Joe, I only included the beginner session comparison to illustrate my
recommended approach to the callers session re: indexing. Wasn't pushing
you into new discussion territory.
And I still love having my dances written on cards, and carrying my box of
'em to dances. I doubt if I'll ever
On 2023-01-11 10:42 p.m., Joe Harrington via Contra Callers wrote:
[Thanks] for the idea of using spiral-bound cards rather than drilling my own.
Now I might actually do it...
Isaac, try Staples: [...]
Note that for edge-notched cards, you need a fairly sturdy card stock to
survive
Wow! This has been an amazing thread. Many thanks! (And I look forward to
further replies!)
Anyone care to compare the computer programs? Are there more than Colin's
and Will's, and has anyone tried both of those? I know both Colin and Will
are here, so we can stick to facts about what they do
First off--Gregory Frock, where do you live that you're calling 30-40
dances a year? And are you the only caller in the area?
Joe-- There are theories in the contra world about how long a beginners
session should be before the dance. Some believe that going in depth is the
way to go, teaching
As someone who *ran* a card sorter for IBM as my summer job working
through college,
I'm simultaneously laughing and shuddering.
My cards are the standard white kind -
except for the ones I wrote or rejiggered, they're on cream colored stock
Beckets are blue paper and double-progressions are
My filing system is probably archaic. I have 4 main categories: simple,
smooth, medium, and percussive. Then I have several rarely used categories:
3 face 3, multiple progressions, circles, mixers, etc.
I keep them in separate, alphabetized sections in my box. Top right corner
of each card says
Now I'm mostly just grumpy because I got all excited about Edge-notched
Cards and spent a good 30-45 minutes frustratingly discovering there's
nowhere to get these for a reasonable cost/scale anymore...
Tossing onto the rest of the conversation, I have 9 categories in my box
but am broadly only
Angela
I love the idea of the colored stickers on the top. That sounds so colorful and
enticing.
When I started calling and building a collection of dances, I did a similar
sorting by difficulty - Easy, Medium, Complex. And mostly, it works. However,
My definition of difficulty changes in
I love that Joe remembered the edge-notched sorting system I told him about
and also really love Jeff's suggestion of getting spiral-bound cards and
removing the spiral! I've drilled holes in index cards before as Joe
described, but the results weren't clean.
*I don't remember who I first heard
On 2023-01-11 12:44 a.m., Joe Harrington via Contra Callers wrote:
I heard recently (I believe from Angela DeCarlis) of a mechanical sorting
system based on the Jacquard loom concept that became the Hollerith punched
card system. I've never seen it in use. Does anyone do this?
See
Hi Emily,
Like Tncontracaller, I make notations of potential trouble spots in a dance and
put asterix beside the spots with a note at the bottom. Depending on the dance,
I might have *, **, or even *** spots where I have a note. I often put a note
of (prog) if the progression is somewhere in
This is more geeking than actually useful, but the hole-sorting system
you're describing is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card
You could buy spiral-bound index cards and remove the spiral:
https://www.staples.com/oxford-spiral-index-cards-3-x-5-50-cards-white-40282/product_26031
This
Hi Joe,
The most important thing is to have a sorting system that allows you to
find a dance fast when you need it. The key elements of this system would
thus be based on how one programs and how frequently one calls. For
example, a caller who programs in advance and calls one dance per quarter
This might be one of the 100 replies you were trying to avoid, rather
than the summary you are looking for, but here's what I do:
I categorize my dances by "signature move" -- hey for four dances,
down-the-halls, petronella dances, stars, roll-aways, wavy lines
(subdivided into short waves,
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