dr. erin n. bush

historian of u.s. crime & punishment. digital research methods.

PHP Tango

Oh PHP. How you vex me. Our assignment this week was to play with PHP, specifically to create a working data entry form using HTML, PHP and MySQL. I can report that, with very generous help from my Clio class, I did all of that. My simple, but working form is here. My simple, but functional […]

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Managing the Uglier Side of Historic Research

Immersing yourself in 19th century crime, death, autopsies, forensics, and executions can make you forget that you’re actually studying people. Who died. Violently. Often painfully. And before they were “supposed” to. I often liken it to the gallows humor that homicide detectives, FBI agents, medical examiners, and first responders all tend to develop. When you […]

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Adventures in Programming

My third year as a PhD student began this week and I’m excited to be taking both Feminist Philosophy & Theory and Programming for Historians. (There’s something ironic and fun about reading The Second Sex in the same week that I’m learning how to create my own databases from scratch.) As part of our assignment for […]

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Commenting Week of March 1

Turns out Zayna and I are in the same boat with color – red to be precise, which is a fabulous color, but difficult to use correctly. I also commented on Clay’s discussion of color, which in my mind sparked a “what’s better” debate: good content on a non-designed site or gorgeous design and so-so […]

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Data Visualization & The Historian

I was looking forward to revisiting Edward Tufte this week. In 2000, I scammed a free trip to one of Tufte’s day-long seminars in Crystal City. At the time, I was working for Sallie Mae as one of their web content writers and often, my work required drilling down complicated loan details into digestible webby […]

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Purpose-Built Content

I finished up my Type assignment last night. Like most of our other classmates who’ve expressed such things, I spent an inordinate amount of time on it. Even still, I’m not totally happy with it. For the final project, I might do what Ruel did and use a graphic for my rule instead of that […]

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