Epistemographer

Tonight I think I finished my fourth chapter (which will actually be the sixth chapter of the final thing, thanks to the screwy way I wound up working on things)…the ending isn’t as tight as I’d like, but I’ll need to return to it after writinig the two chapters that precede it, since it relies on some arguments I’ll be making in those as-yet-unwritten chapters.

So, I’ve got two chapters left, one on the social culture of video stores (all about video store clerks and people hanging out while talking movies) and one on remediating films as texts from celluloid onto video (basically the chapter about letterboxing and colorization). These are the fun ones, and the ones I’ve been most looking forward to writing (hence me saving them for last, when I’m more than a bit burned out by this whole “writing” thing).

After that, it’s just a matter of writing an intro (basically cutting and pasting out of dissertation proposals and a talk I gave at the Media Ecology Association a few years ago) and a conclusion (about the idea of not being able to program one’s VCR, from a talk I gave even longer ago at SHOT).

My goal, pie-in-the-sky as it may be, is to have a full draft ready by mid-March. That is, of course, assuming no illness, no derailment, a constant level of motivation, and the continuation of this godawful draining schedule I’ve been on for the past week. Of course, I’m also going to be taking days off at a time, heading down to NYC without a single word of dissertation material, so I should be able to rejuvenate myself in fits and spurts.

Of course, if something terrible happens, like say I actually get an interview for one of those jobs I applied for, then I’d have to get a job talk ready, and either this whole schedule goes out the window or my head physically pops off of my shoulders. [irony] Hopefully, I won’t have to worry about anything awful like that. [/irony]

The cubicle in which I work:

The classroom in which I teach:

The odometer that just clicked over to 70,000:

Like I said in the last post, I’m a boring, boring man these days…

I’ve been sitting at my desk on campus for most of the past three days, and I’ve got another month or so of this to look forward to. Between teaching and trying to finish my dissertation, it’s going to be a loooong month.

In other news, I got my webcam hooked up at my desk, so you can watch me as I sit here and work. Right now, the only software I’ve bothered to set up for videoconferencing is MSN messenger (I know, I’m a corporate sellout, but it’s so damned easy to use), so fire a message to jmg48@cornell.edu via MSN and say howdy if I’m online…

Just spent the past hour setting up 17 student blogs for a writing course I’m teaching this semester. Movable Type really, really needs a batch blog create function.

The course itself will be an adventure: teaching a course I’ve not taught before, using a technology (Movable Type) I’ve not used in a class setting before, not to mention the electronically decked-out classroom with which I’m just getting familiar. On top of all that, I’m totally unsure how my students will respond to all of this…all in all, it’ll be an interesting first few weeks.

How cold is it tonight in New York City, you ask? Well, according to weather.com it’s currently 1 degree Fahrenheit, though with the wind it feels like -19.

But those are just numbers. How cold is it, really?

Well, Jenny’s apartment is well heated, and the windows are tightly-fitted, double-paned glass. And there’s frost on the inside of the window all around the frame:

This is crazy, not to mention the fact that I’m headed back to Ithaca on Monday, where I wouldn’t be suprised if my house is one big icicle.

For anyone in the NYC area this weekend:

RIVER ALEXANDER’S MAD JAZZ HATTERS

SAT. JAN. 17, 7-9PM, BARBES

aLIVE, aLIVE – OH! Hello Friends. Come experience the Mercurial Exuberance of delightful song and novelty of the 20’s and 30’s. Dance, Cavort, Frolic and Gallivant to Jazz, Vaudeville, Hokum, Swing and Soulful Undescribables (It’s getting good folks).

it’s at BARBES. BARBES, at Sixth Avenue and Ninth St.(376 9th.St.) in lovely PARK SLOPE, Brooklyn is just the most slopping over with innate character bar this side of the Rhine. EARLY SHOW 7-9PM. Excellent and evolving band: Aaron Maxwell charms the guitar, Gil Shuster conjures the wash-tub bass, Gillian Austin delights with the washboard and percussion, Karl Meyer soulfully saws the fiddle, and River Alexander on vocals, guitar, jew’s harp and harmonica. I’m very excited about the show. We’re followed immediately by Delta Dreambox, whom I’ve heard are most excellent. IT’S GONNA BE A LULU!

