CogBlogged from ‘June, 2011’

A bad link click turns up some stuff from that Bag of Gold- the link was in the twitter river, for something I forget, and ot was not found on the site, but the site itself caught my interest– http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/, where the subtitle is “Ever get the feeling you’re living in the wrong time?”. It is a collection of images and videos that are geared to tap into an older era that links to the current one, yes, there is a faint odor of Steampunk, but its more than gadgets. The technology section is full of mocks of older advertisements and movies, amde out to use current tools– such as an iPod from 1977, and this video clip from 2001 A Space Odyssey where the astronauts are using iPads: In the History WTF section are color photos from inside the Hindenburg. There is a mile long scrolling infographic on the [...]

Since I’ll be on the road alot soon, I’m doubtful I will get to play on the next Dr. Oblivion round of ds106, but while I have time, I wanted to dip my paws again into animated GIF creations. Now having done a few, I am trying to think more ahead of time what might work, or what actions might be isolated, or what seends have that cycle of motion that might work. I’m really keen for looking at eye motion or expression changes that can be lifted out. For tonight’s experiment, in this pair if animated GIFS (“jiffs”) I am aiming to put two characters in parallel, two that are trying to out con the others. This is from the poker scene early in The Sting (1973). Harry Gondorff, played by Paul Newman, is working to hook Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) into a much larger con. Gondorff knows that [...]

Recently “on The Twitter”, Scott Leslie rightfully chided me because my web page describing the concept for the StoryBox was long — Don’t apologize Scott, I like you because you say it like it is, cause you carry the card. My response was, :”it’s a first draft!” but I had been trying to do something with a layer of complications, trying to set up directories on the pirate box to upload files (which despite the form being simple JavaScript, did not work because of the way the web server uses ports- if I knew anything about python web servers I might be able to figure it out…). So I re-reorganized the page http://cogdogblog.com/storybox, putting the technical stuff later, and pushing the question first of what I am asking for- people to share in my time capsule, pieces of digital media that expresses what this time, the “now” means to them. [...]

It’s just a Sunday, lazier morning in, longer coffee time at the kitchen table. The phone rang and Mom said, “Happy Father’s Day!” “But Mom, I’m not a father…” “Yes, but you have one.” She says it in present tense, darn she is savvy. If I was thinking of today, I might call it Father-less day, given Dad passed away 10 years ago and I am not really much in touch with my step kids any more. It’s just a Sunday. But while I cannot talk (directly in conversation) with my Dad, I still have a Father. Of course. I told Mom something she would enjoy from my camping trip last weekend. When I had set up and was relaxing in the forest, a monarch butterfly flew right over my table, circled, and moved on. Thinking of Mom, who has this sweet saying about butterflies holding the spirits of those [...]

This psychotic animated GOF was grabbed hastily from the Amazing Story video JIm did for me when he visited Strawberry last month. Not quite yet the perfect style, I am getting a better handle on isolating movement (sometimes- my Ayn Rand one was better). My current technique is: Load video into MPEGStream Clip Use the Export Frame option to export the single frames I need as a GIF Load into PhotoShop as a Stack (Files — Scripts — Load Images as Stack) – this loads each frame in a layer. Activate the Animation panel (Windows — Animation) Shrink the time lines into “frame” slicesYou can change the layer order. To do more isolated moviment, I have tried leaving the lowest layer as a background, and erasing all but the movement for the upper layers- this worked better for the Ayn Rand one where mostly it was just her face that [...]

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by qthomasbower I’m starting a countdown for the start of my Road Odyssey, and today is 7 days out. I doubt anyone cares to read the minutiae navel gazing as I ramp up (or down) to this, but hey, I am writing for ME, ME, and Me. I’m juggling two curves of intersecting organizational tasks- one is getting all the stuff ready I need to take with me, figuring out what I will need, where to put it. My guest room is covered with various boxes, and on a daily basis, I move things from one to another, or take something out, or put it back. Today I picked up the remainder of gear for cooking while camping, and have that all organized in a single plastic bin. The other task is also organizing all the stuff I am leaving behind– [...]

When Bryan Alexander tweeted his dislike of ET, I could not help but play with him… Hence… Who else does he side with? The Orcs? Jame Gumb? Freddy Krueger? jack Torrance? Lex Luthor? Gollum? Just kidding, Ax-man, you know I dig your style.

(the movie, not the country!) I had promised myself to avoid blogging or tweeting all the injustices inflicted upon my by heartless and stupid companies, no #FAIL proclamations. Oh well, time to bust my own promise. But really, the communcination systems I find myself dealing with seem right out of the Ministry of Information. Yesterday, I got a call from the Ministry of My Health Insurance, aka Humana: “Hello”, says an automated woman’s voice, “This is RightSourceRX Prescription Services Department with important information for Alan Levine, Is this Alan?” (This seems like a semi intelligent system, it uses voice recognition rather then button prompts) “Yes” I say, slowly and clearly, directly into the iphone mic (previous experience shows she does not always hear. “We have important information for you. Please call 866-xxx-xxxx and enter this message priority code 8492006″ Stop. You call me, ask it is me, tell me I [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by giveawayboy Taking the swirl metaphor of real life/online connections in a different direction, what follows might be patently obvious. But first, here is some secret insight- If you find that 140 characters cramps your communication style (and please avoid the hokey pokey longer tweet approaches, all ugly/clunk), there is this thing you can use to write long replies- it is called COMMENTING ON BLOG POSTS. That was a little (a lot) of facetiousness. It sounded funny in my head and looks stupid here in the text box. I have accepted the majority of activity (and it was never more than a few blips), I used to see here in the blog are happening “out there”, usually in twitter, disconnected from the blog. And while it would be nice to have all thats tuff connected, I’ve yet to see a [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Jess Gambacurta For the last four? five years? I’ve sported the same old quote on the top right of this blog, under “What the CDB”, a slight rewording of my favorite desert author. Time it was to change out the quote, and I found a good one in reading a paper, this originally from Henry Miller, but with my own edit from “writing” to “blogging”: Somewhere along the way one discovers that what one has to [blog] is not nearly as important as the [blogging] itself. I’ll be looking to swap these out on some semi-irregular interval, and set up an archive (with a vast set of TWO listed) at http://cogdogblog.com/quotes/. I’m looking at ones I can paraphrase to support the essence of blogging, despite its oft-rumored deadness, it is the most important mark you can make on this [...]