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iPads in the Field - Episode 13
179 Plays10 years ago
We talk to two DIGTECH employees that are actually using iPads on a field project. What's going right and what's going wrong?
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Introduction to iPads in Archeology
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 13 of the Archaeotech Podcast, iPads in the field. I'm your host, Chris Webster. We're going to talk about using iPads in the hot northern Mojave Desert on an actual project with the people that are using them. They've never used them this way and they've never used the software we're going to talk about either. It's a candid discussion of the technology and where it's going right and where it can improve. Let's get to the show.
00:00:34
Speaker
Okay, welcome to the ArcheoTech podcast. I'm taking over for Russell and Doug for a little while because I've got a project out here in Ridgecrest, California where, well, anybody that's heard me talk about stuff, I've been working with iPads for a long time now, but this is actually the first large scale survey with multiple employees where we've used iPads this heavily. Now, the last project I was on, we did use iPads for that, but it was very limited site recording and isolates and stuff like that. Not really that big a deal.
00:00:59
Speaker
But out here though, it's full of California DPR forms. If anybody's heard of those, there's at least two forms, usually three or four for every single site. So you've got four people in a crew dealing with that. Three people are on iPads, one person's on a tremble. So we typically split it up like one person's filling out a primary form, one's filling out an archaeology form, and then the other one is doing artifacts, and then we kind of go from there.
00:01:25
Speaker
Just a little brief, we're going to talk about the iPads and how they're working with two people here that I'll introduce in a minute that have never used iPads in the field, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, so you have.
Tech Specs: iPad Mini 3s and Essential Apps
00:01:40
Speaker
Okay, but you haven't used the software that we're going to talk about, which is kind of a key element to this whole thing. So it's not just the hardware, but we'll talk about the limitations and advantages of both. But just to put it out there, we're using Apple iPad Mini 3s with the retina display and fingerprint security that should help identify the model. They're in a life-proof case, and the app
00:02:03
Speaker
or apps that we're using for site recording and for forms using an app called Tap Forms for iOS. It's only available for iOS. And it's always listed as like the number one database app on the App Store. When you download it, it comes with a whole bunch of crap that the guy puts in there that you got to spend time deleting one by one by one because you don't really care about your garage door codes or anything like that that he wants you to save with these things. And then I create all these other forms. The nice thing is you can create template forms, which I have stored on my computer.
00:02:29
Speaker
and I can just send those via email or message or whatever to the tablet and then click on that and it opens in tab forms and creates everything. So it's kind of amazing that way. I'm also using the other guys aren't so much an app called iAnnotate and I've got all my project maps. We've got a 30,000 acre project and
00:02:45
Speaker
all of the little parcels are split up into one by one mile sections. And so each one of those, I've got overview maps, and then I've got a little section map for each different section that we're in that shows our particular project area for that section. So I'm using that, like normally crew shapes would write on their maps with pencils and things like that. And every few days out here, it'd probably be every few hours you'd sweat through that map and have to get another one. So yeah, this is an advantage, definitely having that. So I can draw on it and do all of my transects and stuff like that.
Challenges: Overheating and Weather Conditions
00:03:15
Speaker
So anyway, I've got here two DigTech LLC employees. We've got Andrew Erickson and Jesse Shellmeyer. Andrew has used the iPad a little bit this rotation. He'll get more heavy into it a couple of times. Jesse, however, has been knee deep in the iPad for the last two weeks. Nice warning there. Yeah, yeah.
00:03:37
Speaker
Piled hi. And so we're just going to talk about what's working, what's not working, and whether or not this is actually, you know, a direction people should be going or whether it needs to be modified to continue in this direction. So let's first talk about the hardware.
00:03:50
Speaker
What, I know you had some issues early on with the hardware and let's talk about that. Well, one of the biggest issues is because, and I mean, this isn't going to be the case everywhere you walk in the United States, but out here where it's like 110 degrees, like it overheats as you're standing in the sun. And you got to actually worry pretty heavily about your shade and how you keep it out of the sun. Because the thing would just shut down you in the middle of a form like, okay, awesome. Back to paper, Chris.
00:04:17
Speaker
Right. And then that is a problem and that's a problem I encountered five years ago when I first got an iPad working in Georgia with it. It, I put it in a nice tight black Otterbox case and it overheated almost immediately when I took it outside just because I wasn't aware of the different things. So, you know, part of that is any tablet with a glass screen is going to.
00:04:35
Speaker
overheat quickly in just about any amount of sunlight regardless of the ambient temperature. It doesn't help if it's 110 degrees out, but even just sunlight on the glass at 85 degrees, it'll eventually overheat because of the way UV irradiation interacts with the glass. So something people who are unfamiliar with the iPads in the field aren't aware of is constantly being aware of shading it or flipping it over if you're going to toss it on the ground. I've got good screen protectors on them. I don't care if you toss it screen side down on the ground.
00:05:02
Speaker
you know, do that. So that's one way around that. But it is a limitation that needs to be considered is definitely overheating. And these life proof cases have the little air vents that Jesse accidentally discovered. And I don't know if that's helping or not, but it's at least
00:05:17
Speaker
I don't know, maybe doing something. Yeah. I think another big problem is a lot of companies and stuff, because it's an iPad and it's a piece of technology, it's the same way everybody is with like trembles, you know, these are like sacred objects that aren't going to get destroyed. But the truth is like conditions in the field, stuff's going to happen. So, I mean, if a company is going to use this and they take that kind of like, oh, you got to hold this like a sacred cow or something, it's just not going to work.
00:05:43
Speaker
No, and I see iPads as expendable items. I mean, for the cost of one Trimble with Terra Sync and the software, you can buy like 15 or 20 iPads. I mean, it's just not the same cost comparison. And that's what companies will understand. I think it's such a new thing that eventually, if we keep using it, it's going to be seen like any other tool. You know, like your screen or, you know, you're going to have to repair it or replace a screen as a traditional, you know, when you're digging. And we're used to replacing
00:06:15
Speaker
those as you know as a technology like Jesse was saying but you know it needs to last for 20 years. It's the shiny new watch. Rather than looking at it like a shovel or a trowel.
00:06:31
Speaker
out there and it's going to get worn out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That's a good analogy because the, uh, uh, with the screen, cause, Oh my God, I've talked to these guys about screen repair before screen. Nothing irritates me more than screen repair because of the time spent doing, and often it's not like.
00:06:48
Speaker
Sometimes a crew will have a field tech that's like a screen guru, like some guy that just has all his power tools in his truck and he just wants to do screens. But often it's like a crew chief or something, or even a project manager. Somebody is like, oh, I'm going to do screens because this is what I'm doing. And if they're just replacing screen, all right, fine. But even that could be seriously time consuming.
00:07:09
Speaker
But by the time this person at their billable rate of $50 to $80 an hour or more repairs a bunch of screens, you could have bought 60 iPads. You know what I mean? And honestly, I think that's a lot of people just trying to find things to do with their time.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I could have done that. We had a rain day today and there's probably some administrative things I could have had these guys do, but you know, in the end it doesn't really matter all that much. Just take the day off and enjoy it. Safety naps. Yeah, safety naps. While you're mentioning rain and you're mentioning limitations of an iPad, I think one advantage that I could see when you're out there working in rain, you know, we have those life-proof cases and while a
00:07:59
Speaker
You know, your, your dad is fine. You don't have to worry about it. We're running or though I do, we would pretend like everybody has right in the rain stuff. They don't. Yeah. Well, and a lot of people out here don't have right in the rain stuff because, uh, well, it never rains in the desert, right? Yeah. So let's keep talking about weather because there are some other concerns.
00:08:19
Speaker
concerns. How about wind? We've had some seriously windy days and we've all had paperwork utterly destroyed. When I have a clipboard with paperwork, I usually have a rubber band on it to hold the stuff down. I'm used to working on wind phones where there's a reason why they're putting in wind phones.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, wind farms, the most appropriate application for tablets. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, wind farms aren't put in calm, windy places, right? Yeah. Your tablets aren't going to blow away. No, well, not in these winds anyway. Some winds, maybe. So yeah, that's good. And you know, water, I'll say this because I have used my tablet in the rain, in a light rain. There are some considerations to keep in mind with that. The capacitive touch screen, the water will actually, like,
00:09:07
Speaker
kind of move your touch around, and it does get difficult to touch the screen and have it be responsive. If the screen's too wet, a few drops is not going to hurt anything, but a little bit too wet, you're still going to have a problem. Now, by the time it gets too wet, you're probably leaving the field anyway, and you're probably not out there. You're probably heading in, because the reason we don't work in the rain is not because our paperwork will get wet.
