CogBlogged from ‘April, 2011’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog He was persistent and wore me down for a donation to Red Cross; my concession was asking for a photo, not quite the full Stranger Photo process, but in that direction. This was my lukewarm attempt at a ds106 Stranger Portrait. Jason cornered my over on Green Street, near the Presdio, aiming to sign me up for a Red Cross donation. I bobbed and weaved, but he kept coming at me with jabs.. I gave in in exchange for getting s photo of a stranger.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com) I’m in California for both R&R but also to fulfill a presentation obligation I made back in the end of 2010, for the Mt Diablo Chapter of the ASTD on the 2011 Horizon Report. This was a fun, high energy and wired group (or they all stopped for a huge group espresso on the way in). It was great to meet in person Paul Signorelli, who served fantastically on the 2011 Advisory Board and also to see Clark Quinn, author of Designing mLearning plus all the others I got to meet tonight. The slide deck is mostly photos, but here ya go 2011 Horizon Report (ASTD Presentation) View more presentations from Alan Levine And I have a list of extra linkies at http://cogdogblog.com/stuff/astd11/. But the real special part has having Rachel Smith there, who did this presentation last [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I aspire one day to be as cool at the audio helm as DJ Lamb. Until then, I relish the experimental, free form, nobody gives a s*** if you screw up place we have come to hail as ds106 radio (soon to be subject of a documentary? WT? Why not a mockumentary?) Last night I took the stream with half a plan, and sat on it for 90 minutes going with something that was not in that half plan. My plan was to play some music from the German band that contacted me in 2005 about using an old photo for the cover of their CD (one of my own favorite Amazing Stories — view video) I read a bit of the story from the original blog post 9noting how many typos I had, sigh)– Now how else could a [...]

I was here trying my best to stay on target on my list of tasks, when The Twitter® distracted me with A Life Eroding, a cool project from the Tokyo campus of Temple University As described there: This is a video call to participate in the first ever crowdsourced augmented reality music video, produced in collaboration between UK folk music band Songdog and a class of 20 film-making students in Temple University Japan Campus. The song, A Life Eroding (©Songdog, One Little Indian, 2010), is about all the moments of sorrow that fill a life, and makes it beautiful. Augmented Reality is used to symbolize all that one can remember, but that is lost forever – you can see it, but you can’t touch it. While augmented reality has been used in music video before, it is usually designed by monster-big production studios with substantial budget; this is the first [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Jim Blob Blann Disclaimer: I have no training in film critique or production, cannot cite obscure Peruvian directors nor dissect plot structures of obscure Norwegian dramas. I just see a wide range of web videos. And I find myself more and more bored watching ones likely created with budgets versus ones created with passion. I like the approach I got in this email from the Arizona Department of Transportation as they solicit citizen input for future transportation planning — http://www.whatmovesyouarizona.gov/. They have a modern web site featuring a short video, hosted in YouTube, and a survey published from SurveyMonkey (though I wish they had an option for open ended comments in the survey). According to the email, We’ve got one more week…more than 750 Arizonans have added their voices to the State Long-Range Transportation Plan by watching a short [...]

For my attempt at the ds106 El Mashup assignment, I stuck with a subject used twice so far for other ones- the legendary Dirty Harry. Previously done were Soiled Harry web story page redone from IMDb, and a little audio play with Dirty Daffy. My plan was to mashup up Inspector Callahan with a Warner Brothers cartoon, so here I present Looney Harry: I can’t say it produces a coherent story line- my attempt was to maintain the integrity of the audio from the cartoon, and try and chop up, sauté, stir fry the video to try and match. I searched YouTube for a lot of cartoons- I needed something with a character like Elmer Fudd firing his gun, to match with the “do you feel lucky” scenes. I ended up using Robot Rabbit, where Farmer Fudd conspires to deploy a robot to destroy the rabbit who keeps eating the [...]

Like us canines hearing sounds beyond the human spectrum, participants in ds106 seem to see lights and colors others miss… cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This photo that was from a number light pole in Mesa, AZ, was the genesis for the Illustrate 106 visual assignment. I’ve dodged in and out of remembering to look for occurrences of 106ness in the world, but have collected a few. Beyond the obvious address signs, I still seek something with a “CVI” in it (Roman numerals), and I am missing more easy items like mile markers and road distance signs (“Fredericksburg 106″ would be cool to see in Virginia). But I keep looking and tag them both ds106 and my own with just 106 (there seem to be a lot of clutter in the public tag). I’m just posting this as I aim towards making a future home [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Last November I had an ambition to do another round of NaNoWrimo but fell off the wagon early. It began as an experiment to do the writing in the open– which was fun, but then, alas,, the story part eluded me. My plan was to write a story from the perspective of a real dog as an author, not a cartoon, but the real deal. But out of the failure to execute came a few gems, as commenter John King recommended, I found, kindled, and loved Timbuktu, the story narrated by the astute Mr Bones, and his tale of devotion to his less than stable human partner, Willy Christmas (book details). So I am building a collection of other Dog Point of View books, made a shelf on Good Reads I have just started reading Art of Racing in the [...]

I’m thinking a lot about my plan to be on the road 4 months starting in June- I’ve carved out a corner of the blog site here to be my record for what I call my “odyssey” (one positive outcome is I can consistently spell that word correctly) — http://cogdogblog.com/odyssey. While I could have made a separate site somewhere else, this is my home damnit, and there’s no reason not to have it be where I focus my energy. Since I am dotting in my map with people to visit, most of whom I have known only or first online, I came up with an idea for something to do on this trip, collecting a new collection of Amazing Stories of Sharing. This has been something I’ve created twice for presentations; the first at the Open Education Conference in 2009 (well, it was Amazing Stories of Openness than, but close [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Pink Sherbet Photography Summoning a deep toned Don Fontaine voice In a world of 140 characters… every keystroke, every picosecond saved counts. There is one who can get to their search results the quickest… There are times when it benefits you to be the quickest search to get the URL to tweet or toss into a webinar chat, but it is also efficient to make the finding process less tedious. I had long ago forgotten how I got them into Chrome (I think it was first done in Firefox and brought over), but I had a few quick search short cuts set up, like typing “f” in the address bar, pressing space- then a keyword, press return (enter), and boom! I get flickr search results from my photos right away. Somewhere in the process of moving off of the development version [...]