Last 100 All Text

Why? Because I can. The plain text of the last 100 posts….


One tweet somehow manages to send me off to the web experimentation rabbit hole for building a new gizmo. But the bigger lesson is that knowing how to read, edit, and modify URL parameters can give you the power over the algorithmic lords. From One Tweet... I managed to just click this out of curiosity https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1481293970135212037 What Anil gave is is a link that performs an advanced twitter search that returns all the tweets from accounts you currently follow, if they had any before January 12, 2008. It can be an eye opening peek at what people thought was important back then (besides lunch), when tweets were shorter (remember 140 max, hashtags did not exist, and URLs did not even link). In my own old tweets (in the mix) I saw references to early Flickr raving (has not changed) and many references to Second Life. It's all done via a long URL. To many people this is goop, but if you Read URLs you know it's a call to a server search query and it is passing in the parameters of typically might come from clicking options on a form https://twitter.com/search?q=filter%3Afollows%20until%3A2008-01-12%20-filter%3Areplies&src=typed_query But right there I saw potential https://twitter.com/cogdog/status/1481303598726365184 I had this idea digging away, what if one could make a web site that assembled a URL like that dynamically- the default could be the current day in 2008, but with a set of menu selectors, it could let you perform the same task on any desired date, not just the one Anil chose. Retro TV Time My mind association went to the old Irwin Allen 1960s sci fi show, The Time Tunnel. I most remember the opening sequence, and that 1960s set of the tunnel room and the people working at machines, computers. I don't recall the plot much, except people traveled in time. Ironically, as I read the Wikipedia article, the secret government project that built this was called "Project Tic-Toc" -- how is that for some weird retro-futurism? There is interplay between scientists, army generals, and politicians who demand to know why so much money is being spent. Two of the scientists, Tony and Doug, enter the machine, travel in time, but cannot get back. The episodes include the vain efforts to return them as they travel back (mostly) and sometimes forward in time, and as typical run into situations where the time travelers acts in the pass can affect the future (hello butterfly) and even interact with their own history. The show was canceled before the scientists could ever be saved, so i guess Tony and Doug are still out there. The Twitter Time Tunnel I just loved the trope of the machine, and jumping into it and being swirled back into the past. Thus my machine was made: https://cogdog.github.io/twittertimetunnel/ When it loads, it is set to launch you back through the twitter machine to the current month and day, but in the year 2008. Like Anil's example, it will give you what your current twitter followers were tweeting (if they wore) for that date (and earlier as you scroll back) But you can also select any Month, day, and year (back to 2007) to search a different time. One change I made was to not use the "top" tweets option, which does some algorithmic sorting, just to the pure chronological listing. Maybe the most ironic thing was one of my early tests, when the tunnel took me back to a tweet By Sylvia Martinez mentioning a "Time Machine" (likely the Apple back up stuff, but still, ironic, right?) https://twitter.com/smartinez/status/595368562 The Making Thereof I likely spent way too much time figuring out those three menus. I found some useful scripts for generating dynamically such menus from HTML Code Generator. I could see likely if I used them I might be able to do this without jQuery, but since I grabbed a regularly used template that makes use of Backstretch.js to fill the background with an image, that I would rely on jQuery. The tricky part is getting the right number of days. So I had to make scripts that if the month was changed, it would need to check for the months of differing day numbers (so that April's menu stopped ay 30 days and January 31). And of course February has to stop at 28 (unless it's a leap year). So the day menu has to change dynamically if the month or year change. But then the button script just has to get the date format from the menus that the twitter search URL calls for. You can find it all at https://github.com/cogdog/twittertimetunnel and as usual is not elegant of very compact Javascript. The Thing About URLs I can always reflect on some of the talks I remember hearing from Jon Udell when he was invited to speak to Gardner Campbell's students, I think it was at Virginia Tech. Jon was making a case for something like URL literacy- that if you could understand what those variables mean in things like google searches and amazon searches and... well any searches, you could actually bend them to make them do what you want, just by editing the URL in the browser. It's the same thing at work for what Anil shared- his URL is based on the results you get from an advanced twitter search. He explains it well https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1481404841486336005 https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1481405721199755267 When you have awareness / interest / willingness to tinker with URLs it means you are not limited to what the platform and it's algorithms just hand you. I feel like I am rewriting or taking control of sites when I can do things like manipulate URLs to do things like force Google Images to give me only Creative Commons licensed results. So when someone replies my first share of this with what sounds like "hey it won't work for me because of the way I manage my follows" https://twitter.com/chris_mahan/status/1482009883088089089 My brain goes-- okay, rewire the URL, you are not helpless if you are willing to tinker in the URL field. You cant break anything! https://twitter.com/cogdog/status/1482017279516848128 This is it! You can subvert the algorithms, you can make web services give you what you want, not always what it wants to serve. And you can get more out of the experience. Glitched It And because this all started with Anil Dash's tweet, it's only fitting that I slide my project from where I lobbed it first (github) into the Glitch platform he is behind. The code is there, very easily remixable but you can spin the tunnel too at https://twitter-time-tunnel.glitch.me What can you find in the machine? Will you see Tony and Doug chasing down historical figures? Or just a glimpse into what people were sharing, posting in the deep beginnings of Twitter Time. Featured Image: My Photoshop modification of thumbnail of YouTube video The Time Tunnel Ep 19 The Ghost of Nero, the text with Hobo font, and Twitter logo found on Pixabay I cast it out with a CC BY license The sound calendar flipping comes with it the rounds of The People That Still Blog writing their summaries of the flipped year and/or the hopes/promises of the year being flipped to. Without resorting to anyone but myself for analytics, I can link to 170 blog posts for 2018 (14.2 per month, and that 0.2 of a post is a beauty). There it is, my review. Stuff I did, made, complained about, projects, blah blah blah. I mock myself. My blog is my humble safe home amongst a web of increasing pollution and abandoned storefronts. I regularly lean on my own writing to connect new ideas, to grab old ones. I now have 16 years worth of stuff. But the way I prefer to see my year is in my annual review/cleanup of the daily photos I have posted to flickr, aiming for one a day since D'Arcy Norman inspired me in 2008. It's rare I get a perfect 365, that is not the goal at all. Towards the end of December I look at my album, and this year I saw I was about 30 images short of 365. So then I have a process of going back through, and finding ones I forgot to put in the album, or days I just was sloppy with organizing. In about 3 hours of sorting, I got it filled out to 355, meaning 10 days I just did not take any, so my 2018/365 flickr album is as full as it will get. What I did not realize, or likely just forgot, is that this process itself triggers a fantastic window into the year at a more human pace and scale than blog posts. Because it's through the camera I see the world, and in turn, I see what/where/who was in it. Enough of that, here is the 2018 in 355 photos in one video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8m5RoUQyo So it has been a rather big year of life changes- and everything in it pales to getting married June 1 to Cori (a flickr album for that) and moving from Arizona to Saskatchewan, settling into a new home, and working through the thousands of steps to get me status here sorted out. I'll let the photos talk, it has everything in it. Among the many things Cori and I share it's our mutual love of photos, invariably the paired ones we take of each other looking through our cameras. [caption width="640" align="aligncenter"]2018/365/226 I Love This Woman! flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)[/caption] I could go on about work and projects and SPLOTs (yes, you do want more blog posts about SPLOTs, right?). Actually a post is due on work stuff for 2018 because I sure need more work for 2019. But that's another post, this one is about what was in the camera view. This daily photo thing is something I just have to do. Discarding ideas of 10,000 hours magically meaning anything, a regular practice of creativity, not just photos, but crafts, music, writing, heck even meditation, really has hit the magic spot when it bothers you to not be doing it. This photo habit works at different levels; I remind myself several times a day to stop what I'm doing and look around for posible photos. It means walks to the post office or with the dog are not just tasks, but opportunities to seek light, shadow, funny signs, and also just let the mind wander. And there are layers of reflection I find useful. Then there is the evening round of pruning photos, editing, writing titles and captions, and settling on a reason to pick One as the Photo of the Day. Maybe it's the most visually eye catching one, or maybe it's one for meaning of what happened. And then end of the year, another time to see them all at a different scale. And while the blog provides a copious amount of filling in where my memory fails, it's often my photos I count on, the captions, locations, etc, to pinpoint moments in my life. And with 11 years of daily coverage, it's a rather detailed, comprehensive credit. It's my outsourced memory. This is why it's not much a decision of me to pony up again for my flickr pro membership, because the platform is not just an archive, it's my lived memory. There are so many ways it serves my needs, that no other option can match it. There is no barrier of entry into this process, you get to pick how you go about it. We have a flickr group for 2019/365 Photos (I change the name each year, it's the same group) now in it's 12th year, with over 1700 members, who have shared over 266,000 photos over the year. No one makes rules, policies, and for the most part, not many people even say much in the group discussion area. I love this so loose an idea of community you can question if it is one (don't question, it is). Lastly, some nuts and bolts on that video. I owe much to some clever command line scripting from John Johnston (summarized in last year's blog post) that I have modified slightly. It is magic- it will download all photos from a specified flickr album, then resize them to proper video dimensions, then string them together as an mp4 video. I thought last year I figured out how to reverse the sequence, but my blog post and memory failed, so I pulled it into iMovie where it's easy to reverse, I added some titles, and CC licensed electronic background music from the Free Music Archive. Lots of people are pretty grim about 2018, but mine was brimming with light and love. From January 1, 2018, an image of one home [caption width="640" align="aligncenter"]2018/365/1 Home is Where The Key Fits flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)[/caption] to a new home in 2019. There was but 365 days /355 photos between them... [caption width="640" align="aligncenter"]2019/365/1 Effervescence Now flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)[/caption] And more photos to come in 2019. Featured Image features my favorite photographer: [caption width="640" align="aligncenter"]2018/365/154 We Love Photos flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)[/caption] It is only for solemn or silly reasons I will put a cloth chain around my neck. Yesterday was definitely the latter. I made a video as a "trailer" for our upcoming UdG Agora Google Hangout (this Friday) the live sessions we are running each week to support the online phase of the project. Of course, a trailer was not really critical. No one told me to do it. But this feeds into something I have been trying to write think about for a possible Hybrid Pedagogy article. I may come back to that. In our project our participants are working on "implementation plans" for the challenges/activities they are integrating into their courses over the next few weeks. We are encouraging them to share in their ~40 person sized groups in our online community space dilo and/or their smaller triad groups. It has been a little bit of an effort to move them from seeing they were turning it in like a homework assignment to us, their group facilitators, and it's more for each other to share and support. Somewhere in the random neural circuit room, I was reminded of the scene from the movie Office Space, where Peter is harassed by his boss, Lumbergh, about his lack of covers on his reports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy3rjQGc6lA This could be fun, and Ken Bauer was game to play the part of Peter. I did a quick re-write of the script, and sent it to Ken. As he does,m he shot his video in like 10 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfsheW6RwJE Reminder, Ken is in Guadalajara, I am in Arizona. We are making a movie together. But Ken has the office decor, he works in one. My home is full of wood paneling. I lack a set. What to do? Set up the Green Screen! [caption width="640" align="aligncenter"]flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license[/caption] I tack it to a wall that get's the most natural light from doors and windows. I have 2 clamp in utility lights I added to fill the background (these are those cheap lamps from the hardware store, I clamp on some ripped up old sheet fabric as a diffuser). My video camera is my iPad (because it's easy to monitor the angle) and I use my Samson Meteor mic for audio. To play the part of Lumbergh I had to dig out of the back of the closet one of 2 ties I have (the other one has green in it, that won't work) and some prop eye glasses I have used before to create the serious academic look. It took about 45 minutes to set up, test, and shoot video. I then took an hour to edit in iMovie- yeah I should use something more sophisticated, but why? I can pull off must of what I need here. My character sits in the upper video track using the green screen mode, which shines through to some generic office photo I found. I have a few cuts between me and Ken, even a view where my video is over his dialogue. There is this thing in video called the 180 degree rule that you need to pay attention to when doing these 2 camera angle edits, to maintain their spatial relationships. To do this, I had to flip Ken's video horizontally (I chuckled every time I chose this video effect since Ken is an expert on the flipped classroom). Also what I like to do is add a layer of audio environmental sounds, it smoothes the gaps when we are not talking. I used an Office Ambient sound (creative commons, ftw) from freesound. Okay, that was all the background stuff-- unlike a DVD, on CogDogBlog you get the extras FIRST. Here is the episode for "Dilo Space" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp9qqkby7BU It is totally ridiculous, there is a message. And its not too likely our colleagues in Mexico know the original movie. That, is not even critical to get the message (the one mistake we should have done Ken is Spanish subtitles). Even if they do not understand it, they should see that we are having fun. And this is my idea to write about videos- it's when you do them in teaching for Stuff That Is Not Contained in the Syllabus. So much of stuff written about video is Its All About the Content. And so much money, time is spent on making it look like professional video. Why? Are we trying to emulate TV? Why not guerrilla style video, low tech iPad and iMovie editing? Instead of producing video students may never be able to emulate, show them what they can. And damnit, show you are a goofball you can have fun. KEN WHERE IS YOUR IMPLEMENTATION PLAN!!!! DO NOT BLAME THE COPY MACHINE. Top / Featured image credit: Here I go again, attributing myself! Why? Because I can. No because I do -- flickr photo by cogdogblog http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/21068972872 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license I did not ask for little stickers on my fruit. I do not want to eat little stickers on my fruit. I spend time peeling off little stickers on my fruit. I toss in my trash those little stickers on my fruit. Those little stickers on my fruit do not grow there. Someone working minimum wage at The Store must manually put little stickers on my fruit. Those little stickers on my fruit help The Store track their inventory. Those little stickers on my fruit make it easier for the cashier to ring it up. Those little stickers on my fruit generate Big Data that helps the Store do something. Those little stickers on my fruit support the business interests of The Store. Those little stickers on my fruit do not do anything for me. I did not ask for little stickers on my fruit. Top / Featured Image Credits: flickr photo by cogdogblog http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/17128331906 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license Maybe some readers are all over RSS and massive amounts of syndication of content, but I am jazzed whenever I discover some small, useful, time saving way to make use of the Small Technologies Loosely Joined. Using free web content services like flickr, del.icio.us, Technorati that can travel the RSS road to dynamically update content elsewhere, moving from static hand spun web pages to live ones, is powerful stuff. So here is a roadmap of a change I set up in about 30 minutes time to rescue some stale links. This approach is something teachers can easily do to populate their own web sites with new web resources for their students, and can be done so efficiently, and without much effort. It fits in to an instructors own discovery process of resources, and boils down to: (1) Find interesting sites (2) Bookmark (using browser tool link) to del.icio.us (3) Tag it with a special identifier (4) Create a cut and paste Feed to Javascript code (5) Past to Web page(s) By repeating 1+2, the pages in (5) are auto updated. It is no great Einsteinian leap, but cannot imagine where there is not a goldrush stampede of faculty using this approach. So back to my situation. Our web site for the Ocotillo Online Learning Group has pretty much a stock template for all of the internally linked pages in that site. When I set it up, I did so in a manner so that a box of content on the left side navigation bar representing a collection of new web resources, was generated from a single external text file. Without getting too techie, the PHP technology we use for all of our web pages allows me to create a place in all documents that says, "Take all the contents of this external file, and stick it right here". The benefit of a PHP include is if I update the little text file, all changes that reference it are updated. So my original plan was every now and then I would manually update this file, and there would be a "see more" link to a larger set of web site links. The pitfall to this approach is I either get lazy, or run out of time to keep doing all this manual editing. Thus, the links that were listed as "new" were pretty much 2 years old. So I had a brief flash of light. Or maybe it was just an extra jolt of coffee. I already do a lot of site bookmarking on my collection of my del.icio.us bookmarks. I could just start tagging stuff I wanted on my OLG site with a tag of... olg in addition to other tags L might add like "teaching", "code", "ajax", "technology", "socialtech", etc... in my normal review of web sites, and extra click using the del.icio.us bookmark tool files sites into a special OLG category. Now a link to this collection is a start, but we can do more. If I copy the RSS feed URL for this tag collection, and then take it over to Feed2JS, I