Project Panormos: Daily Log

The ‘Daily Diary’ or 'Daily Log’ is a way for all team members to get involved in richly documenting the project (as part of an effort to provide some degree of multivocality in meta-discourse). Both paper tract log and digital log entries can include notes and comments on archaeology, impressions of how the work is going and what could be done differently, sketches of views, buildings, people, animals and finds.

'Personal’ Paper Tract Data forms and Daily Log

After each walked tract, each fieldwalker must document his/her own tract with the tract form for walker using their own booklet:

Tract walker data compact form

One team member will also carry the log book during the day to keep track of what happens.

Daily log notes

You need to carry with you your own tract walker data booklet. Please take care to always prepare your supply for the next day when you leave the base in the afternoon. Think ahead!

N.B. The paper entries will not be edited and will instead be preserved in the paper archives of the project.

Digital 'Daily Log’

For each field day, one person from each team will be assigned the job of writing a digital log entry (hereafter “responsible of the day”). The Digital Daily Log is a summary of the field activities of the day. It should summarize what happened during the day, the most important events, the major failures, the feeling of the team… Have fun with the content! It should be both informative and fun to give colour to how we worked. Someone may read this in 20-40 years in order to understand how we worked.
The language used can be English, German, Turkish or any other that at least one other team member can review, edit or translate. Use the paper version of the Daily Log to make notes during the day as preparation for the more developed/fleshed-out digital version.

The digital entries will be lightly edited to avoid the publication online or (ultimately) in the public archive of material which could be problematic.

N. B. After review and merging, the log will appear as a post on http://team.panormos.de/ !

How to prepare the digital log entry

“Responsible of the day” will be responsible for writing a digital text for the digital archive and will receive named credit for their contribution. To track the authors we will use the web service GitLab, which is based on Git (for more information about Git see the git handbook)

Writing the digital log is divided in two steps. First, responsible of the day will have to write it in Gitlab. Then, they will ask the team to review the dailylog. Just follow this tutorial to get started.

  1. Log into Gitlab at https://gist.dainst.org with the login that have been created for you. You need to accept the certificate from the DAI. The SHA-256 fingerprint is: DC:6B:3A:88:98:3D:16:81:A7:4E:52:83:F5:ED:95:03:F2:8C:D8:E5:55:7B:6E:7A:6A:6D:A5:AC:CD:FE:50:04

  1. On the right side, navigate to the project by clicking on “panormos/team” and after, on the left side of the panel click on “Files”. There you will find a folder named “dailylog”, click on it!

  1. For each day Toby and Néhémie will prepare in advance a template that you can use to write the daily log. It should have the name: YYYY-MM-DD-dailylog-Team-X-Ddd.md for example for a virtual log from Team A on Sunday the 30th August 2015, the name will be 2015-08-30-dailylog-Team-A-Sun. Just click on it! If your file is missing, ask Toby or Néhémie. They may have forgotten!

  1. Now you can edit the daily log. Remember that it is just a blank template to help you to start. Click on Edit to start your entry.

To write the daily log we use a lightweight markup language called Markdown. A markup language allow to separate what you write from how it looks like when it is “published”. At the end of this section, there is more tips to find help with writing in Markdown. This part guide you to the very specific steps for writing the daily log.

First, complete what we will call the Preamble. This is the part at the top of the file between the three dashes ---. Please take care to only modify the fields between the quotation marks “”

     layout: post (do no edit)
     title: "TITLE" (give a title)
     author: "NAME" (write your name)
     date: "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS" (check and complete)
     published: false
     categories: [log] (do not edit)

Then you should repeat the title after # and the author. You can start to edit your file by replacing ## Title by a real title and write the content of this section directly under it. Remember that you can always have a preview of your writing to see how it will appear when posted online by clicking on preview

When you are finished with the writing, check it again :smile:. If you have finished your daily log, you must now commit (i.e. save) your daily log. At this point, a snapshot of your work will be saved and attached to your name as author. To commit, you have to add a message, that explains what you have done. In most case, that will simply be “Editing daily log YYYY-MM-DD-Team-X-Ddd”

Click on Commit

The last screen will confirm that everything is committed. Please check your work and make more edits if necessary and complete the commit messaging according to your edit (“Change wrong tract number”).

Ask for comment from the team!

Git and GitLab are tools created to help people to work together. Now that the daily log is created, it’s time to start the review process by other team-members. To ask for help, you will need to create an 'issue’ (the term was created for software developer, imagine it here as “asking for help or review”). On the left side, click on Issues.

Open a new issue and fill the form. Add a title, for example, the name of the file you just edited (YYYY-MM-DD-dailylog-Team-X-Ddd).

You can make a short description or add comments if you need more information or help from your team. “` Hello, This is the daily log for our team. What a nice day but so many things happened and I really hate dogs. Could you have a look on my log to see if there isn’t any mistake or if I didn’t forgot anything?

@Nehemie Could you add the photo you have taken from the POI we recorded today, in the corresponding section?

Hadi, let’s go back drawing some EBA ceramic. Kolay gelsin ”`

In the section Assign to, add a team member as primary reviewer. This will normally be Néhémie (nehemie), or Toby (tcwilkinson).

When everything is done, click on Submit the issue.

At this point, an email with your comments will be sent to the assignee with a link to the “Issue”, they will forward the mail to all the team members.

Other team members have the responsibility to check the daily log, make further edits or comments on it. Here are some rules for the review-process:

An Example

This how it looks like when you have finished writing in Markdown. You can find this example in the daily log folder under the name template. By looking at the preview (see image below), it may help you to get started.

---
layout: post
title:  "A hot day: team A does 60 tracts"
author:  Toby Wilkinson
date:   2015-09-03 16:30:00
categories: [log]
---

...*the one where everyone was very tired and it was too hot*...

## Stats and Mistakes

Today our team managed to walk 60 tracts! The sun was hot though, 
and it took a lot of concentration not to make mistakes. At one 
point we had to rewalk one of the tracts (no. 560) because the battery 
on the GPS died during data entry and TCW got confused. Luckily a 
local living near the tract came out with a pile of fresh *karpuz* 
which saved us all.


![Team A eating karpuz][us_eating_karpuz.jpg]     


## A poem I wrote at lunchtime

    Altınkum, Altınkum,
    Kumların beni çağır,
    Seslerin beni bağır,
    Geliyorum, geliyorum.

Where to find help for writing Markdown

Tow links to get started with Markdown

You may also find help, just by writing help in the search field at the top.

Final note, for those who find it complicated

There is an old joke about a visitor to New York City asking a passerby for directions to the city’s famous classical music venue:

Visitor: Excuse me, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?

Passerby: Practice, practice, practice!