Author Archives: Hugh Paterson III

EGIDS, SIL, and Language Documentation

Posted on by
Reply

About two or three weeks ago Gary Simons and Paul Lewis co-presented on an Extension to Fishman’s Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (Lewis & Simons 2010) [1] Paul M. Lewis & Gary F. Simons. 2010. Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 55.2: 103–20. . Fishman’s scale for measuring Language Vitality and Language Endangerment has been around for about 2 decades (almost longer than me ;-)). The Ethnologue in its most recent version has started to list the position of the language on the EGIDS scale. This is something that the editors are looking to expand to all languages in the Ethnologue. This has some bearing on Language Documentation globally (as grant writers and funders look at EGIDS as a pivot point for language vitality) and because Language Documentation efforts usually (and typically) focus on languages on a 7 or higher on the scale (Shifting, Moribund, Nearly Extinct, etc). Continue reading →

References

References
↑1 Paul M. Lewis & Gary F. Simons. 2010. Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 55.2: 103–20.

Finding that Apple command symbol

Posted on by
1

I have always wanted to be able to type the ⌘ symbol for various reasons, including writing tutorials, but I have not know how to access it through my keyboard. A few, general, related notes:

  1. There is a nice wright up including some history on the Command Key, ⌘ on wikipedia.
  2. How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One
  3. PopChar is an application which helps users find obscure characters.
    PopChar

    PopChar is a utility for helping users find the Characters they are looking for

    This functionality is built in to OS X with Character Viewer, though it is likely that PopChar extends the user experience in some way.
    CharacterViewer-with-highlight

    OS X Character Viewer

    Shiftkey-in-characterViewer

    Shift Key in Character Viewer

  4. This discussion on the Apple Forums talks about a way to put these symbols in Pages’ auto correction so that Pages will auto correct a set of characters typed to the symbol desired. I have seen this used in MS Word too.
  5. A table of Unicode characters corresponding to Macintosh keyboard symbols, as they commonly appear in menus.

    6. The Next two Links are more detailed but like the above.

  6. Special Key Symbols
  7. Apple Keyboard Symbols

    8. Marginally relevant:

  8. Multi-stroke Key Bindings
  9. Keystroke mapping explained by SIL’s NRSI.

It is unicode point 2318 (the html hex code is ⌘ ) and so you can find it in the character palette under:

  • Code Tables>Unicode>2300>2318

    • or you can go into

  • All Characters>Symbols>Technical Symbols

.

Apple ⌘ symbol

Apple ⌘ symbol

There are a few other ways to get at it, but that should do it for you.

On OS X, if you switch your keyboard to Unicode Hex Input, then holding down opt allows you to type the four digits for a unicode symbol and get the ⌘ (2318).

The Alt/Option Symbol has also been elusive. It can be fount at Unicode point 2325. U+2325.

Alt Key U+2325

Alt Key U+2325

Unicode and Hex Keyboard symbols
⌘ – ⌘ – ⌘ – the Command Key symbol
⌥ – ⌥ – ⌥ – the Option Key symbol
⇧ – ⇧ – ⇧ – the Shift Key (really just an outline up-arrow, not Mac-specific)

⇥ – ⇥ – ⇥ – the Tab Key symbol
⏎ – ⏎ – ⏎ – the Return Key symbol
⌫ – ⌫ – ⌫ – the Delete Key symbol

Girl Scout Samoas

Posted on by
Reply

Girl Scout Samoas are my second favorite Girl Scout Cookie (GSC). But the price is outrageous and they use High Fructose Corn Syrup. I think I would rather eat a brownie. So I though it time that Becky and I figure out a recipe we like. So, here are a few we’ll try when we get back to the States:

Recipe: Girl Scout Samoa Cookies (Copycat)

