cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine It’s such a burden to remain fashionable, especially in web technologies which rise and fade faster than the latest in sweater swim wear… In assembling future lessons for the Headless ds106 course, I’m on the section for storytelling, and find myself hand editing a list of web resources, the “Bag of Links” approach which has not changed much since 1994. The colors went all faded high chromatic, I heard the crooning of The Mamas and Poppas, and became nostalgic for the dreams of social bookmarking, crowd sourcing dynamic link sharing. I am so retro in that regard that I still use delicious. Go ahead an laugh, even with the Yahoo purchase and discarding, the frequent blinking of lights with the new owners, I still tag and bag my links there, a collection that goes back to 2006. Yes […]

Things can be right in front of you and you miss something completely. That’s the beauty, at least one of them, in a place we share things. More eyes, more perspective. Yesterday’s ds106 Daily Create was to make a monster out of your kitchen items. Given my old cheap coffee maker died that very morning, I hung some things off it, and came up with a not so clever title for the photo of “ineffectual Coffee Maker”. Done. I forgot about it- until Stenfanie Jeske, who has been consistent for maybe a year as an open online participant in ds106 saw what I overlooked and commented: Looks like Darth Vader ;) Of course! The shape of the lid mimicking the hood of Vader, that Chrome plate in the middle looking like his mouth piece. How did I not see that? Revise, meet “Darth Maker” cc licensed ( BY SA ) […]

Because she’s #ds106 #4life and an awesome grandma… #ds106 I'm looking for a way in WP to add a page that shows all of my blog posts. HELP? @cogdog @timmmmyboy http://t.co/CFxbAwhm6y — Rochelle Lockridge (@Rockylou22) August 25, 2013 I do have one of these on CogDogBlog- mainly because I wanted a reference way to be able to grab the links to my own posts when I write new ones. The way I did it is a bit arcane (especially since I did it like 4 years ago), but here is a method that should work for anyone with a self hosted WordPress site. (1) Make a copy of your template’s page.php file and name it something like page-last100.php. (2) At the very top, above everything else add: <?php /* Template Name: Last 100 Posts */ ?> Doing this allows this to appear as am optional template in your WordPress Page […]

As I was mucking about the yard yesterday, I noticed this brightly colored caterpillar trying to climb the wall at the base of my house: cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine After spooking him/her with the camera click, I took a series of shots as it walked along the edge of the rock– it said GIF POSSIBILITY OF MOTION. When I looked at my photos, it was a good sequence, but unfortunately, I had lightly moved the camera so the background was inconsistent. And I did not have a full traverse section. So I decided to see how much I could “fill” in Photoshop once my series was imported. The first thing was to make a background layer without the caterpillar- I took the one from where it was left most positioned, made a copy of the layer, moved it to the bottom of […]

It’s not sure what this portends for next week, these headless courses appearing. Keep your eye and web browser open to http://ds106.us/category/the-site/fall-2013-headless/ where on Monday, at one minute past midnight, the first week’s worth of content will appear for the Headless ds106 Course. The person not teaching this class, a.k.a. I. Crane, has texted us to remind you that this course is not going to provide a detailed list of instructions each week that you need to dutifully follow. Crane will make no vide lectures, nor will appear in twitter, nor will issue grades. See how useless a headless teacher can be? The first two weeks is settle in and get acquainted time, with bits to ponder the foundations of ds106 — creating and owning your person digital space, and getting yourself into the ds106 blogging habit. not that we can penalize you with grades or drop you from class, […]

Here is what an assignment looks like (today) on the development version for a theme that will ultimately give other people a way to build something like the ds106 Assignment Bank This nonsensical example may or may not be here tomorrow, click at your own peril. A screenshot does not give an indication about what it has slowly taken to get just this far. It;s one thing to hack and whack one’s way at the code to get a site like this to world; it’s another to try and build it in way that will be flexible for future and varied uses. I am not messing much with the layout now, it’s more about what’s under the hood. I’ve been able to reduce the database calls in half over the original, and removed a big swath of redundant code. A major change is in how each assignment will get a […]

Leon is looking for you, Sandy Brown Jensen! No, he is not going to “clean” you, but hopefully make you appreciate maybe a little these animated GIFs. This is for today’s ds106 Daily Create: The last time we have an animated GIF assignment, Sandy emailed me and said “Nooooo! I ain’t gonna do it! And you can quote me on that!” She has not found her GIF passion, can you help her see the animated light? Sandy has been consistent in her disdain for the GIF. Thats okay, because she creates some awesome digital stories. And this is a bit of a tease at her, and I know she is a good sport (right Sandy?). I am not sure the ones I did tonight will nudge her meter, but I really enjoyed sitting down for the first time in a while and breaking down some movie scenes into small bits. […]

