I’m playing with words. As usual. I ain’t no chat ai thing just a frail human. “Right” here is not in the sense of correct or justified (although someone on the internet might be correct at this very moment), but right as plugged in to its essence, the original wizards staying up … | Continue reading
The unexpected responses to online activity, sharing openly, are the things that sparks my optimism the most. This most recently happened through a flickr email notification: Hi ! Congrats! The photo 2022/365/226 In the Cloud (*that* kind of cloud) you added to the group CSSS: Ca … | Continue reading
Sure a new year means all kinds of things (sans resolutions) for me it’s time to mark another year done at the Daily (but never everyday) Photo effort. Thus 2023 makes it the 16th year for this habit I do no want to shake. To recast the story again, it goes back to the solo […] | Continue reading
It’s six o’clock PM, the outside solar lighting (aka the sun) has turned off, the temperature outside has warmed up from *&#^ing cold (where Fahrenheit and Celsius converge), we are cozy inside with warm drinks, silly movies, and completely unplugged, diverged from the w-o-r-k st … | Continue reading
Since I know not which will be last, I am doing my own archival work here. This was my first day twittering on January 31, 2007: This first day’s glorious messaging says so little about the future. Here is that fateful day, with tweets in chronological order: Looking at a long li … | Continue reading
There’s been more than enough “takes” on the Twitter implosion at the hands of he whom I may only refer to as the Dark Lord of Twitdor. I do not dwell nearly in the muck of it as much as many colleagues. By not putting my face in the public algorithmitized stream (hello lists, co … | Continue reading
It hardly takes much to compel me to blog something about Flickr. Sure, lots of folks are just dumping photos to Google because it applies some data sniffing organizational features, or pouring them into Instagram for the quick like fixes (where they can never be found by search) … | Continue reading
All the places are full of doom, gloom, apocalypse about the state of the bird site or the impending end of _____ at the hands of AI or just the regular invoking of internet as burning dumpsters. I do not deny that these foul things are happening nor is this head in the sand. It’ … | Continue reading
I had a tab open for months (no one paid it off) (no a browser tab) in the vein of ones about shaping technology (insert a Tom Woodward style footnote that goes to his blog). What am I babbling about? It’s a way of using technology working within its abilities to shape it to do [ … | Continue reading
Nothing new here, is there ever? But I am a bit tired of every post to Mastodon WordPress plugin (and ActivityPub too) sends there a featured image without the alt text entered here in WordPress. I end up getting (correctly) slapped by the Please Caption bot! So I am switching th … | Continue reading
In a fit of desperate desire to not be awash in social media slush of the twitter muskification as explained via ChatGPT, I am resorting to perhaps the worst blog post title since… (searching them all in vain) ever. Yes, to be honest yesterday’s foray into coding some means to ex … | Continue reading
Oh WordPress, how I love the, let me count the ways… well one of the ways is the ease of embedding all kinds of media sources just with a simple URL. I am surprised seeing so often authors on WordPress sites adding a link to a YouTube video, when it is even simpler to embed […] | Continue reading
In the ongoing commitment to keep use of my trusty old 2012 Macbook Pro, after a battery replacement last May, the latest challenge was the loss of my spacebar. I did my diligence in watching YouTube videos of various people demonstrating how to pop of the spacebar and clean\insp … | Continue reading
There has been over the last few (insert measure of time) better awareness and attention given to making information in media available (aka accessible) for the visually impaired, via alt text or image descriptions (not a new topic ’round here). But here is something counter intu … | Continue reading
I actually am not ready to blab about the Twitterpocalypse- instead I am experimenting with a “toot” from Brian Bennett, who I have been path crossing (pre-Twitter)? via ds106. I remembered there was once a JavaScript bookmarklet for quick posting built into WordPress… it’s not i … | Continue reading
I’m sending a big thanks to Alec Couros for inviting me to present a one hour introduction to H5P, zooming in, to the University of Regina Centre for Teaching and Learning. As promised in my intro, #IDontDoSlides, so they got my Branching Scenario style show, talking about H5P by … | Continue reading
