00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome back to episode one ninety nine of the architect podcast and we are about to talk about another product that I was actually pretty excited to hear about when it first started or at least when we were talking to them which was a few years after they first started and it's called fames and. 00:11.34 Paul David. 00:18.52 archpodnet Man I'll have to look on here and see what this actually? oh it now stands for failed field acquired information management systems I swear I think they came up with that because they wanted to keep the name of fames because they had branding for that because I'm pretty sure it used to mean something like federated archeological. 00:35.61 Paul Um, then. 00:37.80 archpodnet Something or other because it was designed specifically for archaeology back by archaeologists back when it was first started in Australia no less and but now they've kind of pivoted which is smart incredibly smart. They've pivoted to being an electronic field notebook for basically anybody. 00:44.52 Paul Easy. 00:56.15 archpodnet Right? So ah, you can you know it's it's essentially um, open source software and you can use this on. It's Android based I believe and you can use it based on you know, whatever you want to collect essentially and I don't even know if they charge anything more and for it to be honest with you. Um, they may. But. Um, not seeing anything here. Um yeah, it. But it's pretty cool software. Yeah yeah. 01:16.38 Paul Well your faulty memory Your faulty memory is not terribly faulty because I just looked at get this I I searched on the arcpodnet architect page in the search box for fames because you've told people about that before right. 01:32.90 archpodnet Okay, ah yeah, yeah, exactly. 01:35.25 Paul And came up with ah with the answer right? there episode 7 federated archeology information management system. 01:42.58 archpodnet There you go there, you go So they so they did want to use the same acronym. They just came up with different words for it. Ah, field acquired I like it I like it. So anyway. Yeah, this thing is pretty cool. Yeah exactly Um, this is pretty cool and. 01:47.80 Paul Um. 01:53.58 Paul Yeah, which makes sense. 02:00.82 archpodnet It's ah it it looks like they've rolled out relatively recently fames 3.0 um, which honestly doesn't sound like too high of a number for being around for you know, something like 13 years um I don't know how many iterations they think they've gone through. But yeah 3.0 um, but it's it says also enables cross-platform data collection android ios and desktop and more flexible synchronization and integration with other platforms as well. So sounds like they are doing a lot of things the production version of fames 3.0 just one live on December Twenty Second sorry December Twenty Twenty Two and you can subscribe to their newsletter and find out all kinds of stuff but we'll have again links for these if you want to check it out because I don't I can't imagine this is limited to Australia either. But they have opened it up to a lot of different fields read. 02:49.63 Paul And we had to reach out to them again too because it'd be nice to find out what they've done in the term. Why they've rebranded a little bit and where they see themselves going since it's you know, still going strong. Apparently. 02:55.73 archpodnet Yeah. 03:04.71 archpodnet Yeah indeed and again says it was started here in 2012 and if I again I'm I'm guessing here because I'm trying to remember but I think it was started almost like as like ah um, like a project by grad students right? to to develop this and I don't know if they turned it into a company. 03:16.90 Paul Movement. 03:21.26 archpodnet Or if ah somebody else did but um, yeah, it seems like I mean it must there. There must be either some funding behind this or you do actually pay for it I Honestly can't really tell just by looking at this but you know they're keeping it going and they're keeping a website maintained and they're keeping it updated. So. 03:31.59 Paul Is it. 03:38.41 archpodnet That takes resources one way or another all right cool all right? Well, that's a cool one? Yeah, we'll try to get those ones on the next one's going to be pretty quick. Field technology is incorporated again. That's what we call the episode title essentially but can't find anything. 03:41.15 Paul Yep. 03:56.84 Paul Call. 03:57.60 archpodnet And Chris Cameron who is the person who started field technologies incorporated yeah, he I actually talked to him a few times I think I did a profiles in sear I'm with him back when I was doing that part that podcast and I talked to him a couple of times about different things he was. He was pretty hot a few years ago 04:04.47 Paul Vision. 