River’s great, and the lineup playing with him is fantastic. I’m not kidding – until you’ve hung out in a small room with a guy playing a bass made of a washtub with a broom jammed into it, you have not lived. Not to mention the washboard percussion.

After several days of wrestling with a chapter that just wouldn’t work, I realized a structural problem with my dissertation, and just spent the past hour and a half gutting and rejiggering. Once the smoke cleared, I was left with an outline that included one chapter more than I’d planned, but which also made a heck of a lot more sense, both in theoretical and narrative terms. That said, the tallies on the sidebar have been rewritten, and I feel like I have a strong sense of direction and purpose in my writing for the first time in a good three weeks.

This is exciting – Dan Froomkin, my old boss from washingtonpost.com just started writing a daily media round-up column called White House Briefing. Dan’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met when it comes to the intersection of politics, journalism, and new media, and I can’t think of anyone better to tackle this sort of column (though I do wonder how this happened, since one would imagine that there’s a bit of overlap with Howard Kurtz’ Media Notes weblog-ish column).

Back in New York City for the next week, with nothing on the agenda but dissertation writing and exercise (both of which I’ve sadly been neglecting while out of town). With that in mind, I’ve established a self-imposed moratorium on the reading of blogs of any sort until I get my next chapter finished…while this may not be easy (especially since the primary season is about to kick off), it’s entirely necessary. I’ll still post stuff here, if nothing else updating the dissertation progress sidebar throughout the week.

In other news, a profile of me and my research was published in the Cornell Alumni Magazine this month – since their website diesn’t appear to be current, I’ll link to a PDF version of the article that I recieved by fax (pardon the quality). The profile is a bit sensationalist, but definitely well-done, and it impressively doesn’t fall into the trap of over-simplifying the kinds of approaches I take to charting the rise and fall of the VCR.

And the best part is that while I’d done the interview months ago, I didn’t even know it had made it into print until last week, when I recieved a phone call from a Cornell alum who had seen the article and wanted to chat. Turns out that he had helped run the earliest U.S. demonstrations of Sony’s U-matic video player (a predecessor of the Betamax which was aimed at the educational and institutional markets), and was also involved with many other early video companies, including Cartrivision, which I’ve written about. We hung up an hour later, and I’ve now got a few more paragraphs of material to weave into Chapter 2.

In other news, I just sent back the page proofs for a review of Fred Wasser’s VCR book Veni, Vidi, Video that will appear in the next issue of Technology and Culture. I’ve also got an article coming out in the next issue of Public Understanding of Science on religious readings of a Hubble Space Telescope image, which I’ll link to once it’s actually in print.

So, that’s it for now – off to work!

Sorry for the delay, you hardy few who read this space on a regular basis – I’ve been busy doing not nearly enough down in Florida, where lots of sun and swimming pool time has been on the agenda. Tomorrow, we’re heading down to Miami for a few fun events, including an evening of Jai Alai (a staple of my trips down here). Plus, at some point I’ll get some good pictures of my trip this far up here, but in the meantime just imagine sun, family, and lots of me writing fellowship and job applications.

In the meantime, here’s a fun excerpt from an e-mail I recieved over the break:

Dear Josh,

We closed our video store 2 years ago. We still have left all of our adult vhs stock, about 2500 titles. We also have thousands of empty vhs display boxes to sell. Do you know anyone to contact for these items?

While my suggestions were pretty much limited to trying to unload the tapes on eBay or through the VSDA‘s classifieds, I figure I’ll lend a hand. So, if anybody out there wants to pick up 2500 adult videotapes, let me know and I’ll try to broker a sale.

When I started grad school almost six years ago, who knew the heights to which I would soar?