can build a cut an paste JavaScript line of "code" that will generate a simple list of say the ten most recent marked sites. Just by putting this JavaScript code created by Feed2JS: View RSS feed into a text file named new.inc I can have the dynamic feed of new sites inserted into my web pages (the formatting is controlled by some extra CSS styles, but that is not essential. In all the pages I want this on the sidebar, all I need to have in my HTML code is: I also add to my new.inc file an extra link for "more resources" page that goes to another new page that now uses the same construct, but displays the most recent 20 bookmarked sites, and includes the item descriptions. Now if all of this sounds complicated, it's only because I've tried to over explain. but think about this- once set up, you can use the Feed2JS code on any number of web pages, be they PHP, ASP, CFM, HTML, home page, Blogger template, Blackbaord/WebCT site... And if you set up tags for say your different classes you are teaching, as you find new resource sites relevant to these classes, you can tag appropriately, and the most recent items will be automatically published to your different course web pages. It is simple, and elegant, or at least I think so. Being able to update numerous web sites via the basic act of bookmarking and tagging in a collection, and having different subsets of content being "pushed" out as new content to other web sites... well it is just sweet music to me. Apparently writers with orders of magnitude more readers than I are penning saga length whinging rage posts about how terrible technology is. Oh they keep moving the buttons on me! Teams Sucks. Google Search is junk. Technology is terrible. I don't counter the disgust of bad software interfaces (oh reminds me I have a post to do about the interface of my air fryer, I digress). But I find reward in figuring things out that call for doing things beyond the front facing interface. Finding the end arounds. Doing some sleuthing. Here is today's tale, something again that started out with a speck of an idea, leading me to digging into old posts, shreds of web sites left on the internet archive, picking through some web source, and a wee bit of luck. Now trying to write this-- I pause and wonder, is this really a great story? Who cares? Oh yes, this is for the Nobody who reads my blog. Them. Hi. It's about a character he came to know as The "Lo" who as the feature image goes, was definitely "cool" The Simple Start This began this morning's team meeting with my colleagues at OEGlobal. I was doing my updates for Open Education Week (what you have not added anything? Get over there!). Most of the attention and things shared are events, which are fine, but truly, its webinar after webinar after webinar, zooms all the way down. I try so hard to get other kinds of activities going, small things that let people explore or create something and share it. That's my DS106 roots at work. I have been launching a few of them already in the DO OE Week Activities in our OEG Connect Community space. All very DS106ish. Some creative stuff with Bryan Mather's Remixer Machine. Recasting an event title with ChatGPT to include cats. An exploration of the new Flickr Commons Maps. So far, well certainly that NOBODY character has been active there. I cant even get my colleagues to participate. I end up replying to myself or logging in as one of my sock puppet accounts. Skipping the ennui over excuses to not participate, I was talking about ways people can share something of their global location. We had all started our meeting sharing our weather, which ranges from me right now at -28ºC and huge snow drifts to me colleagues in South Africa and Costa Rica in t-shirts talking about the heat. My colleague Heather suggested something where people do a short video showing their weather. This started clicking off some neuron memories of something in the way way back early times of DS106, involving that legendary persona, Scott Lockman aka "Scottlo" who as a teacher of college age students in Tokyo, Japan had somehow found his way into the whacky anti-MOOC circus of DS106. Scott had oodles of media creativity and a bit of a snarky attitude. I recall he had worked as a radio broadcaster in the Army (?), knew a lot of practical chops about audio, and I am pretty sure its true that he was the first podcaster from Japan (I am pretty sure this guy is lying, but I will dig for evidence later). Anyhow I remembered that Scottlo had put out a series of these short, like 30 second audio or video spots where he did some kind of daily update that included the date, time, and weather, and some kind of mood level. I could not stop myself from opening the door to the rabbit hole. The Digging Begins I thought maybe it was something in the DS106 Assignment Bank, but nothing came up on a search for "Scottlo" (as it turns out from a later message, Eric Likness found a different assignment, with "Scott Lo" in the title, some kind of Oxford space issue?). I was pretty sure it was a Daily Create- a few hits came up referencing the guy on the current site, but none the target. I would think it was on the first version of the Daily Create which was once online at https://tdc.ds106.us but no more. I trudged off to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, truly one of the swiss army knives of web research. I am shocked how few people even know it exists. Shrug. I ended up paging back through the archives, starting with the most "recent" being TDC1334 the last on the old site before we moved to the current one. I tried paging back and doing a ctrl-F to look for "Scottlo" but each archive of the acrhive was not exactly consistent, and I could not seem to go back past a certain point (but I did find a few old assignments that I copied and put into the rotation for new ones in the next week or two - look for 'em at https://daily.ds106.us/ I think the one I added os scheduled for February 20. Round 2: Sideways Searching Was it there a reference in my old blog posts? In the early days many times I would write up a "making of" for a response to a DS106 challenge. I have 48 posts referencing the "lo" but none were what I sought (there was distraction re-reading old posts). Next idea. I used to respond to Daily Creates in some web site that had a frog logo-- no it was some kind of bird, the name was something like "fritter"? (I joke, right?) I flushed my entire account a few months ago, but thanks to some long ago genius of a wizard named Martin Hawksey, I have a full, searchable archive of my twittering (well through June 13, 2023 when the Dark Lord Elmo yanked the plug on the API, a thousand cockroaches should infest his bed). The first searches like "Scottlo weather" or "Scottlo forecast" came up dry. But resorting to just "Scottlo" as a search got me 767 matches. I quickly scanned for something that looked like maybe my own video reply when he put this out as a challenge. About 1/8 the scroll down all results, this looked like a possibility. The View on Twitter is dead, but the hyperlinks in the text do work. A tweet to #scottlo with a YouTube link Nope, but it was a fun trip of a goofy cover song I did for the Lo's birthday. Scroll on we go, and not too long until I hit jackpot. It's a tweet mentioning doing a @scottlo SRB Daily Update from Strawberry-- that's what this thing was called! The tweet I was seeking! My response for a daily create number 696 as a "SRB Daily Update" Jumping to my video, well heck, it was fun, I will embed it-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mna8RdrVUl4 In the YouTube caption I included the link to the daily create I was responding too- most likely, this would be the source. Here is another lesson in ther value of writing captions or descriptions on uploaded media- extra info. But now I have the url for Daily Create that likely explains what a "SRB Daily update" is all about -- http://tdc.ds106.us/tdc696 Going Back to the Wayback Machine To access this Daily Create, we have to go back into the Wayback Machine, Peabody. And we find Daily Create TDC 696 from December 4, 2013 which is "Create a @Scottlo Radio Broadcast (SRB) Daily Update Video" and we know what SRB is. Daily Create TDC 696: Create a @Scottlo Radio Broadcast (SRB) Daily Update Video The instructions are: Announce the full date “Today is December 4, 2013? Announce your geographic location Announce the current time Announce the current weather conditions (include outside temperature) Rate your day on your own special 1-10 rating scale Daily Create TDC 696: Create a @Scottlo Radio Broadcast (SRB) Daily Update Video But no video embed! Are we doomed? Do I go on a rant at how effing bad the web is? Nope, I go into View Source, find the iframe for the video embed. Source HTML reveals the link we have been looking for. It needs to be pried out of the weyback machine link, but now I can plunk into a web browser http://www.youtube.com/embed/jZk7jLUKGh0 which is the full screen, I can then click the title to have the YouTube link to embed here. This is Scottlo himself, quite young, sardonic, and in his style you think he is serious but if you know his shtick, you realize he is playing it up. But this is the definitive SRB Daily Update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZk7jLUKGh0 From ther YouTube page, one can find Scottlo's profile and another style of the SRB Update from a few days earlier. This is more the style I remember, where hes shows a local scene- one does not have to do as a selfie style, and it seems more interesting to see a visual of this place in the world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCiruvsX9dE And Why Did I go to this Extent? Well that mnight take some psychological profiling. I enjoy the chase, and finding clues, not giving up. It is rewarding to use the search engine that everyone talks about as being useless, and then some intuition and some luck. If I expect my software alone or some faceless algorithm to spit out an answer like a vending machine, I am yeilding my curioisty and inquiry thinking to a piece of software. It ain't about the technology or the interface, folks- its what we do with our grey matter upstairs. Now I can write up a 2025 version of the SRB Daily update, record an example, and post it on our OE Week activity space-- likel;y to sit there un replied. But I ain't stopping. Being creative, making things, figuring out how to end around when the systems fail? That's delight with technology. not dreading its crappiness. Yo, Lo, where ever you are, I hope you got your voice in a radio mic. Postscript Scottlo let his domain and blog go, and now https://scottlo.com is an Indonesian site selling slot machines. So it goes. In one of those old archived tweets I saw a link for a Blogger one he set up I think when was in his stage of creating personas. or Internet Sock Puppets, the blog of one Otto Paertz full of DS106 assignment responses. Featured Image: My own photo of a stove top control, it's the details that are fun to find in the world. More fun than typing words in a box and looking at what is spit out for you. I am a Fan of The Lo flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by Mom Smackley Maybe this is a series, but today's rant is a follow-up on How to Be a Social Media Dust Bunny*. Spam by email is likely now about 15+ years old, and has become such a commonality that many of us take it as a Fact of eLife (I fall in that camp). Over the last few years, a new tactic has emegered that people can harvest your address and dump it into a mass email tool and send you whatever the **** they want if they provide a link to opt out. I am opting out several times a week from crap I never asked for. So you are some hip startup in eLearning and trying to tap into the biz with some new service. Is this the image you want to project cause it smells like Dust Bunny Poop: and the text, for your bunny sniffing pleasure (my emphasis added): eLearning Learning has established partnerships with several leading content and distribution partners. Our partners have asked us to send you our personalized email newsletters that will include their content and content from many other thought leaders in the industry. This is a part of an open content exchange that relies on social signals to identify the best content on a daily and weekly basis. You can personalize this content by providing us with your Twitter and LinkedIn information. We will see your profile and what you are sharing and that will help us to make your personalized newsletter even better. Personalize it Now To get personalized content, Click Here. You can also follow us on twitter at: @elearningposts We look forward to getting to know you and providing you with the best content available. Please let us know if you have thoughts or ideas on how to make this service better. Sincerely, The eLearning Learning Curators editors@aggregage.com Their business parts want to send me shit? I never asked for it, and in my super basic understanding of the CAN SPAM act, not providing a direct opt-out is a violation of the law, subject of fines up to $16,000, specifically: Offering a Way to Reject Future Messages "“ Commercial email senders must provide easily-accessible, legitimate ways for recipients to reject future messages from that sender. So I replied to the message: I did not ask for nor sign up for this email and the lack of an opt out in this message puts you in direct violation of the CAN SPAM Act. If you do not confirm my removal from your list in the next 48 hours, I shall file a report with the FCC. No response yet. Feel free to retweet this: @elearningposts I did not request your newsletter. Your email to me w/o an immediate opt-out option is a violation of the CAN SPAM act.— Alan Levine (@cogdog) January 11, 2012 Fracking Dust Bunnies. * "Dust Bunny" is a euphemism for another word I dont want your Mom to read in a blog post. UPDATE: Later the same day: Tony Karrer responded by email and confirmed I was removed from the list and that they would make sure the opt-outs are in all future mailings. Sure, I vented here like a mad cow, but it worked! I've been tinkering with my simple approach of using MovableType as a publisher engine to create podcast feeds and content listings for audio content that is used across several different web sites. While there are many ways one could go about this, I am finding this to be efficient and fast. I only have about 7 feeds set up, but they are pushing across multiple web sites, with different design layouts. This allows me to create a single directory of content and RSS files that can be accessed by any of our other PHP web pages. So the main podcast entry page lists all the casts on our site, and th elistings provide links to web sites connected to the audio, a description, a URL for the MP3 file, and now, stealing the idea from the EDUCAUSE blogs, the slick niftyplayer, and embedded flash audio player, e.g.: But by setting up categories, I can have content filtered to feeds that are associated with specific project, such as our Dialogue Day podcasts, Ocotillo podcasts, and our Online Learning Group podcasts. MovableType generates the correct RSS 2.0 feeds with proper enclosure tags, as well as generates the small text files that are used to provide the content to these pages. There is also another template that provides the content used to display as "What is Podcasting" info on these different pages. It works well because it is not publishing a full blog, just some small bits of content files. For example, a snapshot of my current directory includes: where *.inc are the main podcats listings, *_nav.inc are shorter listings that are just links to the sites that include the audio, and *.xml is a podcast feed. Below I will describe in a bit more detail how it is done and provide a download of the template files. To use these you will need to * have a web site that uses PHP for its content pages * have an understanding of linking to web directories up and down a web server structure * use or be able to set up MovableType on your server (I use the last free version, 2.661, but it ought to work on the 3.x versions) (more…) While nervously planning my first major event at the Maricopa Community Colleges as a young instructional technologist my stomach was a mess. My mentor, Vice Chancellor Alfredo de los Santos, assured me that all I needed to do was to get people in the room and something worthwhile to do. Like many of Alfredo's sayings, that one has held true. Today was the third weekly online gathering (via Zoom) for the Extended Lunch sessions I've been hosting for the eCampus Ontario Extend project. The idea is just to set up a time to meet, and talk about whatever comes to mind of people who show up. How often to we get such unstructured time? And today worked well with our group of @stevensecord @IrenequStewart @ProfessorDannyS and @NurseKillam. [caption id="attachment_66459" align="aligncenter" width="760"] Danny has this idea about to unleash on us...[/caption] Some loose notes follow, assisted by other items in the chat log. Several folks still mentioned some struggle with the Extend Modules, especially the Scholar one (see the video conversation I had with David Porter on the Scholar Module) and also the Technologist one. I urged them to interpret the activities in a way that makes sense and meaning to them (e.g. if their faculty role was different that having a class now, there are other places/approaches for doing SoTL research). We quickly went into some news shared by Danny about Microsoft purchasing Flipgrid, and many of the features that were fee-based would now be free. It's a platform for posting video question and response discussions, with many features for setting up (e.g. limit to 90 second responses). See more at https://flipgrid.com/: Flipgrid is where your students go to share ideas and learn together. It’s where students amplify and feel amplified. It’s video the way students use video. Short. Authentic. And fun! That’s why it’s the leading video discussion platform used by tens of millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families in 150 countries. Irene noted that for accessibility it's a great feature that automatic close captioning is built in, and as Danny reported, transcripts can be downloaded. Laura asked in chat if it can be used with an LMS, and I believe there was a "yes". Several said they use it as a way for student introductions. And it has been used for a previous Daily Extend (authored by Steve). But what other ways might it be used? It was suggested for in-class students to record concepts, teach each other. From the FlipGrid website: Don’t just ask a question. Expand their world and ignite a discussion! Foster previous experiences, share a booktalk, discuss current projects and events, delve deep into STEAM ideas, or collaborate on anything. If you believe it’s valuable for students to verbalize their learning ... that’s a Flipgrid Topic! You are 100% in control. You can moderate videos, provide custom feedback, set the privacy rules, and much more. We had a bit of round robin of talk about, for productivity software, whether people are "Microsoft People" or "Google People" (or "best tool at the moment" people). There was a question about content on YouTube being taken down, and what that might mean for individuals (probably little) via this tweet from Grant Potter https://twitter.com/grantpotter/status/1009591562458861568 The latest update to this story suggests the issue has been cleared up, but we recognize that Google/YouTube gets to call the shots (and also, hosting video servers is no fun at all). I was able to watch this beautiful animation (and be very drawn into it) by the Blender Foundation, one of the organizations thought to be affected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-rmzh0PI3c We talked a bit about domains of ones own, and how that was something available to Extend Participants. Laura shared some info about how she uses her domain nursekillam.com. I'm planning on running a four week mini "Domain Camp" starting July 9 as a way for people new to domains (or experienced) learn more about how things work and what is possible). Then, inspired by this tweet stream by Jesse Strommel, was a lively discussion on plagiarism, the role (and problems) of tools like TurnItIn. https://twitter.com/Jessifer/status/1009529736220020737 And in what I really like seeing happening in this kind fo gathering, Danny asked for some feedback on dealing with an issue of grading participation in group projects. Not quite of relevance, I shared how in one of my DS106 courses where students did group radio show projects, one group cleverly did a show, "The Science of Group Projects" about dysfunctional group projects! I found a link (maybe for my own nostalgia sake) http://ds106.us/wp-content/audio/spr13-radio/dot-commers-S13-ds106radio.mp3 Danny noted that he tracks what people do in groups by having students communicate in WhatsApp groups. There was some interest in