I rather feel like headplanting in the sand until the din and blabber (not the fun kind) of endless takes and broad claims of Twitter demise, Fediversitopia subsides. Oh I have something maybe to say, but I’d rather build stuff and tinker that toss sermons. Out of curiosity and e … | Continue reading
Cue the music. Baddddum. Baddddum… Pinging Martin Welller… It’s been a while (maybe 6 weeks but that’s like 2 eons in blog years) since I last blabbed about the bad smell or worse or just missing items in Google Image’s Creative Commons License search. Danny Sullivan, who I belie … | Continue reading
For re-refreshing change from the ever increasing Twitter fallout drama and the rising wave of AI euphoria, I was granted a reprieve last week where I got to catchup with an old friend, yes, that Blabberize talking alpaca. Alas, we could not help but slip into the musky drama of … | Continue reading
I am not sure if what I am going to describe is some kind of condition or diagnosis (or just weird). I have a pretty good recall for landscapes or places I have seen. They seem to register in my brain more efficiently than location of car keys and missing wrenches. A few block cl … | Continue reading
My last long winded nerdy post on image accessibility veered far off the path of possible interest from anyone (or maybe everyone is too busy trying to sort out their move to Mastodon). The thing is, my brain is not done with this. Most of the things I whinged on depended on syst … | Continue reading
Amongst all the Twitter upheaval spawned by he who shall remain nameless and its effect as rapid increase in Mastodon as a federated platform that should withstand those kinds of despots, a rather telling difference to me is in what we, the sighted people, never see– alternative … | Continue reading
Please Steven Johnson, take my blog post and remixed photo as an honor and tribute to your book (which I have purchased, read, and scribbled notes in the margin). Most great ideas first take shape in a partial, incomplete form. They have the seeds of something profound, but they … | Continue reading
Not that I am setting any goals here but can I keep pace? Just writing this creates the potential of expectations. But this is my gig space alone. And once more, a small nugget of example what hoisting content on your own platform, your own domain, creates unexpected potential fo … | Continue reading
The fun thing about Mastodonning is that it is all new again. I worry much about what I see as a lot of effort to just transport the Twitter mindset there. Think differently, build a new. As a small experiment, I am testing the WordPress Auto Post to Mastodon plugin to toot out n … | Continue reading
In my ongoing stream of “how can twitter be that awful when this happens daily”, I present the case of a geological cross section that yanked me far down the web rabbit hole. My primary view into “bird space” (frankly that masto-term has as much goofiness as “toots”) is a Tweetde … | Continue reading
The churn of techno-fadism is at warp speed 9. Already left behind is blockchain, NFTs and despite the imploding star of twitter-verse, it feels like it’s AI* all the time. In trying to generate some discussion activity over at the OEG Connect community site I have been fiddling … | Continue reading
If you stay at this old habit of writing in your own space (rather then handing it off to whacky billionaires?) a side benefit is being able to tap into your own past experiences. It’s much more than nostalgia, especially as my human memory banks tend to get leaky over time. Or m … | Continue reading
In all the frenzied exodus from the deck of the Musk Boat, mass acts of tweet deletion, self announcements in the fediverse, I wonder about how far we’ve come from Mike Caulfield’s classic (to me) pondering of the Garden and the Stream. Pretty much the last few years the garden h … | Continue reading
Taking the green pill, as all the crowd is doing. I have stuff to write about Mastodon, but for now, I am trying to figure something out — is there a way to extend the capability of the DS106 Daily Create (TDC) to include participation from Mastodon. Needed steps would be: Create … | Continue reading
It has been a while since I gave thought time to volcanoes, how about you? And of all unlikely starts to the process, this came via a tweet from Stephen Downes referencing a new content site which he noted must be just starting out because 3 of the top search results included cou … | Continue reading
I have more than a fondness for what was my first (non child theme) custom WordPress theme, WP Dimension, converted from a HTML5up template, ideal for a person’s main domain site, what I like to call a “calling card.” The front page offers a series of “boxes” you can set up with … | Continue reading
