iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 04/11/2025

#WebinAAR | On Friday 7 Nov, at 12pm ET / 6pm CET, I’ll be speaking in an AAR webinar on Buddhist feminist historiography, in conversation with Steph Balkwill and other excellent folks. Q and A follows; register now and join the discussion: my.aarweb.org/event-inform...

A poster for the webinar mentioned in this post.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 29/09/2025

Good copyedits need a good kittyeditor

A cat sits on my lap, looking at the camera, while I mark up a manuscript in red ink.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

With some playing around, you can end up with something like this. This probably seems like a *lot* of steps just to end up with a blank--but now that we've created our canvas, we can start to customise the information WE want it to communicate: landmarks? Travel routes? Historical borders?

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

NB: there's a big difference between "scale" (how zoomed-in the map itself is) and "magnification" (how close your face is to the map)! Try to keep the zoom at 100%, and only change the scale, or things will turn out strange. I've made this mistake before...

screenshot of discrete "scale" and "magnifier" settings

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

Here's what I ended up with: something that looks at least half-polished?

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

Most of the visuals are controlled in the Symbology tab. You should see that there's a "simple fill" (meaning that all of the land-shapes are filled with a single colour). Play around with the fill colour until you find something you like. I went with a flamboyant grey-white fill!

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

On the left, you'll see a "Layers" panel, which at the moment should only include a layer called "ne_10m_land." This is the data you just downloaded from Natural Earth. Double click that layer to open up the "layer properties," and let's start to play around with how it looks.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

...wow, it's hideous. Or, mine is at least. QGIS now knows what the shape of the world is, but it's randomly selected what colour that world should be. Let's see if we can make this look a little more presentable!

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

QGIS will ask you to provide a "source" for the vector layer. Use the three little dots next to the "Vector Dataset" to navigate to the land data you just download (either as a zipped folder, or as the .shp file contained within). Then hit "Add" at the bottom of the dialogue box and...

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

How do we turn this nebulous "land" data into an actual map? At the top of the QGIS window you'll see a "Layers" menu. Use that to add a new "vector" layer. I promise, this will all come together soon...

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

There are a lot of options here, but to keep things simple let's stick to downloading their "land" data. It'll download as a zipped folder, which you don't even need to extract: QGIS can read it fine. Remember to move it to your special folder!

Screenshot of the "land polygons" download from naturalearthdata.com

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 03/01/2025

Let's start out with some large-scale "physical" data, which means natural features like coastlines, rivers, and so on (rather than "cultural" data, which again is all very modern and so uninteresting to a medievalist like myself).

A screenshot of naturalearthdata.com's downloads page, calling attention to the large scale data.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 27/11/2024

If the academic thing doesn't work out, I'm going to diversify into formal sleepwear for tiny friends

A sleeping cat with a bow placed on her neck

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 25/11/2024

For reasons entirely beyond my understanding, some desperate hacker out there has decided that my website--a half-baked Wordpress template--is valuable enough to try and brute force their way into. Whoever you are, I promise you, it's not even worth the electricity you're using to run your script...

A warning notification that my website has experienced 533 failed login attempts in the past 24 hours

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 22/11/2024

What if your cat is also your editor?

A cat sitting, unhelpfully, on a book manuscript.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 22/11/2024

I've got some other papers in the works--on Buddhist poetry, the end of the Mahāyāna in Sri Lanka, and on what "gender" even means in a Buddhist context--as well as the book, some digital projects, and probably just posting more cat pictures... (To conclude: here is a cat picture)

A small tortoiseshell cat is lying upside down in a cardboard box.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 22/11/2024

I wrote a dissertation about "Buddhist kingship" in the kingdom of Polonnaruva. I tried to show that it wasn't a fixed category but rather the site of considerable innovation: what makes someone a GOOD Buddhist king? Now under contract as a monograph, coming soon to a press near you!

The southern face of the "Galpota" inscription in Polonnaruwa, on which is carved an image of the goddess Lakṣmī with two elephants.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 22/11/2024

Okay, serious introduction time: I'm a historian interested in how ideas about politics, gender, and religion change over time, particularly in Southern Asia, and PARTICULARLY particularly in Sri Lanka. (To illustrate this, please enjoy this lovely and tangentially related image)

The lion-shaped throne of Niśśaṅka Malla, located in Polonnaruwa.

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Bruno M. Shirley @brunomshirley.com · 20/11/2024

I am still recovering from Post Twitter Stress Disorder and don't know how to post anything meaningful anymore, so here is a photo of my handsome cat in his favourite armchair.

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