Loving the ‘Groovy’ Engravings

Engravings have to be one of the coolest art forms I’m getting into. No, I’m not creating them (I only wish I was that talented!); I’m capturing them. In Florence I saw paintings in all styles: frescoes, tempuras on wood, oils — they were still all paintings. Engravings are simply ink stamped on with intricately carved plates.

This semester I’m working for Dr. David Gunn. I’ve been cryptic, or in some instances just non-straightforward, with people on my plans for this summer because they’re never cemented. Even still, there are unknown variables that pop up occasionally that 5 months ago I would not have been able to handle. I’m working for Dr. Gunn on a project: 1 and 2 Samuel. He holds the Bradford Chair in the Religion Department and luckily could hire me as a research assistant.

Many people knew for the past 2.5 years I’ve been working on sequential versions of KingQuest for Dr. Gunn. In the spring semester of my freshman year I had an advising session with Dr. Schmidt, my Greek professor and advisor. That session was when he recommended I find a way to do Florence while at college. That same session he also realized that I liked computers and had me find a time to go upstairs and meet Dr. Gunn. Dr. Gunn, in a transition time, was in the late stages of a commentary on Judges and was looking ahead to the commentary he would write on 1 and 2 Samuel. For Judges, he and his team were using a Filemaker Pro database that a past employee had designed. He had one issue for me to tackle: I had to figure out a way with the 1 and 2 Samuel database to devise a system where data could be saved without losing changes that were happening at the same time from others.

Their system was one where a simple coordination of who had the latest copy of the database on a certain day would solve the problem. I knew there was a better possibility though. That summer I designed a revised version of the Judges database using Microsoft Access and then went up to Seattle, WA for my internship. Coming back from that I knew so many new and better techniques that I overhauled the design and during my first semester of my sophomore year, worked in the library and programmed the new version in a SQL Server database where multiple researchers all fed the data into one collection. That semester I still didn’t have the tools for allowing him to get it out (conveniently), but I knew it was a start.

That next summer I was in Cambridge and I created a full-text search tool of the database. Then came the need for something else, something better: a usable version. The one before had been great, but it was limited to only keeping track of 6 different types of bibliographic information. It also was in an MDI form which is useful for programs like Photoshop and Word which are incredibly complex, but not one like KingQuest (the program that uses the database). Last year came the process of building and rebuilding features in KingQuest to make it user-friendly for both the researchers and the professor (or whoever) using it. It also is now more secure with everything going through a web service instead of straight through the SQL port. In the end, only one tool remains: the export functionality. Making KingQuest export to different bibliographic software applications will be the final challenge for this version.

Now that I’ve graduated I had to find something to do; using the software I designed seemed like the good next step. I still have graduate school starting in the Fall, but this Spring I wanted a way to be down here in Ft. Worth. Luckily the stars aligned and things fell into place: I’m working for Dr. Gunn and housesitting for Dr. Schmidt, my advisor who is on sabbatical. So now I’m here for a couple of weeks, around the country for a couple of weeks, and finally back here to finish off the semester.

There will definitely be more coming about my job and what I’m doing, but for now, let’s leave it at: I’m loving the ‘groovy’ engravings!