FAIMS3 News

2022

On interdependence in FAIR research communities (digital and otherwise) Permalink

4 minute read

Penny muses on inter-reliance of researchers working in different stages of the research workflow.  SangyaPundir, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Last week our paper on capture of FAIR-ready data on the FAIMS mobile platform was released in the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology (Ross et al. 2022). In it we step through each of the FAIR data principles:  Findable w...

Dev Diary 14: Thoughts about server architectures Permalink

6 minute read

In this dev update, as we get close to feature freeze, Brian shares some screenshots of the new UI in testing and muses about server architectures. A FAIMS 3 Poster (and general project update) at eResearch Australasia Penny and Jens are busy this week as eResearch Australasia in Brisbane, presenting our poster (https://osf.io/5karu/). I am told, that it was ‘Highly Commended’ for c...

Digital Recording in the Blue Mountains, NSW Permalink

4 minute read

Recording mining ruins in the Blue Mountains, 18 September 2022. Back row, from left to right: C Barnett, C Leevers, F Leslie, C Stafford, S Lupack, L Jelovic, B Dickson, J Odenthal and A Berthold. From row: R Parkes. (Photo: CC-BY 2022 P. Crook) On 17 to 19 September a team of archaeologists and MQ students returned to the Jamison Valley, Blue Mountains, to conclude a survey of shale-oil minin...

Dev Diary 12: Projects in the field Permalink

1 minute read

A very brief dev update as we work through issues found by taking FAIMS 3 into the field. Macquarie University Biologists using FAIMS to determine tree groundwater use. Photo from a FAIMS3-created-record, TREE 00002-30300 by Loren Pollitt CC-BY-SA. Status Update Our devs are hard at work, updating our server code for role management, making persistent fields (so that field values entered in one...

Dev Diary 11: Demo day and a response to Archaeological HARKing Permalink

10 minute read

In this dev update, we share a brief update about the MQ Incubator’s Demo Day and reflect on Jeremy Huggett’s recent blog on: HARKing to Big Data? Brian holding out a tablet running FAIMS3 during the MQ Incubator Demo Day. CC-BY Brian Ballsun-Stanton 2022 Status update Planning continues for our November production release. In the last two weeks, we’ve mostly been cleaning up ...

Dev Diary 10: Dev Roadmap, Experiments with External Bluetooth, and iOS Permalink

5 minute read

While FAIMS plans for the ‘final’ August–November development cycle, Brian is experimenting with different hardware: an iPad and a Bad Elf GPS unit. He reflects on our roadmap to production. Corner-of-office charging … zone… The devices are starting to accumulate. CC-BY Brian Ballsun-Stanton The final countdown As we enter our last development cycle, we are closin...

Dev Diary 9: FAIMS3 Enters Beta! Permalink

4 minute read

Earlier today we went through client acceptance tests on our April-July development cycle. We are now officially in beta!1 Contact us at [email protected] if you want to try out our beta software. FAIMS 3 beta testing soil sampling campaign for Ultrafine+ TM as part of the MinEx CRC, National Drilling Initiative, Mundi region, NSW., 3/6/2022. Photo Copyright Nathan Reid CC-BY-SA 4.0 Int 2022 De...

In the field with the last FAIMS 2.6 module Permalink

5 minute read

In this blog post, we handover to Macquarie University researcher Tess Nelson to reflect on the last FAIMS 2.6 module we will ever1 design. Working with supervisor Professor Grant Hose, Tess and their team have taken this module out multiple times over the last year to do groundwater sampling and vegetation observations. FAIMS data collection in Macquarie River catchment western NSW, Australia....

Dev Diary 8: Access Controls and thinking about the Common Workflow Language in the context of in-field data collection Permalink

6 minute read

In this week’s dev diary, Brian shares a video of our new advanced authentication and visibility controls, reflects on a recent paper on the common workflow language, and how FAIMS could relate to that data processing and analysis ecosystem. FAIMS data collection in the northern Delamarian region of South Australia, 19/6/2021. Photo Copyright Robert Thorne CC-BY-SA 4.0 Int 2021 Status ...

