CogBlogged from ‘May, 2011’

Caught Checking In to Morrison Hotel cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Some of the best creative challenges in the digital story game are ones that limit the things you can do; the creativity is in working in that space. A perfect example is the Six Word Story Group in flickr: Ernest Hemingway was once prodded to compose a complete story in six words. His answer, personally felt to be his best prose ever, was “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Some people say it was to settle a bar bet. Others say it was a personal challenge directed at other famous authors. I’d like you to post a photo with a Six Word Story in the title section of a Flickr photo. Be as inventive as possible. Have those few words tell the whole tale, and let the picture be its visual interpretation. Just make [...]

I tried as hard as I can to post this yesterday, but the apps and the nets failed. I was sitting there in Washington Square park, and awash in seeing all kinds of human stories play out. There were film students doing a project, tourists being taken in by the card tricksters, breakdancers doing movies, a wedding party… At the end of a bench I sat on was an oriental dude with a banjo, and playing some really soulful blues. Some other guy walked up with a plastic keyboard and some sort of tube he blew into, and made wailing harmonica/accordion sounds. This little video was done in in Animoto on my iphone, but offers no way for it to embed. C’est la app. I have some audio I recorded that I may attach (okay it is taking too long to xfer from my phone and my flight leaves soon, [...]

I spent a few hours in the New York Public Library archives, down in the basement, combing through piles of uncatalogued photographs. In one dusty corner was a box marked “Unpublished Bay Watch Set Shots”. Leafing through photos from guest appearances, I was surprised to identify a shot of Bryan Alexander. On the back, notes said: “Alexander played part of herbert Rosenstein, a walmart sales executive who has a dangerous fall from a surfboard in which he was an encounter with a romantic seal” The script is in the box too, but it is highly damaged from what appear to be large coffee spills.

I’ve got a busy day here in the Largish Apple, but not too busy that I cannot do a short digital story while sipping coffee. Today, it is using my own Five Card Flickr Stories to weave one from random ds106 flickr photos. Make one yourself! Five Card Story: Webbed Up Past 11 a ds106 story created by CogDog flickr photo by laughing_llama flickr photo by giulia.forsythe flickr photo by duncandonuts56 flickr photo by matt.dietz flickr photo by Cali4beach I was in the library, minding my own business. Trying to focus on this (deleted) (deleted again) essay on Existentialism, but really I am distracted by the screen on my laptop, displaying the most recent effort at coding what is now known as “The Box”. A husky voice behind me whispered, “Reach for the sky, module hacker! Your jquery library or your life!” What could I do, he had an 11 [...]

Okay, none of y’all are dog enough to step up to the digital a story a day in may task, but this dog is going for the full ride. There is so much to choose from in the ds106 assignments submitted by participants, and if that is not enough, there is some place with like 30 or 40 tools you can use. For today, while sitting on a train from Vermont to the Largish Apple, I sat admiring the wet landscape, and decided to return to one of the most creative assignments (and made by a UMW student)- making a story from the titles of songs in an audio playlist. I had done this before, so I upped it a bit by pulling small bits from each song to go along with the flow. Being here on the road, and thinking about the longer trip ahead this summer, here is [...]

I’m doing a third round of Amazing Stories of Openness, as an invited keynote for the Spring ETUG Workshop (June 2-3 in what is usually described as “lovely Nelson, BC) . An Amazing Story is you sharing an example of something unexpected that happened as a result of you sharing something on the open web- it might be as simple as an invitation to present at a conference, a connection created with a new colleague, an image being used for a museum exhibit on the other side of the world– see http://cogdogblog.com/stuff/etug11/ for where all the stories will eventually appear. For an idea what I seek, look at the videos from 2009 and 2010. While on the road in May, currently in Vermont, then New York City, and later in Vancouver, I will be bugging people I see to step in front of the camera. So you have been warned. [...]

For day 2 od the digital story a day month, I am strong. I am not wavering. In honor of the crazy movement that started ds106 even before it started, I made an animated GIF of my good friend Bryan Alexander. I visited with him and his family yesterday, and besides playing nerf gun wars in the woods, his son also had me playing Halo 3, Bioshock, and Fallout 3. In between, Bryan graciously agree to record a short video for an upcoming version of Amazing Stories of Openness. I asked him to do a shot outdoors, maybe holding his iconic axe. He just naturally gestured with it! For a quick and dirty process, from the video I pulled 5 frames (opened in QuickTime Player 7, I did a copy from each frame, and when you open a new doc in the Preview app, it inserts what is on the [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Tennis is such a civilized activity. So proper, there is proper dress, clean white painted lines, rules to the game, it is all very genteel. It is the mark of an upstanding person, eh? Alas my overhead serve slamming friends, I must warn you that you are being subverted. You have become part of an industry that plows under the Mother Earth with choking asphalt and parking lots. The precious resources that go into those fuzzy balls and other paraphernalia could be better devoted to building schools and sustainable agriculture. Should I even bring out the fact of animal body parts butted, stretched, and wound into the strings of your newest racquet? Do you hear their cries when you swing it? Join me Canada, in the Anti-Tennis Movement, let’s stop this decadent practice, Just Say No, to tennis, damnit! signed [...]

Since I started May 2nd on my May Marathon of One Digital Story Per Day (#mayday), I am missing the first day of the month. So, while anyone can blog three times a day, I have gotten 2 stories done since being on the train 3 hours from Castleton Vermont. Did you know that Howard Beale got his start doing news for Penn State University? I’ve been wanting to do a mashup for a while with the “I’m Mad as Hell” scene from Network (I’ve thought of a school on called ‘I’m Bored as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take It!”), and since I had the clip on my laptop (and there was no 3g in reach for my network card) I began rummaging around my drive for audio to use. Since its too easy to use Jim Groom, and he would sync nicely to the frothing Beale, I [...]