Lawyers, Tweets, GoFundMe

There was a song in my head ever since I heard the news that the overzealous Proctorio was SLAPPing Ian Linkletter for his revealing their company IP by tweeting their unlisted YouTube links. Surel… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 3 years ago

On Thankskidding

The title is not a typo nor a bad pun. Yes, it’s the fourth Thursday of November. The emails have gone quieter. My twitter and instagram are full of photos of the baking I see friends and fam… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 3 years ago

Mass Producing Google Slides from Sheets: Scripts Are Your Friends

With technology work I find Need is more of a spawner of Invention than Desperation (or Necessity). Not only did a need for a screen timer for the Open Education Global Conference spawn some produc… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 3 years ago

Small Adjustments to the #ds106 Assignment Bank SPLOT

As best I can find from old posts, I started messing around with making a WordPress theme to provide a functionality of the ds106 Assignment Bank in July of 2013. So while lumped in as a SPLOT, it … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

What Can You Do About Digital Surveillance? At least make [#ds106] art

I don’t need to spend paragraphs explaining the state of digital surveillance most of us have become resigned to here in 2020. I turn that over to the twitter stream of Chris Gilliard (where … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

BS-ing about BBS-es

If you can wax on about stuff from 25 years ago…. (the blank is left for you to fill in). Feel free to make your own modem sound noises as you scroll on by. No secret here, that I can go on a… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

The OBS Screen Timer Zoom Trick

There’s some old saw about “timing being everything” right? What about lucky timing playing with a screen timer? Is that one taken? I got some luck this week with a setup I have b… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

SPLOTS Now Alt Equipped

I may have to put on my code dog cone of shame for finding out I was missing a feature in the SPLOT themes that should have been there a long time ago. But shame is for silly humans, so I just shoo… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Conferences as Conversations

Conferences are in the air right now, heaps of them. Just in the rear view mirror is Creative Commons Summit, EDUCAUSE, Open Ed is coming up, and after that one I am involved in, OE Global. And tha… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Hi, Dave

Dave Cormier had a serious question. I cared. I provided a legitimate answer. This one’s for you, Dave. Are you here? Featured Image: Dave is Not in the Barn flickr photo by cogdogblog shared… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Launched in 2009 Amazing/True Stories Reborn As a SPLOT in 2020

Breaking with the usual long winding blogging, let’s go directly to the demo. What was once a hand spun web site with some funky, no longer plugin called Cool Iris then a template-tweaked Wor… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

SPLOT No /random

File this in the tiny bits of code of almost nil importance. But it also reinforces that in building things like my SPLOT themes for other people, I’m not totally in the power to foresee all … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Aiming for the Joslin 50 Medal

With a bit of uncertainty on the exact date, I am fairly sure tomorrow marks a milestone making me eligible to apply for a bronze medal from the Joslin Diabetes Center. That means making it to 50 y… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Backblogging: The OE Global Work

Where did 7 months go? In January and February of this year, my consulting work was getting worrisome t-h-i-n. Starting in March, though, things picked up. A lot. And I’ve been behind on blog… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

When a Blog Post About an Old Chair Turns into a Furniture Flea Market

The best things in web serendipity are unforeseen. That’s the only way it works. It’s all because of rug shampooing. Back in 2017 at the house in Arizona, I decided to get the old whiti… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

From Hakatai On: My 1990s Web Servers

Was there a request for more web nostalgia? Bueller? Bueller? Oh, I mean… Weller! Martin Weller has his own cottage industry of 25 years of _______ going strong… heck he has books, swag… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Slo Mo Moments

Here’s something I’ve been playing with in mixing things up with daily photos- and it’s video. But not video. I am using the Slo Mo mode on the iPhone to just capture a bit of sub… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Got Four (barely)

Now I am in the trap of my own making. I am going to post (if I do not fall over asleep) the top image from the batch (well maybe four photos) I just heaved on to flickr. It was a light load today,… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Humble For Three

There was doubt. Fatigue. Second guessing. But having set out this daily photo posted daily plus a wee blog post. the bar was set on “get one posted before Wednesday.” Ooops, at 12:20am… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

That Would Be Two

Like days in a row. I’m out of the gate with getting back to not only posting my daily taken photos daily but even blogging about them. imgflip meme by char7164 license unknown It was not a b… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Putting The Daily Back in Daily Photo

It’s still my daily habit. I cannot let go of it. 2020 marks the 13th year I have been posting daily photos to flickr, and dropping them to into the 366photos group — heck the 4th round… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

CSS Painting Over Those Fixed Copyrights in WordPress Footers

Nearly every WordPress theme since the dawn of time has in part of it’s footer template something like “©2020 Blah Blah Blah” the “Powered By WordPress” assertion, and… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Nifty Trick for Extracting Text Out of Images

Images of text are not useful when all you can do is look at them. How can you get text out of something like this if you need a chunk of it to put to use? Wikimedia Commons image Infographic: We L… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

The Ring Drone Zone

As soon as Chris Gilliard shared the flying Ring drone my mind went to free association. It went back to the Twilight Zone episode “The Invaders” just for those scenes of Agnes Moorehea… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Presenting at Hey Pressto! while I was doing something else…