Confessions of a (Digital) Archaeologist Permalink

3 minute read

This week, Penny Crook reflects on her experiences designing data structures for her own archaeological research and implementing FAIMS3 notebooks on behalf of other archaeologists and researchers. Off to record industrial heritage in the Blue Mountains in December 2020, with the old FAIMS tablets in tow. (P. Crook CC-BY) As we take a breather from focus groups and demos, catch up on some pro...

Dev Diary 7: Focus groups and participatory design Permalink

8 minute read

A shorter longer update this fortnight because Penny and Brian just finished running focus groups at UNSW! Also a short reflection on participatory design in 2022… FAIMS3 Focus Group participants using the Campus Survey notebook to record Landscape Elements. CC-BY-SA Brian Ballsun-Stanton 2022 “I’m a bit of a numpty, but even I can do this [designing a notebook]” —...

Dev Diary 6: A philosophy of Digital Archaeological Tools Permalink

6 minute read

Brian gives a dev update for mid April, and descends further into the philosophy of technology and archaeology. (Madness intensifies…) Lego Archaeologist by Grianghraf (Unsplash license) Dev update We have just begun a new tranche of development work for CSIRO, focusing on notebook authentication, row visibility controls, new work on the exporter, and attachment sync management. We’...

FAIR in the field with FAIMS Permalink

4 minute read

Shawn Ross recently was interviewed by Rory Mcneill, for his Fair Data Podcast about FAIMS, digital field data collection, and his professional journey from history to archaeology, open science, and research technology. Rory is the founder of Research Space (an open-source electronic lab notebooks developer and service provider). Petra Hermankova in the field using the FAIMS module to record a...

Dev Diary 5: The Colour of (offline) Bits Permalink

10 minute read

This week, Brian reports on a successful launch to production and thinks about the “colours of bits” applied not to a financial framing, but from the perspective of academic paradigms.1 The panopticon/logo of Friend Computer, of the Paranoia tabletop RPG. Image Copyright Mongoose Publishing, used with kind permission. Are you happy, citizen? Happiness is mandatory. This blog post i...

Developer Update #4: Wait, it’s March‽ Permalink

6 minute read

In our first update of 2022, Brian is deeply confused about time, offers hints of an unexpectedly manic development period due to a secret project, and thinks about the pragmatics of technical debt. Brian taking a “core sample” in an abandoned field in Canberra. Photo Copyright Liz Stower  CC-BY-SA 4.0 Int 2021 The problem with manic deadlines in lieu of leave is that they leav...

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2021

Developer Diary 3: End of the year, end of v0.3.0 development, User Acceptance Test Success Permalink

5 minute read

As we end this development cycle, and we look at how well we’ve done at achieving our goals, our Technical Director, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, reflects on the year. While my first dev diary has our expensive sentence, the way I framed our goals when talking about feature priority was, “the thinnest possible bridge between notebook creation and export.” We need to be able to run ...

Collecting data on the Cold-War Bunkers of Aarhus Permalink

7 minute read

While we are watching FAIMS3 emerge, a number of old 2.6 modules are still being created. As the developing team has little capacity to support new projects, project directors follow a do-it-yourself approach from design to deployment. Adela, who has used and administered FAIMS before for landscape archaeology, has never developed a module from scratch but used her software-carpentry-level skil...

Developer Diary #2: Feature Freeze Permalink

4 minute read

Moving into “feature freeze” offers an interesting opportunity for a developer diary. Our Technical Director, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, ponders the state of all the various components that are working together in our project. XKCD #303 I’m writing this watching a timer count past 5 minutes while building FAIMS3 using Github Actions. Our Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery...