Ingredients

  1. 6 tablespoons butter
  2. 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  3. 1/2 cup light corn syrup
  4. 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
  5. 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  6. 4 cups toasted coconut
  7. 1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. Place each shortbread cookie in cup of a greased muffin tin.
  2. In 2-quart saucepan over medium-low heat, combine butter, sugar and corn syrup.
  3. Heat to a full boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.
  4. Boil 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
  5. Slowly pour in sweetened condensed milk, stirring constantly.
  6. Continue cooking over low heat until candy thermometer reaches 220-228ºF degrees.
  7. Remove from heat.
  8. Stir in vanilla.
  9. Beat until creamy.
  10. Immediately stir in toasted coconut and mix well.
  11. Spoon mixture by teaspoonfuls over shortbread cookies.
  12. Cool completely.
  13. Remove cooled cookies from muffin tin onto waxed paper.
  14. Melt chocolate chips and drizzle thinly in stripes over cookies and let chocolate harden at room temperature.
  15. Store in airtight container.

Quick Notes

24 -30 shortbread cookies (I used Lauryn Clark’s copycat recipe for the Girl Scout shortbread cookies, just cut them out so that they look right.)

Variations

Substitutions: 1/2 cup sugar + 2 tbsp water = 1/2 cup light corn syrup; 1/2 cup honey = 1/2 cup light corn syrup

Meal type: dessert

Culinary tradition: USA (General)

Recipe: Girl Scout Samoa Cookies

Ingredients

  1. 6 tblsp butter shopping list
  2. 1/2 cup sugar shopping list
  3. 1/2 cup Karo light corn syrup shopping list
  4. 1/2 of a 14 ounce can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk shopping list
  5. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract shopping list
  6. 4 cups toasted coconut shopping list
  7. 1 cup semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips

Instructions

  1. In a 2 quart saucepan over medium-low heat, combine butter, sugar and corn syrup.
  2. Heat to a full boil, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
  3. Slowly pour in Eagle Brand milk, stirring constantly. Continue cooking over low heat until candy thermometer reaches 220-228 degrees.
  4. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Beat until creamy. Immediately stir in toasted coconut and mix well.
  5. Spoon by tablespoonfuls into circular mounds onto buttered wax paper. Flatten slightly. With the end of a wooden spoon, poke a small round hole into the center of each cookie.
  6. Cool completely.
  7. Melt the chocolate chips and drizzle thinly in stripes over cookies. Let chocolate harden at room temperature. Store in a airtight container.
  8. To toast coconut: Spread coconut on a baking sheet and toast in a preheated 350 degree oven, stirring occasionally until lightly browned, 5 to 6 minutes.

Meal type: dessert

Culinary tradition: USA (General)

Recipe: Caramel de-Lites

Summary: Homemade Girl Scout Cookies: Samoas

Ingredients

    Cookies

  1. 1 cup butter, soft
  2. 1/2 cup sugar
  3. 2 cups all purpose flour
  4. 1/4 tsp baking powder
  5. 1/2 tsp salt
  6. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  7. up to 2 tbsp milk

    8. Topping

  8. 3 cups shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)
  9. 12-oz good-quality chewy caramels
  10. 1/4 tsp salt
  11. 3 tbsp milk
  12. 8 oz. dark or semisweet chocolate (chocolate chips are ok)

Instructions

    Cookies

  1. Preheat oven to 350F.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt at a low speed, followed by the vanilla and milk, adding in the milk as needed to make the dough come together without being sticky (it’s possible you might not need to add milk at all). The dough should come together into a soft, not-too-sticky ball. Add in a bit of extra flour if your dough is very sticky.
  3. Roll the dough (working in two or three batches) out between pieces of wax paper to about 1/4-inch thickness (or slightly less) and use a 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter to make rounds. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and use a knife, or the end of a wide straw, to cut a smaller center hole. Repeat with remaining dough. Alternatively, use scant tablespoons of dough and press into an even layer in a mini donut pan to form the rounds.
  4. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned and cookies are set. If using a mini donut pan, bake for only about 10 minutes, until edges are light gold.
  5. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