00:09:27
Speaker
other safety considerations. But I remember my one professor mentioning a story about they used to keep F1s which were these giant notebooks of everything and having to jump in the stream and chase after them. And one thing that people I think don't like about the iPad is they're afraid that the data is just going to mysteriously disappear from forever because it's not tangible. But the thing is if you can back it up in the field and quickly then that issue of
00:09:54
Speaker
your f1's floating down in a river out to sea or whatever is not going to happen you know so yeah and that's that's that's entirely possible and i've only done it a couple times with a couple of the ipads i really should i really should get better at it like at our breaks and our lunch time um take
00:10:10
Speaker
I've got what's called basically a Wi-Fi USB drive. It plugs into the computer via USB. That's how you charge it. It also creates a Wi-Fi network. Within a few minutes, you could back up all the tablets simultaneously because you can connect up to eight devices to it. So that first field backup, that's a good thing to do. If you've got cell connectivity, you could back up to the cloud or to Dropbox or to your company servers or to whatever you want, anytime you want.
00:10:37
Speaker
If you don't have connectivity, then like I said, you could just do it this way. You can also transfer, depending on the app you're using, tab forms will allow you to do this. You can actually sync all the iPads if you have connectivity as well. So then the data will be in multiple places rather than just one. That's going to be pretty good. Right. Well, I mean, I have, you know, when I'm thinking about, like, one thing that's hard to overcome is people like the tangible object in their hand. And like, that's one of the pails of paperwork is like you have this thing that you're looking at and you can, when you have to reference to something, you can pick it up and look at it.
00:11:06
Speaker
and I know like for myself we were just like having lunch and a lovely rain day here and uh
00:11:12
Speaker
Like I was talking about like the notepad in my phone and I'll put notes in there and it'll be like a year before I find out that I want to like, you know, lemon yogurt or something. And I'm like, Oh, I thought I forgot about this. And like Andrew had like some note about skateboarding in India or something or anything. And it's like, for some people it is like some of the, you know, more, I don't know, quick on ephemeral things that you write in a field.
00:11:36
Speaker
Essentially, if you can write it on paper, sometimes it's just easier. Simple tallies and stuff, that kind of stuff might just be easier without a pad sometimes. That's true, and I found myself actually thinking that too. Sometimes you just got to write something down real quick that you don't need to keep for very long and squirreling it away inside of a tablet where you might not see it.
00:11:57
Speaker
That's a brain conditioning thing that we're all just never used to yet. If I need to refer back to that note, I can pull out my little notebook and hunt through and find the page. Well, I kind of do the same thing on a tablet if I need to go back to a note. The thing I've noticed about notebooks, and this isn't always the case, I've seen a lot of ... In fact, I was at a class this last weekend where
00:12:18
Speaker
a guy who's, he's probably in his 50s, he was a private detective actually, before he retired and he lives off of legal pads. And every time I see this guy, he's got a legal pad. In fact, we're in this class sitting next to each other and he wanted to ask me something completely unrelated to what's going on in the class. And he basically passed me a note. Like he wrote down a single sentence on the top of the only thing on this 11 by 17 or 11 by 14 sheet of paper.
00:12:44
Speaker
or it was eight and a half by 14, yeah, that legal pad size. And then he like rips it out of the legal pad and hands it to me. Yeah. Yeah. And then I just like answered him. So that sheet of paper is ruined. Yeah. Yeah, completely wasted. But I think that's like individual psychology there, you know? Yeah. And I think too, there's going to be a cultural change, obviously, but... Yeah, there will be. The thing I'm saying is, you know, with these notepads, I've just noticed that so many people write a lot of stuff down, they write notes, they write field notes, they write all this stuff. The biggest problems with those are,
00:13:10
Speaker
One, I hardly ever see anyone going back through their notebooks. It's really kind of a journal. It's really just a record keeping and not too many people are going back to and referring to it, which, okay, you can do that on a tablet. The second thing is you can't share notepads. If you take notes in the field on the notepad on the tablet and you're off on a separate part of the site, I'm busy or something like that, and you want to write something down real quick,
00:13:36
Speaker
something you want to remember you can come back over to me later on and you can either show me the note or you can send me the note in the field without any cell connectivity whatsoever and the tablets will talk to each other so I can have that if it's something you want me to add to the site description you can just write it out exactly how you want it send it to me and I'll add it to the site description yeah but I think it's going to take a long time for that lead for
00:13:58
Speaker
for how we use text messages today.
Career Insights with Jordan Harbinger
00:14:01
Speaker
I'll text myself notes. I have it, because if I write it in my iPhone notepad, it's gone. I'm going to see it a year later. I'll text yourself, Jesse, you're a good guy. Buddy, you know what? It's all right. Shut up, buddy. It'll get better. Go to positive thinking. I think when you talk about the legal pad, that's largely for the self.
00:14:28
Speaker
And they write down notes because it helps them think out the work that they're wanting to do. And I think that right now iPads are, they're too stiff and they're too static to allow for that. 10 years are they going to be? Maybe not. But all the data that we're recording in an iPad,
00:14:57
Speaker
However, for the individual and the stream of consciousness organizing one's personal thoughts, it doesn't really accommodate that too well yet. Well, and that comes to a larger problem that I've noticed also in the field when we're
00:15:11
Speaker
writing out stuff and like for me my bias in the field is to make the field as efficient and good and streamlined as possible so there's not a lot of hiccups but when you're like you know when we're writing down like site information you use clicked sentences and fragments and random things and then when you're doing it with an iPad you have to like re-edit it and then you're sitting there in 110 degree weather and your brain's like half-right and you're like okay I gotta try to focus here and get the sentence right
00:15:39
Speaker
Because, you know, and then that becomes a larger issue. And then not only that, but you're like typing into something, you know, instead of just like writing it, which like when you write stuff. And I know there's tablets where you can write with your fingers and stuff like the Surface Pro or something like that. Yeah. But like, but I still don't think it has that ability to like.
00:15:59
Speaker
I mean, the idea is to eliminate a lot of that office work. And I don't know how much of that office work will get eliminated because when you're in the field, you are doing that, like not final edit, you're just doing the, let's get this isolate done so we can keep moving, you know, like kind of thing. And of course there's gonna be mistakes. Well, yeah, that leads into a good point about tablets in general and just changing field practices that we need to talk about as part of this conversation.
00:16:27
Speaker
Because one thing, well, there's two things that we all know. One, CRM has no money. Budgets are tight, no matter how you look at it. Okay. And we've, that's a larger conversation on whether we've done that to ourselves by underbidding everybody or not, but okay. That's, that's where another, we'll talk about that on the CRM archeology podcast.
00:16:46
Speaker
Alright, so the two big things are the budget, you know, CRM doesn't have any money, it's not going to get any more money, and we're all underbidding everybody. So, and the other big thing is, everything's going digital, okay? Everything in this world, whether we like it or not, whether we want to be, you know, hippie, liberal, archaeologist, and say, fuck tablets, we're all going paper.
00:17:06
Speaker
That's just going to put us all out of jobs. So one thing I try to do with my company, and this is why I'm trying to make tablets work, and this might not be the end game here. In fact, I guarantee you this isn't the end game here. This is just a very low step on the totem pole to ultimate digital efficiency, if that's even an attainable goal.
00:17:26
Speaker
But the thing is, I'm working within the system. I know that I'm not going to get any more money for doing CRM. I know it's just simply not going to happen. Congress is never going to say, hey, pay archaeologists more. Clients are never going to say, hey, maybe we should pay more for these surveys. No, they're just not going to do that. We're going to keep underbidding ourselves. Hopefully we're going to get to some baseline. And what I don't want to do with my company, even though I can,
00:17:50
Speaker
is I don't plan on underbidding by 30, 40%. I plan on bidding just low enough to make the project. But also, so we're still making about the same amount of money. And then theoretically, if you're doing it all right, you'll have a larger margin that you can take home to the bank and then spend on other things that the company wants to invest in. Maybe other projects are going to go over. You have your payroll.
