00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to the show. Everybody Paul long time. No podcast. How's it going. 00:06.69 Paul Yeah, no kidding I'm doing pretty good I feel bad I mean when I took off for this last trip I thought that I was going to be able to record because you know, ah we normally record on Thursday evenings which is ah Friday very early morning late night um when I'm in the Middle East 00:19.10 archpodnet Um. 00:24.37 Paul and and I can wake up record for a couple hours and then go back to sleep and I thought I was going to be able to do that and out of 2 months I got to do that once so you know here I go continue my track record of being the world's worst podcast co-host ever. Ah. 00:24.66 archpodnet Um, yeah. 00:42.40 Paul But that was a fun recording actually that one that we did. 00:43.32 archpodnet Yeah, for sure you know you are I wouldn't say the worst you you're in it the exact just one of yeah no, it's exact opposite. You're you're out there boots on the ground gathering content. That's what you're doing So you know it's It's great I Love it. 00:51.19 Paul Um, just one of no. 01:02.72 archpodnet I Mean you're gathering a lot more content than I am to be honest with you So there you get there. You go So let's yeah. 01:07.76 Paul Yeah, you know I got into this podcast way back when um to keep myself one toe in the ah in the field in archeology and I'd always considered myself a field archeologist not necessarily a very good 1 but 1 somebody who really enjoyed it and ah and. The way things have developed over the last few years this has been. You know, not just a ah lifeline to keep me in the field. But now that I am back you know fully fledged in the field. It's ah it's great because I have these these opportunities with you to kind of reflect on what I'm doing and to talk to other people that are doing other interesting things. And ah, you know and then sometimes I apply that on the work that I do sometimes I can take some of the work I do and you know have side discussions with them about the work that they do. You know it's life's kind serendipitous right? you know? and so it's ah it's It's worked its way back into my life in a really interesting way and and because of the podcast. That's a big part of it. 02:02.28 archpodnet Well, that's awesome and it's awesome to see how I guess how things have progressed you know since you joined the show and I don't know. Did you have a chance to hear episode 200 I don't know how much chance you had to hear um when you were over there. How do you get to listen to podcasts. 02:17.67 Paul Yeah I Um I didn't have a whole lot chance to listen to that. Um I think I probably listened to that episode on my flight back home. But yes I did listen to it I always make it a point to listen to all our podcasts and to ah try to use it to improve and you know maybe slowly itsy Bitsy bits at a time I have but. 02:21.70 archpodnet Um, yeah, the. 02:33.40 archpodnet Nice, well the yeah for yeah, exactly for anybody that didn't hear that it was a really fun one and I'm only mentioning it because you're talking about. You know when you joined the podcast and I had to look back at it. It was episode 61 so in the context of 202 episodes which is what this recording is. 02:35.62 Paul Ah, was fun. Memory lane. 02:51.86 archpodnet That's a lot I mean you've been here for I mean obviously longer than ah, longer than any other cohost by far. So that's ah, that's amazing I love it. But. 02:53.48 Paul Um, yeah. 02:59.26 Paul Yeah I Wonder if that counts when you count the time that I'm not here. 03:04.48 archpodnet I mean in that amount of episodes is still not very many times so you know although it's been more in the last couple of years yeah yeah exactly yep. 03:10.62 Paul Ah, okay, well yeah, like I said I'm back in the field literally and the field writ large but I'm I'm on a commission half of last year and a couple months already of this year 03:26.78 archpodnet Well in ah along those lines then let's talk about where you've been the last couple of months I mean we kind of led up to it when before you left and just chatted about you know what? you guys are going to be doing a little bit but ah. You were in Saudi Arabia tell us ah tell us what brought you there. 03:43.72 Paul Right? So um, any long-term listeners will remember that I was in Saudi last summer as well. I was working for an american crm um company that was doing some work there. Ah the company has more projects and has expanded their presence in the country. Ah so they brought me out again and this time. I was working on a series of different projects that the company I'm working for was hired by a group called the royal commission for allulah which is aulla is ah a fantastic site city rather in north of medina always and then like I mentioned on the. 04:18.68 archpodnet Um. 04:20.98 Paul The last recording that I was actually on there's a ton of archeology in the area. There's the the major site of Didan there's the site of Hegra those are 2 of the things that if you don't know anything else about saudi archeology. You may have heard of 1 or both of those. Um, so because I'm you know this is contract archeology I'm not. 04:32.79 archpodnet Wow. 04:39.43 Paul At liberty in the same way I am when I talk about the work that I do in Lagosh which is an academic project I'm not at the same kind of liberty to talk exactly about what I'm doing but I did a