CogDogBlog

Nothing is more sweeter than the serendipity of finding something online that grabs a breath from you, and such that you drop what you are doing to dig deeper. This has only happened to me, oh, estimating (counting on fingers…) maybe 18672 times.

One more.

A day or so ago, on scanning the flow of tweets, I saw this message from Roland Tanglao

Who knows why one tweet grabs your mouse as opposed to another? But with that I was fallen into a fun time of exploring the noticings site which taps into many of my interests- flickrs+daily photos+geolocation+a bit of gaming, with a simple premise “the game of noticing the world around you”

The elegant aspect of noticin.gs is that it has cleverly simple rules. Your goal is to notice details, objects, interesting things, lost items in your surroundings. Take a photo, post to flickr, geo-tag the location, and tag the photo “noticings”– the web site does all the rest. Every 24 hours, the site crawls flickr and awards points based in criteria like:

• Noticing something near someone else’s noticing.
• Noticing something.
• Your first noticing in a neighbourhood.
• Being first player to notice something in a neighbourhood.
• Noticing something every lunchtime for a working week.
• Noticing something every day for a week.
• Noticing something that’s been lost by someone.

plus the teaser

Of course, there may be hidden rules, which can only be discovered by earning them.

And it amps up the challenge by making scores public. I just started so only have 50 http://noticin.gs/players/cogdog

So for me, I saw a lot of ties of this and the noticing I do when finding my daily 2009/365 photo.

I wanted to share this back in twitter, and thanks Roland, and mentioned something about the parallels (me) of doing the daily 2009/365 photos. The joy of this crazy web is that we see things differently, for Roland, he sees one as self induglent and one as with others, in his case Your Mileage May Vary

I have to respect that, since Roland has long been one of the prolific flickr photo posters (he must have 9 gazillion pictures on flickr)– and he’s just a nice guy, too.

But I find that remark curious, as I see a lot of “indulging with others” happening in our 2009/365 space- people regularly comment (some as soon as I post), there is an active community -I don’t fell alone at all. This was the gist of my 2009 Northern Voice preso on Say/Blog it in Pictures – it is one of the most informal, unstructured, yet appropriately bounded in structure groups I’ve been in.

So i don’t agree with Roland at all– for me, MMDV- My Mileage Does Vary.

And all of this is besides the point- it is all about playing the noticings game- start noticing today! rack up some points.

And its part of the newly arranged area on flickr called the App Garden- a place to find those clever apps people outside of flickr create with the API- where noticin.gs has a nice corner garden spot

cc licensed flickr photo shared by MikeOliveri

I spew a lot of words (and typos) through this blog, but I’ve always harbored idyllic dreams of writing something…. more. But the epic idea has failed to materialize, so I am taking another interesting route by signing up for National Writing Novel Month or as most of the in crowd know as, NaNoWriMo. The basic premise is you write 50,000 words of a draft novel in 30 days, but track your progress in the NaNoWriMo web site, which employs almost every social media and support system one can think of– and it is massive.

Its not with some expectation to toss out the 50k words and soon be sitting pretty on the Oprah show with the new novel, its (seems) more about just the exercise and rigor of regular writing towards a goal– not all that different from the sport I really don’t like. So almost on impulse, when I noted through twitter yesterday that some colleagues where “Wrimos”, without too much thought I signed up.

I’ve got about 3700 words in, a little behind the chart pace, but the idea is just write write write, and get the 50k words out, then edit in December. I’m not ready to reveal the topic yet, as it is somewhat unfolding with the words. I first started to go down a path of something more typical to what goes here (and yes, the first idea involved dogs), but decided to try something really different from what goes here.

And I also wanted to see from the inside how the features on the NaNoWriMo site work for someone who is a participant.

I have a over all concept, gimmick, and arc, and it was a quarter baked idea that had a genesis to something that happened a whole ago, but even in the first rounds of word dumps, I am liking how it is growing as it goes.

To be continued…. maybe once I get to 25k I’ll lift the corner of the lid a bit…

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Xuilla

It’s like pissing in an ocean of piss

I’m probably over-saturating, but until I can figure out something useful to do in Google Wave, its more fun to piss on all the silliness I see about it.

I peek in every few days, and mostly I see Google Waves talking about Google Wave. Yawn. So far the main use is some place to have back and forth conversations, nothing any more novel than the email it is supposed to replace, listservs, web boards, twitter, etc. Or a place for people to try toss in media or various widget like things. Its a mess.

