Continue reading »]]> By Julia Flood, Project Gado Intern

My name is Julia and I am the new intern at Project Gado. While I am a new member of Team Gado, I am not new to the world of newspapers. My grandfather, who got his start as a writer for the Baltimore Sun, founded a newspaper in our hometown of Dover, Delaware. My father was very involved, so I grew up around printing presses, column deadlines and photographers. Naturally, I worked on my high school’s newsletter, as any good publisher’s daughter would do, and took up photography as a hobby. As a history major at Johns Hopkins University, I wrote my sophomore thesis on the influence of small, urban newspapers in London in the nineteenth century. I spent the past few months studying abroad in Italy, and reading the local Florentine newspapers revealed more about the city and its people than you could get from any number of tour books.

While the times and places of my different newspaper experiences might be different, the effects that a newspaper can have on a community can be seen clear across the board. Newspapers serve to commemorate people and events, draw attention to lesser known information, foster community pride and help connect people through shared interests and passions. Whether you wake up in the morning to read the Baltimore Sun or the Dover Post or La Nazione or the Afro-American, you are opening its pages expecting to find stories you care about and maybe pictures of people you know.

It is the images in the newspaper that brought me to Project Gado and the Afro. Because of the journalist blood running in my veins, a part of me likes to look back upon the pre-internet newspaper with rose-tinted lenses and romanticize the specialness bestowed upon a picture by the nature of the fact that it was lovingly clipped out and stuck on the fridge. However, I still appreciate the fantastic ease that the internet and online databases of images bring to researchers, historians and anyone who is interested in the history of the area. I have only been with working with Gado for a few weeks, but I have already come across so many images that make me stop and take a minute to appreciate them. The archives of the Afro aren’t just full of old pictures. They’re full of stories and memories and lives that may have ended, but can still be shared. That’s the mission of Project Gado, and I am proud to be a part of it.

Continue reading »]]> Blog post by Alex Neville, Digitization & Operations Specialist

Bear with me for a moment.

A synthesizer is a musical instrument. Some of them have keyboards and speakers, so you can play and hear them directly, but many don’t. You have to plug in a keyboard to play them and an amp or some speakers to hear them play. There are two types, digital synthesizers and analog synthesizers. The analog synthesizer uses its circuitry to generate a waveform, which will be translated into sound as it is passed through to the amp or speakers. The waveform can be fuzzy or curvy; the analog synthesizer uses chaotic and natural processes to generate tones. A digital synthesizer can approximate those fuzzy or curved natural waveforms by generating tones in a series of small steps, kind of like an LCD screen uses a pattern of dots to recreate whole lines and pictures. However, there can and often is an audible difference between analog and digital synthesizers; analog synthesizers are said to have a “warmer” tone because of the random and natural shapes of sound that they produce.

This is a synthesizer. It creates a tone digitally, passes the signal through an analog filter, and puts it out through the audio jack. So it isn’t an analog synthesizer, but it sounds quite a bit like one. Here’s another synthesizer. This one doesn’t have any analog components, but it uses programming to emulate the sound-generation methods an analog synthesizer would use, and the whole thing is open source hardware and software – like Gado – so anyone could build and assemble their own. Like the MeeBlip, the Shruthi is open source, and the software and
hardware designs are posted on their websites for anyone to look at. They are also inexpensive—well, inexpensive compared to the classic analog synthesizers that came before them. I know that’s not saying much (pianos and swimming pools cost less than some of the older analog synthesizers), but these are instruments that put this technology into the hands of a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to afford one of these.

So I’m thinking of putting one together. But “inexpensive compared to classic analog synthesizers” doesn’t mean “cheap enough to replace because you tried to put it together without knowing how to solder.” So I have to learn to solder, and it just so happens that learning to solder would help me with Project Gado. When it comes time to put together new circuit boards for the robots to be shipped out, I’ll be helping instead of, you know, not helping.

clutter clutter clutter

So this is one of the things I’ve been working on lately. I’ve got a stack of electronics parts and soldering supplies on my desk at the office and on my desk at home, and I’ve been checking out kits and circuit diagrams online. Here’s one of the fruits of my labors. It’s a kit from Jameco for something called an Atari Punk Console, and it uses a 556 timer chip and a speaker to generate tones. It works, which is about as much as I could ask for.

Next project: headphone amp.

Continue reading »]]> On November 5 2012, Project Gado partnered with Johns Hopkins and the Afro American Newspapers to present “East Side Story: JHMI and the AFRO Celebrate East Baltimore”, an original production by nationally-produced Baltimore playwright Alonzo Lamont.

The event was a resounding success! Over seventy Johns Hopkins affiliates, AFRO staff and members of the East Baltimore community came together at the School of Public Health to see the free performance, and we had a lively talk-back with the actors, Alonzo, myself, and John Oliver Jr. of the Afro American Newspapers.