00:18:13
Speaker
You can focus on the employees, you can have better benefits packages, all this other stuff, these high-minded ideals you can do with extra money. You can, hey, publish papers, go to conferences, pay for your employees to go to conferences and not break the bank on it, right? So use that extra money for all those things you wish you could do and don't just underbid because you can now.
00:18:33
Speaker
I know a lot of companies are going to do that. A lot of companies are just going, they're going to say, hey, we can bid $50,000 for this project that everybody else is building $80,000 for. And they're going to do that. And those companies are going to do that. And hopefully the clients don't see that and start expecting that as the new normal. Cutting off toes and then legs. Yeah, exactly. One of the things, though, is when a new technology, I don't see it as something that's going to replace every piece of paper.
00:19:02
Speaker
Because I think I kind of see like a middle ground on this perspective in the way because I get just even sitting at this coffee table here Christmas I see like, you know six books in front of me and it's not like Digital information gets rid of every, you know piece of paper that exists or the old form of technology I mean like just the way that like, you know, we all have mp3 players, but sometimes we still get CDs and put them in our CD player, you know, like
00:19:26
Speaker
and though they phase out well you're an early adapter but you know i mean it's going to be a slow process and i think you know step by step it's going to happen but the key word there is process right slow process there is going to be a mix of digital and paper absolutely yeah but
00:19:43
Speaker
The incorrect part of your statement is that there won't always be paper. Eventually, there will be zero paper. I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. It might take 30 years. It might take 100 years. But the truth is, as anthropologists, we know, I mean, the fact that people produce dropout, like, people still produce...
00:19:59
Speaker
I still paint, for example, you know? And people are still going to do that stuff, even though, and it's just on the fly, it's easier. Like when I'm using the Tremble, they write down what the UTM's are for my end line or something. It's way easier than like trying to type it into a tablet. And even in, I can't even see it in a thousand years from now being easier. But here's the thing. It's not, it's not necessarily about the ease of using it. I hope we're not using Tremble as in a thousand years. Oh my God. Please tell me. We'll all have sub-meter DPMs.
00:20:38
Speaker
All right, we're here with Jordan Harbinger from the Art of Charm training and podcasts. So Jordan, what are a few big ideas or concepts that you've learned from interviewing some of the amazing people you've had on the podcast over the last few years?
00:20:49
Speaker
It's funny, you know, it's really informed my opinion of how business works. And it's great because I've gotten the same insight that I seek to provide for the audience in terms of what makes successful people great at what they do. So I have been able to talk to people that I otherwise wouldn't have had access to. And I've learned things like.
00:21:09
Speaker
Not only is it all about who you know and not what you know, but that's actually a good thing because once you get good at creating and building relationships, which is obviously what we teach on the show for business reasons, the sky's the limit because you don't have to be the smartest guy in the office. You don't have to sleep on your desk putting in hours. You don't have to do FaceTime.
00:21:31
Speaker
to the
00:21:46
Speaker
I found that every single business that I know of, essentially that's in person that's successful has had that experience and intentionally cultivates it. So that's really changed the way that I look at work. It's changed the way that I look at business. And it's really given me the idea that, and what has brought out of charm to this level, which is focus on relationships as well as building your platform, building your skillset, learning. Cause one in the absence of the other will not get you there.
00:22:16
Speaker
And I have that on good authority because of the people that I'm able to talk to on the show.
00:22:21
Speaker
You know, I'm glad you said that because people like to think that in archaeology and our field especially, we're isolated against other fields and we're different. But you said exactly what gets people jobs and gets them moving up the chain is building relationships and building your skill set at the same time. And that's just, this is such a small field. I'm working with a few guys right now that we've worked on the same projects across the country but never met each other and we know a lot of the same people and it's just an incredibly small thing and building those relationships really helps.
00:22:47
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, if if I know that you're a skilled archaeologist and I know that Mike is a skilled archaeologist, why wouldn't I hire the person I like the most? I mean, I and even if it's like, oh, well, you know, Chris sometimes his work is late. I'm obviously this hypothetical.
00:23:04
Speaker
I don't know what work you would turn in, but sometimes it's late. Well, oh yeah, but you know, I know he's a good guy. He shows up on time. He's pleasant to work with. So if he's a couple days late with something, there's probably a good reason. All right, hire him, right? But if it's like, oh, well, this guy, he turns the stuff in late and this other guy, all that things being equal, I haven't heard anything about him. Well, then you lose, right? So it always pays. There's no scenario in which having a relationship with somebody hurts you.
00:23:32
Speaker
There's only a scenario in which you not having that relationship hurts you. And there are plenty of scenarios, as I just mentioned before, where it all, where it helps. And I've only seen that help. So all of the things being equal, it's one of the most important determining factors in success. So it seems, if you don't think it's important, you're just oblivious to the secret game being played around you. It's not that it doesn't exist, it's just that you're the guy who doesn't get it.
00:24:00
Speaker
Right. Awesome. Well, if you want to learn how to build your relationship skills and learn some of these things that we've just talked about, check out the Art of Charm, wherever you download podcasts and over at www.artofcharm.com. Now, the thing is, it's not really even about archaeology and about the field efficiency when you're talking paper and tablets and the
00:24:25
Speaker
eventual demise of paper in the field.
Digital Shift in Archeology
00:24:28
Speaker
The real thing that's going to drive that is curation. Curation is a huge problem right now. Curation is a massive problem here in California.
00:24:39
Speaker
There are so many archeologists that started their little companies in the late 70s, early 80s and now have houses full of file cabinets. And when those guys die and those women die, where's all that stuff going? It's not curated anywhere. Okay. So the curation problem is really going to drive the paperless revolution. And, uh, if I can call it that, um, hashtag paperless revolution.
00:25:01
Speaker
No, so the thing is people that still want to use paper in the field you can use paper in the field until you know for a thousand years if you want to but the thing is you're going to have to take that paper and create a digital version of that before before a curation facility will accept it eventually. Well, okay, not now but eventually. This is also the other problem is that if you're looking at government bodies some government bodies require a paper document for everything and it's written written into like stone now at this point, right?
00:25:33
Speaker
I mean, paper's a commodity. The behemoth of the government. Paper's a commodity. It's a resource that we have a lot of, even though we're decimating forests and things like that at an alarming rate. But paper is still a commodity. And like all commodities, as digital becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, paper is going to get more expensive. Eventually, this green revolution is going to land on paper and people are going to start taxing it heavily and start limiting its use. And if we don't jump on this thing now,
00:26:00
Speaker
and start figuring out how we're going to not use paper, we're going to cut with our pants down because we've already kind of done that. Everybody else is not using paper. So we're pontificating on like futurism here and be honest with you, like the energy used in our tablets aren't any greener than paper right now. And the resources inside the tablets, the minerals in the tablets, I mean you're right, you're right, you're totally right. But the thing with the tablet is
00:26:21
Speaker
The tablets are always improving with their efficiency. I mean, look at tablets 10 years ago that were massive. You could barely even call them tablets. There were laptops with a screen that spun down and flipped over. But even the iPad in five years has gotten thinner, better on resources, more sustainable resources. It's still got a whole bunch of horrible shit inside of it. Okay, don't get me wrong. And that stuff needs to change. But I'm not worried about that because the progress of technology means that stuff will change. Eventually we're going to have this
00:26:49
Speaker
this translucent carbon nanotube paper-like thing that will just do whatever you want it to do. Which would be great, but it's not there yet. It's not there yet, but you have to just go on the assumption that it's going to be there and then start figuring out how we're going to incorporate that into our reality. I think that's what's going to drive it. It's not going to be an environmental or high-minded consumer. I think it's going to be driven by the utility of it, and I think that
00:27:14
Speaker
Right now, we're seeing the birth of that. I think the utility of the iPad, it's there. We know it's there, mostly. But I think the utility is also going to drive the software because I think when we're talking about what we're seeing in the field right now and the limitations,
00:27:33
Speaker
It's a lot software. This is, it's clumsy. A piece of paper in my pocket, that's not clumsy. That's very utilitarian. I can do just about anything. I can make an airplane out of that. You can throw it at your crew chief. He's using it as great a technology and it can do all kinds of, but today it's a very clumsy thing.
