CogBlogged from ‘February, 2010’

I saw Mikhail’s effort of telling the story of The Shining in 6 Frames in response to Jim Groom’s explanation of this as an activity used in his digital storytelling class. But c’mon, how many other ways do you mix up Jack with an Ax, Jack in the Ice, Jack in the Bar, jack poking his head through the wall, Jack as Woody Allen (oaky, Mikhail, that was clever and rule bending) ? Yawwwwwwwn I was looking for some different angles on the story. Some made up ones. For me, the Shining was a story about a boy, his toys, and his boundless love for a Dad who gave him more and more toys.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’ve never met Jared Stein I’ve had his blog in my reader a while, see his tweets, and know he swims in same circles as some of my other core online circle. So what do I know? He writes rather deeply and introspectively (e.g. on solitude and metacognition woah, Neo), he works at some university in Utah (I could look it up, yeah), does some insanely original presentations (if you out bava the bava, you are top shelf), and he’s into skateboarding. I like that mix. That’s ’bout it. I figure one day, I’ll meet, and like this guy. Or worse, I’ve met him once and stupidly and rudely forgot. But now I know he’s an artist and a clever one at that with the arrival of a Motley Reader postcard with this clever hand drawn art representing the opeing of Joycw’s Two [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by elvis_payne Let’s say you were marooned on the apocryphal desert island that was equipped with a broadband internet connection limited to accessing one web site, what would it be? Well maybe that is not the question I was framing- most people might claim email or twitter, maybe even (eww) facebook (“status- just cracked a coconut!”) or something with two way video (you survivalists, you, want to stay in touch). No, I am thinking, if you were limited to one Web 2.0 tool, what would it be? That’s easy for me- hands down, its the site that spawned a million ideas, experiments, hobby time hours for me– nothing more typifies the experience to me than good old flickr. I’ve sometimes thought of building an entire web 2.0 presentation (not that I do web 2.0 presentations) around flickr. cc licensed flickr photo shared by The Eggplant [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’ve spent the past 3 days working behind the scenes for the NMC ;SL Pro! conference We had a lot of challenges with voice chat on day 1, so I fiddled a bit to see what I could do to provide a live audio stream. The trick with Second Life is that the audio chat actually runs as a separate invisible application, so it is tricky to get both the sound from in world and the voice. My solution was to use my PC as the source. I rigged my sound controls to use my headset mic for inout (when I needed to talk), but routing the sound out to the speakers, essentially mixing all the sound into one source. Rather than using the speakers, I connected the headphone jack form the speakers as a line in input to my MacBook Pro. On [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog @dailyshoot: 2010/02/24: There is often a conflict between traditional and contemporary. Make a photo that shows this tension. (@melhutch) #ds101 Oh man, when I read the assignment this morning, I thought– "is this the first one I bail on?" — I had no clue what to do; I played with book and computer (too easy), old and new phones, then did some stuff with my iPhone and my old drawer of CDs… then shazam! (get it?) I saw my guitar sitting on a chair and remembered my iPhone has the PocketGuitar app.. So there you go, traditionald and contemporary guitars, though not much tension. I have been so energized in photography since last summer D’Arcy turned me on to the Dailyshoot – a clever idea to expanding your photography skills. Each day, the Dailyshoot tweets an assignment of something we need to capture; [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Johnny Grim My noble plans to spend a week not blogging here and commenting on other blogs sounded pretty noble, but in execution? In a word, “meh”. I certainly succeeded on the first part, but managed at best, a few comments a day during a week of travel, overload, and well, plenty of excuses. The forecast of the image above seems to be holding strong for this week as well. Frankly, commenting elsewhere ought to be an ongoing activity, not a once a year for a week thing. The odds of that? Three words….

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Orin Zebest The recent flip of the calendar (well not so recent, jeez, it’s been two weeks) reminds me that February is the time for my annual blog hiatus– I take some time off from posting here and devote my attention to commenting on other people’s blogs. This makes for the fifth annual CogDogBlogMuzzle, having done so in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. Usually this coincides with attending the Northern Voice conference but since apparently there is some other small event happening in Vancouver, NV10 has been nudged to May 2010. I do this because I still believe, after all these years, that blogging is not just about your own blabbing, but equally the critical act of participating in the spaces of other blogs. That is, if I can find any, as we all now allegedly blogs are dead. Again. That twitter, facebook, buzz [...]

The subject of the video below grabbed my interest and curiosity from where I saw it first on engadget. But as I watched it, I was mesmerized first by its elegance. Not being a film critic, the simplicity of its form (no music, no spoken words beyond the ambient), the detailed closeups impressed me. But more than that, if there was not a title on the video, and I just watched it, there is a smartly created sense of mystery as to what is happening, slowly revealed. Done straight up documentary style, with an opening credits sequence, hip music, and some professional announcer voice, it would have no magic or charm. Thankfully, it was not done that way. I only wish they would have not titled the video in a way that totally gives it away. I could have done something to mask it, but imagine you have not seen [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The photo above is literally the title of a book that was pivotal to me 21 years ago (the photo was for today’s @dailyshoot photo assignment). And just reflecting back jolted me to how powerful the words were of Edward Abbey, ripping my gut out from a paperback book i picked up on a whim heading out to the california desert for field work I was doing for my Geology masters research. Desert Solitaire spoke to me in a time (late 20s) when I was free, idealistic, poor, on my own, but also embittered by the norms of society. This Abbey guy wrote these long, flowing sentences that ramble across my landscape like an arroyo flood. At the same time his words cut the establishment to shreds he painted the harsh stark beauty I was just discovering just having moved to Arizona. The [...]

Strange as it sounds, today I had to email my Mom a scanned copy of a copy of my own birth certificate to prove her own birth record. And perhaps the most challenging was helping her decode the email attachment so she could print the record. It goes like this. Her Florida drivers license is up for renewal and some new regulation (she says) requires her to bring a copy of her birth certificate. The problem is that back in 1929 Baltimore, records were not so rigorously recorded. The daughter of immigrants, whom-ever took the record information probably could not understand the name her mom reported, so Mom’s birth certificate lists her as Baby H********** (Polish sounding name); a later attempt by her parents to update it recorded the wrong name- her name is “Alyce” but the thick accent ended up with her official name being listed as “Ellis”. But [...]