CogBlogged from ‘December, 2008’

Is there anything to be optimistic about regarding the financial bombs? Is everyone expecting the sky to fall? Should I worry about my content hoisted in those once shiny new Web 2.0 sites suddenly evaporating. And damnit, will I be slashing more tools from my 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story? (It might be more manageable at say, 25… but nearly as much fun). Maybe is the answer to all. I’m not ready to scribble doom and gloom, but the Deadpool is rising. One of tools on my “to do”list for 50 Ways, Sketchcast disappeared except for a one page logo (no notice) and I heard people who used it got no notification either. My procrastination paid off there. But the puckering sounds are hitting the once rock solids, the giants. Yahoo seems to be losing its happy yodeling sound. I got wind today when @soul4real tweeted the [...]

Now That is Technical Detail! by cogdogblog posted 16 Dec ’08, 7.08pm MST PST on flickr There was a slight leak in the computing cloud when I was just checking my email. I figured it would close quickly (and it did), but I was curious at the link provided offering technical details. Ah- that makes so much sense- "Numeric Code 5" – thanks for all the detail! Overwhelming! I love goofy screens. Almost as much as weird user interfaces in hotel showers. Or maybe I should find another book to read.

I just did something I’ve not done in a while. I finished a novel ;-) Sadly, it was one that was sitting on my shelf a long time, picked up maybe 2 years ago in a local thrift store recommended by Brian when he visited here. I’m not going to launch into some sort of heavy literary analysis, but it was a helluva a ride through a mashup of fact and fiction revolving around Lee Harvey Oswald (or was it Hidell? or Leon or ??) and making him as close as you can get to sympathetic yet showing more layers than the card board cut-out assassin. There is a whole swirling cast of players who vary in degree of disturbing personality to psychotic. What I was most taken by (maybe cause I read too many online things where the writing is general flat- like my own) was DeLillio’s complex weaving [...]

Useful Highway Tweets by cogdogblog posted 14 Dec ’08, 5.53pm MST PST on flickr Thanks to @sorden I know am following ArizonaDOT – Department of Transportation which is now tweeting accidents and highway closures. I am trying getting these tweets via SMS – the message above would have helped a few days ago when I got stuck in a highway closure on the Beeline Highway near the Slate Creek pass– I would have known the road was closed twitter.com/ArizonaDOT/status/1052129515 There’s only a few spots on Highway 87 where I get signal nothing past the exit for Four Peaks until just past Sunflower, then over the pass, nothing until the AZ 188 junction, and then nothing until Payson. What would close the loop would also be a way to let people tweet the same account to report problems– it’s not clear where they are getting their data, but the messages are [...]

It was by sheer accident a few years ago that I found if I tagged/ captioned my photos of flowers in flickr with “unknown” or “unidentified” that I was indirectly asking for help… and people I did not know would respond. I’ve relayed in presentations quite a few time the improbable but true-I-have-witnesses story of how one such flower united me with the person who had identified it… in Tasmania. I never meant to suggest it is guaranteed a result, but I was excited to read this week of someone who gave it a try. I got to meet Jabiz (aka IntrepidTeacher) this past September at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai– he teaches elementary school ESL at an international school inn Qatar. He asked (via twitter) how he might try it with a photo he took of a caterpillar on his roof, him wanting to try it as a [...]

Blue Fire. by tesla1000 posted 16 May ’06, 12.49pm MDT PST on flickr Miles Waldrons T.C. Clintlightning@aol.com Like the web first did about 12 years ago, Twitter seems to have jumped an inflection point from something weird and for geeks only… to something else. Who would of thought? I did not when I first tweeted in 2007 (thanks once again @colecamplese), but like the web, had this tingling sensation (hindsight 20/20 specs on) that there was something there. On one of my recent drives back and forth across the desert/mountain transition between home and Phoenix, I started thinking of some of the interesting phenomena that happen in the …. (ugh don’t use this word,, no, no, resist…) ….the…. “twittosphere”. Eavesdropping on Half Conversations. This happens when you are looking at your stream, and you find yourself curious about the halves of conversation you are hearing (half from one party you [...]

Lifehacker’s Top 10 DIY Photography Tools is a mine of nifty gems for photographers to up their own photo mojo. Besides what I learned (see below), I am finding myself thinking more about the rise of the DIY (Do It Yourself) culture on the net- there surely is a future blog post relating that to education. Or maybe some crazy dude will write it for me. But back to cameras. I am going to ASAP try 9. Make a remote camera trigger by modding a $3 cell phone hands set (looks like a matter of disabling the microphone). There is a very clear instructables bit to walk you through it. What I am looking for is the ability to take long exposures Make a remote shutter release for your canon digital camera (and some other brands such as Pentax, sony, and some nikons) for about 3 bucks in under 5 [...]

News Online / in Paper by cogdogblog posted 10 Dec ’08, 7.19pm MST PST on flickr One student in Brian Crosby’s 6th grade class was eager to show me the web version of the story of that class featured in the local Reno newspaper. About two weeks ago I got to Skype video chat from Iceland with Brian Crosby’s 6th grade students in Reno; and, as luck had it, I had a visit December 10 with his school district. So I made it in the plans to visit the kids at Agnes Risley Elementary School. Talk about excited motivated students! I’ve not seen such eagerness on a classroom since… I forget, and we are in a rather antiquated school in what I guess is a poorer neighborhood. All f the students were set to go on a variety of Apple laptops (and not MacBookPros, I saw old iBooks, old Powerbooks) [...]

Just toying around with the new QuickPress feature on the WordPress 2.7 dashboard. Sweet! Am just getting used to all my links on the left. I love the new dashboard features, being able to move ‘em around, hide ‘em Nice to see a few changes to the media uploader (looks like defaults match the way I work for images). I would still like to be able to admin comments right from the dashboard. One minor minor oddity- why does the top link to “visit site” not open in new tab/window? I hate blasting out my editing interface. And I am already eager for the first built on 2.7.1 upgrade to see how the updater works. Update: Interface quirk IMHO for QuickPress is that the feedback on clicking the “Publish” button is way to subtle. I saw no browser spin, and thought I mis-clicked, so I clicked the button again, and [...]

Note- I wrote a bit of this while I was waiting for a highway to re-open… It looks like I have offline time for some slow blogging. I am writing this from the front seat of my car, stuck in a highway closure on Arizona Highway 87, whose nickname is the “Beeline Highway”. The bees are not moving fast today, there is an accident up ahead, and the highway is a parking lot of strangers thrown together. There is the usual flitting around, craning necks, and people who don’t know each other talking like they don’t. There is no spot to do a turn around on this mountain highway, and what else can one do? As much as I might complain, I am guessing someone up ahead is having a much much worse day, likely the worse of their life. While here I have time to reflect on the experience [...]