The conversation continued after the performance at a post-show reception hosted by Johns Hopkins Office of Cultural Affairs (thanks to Shannon Dunn). Over refreshments, the attendees had an opportunity to chat and discuss the play’s themes, which included the relationship between Hopkins and its community and the pride East Baltimore residents feel in their neighborhood.

East Side Story originally came about when playwright Alonzo Lamont approached the Gado team about volunteering with our project. Amy Smith, Gado’s Marketing Director (and a theatre person herself), showed Alonzo some East Baltimore photos we had digitized from the Afro’s collections. Alonzo found the photos inspiring, and the two hatched a plan to create and produce what would become East Side Story. Gado staff worked directly with Alonzo to support his vision and make the play a reality.

One of the most remarkable moments of the production took place during a rehearsal, when we projected several of the Afro’s historical images for the first time. When we showed an image of the East Baltimore Elks, one of the actors looked stunned, pointed at a man in the background of the photo, and exclaimed “That’s my dad!” This kind of community engagement and personal connection to the Afro’s photos is exactly what we hoped to foster during this phase of our project.

A complete video of the performance is available below, in three parts.

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The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions Office of Cultural Affairs, Welch Medical Library, Government and Community Affairs, Afro American Newspapers and Project Gado Present:

East Side Story: JHMI and the AFRO Celebrate East Baltimore 

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Continue reading »]]> Hi, I’m Alex. I’m Project Gado’s Digitization and Operations Specialist, which means I operate the robot at the Afro’s archives, search for requested folders and photos, and deal with any problems we have while we’re scanning. One thing that helps me do my job is Python, the programming language that I’ve been learning, and that our robot’s software is written in.

Alex Neville hard at work at the ETC learning Python.

(You can find the latest version of said software here. All of the software and the designs for the robot’s parts and circuits are open source and free for downloading, using, or altering. The images we’ve been scanning with the Afro are up at GadoImages.com.)

I’m not an expert in Python, but I’m learning. It takes caffeine and motivation, and I have plenty of both. The secret to the former is living within walking distance of multiple fine coffee shops. The trick to the latter is finding something interesting to work on. Lately, I’ve been working on writing a text adventure game in Python based on Cthulhu Dark, a fun little horror RPG with simple rules for depicting a character’s descent into madness as they encounter unutterable horrors from dark corners of the earth.

It’s not anything fancy, but it’s helping me get reacquainted with some basic programming concepts and lets me get a feel for Python, and when it’s finished, I’ll have something that I would want to use, as opposed to a program for calculating budgets or playing Breakout.

The other thing I’ve been doing to teach myself Python is looking at code online. There are a lot of excellent free resources out there for someone trying to learn just about any programming language. I’ve also been lucky enough to be spending a day each week in an office with others who know the language and can help out when I run into issues with the projects I’m working on.

-Alex Neville, Digitization and Operations Specialist

Continue reading »]]> Last Wednesday, I attended Baltimore TechBreakfast at DLA Piper LLP in Mount Washington.  Ron Schmelzer founded TechBreakfast in June, 2011, when the format was 8-10 Baltimore techies sitting around a table, discussing what’s new in the local tech scene.  A little more than a year later, and with Meetups in Baltimore, DC, and Columbia, TechBreakfast is an impressive gathering of at least 150 techies, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs who share the new and exciting projects they are working on.

Ron Schmelzer (Founder, Bizelo) introduces some of the sponsors of Baltimore TechBreakfast.

Ron always has a great lineup of companies, but one of the groups that stood out at the last Baltimore TechBreakfast was Parking Panda.  Co-Founder and CEO Nick Miller shared his vision for a community marketplace for parking in which people can reserve parking spots in advance.  Parking Panda is currently available in Baltimore and DC and was the official parking partner of the 2012 Grand Prix of Baltimore.

Co-Founder and CEO Nick Miller presented his company Parking Panda to Baltimore TechBreakfast.

For me, TechBreakfast is a great opportunity to learn about new technologies being developed, network with other tech professionals, and share Project Gado with the community.  One of my favorite parts of the TechBreakfast is the 30 second lighting “shout outs” where anyone in the audience can get up and make an announcement or share news about their company.  This was a great opportunity to introduce Project Gado, which we’ll be presenting at the Columbia TechBreakfast in a couple weeks, and announce the launch of the Gado 2 kits, now for sale on our website.

Mark your calendars for the next Columbia TechBreakfast on September 13 – Project Gado will be demoing the Gado 2.

Since the Gado 2 is an Open Source device, anyone is free to take any aspect of the machine and apply it wherever low-cost, autonomous digitization is needed.  This is another reason I love TechBreakfast; it’s a great way for to meet and connect with developers who want to tinker with Gado.  This really gets at the heart of our mission to create a truly collaborative technology, and we need the help of the Baltimore tech community to do so.