    6. Topping

  6. Preheat oven to 300. Spread coconut evenly on a parchment-lined baking sheet (preferably one with sides) and toast 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until coconut is golden. Cool on baking sheet, stirring occasionally. Set aside.
  7. Unwrap the caramels and place in a large microwave-safe bowl with milk and salt. Cook on high for 3-4 minutes, stopping to stir a few times to help the caramel melt. When smooth, fold in toasted coconut with a spatula.
  8. Using the spatula or a small offset spatula, spread topping on cooled cookies, using about 2-3 tsp per cookie. Reheat caramel for a few seconds in the microwave if it gets too firm to work with.
  9. While topping sets up, melt chocolate in a small bowl. Heat on high in the microwave in 45 second intervals, stirring thoroughly to prevent scorching. Dip the base of each cookie into the chocolate and place on a clean piece of parchment paper. Transfer all remaining chocolate (or melt a bit of additional chocolate, if necessary) into a piping bag or a ziplock bag with the corner snipped off and drizzle finished cookies with chocolate.
  10. Let chocolate set completely before storing in an airtight container.

Quick Notes

Makes about 3 1/2-4 dozen cookies.

Variations

Samoas Bars

Meal type: dessert

Culinary tradition: USA (General)

Skyping in for Jon’s Wedding

Posted on by
Reply
My brother, Jon set the date for his wedding the day after Becky and I set the date for our return to México. Unfortunately they were both set for the same day. So Becky and I Skype'd in and watched the wedding from the Houston Airport.
Hugh and Becky at Houston AirPort

Hugh and Becky at Houston AirPort

Jon waiting for the Bride.

Jon waiting for the Bride.

Blocking the Camera.

Blocking the Camera.

Meꞌphaa Bibliography

Posted on by
Reply
This is an experimental use of Mendeley's API to present a bibliography of materials used in the Meꞌphaa language documentation project.There are are several limitations to the WordPress plugin because it does not bring over all the reference types. This is partly a limitation of Mendeley's API and partly a limitation of the reference types they support in their application. The WordPress plugin ignores that some references do not have the same parts in their citations. Some form of CSL should be used in the plugin. More about Citation Style Language. One other thing that I have noticed is that when there is a URL which ends in a .pdf the plugin re-codes the link name to "pdf". This is the advertised behavior. However, when there is more than one URL, they all say "url" rather than what is the last part of the URI. Look at this example from above:
Steven Egland, Doris Bartholomew, Saúl Cruz Ramos (1978) La inteligibilidad interdialectal de las lenguas indígenas de México: Resultado de algunos sondeos, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, p. 58-59, Mexico City: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, url, url
Languages of Western Central Mexico

Languages of Western Central Mexico

[mendeley type="groups" id="899061" groupby="year" grouporder="desc"]

Using Endnote X4 for Mac

Posted on by
Reply

One of the most popular Citation Management software applications among academics is the application Endnote. Endnote has a long history is published by a reputable company, and has some pretty cool features. I use it (version X4) primarily because it is the only citation softwareThere is other citation management software for OS X which claims integration with pages but none of these solutions are endorsed or supported by Apple. Some of the other applications which claim integration with Pages are:

  1. Sente
  2. Bookends
  3. Papers – This is according to Wikipedia, but I own and use Papers 1.9.7 and have not seen how to integrate it with Pages. (However, Papers2, released March 8th, 2011 does say that it supports citation integration with Pages.)

which integrates natively with the word processor Pages, by Apple, Inc. The software boasts a bit of flexibility and quite a few useful features. Some of the really useful features I use are below.

However, regardless of how many good features I find and use in Endnote there are several things about it which irk me to no end. This is sort of a laundry list of these problematic areas.

  1. Can not sort by resource type:
    For instance if I wanted to sort or create a smart list of all my Book references, or just Journal Articles. This can be done, one just has to create a smart list and then set Reference Type to Contains: “Book Section”. There is not a drop down list of reference types invoked by the user.
  2. Can not sort by custom field:
    I think you can do this in the interface. Though it was not obvious on how to do it.
    Endnote Display Fields

    Endnote Display Fields

  3. Can not view all the custom fields for a resource type across all resources.
    This seems to be limited to eight fileds in the sorting viewer at a time.
  4. Can not view all entries without content in a specified field.
    This would be especially nice to create a smart list for this.
  5. No exports of PDFs or exports of PDFs with .ris files.
  6. There is no keyboard short-cut to bring up the Import function (or Export) under File Menu
  7. Does not rename PDFs based on metadata of the resource.
    This is possible with Papers and Mendeley. The user has the option to rename the file based on things like Author, Date of publication, etc.
  8. Can not create a smart list based on a constant in the Issue data part.
    I have Volume and Issue Data. Some of the citation data pulled in for some items has the issue set as 02, 03, etc. I want to be able to find all the issues which start with a zero so I can remove the zeros. Most stylesheets do not remove the zeros and also do not allow for them.
    Items are not selectable based on Issue Data

    Items are not selectable based on Issue Data

  9. Can not export PDFs with embedded metadata in the PDF.
  10. Can not open the folder which contains a PDF included in an Endnote Library.
    Endnote does not have a way to open the containing folder of a PDF

    Endnote does not have a way to open the containing folder of a PDF

    Endnote does not have a way to open the containing folder of an included PDF

    Close-up of the same menu.

  11. Modifying Resource type does not accept |Language| Subject Language|
  12. There is no guide in any of Endnote’s documentation for how to create an export style sheet.
    This is in the Help Menus I was expecting it on the producers website or in a book.
  13. When editing an entry’s meta-data i.e. the author, or the title of a work, pressing TAB does not move the cursor to the next field.
    At least some times it does not continue to TAB. If I do a new entry as a Journal article, then it will tab till the issue field, but not beyond. It gets stuck.
  14. There is no LAN collaboration or sharing feature for a local network solution.
  15. There is no Cloud based collaborative solution.
  16. There is no way to create a smart group based off of a subset of items in a normal group.
    i.e. I want to create a smart group of all the references with a PDF attached but I only want it to pull from the items in a particular group (or set of groups).
    Endnote no option for part of group filter

    Endnote has no option for 'part of group' filter

  17. There is no PDF Preview within the application. The existing Preview is for seeing the current citation in the selected citation style. (Preview of the output.) It would be helpful if there was also a preview pane for viewing the PDF or the attached file.
    No PDF Preview internal to Endnote

    No PDF Preview internal to Endnote

Notes and a Bibliography

Posted on by
Reply

I have been looking for a way to create Posts with both Footnotes and a Bibliography section. I have wanted to make my post a little more professional looking, and let the information flow more easily with the way I write. What I have come to realize, is that Footnotes and Endnotes are different and function differently in respect to information processing. Traditionally, in print media Endnotes have occurred at the end of the article, whereas Footnotes have occurred at the end of the page on which the footnote is mentioned. This leads to a three way breakdown:

  1. Footnotes
  2. Endnotes
  3. Bibliography

The purpose of footnotes is to facilitate quick information processing without breaking the flow of reading or information processing of the consumer of information. On web-based media, the end of the article and the end of the page is the same if pagination is not enabled. So this creates a sort of syncretism between Endnotes and Footnotes. However, the greater principal of quick reference to additional information still applies on the web. There are several strategies which have tried to fill this information processing nitch, these include things like:

  • Tooltips (The pop-up text which appears when your mouse cursor hovers over a link or some other text.)
  • Lightbox (The darker shading of the background and the high-lighting of the content in focus.)
  • Pop-up windows (which have been phased out of popular "good web design").
  • Information (Text) balloons (an example of this is Wikipop Wikipop is really a combination of the above mentioned effects above to create an inline experience for the user. But some web-sites have a similar effect which is dependent on the mouse hovering over the "trigger".).

