Aidan Wilson

Could DNA be the future of digital preservation?

24 January 2013 by Aidan Wilson

Genetic scientists in Britain overnight, have successfully demonstrated the data-storage potential of DNA, as explained in The Conversation today. In a proof-of-concept experiment, a string of DNA with a physical size around that of a grain of dust, was encoded with an MP3 file of the ‘I have a dream’ speech of Dr Martin Luther King, … Read more

Announcing Paradisec’s new catalogue

24 October 2012 by Aidan Wilson

Over the last year or so, the Paradisec team, in collaboration with software developers Robot Parade, Silvia Pfeiffer and John Ferlito, have been working on the development of a replacement to our ageing catalogue and database systems and a couple of weeks ago, this work culminated in the release of the new catalogue. There are … Read more

Participant Observation: A LIP discussion

12 June 201212 June 2012 by Aidan Wilson

This post recaps the May meeting of Linguistics in the Pub, whose topic was More than just being there? The place of participant observation in linguistic fieldwork. Two weeks ago at Linguistics in the Pub, we discussed an issue that many linguists never really consider, but which is central to many anthropologists’ work: the role … Read more

Unveiling the new and improved ELAC

11 February 201111 February 2011 by Aidan Wilson

Cross-posted from Transient Langauges and Cultures

This blog is now well into its fifth year and in all that time, not much has changed (apart from the new ‘look’ which was imposed on us from above). But a major development has now taken place: we have moved to a new home.

Regular readers will know that many contributors to this blog (such as Peter Austin, Jenny Green, David Nash among others) do so under Jane Simpson’s user account. This is because the blog’s user accounts are managed as part of the University of Sydney’s wider authentication system, meaning that only staff or students of the university could have an account.

Now, Jane Simpson has moved to the Australian National University, so we decided late last year to migrate the blog out of the confines of the Sydney University user authentication system and host it ourselves, on a server that PARADISEC won in 2008.

One missing slash equals an object lesson in keeping backups

5 February 201122 April 2010 by Aidan Wilson

This semester, I have been helping out Jane with her wonderful Field Methods class in technical matters such as recording, uploading files onto the server and allowing students to securely and quickly download both .wav and .mp3 files. I took this course myself some years ago, and it was a great experience for me and the whole class, and many members of that class have continued on in their studies to do field research of their own, and I’m sure the Field Methods class was as much a help to their research as it was to mine.
But this post is not about when I took the class. Instead, it’s about how I almost buggered up this semester’s class in what can best be described as a lesson in keeping backups of your recordings.
(Warning: Some computer nerd stuff follows after the fold.)

More Good News

5 February 201120 October 2008 by Aidan Wilson

Following on from Jane’s announcement during the week of all the great news regarding successful grant applications, I have another bit of good news to share: James McElvenny and I recently applied for, and even more recently received, a grant from a philanthropic foundation to support our current work in compiling dictionaries.

2000 Hours

22 April 201330 June 2008 by Aidan Wilson

Early this morning, a delivery of audio files was quietly sent from Paradisec’s local server at the University of Sydney to permanent near-line tape storage at the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing in Canberra. This happens on many days, as you might imagine, but what makes today’s delivery special, was that somewhere in that bunch of files was our 2000th archived hour of audio.
Moreover, we will soon be celebrating five years of operations, in which case, 2000 hours might not seem so impressive – it’s just 400 hours per year after all – but we at Paradisec are very proud of our collection. Especially given that just about everything here is done on a shoestring budget and there have been some lengthy hiatuses of funding lately.
Speaking of which, this may be an opportune time to mention that we are always amenable to generous donations from people wishing to sponsor the digitisation and preservation of a collection of data. See our website for more details.
So, just which file was the lucky 2000th hour? Well, we can’t really be sure, but we do know that it was among a collection of Mark Durie’s research into the dialects of Aceh, an area that was devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami of Boxing Day 2006.
To help us celebrate both these milestones, Mark has kindly written a small piece for us about Aceh’s dialects, his research of them and the importance of preserving the collection. He has also allowed a small portion of one of these recordings to be posted with this piece, which you can download here.

Renovations, Repairs and Repositories

5 February 201111 March 2008 by Aidan Wilson

A lot of work has been happening at the University of Sydney over the past six months, and at the end of last year the top floor of the Transient Building, which houses Linguistics, Paradisec and a few other offices, got renovated. Unfortunately, since the entire exterior of the building is composed of fibrous asbestos, it’s unlikely that the University will outlay the mammoth insurance costs to do any exterior work. But anyone who knows the Transient building knows that the best option would be to demolish the whole thing and start again from scratch.

‘Baking Tapes’ or Analogue Audio Restoration

5 February 201114 May 2007 by Aidan Wilson

Last Friday was a bit of a milestone for me, since, in the 6 or so months that I have been involved in the audio preservation side of things at PARADISEC, I hadn’t yet actually cleaned a damaged audio tape. Unfortunately for me, the process isn’t quite as straight-forward as it is for a CD – warm soapy water, a non-abrasive cloth, wipe across the grain – rather, the entire process can take weeks, depending on how badly affected the tapes are.