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CogDog The Blog

An early 90s builder of web stuff and blogging Alan Levine barks at CogDogBlog.com on web storytelling (#ds106 #4life), photography, bending WordPress, and serendipity in the infinite internet river. He thinks it's weird to write about himself in the third person. And he is 100% into the Fediverse (or tells himself so) Tooting as @cogdog@cosocial.ca

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La Liberté est Amusant

Following remotely from a train as our friends Brian, Keira, Grant bring us from Quebec via ds106 radio not only the sounds of the student protests but the wise words of Harry: @ds106radio "Freedom is fun." Harry. Amen little bro. #ds106radio — GNA Garcia (@DrGarcia) June 22, 2012 The scene there shared by Grant: We […]

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Conferences, Sharks, Gems, Flow

I’m one of the people frequently lamenting the stale, presenter-centric structure at atmosphere of most academic conferences – that said, it has been well over a year since I went to one of the bigger shindigs, maybe they have changed dramatically. And the THATCamps (which I have not seen but read about and know people […]

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Go Tom Go

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Jumping into the ds106 audio, assignments, I wanted to take on ones that had few takers so far- and I remain stumped why Suess It was not given some ds106 attention: Take a Dr. Suess book, or perhaps the Berenstain Bears, or one of your […]

Magic Macguffin

Right out of Piedmont

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog With activity ramping up for me at the Northern Voice conference this week, my window for MADI (Making Art Damn It) is closing, hence here I sit working an hour on a faux book cover for the I Can Read Movies assiognment: Create a film-based […]

Magic Macguffin

Week 3 Letter Home from Camp


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by photosteve101

Dear Dominoe,

I thought I would write since it has been like forever since I last communicated (literally), but who would understand me better than the dog pal who followed me across the country and then some. You might noy be aware, but I have been away for three works helping run a summer camp called Camp Magic Macguffin – the magic meaning that nothing bad happens here and the people who come just want to create, create, create art and funny animations all day long.

In a way I wish I was a camper, because then you get to play. But I also have to work .My colleague Martha and I have much to do with orienting our UMW students to things like WordPress, creating course materials and videos, running live camp fire sessions, clearing timber, planning activities, etc. And we have to make sure we review and give feedback all the time.

It’s a good thing we have the grooviest bunch of counselors to help us out, especially people like Ol Hatchet Jack, who sounds threatening, but has been super helpful, Cheryl Colan that fun do Wop Girl, Giulia Forsythe, our drawer and mentor extraordinaire, Sergeant Pepperstorm who has been building like crazy in Minecraft (along with Ben Rimes). Tripper Harrison has been running live music over the PA system, and Zazzy, who seems to be questioning me all the time, has been a champ at commenting and doing innovated creative work herself.

And then the open online aprticipants! Woah, I would break my hand trying to cite them all, but we have about 50 whoa re active- you can see all the camper blogs here http://magicmacguffin.info/subscribed/

Magic Macguffin

Venn Gandalf

I’ve been all day peeking at the different design magic of Stephen Wildish’s site, I think we linked last year to one of his film alphabets, but all of his work has powerful elements of graphic design we are introducing this week to ds106 / Camp Magic Macguffin. The one that got under my skin […]