CogBlogged from ‘June, 2011’

I just created a new page to explain and invite participating in the StoryBoax/PirateBox idea sketched out earlier — you can see the info at the project’s new home http://cogdogblog.com/storybox/. it has instructions there on how you can contribute to the project via a dropbox site, just in case I do not cross paths with you (and knowing I wont be crossing oceans) (yet). The thing is small enough I can carry it around in my camera/laptop case, all in one. Heck, once I get the right power cable, with the battery I purchased I could just walk around as a roving station. I also made a new Google Map that I will use to document the places the StoryBox has been to (since picking it up from @NoiseProfessor, it has only been to Strawberry, AZ): View Where is the StoryBox? in a larger map As I take this device [...]

In preparation for my upcoming long road time, I’ve been organizing some audio books to fill some of the time/space. There is a veritable bag of gold from the Internet Archive. I also found a decent selection of free (public domain) Adventure Audio Books. A small problem with them is that these are really a set of audio files (duh)– so if you are say, listening to them on a long road trip, you have to remember where you left off. However, I’ve found using the $9.95 Audio Book Builder app (Mac OS only), its easy to turn a pile of audio book files into an .m4b which plays on iDevices as an Audiobook (meaning it remembers where you left off and has handy chapter navigation hooks). So far, I have converted the following from their freely shared audio file versions to Audiobook (m4b files), and am sharing them back [...]

(one last post before I exit for camping!) For those in the ds106 Radio fold, this week’s drama has been the reported demise of our New/Old Radio Friend, Scottlo. The “death” part being a bit downloayed, it has been a fascinating thing to watch unfold as he (Scottlo? Otto? Frank?) examines, reinvents, who he is online, especially now, as he leads a course on “Sock Puppets”. Last night on the radio, we (@mikhailg and @jimgroom) held a “wake” for him, but it nicely eveolved more into a great discussion of identity, and and a dviersion into Border Blasters, John Romulus Brinkley, dramatic definitions on Urban Dictionary, and even an unexpected use for goat parts. And it was nicely topped when (Scottlo? Otto? Frank?) joined us, and provided some more insight into what he is thinking. I am hoping somewhere out there is an archive- it was not the “smoothest” technical [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It’s time to shut the lid and go offline. I’m going to pack up the camping gear, the kayak, and head up to Knoll Lake on the Mogollon Rim, to enjoy some mellow time. Might be back tomorrow, or Tuesday, or …. This is a bit of a dry run for being on the road starting in 12 days, but also just to out and about. I cannot thing of anything else I’d rather be doing this week. Cya on the flip side.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog We often frame our ideas about the virtual/online spaces we inhabit as being separate, across some boundary from, the real ones we inhabit- we go binary, either/or, on/off, black/white. Like the image above, I find it not so neatly define, it is a swirl. Bear with me on a windy trail of a blog post that is starting with one plan, that may unfold another as it flows from my fingers to the keyboard to the wordpress editor to the web. The photo above was taken 2 years ago while attending the 2009 EdMedia conference in Hawaii- note the visual connection from there to: A connection, eh? This is Rick Schvier’s recently released epub Connections: Virtual Learning Communities and like Rick himself, it is full of insight, but also, his genial personality. Connections: Virtual Learning Communities is an eBook that [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by vistamommy A few clicks back I coined the made up term “linktribution” to represent the recommended way of thanking someone for use of their open licensed content by linking back to the original. It is the least one can do, eh? Sadly it does not happen nearly enough, note this article on Psychology Today — not only does it have an image (probably not licensed from the movie Stand By Me as this TinEye search reveals for the image), it just sits there w/o out any kind of attribution at all. But I go off track. Doing a link back, again, is the base minimum that one ought to to, but there is no reason not to go a step farther. I cannot seem to locate it in my blog (uh oh), but I remember writing once about the phenomena of [...]

cc licensed (BY) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The smiling hippy chick behind the counter at the restaurant on Nelson handed me my change. "Oh look, you get a lucky dollar coin" (coy smile). Sure, I am in Canada, and people have that "nice" thing going, so I’m ready to believe. And their money is close to ours, except for more use of dollar and two dollar coins, so why not think there might be variations in coinage> The light was low, or I was dim, and I glanced at it, not exactly getting why the coin was special– I still am not always sure which one is the single dollar. So I saw it looked different, but did not look closely enough. It was not until back at the table when I showed it to my Canadian friends… and shrunk at their laughter– Hippy Chick had passed me a [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by sayhellotojessica Well, actually I wont be there unless you ask. I’ve had some people request a means to get updates from here via email, namely for the upcoming road trips. Yeah, e-mail. that dead thing. I looked at adding a subscription plugin (likely Subscribe2), but before adding another plugin to my blog house of cards, I speculated there might be another service to handle the load. And voila, it is Feedburner — which is now a part of Google, so its a service many of us have. You can set up a Feedburner thing for any RSS feed, and I did have one there for CogDogBlog from a while ago (I considered doing one for say the RSS feed for a category, but opted for the whole show). So it uses my blogs RSS feeds to send email notices to [...]

Don’t ask me why I tooled around in Firebug, but my sarcasm spot sure needed some itching. I was looking at some of the works done for the web story assignment in Martha’s ds106 session (wither the URL for the class blog?). I was wondering if this time I could do the whole thing in Firebug without buggering it, and I found out, YES I CAN. My target is the product blessed by all other MOOCs for synchronous events, specifically the page for the so called “Live” product (yikes, I cannot even find the original URL), and especially as it is underwoven by Blackbeard. Okay, so I went a tad overboard in messing with their content, and am not even sure it tells a story. The fun parts were poking a bit deeper with firebug, and being able to mod the style sheets for new images/backgrounds. The text on the [...]

When I first saw (or correctly, when Ninmah sent me the link) Google’s home page today, first reaction, was “nice graphic”- a guitar version of the logo. Then I moved my mouse. The graphic made a noise. OISOME! The logo makes sounds. But wait, there’s more. You can record your sounds at a URL you can share! Woah neo. Like most of you, I then made noise and tweeted it – here is my first song, recorded below as a video: But then I figured out you dont have to strum with your mouse, the keyboard plays things, so I got a little bit farther from Pure Noise — http://goo.gl/doodle/Ocja, though far from Les Paul, for whom today’s logo is made in honor of. And there is more- see from PC Magazine How to Play The Beatles on the Les Paul Google Doodle — there is a strc ture to [...]