00:00.00 archpodnet Okay, okay. 00:00.00 Paul Because I realized that the rest that the next chunk here of talking about documentation just got more in the abstract so I figured that it was in the wrong order for that. 00:09.78 archpodnet Um. Okay, sounds good. Sounds good all right and we're recording welcome back to episode none of the archae tech podcast and we're talking about an article that you can find by looking down at your device or looking at your computer screen. Whatever you happen to be on. And look at the show notes for that so you can see the link to the article and a bunch of other links that we have in there that were mentioned and some other stuff that that we just have in there. So check all that out. None of the things that is linked in there that is discussed in the article quite a bit. Paul is the foss uav protocol and I keep seeing that. Foss and free and open source in like the same context and I keep thinking foss is like some sort of acronym for free and open source is it free and open source software is that what foss stands for okay I wasn't actually sure because they never say. 01:35.20 Paul Even. 01:47.20 Paul Yeah, exactly. 02:00.38 archpodnet Software when it says free and open source. Well they I guess they do probably sometimes but I was like is this just a coincidence or is that literally what it stands for ah yeah, source software Yeah, got it got it I was just making sure all right? So with that. 02:10.80 Paul Yeah, no, no free f open o if that's source s software. Yeah. 02:37.56 archpodnet Let's continue. 02:39.42 Paul All right? So you were looking at that presumably then on the yeah on the Github link which like I said they've got their actual protocol not in this article they link to the protocol and the the article itself is a discussion about the protocol and about their development of the protocol. And about it's a justification that the protocol works Damn it. Um and it really got me to think about documentation because that's something that gets overlooked a lot in software. Um, but good documentation is really really important. Um, and. 03:41.46 archpodnet I. 03:58.88 Paul It's something that you and I know very intimately because we deal with documentation all the time I mean I know that you have to deal with it in your training with donesafe and and you've dealt with it with with wild note. Um, I had to deal with it. Especially when I left my last job documenting a lot of the procedures of how to get this to work or where to look for that thing when something goes wrong for the survey I just did in lockosh I Wrote up an instruction manual for for doing the surface survey Um, and. I've mentioned my surveying software that I that I put up on Github very recently and when I put it up on Github. The biggest thing I did was do a ah ah quick start instruction set in the read me so documentation to us. 05:30.00 archpodnet M. 05:39.24 Paul Is something that is really really important. But we're typically talking about documentation of of ah a piece of software and what this article is talking about is not a piece of software. But how to use a dozen different pieces of software How to install those different pieces of software. How to configure those pieces of software to make them run to to make that reproducible result again tie it back to that reproducibility goal of of good science. Um, and I don't even know what I want to say about this in particular other that it it was exciting for me to see. 06:29.96 archpodnet Yeah. 06:58.16 Paul I guess in part because like I said I've been getting all these different similar adjacent notices in my various social feeds and such about other projects that are documenting their procedures. How much how deeply have you ever been involved Chris in in documenting anything. For archaeological work as opposed to for for the software products that you worked for. 07:47.10 archpodnet You mean just documenting processes like this that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, sure I mean almost never to be honest with you. It's ah it's just not something that. 07:54.60 Paul Yeah, yeah, like this you know a broader set where you know any particular piece of software is one component of a broader system. 08:23.14 archpodnet I Don't know it's just not something that people do and then we should you know? yeah. 08:26.24 Paul Absolutely I think that it's It's really important and so that's where I was excited by the article because and again by all these things that keep on showing up on my feed is because I think that this is a fairly overlooked aspect of archeological research. 08:38.24 archpodnet Um. 09:00.14 Paul Now I could be entirely wrong with it when we get to the the very sciencey techie things people are doing radiocarbon people who are doing Dna analyses different kinds. Of chemical analyses and so on they've probably within their own labs have very explicit protocols for how to get a reproducible result how to use that special widget that costs you know $10000 of sitting in the corner there. Ah but this is also something slightly different because those are often. 09:49.54 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 10:04.14 Paul Private documentation right? It's for my lab because it's written by me for my coworkers so that they can all know how to use you know these 3 pieces of equipment that we own whereas this article is much more broad than that you know and also the things that again have been showing up on my feet. Are much broader they're they're how to acquire and implement a whole set of different tools to make a desired outcome. Ah, which is for me a slight shift I mean even. Even the documentation I've done. That's a little broader the stuff you know that I've done for for Dalton for the school I worked at that that involved you know, None different pieces of software to get an end result. It's it's still in-house stuff. It's not something that I could then turn around and show somebody that didn't work at the same school. And have it be immediately useful for them. They would have to reinterpret it for their own use. 12:00.10 archpodnet That yeah, right? and and that's that's one thing I mean they even point this out in the article right? that there's something like 6 programs they're using to actually process the the ua a imagery and then make the high resolution digital train modules. But. 12:23.48 Paul Um, yep. 12:36.62 archpodnet You know that's something you got to remember in the early days of some of these technologies at least early for archeology that if you do want to try this out on the cheap or free. Well, there's probably going to be some extra hoops. You got to jump through to make these things work because that's how free works if if you want to if you want to buy the cadillac. 