00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome back to archeotech 1 8 ight seven and we are well we're talking with paul on his experiences in saudi arabia the last couple of months doing some work out there. So let's let's get into. A little bit about obviously this is the arche architect podcast. So let's talk about how you guys were doing things and I want to take a short detour before that and just ask you. You know what? the I guess really quick what the recording methodology is over there. You know I'm thinking like you know. Nevada uses the imax forms to record sites california the dpr does that area or maybe I don't know if there's provinces or states within saudi arabia but do they have their own regimented. You know this is how we record archeological archeology sites in this area because I and I know actually some countries don't right? It's kind of like the wild west. But. 00:45.49 Paul Um, yeah. 00:49.34 archpodnet Some countries do and they're very into their their cultural history and and have very specific ways to record it So tell us a little bit about that if you can. 00:58.11 Paul Yeah, it was um to the extent I can talk about it was a little jarring to me. There isn't a a formal format for how to record sites and the registry that we had was kind of all over the board both in terms of the yeah the terminology that was used and the detail that was provided to us of the pre that roughly one thousand. 00:59.39 archpodnet Yeah. Yeah. 01:14.47 archpodnet Yeah. 01:15.81 Paul Preexisting sites. Um I didn't always agree with what was called a site oftentimes I felt like well the site and the next two over are actually the same site and sometimes I said well this site and the next site on the list. 01:24.41 archpodnet Ah. 01:33.60 Paul Even though list is two sites. Um, yeah, yeah, they're really 1 site. Um, yeah, that just the way things were split and lumped together. Yeah, anyhow, so the the saudis really opened up but there was work done archeological work. 01:38.60 archpodnet Yeah, well that happens all over the world. Ah yeah. 01:49.86 Paul Particularly in the 70 s and eighty s and then they were mostly close to outside archaeologists until about five years ago and so they are really trying to ramp up their ah their expertise in the field of their own archeology. 01:55.36 archpodnet Okay. 02:06.56 Paul And part of that is actually is bringing in teams like the one I was on to work with them to try to improve their own data recording and and reporting and you know it's a work in progress. Um. 02:18.29 archpodnet Um, okay. 02:21.10 Paul So we didn't have specific forms. We didn't have those Imags forms or anything like it What we did have was a fairly structured workflow from the company that was with um, that dictated certain ways and this was negotiated with the with the clients that they were hired by. 02:24.34 archpodnet Thread. 02:33.20 archpodnet Um, yeah. 02:39.32 Paul As to what things they thought were important. Um, ah one little back point here is that the department of antiquities isn't a separate department. It's part of the department of tourism in Saudi so a lot of what was being presented to us. 02:40.28 archpodnet You know. 02:51.21 archpodnet Okay. 02:59.14 Paul As to its importance wasn't necessarily its importance historically archeologically in a way that you and I Chris might look at it. Um, but its potential value for tourism which to me felt a little weird. Um. 03:08.93 archpodnet Um. 03:11.36 archpodnet Okay, and. 03:15.86 Paul It's certainly sensible I can understand why they do that but but it did mean that that some of the questions asked and some of the ways we did things were prioritized not the way I would have done it again. Doesn't matter. That's not the way I would have done it I don't think I've ever gone anywhere that is exactly the way I would have done it. Um. 03:24.80 archpodnet Sure. 03:33.69 Paul And it's nice to learn a new way. But but so we had this. Um we had this system in place and early on in the project when I was working on the the yeah the parcels survey and we're just walk transet right? There were a supergroup of like cheese 7 of us I think. 03:39.52 archpodnet Okay. 03:54.10 Paul And we would just get out to the edge of one of the parcels and spread out and you know walk our transects and see what we could see um, recording a new site if we found it but very rarely did we find it doing that. Um, when we switched around a little bit and I got moved onto the existing site survey. 03:54.24 archpodnet Um. 04:05.16 archpodnet Yeah. 04:13.20 Paul The groups got broken up differently and so it was myself and 2 other archeologists. Um, and the 3 of us formed a really good team. Basically there were 3 things that we had to do all our recording was being done on Ipads. 04:30.21 archpodnet Um. 04:30.25 Paul Ah, there's narrative and checkbox recording that was being done in a custom version of codify and I feel okay mentioning that here because codify has shown up on arch architect many times and so I was working with Michael Ashley a bit. Yeah many times discussing. 