Well! It was very nice to read my True Friend John Johnston‘s (@johnjohnston, on Twitter) post, called Glitchachrome ds106 Glitch GIFs,  about how he made an app to make a GlitchAChrome ds106 Glitch GIF  to make GlitchGIFs like my True Friends Mariana (@mdvfunes) and Christina (@clhendricksbc) had been doing while I was having an Art Lack like UNCLE […]

I am not sure what week it is in the Headless 13 season of DS106! After moaning about google plus, I’ve used it more than any other way of keeping hold of the ds106 tale. I still do not like the locked in nature of plus, but have to admit is it easy to use. […]

A call for papers for something called the Evil Incarnate Conference  came through my email today. The theme is “Manifestations of Villains and Villainy,” and the conference seeks a definition through exploring various cultural representations of evil. This was a … Continue reading →

This is what I love so much with many ds106 assignments, there is already a nice idea behind and I just have to add something.For the assignment Captain Kirk watches ... Alan Levine must have analysed the idea of the Youtube video Captain Kirk wat...

The Daily Create for DS106 was to create a video promo for DS106 Radio. I am still getting used to the updated iMovie, which comes with expanded “movie trailer” options. Here, I took clips from the radio-infused Air Heads and popped it into a trailer template, and created this bit of video anarchy: Peace (in […]

Taken with exclusive Giff-Glitch-a-chrome film created by John Johnston’s hot off the press Simple Glitch App. 

Information is just information

Take 2 of Cory Doctorow’s photo remix invite from Jonathan Worth. The theme from a forthcoming book by Cory ‘Information does not want to be free’.

When I started DS106 and this blog, I heard somebody advising a participant that if he was...

For the GIFfight, “The Man With No Eyes,” it has a picture of a sunglasses face. And maybe the man wearing the sunglasses can’t see very well in the sun. So it is hard for him to understand communication, which is his failure. So when the Terminator comes along, he puts on his glasses so […]

Professional photographer Jonathan Worth has put out an invitation for anyone to take his photos of Cory Doctorow, activist for liberalizing copyright laws and proponent for Creative Commons, and remix them in anyway you like. They will then choose from the best remixes and share any profits with their co-creators. A series of photographs taken […]

While finishing up the code and remix for Cory’s Mood Room it dawned on me that this could be something put into Mozilla Thimble so other people could change the content or even use their own images to do the same colorizing effect (see the original version at http://lab.cogdogblog.com/cory/). Here is a screen shot of the new version hosted on Thimble, meaning you can explore the code and tinker with it via the handy dandy Remix button: Getting this into thimble meant taking two external javascript libraries and two external CSS files and stuffing them into the code (because to link externally requires a https url and that seems not to work on my site). I added fairly explicit commenting to show the places where you can modify: Again the beauty of Thimble is you can edit code on the left and see the changes on the right (and get […]

Cory Doctorow, taken with a GIFAchrome 106 camera

“First, it’s okay to copy! Believe in the process of copying as much as you can; with all your heart is a good place to start – get into it as straight and honestly as possible. Copying is as good as any other way of getting ’there.’ ”

NOTES ON THE AESTHETICS OF ‘copying-an-Image Processor’

Phil Morton (1973)

Thinking about remix and mash-up!

I was late night tinkering on a current remix effort of For The Remix, an open invitation to generate remixes from Jonathan Worth’s photos of author Cory Doctorow (also a ds106 assignment) For this go around, I wanted to do something in code, and in the web. I cannot remember where the dim light bulb first flickered on, but my idea is a modernization of the 1970′s mood rings which purported to indicate a person’s mood when really it reacted to skin temperature (disclaimer: I honestly owned one) (( never wore it in public). To jump to the final remix chase, my concept reflects that Cory has many things on his mind- books, privacy issues, technology, copyright– and in his private think space he can ponder these and his skin would radiate a mood color. As you mouse over some of these topics, see how his mood color changes. See […]

I admit the title of this post is a bit tongue and cheek and might potentially trivialize the larger crisis in higher ed surrounding adjuncts. That said, adjuncting has been an integral part of my experience at UMW over the … Continue reading →

What feels like a month later, I’m still back blogging some of my experience at Mozfest in London. My ears perked up when someone mentioned something about SourceFabric being at Mozfest. @grantpotter I was told the folks from Airtime are sponsoring the #Mozfest beer tonight, hope to find em to talk about #ds106radio — Alan Levine (@cogdog) October 25, 2013 Why? Because they are the folks that produce Airtime the open source software we use to manage ds106 Radio. I spoke to a few of the folks at the opening night Science Fair, especially Daniel James who works on the Airtime documentation and community. I shared our challenges in having a way to easily signify when a live broadcast is one, and he showed me where in our software is the API we could call, and where in the airtime code this is generated. I got the idea that we […]

So I am looking at Headless Weeks 13 & 14: ximeR and M@$#up, there is a lot of stuff to watch, read and think about. There is also Alan’s Triple Dog Dare for one is: Remix a photo of Cory Doctorow Which I’ve done before. So I end up on my usual ds106 pattern, browsing […]

The article we read a few weeks ago, Mad Love: The Ballad of Fred & Allie, has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize! While some might call it self-congratulation among the Academic/Industrial Literary Complex, it’s more of an honor … Continue reading →

Jane’s Addiction wrote the song “Ted, Just Admit It” in 1987. It gave the title to their 1988 major label debut, Nothing’s Shocking. At that point in time, Ted was still denying responsibility for his murders. The song incorporates Bundy’s … Continue reading →

This was more for fun than for anything else. But in Seattle a few months ago (sorry, this post was in my draft bin for a long time, I guess), a friend of mine (Janet Ilko) from the National Writing Project joined some family members who lived in Seattle. She was with some young cousins, […]

My last episode of Crime Time Radio went up late, assuming it actually made it into the radio stream. But here’s a transcription: That was the Revolting Cocks featuring Timothy Leary with our Crime Time Radio theme, Gila Copter. It … Continue reading →

UPDATE: later the same day Much of my assumptions here were just that and pretty much wrong. Thanks to replies on the wordpress forum to my request from catacuastic, it looks like WordPress is not doing any native resizing (just cropping the original voa CSS) and its more complicated than I guessed to resize. Best suggestion still is ti upload the proper display size of your GIF (keep this size in mind when you create it). The WordPress media uploader does a lot of work under the hood- when you upload an image, it automatically creates at least 3 different sized versions of your original- a thumbnail (usually 150x150px), a medium size (usually 300px x 300px), and large (1024px x 1024px): plus it keeps your original size. All of these are available when you go to upload and add an image to a post. The medium size is frankly small, […]

I saw Sara’s first gif attempt, then I saw CogDog’s Googlyify A GIF assignment for ds106, and I knew this was going to happen. Sorry. Couldn’t be helped.

I just wanted to make a start learning about remixing. Is it a creative act? Where is the creative act? Is it in my choice of filters in Photoshop? Is it in my ordering of video clips? The special effects chosen? The idea that everything is a remix and to some extent has always been, strikes a chord and challenges the view that creativity is originality. The underlying assumptions in what we are reading/viewing this week seems to be that creativity lies in the process of bridging the use of a known set of elements to a new narrative or purpose. Much to learn and reflect on.

Guided tour of the four Jensen refrigerators!