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I’ve been thinking of my approach to the daily create. At the start of the month I was loosely connected to the Reclaim Open 2025 conference via Combobulating where a few of my posts here were combobulated with others as a way of talking about ds106 as part of a wild web.

I didn’t manage to take part as much as I liked, but had some fun, and thought a bit about the daily create. I don’t take the daily part very seriously at the moment. My contributions are often old things I’ve had on my hard drive or recycled attempts at creates gone by.

Strangely this week I’ve done more than usual. But two were recycled, one was a photo and one was a quick image edit.

Today I made more of an effort, I’d looked at the prompt in the morning and it didn’t click with me. Then I saw Kevin’s toot:

dial in a daily call us and we will inspire you to create or to remix; or maube it will be an invitation to write a story or a poem; or perhaps a call to share a photo or a piece of art. the unexpected is part of the appeal.
call today to get inspired.

Which made me think. I wonder if I could do something like the original project without any of the really hard or expensive bits. Maybe a webpage that would speak a random Daily Create? I did a bit of combobulating of some ideas and things I’d found and stored.

  • I knew that the daily create runs on WordPress and that you can access WordPress posts via an api. I’ve played with that before. So I just tested the endpoint to the posts in Firefox as it renders json nicely.
  • I thought I recalled that JavaScript can do text to speech so I searched for more information and found a nice, simple example.
  • I copied a very simple php cache I used a while back and adapted it to pull down the posts from the daily create.
  • I copied some code from an example from Tom Woodward to get me started. Pointing it at the php which would get the daily’s once a day and hence be less of a strain on that site and speed things up.
  • After looking for some phone images I decided to go mobile with a crude div with rounded corners.
  • Working on my raspberry pi meant I could edit and update quickly so just bashed through, borrowing and adapting some JavaScript from the speech example and Tom’s code. Some css from the speech example. The meta tags from a previous daily create. Since I had got the content of the daily posts I added a view of those too.

I came up with this: TDC 5054 Phone DS106, which reads out a random daily create challenge.

Given I’d already run way over the idea of doing tdc is 15 minutes I stopped quite quickly. There are a lot of things I could improve.

  • Proper colour change on the button, handing up a call you do not like.
  • Not loading another till the first was finished or hung up.
  • And maybe a text button to reply to the create on mastodon.
  • Some error checking & tidy code 😉
  • A calendar view of the creates would have been cool.
  • Make it nicer looking, maybe go with a tin can telephone metaphor.
  • Is a nicer voice possible?

But life is short, I’ve learnt a bit, had some fun and perhaps I’ll get a like or two.

This sort of thing, where I take the daily create in a different direction, make it into a couple of hours play, practise some “skills” and think a bit, is my favourite type of daily create. And because the rules of DS106 are flexible & porous I feel “successful”.

Update, while I was writing this Alan added it to the Daily Create site menus. Adds a bit of pressure to keep the pi running and maybe tackle some of the improvements.

Featured image public’s domain from Wikimedia Commons.

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In reply to #tdc5054 #ds106 Dial A What?.

The Dial-A-Poem project by Giorno Poetry Systems (from the brain of artist/poet John Giorno) is old school connective tech. You dial the number (1-917-994-8949) and you get a poem read to you. Cool, right? (And it works! I just listened to a poem read to me via US phone service)

What else might work for the Dial-A-? concept?

Make your pitch.

Stole an idea from @dogtrax

TDC 5054 Phone DS106

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Raven in flight, Black and white

Kilpatrick braes, yesterday, short loop. Low clouds, some drizzle and a few bright spells. Quite warm. Paths like burns after yesterday’s heavy rain. On the first field a buzzard hunting. A couple of ravens appeared & moved it off. After the deer fence, under the trees, I saw them again, or another trio. Again the ravens chased the buzzard off. I could hear them kronk and also making an almost electronic 2 note call I’ve not heard before.

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Read: And He Shall Appear by Kate van der Burgh ★★★★ 📚

Working class boy is dazzled by Cambridge & his magician, occultist “friend”. Page turner, dark academia.