13:08.30 Paul Ah. 13:14.80 archpodnet And have all the features pre-installed when it when it delivers then you're paying for the Cadillac. But if you want to try this out but not spend any money and and you'll need a little bit more expertise than I mean to be honest, this isn't the only thing that's going to require you to do that other other technologies and and I guess things that you do will. Usually require you to kind of bootstrap this and and and put a bunch of things together to make it work and I'm glad there's people out there like you said that are willing to do that hard work. They don't look at a problem and say well that's too expensive. Let's do something else. They say how can we do this? How can we do this and test it. So other people can and and then they document this process like. Said which leads me to another question for you Paul where is your article in advances are you or are you writing it right now for your processes that you're doing right now so people can learn from you where's where's your article. 14:55.68 Paul I'm not writing it right now. But I think I will be soon I just sent an email a couple hours ago to the project director asking her for permission to do that. The problem I have is is not writing the article I can certainly document again because for me, it's going to be primarily documentation. 15:00.14 archpodnet Ah, nice. 15:11.70 archpodnet Nice. 15:29.12 Paul Can document all the steps to to generate the same results or virtually the same results or to replicate the same process on another site. Um, but it's been so long since I've written for an academic audience that my writing style has gotten totally divergent. Um. 15:53.72 archpodnet Right. 16:05.74 Paul And so that's going to be a problem for me is to bring that back in I mean I can I know how to cite but I don't have like ah a stock of articles and books and things I can cite I've read them but I didn't read them with the mind toward you know, being able to pull. Quotes or to you know to reference them later in an article I read them out of my own interest and and so now I'm in a way I'm a little bit up Aric. But no I definitely do want to document the the survey procedure end to end really from how I drew the map. 16:45.44 archpodnet Right. 17:04.40 archpodnet Yeah. 17:15.40 Paul And decided on the density of the survey how we conducted the survey in the field how we processed the the artifacts that we collected and then how I generated the heat maps after that because the results were really good and I do think that it's really replicable and I think that if I can. Set out a set of instructions for people probably in the same journal because it seems to me the most appropriate for this. Um, that would be a good thing. Um, but now I'm I'm not there. Yeah I do want to actually I'll backtrack a little too I thought. You were talking about free and open source software something I hadn't really grasped with but it just kind of tickled the back my head ah is that it used to be 15 maybe twenty years ago the notion of free software was free meant cheap and cheap. Not as an inexpensive but is not as good as software that you pay for and now in this article does demonstrate that it's no longer free means not good. It means. 19:06.92 archpodnet Right? right? right. 19:32.58 Paul Not as easy to install. Not as easyly supported. Maybe yeah yeah, um, it doesn't mean by any stretch not as good and so that's. 19:42.56 archpodnet Right. 20:03.10 Paul To me an interesting shift. It's like where where the balance in that decision matrix goes Now. It's it's it's different than it used to be ah and as somebody that uses a lot of free and open source software and contributes to more open source projects um Maintains a couple Now. Ah. I I'm happy to see that change I'm happy to not have to fight that battle to not say oh we can either do the cheap thing that that that's free or we can do the expensive thing that's going to be good. Do We want good results or do we want you? cheap results? Well, That's not the balance anymore. 20:46.26 archpodnet Yeah, oh there are yeah. 21:09.38 archpodnet That right? Yeah, you're right? and I think there's ah, there's a little bit of a caution there too though because there there is still truly truly you know cheap software out there cheap or free that is just like not written very well. But that's why you read articles like this. 21:44.60 Paul Mm. 21:47.16 archpodnet And you you know you get into the communities like you're in where people are talking about this kind of thing and saying well this is good. This is good because there's some really really solid people out there that are committed to the idea that some of this stuff. You know to the open source idea you know the open source. This can be modified by you know. 22:14.30 Paul Um, yeah. 22:23.60 archpodnet By anyone with the skills to do it and people can add to it. You know you can you can create these things and you don't have to you don't have to set out to make a billion dollars while you're doing it because I mean more like you're not going to anyway. So you know there's that. But yeah I agree there's There's some really good stuff out there these days and it can be found by you know. 23:01.14 Paul Yeah, yeah, no, it is. It's ah it's It's a good thing again. Please for back to the question about the about documentation as a variation on this open source world. Um. 23:02.32 archpodnet Crowdsourcing. 