and this leads to different interpretations of the same text, and these notes, and all notes allow us to see the text through a different set of eyes. To experience things as others do. That is the true beauty of marginalia.

~Austin Carpentieri

Copies of video games sold after American release date

~ Annie Swafford

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So this is the research I did,  I chose t do it on my favorite video game sequels and group them by the developer and the amount of copies  sold in the firs month after their American release date.  I had so much trouble with this project that I will not be using this site ever again. and in the future we should spend a little  more time explaining how to use the software  before we are thrown into the fray.

Wes Anderson Movies Through Visualizations

~ Annie Swafford

You can find interactive versions of these visualizations here, and my spreadsheet can be found here. (I added the “Genre” section after I made the spreadsheet directly into Google Labs)

SCREENSHOT 1

SCREENSHOT 2
The card set for my data (both of the above)
MAP
The map from my data
PIE CHART
The bar chart from my data, which shows the amount of main characters in relation to what movies they are from.
NETWORK
My network visualization, which shows the genres of the movies and how they are connected
BAR GRAPH
A bar chart, which shows the amount of main characters over the years of the movies being made.

~ Austin Carpentieri

Scandal in Bohemia wordcloud

~ Annie Swafford

sherlockwordcloud

I used the Sherlock Holmes story “A Scandal in Bohemia” and the visualization tool Wordle to create a wordcloud based on the story. What I noticed about my particular wordcloud is that it has a sort of circular pattern to it, as apposed to the normal seemingly “random” assortment of words. The smaller words are on the outer rim of the circle, and the words get larger and more condensed towards the center. Unlike my classmates, I did not remove the word “Holmes” from my wordcloud, because if someone unfamiliar with this assignment would glance at the wordcloud, seeing the word Holmes would give them a sense of what text the wordcloud was showcasing. I also noted the difference in sizes between “Holmes” and “Sherlock”. While Holmes is seen almost instantly, you might have to do a bit of searching to find Sherlock. I find that interesting due to in today’s standards, especially in stories, characters and people are often addressed  by their first name. The Sherlock Holmes stories, as we know, are presented by Watson, not Sherlock. But it is odd that even Watson, the person arguably the closeted to him, calls him by his last name instead of by his first.