Also, I’ve noted the version available to the public is not the same one featured in the 80 minute preview video. For example, we have no tool to “split” a conversation, so we are stuck with simply reply and tack on– unless someone has access to this bit that was demo-ed:

Google Wave Split

More so, what I see is people focusing on the interface we have now- its cluttered (yes), clumsy (yes) confusing (yes).

But over and over, I see people mixing this implementation of Wave with the platform that is underneath. This is but the first crude instance we have to use the Wave Platform- the web interface is not Wave itself. I think Google majorly gaffed by not giving the web app a different name- I therefore shall refer to it as “Surfboard” since it rides the Wave.

I know/hop, if I relax the mind, go about my regular business, sooner or later (maybe a lot later), a light will flicker on with an idea of something meaningful to do in Wave- but until then, I am not seeing any value in endless chatter on the Surfboard.

Man, I gotta go…. again. Surfs up.

   
cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog and cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

It’s been a week since returning from Barcelona, where I was like 5 Yahtzees in a row luck enough to be a part of the Open EdTech 2009 summit co-organized by Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). I remember hearing the raves of the 2008 meeting from my colleagues that got to go.

This was actually my first trip to Europe since attending a Geology conference in Germany back in 1990. It seems patently obvious, but was slightly eye widening in a place where (a) there is visible history going back 3 or 4 times the history of the US and (b) the driving distance proximity of different speaking and culturally’historically countries makes for a different feel than we get in what can seem like ironically isolated vastness of our large country, where it takes a multiple day trip to get to a different culture.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Even for a small example is this city’s monument sized honor of Christopher Columbus, being the place where he gave his “report card” to Isabella and Ferdinand after his first foray into America, while over here, he is either painted as cartoon schoolbook hero or a villainous fraud.
Read the rest of this entry »

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Looking outside a window of the ruins of Scorpion Gulch, a home in south Phoenix built in the 1930s of local rock.
southmountainhistory.blogspot.com/2009/05/scorpion-gulch-…

Okay I admit the colors have been super scooched with Vibrancy and Saturation for a false color effect on the Palo Verde tree

Words are not doing much justice to the view…

The only thing missing was the big roadrunner who… ran across the road as I got out of my car.

On a daily basis, life presents me metaphors.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Frosted Peppercorn

When I stepped in the shower this morning, I notice a medium sized, non threatening black spider in the bath tub. My first, and normal reaction is to quickly grab a tissue, so I can squash the bugger, toss it, so I can go about my day. It’s in the way.

And I did grab a wad of tissue.

But I hesitated.

I remembered a time when I was with a friend, and some others were bothered by flies in the room buzzing against the window. Several people reacted with the intent to squash, but Barb deftly whipped her arm around, cupped the flies in her hand, walked outside, and set them free. She did not make a speech about this, and just mumbled something about it not taking too much more effort to free something rather than killing it.

So I went to the kitchen, grabbed a glass, a piece of cardboard. I popped the glass over Mr Spidey, slide cardboard underneath, and escorted him outside.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by V31S70

It really did not take much more effort to relocate this living thing than to smush and discard it. Smashing seems easier at first.

So what’s the spider in your bath tub?

My own Google wave spun through Photoshop

As much as I recall being smitten by the original Google Wave Preview video (I watched the whole demo, its still on my iPhone), I’ve felt not more than tiny ripples of interest, and until just a few minutes ago, was curious why I was not feeling the giddy euphoria I see elsewhere.

Yes, I am still on my medication (just kidding, the only meds I take are the ones my pancreas stopped making in 1970).

Maybe it was the let down of all the anticipating for my golden ticket invite, after barking a lot on twitter, I ended up with about 6 invites.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Witheyes

After all that, well, if I was a cliche movie figure, I’d be in bed smoking a cigarette wondering if the invite had been good for her.

Over my years in the tech game, I’ve learned to pay attention to some more or less gut level instinct when a new technology comes along. It does not always happen on first exposure (like twitter), but there is some moment, when I feel that “aha” sensation that fuels my excitement.

And I have just not felt it yet for Wave. I don’t mean that it wont happen, but, there’s just not that spark. The spark usually comes small at first, yes, like the smallest of ripples, and it’s my senses that detect that there is some there there.

So what is different with Google Wave is that a tremendous amount of hyper and expectation was built up first– it was brilliantly done, I admit, but now we have this Large Thing Which is Supposed to Be Cool and Revolutionary and what I see is a whole lot of frantic scurrying to jump on the Wave Wagon.

