Blog Posts

gojira, in icons

Godzilla iconstory title

The original Gojira story, as retold through icon imagery.

radiation. run. fight. oxygen destroyer.

and, for Jim, here’s a version of the US release from 1956, where they spliced Raymond Burr throughout the movie to explain what was going on, because North American audiences couldn’t read subtitles in 1956:

Godzilla US Release iconstory

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playlist story

A computer-generated story, using tracks in my iTunes library as source material as per request

Playlist story

A tale of mortality. Of acceptance. And of transcendence.

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traffic

average visits per day, for the first month of 2011.

Visitsperday

just sayin’, is all…

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why usage based billing will hurt online education (and other interesting things)

The CRTC has supported Usage Based Billing (UBB) for Canadian internet service providers. On the surface, paying for what you use sounds entirely rational. But the way UBB is set up is to impose a disincentive for usage, rather than an actual pay-for-use model.

My ISP, Shaw Cable, has a “High Speed” internet service. It is now capped at 60GB per month. Every GB above that is billed at $2 each. It apparently costs the ISP about 1 penny to move 1GB of data. Real UBB would have my monthly bill increased by approximately 1 penny, rather than $2. Maybe the ISP can make a case for a 10x charge. Fine. So a rational UBB at 10x cost would add 10ร‚ยข per GB, rather than $2.

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on broadcasting to radio #ds106

The Radio #ds106 phenomenon has totally changed how I think of social presence in a course experience. There is something magic (and yet not magic) about a bunch of people coming together to play and collaborate in various forms, just for shits and giggles. It’s awesome in so many ways.

It’s also a little like living in science fiction.

Grant Potter set up a radio station for the DS106 course. Which has been amazing. And then he shared the live broadcasting info, so people can tap into the server and broadcast live audio from wherever they are.

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honey, I'm home.

the move. she is done. if you can read this, then stuff is up and running on MediaTemple. woohoo.

things may act a little funky as I tweak stuff after the move. I mean… more funky. cough.

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moving

I’m moving my stuff to a new server. Things may be kind of flaky in the mean time. I’m sure you’ll find something else to entertain yourself until my stuff is properly moved.

** and… done. ** if you can see this, then my domain has properly finished pointing at the shiny server bunker of MediaTemple

– D

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where to draw the line?

Where to draw the line.jpgOne of the things I’ve been thinking about with regards to personal cyberinfrastructure, is where to draw the line defining where an individual should be focusing their energy.

The #ds106 model draws the line just above the LAMP stack. But that’s an arbitrary selection. It could just as easily be pushed down to the hardware level - students will acquire (or build, or design) a server and then install (or build, or design) an operating system etc…

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ds106 intro story

In the spirit of sharing process, ala Cogdog, here’s how I did it. It’s pretty complicated.

This video was shot in one take (no script, just kinda winging it), using my iPhone4 as video camera, resting on a plastic stand on my desk in the basement. To do this, I pressed the “record” button on the phone. The video was brought into iMovie ‘09, via the magical wondrousness of a USB cable, and some photos were dragged over from Aperture (I used a trackpad for this, but any pointing device supported by MacOSX would likely suffice). Export the file as HD movie, and upload to teh youtuber, slowly, via the fugly web interface.

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2011 won't be like 2001

that’s what you get when you say “create something” to someone with no skill, and even less ability to self-restrain.

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best of 2010

Relax. This isn’t a navel-gazing retrospective. It’s an effort at editing my photo library.

I took some time last night to go through the photos I shot in 2010, to find ones that were good. I do this long after taking them, to distance from the emotional connection - it’s easy to think a photo’s good if it’s of family member etc… if you like the content or moment. But I try to go through on a second (and third, and fourth) pass to find ones that are good on their own. I started doing this delayed review after watching an interview with Gary Winogrand, where he mentioned that he doesn’t even develop film for at least a year after he shoots it, to separate himself from the emotion of the moment.

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