asking Danny to do a demo for us next week. Yes, the hour went quick, but was really engaging open discussion. I'm putting out a challenge next week for our lunch crew to recruit a colleague to join in, we have room at the table. And also this suggestion: https://twitter.com/NurseKillam/status/1009870062172475394 The lunch table will be open next Thursday at 12:30pm EST, pull up a chair and join us. Featured Image: Pizza photos shared to twitter by @thomcochrane - a friend and colleague from Auckland New Zealand, who inspires me with his home cooked pizzas (I've sampled them in person). As far as licenses for tweeted images... well who know what? I'm fairly sure Thom would be okay with this. https://twitter.com/thomcochrane/status/1009688090770698240/ Yum! For no other reason that it was fun to play with, using the cutting web 2.X tools of BombayTV, we have the latest in the tales of edupunk. Grapheine : Webdesigners, illustrateurs, graphistes, agence de com, Paris Lyon A linktribution goes to the Adventures of Bollywood Blackboardwala by Randy Thornton for yielding this site that allows you to write your own sub titles for a clip from a Bollywood movie. Jim, you coulda been somebody, you coulda been a contenda.... flickr foto The Result of Our Online Application Programavailable on my flickr Over the past two years we developed and implemented an online system for faculty to submit applications for professional growth summer projects, for their reps to review applications, for a committee to submit their scores. Sadly, they insist on this-- printed versions of all 120+ applications. Can anyone hear the trees falling in the forest, or is it just me? Sigh. Big sigh. Huge sigh. We've moved most of the process of our faculty professional growth summer projects application to an online system, home built. Applicants create their drafts online, electroncally send drafts to colleagues, submit to their college reps for approvals, reps can return for edits, review committee members log in to enter their scores and comments, and the results are tallied to a giant display so the committee can make their final recommendations. All of that is online. However, our committee of X people still insist on this - a pile of X sets of paper copies of all 127 applications. Sigh. I am staring across the gulf of the digital mindset gap, among the tourists who do not speak the digital language, or do so with thck accents, and it is looking broader than the Grand Canyon. And not nearly as scenic. Sigh. cc licensed flickr photo shared by AlyssssylA I get about one of these a day. I guess there is a giant "SUCKER" sign pasted on the back of me on the internet. Do you think it is that hard to spot a machine generated body of text? C'mon, I did Mad Libs in the 1970s. Dear [sucker's name], I really appreciate your collection of information for teachers on the [sucker's blog name] website, [sucker's blog url]. I have also found your post "[last blog post]" very interesting. Yes, [sucker's blog name] is one of those sites I keep coming back to. I'll keep this short as I know you probably get a ton of email. I have developed a tool [insert name here] that I think your readers will find interesting. It is a useful thing to post on your page so you and your readers can [verb made into something web 2.0ish]. You can see a demo of it in action at [my crappo URL] and you can see it in action at sites like [obscure web site with familiar sounding name] and [another web site name, yeah they ignored my email but who's gonna check]. I'd ask that you insert an [ad, widget, big hunking ugly ass cpu crushing flash banner] onto your site and in return I can offer you [something I'll never deliver]. Or I'd be wiling to write a guest blog post at [sucker's blog name] - if you want to see my writing in action, look no farther than {obscure blog url here], [a blog url I own but registered under my cat's name], or [my mommy's blog url]. I'll make it as easy as possible to work together so we can both achieve mutual [random buzzword]. You just sit back and watch the [allusion to wealth] roll in. Let me know when we can start to achieve [another buzzword] together! Sincerely, Billy Bob Spammer There is no originality in spam, none at all. Created by morons for suckers. Editors Note: This blog has a strict policy agains guest posts, but sometimes you have to relax the rules. My pal Bob stopped by unexpectedly and rather made himself at home. He wrote this. Heya. This here Arizona scenery is more spectacular than Alan let on. Life got a little crazy last week, and I bolted from Malibu, hit the highway they call I-40, and made the turn south at Winslow. So yeah. A big pile of mail as usual last week. Some suspicious letter from the "King of Sweden," as if. I did open the big envelope from Publishers Clearinghouse, and would you know? I did not win again. But that letter from the King. Yeah. Supposedly I won some kind of noble prize and the King is going to give me a few dollars for it. Bunches of people on the internet got arguing, and my phone would not stop. So I headed for Arizona. To get my head cleared and see some of that long blue sky. Alan was busy building some kind of wood structure out in his driveway, like he is preparing for some mean end of time. I'd think this surreal election is getting to his head. I'll keep my eye on him. He said I could sing on some kind of 106 internet radio thing. This sure does not look like any kind of radio station I've sat in, and I have seen a lot. But it lit up, and I launched into "Shelter from the Storm". Probably sounded off, I'm rusty. And my voice... maybe that's what the King liked, they say the Swiss like to yodel. Here's a bit of today's sound: [audio mp3="http://cogdogblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/some-guy-named.bob_.mp3"][/audio] I had me planned a bit more, but some Scottish guy and a psychology lady in the U.K. booted me off the radio, they said it was about "bullets". And they call us Americans gun crazy! But I will be hanging around Alan's place a few more days. I might have to share the couch with his dog. But he said Wednesday night might be a good time to light up thar internet radio. We'll see, I'm just like something the wind blew in. Top / Featured Image: Photo of my back porch with an obvious insertion of some guy name Bob. Very questionable use of his image. I thought he left a hand written permission, but its illegible. Late in the afternoon I lurked in the session on "Cross-Media Cross-Pollination: Mashing Up Video Games and ARGs" a panel session with Tony Walsh (Phantom Compass), Dan Hon (Six to Start), Dee Cook (addlepated.net) all people involved with creating top shelf ARGs (look it up yourself). It seemed the audience was pretty knowledgeable about Alternate Reality Games, and the session covered ground on some of the successes of ones like ilovebees and World Without Oil. The intent was to talk about how what works well in video games can be used in ARGs. There was a bit of discussion about the numbers of players (not remembering exactly) and some questioning about how many of them were active. Someone in the audience wanted to know the business case/benefit for runnning one. Another question was about the implications of ARGs that are so real people think that someone is really missing or in trouble, and what responsible the game makers have (I think the advice was "get legal coverage"). I decided to venture up and ask a question, admitting I was an "ARG wanna be" and that i was interested in hot implement one on higher education, with potential for teaching problem solving, media literacy, etc. My question was about how to go about it, as the thought of the necessary complexity to create an ARG paralyzed me. "I dont want to create a lame ARG". First advice, "hire a writer"; then I asked how many people it takes to create one. They did not answer exactly but comapred the budgets to that of a medium scale film production. Sure I thought, thats easy to do if you are a software game maker. Their final advice was to start small (doh) and develop iteratively. Ok. But then I found out there was a great benefit of asking a question, because I talked and got a card from a game software writer and talked to another colleague from North Texas University who was working on an ARG for libraries. Yes, SXSW can be great for making connections. And going to the parties. And playing the games. And... I have to say that the sessions I saw in panel format ran very well, no dead space, equal coverage, and good talka nd response with audience. From the dark ages of building web resource collections, I have always stressed the importance of having 1-2 sentences to describe what a web site is about-- other wise, what you end with is a linkatorium, a laundry list of URLs or site titles and no context. And this is that is key for me, in the light age, when I tag something for my del.icio.us collection, I want that snippet that describes a site. And it is even better if it is a chunk of text I can highlight, since when I use my bookmark tool (the one my marklet maker not in the one del.icio.us hands out), that chunk of text goes into my notes field. It's gotta be short and sweet, since del.icio.us truncates at (??) 256 characters?? But woe is my blood pressure, when I cannot find that chunk of text on the front page, must less the about section what the heck a site is about? Is that too much to ask? I mean sometimes, the about section does not tell you "about" the site, it ends up being "about the cool people who made it". Or it just does not even explain. Or worse, when it has an about, and it still does not say what it is about. So based in Stephen Downes' nod today, I am checking out "academici". Hmmm, it has red, tan, and green shades of color... and here in the middle, this must be a description: Welcome to "academici. Knowledge networks". Here, you can extend your personal and academic networks. Good reasons to enroll: academici is successful, because it combines the interests of - knowledge workers who are interested in their special interest areas, topics and problems - people who are interested in relating to others, sharing information and knowledge, but also friendship and life - institutions who would like to support and enhance their knowledge workers and all the other people dealing with them and their institutions - companies who spend billions for R&D, but could save millions if they could easier link up with researchers: - secure data protection, no advertising, no direct sales, no spam Nice, but... what does that really say? I am seeing words, but am not "getting it." What does academici do? It "extends my personal and academic networks". is it a dessert? Is it a floor wax? So we have to do, following intutition to the link for "About academici": 'academici' is successful, because it combines the interests of - knowledge workers who are interested in specific topics and problems, looking out for colleagues and partners - people who are interested in relating to others, sharing information and knowledge, but also friendship and life - institutions who would like to support and enhance their researchers and all the other people dealing with them and their institutions - companies who spend billions for R&D, but could save millions if they could easier link up with knowledge workers I am two clicks in, several paragraphs consumed, and I still have no clue what the ______ this site is about. Now, it may sound like I am picking on academici, and I am not (there are piles of other web sites that somehow obfuscate their purpose). If Stephen recommended it, it is worth digging a bit more. And I bet some will be thinking I am just poking with a sharp stick. I did not even get to examining their site because I was blown away that a web project could roll out with some a muddy entrance. My guess is the folks behind it have focused on some deeply nested level of functionality and programming, and have tossed up the user's interface as an after thought. "Let's just copy some stuff from the junk we wrote for fishing for funding". This embodies the designers dilemma- the folks that build a web site know exactly its purpose and intent. Everyone else has to guess. And if it is not bonehead simple obvious, in short sentences one can copy and paste, then they are doing themselves and their visitors a dis-service. Good writing takes time, effort, care. Good writing has thought and sweat poured into every verb, pronoun, and comma (spelling might be over rated ;-) There is writing, good writing, and spraying words into HTML just to have something there. Note the beauty of the work Stephen Downes does- he writes the about statement the site itself lacks, "Academici is a social networking service for academics. Has a free version and a fee-based upgrade. Fairly standard set of social networking features with group articles. Multilingual.". Maybe they can hilite that, copy/paste it... When I say “Accordion” your first association may be the musical instrument. But here we are talking about a simple, display-oriented (no built in feedback) H5P content type that has potential use in Pressbooks. In the H5P Kitchen project work so far, we have seen use of these for end of chapter review of terminology, but also as a quick knowledge check where a question is presented in a form where the reader is asked to think about their response for toggling open an explanation. Accordions can have a place in creating practice activities, often in the context of other content, text or H5P. They are like drawers of content that can be opened and closed. One issue that might come up is in the exported versions of Pressbooks content, as H5P are not rendered but replaced with a link to view them online. So the accordion music goes silent in non web-based version. Also note that the H5P Accordion can display formatted text plus lists, quotes, but no media. e.g. images. There is an alternative that uses standard HTML tags that are also accessible and can appear in exports. Meet the use of the <details> disclosure tags playing here the part of an Accordion. What Are Accordions For?(show/hide) The H5P documentation spells it out nicely: Reduce the amount of text presented to readers by using this responsive accordion. Readers decide which headlines to take a closer look at by expanding the title. Excellent for providing an overview with optional in-depth explanations. You can see that this might be effective to reduce long lists of information, references, or breaking content into sections more like a miniature outline. Or even to present a question for a learner to consider before revealing a suggested response. In this case, an Accordion is used just demonstrate itself. Foot Stomping Music(show/hide) Well, that was silly. It would be useful maybe if one could include images here, but alas not in H5P. But we can here! Something Extra Sneaky!(show/hide) Were you expecting that? Have we reached some form of H5P Inception? This all came about from a request for something different. Question for my #edtech gurus using @pressbooks. Looking to spice up my book with some tabbed content nav and wondering if I can drop some javascript in there? I don’t see an H5P content type that can do that. Accordion yes, tabs no? @edtechfactotum @cogdog @dendroglyph— Dennis Green (@chefdgreen) March 10, 2021 Several responses later, Steel Wagstaff (our friendly Pressbooks connection) chimed in with this suggestion. Have you considered the good old <details> HTML element? https://t.co/bDz6r8vhdn No JS needed, is fairly accessible (see https://t.co/BEtRLSIyEW), and works well in exports. What’s not to like? ?— Steel Wagstaff (@steelwagstaff) March 11, 2021 I thought I knew much about HTML but this structure was brand new to me! It does require that you flip your Pressbooks editor to the HTML mode, and enter content between a tag structure like this (see more information about the HTML tags): <details><summary>Title that appears on screen</summary>This is everything that appears when the accordion/disclosure is opened.</details> It’s not without issues. The appearance is not quite the same in different browsers. For Chrome and Safari, you automatically get a side pointing triangle for the summary text that turns downward when the drawer is open. This does not appear in Firefox (and perhaps other browsers). Also, the summary is technically a clickable object, but the cursor remains a cross hair when positioned over it. Both parts look not all that different from the body text, except for a highlight box around the summary tags My examples here have made use of custom CSS to change background colors, change the cursor for summary to a pointer, and a little trick to format anything inside the <em>…</em> tags within a summary (e.g. “show/hide”) to be right aligned and smaller font. CSS presented as an image? Ugh. I have banged my head too long on getting a FeedWordPress syndicated post to display preformatted code. Copy the CSS from the original post! These styles could be modified if they do not work for you. This is where the styles listed above can be inserted. Pressbooks: Go to Appearance -> Custom Styles and paste the CSS styles into the space for “Web Styles”WordPress: Go to Customize -> Custom CSS and paste in the CSS styles I have seen other approaches. For example in the OER By Discipline textbook section on sources for open media, long lists of content are nicely collapsed, shown here in a 3 screen animated GIF. The plus sign indicates something to open, and the minus sign to close again. from https://opentextbc.ca/oerdiscipline/chapter/multimedia-collections/ For a detailed treatment of not only how to create these but also a thorough treatment of how it meets accessibility, see Collapsible Sections from the Inclusive Components site. Using this method involved much more complex raw HTML editing and use of SVG tags, but we present it just to provide one more approach. It also might require use of an extra bit of Javascript code that most Pressbooks authors will not have access to install. This is maybe a lot of detail for a simple thing to flip content drawers open and close, but we want our H5P kitchen visitors to know what’s in the cabinet and some consideration for choosing between approaches. We also would love to learn of more creative ways to use simple H5P content types like the Accordion. It’s often not just within the tool itself, but as we saw in the Vital Signs project, how different tools can be pieced together or how the context around the H5P can generate some deeply interactive Pressbooks dining experiences. What might you use these for? Image Credit: Unsplash photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi in dog we trust by w00kie posted 11 Mar '05, 5.57pm MST PST on flickr In these turbulent times when all the so-called leaders are suspect, put your trust into the most worthy hands. Do not be fooled by imitators, trust the dog, any dog with their scent working. Since I am up in Strawberry on my 28 kbps straw to the internet, I will not be able to grab this cast, but from the description, looks worth a listen (as well as the Y.uk? blog itself: "Well the answer is - Why Not or Y.not? I guess it is a tongue in cheek response to the tagging sites like del.icio.us. We will be posting views on up to the minute emergent technologies in education and examples of practitioners using them in the classroom.). See Skype interview with Tim Rylands, the teacher who uses MYST in his classroom-- excuse my lasziness in grabbing the full post: Suddenly it's cool to learn. Earlier this month CNN ran a story about how an English teacher was leading the world in his use of gaming in class - after only 2 hours of this appearing, he was inundated with hundreds of mails wanting to know how he was doing it and suddenly he found he was getting hits on his site - www.timrylands.com, in the order of tens of thousands from all over the world. Learn 4 Life approached the 2005 BECTA award winner Tim Rylands for an interview at the up-and-coming technical seminar on creativity at the British Library. He is giving a presentation about his work with virtual landscapes in schools; but when we realised that he had Skype, we quickly hooked up to an i-River iFP 790 , took a line in from the laptop and attached a broadcast mike, then monitored the whole thing over headphones. The result is a first Skype interview podcast for mainstream education in the UK. The ad hoc 42 minute interview covers Tim’s creative use of Myst in literacy hour, how he writes rock music for children and his plans for future projects. This is the interview everyone wanted but we got there first. Anyhow, some of you may get listen to it before me, so let me know if it plays as good as it is described: http://www.l4l.co.uk/mp3/tim_rylands@L4L.mp3 I've often asserted that blogging is a social process, that the mere publishing, caterwauling, prettying up templates, is only a piece of it-- blogging is also participating in other people's blogs. There is