John – Page 29 – 106 drop in

DS106Zone Week 1

Please specify a Flickr ID for this gallery

I am slightly late with this weekly review and it will be short on thinking. I had got a couple of posts under my belt before the official start date so was feeling fairly smug. I am also listed as a true friend of Talky Tina which brings a certain amount of responsibility, I don’t want to let her down.

I managed the required 4 daily creates, my first is probably my best.

The idea is that this is a computers view of me. I was riffing on a remix from the Mozilla Teach the Web Mooc, Here’s iterating at you, Chad which was working of an idea I saw on flickr sometime and had used in a blog post or two. Somewhat bladerunner I think.
I iterated this a bit more int oa gif for my first assignment Trapped in the Zone which is probably a better idea that it looks.

The only other post I managed was Roots for Riffing which combined a remix and a run at a new assignment.

This is my favourite bit of ds106 ~~stealing~~ borrowing from other participants.

It was Thursday before I watched Jim’s ds106zone: Introduction and Syllabus Review which is just a wonderful introduction into organising online learning, I’ve been rabbiting on about this model during discussions of the next phase of Scotland’s educational intranet, glow so passing this video on like mad.

I’ve also manged to listen to a few of scottlo radio blog ds106 LoDown podcasts which are pretty wonderful. I listen to Scott regularly and love his work. His voice is great and he manages to record where the background sound, kids playing football, cooking or arabic music playing on the radio adds to the rich mix. Sometimes Scott is just facinating while ruminating about what he is doing. Week three, the audio one, looks like being a great bit of ds106 this session. I’ll be away from home without a connection so I’ll miss that bit.

I’ve watched the odd episode of the Twilight Zone, A Nice Place To Visit did not really excite me, I ripped a couple of gifs from this, but don’t think they were interesting enough to post. Last night I flicked through Perchance to Dream part 1 which looks more interesting, again grabbed a couple of obvious gifs:
darkness

Was an easy one. The next with the eyes is a bit rough round the edges but I could not get it a smooth as I wanted despite quite a few edits, this one is at least 75KB small:
mirrorblack

Finally a nice spiral, the barrel could be fixed with a bit more time. I’ve not watched the episode through yet, but downloaded it in two parts from youtube and look forward to it.

As usual I used fireworks to edit the gifs after ripping them from the movie file with my own wee dingus.

I promised myself I’d try to do a good bit more commenting but I not done too well. Started to save the posts I commented on on pinboard but I missed a few. Must try harder!

Off on holiday for a week on Saturday so I don’t suppose I’ll get much done, hopefully return to the fray week 4. If I get a connection I’ll keep up tdc at least, but I’ll not be carrying a computer.

Finally although I’ve not comment much the flow is fast moving and exciting.

Roots for Riffing

timelapse_porthole DS106 seems to have got off to a roaring start, perhaps it is the compressed 5 week course but it is impossible to keep up with the flow. The 24 folk at UMW have turned out 127 posts at time of writing!

This is wonderful, not only for just enjoying the flow of ideas but for the invitation to Rif.

Last night I spent a happy hour, thanks to Brian Bennett’s invitation to rif his trip gif to no great result. (I may return, the one on the left took about 2 minutes this morning, but there are a lot better things to do with the material).

Just before bedtime I then read Mr Conway’s Twilight Zone Title Poems where he kick off a new assignment to make a poem out of Twilight Zone episode titles

I commented a quick verse:

A Most Unusual Camera,
Mirror Image, Miniature.
The Whole Truth: Mute,
Spur Of The Moment:Static,
The Silence: Dust.

Which could, with some generosity, be seen as being about the daily create…

Then I fired off another couple:

Night Call
I Am The Night,
Come Wander With Me.
Valley Of The Shadow,
The Bewitchin' Pool,
Sounds And Silences:
The Fear.

Night Call
Spur Of The Moment,
Come Wander With Me:
You Drive.

The second is almost a haiku. THis got me wondering about feeding the words in the titles into some sort of Haiku generator of which there are a few, some with recipes. Also wondering about some sort of auto animated titles from the zone…

Mr Conway kindly provides a doc of all the lines, I’ll pay that forward with a text file: the twilight zone titles.

Trapped in the Zone

trapped in the odd zone

A quick gif after yesterday’s daily create. I am looking at you #DS106 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

I think this one hits Talky Tina’s ds106 Assignments: From the Twilight Zone, and Beyond … assignments.

I also think a much better job could have been done with the levels if I know a bit more about them. The idea is better that the execution.

Screen capture in Quicktime, my own hand knitted gif extraction. Edited in Fireworks to flip and add the background images.

8 Gifs in search of a title

8gifs-5characters_2

So I am trying to get an idea of the twilight zone before the next round of DS106 starts. It looks like you can watch any of the first 3 seasons on The Twilight Zone Video CBS.com if you live in the USA. I may have to investigate some sort of fake us ip device to see these.

In the meantime I’ve been wandering round youtube. Watching the odd fragment and episode. I’ve watch a couple but Five Characters in Search of an Exit was the first to make me pay attention. According to Wikipedia the title at least is based on Six Characters in Search of an Author and No Exit it has been a while since I saw 6 Characters or read No Exit, but the links, especially to No Exit are clear.

I am beginning to get into the zone, but I found the exposition from Rod Serling a bit much, great voice but I think this episode would be better without the explanation.

On second watching I grabbed gifs as I went through. There is plenty of banging, ringing and the idea of repetition in the tale, I hope some of this comes over in the combi gif above.

The gifs are all short, 7 frames. I combined them by importing them into fireworks.

I am pretty sure there are a few good pun titles for this gif just beyond my grasp… can’t get out of the zone, sort of thing.

After knitting together the gif above I though that two of the frames would work, here is the major begging Rod not to talk so much.

please_rod

I am wondering about redoing this one with Jim Groom in the Rod Serling position.

I guess this is a Multi-Frame GIF Story as well as a From the Twilight Zone, and Beyond … Assignment.

I though the gif at the top looked better on a black background, so wrapped it in a paragraph:
<p style="background:#000;padding:45px">

Once you are on the DS106 Train

A new chapter of ds106 is starting.

ds106zone is an idea Dr. Garcia had about framing the Summer session around a Twilight Zone inspired thematic

from: bavatuesdays | a “b” blog

I’ve not idea about the twilight zone, well off my culture radar, so I am speed reading wikipedia and it looks like I’ll need to take a youtube trip. But DS106 is irresistible! A quick check to see if my blog is still in the mix: