My Favorite Computer Game ...
Dec. 1st, 2005 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrj... is a database. Any database. Spreadsheets are good too. I'll stay up to all hours playing with them.
Today I converted another document file into the FileMaker version of my Medieval Welsh Names Database -- specifically a late 13th c. tax roll from Lleyn in north-western Wales. I started out keeping the project in a series of Excel files (one for each source document). Well, actually, I started out working in dBase but found that that approach locked me too solidly into a particular format at a time when I really needed to be exploring and playing with the data a lot more. So I dumped what I had into Excel and then focused on adding lots of content with a minimum of interpretation. Now I feel comfortable enough with where I'm going that I want the greater efficiency and power of a relational database, as well as needing something that will more easily convert to something with a web interface eventually.
Here's the state of the project. In Excel files, I currently have slightly over 20,000 personal names from about 65 different historic documents ranging from the 10th to 16th century but currently emphasizing the 13-14th century. Currently I've transferred to FileMaker the contents of 16 documents representing 8400 personal names (comprising about 25,000 individual name elements and about 2000 different roots). In addition to what I have in Excel form, I have about 15 other source documents that I haven't entered in any form yet. To say nothing of all the potential sources that I haven't tracked down copies of yet.
This is the project that inspired me to get a PhD. I've been working on it for just short of 20 years. In short: I plan to produce an analysis of pre-1600 personal names in Wales including a complete catalog of known name elements (and variants, and the contexts in which they occur), an analysis of overall name structures, and as many other angles as I have fun exploring, in particular large-scale patterns of change and variation over time and space. Originally I had a notion that it would become a printed book, but in the end it will almost certainly be a web site instead (or whatever evolves to fill that niche). So far it's spawned a dozen conference papers and one "forthcoming" publication.
My favorite computer game is a database.
Today I converted another document file into the FileMaker version of my Medieval Welsh Names Database -- specifically a late 13th c. tax roll from Lleyn in north-western Wales. I started out keeping the project in a series of Excel files (one for each source document). Well, actually, I started out working in dBase but found that that approach locked me too solidly into a particular format at a time when I really needed to be exploring and playing with the data a lot more. So I dumped what I had into Excel and then focused on adding lots of content with a minimum of interpretation. Now I feel comfortable enough with where I'm going that I want the greater efficiency and power of a relational database, as well as needing something that will more easily convert to something with a web interface eventually.
Here's the state of the project. In Excel files, I currently have slightly over 20,000 personal names from about 65 different historic documents ranging from the 10th to 16th century but currently emphasizing the 13-14th century. Currently I've transferred to FileMaker the contents of 16 documents representing 8400 personal names (comprising about 25,000 individual name elements and about 2000 different roots). In addition to what I have in Excel form, I have about 15 other source documents that I haven't entered in any form yet. To say nothing of all the potential sources that I haven't tracked down copies of yet.
This is the project that inspired me to get a PhD. I've been working on it for just short of 20 years. In short: I plan to produce an analysis of pre-1600 personal names in Wales including a complete catalog of known name elements (and variants, and the contexts in which they occur), an analysis of overall name structures, and as many other angles as I have fun exploring, in particular large-scale patterns of change and variation over time and space. Originally I had a notion that it would become a printed book, but in the end it will almost certainly be a web site instead (or whatever evolves to fill that niche). So far it's spawned a dozen conference papers and one "forthcoming" publication.
My favorite computer game is a database.
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Date: 2005-12-02 05:48 pm (UTC)I too can noodle around with spreadsheets for hours. Lately I've moved into new territory - statistical analysis with Minitab. It's my new favorite computer game! And now a database project has presented itself, so I have to get into the relational mindset again. Just spent $5K of someone else's money on an environmental database management system, which I'm hoping will save a lot of hours otherwise spent noodling with Excel.
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Date: 2005-12-03 05:54 am (UTC)