View source for Talk:Allusions in Context

Learning to use Gephi efficiently was the most difficult part about this project! However, I feel that I have acquired a skill now, which is pretty cool. (Useful in my future? Maybe, maybe not...) Luckily I entered the data in the right order (I put the columns in the right order in excel) so that the edges were connecting nodes the way I needed them to from the beginning: the far left column items are connected to each of the items next to them in the row, but the other items in the row are not connected to one another by edges in the network. Finding the "zoom" function and the node sizing function made life easier after a day or so of playing around. I also found running the "label adjust" layout to be extremely helpful, especially because for the larger networks I didn't need the cluster in the middle to be organized any certain way, I just wanted each node to be semi-legible.

As far as "using the technology to think," this project has certainly solidified my belief in the efficacy of that. I started making network graphs with no thesis and no direction in mind, but once I saw them, I suddenly had questions to ask and answer, which called for more specific network graphs, which in turn brought out further topics of inquiry. When I was almost done with the essay, I realized I had written most of it just by "thinking out loud" (typing out observations) and then making connections and thinking out loud some more. Because of this approach, my writing style is a little more casual than usual for an English paper, but I think the style fits in with the rest of this course: several of the articles we read were written slightly informally, and this is a project for a website (granted, on an academic subject and in an academic context) that ''anybody'' could access if they wanted to begin learning about "The Wasteland" or what Digital Humanities projects look like.

I think I like my final project a lot more than I was expecting to. It fell together all right. Thanks for reading.