04:16.14 archpodnet And the archaea field text group and a few other archeology groups on Facebook because he was he was doing 2 things that I was very aware of he was the first thing which I think is what we talked about in this episode which was March Twenty third 2015 what was that episode. It's in your show notes episode 14 oh no. So I'm sorry episode 8 of The Arche Tech Podcast and I'm really kind of sad that I can't find anything now and he may have renamed it and it's just it's still there I just can't find it by searching field technologies incorporated I also can't really find any late any posts from him on Facebook or in any group on Facebook we're still friends. 04:36.83 Paul Is. 04:55.57 archpodnet But he has't like posted on Facebook in 7 years so he's essentially left the platform. So I literally have no idea what's going on with all this and but like I said cool 2 cool things that I thought he was doing. He was creating an application. Ah for ah, basically cataloging shol test pits. Ah, stps because he's based out of North Carolina I mean shovel test pits in the southeast United States that's like all you do out there right? I mean you do lead to further excavations but shovel test pits is like you know that's equals a survey out of here in the west right? It's just sdps sdps you'll dig thousands of them in a field season. 05:15.36 Paul Um, into. 05:30.50 Paul Um, right. 05:34.60 archpodnet It is nuts. Um so finding better ways to catalog these things is you know name of the game. Ah, and then he was also trying to develop um basically a machine learning ai tool for identifying projectile points where essentially you'd take a picture of a projectile point and it would tell you all about it. And he was asking people for pictures of points so he could put it into this machine learning system and have it learn those known points. Do you remember see anything about that. 06:00.71 Paul Right? I remember hearing about that on the podcast I remember that episode and I remember you've mentioned it a number of times because it was really cool. It was It was kind of building off of the same thing that um, we now have like. 06:16.24 Paul Oh I'm trying to remember who's behind it but the but the different plant Identifier apps right? So you take a picture of a leaf and it tells you Yes, that's one that was the big one but there have been dozens of these sorts of things probably bird ones but definitely a lot of animal ones not an animal excuse me a lot of P plant ones identifying flowers and leaves and such. 06:19.70 archpodnet Oh yeah, yeah, least snap was one of them I saw yeah. 06:35.67 archpodnet No. 06:36.50 Paul And so he was trying to do that for well like you said for ah for Lithics which makes a lot of sense I mean for ah for you know if you've got the entire form but but yeah I don't I haven't heard anything since. 06:52.76 archpodnet Well let's let's talk about that technically because he may have he may have stopped doing that project because it might not be technically possible to solidly 100% or at least with a high confident high degree of confidence. 07:04.50 Paul Um, he. 07:08.89 archpodnet Identify a projectile point I've often thought about this because I've I've worked in as you have at this point now even just in the last few years of doing crm you know you've worked in ah a number of different places in the country you know from west coast to East Coast at this point I've worked in at least 18 different states seen projectile points in every single one of them and. I'll tell you what everybody has their own regional names and terminologies for these things but there's not a whole lot of ways to make a projectile point right? I mean you've got your side notches in your quarter notches. You've got different lengths width thicknesses base shapes and things like that. But like. 07:28.69 Paul Known as it visit. 07:43.83 archpodnet Ah, certain point name over on in the west in California you might have that exact same shape of point over in South Carolina it's just you know it might even be made of the same things actually in South Carolina it's probably courts or something like that and in California it's probably you know obsidian or or something. But. 07:55.71 Paul Um, yeah. 08:03.80 archpodnet But either way aside from material type. You know there's also only a handful of material types that are typically made into projectile points as far as the mass collection of those go across this country and I just wonder if it was too hard. You know what I mean like there's such subtle differences between some of these things and. 08:16.67 Paul Um, hidden. 08:19.65 archpodnet I don't think we have 100% degree of confidence when we even type those for sites. You know I mean some of them are real obvious like we're going to drop it in this category but then others it's like oh my god it could be on the line between this one and that one you know what I mean so even having a computer do it I think would be hard. 08:29.56 Paul Um, yeah. 08:34.24 Paul Well I think that if you added a spatial component to it that might help a little bit with that. You know if you if you restrict it to the terminology and the materials and the. 08:40.52 archpodnet Sure. 08:51.84 Paul Well, the typology the chronology of it all based off of where you are if you're in the Northeast don't bother looking at stuff from the southwest that may help that a little bit but um, but really, it's this is way above anything I would even know how to tackle because I'm not particularly good at lithics. 