Nova is coming

On Monday, a film crew from the public television program Nova will be coming to film the Tel, in preparation for an upcoming segment on the abecedary.

As one might imagine, this is cause for more than a small amount of consternation, as square supervisors must set aside ambitions for more excavation and instead sweep their squares in preparation for the filming. Everything must be perfect, of course - even the Baulk Tags - labels which are nailed into the earth layers exposed at the edges of each square (the baulk) to indicate the Locus number they are associated with. Traditionally done with permanent marker on a piece of 2"x3" manila card stock, the dig director has decided that a more professional approach needs to be taken. So, each morning he calls me up from the field with a list of locus numbers, which I dutifully transcribe into 'Word Art' in Microsoft Word. The height, width, centering, and boldness of each must be 'just so', and then printed out on adhesive labels bought for the purpose.

We will all be relieved when the TV cameras go away and we can get back to the mundane business of archaeology.

Busy life = no blogging

One of the first things to go when the pace of life gets hectic is the blog.

Both reading and writing blogs are lower priorities than the important things of daily life: data entry, data analysis, running backups, saving the world from massive destruction, and the like.

I had an interesting discussion with Lauren and Erin over lunch the other day about why anyone in their right mind would blog at all. Both are intelligent, highly motivated university professors, with several peer-reviewed publications to their name and they had comments like these:

"Why would I want to have people I don't know able to read my private thoughts? If I write in my journal, it's for me only, not for others."

"I already have enough trouble controlling the image people have of me - to have my words from a blog used against me is a thought to horrendous to contemplate."

"As an academic, I have trained myself to do all my writing as if it were going to be picked apart by a thesis defense committee, and I simply don't have enough energy to create such entries."

"I don't get why one would allow one's self to be driven by the appetite of the reader."

It makes me think about why I blog, why I had an email list for people who want to know about my thoughts about Zeitah in years past, and why I have an email list for people interested in progress in the rebuild of my Aeronca airplane .

Is it egotism? Pride gone wild? Self-centered individualism?

Truly - does anyone really care what I think about Carbon 14 dating, or what arcane method I was able to devise to print pot sherd outlines, or that I got to fly while in England on my way over?

Indeed, other than my family and a few close friends, I suspect the interest level is pretty low. But I continue to blog. I guess I just don't care that much if people don't care about my blog. I mean, it's nice if they like it, but my self-image doesn't hinge on adulation for a well-crafted blog entry.

I realized that today is a momentous day: it is the half-way point between my arrival in Israel and departure for home. Perhaps this is the reason for the navel-gazing: I'm half-way through the dig, and my vaunted hopes for data entry and analysis have gone unfulfilled. It's the end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end.

More about life at Kibbutz Galon

Kibbutz Galon has an interesting mix of people: the original kibbutzniks from Poland who established Galon in the mid 40's, their children, their grandchildren, immigrant workers, guest house guests (ranging from secular to highly religious, local to international origin, young to old), and renters who may have no other affiliation with the kibbutz.

Galon's main sources of income appear to be farming (dairy cows, melons, and grain), the Guest House (that would include us) and 'taxes' on members. Originally a collective run on communal/communist principles, over the years commitment to these ideals has been eroded, kibbutz members have become more interested in material comforts, and a certain amount of capitalism has emerged. This has given rise to a significant population of renters and to the Guest House. Combined, these now subsidize the needs of the kibbutz, which is seeing its members age and reduce. (see the article in my last post for details).

Capitalism, in the form of a competing eatery, (
Mike's Bistro,) is not welcomed with open arms, but is tolerated because of the income it produces.

But one thing all agree on: the love for their children and desire to pass their values on to them.



From the whimsical creative playground equipment to the practice of having children play in the area next to the adults as they enjoy their conversation, coffee and cake after the Friday evening meal - it's clear that they love their children and desire a better life for them than they have experienced.

In this we are all alike.

Madeleine Tappy, a remarkable 11 year old girl, drew a map (top plan) which was her impression of the kibbutz. I insert it below for your enjoyment.

May all parents celebrate the promise of youth, enourage our children to work to attain that promise, and transform our natural fear of separation into creativity as we seek positive ways to form healthy familial bonds that don't lead to bondage!