nothing that will energize a budding blogger more than getting feedback, and the impact is even larger when it comes from someone distant or unknown. It validates (or invalidates, or infuriates) a blogger's writing. It says that you are not just spewing words out into the ether, that they land somewhere. And it connects us. My favorite example described by Matthew Kirschenbaum as "Comment Blogging" he describes the actions of François Lachance who lacks a published blog, but instead blogs in the comments space of other blogs: I can predict the range of theoretical positions such a "blog" (should we call it a comment blog?) might be said to occupy: this is blogging in the margins, distributed blogging at the interstices of the discourse network. François appears on no one's blogroll, his entries are not tracked by blogdex or weblogs.com or similar sites. He is an utter non-entity in the standard ecological renderings of the blogosphere, yet he unquestionably has a presence "here." Consider my friend and colleague Brian Lamb's blog request for suggestions to presentation he had to deliver and how the network delivers the goods: You never know what might happen when you make a blanket appeal for feedback, such as I did in the run-up to the blogs and wikis talk tomorrow night at the VPL. People are busy, and I asked some deceptively difficult questions. I'm simply overwhelmed by the responses I've gotten back. Within minutes I got a trackback from Germany (wish I'd paid a bit more attention in my high school classes). Christopher Sessums contributed some notes toward what became a pretty groovy wiki-based presentation of his own, demonstrating how to be tremendously supportive of others while working to achieve one's own objectives. Vicki Davis pointed to an array of wonderful multimedia she is using with her students, it's easy to see why this work was named Wikispace of the month last December. I've been fortunate in 2.5 years of blogging to get some attention/linkage from others, but cannot recall a post that got more than 10, pretty paltry when you see the 5, 100+ comment streams some über bloggers get. Also, I meet a lot of people in conferences and emails who tell me they "read/like" CogDogBlog (though I can never remember seeing any comments- they are silent blog consumers, which I need to say up front- there is nothing wrong with lurking). So I decided to fish around my database tables to see what the numbers said. My copy of Spam Karma gives some basic stats- going back to January 1, 2005 before I even implemented SK2, it has caught 1438 spam messages, and I moderated another 78 into the pile, and that there are 670 legitimate comments. To get a grasp on the unique commenters, I did a quick mySQL query: SELECT comment_author, count(*) as acnt FROM `wp_comments` WHERE comment_date > '2005-01-01' GROUP by comment_author ORDER BY acnt DESC which says find me all comment authors since January 1, 2005, tell me how many comments they made, and list them in order of most commenting authors. So the results give me 380 unique commenters (well if they did use the same name in the comment form), which actually is quite a lot. I don't even know 380 people, you'd have to go down an order of magnitude and divide again by 5 or so. So thanks to my top commenters: Alan 146 D'Arcy Norman 76 Alan Levine 32 Gardner 27 Cheryl Colan 26 Scott Leslie 21 Stephen Downes 21 Bruce Landon's Weblog for Students 17 Brian 17 Situativity 16 Abject Learning 14 XplanaZine 10 Gulp- that's me doing a lot of commenting back, 146 instances, no wonder I feel like I am not getting any work done! It's a little bit worse on our MCLI iForum- a print+web publication from our office we turned into web-only and publish with WordPress. One of the added benefits (we hoped) was an ability for readers, and mainly our internal Maricopa audience, to "interact" with the articles. We ended most articles with some open ended questions, yet 2 months after publishing there are 8 legitimate comments (the last one more than a month ago), and 197 spam attempts caught by SK2. We got individual phone calls, emails, and verbal positive responses, but there is some unseen inertial force keeping our folks from making public comments (and they can choose anonymity with a fake name). We are rather stumped by this.... so what is it that prevents readers from interacting with blogs? Does it only happen when there are points provided by a teacher? I know not everything needs a comment, and I certainly do not post comments on everything I read. Commenting- never underestimate its power, reach, and affect (unless you are a spammer, die a foul fetid death you wastes of human flesh!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gykuG37Ww6k I will let the video do the talking here- meet my Strawberry Arizona friend and neighbor Jim, a man full of stories from his years in aviation industry. He recently decided to pass on his pride, a bright blue 1973 Volkswagen Beetle named "Bob". Today I visited to take some photos and record hom telling me the story of Bob. This was assembled quickly in iMovie, and yes, I went lazy and took the Ken Burms fever pill. The older photos were ones Jim shared from his computer taken when he was first working on Bob. The audio is truly Bob's purr, recorded, along with the interview, on my iPhone. Go, Bob, Go! cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Jack Zalium I'm slinging the axe, and going deep into the mine, building a new syndication site for my colleagues at Virginia Commonwealth University. It's a bit under wraps, or so I guess, so I can be deliberately vague. But the idea is to document what we are doing, even if vague, as we do it. Syndicate it in. Mix it up. Spin it back out. The key word is... thought vectors So far all you find for that is comic bubbles. By the way, that image aboce? a google image search? Saved to an image easy with Image Quilts (go with Tufte). Is this some sort of lorem ipso mumbo jumbo? You betchya. A few weeks ago twitter and some blogs were all a' gushing about the demo of Google Wave like it was the new Shimmer, maybe even more than a dessert and a floor wax. I tweeted some snark about the hype -- a bit foolishly since I had not seen the demo. I failed to heed my own warnings of judging a technology from the outside (well, I cannot help but be from outside, since all I have to go on is an 80 minute demo). Until today on the flight to Hawaii, when I watched the whole demo on my iPhone. I'm surprised the plane held steady with the number of times my jaw dropped or I yelled, "wow". So I cannot do much except say wow-- but--but--but if the wave does break (in the positive surfer sense), this could be a huge game changer. Not only does it change email and communication as Rasmussen proposes in the beginning ("what if we were to invent email today?") -- it could be the end of the static web as we know it. Now of course, with web 2.0 we think it is really not static, but the web on wave looks a whole lot different than what we have now- this very blog post becomes a conversation that is always being updated, edited. There is also this sense of information, communication becoming free of the technology boxes we have them now- so the same content can be modified, edited, discussed via a browser, phone, blog, wave client, some remote programmed bot.. It could change the sense of what we think of as documents, as they become distributed yet connected-- the piece about people working simultaneously yet in a chained publish model (pieces of one wave are updated causing instant propagate changes where-ever that web is used. The notion of playing back a wave goes way being watching a video of MediaWiki updates-- did you catch the small piece about just playing back a single person's contributions? Doesn't this have some compelling interest for assessment, to be able to track a single student's contributions to a larger group project? Is Google Wave the manifestation of those long ago (for me dead) dreams of reusable learning objects-- but with much more? Another piece that just jazzed me was both presenters manipulating and marking up a Google Map together. This has been one missing piece of Google Maps / Earth- the social layer that we see in virtual worlds. With wave, we can be co-exploring (or heck field trips) in maps, maybe Earth? Things maybe to be added or I missed include: I saw them adding users o a Wave one at a time. I'd like to see an ability to define groups, and groups made o groups, so you could mass add people together. Or perhaps you tag contacts, and assemble them that way. It wasn't clear what kinds of permission layers you can add- it looks like everything is editable. If that is the case (and I am not sure I mind), then-- everything becomes a Wiki (and conversely, as someone else suggested, wikis as we know them go the way of the doodoo bird). What if a wave is "complete" can it be frozen as a final product? What if I want to let Jane and Nancy edit, but only let Harvey view a wave (or maybe harvey can only comment, but not edit). Waving seemed fine for 2, 3, 5 people-- what happens when 100s are in one? 1000s? So I have sipped the wavy cool-aid, and it is now factoring into plans for a major new NMC collaboration site I will be charged with designing this year. While this is all exciting for the technogeek in me, the bigger question is -- is it too much a cognitive leap for people to jump form their inbox? Is it too complex for people to grok? What will be the big feaure, app that will make people drop the fears to try hopping on a surf board and get on a real wave? I am paddling out there to see.... I've been daunted by the ds106 Spreadsheet Invasion assignment where you are charged with creating an animation using the software designed for... sales reports, etc. It is, ironically, the first Design Assignment. And one that is least frequently done. But thankfully, it was my student Tiffany who undertook it bravely in her Tale of a Flower version that pushed me over the hump of inertia to try this. So here, I tell in a rather horribly inaccurate fashion, the process of Geology that form sedimentary rock (invasions of inland seas, rivers, and desert environments over time) and uplift/eroison processes that shape canyons. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhen9RSGj0U I did this while idling time yesertday at BWI airport, wine was involved (Malbec, I love relaxing at Vino Vola). A lady at the next time working on NUMBERS in her spreadsheet must have been tsk-tsking me coloring in cells. There is a fair bit of slop, I was not careful to move the selection box (I could not find a way to get it out of the way). But more or less, I just kept adding to it, coloring selections of cells and reverting them to no fill as needed- I ended up with 82 screen shots. When I wanted to elevate the landscape, I just deleted 3 rows from the top, and colored the empty cells at the bottom. I used an old Mac file renaming tool to change the file names to be "geo01.png, geo02.png" etc. This is because in QuickTime PLayer 7 You can do File- > Open Image Sequence..., select the first one, and it grabbs all the rest into a video file. I set the frame rate to be 1 second... Which was pretty horrible, so I brought into iMovie. I broke the main clip into sections by finding the pots I wanted to have different speeds, and splitting the clip (control click for menu, select "Split Clip") Then for each clip, I use the little menu in the top left to do a Clip Adjustment, and change the speed to make it go faster or slower: Beyond that, it was a matter of adding some titles, a few transitions. I grabbed a bit of the opening of John Mayall and the Blues Breakers "The Mist of Time" as a sound track. Another little trick is get some black screen on the end. You cannot use the "Fade to Black" transition without something to fade into. Sometimes I import a black PNG, but what I did here was to add a title sequence with just spaces in it (no text), which creates a video sequence of black. I could then extend the audio sound track to match, so there is some outtro music. This was quick and slightly dirty, I'd like to think about how to do something more elegant. It would be more useful to do some things with different sized columns, maybe make them square so you have pixel shapes to work with. Or perhaps the animation could eb done by creating the action as a long horizontal sequence, and doing a screen recording as you scroll the horizontal. But I love using Excel for something it was not built for, this is so Ed Parkourish. I am not sure yet what to make of wists - visual bookmarks, yet another variant following the flickr del.icio.us trail through the mountain pile of folksonomic tag mania. Create a wist account, load a browser bar tool, and when you are surfing and want to track a site in your "collection" (a del.icio.us task), wist offers to create an icon based on any image it can find in the page (quasi flickr-like). Slap on some tags, and see where your tags lead you. There is a friend of a friend thing there too, but I lack friends (apparently). You end up with a collection of tagged icons representing sites you have "wisted". Since it syndicates, this is another one in the pack of Rip. Mix. Feed. I am wisting but I have no idea what I am doing. Did you catch the obits? Teemu Leinonen, one of the members of the FLOSSE Posse has bravely cast out the notice in "Learning objects - Is the King naked?". He argues that the IEEE definitions of "any entity, digital or non digital hat may be used for learning, education or teaching" is broad enough to mean nothing, or that if everything is a learning object, what does that mean? Because any entity in the universe - digital or non-digital - can be used for learning, education and teaching... I know that many people are using the term "learning object" when they talk about pictures, graphics, simulations, piece of texts, video and audio clips that are specifically designed for learning purpose and can be combined together to build up larger learning material units. This all makes sense. But why should we call them "learning objects" and not just learning content, or pieces of learning content? I could not agree more. All the piles of effort to define what us a "learning object" has gone back and forth across the academic papers and presentations, but in the end, I must bring up the ghost of Clara Peller to inquire, "Where's the Beef?" Meaning, where is all the content that has been created form the re-use of all the things piled up inside the "repositories"? Where has a so-called object been "recontextualized" with a set of others into something new? I've been looking for a while and coming up empty. Submitted to perusal is the New Conceptual Framework Learning Object, heralded as: This learning object helps students struggling to create a conceptual framework or concept map for a major project or thesis. It includes narratives, examples and resources to guide students through a 5 step voyage of learning. The roughly 2 hour experience with this object will be time well spent by students or teachers struggling with the challenges of grounding their research and developing questions in an appropriate research framework. I am not leveraging any criticism at this piece of content- it is nicely done with a consistent map/voyage metaphor, and is rich in media. Again, I like the content. I might see linking to it or recommending it to someone. Check it out first: http://innovation.dc-uoit.ca/cloe/lo/cf/. What I find curious is a great del of self referential statements in the so-called learning object aiming to reinforce it's existence: This learning object has been designed so that you can navigate through it in two ways. You may follow the prescribed route as indicated on the map or you can jump from island to island in whatever order you desire. We strongly recommend that the first time through you follow the suggested sequence. You should use the navigation buttons provided in this learning object and avoid using the "Back" button in your browser. What can I do with this "object"? How can I re-use it? How can I "recontextualize it"? What is it exactly I can do with it? Here is the big answer. I can link to it. It is a web site, a pretty one, one with a variety of media, but it is really a nice piece of content. If it were published 15 years ago as a HyperCard stack, or 7 years again a CD-ROM, would we call it a "learning object"? I see nothing about it's billboard sign declaring "I AM A LEARNING OBJECT" that lends itself to any more re-use than any of the other say, 10 gizzillion things on the net (again, I am NOT leveraging criticism at the media, the content). Well the point has been labored to death here. What I see, think this is going is more in line with the presentation made by Richard Baraniuk (Rice University) at our Ocotillo Retreat last week, "Open-Access Publishing in Education - Building Communities and Sharing Knowledge". While a good chunk of his presentation was meant to stimulate controversy and discussion over his end of the Cretaceous Era prediction for text book publishers (duck, dinosaurs!), in reference to his vision and efforts with the Connexions Project, he refers to not "learning objects" in "repositories" but "learning content" deposited in a "commons" (deliberately with ties to Creative Commons). For more, see the PDF version [2.3 Mb] of Richard's slides. Maybe I too am just arguing over naming conventions, but it is no wonder audiences and faculty groups I work with are still fuzzy eyed when I try to described "learning objects". What have we gotten for all the expended energy? I do have to acknowledge the expertise and perspective of Scott Leslie (see his take on the FLOSSE decree), that regardless of the road we take, keeping or putting a fork in learning objects, to not forgot the original reasons behind the LO movement But my small fear is that in throwing out these terms, we'll also throw out many of the problems they were supposed to be trying to solve - namely enabling learning content to be shared and found through means that were otherwise unavailable (e.g. searching on pedagogically useful terms that were either not directly part of the resources themselves, or else for resources that weren't served well by conventional web search engines), and having formats for learning content that allowed it to be reused by as many systems as possible without major alterations (there are many more problems they were supposed to address, I know, but let's leave it at that for now). Let's get to the content! I don't spend much time with OS X widgets, and I prefer not to load up as the eat RAM, but I just found a very useful and free one worth the RAM. TimeScroller allows you to enter 8 different cities around the world. Now here is what's cool, the scroll bar allows me to slide time to see how it matches up in different cities, so it can help you schedule meetings with people in other zones, or to deal with trying to plan things in Second Life, where time is referenced to Pacific time. But it gets better- when you click the icon in the lower left, it launches a new email message wth the times listed so you can send them to your colleagues. Did I mention this was free? As always, getting notice of a photo added to Flickr Explore is best served as a total wonderful surprise, unanticipated. For me, it’s been a while (well not that long, since early August) that it happened. I forget about it. But I never expect a photo to land there, unlike many in the group discussions which sound like “Wahhhh Why Are My Photos Not There Regularly?” People complain about "substandard" photos being selected, but if everything was the same, it would look like all the HDR soaked images you find in Unsplash. 