Interesting discussion about the nature of blogs, blogging, and where this stuff might be going. Some comments jumped out at me:

Paul Bausch:

The whole idea of comments is based on the assumption that most people reading won’t have their own platform to respond with. So you need to provide some temporary shanty town for these folks to take up residence for a day or two. And then if you’re like Matt–hanging out in dozens of shanty towns–you need some sort of communication mechanism to tie them together. That sucks.

I just found this Holstee Manifesto Lifecycle video. So good.

The Holstee Manifesto Lifecycle Video from Holstee on Vimeo.

so go out and start creating.

life is short.

I've been using the Ghostery extension in both Chrome and Safari for awhile now. It sniffs the web pages and blocks requests for the douchey stuff that tries to track you online. It lets the good stuff through, but prevents all of the creepiness from executing. It also reports on how many tracking items are attempting to worm their way through it on each page you visit. Eye opening.

It's free. Runs in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and IE. There's also a custom browser for use on iOS, but I haven't tried it yet.

I've been thinking about what would happen to my online stuff, when I eventually kick off (hopefully not for several decades, but still...). This whole Reclaim stuff would mean that my online artifacts would disappear rather abruptly. That's partially mitigated through things like the newly-minted Hippie Hosting Co-op, but what happens to my various account info? How would I hand that off, and send a message after, well, you know...

That's where the idea of the internet deadman's switch comes in. A bit of code that monitors for signs of life from me, and after I stop doing stuff it assumes I've kicked off, waits a predetermined period of time, tries to nudge me by email, and then sends off an email to my family.

My niece got married on the beach in Playa del Carmen last week, so we tagged along. So nice.

The bride asked me to photograph the wedding, but my DSLR is a bit under the weather. I wound up shooting it on a borrowed DSLR - the first real DSLR photos I've shot in about a year. I need to pull mine out of the basement and get it back in working order again. I still haven't seen the photos, but the ceremony was beautiful and fun. I think my fave shot of the entire thing might have been a quick Instagram I shot on my phone, though...

If you're seeing this, the move is complete. My site is now powered by the freshly-hatched Hippie Hosting Co-op, thanks to Timmmmmmmyboy (Tim Owens) for getting the ball rolling.

I'm sure more info about the co-op will be coming soon. I'm making the move to help test things out and see how it will handle adding users. Once things are settled, I'll be closing my MediaTemple hosting package and transferring the balance into the server hosting package used by the HHC (which is also hosted on MediaTemple, so I'm not really leaving MT - they're fracking AWESOME web hosts. Glad to be with them!)

What a fantastic series of posts by Dr. Ben Cowie, a geology prof here at the UofC. He worked with his first-year undergrads, on going to primary research lit, rather than just settling for teh wikarpedia.

• Part 1: the motivation and desire to initiate this program
• Part 2: the implementation of the work
• Part 3: details of how the students handled the material and what the most commonly used strategies were for the students

so good. so happy he's teaching here at UCalgary, and that he's blogging the stuff he's doing.

It was not an isolated incident. As other professors he met described their plans to follow his example, he suspected their classes would also flop. "They would just be inspired to use blogs and Twitter and technology, but the No. 1 thing that was missing from it was a sense of purpose."

(emphasis mine)

You can't just bolt on techy techtech and be a good and innovative teacher (or student). There has to be a reason. A purpose. A genuine, authentic need to use a tool or technique. Otherwise it's just distracting busywork. Sometimes, no techytechtech is the best way to do something.

I've been doing most of my work on an iPad for a couple of months now, and have finally come up with a workflow that fits how I do things. I had initially been typing notes directly into Evernote, which is awesome and extremely useful, but the flow of notes felt entirely too linear. I tend to wander a bit, and come back to things later. Typing notes into a document felt too constraining.

An awesome documentary on finding what you enjoy, and being brave enough to step up and learn. Even better, it was written, produced, directed, and stars my bestest friend Kim Faires as part of the NUTV Doc School program on campus. So good.

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

so good. I need to ride hands-free more. Haven’t really done that since I was a kid…

via a tweet from Momentum Magazine:

The Man Who Lived on His #Bike shar.es/fher2

— Momentum Magazine (@MomentumMag) February 2, 2012

I tried an experiment, where I took a photo every hour on the hour (or as close to it as I could manage/remember) to see what documenting a full day might look like. It was surprisingly fun to do. Might make an interesting @ds106 daily create project...