CogBlogged from ‘December, 2011’

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by massdistraction It seems rather fashionable for some to dramatically announce their deletion of facebook accounts, to shun it, to urge others to quit, after all, all the cool kids are doing it. I never quite followed the logic of whether it was 250, 400, 500, 600 million people “could not be wrong about facebook” — why cant many people be wrong? It’s happened before. That logic #fails me, and falls into the scolding your mom would say if you used the “everybody else is doing it” logic. You could make long lists of the reasons- the privacy issues, the way the interface changes so much you never know how to use it– and I still am offended at the stingy way they suck in external media but do not reciprocate in return. I’ve never found quite the allure to [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’ll take the one on the right. Today I activated my shiny new iPhone 4S. It was like returning home. It was a late October visit to Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia when I managed to drop my iPhone 4 into a canyon while trying to video a train. For reasons already blogged, I opted to wait til December to get a 4S, mainly so I could get the unlocked version that just came out. For one, I am not having to start a whole not contract obligation, and I am free to take the phone to another country and use a regional provider via a swap of a sim card. My choice was for the time in between, to get an Android smart phone. Knowing it was for a short stint, aI did not get a fancy shmancy [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Florin Draghici That title may mislead you that I know something. It just sounds good. But as much as we seem to be in a world of digital information abundance, there is plenty of strategies in publishing of creating scarcity that does not truly exist. I know a number of colleagues do thing like pledge support for open access (I thought Martin weller had a post with his stand on this, and he did stick to an open access route to publishing of his book). This is a long end around to talk about how I feel getting, in the postal mail, notification of an agreement for a paper of mine that was published recently in a museum education journal. Now my rate of publishing is maybe one paper every 2 to 12 years, so its not much of [...]

Via a comment on a recent posting of three photo animated gifs, I found GIF Exploder which might be a handy ds106 tool. It allows you to upload an animated GIF and it unbundles it into separate images. Whyfore might thou do this? Sometimes you don;t know in advance, but I took a play with one of the high end falutin cinemagraphs- I love this one of Edward Norton’s wake up in Fight Club from if we don’t, remember: It plays it well, because the animation fits the scene; nothing happens until his eyes pop open, and then he drifts back. I might see GIF Exploder as a means to explore the making of- or even if you wanted to do a remix, and say, introduce a pink stuffed animal in his lap (whatever). You could Explode it, insert new frames, and reconstruct the GIF. Or just to parse out [...]

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by fliegender It was March 17 of 2011 when I described my [quasi] plan to jump out into the great wide open, which was most filled by the 5 month/15,000 mile road odyssey, but started with some reflection time and travel before the road trip, and capped by a 2 week jaunt to Australia. Today was a day that began in the future with the first of 3 flights our of Melbourne, Australia and ended with a drive up to Strawberry in the snow — and this day seems to smolder as my body and mind remain on other time, while logic suggests sleep should be happening now (the clock reads 2:59 AM). Giulia suggested returning to that March blog post to match my expectations to the now, and this seems like a place to start, though I predict few [...]

I had not watched many TED Talks recently, but given large swaths of not having internet in Australia (once again, no thanks to Optus for screwing me out of my money and my data plan). I watched a few episodes on the bus/plane/internet-less hotels on my iPad. Now I know some people dismiss TED as being exclusive and some in gang thing, you know, its just about the Shiny People inside the Velvet Rope. Not Us. The problem with that for me is that I really like and learn a lot from many of these. In fact, I have a back log of blog posts now generated just by the handful of talks I just saw. And this blanket judging of something like a body of work to me is wrong, and resonates some with the way Dave Cormier spoke about criticisms of his rhizomatic approach, and part of that [...]

A fantastic visit today the residents of Trowunna Wildlife Park near Mole Creek Tasmania. Let the media tell the story. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Brought to you by Geese, Wedge-Tailed Eagle, Parrot, Wombat, Tasmanian Devils, Kangaroo…

Spotted this truck on the streets of Hobart- you always need to know where you can call for some good grooming: In honor of Tom Woodward’s deft outlining of the 4 pillars of ds106

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This started out as one of my usual chasings of photos showing the number 106 in honor of ds106, but I am finding a lesson that you can keep peeling back layers of a story, find interesing bits, but maybe never get there. So I was doing a stroll on a lovely day in Hobart, crossing the open parkland known a “The Queens Domain”- when I oticed the memorial plaques to fallen soliders, the Soldiers Walk. Each one had an ID number, and I seemed to be in an area that would reveal one bearing a 106. I found it. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog the 106 refers to the tree planted in a fallen soldier’s name, and tree #106 is for Kenneth Gavan Ray, who died in France in 1916. That link I found [...]

cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by gurms Hello, @twitter. A little spam is treatable. Block, report. But it keeps coming back, like pesky roaches. I agree with @timmmmyboy – why is there not even a little bit of logic applied at the door? Here is the most easy kind of twitter spam I bet some middle school kids could write the filters for. This nut job tweets some link and uses “via @cogdog” to suggest I had tweeted it: I mean how hard is it to check against my tweets to know I never posted said link? Badda-boom badda bing, spammer- tweet goes to trash, spammer account goes to dev/null. But I guess its way too hard. It’s still a sad annoyance of a trickle. But at the same rate of flow… And it is programmatically doable. Would it take a super computer? cc licensed ( [...]