Kibbutz Galon in the news

In the June 15th Jerusalem Post 'UpFront Magazine', there is an article about Kibbutz Galon, complete with pictures. Although they mention an archaeology team sponsored by Mormons and not our team, the rest of the article appears to be accurate and informative. Happy reading!

Digging at Zeitah

It's not often, actually, that the computer guy at an excavation ventures forth from his air-conditioned lair into the harsh reality of the field, but that rare event happened Friday, and is likely to happen again on Monday.

How did this happen?

I ran out of things to do. Seriously! Oh, I could do a bit more filtering through the database, looking for anomalies, or I could have prepared an esoteric report or two, but until data comes flowing from the field, I was having some serious thumb-twiddling time.

So I woke up at 4:30 and piled into the van in the dark with all the square supervisors and their assistants. By 5:20, we had the tools out and were ready to start excavating. I was assigned a couple tasks I was unlikely to botch: pulling back weeds, removing old sandbags and sweeping the slope near the steps clear of loose dirt.

Erin, the square supervisor for whom I was working, commented that it's one of the great ironies of archaeology that a bunch of obsessive-compulsive people are gathered together and told to go clean dirt. Which I did, with a vengeance.

The only things really challenging about sweeping the slope are how to do so without rolling down the hill (it's about a 45 degree slope), and how to do it without killing your back, as you stoop over and sweep with a small hand-brush.

Excavating the old sandbags was more difficult than it might seem. The sandbags have deteriorated over the last 2 years, so the fabric is almost all rotted away, and where it isn't gone, it doesn't have enough strength to pull the contents away with it. So you have to use trowel, brush and dust pan to carefully brush away the dirt with which the sand bags were filled until you reach the bottom of the sand bag, at which point, the fabric can be pulled up.

Why excavate sandbags? Because they were put on top of and next to important or fragile sections of the excavation at the end of the previous season (in 2005) to protect them from the elements and from people who could destroy the site if it weren't protected. The dirt in the sand bags has mixed with water and essentially become a very low quality mud-brick, adding to the challenge of removing them.

By 8:30, when breakfast was called, it had started getting hot, and I heard data calling me from my room: "Oh John! Please come and enter me into the database!"

So, somewhat reluctantly, I left the field and went back to my duties as high-priest of data, grating out in my best Schwarzenegger imitation, "I'll be bock!"

Here are more pictures from the 2005 dig season or from this season.

Feeling a little Tipsy

No, it's not as you might assume from the title: your fearless blogger hasn't fallen off the wagon - in fact he's always been a tee-totaller. Hm. Since the only strong liquid a teetotaller drinks is tea, shouldn't that be tea-totaller? But I digress.

Let's see. Where was I? Oh- Tipsy! As in the Tipsy Trainer, a very rare pre-war English airplane of which there are now 4 flying examples.


While in London on my way to Israel, I was honored to have been given a flight in this little gem by its present owner (or caretaker, as he thinks of himself), Steve Slater. Only 29 Tipsy Trainers were manufactured, and of them, only 4 are currently airworthy.

Our flight over the English countryside near Bicester Airfield was wonderfully nostalgic and gorgeous. The airplane is somewhat sensitive to the controls, especially in pitch, but appears to love to fly just as much as I loved flying in it.

Many thanks, Steve!

More pictures can be found at Flying the Tipsy Trainer

You want What???!??

One of the joys of being director of archaeological computing on a small dig is the regular occurrence of moments like the one that happened yesterday. Our ceramics expert made a simple request: "Could you please print out a copy of each of the drawings of the registered pottery we've scanned so far? Oh, and it needs to be reduced 1:5. And they really should be labeled by the registry name. Oh, and I really need it by breakfast at 7:30."
Seems simple enough. But it isn't. For one thing, there are almost 400 images to print out.
Another thing: these images are of varying sizes, ranging from 453 pixels wide by 340 pixels tall to about 3000 pixels wide and 5000 pixels tall. And it really wouldn't do to blast through 400 pages of paper, considering that

• we're low on toner
• we only have about 450 sheets of blank paper on hand
• many of the images would print out only to 2 or 3 inches square

What's an geek to do? Most people would say, "just select all the pictures from an explorer window, select 'print', and off you go!" But if you do that (or use PhotoAlbum or similar graphical user interfaces to photographs) you can't guarantee the proper scaling of the resulting printout. Of course, I immediately thought to myself, "If only I had a Linux distribution handy!" But no, this excavation is all Windows based, and although I could use ubuntu, I actually need the computers for other Windows tasks. I could use the VMWare image of Linux I have available on the dig's main computer, but it would indubitably run too slow for this number-crunching task. Maybe I could get Windows to act more like Linux, and allow me to do some shell scripting, a little awk here, a grep there, sed, vi ... and of course, ImageMagick.