04:41.95 archpodnet Many times. Yeah. 04:49.60 Paul Things that could be improved or changed having some questions about it. A little tech support here and there ah but he came out to the project and so yeah, we were working with that as our primary like I said text and checkbox kind of recording interface. Ah we also have to take photographs obviously and the photographs we were taking. 04:55.00 archpodnet Um. 05:01.63 archpodnet Yeah, yeah. 05:08.77 Paul With um with a program called Theodoite and if you're not familiar with it. Yeah, so it's it's interesting in that it it gives you the option of overlaying the the the notes that you take about a photograph. 05:10.81 archpodnet Oh yeah, I've used that. 05:21.99 archpodnet Yeah. 05:24.76 Paul Directly onto the photograph and so that means that you don't really have to have a separate photo log if you're facing northeast it records what your direction you're facing if you wrote down this is a picture of ah an overview of the site facing northeast it can print that directly on it'll save 2 copies of the photograph. The. 05:29.00 archpodnet Right. 05:44.30 Paul The untouched one and the one with your notes overlaid upon it so that was really handy. Um, yeah, it is cool. Yeah yeah I don't know I've never used it before I've heard it about it before but but this was ah this was an integral part of of the workflow. 05:50.20 archpodnet That's cool I don't I don't think it used to do that. Yeah I think you? yeah. Nice. 06:02.88 Paul We had um and then the last thing that we had was obviously we had gis and so the program we were using is icmt gi I s which is a little wonky. It feels like it's ah, an old windows 95 gis that's been somehow ported ios. Um. 06:08.26 archpodnet Oh. 06:19.53 archpodnet Nice, yeah. 06:21.74 Paul Certain things that you could not do without crashing it. But once we learned what buttons not to press and what things not to try. It worked really well for us and the reason why we were using that was because it was recording locally so as opposed to things like field notes Arcgis field notes which has a cloud component. Um. 06:38.11 archpodnet That. 06:40.36 Paul The client wanted us to keep all the data in country so we had to go with something recorded locally. 06:47.26 archpodnet Okay, okay, so that was my other question too. Is you you mentioned this gis was ported over to Ios which kind of brings me to the other question about equipment because I know codifi has been on this show. Lots of times. Actually you know back in the day when it was first getting off the ground Michael's been on the show a number of times and. 07:02.45 Paul Um, yeah. 07:06.27 archpodnet I know codify was and more than likely still is based on filemaker which is an Apple program and does that mean you guys were using like ipads out in the field and then you also had this gis on those Ipads and you had theoolite on the ipads as well and you're just doing everything on one device is that what that is that how that worked. 07:24.32 Paul Ah, well we were doing it on 3 devices. The 3 of us on our team. Um, so one was in charge of most of the yeah, the narrative content another one in charge of most of the photographic content and I was in charge of the gis and just like. 07:25.38 archpodnet Okay, oh got you? okay. 07:37.91 archpodnet Okay, makes sense. 07:39.99 Paul You've used before and yes these were these were gis enabled Gps enabled um ipads just like you've used before we had. We had external gps receivers that we connected then to the is software. 07:48.11 archpodnet Tablets? yeah. 07:53.57 archpodnet I want. 07:57.58 Paul So we could get higher accuracy than what would be available directly in the ipads built in gnss receiver and so that generally works fairly. Well, we're using a combination of Sx blues and bad elf flexes and um, yeah. 08:02.84 archpodnet Right. 08:11.45 archpodnet Okay. 08:16.43 Paul There were some issues with the bad elves in particular there was also an issue that we yeah had a whole bunch of external. Um antenna cables that were a bad batch and they had the tendency to fall apart in the heat. So when it's 110 out you don't want your you. 08:27.76 archpodnet Hold cheese. Yeah. 08:35.49 Paul Your Antenna cables for to just like melt and fall apart. But they sure did that. Um. 08:38.97 archpodnet Well I feel I feel like 110 is beyond the capabilities of a lot of things I'm curious to see how the ipads handle the hundred and ten. Absolutely. 08:45.66 Paul You have to keep them out of the sun you hold them so that they've have as little area exposed to the sun as possible and what area is exposed is hopefully the backside of it. Not the glass side of it to keep them from overheating I never had any trouble with mine overheating. 08:56.15 archpodnet 1 09:01.94 archpodnet Right here. 09:05.19 Paul Or running out of battery. But I know that the other people on my project that happened to them fairly regularly. Um, we did have that. 09:13.43 archpodnet If you're conscious of it though. Yeah, you could you could mitigate that so and you did a good job on that I mean you use tablets up here in Nevada too. Um I say here I'm not in Nevada but in Nevada on the projects we worked on and I wouldn't say it was 110 but it was definitely higher altitudes so more uv exposure to the glass and. 09:23.75 Paul So. 09:29.71 Paul Right. 