Psss, there are ways to do online conferences that do not require The Zoom. It sounds unlikely, but I have been part of two Twitter based WordPress in education conferences cooked up by Pat Lockley… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Chopping the Spreadsheet Karate Chops

I know nothing of karate beyond what I have seen in movies, but I would guess that one of the philosophies behind it is “simpler = better”. My karate non-knowledge did not stop me from … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

An H5P Branching Scenario That Might Break the Boat

Since June I have been pretty deep in H5P support for a BCcampus project (yes. the kitchen). But I had a deep run with H5P on a project earlier in the year, likely pushing the limits of what the Br… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Chasing Down Those Internet Misperceptions

As those great O2 ads went… “Be More Dog” The other morning as Cori and I went outside, with Felix following, both of us humans saw the rabbit. Felix was oblivious as he scampered… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Declared for LiDA 103

Here we go with a blog post about blogging (maybe the most popular topic ever) as part of participating in the OERu open course Open education, copyright and open licensing in a digital world (LiDA… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

An Unplanned Open Course in DIN Cables Taught by Twitter

Twitter is nearly universally accepted as a dumpster fire of hate, misinformation, and just badness. And this is just said by people in Twitter. But it can excel in small ways perhaps lost in the n… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Old Time HTM&L

Cue up the NCSA Silver Browser Band… Just take those old web sites off the shelf I’ll click and watch ’em by myself Today’s sites ain’t got the same soul I like that o… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

If Anyone Gets My Concept of Public Domain, It’s Musicians

In my best Rod Serling intonation, “Submitted for your approval, two different musicians, never having made contact, both express appreciation and credit for shared public domain photos, and … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Finally! Easier Updating for WordPress Uploaded Themes

It’s about time. Thank you, WordPress version 5.5. A subtle new feature appeared, I only glanced after running the update on one of my sites. Those themes you install directly from WordPress … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

9 and 19

August 27 loomed… and now passes by on the calendar. Flip, another year. This one marks 19 years since my Dad passed away. A flip the bird to stomach cancer. And then 10 years later to the da… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Cooking With/As Metaphor: The H5P/PB Kitchen

The opening philosophical question here is, “What is a metaphor for a metaphor?” I leave that riddle for the end of this post, wherever it may end up. The blogging here has been a bit s… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

The Weird Toy Space of Scavenged Public Domain Images (A Bit Slimy, Too)

In every project, playful remix, and blog post I do I am on the prowl for open licensed images. There’s an ever increasing number of sites where you find these. They are far from equivalent. … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Mineral Machine Names: My First Subdomains

My memory may be operating at guess level here. The Office Wall Jacks Back in 1992, my first year as an instructional technologist* at the Maricopa Community Colleges, for exact reasons I forget, I… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Google Sheet Karate Moves for Swapping H5P Video From YouTube to Kaltura

My chops may not be elegant, but it sure was fun this week to tinker with some Google Sheet formulas to deal with a tricky task. Not that this tweet explains it any more, but to me, it’s bett… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Zooming With A Talking Alpaca

I should just end the post with this as a title. Leave ’em guessing, right? It was appropriate today started reading an utterly brilliant essay by Parimal Satyal, Rediscovering The Small Web … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Leadership Site Wins a Bronze

I’m allowed to brag a bit, right? Word came via email that a WordPress site I built last year for BC Corrections (hosted by and working with folks the Justice Institute of British Columbia) w… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

This is Us

I am drafting this post using a tool I rarely use for blogging: This tool choice might change. The current setting is Cori and seated in soft chairs settled in the middle of a small creek, water ru… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Granny’s Day “Life was Good”

I always (gently) teased my grandmother that she had to live to be 100. And this was no childhood thing; I am pretty sure I started this campaign in my 20s. I’m not sure why I did, and likely… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

The Soldier at Tree 106 “Brief is his immortal story”

Nine years ago, an almost random brushing of one person’s story, even if immortal, so brief as to leave almost no remnant, ripples back again. Just because I left a little shred of informatio… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Stories and Histories of Histories and Stories

This blog post title likely makes no sense. I must have typed it in and backspaced it out eight times. Maybe nine. And if I can pull together what feels like disparate strands of ideas, that too wo… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Episode 12: The No Knead Podcast, 3 Months To Rise

Some recipes claim to be easy. This podcast was in the oven for almost three months, and the fault… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Waving the Asynchronous Flag

I promise that I am writing this post that will contain nothing even close to an answer, solution, even coherence to all the scrambling effort to plan for the post-Emergency-Learning-Not-A-Pivot re… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

One in Ten Thousand Odds of Drawing the Fifth Card

Even just writing this title I anticipate the automated spam offering links to poker web sites. Oh well. I can’t pass up a story of serendipity and ancient web technology. The first card is a… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

In Which I Play The Part of a Sysadmin

… with all the acting pistache of maybe… Steven Seagal? Sure I can futz around cpanel and run some command line stuff (on a really good day maybe vi) but it’s far from my wheelhou… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago