Thursday, February 28, 2008

Super Yoder

Best of luck to Dave today presenting to the BYU faculty. I'm sure it will be great. Somebody post a review/summary when they have a chance.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Good Times

I just wanted to say that it was good to see the crew during my recent trip to Provo. It was good times, really good times...

Also, I wanted to solicit some feedback on the trip. Do you think it went well? Specifically, what did people think about the research I presented and my stand up material in 110 or the grad lunch.

Friday, February 22, 2008

ETD Tips

After such ground-breaking BoM proofs have been revealed and more than one faithful truth-seeker has been so uplifted, I feel very useless sitting here with my porcelain fragments and barrel straps...


None the less, I just went to the library's little ETD training class and since I don't get to talk to most of you in person very often and don't have a clue where most of you are at in the process, I thought I'd share this in the hopes of being useful...This is the gist of the class and it’s all you’ll get going to the library class, so I wouldn’t bother going.

So here we go…

  1. In Word, set your personal styles as you’re going for Chapter, Sub-chapter, Table, etc (all needed to show up in bookmarks). This is only useful if you do it as you write, rather than after it’s all done. If you’ve already got a near-finished typed-up product, the trainer says to just create a pdf and make the bookmarks there. Styles in Word will only save time if you do them as you go for most of your document.
  2. Create a pdf (in Windows 2007, use PDFMaker and go to Preferences to choose which styles to import as bookmarks and set the level of priority.
  3. Check bookmarks reference to the correct location.
    1. If not, got to set destination and click the actual place it belongs for each incorrect bookmark. The multi-media lab has Acrobat Professional, which is what you need, but it has a bug where it tends to make the wrong destination, so be sure and check.
  4. To Create Another Bookmark within the PDF, highlight the text for the bookmark and click create. To change order of bookmarks, drag around in bookmark tab. Also can nest (so all Chapter 1 subheadings are nested within Chapter 1 bookmark) by dragging to icon or to text.
  5. Before saving, go to File Properties and select that it show page and bookmark tab when opened initially. The Library just prefers that.
  6. If you want to import several pdfs into a single pdf document, choose Create From Multiple Files. Choose all you want, put them in the desired order and create.
  7. If you’ve created your pdf and then you find an error, go into your original Word Document, fix it and not which pages are changed. Make this a new pdf. Go to the pages tab in your pdf, right click and choose replace with page from new pdf. Choose which pages from old and new documents to change out and click ok.

*If you have questions, the multimedia lab in the No Shhh Zone of the library is the best place to find answers on the pdf process. That’s also the main place on campus where you’ll get access to Acrobat Professional, which you’ll have to use.


Additional Resources:

As a reminder, there are templates, examples, and lists of requirements on the Grad Studies website (they’re forms ADV 11 and 12, various parts).


BYU’s Online Tutorial for Creating an ETD ready pdf—really slow and boring, though!


Download a free trial of Acrobat Professional


Microsoft’s Walk-Through on Creating Quick Styles in Word 2007

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The Land of King Lamoni Discovered

While at work on Monday, I made what I feel is a significant discovery regarding BoM archaeology. Normally, I would reveal my discovery in a more appropriate venue, but since word has made it around the OPA office so quickly, I thought I would reveal the discovery here on FOF.
While sifting through notes of PVAP architecture, there was a pithouse at Paragonah which was listed as having one burial and 15 additional human arms. Fifteen is certainly "not a few" as we read in Alma 17:38. After a brief consultation with Lane, I learned that on the Sand Hollow survey, OPA workers identified King Lamoni's throne. Therefore, I surmise that King Lamoni's land stretched as far north as the Parowan Valley and nearly to the Saint George Basin (or farther) to the south-I also have an inkling that the route on which King Lamoni and Ammon were when they ran into King Lamoni's father was likely the I-15 corridor.
This will certainly alter the PVAP research design and possibly my thesis focus. If any of you PVAPers (current or former) have noticed any other connections between the PV and BoM, please let me know and we can discuss publication.
(Perhaps now the Parowan Valley Archaeological Project will finally gain long-deserved respect among BYU bigwigs.)

Monday, February 18, 2008

Back on Campus

As most of you probably know, I will be on-campus this week giving some research presentations in anticipation of Joel's retirement. I thought I'd put up the tentative schedule as well as some descriptions of the research I am going to be presenting.

Wednesday February 20

6:00 PM -- Arrive Salt Lake Airport
6:00-8:00 PM -- Dinner with Grandparents in SLC
8:00 PM -- Bum a ride from someone from SLC to Provo (any takers?)

Thursday February 21

Pre 11:00 AM -- Either hanging out at OPA or feverishly finishing presentation
11:00 AM -- Research Lecture 919 SWKT My Thursday presentation is entitled "Agricultural Labor, Class, and Population Circulation among the Phoenix Basin Hohokam," in which I argue for the presence of a landless class of attached laborers that contributed to the operation of an extremely productive canal-based agricultural system in a small-scale society in the American Southwest, along with an attendant theoretical discussion.
12:00-? -- Lunch with faculty
?-5:00 PM -- Hanging out at OPA/feverishly finishing lecture for following day
5:00-? PM -- Dinner with Joel

Friday February 22

Pre-10:00 AM -- OPA or feverishly finishing lecture
10:00 AM-11:00 AM -- Lecture to 110 class in B-190 JSFB based on my dissertation research, which is currently entitled "In Search of Alliance: The Organization of Production and Exchange in 14th Century Central Arizona." In this research, I am investigating the conditions under which higher-order political alliances emerge (or do not emerge) in small-scale agricultural societies using data I have gathered on the production and exchange of ceramic vessels. In addition to presenting my own research, I intend to discuss archaeological models, the problem of equifinality in archaeological interpretations, and issues pertaining to my specific analytical methodology.
11:00 AM-12:00 PM -- Great Basin Seminar
12:00 PM-1:00 PM -- Lunch with Grad Students
1:00-3:30ish -- Bum ride to Airport (I think Evie said she would pay someone to take me)
3:30ish -- Arrive SLC
4:40 -- Depart SLC

Looking forward to seeing the crew.

Friday, February 01, 2008

UPAC and Utah Arch

A most of you know, Chris and I are attempting to become the new Utah Archaeology editors. At the business portion of the UPAC meetings we discussed the issue and some have asked that I do a post explaining where the issue sits. At the meeting we discussed how Utah Arch needs to get back up and running and that it should have institutional support if at all possible. Although no one with institutional support is willing to step up. Most agree that there should be some type of editorial board headed by an editor(s). The board would be made up of specialists and when an article was sent to Utah Arch the primary editor(s) would send it to the specialist who would then pick out a couple of reviewers and take care of the reviewing and revision process and then send it to the editor when it was ready to go. The editor would then put the issue together. Lori H. (the president of UPAC) had me stand and talk for a bit about Chris and I being willing to be co-editors. In the end nothing was decided and Lori said we should continue the discussion on a message board. After the meeting Dr. J and I talked with Lori and she committed to send us everything Jason Bright had for the next issue (2005) which is supposedly almost ready to be printed. But I have yet to hear from Lori (despite an email to her on Tuesday) and am doubtful about how 'close' the next issue really is. All of this in my mind epitomizes the problems with using a board, put a lot of people in charge of doing something and nothing ever really gets done, or it gets done very slowly. Anyway, we'll see how it turns out, but I don't have too much faith that it will be resolved anytime in the near future. C'est la vie.