Zeitag TO - history image app for iphone!

You'll have to excuse my history geekiness for a moment (come now people, you know you have it too)...THIS IS SO COOL!!!




http://activehistory.ca/2011/07/like-history-theres-an-app-for-that/



http://zeitag.net/ZeitagTO.html



It's an app that allows you to view historic photos of Toronto in your current location on your Iphone. I've seen things like this before, but never specifc to Toronto. Oh how I love the "historical gaze", what I define as the attempt to picture and formulate past actions in a particular historical space. This project and simiar ones being born from the Iphone phenomenon allows the 'historical gaze' to be rooted moreso in reality than ones imagination can do alone.



I especially enjoyed this comment from the above article:



" 'We don’t want the city covered in bronze – there are various platforms to bring information to the public. This way, you can tell as many stories as you want,' Blakeley recently said. Physical plaques serve a purpose, especially for those without smartphones. But apps on iPhones and other devices offer the ability to expand the number of (virtual) plaques, and what a plaque can do."



Also, I've spoken to John Walsh at Carleton University about another exciting project:



" Historical Landscapes of the Chaudiere: Augmented Reality Apps for Environmental Histories, currently in development, will use AR to translate an existing walking tour of Ottawa created by graduate students in the Public History program at Carleton University to one you can do with your smartphone. The project, funded by the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE), will 'demonstrate how the very direct relationships between geographical ‘mappings’ of heritage and place-based mobile computing privileges narratives of environmental history and will provide a model for using this technology in other landscapes.' Exciting stuff."



This reminds me of the Heritage Toronto iTours: http://www.heritagetoronto.org/discover-toronto/itours

Posting elsewhere...

Hi everyone (all 6 of you), remember that I'm regularly posting on Christopher Moore's blog. Here's the latest post by me:

http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2011/07/zeigto-history-image-app-for-iphone.html

I'll try to remember to post all my postings here as well as there!

Review: The Canadian War on Queers

Perhaps a good book is one that shocks you. In high school, for example, I began reading my (now) favourite fiction writer (Timothy Findley) with a mixture of disgust and insult. Now, I can't get enough of Findley's works. Similarly, though not to the same extent, my sheltered and polite undergraduate academic bubble was shocked when I began to read The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, recently published out of Carleton University. Though I'm not finished the book I think I can still make the comments below.

The content of the book does not shock me, but the approach does. It doesn't shock me to hear anti-establishment, quasi-marxist,  militant gay liberation and generally leftist railings inequalities that exist within social, gender, political and sexual structures. These are not new ideas, and certainly ones that occasionally sound pretty good in my ear. Don't think I say these things because I'm conservative. I don't attack these ideas, they've been around for quite some time. That's the problem, the book openings of the address, for example, the contemporary split between the left and right of queer politics in Canada (liberationists vs. equality/integrationists) with ideas straight out (no pun intended) of the 1970's gay liberation movement. As history undergrads we were taught that historical marxism was all but dead. This work seems to defy that, and its militant and activist approach frankly shocked me. It is so blatant in its condemnation of political, military, and social structures that it runs against the academic grain for this history student. Obviously, in social history there is often an agency vs. structure base. This book, however, is militant, it is politically contemporary. In the early pages it clearly outlines that the authors believe that while gains have been made for LGBT Canadians there still exists a war between social and political establishments and the LGBT community.


I end with saying that while I dislike the activist approach I don't necessarily disagree that there are still gains to be made and struggles for Canada's LGBT community. Perhaps what disturbs me the most is the blatant politics of the book in what is clearly a use history for activist purposes. In this, the book sorely lacks historical distance. Its tone makes me view Jack Granasteins ideas in Who Killed Canadian History? with a bit more sympathy then I did before. Maybe a book that shocks makes it a good book, but I do question whether this type of shock belongs in Canadian history.


Happy reading,


Jordan

King, Ghosts and the CBC

So, I was reading one of my favourite blogs the other day, Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog, and came across this post on William Lyon Mackenzie King's spiritualism. Dr. Beachcombing, I believe, is British, and true to historical form I got all excited that someone in Britain was interested in Canada! ( debatable whether we've ever really shaken the colonial itch ie. Royal Wedding fever). Lovely post, but nothing new to most students of Canadian history. However, as I so very often do, I read the blog and immediately began wasting my time searching through the CBC online archives. Anyway, while surfing I found this, which seems out of place for today's CBC...

A seance at Laurier House

I do wonder if done when the recent election began if King could have forseen the 'Orange Crush'? 


Also, as a side note, I visited Laurier House for the first time a few weeks ago. I found it amusing, and quintessentially Canadian, that the room that King conducted the seances in is now...a utility room.

New post - Queering the Archives #2

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up with linking my posts on Christopher Moore's History News. Here's the latest..http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2011/03/queering-archives-collections-of-clga-2.html

Recent posts

http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2011/01/election-fever-and-ndp-death-knell.html
http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2011/01/suddenly-fur-trade-becomes-tangible.html
http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2011/01/former-stats-can-head-joins-carleton-u.html
http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2010/12/canadian-archeologist-dies-excavating.html

London Day 2-3

Dec 24-25:

These two days have flown by. I don't think I can even recall everything that's happened. Had a wonderful night Christmas eve watching Catherine and Monty perform. Met lots of amazing people, most of them not British actually. It seems all the other colonials hang out together! At the pub on Christmas eve I met the British Vicky Stubbs....it was seriously creepy. We're going to a gay club with her on Thursday...are we shocked? So much more has happened, pubs, lunches, walks, getting scared by opposite traffic, Christmas eve on the 9th floor of a beautiful condo overlooking the Thames...with an all Canadian group + 1 New Zealander. Rush rush, we're off to Herrod's to look for sales....more importantly I'm looking for a tweed cap! Alisha and Catherine gave me a sweet book on London, argyle socks and a tweed tie for Christmas! Must run, more later!

Jordan

Local pub...it's amazing

Thames at low tide..Vauxhall Bridge to the right

London Day 1:

Day 1 Jan 22-23 2010:

We flew out today from Ottawa Itnl. with no lines and no problems at security. Both of us had fitful sleeps on the plane but arrived excited and alert in London this morning (23rd). Surprisingly, there was literally around 5 people in line as customs at Heathrow and we were checked in and had our baggage within 20 minutes. Our friend Alisha met us at the airport to a happy reunion. We took the Tube and cabbed to Alisha's lively little apartment in the Battersea area of London. Went to lunch and grocery shopping with Alisha. Dan and I are both taken aback by the amount and beauty of the cute row houses and 19th century office buildings.She then cooked us a lovely supper which we shared with our friend Catherine and her beau Monty, who we met for the first time. He passed the Dan shock test ie. didn't run away frightened! Dinner included (and was followed by!) much wine, laughter and stories. The lovely dinner was cooked by the lovely Alisha. Winding down the night now with some British TV and reflections while looking over the Thames by night. So much history concentrated on one narrow route...it's overwhelming. Busy day tomorrow, lunch with Catherine and Monty at a local pub, Christmas carol service at St. Paul's Cathedral, Christmas dinner with the gang, then going to see Monty and Catherine perform at another local pub. While in the cab driving to Alisha's on the opposite of the road I was scared several times thinking we were about to crash! Hopefully, I'll get used to that.

More to Come!

Jordan

New blog post - "Vimy" at the GCTC

http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2010/12/vimy-at-gctc.html

Romantic Archiving? New blog post...

http://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/2010/12/romantic-archiving.html