49215941982 flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) My photo here somehow got 32,000 views? Do you believe in data or just data that makes you look good? The behind the photo story is just feeling the good late afternoon light when taking the dog out for a romp in the open field across from our home. I mean, we just open the door, cross the unpaved road and BOOM! We are generally looking right into some glorious sunsets. This was a bit before sun down, but the light had that crisp, warm, feel to it. As we wandered towards the small furrow line (maybe that’s what it’s called), a ridge maybe 24 inches high along the power lines, I noticed the beautiful wind sculpted forms in the snow, they looked just like sand dunes. The shadow of the grass on the bottom made for nice contrast. So I bent down and got a low angle perspective, enough to capture the sky too. Oh, the camera “gear”? Yup, just my iPhone 8. And it was not even the pick for my favorite daily photo, that one was after crossing looking back over that line into the sun. 2019/365/347 Remember to Remember flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) But hey, there you go, the magic of flickr explore is in the surprise factor! I’m in explore! Featured Image: 49215941982 flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) More than halfway through Daily Create a Day in July, and here we are at another writing challenge, really an easy peasy one: Write a limerick about someone famous. Like really famous. So who do you look up to more, who could be not more widely known, than your Daily Create Drill Sergeant? And He is so good, he not only wrote one limerick, he did three! Which one of you suck holes is going to come up and knock him off? I'm Daily Create Drill Sergeant Hulka We're here to make art, not do the polka. Listen to what I say, You will TDC each day, Who can top me, step up here you suck hola-a. Creative muscles are weak and flabby, Excuses for skipping ds106 are shabby. Stop facebooking and tweeting, And get yer blog feeding. Regular making of art makes you snazzy. I may sound tough and a bit like a kook, In the first few days you might want to puke. Soon your GIFs are jumping Creative flow pumping, Like you will never feel in some silly MOOC. I fell into a rhyming hole with the first line ending in "Hulka"-- I could easily get to polka, but the last one was a stumper, so I played with the line from the movie where Hulka asks "Which one of you suck holes is going to knock me off?" I made good use of the Rhymebrain site to try and find rhymes or close enoughs... and of course we end by kicking some sand in the face of MOOCs. WIN Now I have to admit, I've gotten by Sergeant Hulka (from Stripes) a bit crossed up with Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket. Consider it a remix. Look how well their lyric yells go together: Hulka: Men, welcome to the United States Army. I'm Sergeant Hulka. I'm your drill sergeant. Before we proceed any further, we gotta get something straight. Your mamas are not here to take care of you now. It's just you, me, and Uncle Sam. And before I leave you, you're gonna find out that me and Uncle Sam are one in the same. Hartman: I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be "Sir". Do you maggots understand that? If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human f***ing beings. You are nothing but unorganized grabastic pieces of amphibian shit! Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. Hartman takes the lead, I think. So maggots... where's your Daily Creates? You know you love your TDC Drill Sergeant! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubHn4xEnRP8 It is definitely NOT Ok, Google. The rationale for shutting down Google Reader smells like my old tennis shoes. You bring in gazillions of bucks on ads and you cannot aford to leave a service running as is? Show us the numbers! Make the Web, don;t breaking it. Bad, dog, Google, you are a very bad dog. In the November 2008 issue of Wired (which I am reading in old fashioned analog form, reading it on a plane flight), Paul Boutin suggests the blog is dead. 404. Deep Freeze. Passe. SO 2004. Not only Tired, but Long Expired. Kill Your Blog. Still posting like 2004? Well knock it off. There are chirpier ways to get your word out. Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug. Writing a weblog today isn't the brightest idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self experssionism and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns drown out the authentic voices. of amateur wordsmiths. It's almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter. Grrrrrrrr. Bleccch. What dog turds I smell there. I have strong guttural reaction to this incredibly glib, shallow analysis of a complex environment, of something which even an author in a glossy magazine cannot claim to have seen enough of to make such a sweeping statement. But it speaks more to a reason why we should blog more, and spend more time to write meaningful content, that does more that sprays 140 characters, that persists more than a quick Scoble tweet crack high. This is a call to bloggers to announce, "I'm not dead yet! In fact, I feel pretty good! I might take a long reflective walk..." Boutin goes on to describe how few individual bloggers are in the Technorati Top 100 or how most top Google searches are rarely now from individual blogs. The crucial mistake here is in the broad assumption that it is every blogger's goal to be at the top of some list. It is surprising in a magazine edited by the author of the Long Tail, that a column would suggest the only focus of the blogosphere is to try to get to the small head. When blogging was young, enthusiasm rode high, with posts quickly skyrocketing to the top of Google's search results for any given topic... The odds of your clever entry appearing high on that list? Basically zero. The odds of that being my goal? Extremely low. That is about the narrowest view of the web I have seen. And it also suggests that the personal blog is the only form of expression; essentially missing the revolution that has happened in web design for small and media firms, where blog software is being used to power all kinds fo web sites, not just celebrity stalking or political ramps. I am still remembering a dazed feeling at the August 2008 WordCamp that there were about 400 people there who were all engaged in somehow using a blog platform to generate the online presence from everything to companies to needle work societies. I met numerous "web designers" who were really WordPress users. Or how an increasing number of educational organizations are exploiting the platform for an explosion of expression, creativity, sharing, discourse-- that lasts. But that strays the point. It's only a small number of people needing some sort of ego fulfilment, the quick drug users high, of getting noticed. People blog because they have something to express, not because they expect millions of viewers (well 10 would be nice for many of us). Another factor is that my blog is my blog. I maintain all the content; although it is hosted somewhere else, I have all my media, database backups, templates, I am my archive, It is my hub. It is me. These starry eyed twitter stars have no chance of permanence, tweets are not archived for their entire history, Facebook Haz Ur Stuff Not Urs-- if your online existence is scattered in the social software space, you don't necessarily have your stuff. it is subject to fickle economics, buyout, etc. But there is something that is stronger than, that; I am truly the Master of My Own Domain Name. Now do not get me wrong; I am massively 'out there" on my flickr activities and do enjoy and get a lot out of the twitterspace... but I cannot fathom how it can really be the future vehicle for creative expression, meaningful dialogue that will stand up for some length of time. Brian recently wrote about the demise of old media, the layoffs of newspapers, the move from print to digital, He went on to lament the loss of thoughtful expression, research and writing as papers go digital. I first had a reaction to that as the medium itself should not dictate that any of that can change. It's more about the institutions that might be able to carry such traditions, and I thiok Brian's concern was that as these organizations need to find ways to thrive, compete in the new spaces, that the old traditions may go out the window. To me, this is where large groups of individuals can make a difference. For every Jason Calacanis giving up his A-list blog for the quick-verse (as cited by Boutin), there has to be hundreds, thousands of small timer folks like you and me who don't care how high our technorati rating is, who don't write looking in the mirror to admire their reflection, but write to reflect on their being, their soul, things deeper and more important than stroking their ego, who care more about the concepts of slow blogging, of long deep thoughts by people like Barbara Ganley, Chris Lott, Clay Burell (whose A Portrait of the Teacher as a Young Racist is on eof the most moving multipage blog posts I have ever read). This IS happening, and just because Scoble doesn't see it or it is not in some Gawker headline, does not mean it does not exist, does not impact. I am tired of this portrayal of the head of the long tail as being the only thing that matters. That issi bullshit. We don't have to give in completely to the new short form. We can carry on the traditions of the fading media business. And because we are not spitting them out in snack sized snippets, because we maintain our own content in its original form, blogging is more alive than ever. Go out there, shut the lid, and write something out on paper. Compose a post, a story, a deep reflection. Save it as a draft. Re-read, and re-write, Dig deeper for your links than the first Google hit. Write for yourself, read others, comment others, write more. You will have your own record rather than a string of flip bird chirp comments. I relish my blog posts form 4 years ago; I really have no affection for a tweet I made last week. Despite rumors to the contrary, in my blog, blogging ain't dead yet. In fact, I feel pretty good.... "Oh no, Granny! I must call you and apologize for not doing so on your birthday, last Friday... at least I made your split pea soup..." She would have been 116 that day -- plus or minus as the story goes, October 15 was picked by a Census taker since Baby Janet lacked a birth certificate. And there are no phones to call, since she passed away in 2003. I was thinking of her though, as the ham I baked Sunday had a lovely shank bone in it, which is a key element for her split pea soup. There is a story there, as usual, and I've told it before. Another long ago memory came to me a few weeks ago, the taste of her thick split pea soup. As a kid (and a kid-like adult) I loved that soup. It was hearty, chunks of ham, and small dumplings she dropped in.In 1987, that first year I had moved to Arizona, I bet I told her in a phone call or letter how much I missed her split pea soup. I imagine her laughing warmly. What I did not imagine at the time would be she would mail a box to me in Arizona. In that box was her old, well used soup pot, a bag of split peas, and an index card with her hand-written recipe.https://cogdogblog.com/2016/11/grandmas-split-pea-soup/ I lost the card (but my sister came through with a digital version) and again, with apologies, Granny, I used the one from Betty Crocker. She would never be upset at that, an in fact, I can hear her lilting laugh. https://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/51605941875 Splitting Peas > Splitting Atoms flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) And it was fabulously tasty. And it helped heal Cori's flu! I might sit down and cue up a bit of those audio stories I recorded with her (on a micro-cassette tape!) in 1994, that was when that photo sitting in the soup was taken. Happy birthday (late) Granny, thanks for the love and the soup and being my unconventional grandmother. Featured Image: Recording Grandma's Stories flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license superimposed on 2021/365/291 Yum! Split Pea Soup and a Grandmother of a Story flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) There are people who can look at a peaceful valley or serene mountain vista and only see how it can be exploited; they see only golf courses, shopping malls, and asphalt. Likewise, there are those that can only look at a useful communications technology and only rub their hands in glee trying to figure out how to squeeze money from it. There was the glory of the web, and now we have non-stop pop-up ads. There was direct connections via email, and now we are littered by spam. Next stop? The vultures are beginning to hover over RSS. Witness David Galbraith's: "How to make RSS commercially viable" RSS, or more generally, web based syndication, appears to be hitting critical mass, but where is the money? Despite the promise of metadata enriched syndicated content, RSS is usually no more than a way to syndicate a link and a headline. No large publisher will syndicate their full content in RSS because they would lose traffic and therefore, money. . They want to shove full content down your reader. They want to stuff RSS full of ads. Galbraith proposes stripping RSS feeds of words such as "the", "and", "of" from feeds so all you get are a list of keywords and you must click to some site to get the content. I am strained to see how that is syndicating. We could even be more cryptic and reduce RSS feeds to the arcane abbreviations used in personal ads, e.g. "FRDT in srch 4 YT2GS" It may be doom and gloom some time soon for RSS; watch for the shadows of the greedy vultures circling above your heads. Get some use out of RSS now while it is in its naive infancy. Ah, my poor RSS Reader, not nearly given the devoted attention once reserved for it. Maybe a year, maybe two ago, I'd focus on at least scanning all my sources and marking them read by end of the day, even if it was in one fell keyboard stroke. That was BT (Before Twitter), BSL (Before Second Life), Bd (Before drupal), BR5WPS (Before Running 5+ WordPress Sites). That's not to say IO dont regularly mine the feed pile, but there are heaps of unread, unseen items down the list. I have noticed my Feed Readin' pattern has shifted, some to the features of Google Reader. Before, I would organize my subscriptions into folder categories, but still pretty much process one feed's (one blog, one news source) titles at the same time. I was reading DOWN the feeds. Nothing wrong with that, but it is in some ways a legacy of the old bin structure of organization, where you put things in fixed categories. These days, in Google Reader, I have similar folders ("education technology", "visual design", "techie news") but I generally scan them as these larger groups, facilitated by the quick keyboard shortcuts in G-Reader. It makes for an interesting march as you read across different voices. This really has no major significance, just an observation (actually I am running some maintenance scripts on my main laptop and am waiting for it to be done. And it is.... I am not trying to start a boycott, but am making my own pointless statement about my fatigue with the format and limited outcomes of attending the large educational technology conferences. I've barked and moaned previously (see "I'm Bored As Hell And I'm Not Gonna... zzzzz") about the staleness and sad irony of the 50 minute lecture to a passive audience being the primary mode of information sharing at professional gatherings and the minimal information density of conference presentations. This past year I attended both the mammoth EDUCAUSE 2004 conference (Denver, 6000? attendees) and the League for Innovation in the Community College's Innovations 2005 conference (New York City, 3000+ attendees). Beyond meeting up between sessions with colleagues and doing fun stuff away from the site, I am hard pressed to list much as a take away. I get little out of listening to people read me their powerpoints, or spending 75% of their time giving background rather than starting with the demo. The agendas are so jam packed at the mega-cans that there is no room or time to breathe or decompress (the League conference lacked any seating in the hallways, now that is great design), just shuffle off numbly to the next lecture. And isn't there irony that we travel thousands of miles, dumping travel dollars in hotels, and the conference centers are jammed full of folks reading email??? I watch folks in sessions, oblivious to the blabbering presenter, checking their email, fixing their websites, blogging about their boredom (oh wait a minute, that was me). Is this really sensible? Rational? or am I just suffering from a lack of oxygen? Not being in a purchasing capacity, I have zero interest in the silly hawking of the vendor halls (I will enter long enough to pilfer the free drinks and food), where I can get more info about a product by Googling and reading message boards from actual users as opposed to the smiling booth people. So for 2005-2006, I am passing on the big mega conferences. I'll be at home, reading blogs, maybe listening to podcasts, but if I participate this year anything, I am search of the smaller sized meetings where there appears to be genuine exchange. Or an interesting format. I'm already committed to the August 7-10 SAC conference (~300 attendees) and a must-go for me every year is the New Media Consortium Summer Conference (300-400 attendees). I'll keep my eyeballs out for other interesting regional events-- I'd really like to go to the Open Education Conference at Utah State University, but the timing is not looking good with other events at home in Maricopa (and a planned get-away to Rocky Point in Mexico). I'll be doing the April TCC Online conference and hope to coordinate timing with my colleagues in Australia for their online conferences. This happened to me before almost 10 years ago, pretty much pre-web, when I decided to forgo my conference travel money and used the funds to visit a number of colleges in the Pacific Northwest. I got much more in terms of ideas, contacts, from pretty much informal meetups set up with the technology du jour then (email listservs). So is it just me that thinks the big conference formats are as stale as that forgotten, unidentifiable vegetable rotting in the back of my fridge? Some fool has to call the conference king naked. For 2005-2006, I am not attending the big cons and looking for the medium to little cons, the online cons... And before any comments come raining in, I must admit that beyond my complaining, I do not have better ideas how to run a mega conference. The largest events I have been responsible for are in the 200-250 range, and I know it is a challenge to cook up an agenda that works for a good chunk of them. But I do know there is something better we can do with our time together than plenary + 20 simultaneous 50 minute lectures + plenary + .... I would use the collaborative tools of communication before, during, and after. I would follow the idea of hybrid/blended learning, and use the face to face time for what is best achieved in that format (dialogue, debate, exchange, social action) and use the technology to offline to movement of static content (papers and presentations). And people have to go with something of personal/professional value, not just t-shirts, goofy pens, and ugly conference tote bags. Is there any gathering out there that really pushes the conference format beyond a compressed series of lectures? cc licensed flickr photo shared by myoldpostcards It's hard to stay shiny. A few weeks since moving to Chrome for my primary browsing, a few dents: Lack of Java. Not supported. Just means I have to launch Safari to sit in an Elluminate webinar. Very minor damage, just an annoyance. Irregular frame targeting. Some of the messaging from windows to frames seems amiss, most notably in using phpMyAdmin where some queries seem to pop into its own tab. Just a scratch we can ignore. Inability to render RSS. Put a URL in your Chrome bar for any RSS feed- whadyya see? Raw code. Yechhh. to see the RSS you have to view the source. Unsightly and embarrassing if your neighbors see that dinger. The dreaded "Aw, Snap" I cant do anything screen. Some pages just bork- this one was for a Paul Saffo ComputerWorld article. From what I can sense, the page is fine, it is borking on the last bit loading of ad content. Maybe there is a moral there about the value of ads. I guess I can live with the inconvenience, moreso than filing a claim. These are relatively minor. The browser is quick, and has crashed maybe once on me in the last 3 weeks, compared to Firefox which seemed to exceed that crash rate in a day. And none of that waiting for the cursor to respond while typing in a form field that the Fox lumbered along with. I really like the Inspect Element (right/command-click on a highlighted page element- dive into the details of the CSS or scripts, all kinds of techie inspectors. I really like the usability of the view-source, with the code being text wrapped so I can actually read it w/o miles of horizontal scrolling, and URLs in code act like hyperlinks. I like the built in language translation, been saving my uni-lingual ability all over the place. I run about 4 other browsers anyhow, so its not a major pain to have to open a URL in another one. I can easily live with the dents. I don't miss the old wreck at all. cc licensed flickr photo shared by Jeremy Brooks cc licensed flickr photo shared by 尽在不言中 There might be other things to blog about, but nothing seems as exciting or interesting as the Mad Camp Adventures of Digital Storytelling Open Course aka ds106. There is a rive of creativity shared via the distributed blogs, the free form ds106 radio (by the people, for the people, of the people), a budding TV station, live weekly class-casts (yesterday was D'Arcy Norman talking on photography- hoping the UMW folks are working on an archive page for the recordings, hint hint hint nudge elbow wink hint). All of these are things we think can go beyond the usual slide talkin in Elluminate space that is the norm for synchronous online actvity. Jim reminded me of another live element we talked about- it was a half formed idea rooted in the regular #_____chats yo see happening in twitter #edchat, #lrnchat, dot dot dot. Others may have a different euphemism for this act. In those, a designated time slot is announced and people talk about a topic or respond to prompt questions via twitter. It is a loosely coupled open discussion format that plays out in twitter. We are going to try something more loose and open but the same concept- Thursday is ds106 Tweetathon day- during that day we ask participants in ds106 and anyone else and their grandmother, to tweet out something related to the current work; we'd ask that you do at least one (or all) (several times) every Thursday! Tweet Your Own Horn - share the thing or mini project or opus you are working on this week. Tweet Someone Else's Horn - scan the blogs, the radio waves, and give some kudos or suggestions to someone else in the class. Tweet For Answers Stuck on how to do an effect in PhotoShop? Cannot find an appropriate sound effect for your video? Stuck on font choices? Tweet your call to the network Take some time every Thursday to do an extra burst of ds106 connectivity via twitter- just use the #ds106 tag and all will be golden (as in the bag of variety). I'm bringing ds106 to the 2013 TCC Online Conference (the 18th Annual "Technology, Colleges and Community" Online Conference). This keynote session (look at my along side Terry Anderson, I cannot wait for some of his trademark jokes) is listed as Dim the Lights: The ds106 Show. My original thought was to build a presentation metaphor around the weekly live Google Hangout shows I have been running for my ds106 class at UMW. Dim the lights, cue the music, roll the open credits"¦ but the ds106 show is not one where the audience just sits quietly in their seats. You will not only learn how this open online course in digital storytelling works, but have a chance to try a few of the creative challenges and assignments we give to our students. Digital storytelling 106 (ds106) offers a versatile opportunity to create a learning community. This open online course in digital storytelling is part of a networked architecture built of participants' own blogs to which our web site subscribes and shares back content published by individuals. Special features of ds106 include an open assignment bank that participants populate, a daily creative challenge, and even its own internet-based radio station. You can tune in to the show at any time; we are located at http://ds106.us/ on your Internet dial. After watching the archive of the keynote Jim Groom performed yesterday for the Ohio State Innovate conference, I was energized maybe to amp it up a little bit. Not that I can do the Bava on stage act (NOBODY can, did you catch his movie references and the ponies?)