homebrewing gifsicle

gifsicle is a commandline tool for animating gifs. I’ve blogged about it before, and created a simple gui for it to grab animated gifs from a movie. I checked the site for updates today and noticed that there is now a Mac OS X homebrew package.

For folk like myself who do not spend much time on the commandline this is a simpler way to install (as compared to downloading the source and compiling). You do need to install homebrew but you do that by copying a line of code from the homebrew site and pasting it into the terminal. Wait a while as a lot of text scrolls by and it is done.

you can then install gifsicle by typing:

brew install  gifsicle and pressing return.

You are then ready to convert a bunch of gif files into an animated gif.

A couple of examples:

Using a set of gifs created from these photos (and a few more), first set converted to B & W in FireWorks:

gifsicle –resize-width 500 –delay=60 –loop *.gif > eagle.gif

Using a set of coloured gifs exportedfrom the jpegs:

gifsicle –resize-width 500 –delay=60 –loop –colors 256 *.gif > eagle256.gif

If you are a ds106er who likes playing with animating gifs, gifsicle is a very useful addition to your toolkit.

 

Say it like Tequila

I see another round of DS106 has started, I have too many balls in the air at the moment to do more than watch it flow through my reader. Then I saw Week 2: Bootcamping It:

This week, we’re also going to ask you to do your very first digital storytelling assignment from the ds106 Assignment Repository. The Repository is a Web site filled with new media assignments that we’ll be using extensively this semester. Your first assignment is “Say it Like the Peanut Butter,” in which you’ll be creating an animated gif of a clip from your favorite (or least favorite) movie. You must also follow the instructions on the assignment page to ensure that your contribution shows up on the Assignment Repository site.

So I though I’d do a wee gif just for fun.

This is from Betty Blue, when this movie came out (1986) I just loved it, didn’t like the 2005 directors cut which added far too much nonsense.
I’ve not dared watch the movie again in case my old brain doesn’t like it so much.
In this scene Zorg and a friend are making and drinking tequila slammers, tequila rapido, and laughing like manics. As I remember the movie, this went on for quite a while.
I downloaded the flv from youtube, opened in in Quicktime and copied a wee section. Opened this saved movie in Fireworks 8 and deleted some frames. I also auto levelled the images as it is a fairly dark scene. I am guessing I’ve added something to a plain QuickTime install to allow it to open flv files.

flickring clouds

Rolling the remix dice I get: haiku it up [remixed]: Media Bender — Remix Machine

Original assignment: haiku it up For the writing assignment, take a random Dailyshoot photograph and create a haiku using that image Remix Card: “Media Bender”: Change up the media for the original assignment- take a video assignment into audio or design.

So I grabbed some images from here: Take a picture of a cloud and tell us what it looks like to you using A flickr CC search toy to get the ones with suitable licenses. I skipped the cloud pictures that had annotations or drawing and and was left with six strong pictures. I wrote a haiku to go with them, dragged the images into iMovie and added a voice recording and a by Kevin MacLeod.
Nothing that any primary 5 or 6 could not do. I am not terribly please with the audio, using a usb headset mic, recorded so many times my voice loses all meaning. Better mics not avaliable and I wanted to get these 2 stars down quickly and get back on the ds106 horse.

Flickr Photos by
Dare to dream7: Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike License
@DrGarcia: Attribution-NonCommercial License
cogdogblog: Attribution License
Michael Branson Smith: Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike License
Rowan Peter: Attribution-Share Alike License
Music: Kevin MacLeod

Back after AWOL

I’ve completely ducked out of DS106 for the last two weeks. Work, family and a week long conference meant I’ve not don anything for week 7, 8 or Week Nine: Remixing it Up — Camp Magic MacGuffin and didn’t do anything for the wonderful: Seven Day Daily Create Challenge.

I did see a tweet from Mike Berta inviting me to Radio campfire with stories and songs which I could not follow up. For the sounds of it: Digital Raconteur: Radio Campfire Show it was great. As I’ve been digging into Internet Radio at Radio Edutalk I would have loved to join in.

So I am going to try a few daily creates this week, I started yesterday:
Night fades into day
Two photos taken out my window with iPhone, layered and with a fade applied with photoshop touch on an ipad.

and I’ve made a quick one on the Remix Machine Tell A Tale On A Tapestry [remixed]: DS106-ersizing, whicxh turns out to be quite easy:

The Bildwirkerey von Bayeux looks useful: Create your own stories with the historic tale construction kit.


Hopefully heading for a slightly more creative week.

Impending Zombie Apocalypse

So DS106 weekly assignment for last week was: a group radio show which sounded interesting. I joined my Camp bunkhouse (Wäscälly Wäbbits (sic)) buddies: Mike Berta, Chanda Cowger, Ben Harwood, Kevin Murphy and Ciara Norquist, the task was:

In each group, each person is “responsible” for 5-7 excellent minutes of the radio show. If they want to work in pairs, the minutes add up (2 people = 10-14 minutes, etc.) Ideally, the final shows should then be between 25 and 50 minutes.

Mike Berta came up with the title of our show: Impending Zombie Apocalypse ala War of the Worlds, which I must say worried me a bit. A lot of DS106ers seem to be steeped in US movie culture and I am not. I am also not much of a horror fan.

I decided I would think of a few angles I could take and opened a google doc where I wrote:

I’d like to do a segment on ‘other zombies’ eg not movie or fiction including some of the following:

Thinking I could avoid the imaginative.

Mike Berta suggested: How about segments where we are reporting from our location what is happening.

This went down well with the group. We collected a bunch of links to audio, etc on the google doc and went our separate ways with the odd tweet, mail and update to the doc keeping us in sync.

I started working on a script of sorts, I focused on the music of Fela, and kept references to zombies vague, hoping that they could be interpreted metaphorically as well as literally. I tried to get in some links to ds106 but kept them vague too. This is what I came up with. Recorded in a straightforward way in GarageBand.

I got my daughter Christine to help with the recording, she was a great help as shew has a good ear for what will work and how to use voice. Recording a fictional piece (even writing one) was a bit of a stretch, I’ve recorded plenty of podcast but always non-fiction and without much attempt to build atmosphere.

It was then up to Mike Berta to put this together is some way. I had quite a busy week so didn’t pay a lot of attention, but Mike got an edit finished and it was played on DS106. As it was played at 3am here I didn’t hear it. I did download the mp3 file Zombie Free Radio DS106

I was impressed by how well all of my bunkmates contributions came out and even more impressed by how Mike had managed to weave them together into a coherent and compelling whole.

Later I listen to the whole Tuesday show which also had the Bunkhouse 2 contribution. This was surrounded by Alan Levine’s discussion, atmospheric build up and live chat with conversations with Jennifer Orr from Bunkhouse 4 and our own Mike Berta. Fascinating to see how very loose directions, make a radio show, between spatially and culturally diverse folk can come together.

Tech Tips

I was verery interested in how Alan wove together audio from iTunes, his browser, and live skype. We have done similar things over at Radio EDUtalk, but he added a killer feature, the skype folk could here iTunes in the same way as the radio broadcast. I tweeted out to cogdog and got pointed to this amazing post My Newest Rube Goldberg ds106 Broadcast Machine: Ladiocast + Nicecast – CogDogBlog, looking forward to implementing this for next sessions Radio Edutalk

A great assignment that I had more fun than I expected and has me thinking about lots of things.