00:27:58
Speaker
it's that that's going to drive the innovations with it. Well, and that's one of the push backs I see of this is that kind of like irritability with it, you know? It's like the same reason why we all get irritated with the tremble and shuck it off a cliff, you know? I mean, when it changes things from like debitage to debit age and it's like you're out there at the end of the day and you're like, no!
00:28:20
Speaker
I mean those things are going to happen and right now it's glitchy so I mean this is early on stuff obviously but as it goes along I imagine most of those glitches are going to get more and more streamlined again. Well and a lot of these glitches are things that are fixable with software like you said and really is like I'm using a particular piece of software with a particular operating system
00:28:41
Speaker
you start looking at the permutations for operating system and software, and there's quite a high number of combinations. We just gotta land on the right one. That's the thing. In fact, right now, after this podcast, way after this, hopefully in a few weeks, hopefully the people working on this are listening right now and waiting for the data testing version of this, but I'm working with a group up in Berkeley that's coming up with a different type of software. It's still based on a third-party architecture, but it's a
00:29:11
Speaker
It's a more streamlined way to enter data, and it's based on the lessons I've learned from using tap forms. The forms are the same because we can't change that. California decides what those are, whatever state you're working in, decides what those are. But you can decide how you enter those data. And the ultimate goal for all this, not to get too off track here, is
00:29:30
Speaker
The ultimate goal is to have essentially one way to enter data anywhere in the United States, because an archaeological site in California, as you guys well know, is no different than an archaeological site in Florida, Vermont, Kansas. Well, don't tell the Californians that. Yeah. I know. Don't tell anybody. Don't tell the enter state here that. Everybody thinks they're special.
00:29:51
Speaker
San Diego, you know. I'm having a conversation on Facebook right now about the difference between rotation and session and who says it where. And people in the same areas are like, I call it rotation. No, I call it session. Everything is different, right? So anyway, the thing is, you know, you would enter all the data in and then you would just choose the states, forms you wanted to export as, right? And that's the ultimate goal. And I think that's the big thing because once this gets, and I do think, you know, your ultimate end goal, like making a type of like, almost like,
00:30:19
Speaker
Apple-esque product where it's super easy to use and everything goes in and boom, it's done for you. When that does happen in such a way that there's templates for all these sites and other things like that, that you don't have people stuck in an office surrounded by cubicles with fuzzy gray walls and UV lights suffering for the rest of their life. That will be a good thing personally. I don't know, it seems like there's a lot of, like right now, again, that annoyance of just trying to do this stuff.
00:30:50
Speaker
Well, what we forget while we're in that transition period is it's, it's a hundred degrees, it's hot outside. We're annoyed and we have a new technology and we have new annoyances. What also is annoying and what also is glitchy is the paperwork that people do. Cause as a crew chief, I've sat in the truck and I've had problems greater than turning debit age into debit times. And that requires rewriting an entire form versus on, on an iPad.
00:31:19
Speaker
you can make a simple correction. And so I think we got to keep that in mind, you know, and weigh the glitches in the technology against the other. And that's definitely true because I mean, you know, I mean, I have chicken scratch for handwriting that sometimes I can only read, you know. So when I send it off to an office, I'm like, good luck guys.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point, too, because you finish up a project, somebody might not look at any of those forms until the end. And then you're 10 states away. And you're not the person typing up the form. And that's another bonus here is the people actually recording the site.
00:31:52
Speaker
other people recording the site. It's your voice on the form, not somebody else's. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you get back to an office and you're typing up somebody else's form and looking at photos and trying to figure out what they were looking at, you know, sometimes, and that is a limitation in the data, you know. So we're going to talk about the TapForms application next, but I want to finish up one more thing on what's going to, what I think, I still think it's curation that's going to force us into this, and I've got a good example of that.
00:32:20
Speaker
For every, when you get a BLM permit out here in most of these states, you have to have a curation agreement with the curation facility as part of the requirements for getting the BLM permit. I had my curation agreement with the San Bernardino Museum, I think it's called San Bernardino, something or other. And that's where my curation, that's what the BLM suggested. I didn't know who to go through. They said, hey, talk to these guys. So I did that two years ago, I think, year and a half ago, and I've got my curation agreement with them. It's good for three years, I believe.
00:32:46
Speaker
I was just talking to a friend who was trying to do a project in Northern California that she needed a BLM permit for. She got that and she was talking about her curation agreement. I said, oh, did you go through San Bernardino? She's like, no, they're full. They're not accepting curation agreements anymore. They don't want anything.
00:33:04
Speaker
is just the tip of the iceberg. So if we stop, the thing is on most of these federal agency projects, we're required to turn in everything we produce in the field. And this project is going to produce a CD-ROM, not reams and reams and reams of paperwork. I mean, literally file cabin. We have a 30,000 acre project, right? 400 sites were predicted to record with a minimum of probably five sheets of paper.
00:33:31
Speaker
minimum produced sheets of paper. So you're looking at 2,000 sheets of paper right there, and that's not including a normal project. You'd have the field forms, and then they would print all that shit out at the sketch and location map. You're looking at 4,000 to 5,000 sheets of paper just for a project this size. That's just the site records. That's not the report. It's not the isolates.
00:33:50
Speaker
Your field notes, if we all had right in the ring field notebooks, we'd be going through those. Those all have to be curated in a facility somewhere like Indiana Jones in a big box, you know, stuck away in something when now it's on a CD-ROM. Now talk about the volatility of data long-term. Those are problems that we have to fix and problems that are being solved by way smarter people, and I'm not worried about it. One thing I think that that hints to also, Chris, is that
00:34:15
Speaker
The data is then potentially more accessible to people. If I have paperwork in a box here and somebody else has a different sort of paperwork in a warehouse here, the general public or scholars, this data isn't very accessible.
00:34:36
Speaker
we're doing ought to be to increase the knowledge for the general public. It shouldn't be for you and me and Jesse. It should be, you know, and what we're doing has the potential if we do it right.
00:34:50
Speaker
to, to be more accessible. Well, that's a larger issue in Sierra in general. Yeah, that's a whole other, you know, but it doesn't pause. I mean, but, and it's true. We've all been in, or some of us have been in suffering in the basements in Utah, where you have to go through like a Milo map and find whatever obscure and report what you're looking for in your fire search. But, but like, I mean, but part of that again is that as you were talking about the,
00:35:16
Speaker
as technology changes and keeping that data up to date, not on a CD or whatever, the problem is the people who curate this knowledge, they tend to be like the commudgeons, you know? And they're not really on top of their game when it comes to like keeping up to, you know, I would imagine some of them still even listen to eight tracks, you know? But yeah. Well, again, that's why I think a lot of this has to come from the side of the CRM firms. If we start saying, if we go to an agency or creation facility after our 30,000-day project is finished and say,
00:35:45
Speaker
Here's our data and hand them a CD-ROM. And they're like, where's all your field numbers? It's right here. No, but where's all your pay? It's right here. OK, it's right here. Once they start realizing, they're going to have to come up with a way to accept that kind of stuff if they're not ready already. So it goes back to one thing everybody's heard before. And then I heard in the Navy, it's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission. So they're not going to make you do a 30,000 acre survey all over again. I mean, they might.
00:36:11
Speaker
Chances are they won't. Well, and then also if they just want payment forms, you'll just be like, okay, give me 10 minutes. I'm going to kinkage, you know. Yeah, print that shit out and hand it to him. Exactly. 10 minutes of $10,000. Yeah, let me get a... So the last page you print is a change order. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about tap forms. Now, there's lots of resources out there. First off, some people I've heard are entering
00:36:41
Speaker
Well, let me tell you the reason I'm using tap forms. Okay. Some people I've heard are entering in two primary generic ways. I've heard of people using tablets or even just, even just Trimble. Trimble has Word on it. Trimble has PDFs on it. Trimble has all kinds of, I mean, it's a version of Windows on most of these things. There's the, the humans and all that stuff. They all have basically a little operating system on and you can do pretty much anything with. Now the problem is,
00:37:03
Speaker
You're not going to give one of those typically to every single person on your crew, so there's that. So if you use a tablet, the two primary ways I've heard of people entering data, well, three primaries. The first one is just basic Word documents and Excel documents. That's a terrible idea. And the big reason is formatting, okay? We've all had the Word document without the hidden characters turned on where you accidentally hit a tab or an enter key and all hell breaks loose because you can't see what's going on behind the scenes, right?