“Does Alan only blog these days about Creative Commons images?” It. Seems. That. Way. But it’s a break from SPLOT, SPLOT, SPLOT. But look, for this one you get a tool out of the deal, here it is before you have to wade through all my type-ridden, long-winded, whinge tinged verbia … | Continue reading
One of the very best things that can happen from sharing something digital I’ve built/duct taped together, is that someone actually uses it. But even better, is when they use it in a way I would have never imagined. Take my SPLOTs. Please. (bad Rodney Dangerfield joke) The ones t … | Continue reading
Do you know one of the oldest professions on the web? Not that one — heads out of gutters– please! But then again, revel in the curioustity holes that Wikipedia can open when I looked for that link… No, it is making web pages that are list of other web sites. Educators love this … | Continue reading
Yikes, I had to dig deep in the archives to find the last time I did a DS106 Assignment. I would like to think there is one in there about making an excuse for not doing them. Well there was one in 2020 when I made a DS106 Assignment for NetNarr, then the assignment timeline […] | Continue reading
Enough energy has been spent here combing through what Google Image Search excretes for Creative Commons licensed images. So much that it merited a new tag. And yes, they seem to have twiddled a few knobs the results have ascended from only 3 CC licensed dog images found Septembe … | Continue reading
Beware of impending clichés of deceased horse attacks (sidebar: why does anyone worry about how many stones it takes and never ask why the fascination with killing birds?) Having made the call for the broken state of Google’s touted ability to locate open licensed images getting … | Continue reading
This is more of my own niche technical fixes that is more interesting in that I learned a new trick, added a small feature to a WordPress site, all only because I inadvertently capitalized the header column of a CSV import. Or again, my own habit of narrating my work for what I h … | Continue reading
Well the last post on Google Image Search for Creative Commons Licensed ones being broken did get some notice. The word was that it was JaB (Just a Bug) (I made that acronym up, check it) And now the evaporation of Google CC Search is being noticed by key figures. I can’t drop th … | Continue reading
Except me. As of one minute ago I confirmed what I noticed last Wednesday. According to the all seeing Google, on the entire world wide web there are but three Creative Commons licensed images of a dog. People have worried about enclosure of the commons, these seems to be a whole … | Continue reading
The notion (and act) of shaping your technology1 rather than limiting yourself to what a tool provides still (or always) is resonating with me. I’m thinking about the width of the spectrum from complete control by code to almost no freedom except what a GUI provides, for me WordP … | Continue reading
Hey CogDogBlog, you seem to be devoid of not only a hello world, but not too many posts at all recently. So never going out of style (here) is the genre of Blogging about Not Blogging closely followed up by Blogging about Blogging (2007 version! 2010 version!) (and a cover song “ … | Continue reading
I have a negligible update for a favorite of my WordPress Calling Card themes. WP-Dimension was the first of several I first made a WordPress theme out of an HTML5-up template. It appeared in this dimension in February 2017. This theme is also special as I use it dog-fooding styl … | Continue reading
Not in the spirit of slow blogging, this is just a slow blogger, catching up on a presentation done back on July 12. When I was a kid blogger, I’d have it written before the end of the day. C’est la blog. I do relish (possible pun warning) an opportunity to tap back into the […] | Continue reading
Or don’t. I always forgot about this domain, but smile when I see the renewal notice from Reclaim Hosting. They gave it to me in 2014 as a twitter contest to pick a novel vanity name. It’s one of the few contests I’ve ever won, for tweeting my idea– dontlookatmy.photos (see the r … | Continue reading
This post was intended for August 27, and I could even get the energy for the tapping it in until the wee hours, slipping into August 28. This is the day to remember, honor, tell a few stories about my Dad, who left this world August 27, 2001 and my Mom, who followed him 10 […] | Continue reading
You know, like “two great tastes that go together great” (uh oh repeat metaphor alert) the end of August is the end of 3 month run of DS106 Daily Creates that were also set up as an activity for MYFest22. The latter was a 3 month series of “recharge and renewal experiences” coord … | Continue reading