Some people say we’re our true selves when we think nobody is watching. But how do we know our own identities without others’ confirming gaze? If, like the tree falling in the proverbial wood, nobody is around to hear us, is our story a story at all? And when were different things to different people, what then?

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Animated gif of 4 batteries in a box, the name on the batteries is GIF, the colour of the text changes.

Forever

An anmimated gif of a dance scene from The Leopard. Text: The ‹Ds106 Dance goes on #4life

#TDC1968 see also dancing

Dancing

see also personal.

An old photo of an organ grinder with a monkey the grinders fae is replaced by Alan's the monkey by mine.

I’f I’d the skills this would not be a terrible edit and it would be animates. I do dance to a lot of Alan‘s Tunes.

Black and white croud dancing
dancing figures
Dancing couple from the La Dolce Vita movie

I’ve had a lot of fun and learning to make Jim Groom Dance. This is a reasonable example of how ds106 can lead you down strange paths of learning, and community. Jim took this in good part.

Personal

#tdc1919 Celebrity Heads in a Jar | The DS106 Daily Create

Making fun of DS106 leaders can get quite personal, see also socks and dancing.

Competitive

There is a DS106 Daily create score board, I was on the top once:

An animated gif of a stick figure climbing the DS106 top score list.

Political

Animated gif, green circle with text round the edge Vote #DS106 Make America Great again. a man in a ds106 t-shirt dances in the midlle, thsis section is rotating.

Make America Gif Again #tdc2392 #ds106 @jimgroom still dancing;-) See also, dancing, personal

Riffing

One of the best parts of DS106 is what some call remixing & I think of as riffing. Many of these are lost in the depths of delted twitter feeds, but one I recall was record riffing. Which ended up with this:

One of the most delightful things that can happen in DS106 is someone can take what you make and change or improve it, one of my favourites, #tdc1713 Get Your Mozart On: Compose an Imaginary Musical Manuscript | The DS106 Daily Create:

gif of music stabe animated to boince the notes up and dow.

This was much improve by Todd (lost on twitter) and made really musical by Viv.

In another post about this sort of thing I wrote

For me ds106 is a bit like non competitive tennis with self replicating balls that can be played on any court you like with any rules you like with the addition of be nice.

from: Boing – 106 drop in
Animated gif, a heron on the edge of a pond, ducks as a gull flys over. Text: Nervous? - make a gif.
Animated gif of black and white movie of old film, man falls over in the snow wearing snow shooes. Text It is so cold my gif froze.

Features image for #tdc320 using Alan’s photos.

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layered imafe a man looking at a screen from behind. The screen displays the ds106 website.

Or DS106 look back in bewilderment

My path to DS106 is lost in the haze. The First mention this site is animating gifs on a rainy afternoon.

At that point I’d been reading around ds106 for a while.

I suspect my intro came from the flowering of web2.0 in education I was certainly reading Alan in 2006 and remember reading about Jim’s involvement in The Peoples Republic of Non-Programistan.

My first round was most encouraged by this idea: “#tdc2706 #ds106 “Welcome aboard, do what you like and leave the rest.” The Word according to @jimgroom

DS106 Radio logo with dancing jim groom
#tdc2706

Once I started I’ve not really stopped, I’ve participated in several rounds of DS106 classes, finishing some, some not. My responses are scattered over service, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, mastodon & my blogs. I don’t respond much now, but I try to use my blog for anything I want to keep. DS106 has taught me about the impermanence of the web and how a domain of my own gives me a little stability.

Learning

tdc2185

I do not think there has been an online experience that has been as educational as DS106. It took me in to podcasting, aggregation, WordPress and more. It gave me the most positive experience of online learning &connection.

A glitched planet surrounded by a swarm of DS106 astroids. Text at bottom right: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Creative cults attacking the MOOC swarm. #DS106 astroids glitching across distant planets. All those moments will be lost in twitter, like tears in rain.
tdc1992

& Fun

Can on a unicorn, text "I used to be a grumby cat #ds106"
tdc1069