People talking about Wave as the next LMS, Or replacing email. People in wave trying to figure out what the best “curricular unit” for a wave is or already talking about the most effective uses of Wave in the classroom. EDUCAUSE has already 7 Thinged it.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by StephenMitchell

Speculation is fine, but I see the cart so far ahead it is not even sure it needs a horse.

So far, like others have noted, I feel underwhelmed and over stimulated looking at that wave screen. If Wave does replace email, I wish the entire GTD movement the best of luck; you’ll run your self ragged getting to WaveBoxZero.

The demo was lovely when it was just the 3 or 4 people from Google on stage. It looked managable, even fun. Yet I find the long waves, with 50, 90, 150 people “blipping” almost impossible or undesirable to unpack and muddle through. It’s… a mess. I see noise, and little synthesis, or outcome, just lots of swirls and eddies and little current or flow.

I’m not being closed to the possibility, and I am eager to poke around wave, in my own way, and figure out whether the spark is there. What I am dismayed of is all the froth and foam when this is a technology that has not even done anything.

And as a person who lives and dies by the metaphor, I am thinking to the physical properties of ocean waves, that the size of the wave is proportional to the depth to ocean floor… and I am in wait mode to see whether Google’s wave is just a ripple in a shallow pool or of there is more to its size than the hype. Taking it even farther from the ‘pedia, it seems people have the sense that waves are these things that fly and rush around, but its an illusion:

There is little actual forward motion of individual water particles in a wave, despite the large amount of energy it may carry forward.

I could go down a longer path of standing waves and hydraulic jumps, or even the speculation which way the Australian waves swirl, but that gets nowhere.

Don’t paint me anti-Wave, and this might not be the first time I ate the words, but I don’t feel any tech mojo tingling when the expectation is set up that I should. And that’s what is bugging me- like there is an assumption that Wave is the Next Big Thing, so I have to try and be the early bird say it. To me the way my interest in technology flows towards a new tech, not that the tech flows towards me.

I’m headed down to Phoenix Friday to hang out with some fellow edtech geeks and am ready to maybe have my wave mind opened up some more, bring it on, you wave giddy hippies.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Supposedly businesses are getting more "green" and focused on not wasting resources.

I wish I could go to business school and learn this kind of ass-backward logic.

I wish I could remember that light bulb turning on moment when I realized succeeding in the school game had little to do with studying, knowledge, or intelligence– but learning how to score on multiple choice exams. My skills carried me through many standardized tests and college exams where I can really say I got better at figuring out the answer than knowing it.

But I am not sure I can fully yank off the Emperors Statistical Clothes.

Instead I offer a trivial example, which may not extrapolate as far as I believe. In my combing of the corner of my RSS reader where I collect Weird/Funny/Strange stories (the Google Reader tag is “odds-and-ends” sounds like I am playing Jeopardy… “I’ll take Neatorama for $200, Alex”), I found tonight a fun thing to try– the M*A*S*H trivia quiz.

While I have not seen an episode of this iconic TV series in at least 20+ years, I did watch it extensively in the 1970s, all the new episodes in prime time and daily re-runs at dinner… maybe even having seen the entire series 7, 8, 10 times? I’ve watched the movie at least three times.

And at the time I could faithfully quote the classic lines, after more than 2 decades, it seems pretty rusty, like at best I might recall the character names.

So I took this 10 item “quiz”.

I got an “A”

Yes, I got 9/10 correct, although on review, I can say I knew “for sure” only 3 answers. I got maybe 2 more right on hunches, 1 on totally gaming the “All of the above”, and 3 more on outright guesses (author of the original book, for example).

Of course, this test construction is utterly simple- 3 or 4 choices make it easy to guess.

But I am thinking here I got a 90% rating when I knew 30% of the content.

And when I think about how much of education is based on multiple choice exam scores, all carefully charted and graphed, and statistically validated– I cant help but casually wonder what it all really measures. I don’t mean to ridicule the entire franchise and field of examination as there is much more to it than I will ever know, but… well, I will anyhow.

I don;t know what to do, but I am heading over to the Swamp to see if they fixed the still and maybe have a good poker game going.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

On a recent flight I got to playing around with the TiltShift iPhone app, a really fun way to do convert normal photos to something that looks like a miniature train set like model by a clever blur that imposes a false depth of field, and yanking up the saturation to make people and objects look more like little plastic figurines,.

which actually was one of the most exciting games I have ever seen (and I did see a lot of games in my youth at old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore)

There is also a great web tool for doing this as well
http://labs.artandmobile.com/tiltshift/