I was thinking of the times when I would, now totally sounding naively, exalt about the bigness of the internet which today, which we pursue trendingness to be seen, noticed, affirmed, liked and re-liked. Who wants to spout out and not be heard?
I come to celebrate today the small, unnoticed. One of my weirdest to describe efforts, now brown on the edges with aging, was ye old SPLOTs those hand crafted WordPress themes designed to let people build out sites for collecting/sharing content easily (well what passes for easy).
One sign is that the internet is big enough for many things named the same– I am not the first to latch on to a name. Will the real SPLOT please stand up (all rise).
I’ve barely updated, added, tended to SPLOTs, but I do get glimmers of seeing them out in the wild. And even in person, like at the OER24 conference I got to see Frances Bell who is most enthusiastic, gracious, appreciative with the use of two SPLOTs in the Femedtech web site– so enthusiastic she gave me a SPLOT coffee mug!
And this morning I got an email from Suzanne who manages the Lansing Community College Starscapes site, using SPLOTbox for students to post/share media (images, videos, documents) describing projects shared at a college event promoting student creativity.
She reported for 2024 they have more submissions than before:
Being able to offer StarScapes online has doubled the number of students who participate in the event. Right now we are trying to grow the in person event again, as that used to be the only option before the pandemic.
Suzanne B on use of Starscapes site
It’s out there in the bigness of the internet, right?
I still feel compelled to built out image collector sites, even if I am the lone contributor. If anyone ever adds an image, it will be noticed somewhere.
At one time I had the idea to make a SPLOT where people could upload text and then make it available to do blackout poetry, but evnetually someone came along and did this in a much better form, see Emerge Poems (that was likely you @dogtrax, great find).
In these days I am finding solace in the tiny over the big. At least that’s what I whisper to myself. Anyone else out there celebrating the tiny? There’s more of it than you think.
Featured Image: Modified my own image Those Peaks Are Tiny flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license to put the SPLOT logo I created inside the fingers, make it all CC BY and call it a day.
@topdog And here the WordPress ActivityPub plugin kicks in with its version of a new post. Next, seeing how I can customize the output.
Hey, that worked! My reply to my blog post sent to Maston ricochet-ed back here. It’s like an internet of one person around here.
I’m going to have to look at this at some point.
If nothing else, I can talk to myself. 🙂
It can be rewarding.