Blog Posts

Midway

Midway Journey

on acceptance in freeform

Yesterday, Jim was rolling out an all-requests show on DS106, based on the theme “love and loss.” I caught part of the show, and it was pretty amazing. Then, some requests came in and I complained.

I was a jerk. I apologize for complaining about the content of a user-powered freeform Internet radio phenomenon.

For freeform to be truly freeform, the community needs to feel able to experiment and play anything, without fear of judgement or condemnation. My snark broke that trust.

no more political attack ads

An election hasn’t even been called, but The Harper Government has been running ads nonstop, trying to discredit any alternatives to The Conservative Party of Canada. The attack ads have to stop. I just signed the petition by the Green Party to try to reign in this madness.

For the likely 2011 federal election, I refuse to vote for any party that runs attack ads. Stand for something, not against.

DS106 ringtone. can you dig it?

The intro for DS106 Radio has become pretty much burned into my brain. I don’t know who made the clip, but they took a segment of Cyrus’s speech from The Warriors, and smushed it into some marching band music (?).

The intro bumper from the best damned freeform internet radio station on the planet. Can you dig it? Can you DIG it? CANNNN YOUUUU DIIIIIIIGGGG IIIIIIITTTTTT? Yes. Yes, I can.

lecture capture technology may not be inherently evil

I just saw a link retweeted by David Porter, pointing to an interesting post by Mark Smithers.

Mark’s post is a great read, on why lecture capture may not be what we think it is, nor do what we think it does.

But, I don’t think that necessarily makes the technology bad. Yes, it offers a tempting crutch to lazy instructors. Look! My lecture is available online! I’m totally innovative and engaging. Next slide.

still no analytics

It’s been almost 6 months since I killed all active analytics on my blogs. I scrubbed it of Google Analytics and WordPress.com Stats. The only numbers I get now are passive and highly aggregated and anonymized, webserver logs automatically crunched by Urchin.

I don’t miss the detailed active analytics one bit. I still find out if anyone links to my stuff, through the WordPress Dashboard links widget. But I have no clue about how many people read my stuff, nor how many RSS subscribers there are.

the URL alphabet game

Tim Bray tried a little experiment to list browser-suggested URLs for each letter of the alphabet. Thought I’d give it a shot:

• ac.mediatemple.net - Account manager for my Media Temple hosting)
• blackboard.ucalgary.ca - UCalgary’s Bb install
• cpep-net.ca - an OLD project, long ago abandoned
• darcynorman.net - my blog. go figure.
• entrada.com - a vet/med education app
• flickr.com
• google.com - I’m still using DuckDuckGo via browser bar, but go to google directly to search sometimes.
• home.darcynorman.net - no place like home.
• instagr.am - home of hipsterific poser film photography, including my own.
• jentropy.com - how long has this been there? I think the site was abandoned.
• knowledgetree.org - open source shared document repository app
• links.darcynorman.net - my bookmarks site
• mindfulseeing.com - my photoblog
• northernvoice.ca - moose season is coming!
• ow.ly - eater of direct links, killer of web
• photoretouchinglab.com - the horrors!
• Quality Outdoor Gear, Equipment & Clothing - Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) - mec.ca
• reddit.com
• sustainabilityreports.ucalgaryblogs.ca - a current (well, NOW past, project)
• tlc.ucalgary.ca - Teaching & Learning Centre @ UCalgary
• ucalgaryblogs.ca - the best damned campus blogging platform, evar!
• vet.ucalgary.ca - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine @ UCalgary
• www.darcynorman.net - my blog. again. yikes.
• xcal.ucalgary.ca - web interface for some of the UCalgary calendar system
• youtube.com
• zdnet.com

I do much (most?) of my reading through my RSS reader (which runs as a subdirectory of darcynorman.net, which, I’d bet, is why my own domain is listed twice above). The stuff listed here is mostly stuff I use directly and regularly, or stuff that got bounced out of my RSS reader for some reason. (or, stuff that’s linked from gruber’s daringfireball.net, most likely…)

the future of education, ca 1910

This is how education was predicted to advance by the year 2000, as seen from 1910.

Villemard, 1910
À l’ École

from visions de l’an 2000, via photozz

Turn that crank! Absorb those LORs! OERs for everyone!

Guitarcasting with Radio DS106

I had a bit of a duh/ahah! moment this evening. We’ve been messing around with Nicecast to broadcast audio from Skype and iTunes, and it hit me that it would be able to pick up sound from GarageBand just fine, too. Broadcasting live guitar jams over Radio DS106.

I plugged my guitar into my amp, and connected the headphone jack from the amp to the line-in on my MacBook Pro. I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack on the computer, so I could hear as I “played.”

moving beyond the automobile: biking

Yes please, Calgary.

(via PlanetBike’s twitter feed)

visit u.s. station 31

Get away from it all.

Mayday, mayday. Can anyone hear me? Over. This is U.S. Station 31. Do you read me? We found something in the ice. We need some help down here. Can anybody hear me? We found something… We found something… We found something…

zero

This almost never happens. But I took the time to nuke old emails that I didn’t need to keep, and dump stuff that is no longer relevant. An inbox cleansing is very cathartic. Merlin would approve. (but it probably won’t last very long…)