-- but I have an idea to bring some heat to my presentation-- it may be the most unhinged thing I have ever done. So instead of the 1960s talk show theme I have been trying to emulate in my ds106 show Hangouts (black and white, and me in a tie)- I am thinking a little more ahead, maybe to 1978-- and hence I am up til 2:30am making a poster: [caption id="attachment_19425" align="aligncenter" width="331"] (click to see all the detail of this fine poster, check it out![/caption] Howard will make an appearance for sure. If you want to catch this conference, register before April 2 to get the early bird rate. I have a long history with TCC- I first met Bert Kimura at a League for Innovation Conference in 2003 (Milawauke it was). Bert was very gracious and invited me to be a part of the conference planning team. This conference had already been going a long time; it started in 1995. I am thinking they did it then on 28k modems. In 2004 I did a TCC presentation on photoblogging, Publish and Build Communities Around Digital Images -- I was promoting a service called Buzznet, but mentioned one that i had just started dabbling in in March 2004, one with the odd vowel missing name of "flickr". The next year, bert invited me to do a keynote-- it was all about the unevenly distributed future, etc, and for some reason, I maintained a metaphor based on a character from Star Trek -- Harry Mudd, Small Pieces, and that Not Widely Distributed Future cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog There is even an audio recording -- I think this is the one I had to do from a San Francisco hotel where I was at a meeting. I was doing this in the hallway, talking to my laptop, and all of a sudden another meeting room emptied and the hall was full of people chattering, and I think the audience even heard the sounds if toilets flushing in the bathroom. I never stopped talking. Bert has been a great friend and colleague- he tok me hiking when I was in Hawaii in 2004 cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog and he hosted me for a week in Japan for a visit in 2008 cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog So it was an easy yes when he asked me to keynote this year's TCC conference. If you are not at the conference, you will be aware of it via what I have planned, and you will asking yourself, what the heck is Alan doing? I do not have the answer yet, except it is going to be loud and over the top. You have been warned. I hope I don't become the second known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy presentation ratings. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Andrew Curtis This is the last week of my first semester teaching ds106; Jim Groom has reminded my plenty about what a marathon push this is for both student and teacher. Their blogs have fallen quiet as (I hope) they are going full metal on their final projects. Before doing any philosophical ear waxing on tyhe experience, two meta-ish things have bobbed up repeatedly as a means of looking at the work we are all doing. It's easy to get wrapped up in the assignments or the branded #life spirit of it all. One of the pleasant (or least negative) aspects of this course is that we really do not spend much fi any time teaching software. You would think we'd have to cover a lot of grounds with students doing photography, visual design, audio recording and editing, video work, remixing... But we have been able to avoid worry about whether students can learn software, and putting that on them to figure out. Not in the sense of abdicating this role, but handing it over. So we never dictate what software to use- they either use what they have, or find the free tools, or find ones we have never heard of, or download the trial versions. What this means, for something like when we started audio, was maybe a 15 minute overview of importing files, moving them on the timeline, paying attention to wave forms, cutting and pasting of audio like text, using tracks, and exporting. It is the skill of audio production, not the menu items of Audacity we are teaching. This is where I'd prefer to be- that we focus on the conceptual level. We ought to not be teaching software. Well, I prefer not to. But what I wanted to write about here was two broad areas I observed that happen in ds106 across the kind of work the students do. Looking at the World Differently Through a Lens In the activities we did in class "rapid prototyping" and especially the Daily Creates, I have seen (and heard from) students who describe that they go about their activities looking and listening in new ways. This happens first in photography, where they start to look for details they might have not noticed before, or think about thew way scenes they scene might be "cropped" for a coherent meaning. It is the first act of "noticing", but not the last. Would someone every see a stack of CD discs as art or even interesting? It all depends on how you look, and appreciate the light http://www.flickr.com/photos/48429093@N05/6894623063/ or just a world reflected in a puddle? http://www.flickr.com/photos/58873944@N07/6811096722/ When you go into Audio, they learn the magic of foley art, of how subtle sound effects make audio "feel" real, how music, soft background music, sets themes. The learn how a single scream has wound its way through scores of films. I'd like to think student listen differently, or at least notice the impact of sounds around them. Closing doors. Footsteps in an empty hallway. Water flowing into a sink. Crickets. We extend this idea of "noticing" as well in video, when we introduce the ideas of "reading" a movie, of noting the use of light, camera angle, the placement of character. Dominant and subservient positioning. Now I don't have any analytics on this, but it is a theme that I can see across the course, and one I will continue to pay attention to. We can be better creators, communicators, by getting batter and seeing the world through media and being more conscious of sensory inout we might not have noted prior. The Power of Layers As we have progressed through the trail of media, I have been pondering the importance of having students appreciate the use of layers in media- of how meaning is changed, ort effects are created simply by understanding where a set of media is situated in a stack. There is the dimension of time in one dimension and what is visible in the other. In moving from the simple web based photo editors to tools like PhotoShop or GIMP, students learn how layers not only make their work more organized, but also open a world of creativity in visual form, just be having this sense of media stratigraphy, plus the impact of layer effects. Layers also come into play in audio editing, as students learn to make soundscapes, voice, effects, music, that when done well, when levels are adjusted that sound has a dimension perhaps not appreciated before. We did not do much multi track editing for video, but in using even MovieMaker or iMovie, students master it by understanding how layering in the editor allows the mix of image, sound, but also effects, and titles, and again, working in a dimension o time. Again, I sit here typing these words with nothing more than gut feeling, not data, etc. But to me, we are getting to those key conceptual ideals by having students amp up their world noticing and getting a solid comprehension of how media can be stacked in time and place. So maybe this cannot me measured, charted, badges, etc, but these meta skills are the realm I'd prefer to be running in. Google Glass is so 2014. Get with the program. Next week begins the second half of my TRU Open Scholar Fellowship with much of the next two months devoted to an eight week open seminar I am doing with Brian Lamb. The throttle is open though I am not sure we checked the Fuel Tank. [caption id="attachment_39843" align="alignright" width="240"] The You Show is running...[/caption] The YouShow is a fork if you will of Open DS106 meaning it is a connected course featuring people doing work in individual web sites, aggregating together, and cross connecting via twitter. Rather than focusing on digital storytelling as the focus, we aim to have people use the storytelling elements as vehicles for creating an outward (public, open) web presence for themselves (an online portfolio) or to disseminate a project, research topic in a way that can appeal to a broad audience. Once again, I have reached into the movie making metaphor- the sites people will work on will present the final "show" to be shared, but include as well the "back stage" narration of the process, ideas, influences, development cycles to make it happen (ahem, that is the blogging part). To that end, Brian and I are playing with a weekly introductory video that plays with us being both front stage and backstage characters (and that rather than starting off as a highly produced piece of media, it will improve as we go) (hopefully). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxrGeRk85T0 Speaking of backstage, there's quite a bit of scrambling and hammering going on down at the studio. For some ideas what is in store, see The Pitch for this idea, an outline of the schedule, and some beginning info on how to participate. How do we communicate outward the work we do as learners, teachers, researchers? Portfolios and research papers are the final production. But like a film, a great deal of process happens that leads up to a premier, yet much of the process gets left on the cutting room floor. We see a lot of value, for yourself as a reflective practice and for others in sharing that process as you go. The You Show is for people interested in (a) creating sharable portfolios of their work; (b) communicating or mobilizing information about their work to a general audience; or (c) improving their digital media skills. And there will be tweeting, perhaps it is time for you to follow @youshow15 and/or the #youshow15 hashtag. We are planning to set up a tinyletter signup if you desire luscious emails. And I gotta get into the basement today, and wire up the Feed Wordpress syndication engine. I'm thinking of making the signup be for a new blog, start from scratch even if you are an experienced blogger. What we are talking about is creating a stand alone presence, even for experimental space. Otherwise you are trying to insert perhaps a documentary film inside a slapstick comedy. Oi the metaphors are stinking already. Our desire for TRU is to make this an open invite for faculty and staff and students. It's entirely optional. We provide no badges, certificates, or anything of tangible quality. We do have a few planned invited guest sessions, as a cheap trick, I am on tap first to talk January 14 about elements of story structures, but we have some tentative aggreement to bring in D'Arcy Norman, Alec Couros, and a few more celebrities our agents are in negotiation with. But the main sessions, and which we hope work locally, will be open studio time, where we'd like to encourage participants to come in so we can assist them, answer questions, have them show us what they are doing. We are aiming to make this an open opportunity for others, and hopefully we can open up all these sessions as google hangouts. If you have a notion perhaps to bring a group along, let me know, and I can create an affiliation option on the signup form I should be working on right now (instead of blogging about doing stuff...). It's time to put on a show. [caption id="attachment_39844" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Wikiemedia Commons cc licensed photo [/caption] Join us (and pardon the dust) at http://youshow.trubox.ca Most likely I mangled my attempt at wordplay in that title. I'm writing again about my belief/obsession with small acts of daily creativity. I have no real research, no data to back my hypothesis, but I will make up something that applying Curly's Law to doing something small, new, micro challenging on a regular basis is better for you than brushing teeth or retweeting pundits (cite that fifth dentist). At least a few times I pitched the idea to an audience (well at least back in 2015 when we did that public gathering in a room thing). https://cog.dog/show/2015/05/19/doing-it-daily/ This is built on two of my practices, they are interconnected, in a way. The first, is doing daily photography, posting one of my choice to flickr as "the one". I am now into my 14th year of doing this (and we have a group in flickr of over 1800 that continue to gather people doing their own version of the challenge). There's no rules on what you pick, and no requirement for perfect scores- in fact in only two years did I record the 100% rate. As told many times, I owe this idea to D'Arcy Norman, who did his own version in 2007. https://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/4728847341 D'Arcy Norman, Professional iPhone Photographer flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) At the end of the year, he said somewhere (was it early twitter) that it was an interesting challenge, but he probably would not do it again. I said, if you do it, I will do it again, and we started that flickr group for 2008. We had maybe ?20? 40 people. D'Arcy later dropped flickr but continues regular photo posting on his own site. With a personal photo challenge, it's up to me to find something new daily. I enjoy this, as it makes you look in much greater detail at the world around you, notice more about light, texture. It's a welcome break from daily routines to take 15? 30 minutes, and look around the house, the yard for something... interesting. But then a new concept came in maybe 2010 called The Daily Shoot (web site gone but it's in the Wayback Machine). Two photographers, Duncan Davidson and Mike Clark came up with an idea of each day posting to a web site and tweeting a specific photo challenge, like "Make an image with converging lines" "Take a photo using shallow depth of field" etc. The way you responded was by replying in twitter with a specific hashtag. The web site then aggregated responses to the original post. I really liked this approach as it gave you little bit of direction, something specific to try, but not so specific that you could not get creative with an interpretation. This was such a great activity for DS106 when it first started and we had regular assignments for students to do the daily shoot to practice photography, composition, and just thinking creatively how they looked at their every day world. Students loved doing this, many times they commented on how it got them to focus more on their surroundings, or notice details better, or just appreciate things like upholstery patterns, tiled floors, reflections in windows. But sometime in late 2011, the folks behind the Daily Shoot... gave up! They stopped doing the site. Those of us teaching or doing DS106 were not happy! So what do you do when a web service dries up? Cry? Nah, in DS10 you build you own. And that was the birth of the first DS106 Daily Create site built by Tim Owens in early 2012. And we took it further, so it was not just photos, but design, words, video, and audio type challenges. It did hinge on the tagging and syndication from different services (flickr, YouTube), but it worked great. It was maybe in mid 2014 that I got an idea to build a generic version of the concept as a WordPress theme I called the Daily ________ because it could be for anything- and like the orginal Daily Shoot, it's tied to tweeting a new challenge every day and people responding in twitter. This is what powers the current DS106 Daily Create site. Rather remarkably, the daily create as not missed a step since January 8, 2012. I was the maintainer for a number of years (meaning making sure there is a queue of scheduled challenges) but then moved on to other projects, Mariana Funes cared for it for a stretch, as did Paul Bond, and now Sarah Honeychurch keeps the machine going. Think about it- this unfunded site that just runs on services donated by Reclaim Hosting and volunteers, has keep going daily for 9 plus years. That Was Just the Introduction I did not mean to do all that back history, it just happened! With the daily photos, over a year's time I end up with a bit of slop. Many times I have published a photo, but not tagged it or added to my album for the year. Or I got my sequence wrong. So there is always a few hours of cleanup at the end of the year. Last year, I tried to make a habit of doing a monthly check to stay on track. I got January 31/31, February 25/27... and I lost track of the monthly check. Oh well. But I set on in 2021 to be more careful, and I was actually posting almost every day (I was taking daily photos, I never use photos dated from another day), but with a big house move, February ended with me back posting 21 days worth! But I did get to 59/59 for January and February. Maybe I can keep the pace up again. I had only done a handful of daily creates last year, but I was impressed as 3 of our regular crew ctually managed to get a perfect 366/366 in 2020. How do I know? https://twitter.com/cogdog/statuses/1344763414992670720 One of the fun aspects of that Daily ______ theme is you can have a Leaderboard! It even has shortcode parameters so you can have it be a yearly reset. Not only that, each participant has a personal link that shows all of their responses over forever (or 2015 when this version of the site went live). Check out the daily create prowess of the amazing @dogtrax That's right. This sixth grade teacher from Connecticut, who is not a "student" in a ds106 course but an eager open participant, has done 1858 daily creates since 2015. Tell me again about your so called Massive Online Open Whatevers... So I got self inspired to try and keep up a strong pace for the Daily Creates in 2021. I aim to do them over breakfast. While I was in the tie for the leaders top score in January, again,February tossed a socket wrench in my productivity. I slipped maybe 12 off pace. But I'm coming back, doing maybe 3 a day. Look out leaders, there's a cogdog on your heels. But all of this is for maybe naught, as it's not the perfect score, but just making a good effort each day, trying