Now, if you've not heard of ImageMagick, you've missed out on one of the treats of a geek's life.
ImageMagick (or IM, as it's known to aficionados) is a wonderful Swiss Army knife of tools you can apply to a graphical image to transform it in various and sundry ways. Any software that comes with a command 'mogrify' rates way high on the geek-must-have scale. I have used IM in the past to splice images together in a 'montage', and this sounded like just the tool for this job.


So how do I go about turning a Windows computer into something at least mostly useable under the command line? Install cygwin unix command equivalents, Gimp, ImageMagick, and Vim, the improved VI editor.


Then, write a series of batch files that transform the data... which I will include below for the enjoyment of those who know what I'm talking about and in order to impress those who don't. :)

Run each batch file in successive order, then use Gimp to change the resolution and print the results. Easy shmeasy!

So, now that I've written the scripts, I am about ready to run them, which I estimate will take 8 hours of solid computing time. [ Update: Turns out it only took 2 hours, and another hour to print out.]

Happy Mogrifying!

John

Example input drawing :


Example output file (made smaller for this blog):

Assumptions:

- All operations unless otherwise noted take place in

My Documents\Zeitah\pics\Registered Item Drawings\test

- Originals are one level above and are named P1.jpg through Pxxxxx.jpg

- Original scans are at 150 dpi

- We want to maximize the number of images printed per page

Procedure:

1. At the command line (start|run|cmd) and run the command c:\unixutils.bat, which will add the path to Cygnus to your command path.
2. cd “My Documents\Zeitah\pics\Registered Item Drawings”
3. Create test if it doesn’t already exist:

a. mkdir test

4. Create a list of file names and their sizes

a. identify P*.jpg | sort –n +2 | sed "s/x/ /" | sed "s/\[.*\]//" >test\identify.txt

5. cd test

6. Sort names of files into various file sizes (1classify.bat)

a. awk "{ if ( $3 > 1 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 1200 && $4 <= 800 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >fivebyfive.txt

b. awk "{ if ( $3 > 1200 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 1500 && $4 <= 1000 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >fourbyfour.txt

c. awk "{ if ( $3 > 1500 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 2000 && $4 <= 1300 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >threebythree.txt

d. awk "{ if ( $3 > 2000 &&amp;amp;amp; $3 <= 3000 && $4 < 2000 ) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >twobytwo.txt

5. awk "{ if ( $3 > 3000) { print $1 } }" | sort -n +0.1 >onebyone.txt
6. create commands to extend the files into consistent widths: (2mkextent.bat)

a. sed "s/^/mogrify -extent 1200x800 /" >fiveextent.bat

b. sed "s/^/mogrify -extent 1500x1000 /" >fourextent.bat

c. sed threeextent.bat

4. sed "s/^/mogrify -extent 3000x2000 /" >twoextent.bat
7. Extend the canvas sizes (3doextent.bat)
8. Create montage commands (4mkmontage.bat)

a. fmt –250 fivebyfive.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage5.jpg" >domontage5.bat

2. fmt –160 fourbyfour.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage4.jpg" >domontage4.bat
3. fmt –90 threebythree.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage3.jpg" >domontage3.bat
4. fmt –40 twobytwo.txt | sed "s/^/montage –frame 10 –geometry 1200x800 –pointsize 48 –label %%f " | sed "s/$/ montage2.jpg" >domontage2.bat
5. sed domontage1.bat
9. Run montage commands (5domontage.bat)

a. call domontage5.bat

b. call domontage4.bat

c. call domontage3.bat

d. call domontage2.bat

5. call domontage1.bat
10. Open each montage file in gimp.
11. Change the page setup for maximum printing area
12. Change the density from 72 to 600 (for 1:4) or 750 (for 1:5)
13. Print the resulting pages.