This is the first of a series of devlogs chronicling the progress made on the construction of a virtual exhibition documenting Greenbelt oral histories in Ottawa, Ontario. Although this post and its accompanying blog are designed from templates, they are very much from scratch. These lines mark the author’s first successful attempt at creating a webpage from text file, and their second successful attempt masquerading as a mango.

It’s me!

The words found on this static page (if anything can be static with this little experience, and this many mistakes and revisions woven into the page) are the result of several hours of effort, and several moments of blinding, searing rage.

There are a great many things I did not agree with while completing tutorial after tutorial. There are some I still don’t agree with now, after successfully embedding multiple images of mangoes -the greatest achievement I could conceivably imagine.

The digital humanities are messy, complicated, and like many things, they seem pointless to those who have no interest. I took to using Hypothesis, a web mark-up service, to catalogue my complaints. I picked fights whenever I could, even when I had no ground to stand on. A well-meaning tutorial tried to explain a complicated concept? Yeah, well, I CAN GARDEN BETTER THAN YOU.

John Denver was the only soul brave enough to face my wrath. Looping “country roads” for hours, he forced me to power through. Did it matter that one tutorial prophesied that “text files are future-proof”? No. How about the other one that suggested spending years learning to issue commands through GitBash would ultimately pay off, because it saved you some time switching between programs? That’s A-Ok, thanks to my man John. It didn’t matter how many fights I picked. Those country roads were taking me home.

Seeing the other side of the sunrise, I’m optimistic. Today, the first real steps toward this exhibition begin. The domain is being purchased, Omeka installed, and the elements (“items”) inputted. I’m sure this chronicle will have many more stumbles to come, but with the first trickles of success still freshly tapped, I’m optimistic. The fact that I’m able to write this suggests the tutorials were more valuable than I’d given them credit for.

I’ll leave this devlog with a little ditty from my man John. You might notice it’s a little different. That’s because we’re just beginning this adventure -we’re on those roads, but they’ve got a few more mountains to cross before we’re really home.