something new, and to be honest, having fun. It cannot help but be useful to the creative muscles, but also the soul. I am not going to lop on any third daily habits (beyond coffee and loving my wife), but a twitter conversation with Kate Bowles (May 2020 was the last post? Say it ain't so. I so miss Music For Deck Chairs...) introduced me to another fantastic example known as "3BT." That stands for Three Beautiful Things. Every day I want to record three things that have given me pleasure. This 3BT site is the original Three Beautiful Things.My name is Clare Law and I'm a mother and a writer and an editor. I kept this daily diary between 2004 and 2014, and I restarted during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The practice of noting and describing these three things each day helps me take note of life's many tiny joys. For example, February 26, 2021 was "Strawberry smell, easy errand and crocuses." There is an unnatural strawberry smell in the High Street that puts a smile on my face because it reminds me of something that I coveted as a child (not sure what, just that I didn't have it and wanted it very much).An errand I expected to be complicated turns out to be pretty simple.There is a mist of purple at the bottom of The Grove where the crocuses have come. The writing/posting part is trivial to do. But the thinking. Reflecting. What three things to choose, and how to provide them in a succinct form, enough to generate a memory nudge. And imagine having an archive of a decades of this practice of "noting and describing these three things each day helps me take note of life's many tiny joys." It's personal, self ruled, and gloriously simple. That is the power of these habits, is coming up with your own rules and approach. Sticking to it. My daily practices are mine, meaningful to me, and rewarding on their own. But again, it all goes back to the wisdom of a cowboy named Curly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4CvFWCULuI https://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/6327101586 It's 9 O'Clock flickr photo by cogdogblog shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license You may not be aware of it, but your digital photos have more in them than colored pixels, modern cameras, mobile phones attach extra information that travels with the photo. This came up with discovery because a commenter on my site about returning a found camera asked about finding her own lost camera. I came across two services that provide a search online for photos with meta data containing the serial number from your camera - many might be your own, but there is a chance that a camera their might post photos taken with "their" new camera - these sites are http://www.stolencamerafinder.com/ and http://cameratrace.com/. Flickr stores a lot of photo meta date, just look at any images's page, select under the "Actions" menu, View EXIF info. Its a lot of meta data. I've used a process the last 3 years with Apple Aperture for managing my photos that includes the Connected Flow Flickr Export plugin- this has a nifty setting to have to write back the flickr url of an exported photo to the original image. All this stuff in Aperture means using or creating your own Meta Data preset, it is meta data that is associated to all images you import (so you get all of the camera data, lens, aperture, shutter speed, data/time) but you can also add information to. It's been part of my process of blogging my photos at Barking Dog Studios - because I have already written titles, captions, tags in Aperture, my modified wordpress template is able to include that info automatically from the meta data that is imported when I upload an image. The thing is, not all applications make use of all of the meta data. the information that Wordpress picks up form an image is much less than flickr. One field I saw that was available in Wordpress was a Copyright Notice- with some fiddling I was able to add my own creative commons meta data in Aperture. This started with combing through the IPTC meta data on my preset, and entering what i wanted to be included in the copyright field (a place I guess others put restrictions, I decided to put openings). This now gets added automatically to all photos I import (I have not found a way to apply it to the backlog). So what happens? Well it appears in the meta data when I edit my titles and captions in Aperture: And that meta data travels when I post it to flickr (it actually appears twice, plus flickr includes my own name in the meta data too, nice) And as mentioned when I upload the image to Barking Dog Studios, the blog entry automatically adds this line: As an aside, an EXIF viewer app on my MacBookPro does not show this extra meta data, nor does the Get Info command in OS X (you get some meta data): So what seems interesting is that there is a range of hw much meta data is used in different apps and web sites. If anyone knows of a better OS X tool for peeking at file meta data, one that shows everything, please let me know. But this little exercise was useful for me in knowing I can use Aperture to infuse my Creative Commons license into the digital image itself. More frivolity (blog tip of the hat to Kottke) for HTTP in tha House. You submit a URL, and the web site extracts the text, combines them into 16 lines, uses a rhyming dictionary, and pops out a series of random rap-like lyrics. Real word use? minimal. Fun and randomness? priceless. Here is the new CDB rap.... HTTP in tha House lyrics by: http://cogdogblog.com/alan/ barrett a nestor martinez http jade mcli dist maricopa says href http http jade mcli dist maricopa free karan johar simply rock and wrench and a grease gun band accessible this form publishes no comments php aglow flickr related tag solid c border right snag coffee shop which maricopa edu twitch his aa degree in computer spam for neuter solid pad edu alan archives php march bad JADE DOT MCLI DOT DIST DOT MARICOPA DOT EDU IN THA HOUSE JADE DOT MCLI DOT DIST DOT MARICOPA DOT EDU IN THA HOUSE JADE DOT MCLI DOT DIST DOT MARICOPA DOT EDU IN THA HOUSE JADE DOT MCLI DOT DIST DOT MARICOPA DOT EDU Tomorrow at 8pm ET I join my long time colleague and good friend Darren Kuropatwa for an OSSEMOOC webinar session on Storytelling, by request of Donna Fry. There is a story in that sentence, because during my cross Canada leg of my 2011 Odyssey I met Darren for the first time in Winnipeg, and it was a tweet out of the blue that connected me to Donna (and meet her in Thunder Bay). I love the unique way Darren presents ideas, and if you are ever in one of his workshops, you know you just will not sit there. He will make you do something creative. We are trying this tomorrow night, and you can help us beta test a part of it. First all, we are using as a theme, that for teachers looking at the world of amazing things out there, that very often what is obvious for them is amazing to others-- so well encapsulated in a 120 second video by Derek Sivers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcmI5SSQLmE The activity is something we want people to respond to reflexively, don't try to over think it. But where ever they (or you) are sitting, looking around for an object, a metaphor that might represent a response to this question: In your practice as an educator, what is one thing important and obvious to you that shapes your approach? Just look quickly and grab the first object you see. It may not be the best metaphor, try to make it. I am looking at my table, and I see books (too easy), a coffee cup (too dirty), a wooden pen (maybe), even a roll of electrical tape (that seems most interesting). We then ask you to record a 15 second video, not showing your face, just the object, and start it with "What is obvious to me is...". Do not explain it, just state it. Leave it to the audience to figure out the connection with the metaphor. Go. We are asking people to send videos to Darren's Dropbox; if you have a QR Code Reader you can add a contact or send via or just email them to darren_1e14@sendtodropbox.com This was one I did when I grabbed an old radio tube that sits in a dish near my work area https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTYZRMFmXTM Thanks for trying this out! And if you want, join us tomorrow for the live session, to see what happens with the videos, take a seat in Darren Hall. [caption width="640" align="aligncenter"]flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license[/caption] And you may even get us doing a live guitar duet. flickr photo by cogdogblog http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/3124023004 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo shared by Andrew Morrell Depending on intonation, emphasis, and perhaps insertion of a TF, that question can go down a number of paths... I still get questions about The Horizon Report- I've not worked for NMC since March 2011, and it's been so long I may not know what they stand for. And given my incessant blogging, tweeting about ds106, some might think I am affiliated with University of Mary Washington. So if you have not found the ABout Me blurb at http://cogdog.info, here's a bit of self serving WTF is Alan doing. It's been almost a full year since my last paycheck, when I decided to leave the position I held for 6 months at UMW. There was no problem with that job, and given all the continued ground breaking crushing innovation at DTLT, I still maintain it is the best place to be in instructional technology. My reasons for going were more personal, restless, and accepting that I wanted to both travel some but also get back to my home in Arizona. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Marco Bellucci So you might say I am (still) on a self-funded sabbatical. Given that I can live pretty cheap, and have no one to be responsible for, I can go maybe another year living off my savings. Maybe not the smartest economic decision. In the last year, I've taught part time (ds106 for UMW as an adjunct). did a few web site projects, and picked up a few speaking gigs, all to at least stem the bleeding of the savings account. There are some things going that I will rattle off below. And I have more than enough time to think of what I'd like to be doing for the next stage. Between my years at Maricopa and NMC I have almost 20 years doing more or less similar things at an organizational level promoting educational technology... and I am really looking for something different. I so enjoyed my time at UMW getting to teach ds106, in person, and online, and I have some dreams/illusions/dementia about seeking a full time teaching gig. I applied for one (no response) knowing that my sum total formal teaching credentials are thin, and I lack the typical degree requirements (terminal degree) (sounds deadly) (in field). And of course, there are gazillions of people looking for teaching slots. I'd most like to find online work I can do from my perch here in Strawberry, AZ. Actually, when I meet people and they ask what I do, I usually reply with some variant of "as little as possible". Or I will say, truthfully, how much I enjoy not working. It's not that I do not want to, but for now, why not, not work? I have this great opportunity to not be stuck to someone else's schedules, demands, needs. I will say, if/when I do work for some organization, institution, I'll be looking for one that will not wipe out any trace of my contributions or sweep me under the carpet should I leave at some point. But alas, there is the looming signpost of HEALTHCARE given my COBRA coverage I have been paying for since leaving UMW gives out in February. For now, I am sporting the Alfred E. Neuman stance of concern. So for what is happening around thew dog haus... I've had a domain and maybe a web site template set up for a long while to act as a home for my [SCAREQUOTES]business[/SCAREQUOTES] at CogDog It - the idea of offering to provide things people, organizations might like on CogDoggy style. But alas working on that site lags every month. Maybe it will be August. I am finding not a lot of energy to making a business site for myself, and when it does, there will be no phony phrasing of "We" to refer to "Me". There is but one post making reference to the metaphor of the cobblers children lacking shoes. I've been most busy on projects that follow in the steps of what I learned with ds106 in creating wordpress-based aggregation hubs via the Feedwordpress plugin. Working with Alec Couros on his ETMOOC site earlier this year, building the blog hub and twitter hubs both taught me more about building these sites and also made more people aware of its capabilities. In fact I did two of these this month almost in parallel, which means I was able to leverage stuff back and forth. The first is for the Harvard Graduate School's Future of Learning Institute, which runs this week: Justin Reich approached me about building the site, which if you are WP savvy, can see I am reusing the Twenty-Eleven Wordpress theme we used for ETMOOC. We have syndicating content from participant's blogs, tweets, photos (both flickr and instagram), and diigo. The new wrinkle added here is what I call a Quick Post, using the Jetpack Plugin for post by email. This gives people a flexible easy way to add content or posts to the site without having to make accounts or give access to the WP interface, plus it makes it easy to post images or text from a mobile device. We are also using it for their Learning Groups, where group members can post ideas, summaries and add a tag in their email to associate it with their group (see group 9 for examples, all posts sent to the site via email). There has been new stuff to figure out, how to get an RSS feed for Twitter to use in since Twitter killed RSS; how to get larger sized images from flickr RSS feeds since Yahoo seems to feel all we need are 320pixel wide images (hello yahoo, this is 2013, not 1993), and a better Feedwordpress strategy for getting blog feeds. I also had to figure out using a wordpress forum plug to create a place for workshop leaders to share planning and discussion ideas. Have no fears, this will be blogged in more detail soon. I pretty much leveraged a lot of this again to build a site for a project Brian Lamb connected me up with, the RMOOC, (Art + Reconciliation) "that addresses how artistic practices can engage in questions of reconciliation, most particularly in the Canadian context of residential schools and the associated and ongoing Truth and Reconciliation Commission." I got over my aversion of the "M" word; this is really not a class/course person, but a community. Given an expected large amount of media, I suggested using a more graphic oriented them, and spent two days banging my head trying to use a fancy Elegant Themes one (Gleam). The theme looked good, but gave me fits for a funky way it channeled all content through an Ajax call, and its limits on menus. The day of launch I scrapped that one and went with one more reliable, the free F8 Light theme from Graph Paper Press. It has still taken a moderate amount of theme hacking to make it do what I want. On this site, we have syndication from blogs, twitter, photos (flickr and instagram), and in this site, I called the Quick Posts "Dispatches" The new thing I am getting from this site is learning how to set up and use Mailchimp so the prof running this can send out updates in a modern fashion. Yes, this site too has an upcoming writeup. This month I am also working with Nancy White and colleagues again setting up the Project Community site for an engineering design class in the Netherlands: This was setup as an aggregation hub as well last year, with all students using Tumblr to post reflections. I have to archive the last year's content and get it ready for a new round, but with a moderate amount of modifications based on the feedback. I build another site in April for artist Emilio Vavarella, making use of a responsive theme and a gallery grid plugin aiming to keep it in the simple design mindset that Emilio requested. I have not even looked at it, since he has pretty much got all of the content creation sorted out. I am also about 1/3 done another artist site for a friend here in Strawberry who is a talented artist (I'm working on it, Diane!). This was her birthday present, I hope I can get it done before her next birthday. Of course, ds106 always looms in my activity stream. I tried to instigate some more activity in the ds106 Daily Create by issuing a July TDC challenge. It seems to help to nag and abuse people. Why am I doing this (for free)? Because it is fun and it matters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubHn4xEnRP8 And I have set up the idea and potential for a ds106 "course" that starts August 26 that will have no instructors, the so-called "Headless ds106". This will happen on its own, simply by matching a schedule to some to be schedule posts based on the assignments I made for my classes in the Spring of 2013. But also on the ds106 front, and what I am working on for a few pesos in August (thanks to the Shuttleworth Foundation) is making a new version of the ds106 Assignment Bank that could be used for other courses, topics. The plan is to make it into a configurable Wordpress Theme, plus a few required plugins. I will be removing al of the hardwired ds106 code, and trying to figure out how I can reduce the number of required plugins to a small number, plus doing a lot of code and design cleanup. I most likely will be coding this in the open so you can see it progress. Jim Groom an I are hopeful that this might seed some interest so I could put some focussed effort into making more of ds106 not something of an "______ in the Box" but more of what I call a "Boxed Set" of different tools you could use, including the Assignment Bank, but also something to be able to run your own Daily Creates. My plan to do this is to change it to harvest the response based on URLs tweeted, rather than the fickle media players we use now. Youtube is broken for search by tags, Soundcloud is restrictive because we can only create one group per account, and it seems less useful to organize TDCs around media sites. I also would like to change the ds106 flow from an unreadable series of blog posts, to something more like the Course Reader that Martin Hawksey created for the octel course, one that not only acted like the now sadly killed, stabbed, decimated Google Reader, but also could harness the actions of what people read and favorite to bubble up content. In fact, I am experimenting with testing this out as a self-hosted feed reader built in wordpress: This is extremely crude, and represents one afternoon of hammering away at Martin's code. I would never think it replicates all of Google Reader's interface. But for an aggregation hub, and for ds106, I think it makes sense to have a separate site that acts as the hub. e.g. reader.ds106.us (this means we can use a more minimal theme) and make the main site be all about the course/community content. I am also writing a chapter in some new book coming out about MOOCs (ha ha, I am serious) writing about how ds106 blows the MOOC perceptions up. Other things I am doing out of interest and no income generation include: I would like to take my 5 Card Flickr Stories and pechaflickr sites and build them out as Wordpress themes, so you could run and customize your own more easily. I am intrigued at the idea of using Wordpress as sort of an app engine. I have many mane long overdue updates for 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story, plus Darren Kuropatwa and I are dabbling with adding a section that would cover mobile apps. I have a partly baked idea to set up and run online "Photocamps" where I would enroll a small number of people (12 or less) who might want to embark on a month long series of activities to help them improve their photography skills. I am idling on Amazing Stories of Open Sharing -- I am stumped as to why it remains hard for people to want to add to this collection. People talk about sharing all the time, but when it comes to sharing a story about sharing a story? Sigh. This is one of my favorite talks to do. I guess I could modify it for weddings and bar mitzvahas. Daily photography is always happening, both on flickr and stuff I post to my Barking Dog Studies site. Damn, this took too long to do. What I have really enjoyed since mid June is being at home, not traveling, not being in planes, hotels, conference halls. And its not like I have gobs of time. I am not sure where to fit a job in my schedule. But... I do need to make some money, so if there is something CogDog-ish I can do for you, well, you know where to find me. What the bleep am I doing? cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by protographer23 For the 10 gazillionth time the network (as in the people I am connected to) saves the day again. For some upcoming presentations and conferences, I was hoping to set up TwitterCamp, a desktop app (Mac and PC) that runs in Adobe Air and displays in near real