lot of interesting work with a lot of interesting people who are very good at the work that they did. 04:44.92 archpodnet Um. 04:55.60 Paul And and we used a bunch of tech some of it old some of it new to me. Um, that I think you know we might have an episode here just talking about the different kinds of tech that I was using and some of the opinions and some of the experiences that I formed from it. 05:09.12 archpodnet Nice. Well I'm looking forward to that. We've got a whole bunch of things that you wrote down here that we can talk about so it's ah it'll be interesting to talk about it hey first before we get there. You've got photogrammetry on the list here and I just got to ask? Did you see because we we talked about this on the archeology show that came out. Yesterday as we're recording this I can't remember what episode number it was but either way we talked about the brand new scans that were released of the Titanic have you seen that. 05:32.40 Paul Oh I saw I didn't like dig into any of the news articles. But you know on my newsfeed I Saw some of those and those are pretty spectacular and so so eerie. 05:39.57 archpodnet Um, Ah, yeah, oh man, right? Yeah, it's ah it's really Cool. You get a chance to take a closer look at it. Um, what I really like is is what you can. Is really what you can tell from that and from an archeological standpoint. It's interesting to note these things because sometimes we think of photogrammetry as just well I want to essentially grab this object and pull it into virtual space for you know, measurements and other stuff like that. But you might be able to see things especially something like this that's underwater, very Murky. You know it's. 05:55.30 Paul Are. 06:12.77 archpodnet Twelve Thousand five hundred feet down underwater. There's literally no light down there unless you bring it right? So you can't see the whole thing all at once you just can't light it that much. It's too big but when you see it like this one. The thing that struck me was how the bow plowed into the ground I mean there. It looks like a meteor crater with this with the dirt. 06:18.66 Paul Um. 06:27.43 Paul Link. 06:32.00 archpodnet Piled up around the bow and and it's still like that it hasn't you know through ocean currents or whatever it hasn't flatten itself back out or or anything like that from that disturbance in over 100 years and I just it was amazing to me and also the other thing is amazing to me is how intact the center section is probably not internally but externally the whole center section. 06:42.70 Paul Um, yeah, um. 06:51.83 archpodnet You know from where it busted off the Stern and where the bow broke but it's still kind of attached I mean it. It looks like you could float that to the surface and attach a bower in a Stern and sail it off. It doesn't look too bad. So. 07:01.63 Paul Ah, yeah, that's the yeah, the photo that I was thinking of and in particular and the the front and end the while the bow and the Stern are are totally destroyed flattened practically and the the smokestacks are gone. 07:10.88 archpodnet Um, yeah, right. 07:18.26 Paul But that that middle section does look like yeah you could probably just go for a stroll up and down the hallways probably not. But that's what it looks like from the outside. 07:22.25 archpodnet Sure right? Yeah, could you imagine some higher technology years from now where somebody just turns that into a hotel at the bottom of the sea that whole center section just like you know you could go down there and maybe not. It is pretty much a graveyard so there's probably. 07:33.51 Paul Yeah, that's creepy. 07:41.52 archpodnet And might be some regulation against that. So anyway speaking of locating things 1 of the first things on your list here is mobile Gis. Let's talk about that. 07:52.56 Paul Right? So I um I on my list of topics things I could discuss today I kind of broke it down into data collection data processing and data storage and you know most of what I do when I'm on a job like this I'm a field tech so I am primarily concerned with. 08:03.31 archpodnet Um. 08:10.53 Paul Data collection and so mobile jgis we've discussed plenty of times. Um I discussed and have written an article that's in review right now about using mobile gis ah at Loggosh for a a surface survey and we've used a whole bunch of different kinds what we use. On this project. We use a product called icmtgis and um, yeah, this is a weird one I've definitely used ones that seem much more modern this this one it does everything we need to but it has a lot of things that as you use it, you learn not to do because it'll crash. The program. 08:39.80 archpodnet Ah. 08:43.59 archpodnet Threat. 08:45.24 Paul It's really funny looking in that it's um, it looks like it's ported from windows 95 and I think it probably was and and I'm not I'm not being facetious I really think it kind of was and there are a lot of things that you just can't do you know? ah certain gestures that you're used to like on your ipad won't work copy and paste. 08:53.70 archpodnet Bread. 09:04.93 archpodnet Right. 