With strategies for conveying information like Tooltips it is possible to meet the same information communication and information processing goals which were formerly achieved through footnotes. For Web-based information, which is intended to be consumed through a web medium Wiki-pop makes a lot of sense. However, if the goal is a good print out of content then footnotes are still needed, that is why I am using footnotes on this particular web presentationA solution which does both, tooltips or solutions like Wikipop, and footnotes when the content is printed, would be ideal. .

So here is a quick post on how I am doing it.
I am using two different "endnotes" plugins. One for the Bibliography section and the other for the Notes section.

Creating the Footnotes section:
To create the notes section I have elected to use a plugin called FootnotesEven though there are other options for Footnote Plugins. One other option I know about is FD-Footnotes. by Rob Miller. (Big surprise on the name of the plugin...) Footnotes allows for me to put what I want to show up as footnotes in <ref>something</ref>In order to get these tags to display inside of <code> and </code> tags I had to use HTML codes for the greater than sign, less than sign and slash. There is some additional good information about character encoding in HTML on Wikipedia. tags.
Additionally I can set a tag <reference /> anywhere in the post and produce a list of footnotes.

Creating the Bibliography:
To create the Bibliography Section I am using WP-Footnotes (in the WP plugins repository) by Simon Elvery. More information can be read about his plugin here. What this plugin allows me to do is to craft the citation of the item I want to cite. I have to figure out how I want to "code" the citation and then present the citation.

[1]Hand Code the contents of the citation as it is to appear in the bibliography here, between a set of double parentheses.
Do not forget a space after the citation text and the double closing parentheses.

This will produce a citation marker (a number) as a super script inline with the text. Like this [2]Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 1998. Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. Linguistics vol. 36:161-195. [PDF] [Accessed 24 Dec. 2010] :
And that will produce a citation in the bibliography section like the following:

Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 1998. Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. Linguistics vol. 36:161-195. [PDF] [Accessed 24 Dec. 2010]

One interesting thing that occurs on the admin side of WordPress is that the plugin WP-Footnotes has an options page which shows up in the Settings menu, however what is interesting is that in that in the menu it is called Footnotes, not WP-Footnotes.
The options for WP-Footnotes really make it flexible, it is these setting which have allowed me to rename the section from Notes to Bibliography.

WP-Footnote Options

WP-Footnote Options

Final solution?
Is this my final solution? No. One thing I really don't like is that the bibliography is not orderd in alphabetical order of the last names, and then in order of the year of publication. Rather, citations are ordered in the order of appearance (as footnotes generally are). The plugin does not have any options for changing the order that thing appear in (though the headings on the ordered list can be changed). There is also no way to structure the data in the bibliography for reuse (even if it is just within this site), so each use of each citation must be hand-crafted with love. There are some other solutions which I am looking at integrating with this one but have not had time to really explore. One options is to integrate with Mendeley and aggregate bibliography data from a Mendeley collection. Another option is to create bibliographies as bibtex files and then use those to display the bibliography.

References

References
↑1 Hand Code the contents of the citation as it is to appear in the bibliography here, between a set of double parentheses.
↑2 Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. 1998. Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. Linguistics vol. 36:161-195. [PDF] [Accessed 24 Dec. 2010]

No hCite format defined

Posted on by
Reply

I am looking to re-skin Wikindex. I thought that I would add some CSS classes that would embed the meta-data in a manner that the citations could be picked up by Zotero quite easily. It seems to be a bit more difficult than I first anticipated. As a Microformat for citations is not yet been fully fleshed out. Obviously one way to go would be to embed everything in a span element as COinS does but that is not really what I am looking for. (Mostly because I don’t have a way to generate the Attributes in the span element automatically.) I have thought of using RDFa. But I still need to do some more research and see what can be gleaned in terms of which controlled vocabularies to use. I am hoping that this Lesson On RDFa will really help me out here. Finally I do need to know something about OAI so that once the Resources are put into Wikindex I can then tell OLAC what language they belong to.