time the incoming tweets for a specific account. It is elegant, and very suitable for setting up as self-running apps on big shiny plasma screens at conferences. The problem was that the version I had and last linked from the original site, was done in a much earlier version of Air, and did not run in the latest version, even after installing the older run time. Some comments on the TwitterCamp site hinted at newer code, but no links worked. What else to do, except toss out a tweet and say, "help!". And Andy Rush came through (actually twice as I missed his first tweetback) with a link to a new version of TwitterCamp on the Google Code site. And just ran it smoothly this morning: So to do this, the steps should be: Install Adobe Air on the computer that will run the app Install the new version of TwitterCamp This will be the basic version and should run out of the box. Login with a twitter account and watch the tweets pop in. To customize the skin, you can follow the same instructions I posted July 2007 noting on Mac OSX you have to ctrl-click on the TwitterCamp app and select Show Package Contents. The 4 graphics you can customize are in the /Resources/skins directory. I did notice the new version does not come with the config.xml file that allows you to change the default instruction text, but I simply copied the old one into the /Resources directory and it worked (there must be a default string coded). You can simply create this file yourself in a text editor, mine looks like: <config> <message>C'mon out an play in the TwitterBox! Friend me on Twitter @cogdog... </message> </config> and you should be off with a custom TwitterCamp! Thanks again Andy, you saved me again... cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Harry Scheihing I have no idea if this image has any meaning here. It's fun. Or scary. Or just wrong. In which Alan finds that searching flickr for creative commons licensed images tagged "vector: gets alot of people's efforts at graphic design with Illustrator, et al. Yeah, the #thougtvectors hash tag will be long. Be more briefer tweeters? Or heck, it might change. #thoughtvectors connects to a summer 2014 cMOOCish type course out of Virginia Commonwealth that bears the aura of Gardner Campbell. Tom Woodward shared the first semi unofficial word on this course, long titled "Living the Dreams: Digital Investigation and Unfettered Minds". The actual course is UNIV 200 "Inquiry and the Craft of Argument". T The email description that Tom posted actually came from something Gardner wrote when I introduced him to my former Maricopa colleague and friend Shelley Rodrigo (official prof page, where's yer blog, Shelley? and I hope you latch on to this train) who is now down the road from him at Old Dominion University. Gardner invited me to join him, Tom, and Jon Becker into the planning for this just this month, so I'm a new kid on the block; I get the sense they have been power brainstorming this for a while. It's going to be super emergent, meaning it is still pretty much a protozoa stage of development. Bus the cells will be dividing madly in April. The plan calls for a lot of distributed activity, so I'm on deck for putting together a new iteration of an aggregator, but one on steroids. What it will be is still cooking. But in our first discussion we agreed we ought to be saving the stuff from this "making of stage". So here is the early pre-alpha bit of a "reader" more or less something I dabbled with for a day as a Wordpress based feed reader. This is my taking of Martin Hawksey's (m)oocinabox code he did for the ALT-C site and set it up on a new install. I have as feeds my blog and Tom's, a flickr feed on the thoughtvectors tag (me jut retagging a fe wold photos), and a feed on the twitter hash tag (run through the labnol script that turns the jSON feed into RSS). Not much. The thing I can see doing is an ability to use categories or tags to do what Google took when it shuttered Google Reader (/me shakes fist at Google)- to group feeds into "bundles" to re-feed them back out. I've not seen any of the new kid readers offering this. Okay, I've dodged and danced around. This is far from the final deal, but I figure what comes is theming and adding functionality; if we start collecting the raw data now, we can change how it appears later. This baby is sitting now at http://vcureader.wpengine.com/. The main reader with Tom's blog post toggled open. The brilliance of Martin's code is something more browse-able than a flow of blog posts. I *think* it tracks read posts by coloring them white. I added the plugin for favoriting posts; the way Martin used it, people could log in and their act of favoriting created an upvote type system, along with tracking who even viewed items. This will not again be the end product. Martin is coding a new version for a course he is setting up for May, and has offered to let me peek over the code shoulder. His newer iterations are using BuddyPress for managing the user profiles and activity streams, something we may be doing as well for #thoughtvectors and/or using Commons in a Box (my research plate). If you plan to perhaps be part of this experience and what to add your blog feed now, let me know (I need to know Jon and Gardner where you plant to blog and what tag/category- that was a nudge). We also need to sort out where people might do some social bookmarking to add to the pile-- diigo is looking most likely (oh delicious what do the tags not work beyond my account?) The big question is how to represent and organize, recast the community activity? That ism what are "thought vectors"? ideas with force and direction, right? I know Tom is interested always in timeline interfaces. And that is the unifying piece of data, when we aggregate we get a time where something was written, tagged, tweeted etc. And we should have the "who" as well, plus extra info like additional tags to connect the activity in hopefully useful ways. To be seen... Oh, and of course am automatic thing was setting up a Hawkseyian Twitter Tags worksheet to archive #thoughtvector tweets. Right now, its mostly Tim and Jon saying "#thoughtvectors" -- but it just works so well to provide different windows and doors into twittering. [caption id="attachment_29016" align="alignnone" width="500"] Twitter Activity Summary for #thoughtvectors[/caption] The most fertile for exploration is of course the tag explorer, to try and understand the relationships between participants: [caption id="attachment_29017" align="alignnone" width="500"] Tags Explorer for #thoughtvectors[/caption] We can even peek into one node (hello Jon!) Again, this is just me putting out the ideas in the early state (and adding another feed log to the fire)... it shall be narrated! cc licensed (BY) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog My StoryBox had a tougher time getting passed the TSA at the Buffalo airport. They were extremely curious, though I did learn it was a mistake to refer to it as a "PIrate Box" which raised their curiosity to code yellow. Actually it was not a huge hassle. On my last 3 trips, it went through unquestioned. On my flight out, they got stuck on a small metal pen that supposedly looked bullet like. Before that, it was my harmonica which set them off. The fear is consistent if the methods are not. I thought for future trips I would print out the PirateBox wiki page. All I need to say, "It is an artistic provocation, man. I am making art, damnit!" But now it is perched happily in the US Airways club. It wants a beer. (Note, given the contrast with the bright light out the window, this was a multiple exposure shot merged in Photomatix Pro as an HDR image). My StoryBox had a tougher time getting passed the TSA at the Buffalo airport. They were extremely curious, though I did learn it was a mistake to refer to it as a "PIrate Box" which raised their curiosity to code yellow. Actually it was not a huge hassle. On my last 3 trips, it went through unquestioned. On my flight out, they got stuck on a small metal pen that supposedly looked bullet like. Before that, it was my harmonica which set them off. The fear is consistent if the methods are not. I thought for future trips I would print out the PirateBox wiki page. All I need to say, "It is an artistic provocation, man. I am making art, damnit!" But now it is perched happily in the US Airways club. It wants a beer. (Note, given the contrast with the bright light out the window, this was a multiple exposure shot merged in Photomatix Pro as an HDR image). Is it just me or are people in the US (and Britain, and France, and... well everywhere) just more on edge lately? Sleeping less / worrying more? I know it's just not me. Of all the things the new administration in the US is doing (and the list grows with every whacko tweet), the idea to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act, without any idea what to do in it's place, just to thump political chests... is at a minimum idiotic and personally, very threatening. Unlike many other countries that see a healthy citizenship as a positive value, in the US, you get healthcare options if (a) you are some kind of billionaire; (b) you work for a medium to large company; or (c) you marry someone from group A or B. And until 2013, if you were self employed and happen to be blessed with a pre-existing condition (my situation), your chances of getting insured and having enough money left to eat something more than cold beans, was in the range of a snowball's survival in downtown Phoenix. Ranting in social media feels good, but it's just yelling into a well. When I took my rants to medium.com, I got 7 recommends and 1 comment. Bigly. Where I live in Arizona is one of the reddest counties in a very red state. My US Representative Paul Gosar, and both Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake have consistently whinged the last 6 years about how terrible the ACA is. They still do. They still spend a lot of energy blaming the previous President. I have not seen, read, heard until it became political to parrot the incoming President, any expressed interest in providing affordable healthcare to all. It's been all BAD BAD BAD REPEAL REPEAL REPEAL. I do send them emails, leave messages with staff. The consistent reply is "thank you very much for your concern. Now let me tell you how bad Obamacare is [insert boiler plate text from web site I already read]]." It's so easy to feel tiny, unheard and lost in the big machine. My action was to buy a domain. Well, first I was motivated / inspired by a personal project created by Tanya Elias, who I knew through my time at Thompson Rivers University. She took the TRU Writer SPLOT Wordpress theme I developed in my time there, and created a wonderful site for people to anonymously share hard stories of victimhood. I see value in collecting personal stories, so my idea was to build my own site where people who are potentially affected by a repeal of the ACA, to show those making the decision what kinds of lives they are ****ing over. Somewhere the idea came for what I think is a clever domain... 30millionlike.me what would it mean if 30,000,000 people put their stories there? More than a big database! And does one comprehend that number on a single human scale? I had some fun tracking down some stats and info that put it in perspective: It would take the populations of the sixteen largest US cities to reach a total of 30 million people — that is, the number of people who benefit from the ACA is greater than the combined populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Fort Worth. And I fell down a small rabbit hole when I found a site where someone put 1 million dots on single page (much horizontal scrolling). They did it by making a square grid of 10x10 dots (100) into a single graphic that has these grids in a grid of 10x10... 0r 10,000 dots. I made that image a pattern in Photoshop, calculate the dimensions needed to have an image that would include 300 copies, and filled it with the pattern. Boom! You are looking at 30 million dots! [caption id="attachment_64132" align="aligncenter" width="630"] 30 million dots in a single image. You can easily find mine in there, right?[/caption] That shows how I get distracted with an idea. I started talking up the idea for the site up before I finished it, so I had to knuckle down over the weekend to flesh it out. But it's there. With my story Life in a Quiet Place Called Strawberry: I did a lot of rewriting of the form where people compose their stories, to make the instructions more specific to the site. I changed the checkbox of categories in the normal site to be a drop down menu of categories, which are states. If for some reason I did get a lot of stories, it seemed a good way to be able to send a link to a Congressperson. And for fun, I threw one new wrinkle in the error checking: The referring of the Affordable Care Act as Obamacare, to me is a bit of a smear, and it is not the name of the law. So my script will substitute "ACA" for every occurrence of "Obamacare" (or "ObamaCare" or "obamacare": or "OBAMACARE" or "ObAmAcArE") That was easy with a PHP case insensitive replace command on the post field with the written text: $wText = str_ireplace ( 'Obamacare' , 'ACA' , $_POST['wText'], $ocount); where $ocount comes back with the number of replacements. Rather than put the lost of stories on the front page, I used the Wordpress option to put a static page there, so I could explain the purpose of the site. And... on every single story, at the bottom, I added the widget from countable that should provide a way for people to easily message their reps (it does some geolocation and suggests the names of your reps...) (there is probably something now privacy kosher on that) Yesterday I shared directly with colleagues in various Slacks and by email. And nothing happened. Might mine be the only one? SAD. Alas no, tonight came in an unsolicited (by me) a new story by someone I do not know. Two stories down, 299,999,998 to go. Can you help? Please? Featured image: Screenshot of my new site at http://30millionlike.me. Licensed Do With It Whatever The Bleep You Want. The SPLOT Tool I am most proud of is the TRU Writer- there is more to write later about how it represents the SPLOT idea. We made it first as an experiment in creating a rich publishing platform that people can use without creating accounts, and thus, choosing how people can choose their level of disclosure online. The ket point for this was figuring out on an earlier tool how use WordPress as a publishing platform capabilities, but never giving people access to a full account. Not every publishing act needs to be teaching a software platform. So we secretly login people in as an invisible user, to give them access to the rich text editor and the WordPress media uploader– but they never know to see the insides of WordPress. The demo site we created (and two in use by an English professor) are the more typical approach of a front index of stories with the newest at the top. Bloggy. In the last few weeks though, using just a built in feature of WordPress, I have created sites that provide the same publishing features, but present the site more like an online journal, starting with a table of contents. This is as simple as each issue of the journal gets it’s own Category; articles/papers are published as posts, and each issue has a corresponding static page as a table of contents. And we use the WordPress feature to make the current issue’s page set as the front of the site. Another internal page (just a blank one called Articles) is where the normal front page flow of posts goes, so its the list of all articles, newest first. Thus as new issues are added, the previous table of contents page is now the entry to its archive. We hang off of the menus a link to the Table of contents page as well as a sub page for the corresponding categories. menu items for Table of Contents (red) and the category link to its articles The idea to experiment with web-native publishing platform for journals was one of the desirable outcomes for my Fellowship. I met early on with Will Garrett-Petts (Associate Vice-President of Research & Graduate Studies) to discuss this possibility; he leads the publications of a the Small Cities Imprint, a journal that publishes online using the Open Journal Systems platform. As I understood it, the software is a bit complicated, and there is no one at TRU that understands it enough to manage. It is meant as a complete management system for running the review and editing process. I have no basis to criticize it, but as a comparison for what I will show you, look at the first issue. The papers themselves are presented as abstracts with links to PDFs and extraneous information such as appendices (PDFs) or videos that do not play. It is pretty much, to me, paper on a screen. My early conversation with Will was helpful, as I discussed the possibility of rich media publishing n WordPress I could see some interest fading, as what became apparent is that all of the writing, editing, layout proofing happens like elsewhere- some process of shuttling around MS Word files. At the time, my assumption was any attempt to paste content from Word into the WordPress editor was an invitation to HTML Cruft From Hell, and carrying over of usually inconsistent formatting that Word generates. Then I did some research; as of maybe the 3.8 version of WordPress, the TinyMCE editor was updated so it strips out ALL of the non-structural Word formatting- it preserves headings, italic, bold, tables, lists, links, and especially telling- footnotes. As an experiment, I decided to reproduce that first issue of Small Cities Imprint using the TRU Writer platform. It took me maybe 4-5 hours and could ave been a lot less. Now I am pretty deft at WordPress; the main time sink was I did not have a complete set of the Word doc originals and I had to ferret around the OJS files system just to locate them; it also took some time to locate relevant graphics, and n some cases, to find one of the videos that was in the project’s vimeo archive. Enough blather, here is the Small Cities Imprint in a web-native format: I have PDFs linked from each article; I think they should be added to the table of contents. And I could have taken a lot more effort to find hyperlinks from the papers. This was really done as an experiment, not to boast that My Way is Better. Our hope is that they folks that run the journal might be interested in converting more of their issues here. But the other important aspect here is the comparison of using a platform like OJS, which one ends up having to fit their needs to its features or capabilities, in a platform we can bend and flex like WordPress, we can take the initial intent of TRU Writer as a composition and sharing tool, and just slightly restructure it to work like a journal. It’s like we can make small mutations of our tools to fit our purposes, rather than fitting our purposes to a system. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This may be the highlight of my trip to Australia. I came all this way to where a Team Canada hockey jersey to push a lawnmower.. But this art spells COGDOG! Woooooooot Cutting grass. I've not pushed a power lawnmower since sometime the 1980s, but as just a small part of a fun two days hanging out with Rowan Peter was getting this opportunity to mimic the feat he pulled back in March when he traced a ds106 into his grass. In fairness to the crying of Jim Groom, he can pump his pride knowing the reason Rowan discovered ds106 from its beginning almost a year ago was Rowan already a reader of BavaTuesdays. So Rowan demonstrated his craft0 he had been honing the canvas in anticipation of my arrival. We discussed the challenges of a capital "G:, and opted for the lower case. Rowan marked a grid out for each letter, and showed me how he shapes the letters. cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I got a bit of cutting in myself, see how hard I am working? Endlessly. This was but a small part of a great day- Rowan and family took me on a Sunday drive on the Yarra Valley, where we sampled wine, coffee, lunch on a big red couch at the Yarra Valley Grand Hotel, and a trip to the top view of the Dandenong range. I could not resist many photos of Rowan and his adorable son: cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was a full day, and we got back to Rowan's house ready for a nap-- til we got revved up about lawn art. After a tasty barbecue meal, we got on ds106radio, where I discovered some of the loneliness of this time zone- no one was awake! We broadcast for 45 minutes with this audience (because zero is the Lambian Goal) until @dkernohan and @aforgrave broke in for some banter. Here is the archive for any nuts that may want to recant our evening- there was some hilarity and a lot of Little Creatures Pale ale flowing: ds106 Radio from Rowan Peter's Home And this is only half the fun- tomorrow will include our visit to the Giant Theremin and other sites in downtown Melbourne.