09:05.22 Paul Into the fields doesn't work. Ah and it's not you know I'm not here to rag on this program in particular. Um though I happily will ah but what I did enjoy and this is what I want to talk about more was I learned 2 things that really? so. Duck out at me. 1 of them was with this one in particular. Ah when you go to create a new feature. It pops up a box asks you how you want to record it what the the layer is and the the terminology isn't always the same between different parts of the programs. Between features and layers and so on and so that's a little confusing. It also gives you an id that you can edit and what we found out last summer if you edit that id and you give it the same idea as an existing object. Um, it crashes the entire program. 09:42.22 archpodnet Ah. 09:50.94 archpodnet Yeah. 09:55.44 Paul Because that Id is an internal Id for the program itself and so I was thinking about that just as a general point of um, a general point of programming and I realized this in writing my own total station software. You don't have to present everything to the end user right? There's no need to present that internal Id to the end user. They're not going if they. 10:11.53 archpodnet Um, Fred. 10:15.16 Paul Mess with it. They potentially mess with the data.. There's no reason. No Good reason for it and that's the same thing I found with my own programming was I was doing things like my initial messages when you would save some data it said Yes, this point was successfully saved to the blah blah Blah database backend I'm like well. No, that who cares the end user does not care what database you know that I'm using Sql lite and that I saved it successfully to the sqlite database. Um, what they care about is yes I saved the data. You know? and yes, that's all it's saved. 10:34.50 archpodnet Um, right. 10:43.40 archpodnet Yeah I literally need a checkmark That's all I need done. Yeah. 10:50.82 Paul Go you right done and so that's something that I just you know this is just kind of ah ah more of a call than 2 programmers is realize who your target audience is and even though when you're doing your programming. It's very tempting to give lots of detail. Ah. A lot of times that detail is meaningless to the person who's actually using it or in the case of what we saw with this id this internal idea in this program is dangerous to the end user. Ah, the other thing that I really did like those that we used it last summer and then again this summer for for mapping. 11:19.74 archpodnet Um, yeah. 11:27.50 archpodnet Okay. 11:28.50 Paul Right? So you'd go and you could trace the outline of a site or you could trace the outline of features on sites or drop points on individual small features and so on um, part of our group was collecting with paper and somewhere in the specs it said that we would provide them a um that would provide ourcu. Ah, paper sketch map of each site and I thought how silly that is that we could give them a very accurate map done in Gis save it as ah, you know to the do a screen cap. 11:49.69 archpodnet Um, okay. 12:02.37 archpodnet Yeah. 12:04.33 Paul Save that to the ah to the ah to the camera roll on the ipad and then annotate it there and hand them if it has to be on paper print that out and hand them that but then you'd have the advantages of both. You'd have the stuff that that you really have a hard time doing in a Gis indicating you know, slow. 12:08.34 archpodnet Right. 12:22.31 Paul Ah, something that's off screen like you know next site over is two hundred meters that direction something like that that you would really easily do on ah on a paper map that you're annotating by hand. Ah, but you. With those paper maps you you lose the accuracy you know things aren't in proportion things are a little off of where they actually are north isn't necessarily exactly north all those little things that that irk me so I was thinking that that whether you're using this or any other thing that you could actually combine those 2 kinds of. 12:37.90 archpodnet Um, right. 12:48.43 archpodnet Um. 12:54.10 Paul Modes of collecting data. 12:54.46 archpodnet Well Okay, so when you said some of the team was collecting on paper. Do you mean there were were they with for the mapping were they literally like compass and paste mapping or or were they taking an annotated ah taking a print out of a of a gis map and annotating it like you said or literally just sketching out. 13:12.68 Paul No literally just sketching out. They had paper forms that that was I'm doing try to be nice. Um it was driving me kind of crazy but because it was said in the specs to the to the ah to Rcu that. 13:13.42 archpodnet The whole site. Oh my God Yeah wow. 13:30.13 Paul We would give them paper sketch maps. It was taken to be literally paper from start to end. Um, yeah, and so I was I was a little I was a little bothered by that. But but I think that you know again, they're really. 13:34.34 archpodnet Wow Born paper. Yeah, that seems seems a little a little much. 13:47.31 Paul It doesn't seem little much but they're they're again, they're they're very experienced Archeologists are very good at what they do and I think that that I can present them next time I go back which I may or may not do. But if I go back I can present to them. What I think is a smarter workflow that won't slow them down at all still allows them to present something. 