CogBlogged from ‘May, 2011’

There are as many stories of openness about ds106 (http://ds106.us), the open course on digital storytelling, as there are stars in the sky. But Jim Grom shares what may be the most unexpected outcome of a class- a web-based free form radio station that emerged from the community, and is now, as he says, "a platform for a community of open sharing" Learn more at http://ds106.us/ds106-radio/  See also the tech specs from Grant Potter's DIYRadio http://web.unbc.ca/~gpotter/?page_id=860 (Grant is the genius who assembled all of the working parts). Published originally on Posterous (email) http://amazingstories.cogdogblog.com/jim-groom-and-ds106-radio

Vcasmo is one of the 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story- it offers a platform to synchronize powerpoint/presentations to video. A typical use is to have video of a speaker linked to their slides, and it works elegantly there. I decided to tale a video I shot of Bryan Alexander at his house and sync it to a series of slides that playfully suggest what might be in his mind, sort of powerpointed thought bubbles. The Story a Day May pace is killer, I am getting weak, tired… must… story… on…

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was loud, loud, loud, and rocking in East Vancouver at the ds106 Jamcamp studios set up by Grant Potter and Brian Lamb. Ears still ringing, and we;ve got some amazing talent in the room, including @dlnorman, @sleslie, @grantpotter, @brnajack, @brlamb, @noiseprofessor, @DrGarcia, @draggin, and @mikhailg And of course it was streamed to anyone who might have listened on the radio… Tough shooting in the low light, went for the grainy grungy his iso style. yeah right. More photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/tags/jamcamp. Of to see a moose about a northern voice!

For another hurry up and post story, this is an example of the flickr group Tell a Story in Five Frames, where you have to submit to the group discussion a single post with a title and 5 photos that… tell a story. It is in the vein of my Five Card Flickr stories, but of course here, you get to choose the images. This is a great exercise in being creative within constraints and making a message with mainly photos, and honestly, tough to pull off well (I cannot claim to ever have done a great one). The group moderator is pretty critical! Today, I posted what was a series of images I took form some folks doing some sort of team building activity on the Cambie bridge in Vancouver. Technically, the first shot was actually a different group of people than I observed later on the bridge. Posted [...]

I won’t apologize for being a day behind but I am so sorry I am a day behind. This is a tough pace, but certainly no race. Folks, if you think that ds106 is dangerous cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Here is proof… So here, as a quicky, I used one of the many cool flickr gadgets at jd’s flickr toys, this one allows you to turn any flickr photo (or other that you can upload) into a motivational (or demotivational) poster. Radio can do this to you: This is also tribute to one of the longest running snark worthy web sites, despair.com, which I fondly remember form around back in the 90s with their demotivator posters, but now they have a whole range of mocking products. Thanks to Mikhail for showing me his basement lair, where he is exiled in NJ.

I picked up Sands of Kalahari at a thrift store, with a set of other books chosen merely because they looked “old” and I wanted a classic looking row on my shelf. For some reason I started thumbing through it, and fell right into an engrossing story. At a surface level, it looks like most any other hollywood plane crash in the desert movie, a cast of disparate characters thrown together in a survival setting, the deserts of south west Africa. The reader is drawn into the characters slowly, but the unfold and take vivid shape. But the story bobs and weaves, and tosses in many unexpected turns, as it is not just, or even about getting rescued, but more of a tale of how humans behave, and pulled out of their norms, how the line between us and animals is not so distinct. As the characters unravel witha dash [...]

10 days in to one digital story per day in May, 10 stories done. Still going strong. Today was a play with something I wanted to try for a while, an overdub of my own audio over a classic scene, where I change the script to say what I want it to say. My timing to the spoken part is sub par (that is really hard), which I did by doing voiceover in iMovie, reading from my updated script. Here you go, for the next time you are stuck in a boring lecture, dull presentation, deathly webinar. I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as bored as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. Well WTF? Even without audio in it, the YouTube copyright sniffers [...]

I get a steady stream of those mass-emailed requests to write blog post for products or do link sharing, and 99.9% of them go in the poop bag. Sometimes one comes along that gets past the guard dog, and the message from Matt was obviously written by someone who has read my stuff. His site of pet products has a new set of infographics about dogs, how more relevant could that be? The Dog World Records Infographic is packed full of canine facts- like in the U.K., the names sake dog for this site is tied for the top breed. And you never know when you might be asked to cite the longest dog tongue ever (43cm, 17 inches) held by Brandy the boxer (and no, was not owned by Gene Simmons). Or that some 1,000,000 dogs have been named as primary beneficiaries of wills in the US (alas, no [...]

Marlon Brando could have only achieved his heightened performance in On the Waterfront with the help of his film coaches, such as Talking Terry, shown in this historic footage. (this is the Talking Larry iPhone app, a fun little diversion of mimicry; and it can record performances as video, even upload to YouTube). If you re curious if this worked out well, see the performance

In preparation for a presentation I will do June 2 for the ETUG meeting in Nelson BC, I have been collecting a new series of "Amazing Stories". On my recent trip to the east coast, I snagged a series of new ones from friends and colleagues I visited. And this will be a dress rehearsal for ones I hope to get when my Road Odyssey begins in mid June. This one was filmed (on my iPhone 4) at the mountain home of Bryan Alexander near Ripton, Vermont. The scene is very fitting for Bryan's interests. And he obliged my request to pose with his iconic axe (though I did not expect him to swing it so naturally while talking). In his story Bryan relates his experiences with his earlier (and ongoing) experiences in doing a form of storytelling via a blog, in Dracula Blogged, the events of Bram Stoker's classic novel [...]