CogBlogged from ‘February, 2011’

A quickly composed entry for the What the Font design assignment… Even as a kid I had a thing for the James Bond movie- I am not quite sure what parental supervision I was receiving. I had this little 007 car with petals I rode up and down the sidewalk- I cant say what connection the car had to the movie, but it had the logo on it. I also at some point got a toy 007 briefcase. Inside were all kind of Q like gadgets (if Q built them all out of plastic), but the best was the outer edge of the case where you could load a rubber ended dart, and use a button on top of the briefcase to fire it. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog And oh yeah, I still have my Matchbox sized Aston Martin, even with the button the [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The radio studio was in my hotel room in Washington DC on Tuesday– in town for the EDUCAUSE ELI conference, Jim Groom, Martha Burtis, and I (plus friend and guest Steve G) did what we could to keep ds106 radio on schedule — even pushing the radio concept farther with a call in show, or “Bitch n Design” The topic will be “Bitch about ds106″ and it is where I take live callers—and tweeters—concerns, ideas, and general impressions about ds106 thus far. I’ll ask you to consider what’s working, what’s not, what do you like, what should we kill, keep, etc. It’s no holds barred radio. I have done this every semester so far at about week 6, and doing it via the radio station is not only expedient, but could be very fun. I expect you all to play [...]

We buy/get music for many reasons, to enjoy it, but for many people (I hope) there is an interest in knowing more about the musicians, the meaning of songs -hence the liner notes that used to be part of the LP or CD package. cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Steve Rhodes I am reading now Bob Dylan in America and caught note that the author worked for years as the creator of liner notes for Dylan’s music and website, and even was nominated for a Grammy for his work (an award for liner notes? there is recognition for the music meta data?) Likewise, a movie on a DVD is certainly what we buy/rent/borrow it for, but to me, there is a ton more worth learning from the extras– Modified from cc licensed flickr photo shared by One Thousand Words – where through commentary, “making [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It’s time for another “it made sense at the time of planning” crazy road trip. This is three weeks: (Feb 13-16): Washington DC for EDUCAUSE ELI (release of Horizon Report) (Feb 16-18): Keene State College (thanks Mike Caulfied who requested an invasion of the Secret Revolution (Feb 19-22) ITC eLearning 2011 conference- keynote session on Looking Through the Lens (Feb 23-25) Visiting Cookielady (Mom) in Ft Myers (Feb 26-27) Weekend in California (Feb 28-Mar 4) NMC meertings in Austin So in my case is everything from shorts to wool, from Keen sandals to Goretex jacket, from short sleeve hawaiian shirt to a scarf…

I’m a huge fan of Rogue Amoeba’s streaming software for OS X, Nicecast, and have used it before for broadcasting for projects at NMC. With the zaniness of free form live broadcasting in the ds106 radio space, people are sorting out the various live streaming tools and learning as we go. This is not going to be a comprehensive guide to Nicecast- actually their built in help is rather detailed, and it is where I went to school. Read the whole thing. Streaming music from your computer is easy if you use Nicecast to stream from an application (say iTunes). This guide covers how to set it up when you want to mix, say audio and music, as I have used for Scary Stories from Stawberry. And I am not an expert! I defer to a real one on sound software. Your Mileage Will Vary. Caveat Emptor. Batteries Not Included. [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Since my copy of The Thing at the Foot of the Bed came in the mail yesterday, it was prime time to run another live #ds106radio broadcast of Scary Stories from Strawberry. I set up some props and creepy background music, and lit the live stream last night at 10:00pm PT (a later blog post, just for Jim Groom, will cover how I run my mixes through NiceCast). I did good and forgot to press the Archive button at the start, so I missed my opening creepy sound effects- it was basically the haunting music, and some metallic screeching and door slams- and me yelling through the reverb and distortion affects for people to turn off their lights, and be prepared to scream like lil’ Jimmy Groom “I WANT MY MAMA”. Oh well. So here’s the rest of the story [...]

This may set a record for the most un-managable blog title … this week. For some reason (help me Jim!) I cannot find the link for Assignment 4 in ds106 – it was more or less two do two weeks of posting photos in response to the prompts of the Daily Shoot. Heck, I’ve been doing it for over a year, if I were a slacker I would apply for former credit! When it started a week ago Sunday, I hatched an idea to ratchet up my own challenge. I’d been thinking about what could be done ti link/connect the daily shots together, maybe a theme. Then I thought about writing a story that the photos would be a part of. Then I had the crazier idea… Inspired by the crazy innovation of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, I would aim to tell ny story backwards. Each day I would seek a [...]

Just by some idle browsing of the discussions inside the 2011/365 flickr group, I found Elizabeth’s link and mention of pummelvision – a service that allows you to validate your flickr account and have it create a video of your last 2000 flickr photos and publish it right to YouTube, How could I not try that? It was about 2 minutes to authenticate and set up, though you have to wait until they notify you that it is ready. Here is mine- It’s a bit mesmerizing, well maybe, Perhaps it is boring. But how much easier could it be to make a video of your flickr photos? I know people sit down and make a video of a year’s worth, but you can do it here in a few clicks (you can also select a set to make a movie from). Sure, some of you want your title sequences and [...]

I ought to go to sleep, but the shared assignments for ds106 keep tugging at me. And I cannot resist re-using this whacky flickr image. Assignment 50 is Come up with an aesthetic for ds106 radio. If you were to create a shirt, bumper sticker, poster, etc. what would it look like? See WFMU as an example/inspiration. This is the optimal listening mode for radio ds106. And it is hard to think of anything with more aesthetic than this.

Taking a stab at the minimalist movie poster assignment for ds106. There are so many ways to slice this; I rifled through my DVD drawer and landed on this classic I rewatched (a few times), Paul Newman’s tour de force as Cool Hand Luke. While we know the classic opening parking meter decapitation, the “failure to communicate” line, the rant of “a night in the box”, Luke’s effort to win a bet by eating 50 eggs in an hour symbolizes both the futility and focus of being in jail (or so I guess). My technique involves “borrowing” images form Google and tracing/copying them. I did not want to use a photo of an egg, but found a simple photo that I placed in the location where mine is. I used the oval selection to get the shape, and used a stroke command to get an outline. I then used the [...]