13:48.77 archpodnet So sure. 14:06.66 Paul On paper to the client at the end but then brings in the stuff that I care about accuracy and the data collection with the gis. 14:15.57 archpodnet Well I mean don't get me wrong I love compass and Pace Maps sketch maps I really had a good time making those when I used to do that and I haven't done 1 in shit probably eight years eight or nine years I mean it's been a long time. Maybe even 10 years and ah because it's been all. It's been all gis. 14:19.11 Paul M. 14:32.44 archpodnet You know from this point out and when the when the Blm Nevada I came over what it was when they actually stopped pretty much requiring those and you could just turn in a ah gis Sketch Map then everybody started doing that but compass and pace maps are so fun to do and even if you're not an artist. It allows you to? um you know. 14:48.30 Paul Um. 14:51.12 archpodnet To to kind of feel like an artist so to speak. But anyway yeah, it's um, yeah. 14:53.46 Paul Yeah, no, and that there is real value to it and especially in the ways that you can annotate and the ways that you can indicate things like slope that are much harder to do if you're just doing a top-down very clinical dry sort of gis tracing things map. 15:03.85 archpodnet Um. 15:09.36 archpodnet Right? right. 15:11.39 Paul Um, so I think that there is ah there is room to grow there and I think that this is one of the things I've really been enjoying about doing the field work is that in my mind I have a notion of what might be the best but when the rubber hits the road. You know in reality you find that there that there are actually a few different bests. 15:23.60 archpodnet Um, yeah. 15:30.29 Paul And maybe there's a good way to combine them into making the the you know the super best. 15:34.10 archpodnet Okay, then so given the language in the in the scope of work What we're using for photography I'm just curious. 15:43.00 Paul So we were using um a combination we were using ipads and we're using tslrs and what I've come to decide is that Ipads or Android tablets that doesn't have to be Ipads. It's just that I've been using ipads exclusively for the last couple of years. Um. 15:49.82 archpodnet Okay. 15:57.12 archpodnet Just tablets. Yeah, yeah. 16:02.70 Paul Ipad mini sixes which I think are phenomenal. Um, the the cameras on these are not as good as a Dslr but if you're carrying this piece of equipment the tablet out into the field. Anyhow and you've got a camera that is really really good. Um. Might as well use it and prioritize that I would still use dslrs for certain sorts of things. So if I'm doing really carefully composed art photos if I'm doing really carefully composed ah object photos I definitely would use the dslrs because I can control things like depth of field that I can't. 16:28.43 archpodnet Oh. 16:39.71 Paul With a ah a tablet or a phone camera. Um, but for almost everything else. The Ipads have it and they have that built in Gps which is so helpful when it comes time to figure out. You know what photograph was where they'll even tell you which direction you were facing. 16:42.29 archpodnet Yeah. 16:57.99 Paul And that's encoded there in the Exif data so that that that's all so useful so helpful. Ah that I think that it really trumps the perceived advantage of Dslr in most cases. 16:58.41 archpodnet Right. 17:09.94 archpodnet Right? right? Yeah I agree and the photography off the mobile device is getting better and better I'm actually rocking an iphone twelve still and the 15 I think is coming out this September we're we're going to transition at this time I just the 13 wasn't enough. 17:22.75 Paul Yep. 17:27.29 archpodnet For me to switch and and then the 14 it was kind of an off year. You know that there wasn't many advances either from that one so I was like we're going to wait so it's the longest I've gone with with ah without switching out my iphone I think since the iphone came out but the point is I think the last model or the one before that does have depth of field. 17:32.86 Paul Um. 17:45.43 archpodnet And other things that you can even do in post right? So you can select on a different focal point. Um, and do some of that stuff and it's just getting better and better and better. So I think the days of the dsl with Dslr are kind of numbered. 17:46.53 Paul Right. 17:55.76 Paul Yeah I mean the the depth of field that that my understanding is it's software. It's not really the um I mean they do have multiple lenses so there's a little bit that can be affected that way. But when I'm ever I'm on a Zoom call people comment on how. 18:03.68 archpodnet That's true. Yeah. 18:13.93 Paul Good. My image looks not me but the image and that's because I'm using a real camera with a real lens and I've got the um I've got the aperture all the way wide open. So the the depth of field is really narrow just on you know the tip of my nose to the back of my head that that much movement. 18:16.27 archpodnet It is good now. No it is good. Um. 18:29.70 archpodnet Yeah. 18:32.72 Paul And I'll go out of focus. Um, and you know it does make a difference that versus the fake blurring the background which just doesn't look quite as tasty. You know? Ah, but but again. 18:37.11 archpodnet Sure. 18:44.35 archpodnet Um, yeah, indeed. 18:48.40 Paul If you're bringing that ipad into the field and you're using it for your data collection I just I'm really having a hard time at this point to understand why you would also need a Dslr. 18:59.74 archpodnet Yeah, good point. Well we could go on this for for a long time. We've had whole episodes on cameras before too. So ah, yeah, absolutely absolutely. So. 19:05.72 Paul Um, oh yeah and I love him. Yeah. 19:11.58 archpodnet Well let's go ahead and take a break because we got a lot more to talk about and we'll do that on the other side back in a minute.