00:37:28
Speaker
So imagine that happening in the field at 110 degrees and you're dealing with Word. And if this were 10 years ago and Clippy shows up, you're about to just throw that thing under the fucking truck, right? It'd be a frisbee at that point. Oh, it'd be a frisbee, yeah, absolutely. So Word is a terrible idea. Any word processing program is a terrible idea just because of formatting. You've got to get these things to specific spots. California DPR forms, they allow only a specific amount of area for your paragraph.
00:37:53
Speaker
And once you exceed that, it continues on to a continuation form. Very difficult to do in a Word document, okay? The other thing is fillable PDFs. A lot of people that I know listen to this podcast and my other podcasts use fillable PDFs. And fillable PDFs have their own range of issues. Part of that in the Word document has this issue too.
00:38:11
Speaker
is, for one thing, searchability and usability as other data sets. We're not just producing site forms, or at least we shouldn't be. Traditionally, we do just produce site forms, but when we write up these site forms in the field and then we take those site forms in our inventories and we create digital versions of these things and then we put it all together and we PDF it, that's kind of where the data ends.
00:38:29
Speaker
With database programs like TapForms or FileMaker or Access or other things like that, you're creating first a database and second, SiteForms. So I can query everything we've done so far and there is no office. There is no office for DigTech. This is it. I can go in right now and tell you exactly how many Obsidian Flakes we've found because it's a database. That's what TapForms produces.
00:38:53
Speaker
So those are the three different ways. Word document, fill a PDF, and a database. And in some very special cases, there are companies that have created their own standalone applications. Some of them are built on top of FileMaker. Some of them are actually standalone applications that they've created for themselves.
00:39:09
Speaker
It remains to be seen whether or not those are truly working out or they're buggy and then you have to have an IT department or a developer on hand. It's going to cost you $200,000 with ongoing support. Every two months when iOS comes out with another update, you've got to update your code or it's not going to work. So it's a really hassle to create your own application unless you've got a lot, a lot of money.
00:39:30
Speaker
So anyway, that's why I landed on TAC forms. I wanted to have something where I could create the interface using multiple types of fields, and then the output, no matter what I did on the front end, was a database. Okay, and then I used that database. It's basically, it starts as just a CSV file, which is comma separated values file.
00:39:48
Speaker
which basically is an Excel spreadsheet. You can use that CSV file to put into a regular XLSX file. You can use it to deposit straight into an access or FileMaker database, any sort of database you want. And then however you've got your database constructed, you can do different interesting things with that. I create
00:40:04
Speaker
Word document site forms, because we still need Word documents, unfortunately. By taking that CSV file, using the mail merge feature and merging that CSV file with the Word document, I've got templates created that already have all the fields from these CSV files, and all they basically have to do is associate the current CSV file with that Word document, and I hit merge, and it just populates new documents for each record, each line in the CSV file, and it creates all my site records in half a second.
00:40:31
Speaker
So one of the problems I see here though is a lot of people who run companies and other people are as tech savvy as you and I or as a lot of people. And they see a computer sort of like a toaster. It's just a piece of equipment. So when they look at it, they're not actually too concerned about being able to file a search within their own documents or their databases.
00:40:52
Speaker
And therefore, when they aren't doing it, they're just looking to fill in a PDF or something and make a site record. They just want to make site forms. Yeah, that's all they want to do. Now, here's the evolution of this process, though. Let me finish this. That company I mentioned in Berkeley, it's a center for digital archaeology, actually. What they're creating will allow two things to happen. Right now, you do have to be a hair tech savvy to do what I'm doing. I've got a user manual created. I'll walk you through it if you want to do this process.
00:41:17
Speaker
There are a lot of steps in this process. Okay, they're not complicated steps once you get used to it But there are a lot of steps what they're creating and this is the eventual goal. So right right now
00:41:29
Speaker
Typically, especially since I'm a subcontractor for a prime, and the prime contractor is doing the final site record processing. They're doing some research on it. They're doing all that stuff. If you've got everything in house, then you could do this. What I would say is before you even export from the tablet, do all your research on the tablet. Don't do it on your computer. Do it on the tablet, and before you export your forms as a final edition, export every day for backup. But before you export to make site records,
00:41:54
Speaker
Make sure your forms are finished on the tablet first, okay? Then you export and the only thing you need to do your computer is make forms.
Towards a Paperless Future
00:42:00
Speaker
Now, keeping that in mind, what this other company is creating and what I hope we have to market soon within the next few months,
00:42:09
Speaker
is basically doing that. You've got the forms on there. It's creating a database in the background that you don't need to see if you don't want to, but it's creating that for you. It's making a database of all your records. And on the tablet, it will produce a PDF. On the tablet, it will produce a PDF that you can save to wherever you want, print out, do whatever you want to do. There's your site form. That's what you're turning into SHPO or your information center or whatever you're doing.
00:42:33
Speaker
And in the background, there's this fantastic database that it's making that you don't ever have to see. But if you want to see it, you can export that database and query to your heart's content and make all kinds of fancy papers. Yeah, which is exactly how it needs to be because, again, it needs to be like an iPod where there's like four buttons. Exactly. So they can easily use it. The end goal for everything that I do, from iPads to drones,
00:42:58
Speaker
Drunks is another conversation we're going to have on this project. That'll be the next episode of this podcast actually. I'll be there for that one. Yeah. Anyway, everything I do, the end goal is to help archaeologists do more archaeology and less of the bullshit that gets in our way. That's it. Yes. And that's my ultimate thing is, especially with technologies, the way I look at it, I tend to have a middle ground. I am an early adopter and I like technology and I'll play with things. But for me, if it makes the job better,
00:43:28
Speaker
and richer and a data richer, essentially, than adopt it. It's the same reason why I use PDF maps as a shapefile to get to where I'm going instead of a tremble, or I use Topozome to figure out the topography why I'm out there, so it's an easier transect. Or any of those apps that exist, like weather apps or whatever else when you're in the field, and you're looking for access roads or whatever else, the iPhone is the greatest thing on earth for that.
00:43:50
Speaker
And the reason why that exists is because it streamlines all that stuff and just makes it succinct for you so that you don't have any of these bigger issues that you find yourself with. But when the technology starts getting in the way, which it sometimes does, that's when I sort of just be like, you know, this isn't important now. I need to move away from this so I can focus on what the work at hand is.
00:44:10
Speaker
If it gets in the way of archaeology, which we'll get into that drone conversation, then I think it's not necessarily something good for the field. I think, too, we got to be sad enough and forward thinking enough to know that today it might get in the way. But by the pure fact that we're taking it on and we're starting to use it, we're going to be developing a tool and have the skills to use that tool because tomorrow it's something
00:44:38
Speaker
That has the great potential to service well and to be fair like working with these forms They are a lot better than a lot of the other forms for two other companies I've seen that use them have out there in the universe you know, which is a big thing and since it's such an early adoption thing we kind of are like the testing ground which
00:44:58
Speaker
doing all the troubleshooting for all the other people out there that will eventually adopt this because you will. If everybody in the next five years is going to be doing the troubleshooting for everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. There's just no getting around. In a way, it's like, you know, it's going to be like Linux, you know, you get rid of all those bugs by doing it, you know, which is where the, you know, plurality of ideas come in, which is a great thing in archaeology. But, you know, eventually that's going to be the system. But
00:45:22
Speaker
Right now, you know, there's a lot of quirks and stuff that irritate the crap out of us. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like we said earlier, we're all, we're all essentially early adopters as far as this goes.
00:45:42
Speaker
Still recording on paper in the field? Hate having to process hundreds of site records when you get back to the office and would rather go straight to report writing and research? Digtech has the answer. Hi, I'm Chris Webster, founder of Digtech LLC, a disabled veteran owned CRM firm and archaeological technology research and development firm. At Digtech, we're creating applications for smartphones and tablets that will increase efficiency in the field and will keep archaeologists doing what they love, archaeology, and will reduce the amount of busy work in the office. Some of what we do involves enhancing existing third party applications that are already on the app stores.