23:34.92 Paul Yeah I've mentioned a few times now that that I've been getting lots of different feeds of different documentation one that's popped up a few times actually 2 are um, are on a site called protocols io and these two are soap the small object and artifact photography protocol. 24:10.42 archpodnet Nice, nice. 24:13.86 Paul And the HRp the high-resol resolutionion di IYPhotogrammetry I don't know where the d went from diy and that HRp but ah anyhow, these are similar sorts of things published on a site that's dedicated at now that site protocol io is mostly geared. 24:30.46 archpodnet Alright. 24:50.70 Paul Towards people towards laboratory scientists but it does have as of my check earlier almost twenty archaeology tagged protocols on their site and so that might be a good place and you'd mentioned when we were talking about open source software is you know. Find the communities. Well one of the big problems with any of the open source stuff especially with the finding of the documentation is where do you look? where do you find that community. Do you go to Reddit. Do you go to stack exchange. Do you go to the to the wiki of the website that of the that made the or is dist distributebuting the software. Ah. Is there an email address. You know who who knows it. It can vary really widely and the quality of those communities can vary really widely. Ah, but this discoverability is then another part of open source open access and you know. 26:20.24 archpodnet Sure. So. 26:43.86 Paul If you've documented a procedure. That's a good procedure and you want people to see it and you want people to work with it and maybe adapt it to their own. Maybe use it straight out of the box the way that you've done it but apply it to their own research. You got to have it someplace where they're going to see it so this article again. Is in a place that people will see it. It's an open access article. It's links to a github project which are repository rather which is by the nature of github. It's also open. You could take their protocol there and adjust it to your own needs. You can see it. It's right there for everybody to see. Um, you know I would personally it it relies on a it's done for Mac so I would be comfortable I could I could run it directly on my computers but it is it uses um a linux installation engine more or less called home brew and. 28:36.36 archpodnet Okay, okay, so. 28:40.50 Paul I don't use homebrew I have no problem with Homerew I just don't care to use it I would always rather either compile or find different installers rather than use homebrew on my own machines I don't know why I have that prejudice I just do ah but I do know the pieces of software that they have and i. 29:12.88 archpodnet M. 29:18.80 Paul Could install all of those without homerew so I could take their protocol I could fork it so that you could do that same installulation without homebrew I could fork it so I could install out None my linux boxes pretty easily because again, it's all documented and it's reliant at every step of that process on open source software. And on an open documentation of how to do it? Um, so yeah, so they have it on None ends you know on the aap article that's open. They have it on the github repository that's open. Ah. 30:02.90 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 30:30.56 Paul These ones that I mentioned soap and hrp are protocols io which is you can have your own internal private protocols on their website but you can also it's mostly I think intended for open source ones and I was thinking then too about other. Open access open source easily accessible. Where do you where do people find what to do? I've got a huge playlist in my Youtube channel of different videos I want to see of different people some of whom have been guests on this show explaining how to do Xy or z in in grass or in qgis. 31:22.28 archpodnet Um, yeah. 31:44.10 Paul Or an r or whatever and you know Youtube gee Youtube videos are how to videos on Youtube Very're absolutely huge um I don't know how often Youris end up on wiki how like when something goes wrong in the ah Rv ah, but yeah I end up on wiki how a lot. 32:07.56 archpodnet Yeah, yeah, yeah. 32:22.44 Paul Um, so that discoverability anyhow that that's something else that I think that we have to keep in mind because yes you could host it on your own blog. Um, you could host ah your your set of instructions on a self-hosted wiki or something. But. Maybe that's not always the best place but I don't think that we as an archeological community have rested on any None platform. Um, yeah I mean another place that I think would be very sensible would be read the docs I end up on read the docs all the time for different software because it's the. 33:13.88 archpodnet So right. 33:38.00 Paul Preferred place for documentation for python projects since since I mostly mostly program with python I end up on theirs all the time I don't know if that makes sense for archaeologists right now. Protocols io to me seems like it makes the most sense for archaeologists github to a lesser extent but in intriguing ways. It also makes a lot of sense. Um I don't know what I don't think there's an answer there but I do think that. Ah, we're probably over the next year or two as we start seeing more things like this project. There'll be a consolidation around None or 2 different places as the go to places to find. 34:17.40 archpodnet Yeah, so. 34:54.40 Paul Yeah, open source documentation. 34:55.54 archpodnet Right? Okay, Well I think with that we will take our final break and I'll just remind everybody did you go and sign up for your membership yet if not http://arcpodnet.comforward/membersso we can keep all this going and we've got more podcasts We want to do more live events. We want to do and having some. Membership member supported income on that is what makes all that possible so we will see you guys back in just a minute to wrap up this discussion.