Well, Me. My name is Shawn Day and I am a PhD student in the History Department at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Academically, my research interests revolve about nineteenth century Canadian economic, business and social history. Most specifically the role of drink and those who served them in late 19thC Ontario. More broadly I explore the adaptation of technology and information visualisation to the pedagogical process.
Professionally, I earned my stripes in the dotcom boom as jack-of-all trades in co-founded development ventures. Prior to that I was a self-employed journeyman involved in diverse aspects of information architecture.
I have some history in technology and a joy in life is catalyzing the reaction between technology and the study of history.
My niece Meaghan gave the graduation speech this past week. It has been posted to YouTube in a fine montage by Christina. In addition to her speech making honours she picked up a total of seven awards including athlete of the year. Her uncle is very proud! Congratulations Meaghan!
I don’t normally blog about Firefox extensions. I have far too many installed, but this latest one is something that should have been a part of Firefox on install. If you are running Firefox, you owe yourself to test this one out. Thumbstrips allows you to view your browsing history as a series of small screensnaps along the bottom of the browser window. This is something so logical, so appealing to our visual sense that I just makes intuitive sense. Its well integrated and although I have sense its going to start to consume storage space over time, it may well make the space trade-off an investment. Check it out!
Last weekend Toronto dedicated a starkly breathtaking park/memorial to the Irish Famine immigrants of 1847. Ireland Park was opened by Mary McAleese, President of Ireland and features a rather striking memorial wall made up of glass bricks commemorating those who died during the exodus and also those who died trying to help them. The aim of this park is to commemorate this historic tragedy and also to remind us of similar events occur today.
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There is a great discussion at Bricoleurbanism on the absence of people-scaled spaces in Toronto’s urban streetscape. The discussion takes as a starting point construction hoarding on two sides of the street near Bloor that inadvertently created a humane street scale not unlike that found elsewhere in the world.
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I attended a great talk by Steven Bednarski of St. Jerome’s University today. His CV lists UQAM, York, Toronto as places of experience. His framing question today: How does a social historian make use of a research database?
Bednarski explains that he was trained in the French school and considers himself a storyteller by practise. The leads to a valuable reminder for me: the quantitative historian makes good use of his tools and may carry out exquisite analysis of datasets through many means (statistical, spatial, SNA, etc) but what this allows him to do is construct the model and then use narrative to illustrate it through anecdotal evidence.
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While at the Second Cup today and I got a good tip on a rather intriguing grape from Hungary - kekfrankos . Toni Burzotta tells me that it’s one that will appeal to people that appreciate a well structured, smooth and easy drinking red. The kekfrankos grape is one many people are probably familiar with as the principal grape in Egri Bikavér (Bull’s Blood) - the first that always jumps to my mind when anyone mentions Hungarian wine. It is a unique varietal, indigenous to Hungary and has been grown there for centuries. Toni says its smooth, soft and supple and most important for we Ontarians is that it will be available at your local vintages starting October 13th from the Villa Stephen. My palate is watering already. It represents a great value for taste and we can all appreciate that.
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