The DS106 Daily Create started January 8, 2012 in a site originally created and maintained by Tim Owens. I took it over a few months later when I went to teach/work at the University of Mary Washington, and populated/tended it until late July 2014.
Then I had roped Mariana Funes into taking over keeping the Daily Create fresh, which she did more than faithfully, a year and a half, until a few days ago.
She’s got her own Daily thing site going and as I had plans to teach a DS106 class again (now that plan has blown away in a windstorm), I was ready to run some more. In the time since, I had a run of producing more for the YouShow at TRU and the UDG Agora Daily Try.
While the DS106 Daily create wanes and wanes, people like Sandy Brown Jensen, Ron, Jaap, John Johnston and others still show up. And there are spikes when a regular DS106 course is in motion.
Sometime soon, it will lap it’s four years, when it will tick on TDC1461 (the original Daily Shoot the site was based on only made it to maybe 670). Mariana and I sometimes talk about the real joy of the whole thing is coming up with the creative tasks. Sometimes you are able to riff and fill in 10, maybe 20, and other times you are wondering WTF is left to do? Something nearly always seems to pop up.
And so I am back at it, just tonight filling in enough to run through January 8, most with a western theme. Maybe that will get old?
The other key part is as much as possible, doing them myself. Sometimes I have to do it to have an example, but it is just good practice to do actual work you assign to others.
First was TDC1445- make a photograph looking west… I was on vacation, where my western view was from the beach looking to the ocean:
They walked out the ocean from the West #tdc1445 @ds106dc #ds106 pic.twitter.com/F2WT5Xb7ZE
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 23, 2015
TDC1446 was taking a photo of a barn, nice to see 10 responses, not one was mine. There is another aspect of doing the Daily sites- you do not have to be perfect.
TDD1447 was a play on the movie High Noon: Name something that you want do before the clock runs out on 2015 – this one is easy as its just writing a tweet. So easy I skipped it (see Vacation).
TDC1448 was Record Your Own Interpretation of “Ecstasy of Gold” (Wah, Wah Wah) that’s the theme song to the Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I love that Ron did his in the Acapella app:
#tdc1448 @ds106dc Let's go west #western106 #ds106 https://t.co/pCvVQaddrB
— Ronald_2008 ?? (@ronald_2008) December 27, 2015
Mine was a case that started small and grew unexpectedly into a video trailer for Western 106
I had an idea to just play some of it on my guitar (then noted that it was a bit more complex), but I did find some general chords. I went in my back bedroom to record, and noted that with the windstorm outside, I could record background sounds, including my Arcosanti wind chimes. The chords I played sounded a bit more like The House of the Rising Sun, and I tried adding a track of picking some lead notes, all doing this in Audacity.
That’s when I decided to remix it with a clip from the movie, the scene where Tuco is running madly through the graveyard before the final classic shoot out. And while editing, it seemed like his manic energy was perfect to play as The Ecstasy of DS106.
And this reminded me of my student John from UMW in 2012, when he took a simple DS106 Daily Create assignment to create a reversed video and blew it up into a creative masterpiece called Maxwell’s Teacup — sadly his blog is gone, but an archive lives in the ds106 Feed WordPress vaults. I recall fondly his explanation was just that he had an idea that went way beyond the call of a Daily Create, but did it anyway.
And thus we get to today’s Daily TDC1449 Sketch a Horse (of course) (complete with Mr Ed reference). One of the rules of the Daily Create is that you can interpret an assignment any way you please, and produce it anyway you please too.
This was mine, I was looking to do something more of the view of the horse from a rider’s perspective, instead of the normal front or profile views you see of horses
Turn, Gidget @ds106dc #tdc1449 last time I rode a horse (2008) https://t.co/8GJ2MlPm4g done w Virtual Painter app pic.twitter.com/uzw38qBcv7
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) December 27, 2015
I used my own photo, likely the last time I sat on a horse, on beach ride 2008 in Australia
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license
I used the Virtual Painter app I found by away of yet another great story of techno serendipity.
So I am back in the Daily Create saddle, both publishing new ones and doing some myself. I absolutely need some fresh idea, so please send them to me via the web form. And better yet, take on a few more challenges yourself, or get some other’s involved. Just check every day at http://daily.ds106.us/ or follow us at @ds106dc.
Ride along.
Top / Featured Image Credit: My own image done for DS106 Daily Create 1449