08:53.50 archpodnet Ah. 09:01.19 archpodnet Right? um. 09:11.59 archpodnet Well I have always been interested and I don't know if anybody's ever done this kind of study but because people always tend to focus locally and regionally on what they're doing but I would love to be interested in ah in a United States -wide you know typology study on projectile point morphology. 09:19.14 Paul Um, you. 09:28.16 archpodnet And it's a morphological study because I would really like to know you know you've got this one shape like the elco corner notch in Nevada I mean it was used for thousand plus years and you know is everywhere like you can't walk somewhere in Nevada without finding an elco corner notch and that is it's if it's so common. 09:31.90 Paul Um. 09:48.00 archpodnet I want to know how common that shape is across the rest of the country and what other people call it. You know what I mean and and and look at the date ranges where you find those that same exact shape in all different states of the country and say you you can almost see the cultural March of that shape if it truly started in 1 place or if it was independently. Ah, independently invented is so to speak I don't know what the other word would be but created or or shaped in different locations I would really that would be super interesting but man what a effort that would be to create. 10:10.66 Paul Um, is it. 10:17.11 Paul Yeah I can I'm sure somebody's tried it if and again I don't know much about Lithic so I don't know where to start with the research. Maybe it exists already and I just have never seen it. 10:28.56 archpodnet Yeah, nice, nice, all right? Well there's a there's a project for some you know, grad student out there. That's looking for something tackle that one. Okay, yeah, somebody else. Ah. 10:36.79 Paul Yeah, is somebody else do this work for me. Thanks. 10:45.66 archpodnet All right? So the next one I'm honestly I'm a little confused on because I haven't really dug into it too much I really need to listen to the episode again. But it's called site viewer from episode 14 which episode 14 came out on August Tenth two thousand and fifteen and it's now there's now a website called. Tacticalspace.org that is housing site viewer they're doing a bunch of other things. It looks like but they still have the the site viewer application and as far as I can tell it's a way to bring. Um, what did they say? Ah, it's it's a way to bring photo scan models into other devices because. 11:16.73 Paul Um, then. 11:22.93 archpodnet Apparently you can't just bring those in ah you know as as something you can you can save out of photo scan I don't really know unless this is just old and has never been updated because the the github data was from 2015 and I don't know how Github data updates does it update when something changes or is that just like the upload date I really couldn't tell because I don't know a whole lot about github. But. 11:42.92 archpodnet I don't know can you make anything out of this Paul. 11:46.24 Paul Yeah, so um, no I really don't know what's going on with that. Also it seems like a problem that is you know an old problem. Not ah, not a now problem of seeing 3 d models and such in. 11:54.15 archpodnet Right? That's what I was wondering. 12:00.48 Paul In your in your ipad or whatever because there are lots of different ways to do that now. Um, but for your github question. It doesn't mean that it's not actively used it means that change or actively developed rather it means that whatever development changes haven't been pushed to github. 12:01.90 archpodnet Yeah. 12:18.79 Paul Which could be that it's not being actively developed. It could mean that they've moved to a different hosting platform for their git files they moved out to bitbucket or um, yeah I can't think of the other big 1 right at the moment but but it doesn't mean that. 12:19.74 archpodnet Ah, okay. 12:28.42 archpodnet Aha. 12:35.50 archpodnet Chirp. 12:37.58 Paul That it's dead. But that said it pride does mean that it's the development of it. 12:44.14 archpodnet Ah, well I mean the website references the Github Files and nothing else. So that tells me that it either hasn't been updated or you know something else is going on. So anyway, it might be might be all right? well. 12:52.69 Paul Yeah, maybe it's in deep freeze. 13:00.18 archpodnet Before we move on. We've got a few more things to talk about so let's take our final break and come back and do that on segment 3 back in a minute.