CogBlogged from ‘November, 2008’

Vote for Skinna! by cogdogblog posted 11 Nov ’08, 6.03pm MST PST on flickr Calling all my friends and followers (all 7 of you)- I have another flickr photo that was picked up by Purina Pet Charts for a popularity contest. Just go to the Purina site, click the "Skinna on Alert" photo on the bottom list of photos, and then click the green "vote" button. Since a first tweet a few hours ago, she has zoomed to #1 (thanks twitter!), but more votes never hurt. Back in July, you all helped Fresa win this contest, so now do the same for Skinna!

Steaming Lagoon by cogdogblog posted 11 Nov ’08, 3.16pm MST PST on flickr Yeah it is touristy, but guess what? I am a tourist and the warm waters felt damn good at the Blue Lagoon www.bluelagoon.is Yes, today I went to the über touristy Blue Lagoon. Go ahead and laugh and share your story of trekking cross a back country glacier eating reindeer guts. You know what? I am a tourist or as I used to sneer at people who venture to the punch card spots n Arizona…a “touron”. And you know what, when you come to my home state of Arizona, you are likely going to come home regaling with your photos of walking down the Bright Angel trail at the Grand Canyon, the venerable McTrail there. Or worse, riding a freaking mule. But for you, its new. Or, you will call seeing Anasazi ruins snapping a few photos [...]

in dog we trust by w00kie posted 11 Mar ’05, 5.57pm MST PST on flickr In these turbulent times when all the so-called leaders are suspect, put your trust into the most worthy hands. Do not be fooled by imitators, trust the dog, any dog with their scent working.

Are Blogs Are Dead my photo of Nancy White’s graphic facilitation at Northern Voice 2008 (do I have to attribute by own photo? why not?) Lacking no editorial oversight beyond themselves and opinions of their 2 readers, one thing a blogger can do is change their mind. And back again. Last week I asserted, that despite some valley wag’s wired opinion, blogging was not dead. Actually I don’t change one bit of my barking at the Wired puff piece. And more recently Nick Carr asked Who killed the blogosphere? Blogging seems to have entered its midlife crisis, with much existential gnashing-of-teeth about the state and fate of a literary form that once seemed new and fresh and now seems familiar and tired. And there’s good reason for the teeth-gnashing. While there continue to be many blogs, including a lot of very good ones, it seems to me that one would [...]

Under the Influence of Gravity by cogdogblog posted 9 Nov ’08, 12.32pm MST PST on flickr Gulfoss en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullfoss After a week in Iceland, I finally awoke to a sky in the strangest color- blue! It was a clear day here, and that meant getting out to see some sights. I drove up to first see this incredible waterfall, Gullfoss (Golden Falls), where the Hvita river takes a deep plunge into a narrow, dark, deadly looking abyss. The drive here was lovely, open country with views of distant, yet not so distance mountains draped in snow, through towns of less than one blink duration, more horses and cows than I could count. I was prepared to capture a Gigapan image here but was thwarted – first there was the spray from the falls, then I set u a shot and the rig’s batteries gave out after 8 photos of 45, and [...]

Many will regret (or will lie and say they were there) missing last night’s presentation performance by Jim Groom and Tom Woodard as the norm-blowing closing act for the 2008 NMC Rock the Academy Symposium. You have to wade through this blog post to get to the video recording ;-) Donning their gas masks, flame throwers, and edupunk t-shirts, Jim and Tom laid out the warnings of zombies and where they lurk in educational technology. The audience was warned before hand that this was going to be an intense, almost radioactive presentation, so we provided them safety glasses ahead of time. They started asking the audience what their fears were. [16:33]  Redbaiters Stanwell: What are scared of? [16:33]  CDB Barkley: getting sued [16:33]  Elli Pinion: lack of money [16:33]  Oggie Ballinger: Budget cuts [16:33]  Corwin Carillon: accountability [16:33]  CDB Barkley: losing students [16:33]  Mae Mathilde: lack of control [16:33]  Rane Mistwallow: security [16:33]  Hyperion Sands: privacy [16:33]  Ginger Questi: change [...]

Is That Horse Laughing at Me? by cogdogblog posted 5 Nov ’08, 5.48am MST PST on flickr Yep. And he is talking about me in Icelandic horse talk. Today’s Iceland weather flipped on its daily rotation to partly sunny, actually quite sunny in the morning, so Skinna and I walked down to say hello to the horses. They were assembled (they always stay together, how social is that) at the nearest corner of the pasture, and sure enough, there were 18 of them. They are quite striking, and definitely more long hair than their North American cousins. That is about as technical as I can get with horses, and this one in the photo seems to be having a laugh at my expense. Or he is just happily yodeling for Obama. It’s about my fourth full day here, maybe getting settled in. As it goes, with a lazy wake up [...]

I voted by bored-now posted 12 Feb ’08, 5.38am MST PST on flickr Waiting in anticipation to see how this all so important ultra uber marathon horse race ends tomorrow, it just dawned on me.. I have been out of the country for the last three US Presidential elections. This year I am in Iceland… in 2004, I watched from Auckland New Zealand (and thought about not returning). In 2000 I was in Australia. In 1988, I was actually out in the wilderness north of Bishop, California doing my Geology masters field work. I drove into town for gas, heard “Bush won” and drove back to my campground and drank a few beers, and stayed out there another 10 days. All these times, yes, I did by vote by absentee, as I did this year. Readers of this blog may know which way mine went, hopefully y’all are on board. [...]

I am Headed for the End of that Rainbow by cogdogblog posted 3 Nov ’08, 2.30pm MST PST on flickr Another settling in day here in Iceland. After a full day rain yesterday, it was nice to see breaking sun in the morning. I put on the rubber boots and the Goretex layers (they are magically warm) and walked down the muddy track to see the horses up close. Yep, they were horses. 18 of them, as I am supposed to make sure. They had zero interest in me, and were busy munching grass. I will head back on a more full sun day to get some closeups. On the way down it sleeted for about 5 minutes and then burst into full sun. It was the perfect recipe for rainbows, and repeated all morning long. I headed down to Sefloss to try my hand at grocery shopping at Nóatún… [...]

My favorite example of collective intelligence producing something useful out of many ordinary actions is reCaptcha. Developed at Carnegie Mellon University, it provides web site owners free software and tools for providing graphical challenges in web forms that generate posting to web sites. By identifying two random words presented as images, web site users prove they are not software bots intended on insertion of spam links. This is nice, but the “hook” is that the words that appear are taken from a project of digitizing literature; one of the words is one that is ambiguous from the OCR scans. By humans authenticating themselves to publish to a web site, they are helping to digitize written works. Last week, while I think posting a comment to Brian Lamb’s blog, I was struck when the reCaptcha spoke to me: This was not random; it was a phrase, and I grew up in [...]