CogBlogged from ‘March, 2008’

I owe Chris Lott this blog post, having watched him this week grow tired of the PLE flak, bust out a brawl at the twitter bar, and then for me, state clearly what his interest was (he probably said it much earlier, but I miss things). So I get it, now, he wants to have a sense of what people do, use for tools in the network, how we go about doing it. A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is not a thing, so I cannot keep railing about it only being diagrams. Good. But I wont even tray to sketch it out, because for me, it is n-dimensional and defies mapping in 2-D. But I still groan over the name. The environment I learn from, exist in, is not per se a “Learning Environment” – it has no such boundaries- it is my network I do learn from, but the [...]

Mmmmm, another mutated strand of 5 things meme got batted my way from Alisa. I’ve got a lukewarm thing about such things. Over the years I have never forwarded those email things which warned an anvil would drop from the sky on this coyote if I failed to forward. Well, maybe it did. But I’ll play only because Alisa is so cool and knows my favorite cocktail ;-) So her rules are: 1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages). 2. Open the book to page 123. 3. Find the fifth sentence. 4. Post the next three sentences (sentences 6-9). 5. Tag five people. Okay, so I’ll start by saying that I had to change the rules. I just had to blaze a new path. Do things my way or the highway. (Insert your own Cliché here) I’ll try it your way, @soul4real! though it will reveal [...]

With Brian’s announcement that Gardner Campbell is visiting Vancouver this week (shucks, wish I could have extended the stay another week… or forever), I remain tickled at the shelf life of my silly graphic there– and more so that Gardner even sometimes refers to himself as “Dr Glu”. These were from a series of images I created for the so called “Fish Tacos” Beyond the Blog session Brian and did at EDUCAUSE ELI in 2006. Somehow we got on this train of doing a Science Fiction flavor (yes, we did wear foil hats for this presentation) and is really among the most favorite collaborations I have done– we did the whole presentation via flickr along with some creepy sci fi music Brian fished out of the mysterious place he finds weird sounds (we had people coming in asking us to turn it off, so it was effective). I got on [...]

An aspect if blogging I find essential is shying away from a “please the world” view, meaning stepping out on limbs, and thus sometimes, being outright foolish, wrong, even “stupid”. And I welcome being called on my shit. So sometimes, or often, I spout something before thinking it through. So here is my public service for showing there is no harm in doing something stupid. And this is much more likely to happen in the fire-aim-ready world of twitter. So today, I caught wind of a few folks, like Cole, suggesting people take another look at the “other” twitter, Pownce, where I barked back I was just being a smart-ass. And not really thinking of aiming it Cole’s way, it was more on a string of comments I usually get when I post some gripe when twitter is down. They usually go like, “Twitter stinks! Lets have everyone go over [...]

I have gone deep into the iPod touch loveness. It is a thing of sweetness to not only touch but to use functionally. Plus until now my iPods have been bottom of the rack cheapies. It was watching D’arcy Norman blog and twitter (and who knows, code drupal?) at Northern Voice that pushed me over the edge. Levine’s edtech law of success is Follow D’arcy. Right now I am blogging from the sexy device using the iphone mobile plugins which gives an iphone/itouch friendly face for wordpress admin screens. Ok typing is tedious and it is labor to do hyperlinks but the love is still there. I am planning to use the mini sweet thing rather than lugging the laptop next week at SXSW

I love you commenters. You make the blog go round. Following up on the last “story” post about an old electric guitar, Cole alertly noticed I’ve been playing around with my writing both here and in my flickr stream with some extended personal yarns (David’s Chair. Seeing the Door). Yes, its my blog and I can switch my topics, though I am not sure any more what is on topic or off topics. Especially in my flickr stuff, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to weaving more thoughtful (or at least intended that way) text than just a caption or, as I remarked in my recent talks, enough of these hastily posted photos where the only context is a title like “IMG10253.JPG”. There is some curiously interesting, for me, energy with not just including a picture as an illustration but weaving words and images into some combination, making the [...]

Leaving Vancouver by cogdogblog posted 2 Mar ’08, 12.39am MST PST on flickr It was an Arizona blue sky day for a departure from Vancouver. I looked back from my seat to take in one more glance at where I was the last 10 days. Oh my gosh- visit to MDM program at Great Northern Way, Northern Voice, tiki party, ceviche and carne asada, moose camp, ma.tt in my Cat Diaries session, EduGlu blues, a full auditorium for 50 Ways, Victoria, the burned omelet that "almost killed the CogDog", walk in the woods, 6 mile Pub, sea plane ride, hanging out in East Van "on the drive", 50 Ways at UBC, Canned Hamm, more guitar jams, Chinatown stroll…. This could be the type of written piece where I detail all the special people that made this a fantastic visit and regale in the details of what went on. But those [...]

flickr photo by D’Arcy Norman It may look like I knew what I was doing with this guitar at the Northern Voice EduGlu Blues JamFest, but rest assured, you most likely dont want to ask for a recording (there was none)- but just holding a guitar, for me, is a sensual experience. And a nostalgic one. So I am thinking of a story. A story of a blonde. A blonde fender Telecaster. I started taking guitar lessons at 15, with the non original day dreams of being a rock star. We did not have the toys that are here now. I started with a red, white, and blue acoustic for my first lessons. The first song my teacher showed me was “Day Tripper”. My parents said if I stuck with lessons 6 months, they would let me get a “real” guitar. Incentives worked. I ended up with the Takamine acoustic [...]

photo credit: lovestruck. This is my first play with PhotoDropper a WordPress plugin that provides a search interface and one click insert so you can find creative commons licensed flickr photos in your blog. It is lovely, a lovely, lovely plugin, and is just one more iota of my expression of my flickr love. Or obsession. All of which is infinitely more fun, fulfilling, interesting than drudgery than things like meta data or BlackBored. I am fairly sure this is a linktribution to Tim Lauer via twitter