00:46:11
Speaker
Use our consultation form on the website at www.digtech-llc.com forward slash tablet, and we'll help you figure out what digital solution is best for you. The cost of going digital is a lot less than you think, and once you do it, you'll wonder why you ever recorded on paper to begin with. Contact Chris over at DigTech, the parent company of the archaeology podcast network today, and let DigTech help you save paper, save time, save resources, and go digital. Now, back to the show.
00:46:41
Speaker
particular, what do you like about it over, say, other methods? Well, first off, you worked for two other companies that used digital forms in some way. Well, I worked for one, and then I worked for another company, and I was thinking of using digital forms of another company, and then I ended up not using them. So the one you did use, what was their input like? What kind of thing did they use? It was mostly fill-in-the-field PDFs. Fill-in-field PDFs. Yeah, exactly. And there were other things, like we were playing around with like, you know,
00:47:09
Speaker
Extra stuff that we're trying to do like take photos using like how was it? Yeah, which is fun, you know, but not necessarily The only downside with the other light is it always imprints the data on your phone and then you're stuck with that Yeah, you know take maybe one photo with the other light So you have all the metadata on the photo and then take the rest of them without it. Yeah, and that's what we're doing Yeah, but so the other lights a great program if you haven't heard we'll put that in the link in the show notes the other light pro
00:47:34
Speaker
allows you to do so many really cool things with your tablet or your phone. But that also was a company that treated the iPad like it was a sacred cow and you know like and not only that but none of the bugs like tap forms we're getting rid of most of those bugs that exist that like the you know iPad automatically wants to do for you you know and none of those existed so you'd be out there all frustrated you know in the middle of
00:47:58
Speaker
you know, negative 60 degrees rather than taping away. Yeah. Well, cold, going back to hardware, coldness is something I'm going to have to work out too, because when you want to have gloves on your fingers.
00:48:09
Speaker
There's very few options for... But there's a thread, like, we would assume there's thread gloves that you could type with. Did you have the conductive gloves that would be bought that way or the conductive thread? We just used the gloves that you could be bought that way. But, you know... Are those any good? Are they... Well, there's a huge spectrum of those gloves, okay? So, to take a little tangent, because we're going to have to talk about this a few months anyway. So, glorious thinking about that conversation when it's like 110. Nice. Yeah, it would be real nice.
00:48:37
Speaker
Anyway, so there's three ways you can input onto a capacitive touch screen. Capacitive touch screens are not pressure screens, and that's a huge consideration because capacitive touch means you need to use your finger or something finger-like. Famously, a hot dog will work, but we're not going to have hot dogs in the field.
00:49:00
Speaker
speak for yourself. So anyway, you have to have something that's typically contacting your own finger and it's conducting your finger through this device, whatever it is, to the screen. So the three different primary ways are stylus. Stylus is easy if you've just got like drop downs and all that stuff and like, you know, buttons and things. But if you've got the type of stylus can be a huge pain in the ass.
00:49:23
Speaker
Now, you can install new keyboards onto the tablet, which I haven't exposed you guys to yet. There's one called Swipe that was popular on Android devices for a long time, where basically, you use one finger to swipe quickly across the keyboard, and it's a really steep learning curve, though. You get your brain to work that way, but you see people that use Swipe, and they type faster than anybody on the planet. Because one thing Swipe does is it's really good at predicting what you're going to type as well. So you can tap on it before you even have to swipe it. And you see people that are good at this, and they'll just
00:49:52
Speaker
They'll zoom through a paragraph in, you know, no time flat versus people that are typing. But anyway, I'm not going to expose you to that just yet. That sounds like the death of English. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, totally. And you know, its predictability doesn't handle, of course, our unique words as well sometimes. Debitage. Debitage will always be debit age. Bifacial for biface. Right, right. Yeah, we're always getting bifacial here.
00:50:18
Speaker
So anyway, the other two ways, so the stylus is one way and then you've got gloves with capacitive touch fingers. The biggest problem with those is it's almost always just the end of your first finger and your thumb because people imagine normal people using it, just pinching and zooming. And you don't need to type so it's not going to be like all your fingers. Now if you're using the tablet to just type with your thumbs that might work. But then again the spectrum of gloves is messed up too because
00:50:44
Speaker
If your glove doesn't fit properly and the finger's not a tight fit, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. So the other way is you get your nice pair of gloves that you like for the field and you get capacitive thread and you just put a few loops of this thread on your contact points in your glove. It's not going to damage your glove at all. And now you can turn any glove into a capacitive touch glove. Or you get those gloves that like, you know, flip off and then making gloves and then you cut off your thumb and whatever is good.
00:51:11
Speaker
Yeah, I have some of those too and I usually wear my thinner gloves underneath those. Yeah, so I still have gloves on because I mean I don't know what's gonna be like up here But I'll tell you what in the Great Basin when it's 15 degrees out and 30 mile an hour winds Just pulling your fingers out of that mitten is agony
00:51:26
Speaker
It's not too bad. When the winds come, it's a little bad, but it's not too bad. You end up with frostbite on your fingertips if you recorded too many sites. Anyway, those are the basic three ways that we'll have to talk about. We'll have to do some trial and error and have this conversation later on when it gets to be winter. It's good to be having that conversation because I think that the demand is going to grow for that stuff. Early adoption of this technology, we have options to
00:51:52
Speaker
throw our hands up in the air and say, screw it. We're going to start using paper and pens again or say, no, we need better stuff. We need better gloves. We need a better touch screen. All of those things. Well, I mean, you know, and that's sort of like, you get into the different psychologies of people that look at this technology and some of those people are going to be that screw it. You know, I don't need this. Like, ah, whatever. And those people are just, they're not trying to push a field forward. They're just pushing through, you know? Yeah.
00:52:20
Speaker
when you get people who actually are looking at how to do this job better and more efficiently they're gonna be like well how does technology help this and it's gonna be like you know it's gonna be like when you first had the iPod and it was like this big huge clunky thing and now it's like so streamlined and perfect and then you know another five ten years it's gonna be like that yeah
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's finish our discussion about tap forms or start it actually. So real quick, what are some advantages, some huge advantages you've seen or even small advantages over either other programs or paper that you've seen? It's super easy. Tap forms is super easy. You can, you select your field. If you don't have a whole lot of field, you can quickly, boom, boom, boom, fill it in.
00:53:00
Speaker
very easy. You got your data right there. It's easy to edit. Yeah, it's easy. Jesse, you recorded a lot of artifacts and stuff last week. What do you like about it? There are advantages. There are also disadvantages. It's way better than a fillable space on a PDF, that's for sure. I can talk about a couple of disadvantages. One that I saw was when we were doing the mythic tally, you have to actually just
00:53:30
Speaker
This sounds so stupid, but actually physically count, you know, we are like, okay, I've got like five secondary flakes here or whatever. And you got to like add that to the amount you have instead of just having like check marks. Like you used to do like, you know, little, I have five slash, slash, slash cross out, you know, like, and if it could have something like that, and then like you were talking about doing a plus or minus kind of thing, if it can have that, that'd be a way better thing than right now.
00:53:57
Speaker
And one of the disadvantages to was when we first started out, we were typing out every if by hand. So every single time we were creating it from scratch. And now we're using like a template, which is way better. So it's all
00:54:09
Speaker
Seamless in the same kind of style over and over again from a tin can or you know, just a flake or something Which I mean that is an advantage when you have this set up, you know things another thing is um, that's pretty good is being able to duplicate the forms and stuff but when you do that you got to be careful because sometimes like the time stamp for example when you change and you have to make sure you go through all those fields and change them and
00:54:34
Speaker
But it's good in that way that all the data is easily copied, easily sent to another thing, reproduced, whereas in a film or Adobe document, it's not PDF, it's not done that way.
00:54:48
Speaker
So, you know, you got to type it all from scratch from the first place, which is, you know, and that like just cutting and pasting and sending to somebody else so that they can put it in their primary form in California. You know, it's a lot better. You know, there's definitely disadvantages and advantages to it. I can see. And, you know, I don't know what I've got with this. No, that's fine. It's fine.
00:55:10
Speaker
I think it also, it almost goes without saying, but it should be said anyway, you don't run out of forms. You know, how many times have we all been out there and you run out of forms and your crews run out of forms and you're putting it on paper. Yeah. And they can hear, you're going to, you're going to have forms and you're never going to run out. Can I look at the tap forms or that?