Developer Diary #1: Thinking about Licenses Permalink

2 minute read

As we get to the end of this development cycle, and closer to achieving our Expensive Sentence, our Technical Director, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, ponders the state of all the various components that are working together in our project. Status Update Our Expensive Sentence for private beta is: To support CSIRO Geochem for in-field testing in November 2021 by allowing minimal module design through w...

Translating from Paper to Tablet Permalink

2 minute read

There are some beautiful examples of field notebooks in the archives of national libraries and natural history collections like the notebooks of Giovanni Arduino (Italian Apennine Mountains) or Charles D. Walcott (Grand Canyon). But as much as we may aspire to produce these magnificent works of science and art, the reality for most of us looks much more scrappy. Example of a field notebook with...

Spinning up digital recording systems for rapid survey on Perachora Peninsula, Greece Permalink

2 minute read

Hot off the e-press, field reports for a FAIMS-supported archaeological survey on the Perachora Peninsula, Greece, have just been released by Journal of Field Archaeology. The paper by FAIMS 3.0 leadership team members Adela Sobotkova, Shawn A. Ross, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, FAIMS 2.6 alumni Petra Hermankova and Christian Nassif-Haynes, and archaeologists Susan Lupack and Panagiota Kasimi is...

Democratising data design: hierarchies of technical knowledge in data collection software Permalink

4 minute read

The Process of Design Squiggle by Damien Newman, thedesignsquiggle.com This post is part 3 of a series inspired by the presentation we gave to the ARDC Platforms Community of Practice about the generation and management of user requirements. Our first posts considered the perspective of the Product Owner and the Subject-Matter Expert. This post will consider the view of the end ...

A Tale of Reproducible Presentation Infrastructure Permalink

5 minute read

Some folks visiting this post will be interested in the high-level overview of FAIMS by Shawn Ross and Penny Crook as part of the AAO Seminar Series. This post, however, is not about a high level overview of FAIMS. Instead, it’s about responsible academic research, slides as FAIR academic outputs via GitHub Releases, and automation of said releases using LaTeX, Overleaf, our new LaTeX Sl...

Mind reading up and down Permalink

2 minute read

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” Carl Sagan, Cosmos This post is part 2 of a series inspired by the presentation we gave to the ARDC Platforms Community of Practice. Future posts in this series will look at the other roles that academics need to play in order to deliver functioning software that other people...

The Product Owner Must Translate Between the Academic Vision and the Developmental Reality Permalink

3 minute read

'Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.'Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy This post is part 1 of a series inspired by the presentation we gave to the ARDC Platforms Community of Practice. Future posts in thi...

FAIMS3 Alpha UAT Success Permalink

1 minute read

CSIRO researchers with FAIMS in the field. CC-BY-SA Nathan Reid 2021 On 15 June 2021 the FAIMS3 Alpha prototype passed its first major development milestone: user-acceptance testing (UAT). The intention of this round of UAT was to explore, discuss and confirm accomplishment of the goals of Alpha phase of development: To demonstrate the foundational capabilities of FAIMS3. Specifically, loading...

FAIMS3 Github Repo goes Public Permalink

1 minute read

An early screenshot from FAIMS3 on Chrome on Android. CC-BY 2021 FAIMS Project at Macquarie University. As part of getting ready for our Alpha release and initial round of User Acceptance Testing, I took our FAIMS3 repository public just now. FAIMS3 is built in Typescript and we’re designing it to be multi-platform from the get-go. Our Alpha release aims to accomplish the following expe...

Updates and progress reports on FAIMS 3 developments and deployments Permalink

less than 1 minute read

FAIMS 3.0 will re-engineer Field Acquired Information Management Systems (FAIMS) Mobile, a mature and stable, but dated, system for producing custom electronic notebooks for data collection in diverse field situations. This project will make quality, comprehensive datasets the norm, and the platform will integrate with existing virtual environments for data analysis and repositories, including ...

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