About 2 weeks before the semester of a ds106 course I teach for UMW students, I send out something I lifted and borrowed from Jim Groom, what we affectionately call the “Scare Email”. Of course we do not want fearful students, but it was our way of letting them know up front how intense the class was– and because it was in such high demand at UMW, we wanted the best potential students for the start. So here is a modified and maybe softened version for the people who have signed up for the Headless Class which starts Monday. I can see 31 blogs already connected to the hub (for those people who set up a blog but have not posted, we wont detect your blog til you write something there! At least a good old fashioned “Hello World” will do it). For fun, I am sprinkling in some examples […]

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine Back when he made sense, Clay Shirky uttered a clever definition “Social software is stuff that gets spammed.” which, now, in my own brain space, find that ds106 is not “stuff that gets splogged” (What is a splog?) Huh? In reviewing the insides of the ds106 syndication engine, where all those posts flow into a giant vat, I have noticed at least 4 times, that the blogs that were used by students in the Sumer 2012 class=-= were now posting about carpet cleaners, hair products, floor wax… What I have found is that at least 4 of these blogs, let expired by ds106 students, have been purchased by.. some entity, and repurposed as splogs, aiming to get their stuff inside ds106 (?) This is easy to de-activate in Feedwordpress, and to me, it’s a bit of an interesting […]

Look ma, no guilt!

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

This is for of course today’s ds106 Daily Create:

Create a pass or certificate that allows you to not complete this Daily Create.

My free association mind went to Monopoly Chance and Community …

It could be I am just out of coding shape or there is more to this reshaping of the ds106 Assignment Bank than it seems. I’d hedge money on the former, but not for ling.

This afternoon was spent doing more inside shuffling and some important theme adjustments. But now …

Before I took on some coding projects today I was compelled to GIF. I hope someone other than me can explain it to Sandy Jensen Brown (you get a daily create chance for that on August 21).

As often, I was motivated by Michael Bransom Smith’s response to something called …

Once again in the YouDontSeeThisInAMOOC category, long time open participant Melanie Barker gives is a fantastic promo GIF for the Headless ds106 that starts August 26: DS106 makes sense.  Running with bulls does not.  But running with bulls is exactly what’s going to be happening near Richmond August 24th.  Fools. If you visit Melanie’s blog, you will find (I am guessing) a ds106 Icon Story inspired header graphic. So why are educators who stereotypically in a Turkle fashion would be off on the beach reading Milton or Sarte, deeply reflecting on their existence– instead using their summer days making animated GIFs for a course they are not enrolled in nor will get any credit? If you need me to explain, I won’t, except to say– get ready for the bulls. You can with the lowest of risks, join a recasting of the syllabi of previous UMW ds106 courses starting August […]

Just to be clear… My title is misleading- there are elements of the ds106 site we are going to be making available soon in a format for you to open, paint, fill, decorate, install on your own site. I worry more about the “in a box mindset” cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Travis Nep Smith I understand why people are expressing an interest for something like “ds106 in a box” @cogdog @jasongreen @holden Once @cogdog finishes those WP Themes, I hear it's all push-button. Solution in a box. — The Russian Apts. (@rusapt) August 1, 2013 After all it is definitely the best thing since ___________. Cult status notwithstanding. But for reasons which hopefully gush out below, I’d really like to eradicate that “in a box” expression- it’s the kind of mindset in the early web years that got us AOL instead of the open […]

It’s time to get all wide-eyed and get started on my August project- to recast the ds106 Assignment Bank into a wordpress theme that would have the functionality built into it for people to create other kinds of sites with the same features. The first step was to create the development site, which shall remain in the wide open so you can watch it grow/implode — it is live now with nothing on it at http://bank.ds106.us/. The code will go soon to github as well. The things that need to be done are: Pull out a lot of things that are hard coded (the types of assignments, etc) and turn them into theme options. This would mean you can fill in the names of things like “Pastry”, “Algebra” and have them appear as main types of assignments. Create other theme options, like even figuring out of what they are called […]

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

And like that, we are at the end of July, the last day of the ds106 Daily Create Summer Challenge, going out with an easy one, a mere photography challenge:

Take a picture of your favorite thing …