00:55:39
Speaker
So while Jesse is actually pulling up tap arms real quick here, one thing I'll say
00:55:45
Speaker
On the last project, I started using my full-size iPad Air 1, and I had another crew member, Josh, he was crew chiefing another crew, he was using another full-size iPad that we have, and iPad Air 2. And for some reason, I flipped over to one of the iPad Minis that I bought eventually, because my whole thought all along for the last several years has been,
00:56:10
Speaker
The crew chief would use a full size iPad because they're doing a lot more big narrative description and it'd be handy to have the bigger screen, blah, blah, blah. And then the field technicians would have the smaller iPad because they're typically just doing like tallies and brief descriptions and things like that. And maybe they'll have a, you know, for some reason, that's what, that was my thought process. It's totally unfounded on any sort of logic or use whatsoever.
00:56:31
Speaker
So once I actually got into this, I've abandoned my full size iPad completely. I use the iPad mini because I've gotten really quick at thumb typing, although you can join the keyboard and type normally with two hands or one hand or however you want to do it. But I don't need the bigger screen and the smaller iPad fits right on the inside pocket of my vest. I love that about it.
00:56:52
Speaker
These life proof cases have straps on them so some of the guys are just putting them on a strap around there. Jesse puts it in his backpack because he don't really need it unless we stop and get an isolate and just quickly pull it out and use it. And as Jesse said the strap helps him yank it out of the backpack when he can't find it. So violently yank it out of the pack so yeah get the good chases. Which is fine if you yeah exactly.
00:57:12
Speaker
As long as you don't care about babying, you're fine with that. Yeah, anybody that treats it like the sacred cow, as Jesse said, is going to end up experiencing failure because you just have to
Fieldwork Essentials: iPad Mini vs Full-sized iPads
00:57:22
Speaker
assume, if you're just resigned to the fact that your field tax are going to destroy your tablets at the end of every rotation, just resign yourself to buying new ones every 10 days. It's not going to happen, but if you're OK with that and you're saving enough money that you can actually do that. And honestly, these things are better than a tremble because a tremble,
00:57:40
Speaker
It gets destroyed so much easier than like these. And it's 25 times the cost. Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, one thing that's good about this again, I was going to say about tap forms here is that you can duplicate and not only that, but fill in fields, customize the forms. But then again, you also, as Chris has pointed out, you have to be careful about that because you can sometimes delete all of your numbers by accident for all of your photos.
00:58:05
Speaker
Yeah, there are some limitations if you're like what Jesse's referring to we did last week actually if you have say 50 records in one form let's say 50 photo log entries or something like that and you want to change something on the form if you want to change say the default information that's fine but if you change the name of a form the name of a field on the form
00:58:25
Speaker
it will wipe out all the information on the existing forms for that field. Now, if you change what they call the default information, and default information is what shows up when you start a new form, when you start a new record, the default information will auto-populate those fields. And that's what we're talking about, having templates for descriptions and stuff like that. That's fine. You can change that any time you want. It's not going to destroy your other records. But if you change the name of a field or something else about its inherent characteristics,
00:58:52
Speaker
it now can't handle any data that's inside of it, and it will wipe all the data out inside those things. So you have to be cautious then. And there's no undo of button on platforms. If you delete a record, it's gone forever. Yeah, and that's a scary thing. That's a huge drawback. And when I started out duplicating forms, I actually was a little cautious because I'm like, am I overwriting the other form? Because it doesn't really tell you that you're duplicating a form.
00:59:15
Speaker
So I'd go back to the old forms just to make sure out of my own like OCD affair that I'm destroying the record or something like that It was actually still there and then you know making the next isolate that was another tin can out in the middle of the desert But yes, one of the big things I want to know is I kind of threw you into the fire with this You've never seen it before we started on day one. I handed it to you. I gave you a quick tutorial What I mean, what was your?
00:59:38
Speaker
Well, what was your adoption like? Like you were frustrated at first from the heat. I know that and some other things. Well, for me, it's not a problem because I am a tech savvy person. I can see how, and I can see how a lot of companies out there are going to be afraid to adopt this because they're like, a lot of them just don't trust a fail text, which is stupid in my opinion, but that's another conversation. Yeah, that's another conversation.
00:59:59
Speaker
But, you know, especially knowing that most of these kids that are out there now are better at computers than I am too. But if you're on your ball with technology, it's not too hard to adopt. You know, there's not a lot of issues that are, you know, unique for this, you know, like you can pretty much figure it out.
01:00:17
Speaker
And there's nothing on here that you wouldn't do on a paper form. Like I'm just looking at this isolate and you got your norlin and your yeast in your description, you know. And one thing that's actually really nice about this is the tablet itself gives you a GPS location as well. So you're not just going off with the tremble data so you can actually look at that. That is one thing I forgot to mention that with Apple tablets, if you go that route,
01:00:37
Speaker
you have to get the cellular-enabled tablet to get the GPS antenna. However, you don't need to get a cellular data plan, so don't let them sell you one. If you buy the tablet at, say, an AT&T store, a Verizon store, you know, you're going to get it. It's going to be set up for one of those two services, but you don't have to get a data plan. If you want to add it to your own data plan, for AT&T, it's only like $10 or $15 a month if you want to add it to your data plan. But you don't need it. The GPS antenna will still work. But if you only get a Wi-Fi device, it does not come with a GPS antenna.
01:01:05
Speaker
However, something I'm gonna be, and we'll do another, I'm doing another podcast on this later, but something I'm gonna be doing hopefully this month is trying out the, just because I have a dealer that deals in these. What is this? I know, right, yeah. I have a tech dealer, the way people have crack dealers. I imagine. I know, I know. First one's free. First one's free, yeah. But the place where I get my Tribbles, they're gonna rent me the Tribble R1, I think it's called, which is a Bluetooth sub-meter add-on for the tablet.
01:01:32
Speaker
And then you use another application. You can use Trimbles. You can use any application that actually takes in GPS coordinates and do all your shape files and recording on the tablet rather than in the shit-ass Trimble. Yes, and that's a good thing. Get rid of Trimble. So we're going to be trying that out this summer and see how that works and possibly go Trimball-less for this survey. Trimball is shaking in their boots at their desk right now. I hope so because they are definitely out-phased. Well, I am using their sub-meter add-on too, so hopefully they're just adapting with the times.
01:02:03
Speaker
They become like, you know, Blockbuster or something. One thing I'm looking at here too though is, and this is something even using that with the other company, they didn't have very clear and concise with the fillable PDFs, was that all of your forms for like your milling station, your rock art, all that stuff is right here in the tap forms, which is easy to get to. You can quickly make that file. Whereas if you have paper documents, you know, you're like, did I remember the rock art form? You know, and you're like freaking out, you're like, oh crap,
01:02:31
Speaker
It's a mile away in the truck in the paper box. Yeah, exactly. And you're like, okay, let me hope I remember everything that's on that pool. And you've got to carry all that with you the whole day, just in case you do find it. You're carrying a box of... Which overheats too and burns your soul. Which has its own cost. You know, when we're talking about the cost, there's a lot of printing costs associated with writing out forms and rewriting forms. I just imagine like the sheer amount of copies that I've made in the field and stuff that pays for like two or three times right there, you know?
01:03:00
Speaker
Well, let's go down to somewhat of the convenience, too. Andrew was a big skeptic of the tablet early on, and I saw him just last week. Finally, did you stop carrying your massive binder? I had a beautiful little file box, really. It was a clipboard that had a file box attached to it.
01:03:20
Speaker
I'd had that all set up with little tabs for every single form and it was a great system and I've learned it and kind of developed it over the years of doing this and it was a system that worked really really well for me and I was skeptical for a few days that we actually would never carry paper into the field and I carried this five pound object with me for
01:03:45
Speaker
I had stubbornness and finally gave it up. And when you think about that, there's less weight you have to carry with you. More water you can carry with you. More water you can carry. More cinnamon toast crunching. I think that's a bigger conversation. That's a conversation we have with your therapist, I think.
01:04:22
Speaker
So, so what are, uh, there's gotta be some other, some other big disadvantages. You notice we've been, we've been talking about this for a few days. Um, yeah, well, I mean, just some of the disadvantages, one of my biggest one is, you know, and this is true with every electronic form you make ever is that you're afraid you didn't duplicate information or fill in the fields, which again, I get to the same point. It's just, and that's probably like, I mean, like with platforms, I would be recording and isolate and, or like a, a, a,
01:04:31
Speaker
We can have a whole podcast on the odd designs of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch box. The psychological implications of these drawings.
