3229 Posts Categorized "Blog Pile"

Everything that does not have a home, just a big old stinking pile of posts.

Blog Pile

Lover Bird Calls


cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Vijay..

I took a spin on the random button for the ds106 audio asignments and ha ha ha, I got one I had submitted, Character Bird Calls:

Like some people use special whistles to attract birds, your task is to create an 30 second or less audio file that might be used to “call” a particular character from a movie, tv, or real life. It cannot feature voices, but sounds only (try http://freesounds.org). Write a description why this sound would be attractive to the character, why it would be effective (be inventive, write a story about it).

(Stranglely the example I did, Calling Dr Oliver never got added, hmmmm).

So began to consider maybe a pair of characters calling each other, who might that be? My brain mulled back to the childhood TV shows I watched, so here is my bird call (details below the fold) (don’t peek)?

Blog Pile

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 […]

Blog Pile

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 […]

Blog Pile

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 […]

Blog Pile

Scottlo: My Virtual World Can Beat Up Yours

I’m really worried about our brother Scottlo. It seems he has drunk some weird potion and is mesmerized by some beach front pixel property in Second Life, some place called Conoway Cay or something like that. Over here in Camp Magic Macguffin, we are hacking out a whole new world inside Minecraft, and poor Scottlo […]

Blog Pile

I Can’t GIF it Out of My System

This has to stop, but not tonight. I missed the fun of the afternoon shit talking and gif smacking today. With some positive feedback on the last batch, I set out again to see what I could do with GIMP as a tool.

For these next two I went for very original material, stuff you cannot get on the internet- some of the videos from the Storybox as my intended purpose was to keep the raw material on the pirate box but allow remixes to float out on the open web.

This first one was a barbershop pole spotted maybe in British Columbia- I had some shaky hand held video, but found at least one short segment where there was little jarring for one spin:

BUt there was still jiggle. So I made a selection of just the moving pole part, and deleted everything else from 6 of the 7 frames. What I cannot figure in GIMP is how to make a deleted selection transparent; mine got filled with white. I solved the problem by making a copy of the lowest frame, which was a full image. I then used the same selection to fill the same area with white.

I then made a duplicate of this frame and moved it below each of my single frames, set the mode of the layer to “darken”, and merged each layer down. This I ended up with frames where all the movement was within that bit I had saved fro each layer.

This next one was form video I took in Central Park, New York. I heard form afar the loud banging of drums, and came across a protest of people at the boathouse who were protesting the management- their goal was to convince tourists not to go inside, and they were pretty darned successful I recorded some of the audio and spoke a little to the protestors, but I loved most the intensity of these drummers banging on plastic jugs and the metal rails of the barriers. The sound is just exported from the original video clip.

Blog Pile

GIFfing with Jules

Ok, Jim asked me to up the game, so I am going to get more particular about frame selection for my animated GIFs. We are working on the ds106 kickstarter awards for people who requested an animated GIF in their honor. I’ve got the task to do the one for Boone Gorges, who requested something […]

Blog Pile

Evaluating the ds106 Evaluations

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Most places I travel people ask me what it’s like working with Jim Groom and while it’s easy to reach for a wise crack (which I usually do), I have to frame this with a lot of awe for the spirit he brings to this […]