09:31.37 archpodnet And and definitely not cool in some of those areas. So a lot of the same strategies employed I'm sure. 09:36.92 Paul Yeah, and you know and I've used the ipads very effectively without overheating fortunately. Um at Lagosh in Iraq ah, but for me right now. The biggest ding I've got against using ipads in the field and I I wouldn't do without them because. 09:39.40 archpodnet Um, yeah. 09:52.42 Paul They're they're really integral to the way that I think about data collection at this point but to me the biggest ding against them is ah is screen brightness right? I'm working in parts of the world that have a really bright sun. You know if we had that problem in Nevada um I've had that problem in Iraq and now I've had that problem in Saudi where you just come. 09:54.70 archpodnet M. 10:01.46 archpodnet Oh yeah, um. 10:11.61 Paul Barely see what's on the screen because the sun is beating down too hard on it. Um, you know so you try to shade with your body or find a corner that you can sit down or something but you can't always do that. 10:15.35 archpodnet Um, well the other yeah, the other big issue with all ios devices to begin with you know So the iphone and the ipad is well before. It overheats well before it gives you the temperature overheat it purposely dims the screen so you can you can raise the screen brightness. All you want, but it is purposely dimming that screen to prevent an overheating situation and I think it probably uses a combination of not only temperature. 10:40.50 Paul Um, easy. 10:48.76 archpodnet But also actual brightness on the screen you know I've had times where it hasn't even been out for very long like my phone or something that's sitting on ah a holder on the car something like that and you got sun going right on top of it that screen will go go to a a certain level of dimness right away and there's just simply nothing. You can do about it unless you cool the device down. So. 10:57.47 Paul Of. 11:03.80 Paul Yep, yeah. 11:07.71 archpodnet Yeah, it gets frustrating for sure. 11:11.30 Paul Yeah, um, that like is that that's my biggest ding against using this tech. Um, it's going to get better because they've been getting brighter and I know that especially in the um in the drone space. There are certain tablets I can't think of the brand name right now. But there's certain tablets. 11:15.56 archpodnet Um, yeah. 11:25.79 Paul That are made specifically for use outdoors and they have extra brightness beyond you know your typical Android or ah or ipad. Um, yeah, so you know it's a matter of a couple years I think before ones that are bright enough. 11:30.70 archpodnet Ah, here. 11:32.96 archpodnet Red red. 11:45.45 Paul Without overheating and such are are going to be very common I think we're just on the cusp of that. But at the moment that was probably our biggest frustration. We had a um, our truck was a Nissan Pathfinder patrol pathfinder oh I can't even remember right now. 11:49.61 archpodnet Rem. 12:00.26 archpodnet Okay, they do make a pathfinder. Yeah. 12:04.57 Paul Anyhow, it had in the center console. Yeah, ah ya pathfinder in the center console. It had a cooler. So if we could get back to the car. We'd toss our Ipads into the cooler in the center console I mean like air conditioned cooler right? Yeah, so ah so that that was handy for us. 12:11.59 archpodnet Um, nice. 12:15.21 archpodnet Nice, Yeah, yeah, that's that's awesome. Yeah. 12:24.22 Paul Ah, unfortunately we did have to use it and it would have been better if we didn't but yeah, that's fine. That's it's what you deal with right? You always have to be a little adaptive in the field figure out what doesn't quite work the way you ideally like it to and then how you work around that problem. 12:42.16 archpodnet Um. 12:46.61 archpodnet Ah, did I lose you for a second still there. Okay, it sound like a cutout for a second there anyway, let me wrap up the segment. Um, yeah I mean going back to the to the tablets in the the kind of field tablets I would assume most of those are. 12:46.77 Paul No I'm here. 12:54.65 Paul Um. 13:03.67 archpodnet Android based only because you know obviously Apple doesn't let its software go on anything that's not an Apple tablet and Apple refuses to use anything but glass on their tablets which is beautiful and nice if you're sitting in a you know coffee shop or an office building in New York City but if you're out in the desert. 13:05.74 Paul Yeah, yeah. 13:20.52 archpodnet Working in the heat. The glass is your your biggest detriment so you know those ones that have a tendency to not overheat as quickly probably have plastic or some version of plastic screens on them or at least covers over the over the computer screens and that just helps you know that glass man does it just suck in the heat and ah. 13:38.50 Paul Yeah, yeah. 13:40.13 archpodnet Even in seventy degree weather you can have I've I've mentioned this lots of times and I've seen it happen before you can have your device overheat and you're like it's not even hot out. But if your glass is sitting straight onto the sun that uv not just the heat. But the uv will literally overheat your glass and it doesn't have to be ° for that to happen. 13:54.43 Paul Yeah. 13:59.90 archpodnet So all right? Well let's take another break and when we come back, we'll wrap up this discussion with Paul about his trip to Saudi Arabia back in a minute.