If you love technology and have yet to attend a TechBreakfast, I encourage you to check out the next Columbia TechBreakfast on September 13 where we’ll be presenting Project Gado.  I hope you’ll come to learn more about the project and ask us lots of questions.  See you there!

Continue reading »]]> I wanted to say hello from the development team. Robert Douglas and I, Brendan Ebers, have been working really hard this past month on the Gado codebase in preparation for sending out our first Gado 2 kits. It’s really exciting to see how far this project has come along, and we’d like to do a series of blog posts sharing some problems we encountered and techniques we learned along the way. 

But first, I’m happy to announce that the newest codebase is now available over at GitHub. We had been developing on our internal Git server until we realized that our open source project wasn’t available to a wider audience. So if Python is your thing and you’re interested to see what makes this little robot tick, then go check out our code and play around. We’d love some pull requests (and we’d love some help with the GUI.)

In the next few days we’ll also be pushing our 3D models, finalized parts list, and all of the supporting documentation as well.

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Brendan Ebers, Chief Technology Officer and Sinan Ozdemir hard at work at NCIIA’s VentureLab, August 2012.

As part of our National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) grant, the Project Gado team had the opportunity to take advantage of the Sustainable Vision VentureLab at MIT. This intensive 5-day workshop was designed to enhance social enterprises and small businesses by developing strong, operational models and turning projects into self-sustaining businesses.

The Project Gado team walked in on day one with our fully functional robot expecting a walk in the park as most of the other ventures were still in the R&D phase. What we discovered was that it took more than a cool gizmo to make it through the program.

Our highly energetic instructor, James Barlow, guided us through a number of exercises aimed at developing a lean startup business acumen and begin to see our business as a process. These exercises included traditional business exercises such as process mapping, to more creative exercises such as having the entire workshop group solve a puzzle in 10 minutes to instill values such as cooperation and task assignment.

As a result, the Gado team left the conference with a wealth of ideas on how to keep the project sustainable and develop the technology and process to continue to meet the needs of Archives.

-Jon Smalletz, Chief Analytics Officer

Continue reading »]]> Media Contact:

Amy Smith, Marketing Director

Project Gado

443.451.7341

amy@esdallc.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Gado Images Announces New Facial Recognition Software Capabilities

To Search Vast Photo Archive of African American Heritage

Great Step Forward in Search for Images of Individuals in African American History and Heritage

Baltimore, MD: July 24, 2012 – On July 15, 2012, Gado Images launched a new facial recognition capability that makes it significantly easier to search by person in the photographic collection of African American heritage of the Afro-American Newspapers.

Archives like the Afro-American’s often face a challenge in finding specific individuals within their vast collections.  While many of the Afro’s 1.5 million images have been digitized and made available online at www.gadoimages.com, one problem for researchers has been that photos are not always filed by the names of individual subjects. A photo of Martin Luther King, Jr. standing in front of the Enoch Pratt Library might only be found in a file labeled “Enoch Pratt Library”.  With Gado Images’ new facial recognition tool, researchers can find every image of Dr. King in the collection no matter how the image is categorized.

“We are excited about launching this new facial recognition capability because of what it means for genealogy researchers who are trying to locate images of individuals in the Afro’s archives,” says Tom Smith, project manager of Project Gado.  “The ability to find and digitize images of individuals is hugely important in telling the story of the African American community and making this history available to the public.”

On July 21, the AFRO hosted a breakfast at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in honor of the legendary AFRO PaperBoys and PaperGirls.  This event, attended by Congressman Elijah E. Cummings and Kweisi Mfume, produced numerous requests from former AFRO PaperBoys and PaperGirls seeking photos of themselves in the AFRO’s archives.

Whether you are looking for personal photos of family and friends or historic photos of Civil Rights leaders, performing artists, celebrated sports figures, or Baltimore community leaders, Gado Images can help.  Requests for images of specific individuals can be submitted to amy@esdallc.com.  Scholars and community members interested in African American history and heritage may visit www.gadoimages.com to view and purchase licenses and prints for their own use.

About Project Gado

Project Gado has created an autonomous open source archival scanning robot which small archives can use to digitize their photographic collections.  This project grew out of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Africana Studies, and now includes the JHU Sheridan Libraries and the Afro-American Newspapers. For more information about Project Gado, please contact Amy Smith at amy@esdallc.com or visit www.projectgado.org.

About Gado Images

Gado Images provides historical photo licenses and prints. Currently, the collection contains selections from the archives of the Afro American Newspapers. Many images are newly digitized, and many have never been published previously. All images are digitized using revolutionary scanning technology developed by Project Gado. Images are property of the Afro American Newspapers unless otherwise noted. For more information, please visit www.gadoimages.com .

About The Afro-American

The Afro-American is one of the oldest, family-owned, continuously publishing newspapers in the country. It was founded in 1892 by John H. Murphy Sr., a former slave, and continues to provide world-class news coverage to this day. For more information, visit www.afro.com.

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