01:04:49
Speaker
We had some site with like, what was it, like 33, uh, diagnostic artifacts on and I'm like duplicating them and I'm like, Oh crap. And then like, just remembering all the little steps of like replacing the photograph and doing all this stuff and making sure that it all went through.
01:05:04
Speaker
without a problem, you know, again, in the ungodly heat of the sun out there. Yeah, and just those little things that you have no security of knowing that that has actually happened. Like a paper form you have, again, this tangible object that goes, of course I've got this other form, you know, or whatever else. I'll tell you some observations I made last rotation early on was
01:05:26
Speaker
I think, and you guys have got a lot of experience as crew chiefs and as field techs all over the place out here, and when we're writing down, let's say even just isolates or stuff on forms, our brain, it's almost robotic. We know what to write down. We know in order to write it in, and we just do it, right? We have no problem filling out a tin can description, a glass description, a flake description, or something like that on a piece of paper.
01:05:50
Speaker
But when it comes to tap forms, one thing I noticed was a slight, I don't want to say inconsistency, but there was sometimes fields were missed. And I think it's just the new format, right? It's just, you're not used to saying, okay, so for each item, for each item, I've got this new form that I've got to look at. It's not like listing on a table, like you're used to seeing. It's a new screen for each item that you're recording. And you have to look at all the fields and we're just not used to doing that. We're used to seeing it all in one spot and saying, this is how we do it. This is how we do it. This is how we do it. And we fill in these things.
01:06:19
Speaker
So I would notice certain things like especially on a photo log form, where say California requires, California, fucking California, they require a separate column for the month and the day and the time, right? So because of that, the only way I could do that in tap forms was to create separate fields for the month, the day and the time. Now the time auto-populates when you start a new one. That gives you the current time.
01:06:43
Speaker
But I couldn't make the day or the month do that because tap forms doesn't have a date field you can just separate out into the only the day or only the month if you if you could use the entire date and maybe somebody smarter if you're listening to this send me the excel conversion file for this because you could probably have the date go in there and then have your excel when you when you import that in.
01:07:04
Speaker
I just thought of this. This is genius. Somebody can do this. When you import your date into Excel, have another column right next to that that has the formula in it for just extracting the month and the day out of that date automatically. That should be easy. But I don't know how to do that. Somebody else had to do that? Send it to me. It's at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. And it's true because we get into it just from the larger culture in general when we're filling out stuff online.
01:07:29
Speaker
We always forget to fill in little bits and pieces. And you do that, whereas with an art form or whatever else, you don't forget to do that quite often, because you're writing out in pen. And you're like, oh, this part needs to be filled out again. Because we've done it 100,000 times. And some of these software programs, they have the ability.
01:07:49
Speaker
doesn't necessarily, there's kind of a workaround for it, but some of these, like FileMaker, you can do this, and a lot of the others you can do this, you can make, and MementoDB for Android can do this, you can make certain fields required. So you can't actually leave that form until the field's filled in.
01:08:03
Speaker
And I thought about that. And I played around with that on the Android version. I played around with that on something else for iOS. The problem with that is things aren't always that linear. Sometimes you want to move to something else before you finish out filling a form. And if it's requiring you to fill that in, people are going to fill in dummy information just so they can get away from the form and then forget to go back and change it. So it's got more problems than uses, I think. Which, again, goes to tangible objects. Exactly. Exactly. And another thing I noticed, too, was like a co-worker out there.
01:08:33
Speaker
I know he knows how to describe a feature, but he'd get to like, we got to one feature out there and it just was almost like he was brain dead for a second, you know, like with the form. And I was just like, yeah, like describing it. And I was like, he's like, what am I forgetting here? I'm like, yeah, you're forgetting this and this and this because the way I was approaching it in my own mind was how would I write this down? Not how I would fill it out. Just switching your brain tone. Yeah. All right. Well, we've got a, we're an hour plus on this podcast, even after I edit it. So any final thoughts on these things?
01:09:02
Speaker
No, I mean, I would just go back to that, you know, if the technology works for you. I mean, right now, since it's such an early stage, like stay flexible with it. And if the technology works, try it, you know, don't be afraid of it. And, you know, like, if it doesn't work for you, well, then, you know, use something else until it does, because it will. Welcome to the future.
Improving Tech through Feedback and Adaptation
01:09:22
Speaker
Nice.
01:09:22
Speaker
Andrew, anything? I think it's where things are going and the sooner the better. And I think that I would reiterate what Jesse said, stay flexible. And for people who are developing this, you know, listen to, you know, we're going to be the consumer and hopefully we're going to be giving a lot of feedback and listen to that because, you know, we're going to be able to do some excellent archeology with this. And I'm excited about it.
01:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, I'll just add to those and say, you know what so many people do with all things technology related especially archaeologists is the minute they encounter a problem, they refer to their old ways, they don't look for another solution to it, you know, every time I hear somebody say,
01:10:04
Speaker
Oh, like in fact, last project I heard somebody say, well, I'd like to hand write stuff. And I was like, okay, so have you tried some of the, I was like, you know, you can hand write on these tablets if you really want to. You know, you can do certain apps and they're like, yeah, I can't write on a tablet. Okay, what apps have you used? Oh, you've never tried it before ever. Right. Okay. The thing with apps on any platform, even if it's Blackberry,
01:10:29
Speaker
There's millions of apps available. I mean, there's probably tens of apps available for BlackBerry, but for the others, there's millions. There's millions of apps available. If you aren't happy with the one you're using, find one that works. And that's something I do. I mean, myself. I mean, I have.
01:10:45
Speaker
I love apps, you know? And I'll download six or seven apps that do one thing, and then find the one that works, and then I'll get rid of all the other ones. All right, I wish this were a video podcast, because Jesse lifts up the sheets of paper he brought to the tablet discussion and says, I love apps. Again, I need that tangible object, you know? So Jesse's using the new paper app and the pen app over here to a fucking tablet conversation. Yeah, but at least I don't have a BlackBerry.
01:11:15
Speaker
Right, right. We won't mention the person in the room that has the clock very much, not Jesse. With the better keyboard, by the way.
Digitizing Fieldwork and Future Trends
01:11:24
Speaker
All right, well we'll have some links to some of the stuff in the show notes and I'll give a shameless plug because Jesse reminded me today I haven't been plugging it too much but go to www.digtech-llc.com forward slash tablets and you can fill out a form and I'll consult with you on doing either tap forms or some Android version of any form that you want. Keep in mind if you
01:11:47
Speaker
If you write anything down on paper, whether it's notes or a form in the field, and then type that up, it can be done digitally in the field. If it's something you're doing on paper for some reason they can't be digitized, well then we'll talk about that too. Because even drawings can be done in the field with the right applications. And I'll put a link to iDraw, which is a fantastic program. Just a quick aside, I did a really, really, really fast... I took a picture of a projectile point sitting in the truck on my knee with a little scale in it.
01:12:16
Speaker
horrible lighting, you know, just sitting in the truck at lunch, I took a picture with the tablet of both sides, imported that into iDraw, and then quickly in maybe five to 10 minutes or less, probably, probably about five minutes, I did a quick sketch of both sides, right? I'm not an artist. I've never had any sort of things. But then again, we asked all field techs to learn how to draw projectile points and to do it well. And we asked them to do that while we're sitting there tapping our foot saying, are you done yet? And if you could
01:12:42
Speaker
if you could take a picture of it and create another layer on top of it.
01:12:47
Speaker
and basically just trace the damn thing out, you can't go wrong. An idiot can figure it out. Well, it's more of that crazy, weird, they both stashed conservative, weird behavior, a richer act of behavior, we do. Yeah, I know. I know. So. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for another episode of the Archeotech podcast. And hopefully, either Russell would be back with something else fantastic, or we'll be back to talk about drones. I'm going to make an airplane out of this paper and drone like this.
01:13:22
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the archaeotech podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash archaeotech. If you like the show and want to comment, please do. You can leave comments about this or any other episode on the website or on the iTunes page for this episode.
01:13:41
Speaker
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01:14:08
Speaker
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01:14:31
Speaker
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01:14:49
Speaker
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