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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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The One Worthy Session From SXSWedu

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Since I mentioned a desire to flip conferences, I have to say it was worth sitting in the front row of Jane McGonigal’s “Learning is an Epic Win” talk at SXSWedu, and frankly, it was just about the only non “Meh” session I attended. I […]

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back to W.O.R.K.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by CarbonNYC Just short of a year ago, I blogged about stepping into the great wide open. I quit my job “in these economic times” and planned at least 9 months of rewind, as well as an epic odyssey loop of travel (which came to be) and […]

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Culture of Openness Panel (SXSWedu)

Instagram photo by David Wiley. I can only guess David would license it under creative commons as Instagram seems not to care. From the back blog department, audio recording and notes from a panel discussion I participated on at SXSWedu, Developing a Culture of Openness where I appeared with Jim Groom, Karen Fasimpaur, and Philipp […]

Rants

We Can Flip More Than Classrooms

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by thebassoonist12 If a classroom can be flipped to make better use of time and group processes, why are we not flipping more things? I’ve spent three days in Austin attending a conference in the same model going back how Ook ran them in 2500 […]

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Jux a Storybox

In exploring some new tools for rich media publishing, I took a return visit to http://jux.com a site for publishing magazine style media sites, that fill the screen. In many ways, it could be a blog-ish like thing, or a portfolio, or a tumblr that is not just another tunblr. Maybe I don’t know what […]

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Honoring Sue

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog One of the many highlights of last summer’s road trip was a chance to visit someone who was a key influence on my career and life in a powerful, indirect way. On International Women’s Day, I want to recognize Sue Kieffer, who was my PhD […]

Rants

on acknowledgement

Disappointed with people I consider online peers who are up in arms about #OpenBadges & #ConnectedLearning. As if ideas are ‘owned’. Gah. — Doug Belshaw (@dajbelshaw) March 6, 2012 I am fairly sure I can draw the dots as to what Doug is Gah-ing about. Badge bashing is flashing about, but it was hardly “up […]

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Create Something from the Storybox (SXSWedu)

Uh oh, the people in my session are just tuned into their devices.


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Awesome, that is what I wanted, my session was billed as a BYOT one. This represented the new plan I hope to have for the content I collected last year during my travels. I first thought when I got back, I would turn all the content back to the open… but one person in particular clued me into the thiung that made the content special was that is was NOT on the internet.

The “slides” for my talk are actually all housed on the StoryBox (it is a series of images and a jQuery slideshow gizmo) but I put a copy online as well. I also broadcasted it to ds106 radio and have an archive (hey @mgershovich, Always Be Archiving!)

Create Something from the Storybox presentation

Besides referencing my original video for the call to participate

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Animated Water

During my hike today to see Dark Hollow waterfall (in Shenandoah National Park), I did some more experiments with doing some rapid sequence shot of the water detail. It was cloudy, but ay ISO 200 I set the aperture open enough for fast shutter speeds 1/1250, 1/3200 to freeze the motion, and taking a rapid […]

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GIFfing History

I’ve been a month in Fredericksburg, living just around the corner from locations of major Civil War battles 150 years ago. On Friday, I took a stroll down Sunken Road, a place where the Confederate Forces held a commanding position on a hill, and some 15,000 Union soldiers died trying to charge it.

That’s war, what is it good for?

This wall, likely reconstructed (?) is part of the original wall that existed here, when ti was the major road to Richmond.


cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Tonight I came across a stunning set of 48 photos in The Atlantic, part of their series commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, in this piece, showing photos of the locations. What’s remarkable, is that the war coincided around the time when photography started to be viable, and this was the first war (I am guessing) documented so much in pictures that brought the news to the eyes.

What stood out is the sharpness of the detail, so much, especially in large format, how realistic the people looked. Of course they look realistic, they were there.

Photo number 28 stood out because it was taken along this same road I had walked Friday, Sunken Road, although I was looking down the wall towards where this photographer was standing:

The caption from the Atlantic:

Confederate dead lie among rifles and other gear, behind a stone wall at the foot of Marye’s Heights near Fredericksburg, Virginia on May 3, 1863. Union forces penetrated the Confederate lines at this point, during the Second Battle of Fredericksburg. (Mathew Brady/NARA) #

This second battle is not the one I read about on the signs along the road. Apparently a year after the 1862 battle where the Union got slaughtered here, the Confederate troops went west on other campaigns, leaving a thinner number of troops along this road.

(I am on thin ground of knowledge here, I am not a historian, just picking up pieces along the way).

So what to do with this bit of synchronicity?

Make an animated GIF!

I wanted to see what could do to blend these, even though they are from completely different positions along the road.

What I did ended up a large file (about 2 Mb), so I am placing it below the fold.