Tweaking the Machine when Third Party Web Widgets Go Missing

Widgets and little add ons are great for your web site. But know that when they depend on connecting to an outside server, and no one answers… well your site might be toast. Being an organiza… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Making Google Forms and Spreadsheets a Bit Less Rigid Block Style

The Form/Sheet architecture is more dynamic than you may think, once you crack open the lid on Google Scripts. I’ve long seen the creative things Martin Hawksey and Tom Woodward (and plenty o… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Recipe or Toolkit for Building Toolkits

Building collections of resources is among the oldest things to build on the web (and definitely before that). Heck, I made a “Bag of URLs” for this that ran for like 10 years. My first… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

Be More Frakes

A classy and inspiring example how to be someone of high reputation yet very down to earth in social media… It might be 10 years ago that I was fortunate to take a photography workshop co-lea… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

WordPress Rookie Mistake

Never think you are sooooo on top of your code game… Within hours of posting of the features in the updated DS106 Bank theme, including using WordPress accounts for organizing content and sha… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

A Shinier DS106 Assignment Bank Theme

I’ve been deep in the code tunnels rebuilding and adding to maybe my most complex WordPress theme, the one that let’s anyone build something like the original DS106 Assignment Bank. My … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

The Little SPLOT Button That Could (Upload Images)

I have a button in my truck that no longer works. I have the full knowledge of how to use it, have done so often, but really have no clue what really goes on under the hood when I click it. That go… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 4 years ago

TFW You’ve Forgotten Your Kid’s Fifth Birthday

But then again, no one else remembered… does that make it right? I had a good enough clue this week when Tom Woodward tweeted: That ancient tweet? Well something pivotal for me happened Octob… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Stories in Unexpected Places

While the tech choruses croon on about scale and AI and datadatadata, I prefer the long tail. Looking in the corners of digital stuff I marvel when you find small signs of quirky human presence. Li… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

This is not the image reuse…

When you decide to share your images for reuse, you try to release the association with how they might be associated (hence the oddness over my catfished photos). My recent foray onto trying algori… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Patreon Begging, Now With Three Levels

There was some bit of pride swallowing to launch a patreon begging button campaign, maybe with the idea I could solicit enough to devote maybe 1/3 my time to my tech projects. Each ding is greatly … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Reversing a Reverse Image Search

I will always make a case for image attribution in online publishing as an act of gratitude first, over following rules of some license. And to put this practice into all my works, not just here in… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

A Simpler, Account Free, SPLOT

This is kind of a big deal for SPLOTs… but then again I thought the plugin version was, and that made nary a ripple. Maybe I need to write an open textbook (SNAP!). A brand new version of the… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Stay Curious With Una Foto Cada Día

It’s no secret around about my love and belief in the practice of taking/sharing daily photos. I’m in my 12th year; this is maybe when practice – obsession? The idea too has reson… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Feedback, Please?

Maybe the guitar (aka blog post) was not close enough to an amplifier (it fell with a silent thud). I broke some new ground in web making (for me) using a REST API to make a lightweight, customizab… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Puerto Rico Connection Episode 11: The Broken One

In which Alan & Antonio deal with strong cellular deficiency And they talk aimlessly about connection (quite rightly) and… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Explaining the Cost of Insulin Borders on Insanity

This month marks the 49th year since I was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic. Back in 1970 they actually hospitalized me 10 days to stabilize my sugar levels and to educate me and my parents about thi… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Reclaim or Be Reclaimed

From free web sites biting the dust to the rise of the deleters the web is one precarious pile of links. My lonely ongoing struggle has been preserving the webs I’m responsible for, which cou… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Grandma’s Indefinite Birthday

The calendar reminder today, October 15, is rather precise. My grandmother would have been 114 today. So it’s one of the reasons I love and miss her stories, is that she never knew for sure t… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

The Mysteries (and CSS Classing Thereof) of WordPress Giphy Embeds

One of the nifty things about WordPress, as if they need naming, is the ability to embed media into posts simply by putting a URL on a blank line and pressing return. No futzing with copying and pa… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Another Metaphor Generator, Perchance?

Not that this was necessary. The edtech metaphor making for Martin Weller had completely run its course (and the great John Johnston sharing a way to feed it via a Google spreadsheet), yet I am sti… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Down the Magic Road with Flickr’s Bad Panda

It had been a while since I saw the flickr error screen that meant “oops” something went wrong, the “Bad Bad Panda” message. And its intent worked; while frustrating, the im… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

No Need to Beam Me Up: Building the CorrLeader Navigator with Bootstrap and the WordPress API

Now we get to the most exciting part to blog of the JIBC project I have been working on. In this series I went from map metaphors, dabbling with a Leaflet.js interface to the WordPress site buildin… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

For a WordPress Content Type Wondering About It’s Taxonomy

Here, like Tom does well, I am just noting some code thinking in case it gets fuzzy later. Maybe this is an edge case that almost no one will face. A project I am working on now has custom post typ… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

There Goes the Map: WordPressing of the CorrLeader Site

This is the third of n in a series of posts covering the development of a web site project for JIBC. Previously I wrote about the metaphor of and prototyping of a map metaphor. Now it’s how i… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Lacktribution: Be Like Everyone Else

Go ahead, be a copycat. Down at number 111 of the 2019 Top Tool for learning is a site I use often myself for finding images available for reuse, pixabay. The rank is anything I care about. Among t… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Sorting and Filtering With Isotope

If you create content in any system, you likely have ways of organizing them into, say WordPress Categories. This is nothing new under the sun. But the typical organization is rather tree like, cre… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Invest in Beer?

You love beer? Not the factory produced swill that gets manufactured in mass quantities, but the small runs by craft breweries? I have an opportunity for you! Four of THAT flickr photo by cogdogblo… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

No “New Post” For You! (if you are a SPLOT)

It might seem counter intuitive to remove from the WordPress dashboard the menu items that allow a user to create posts. Or crazy. But follow my weaving here. This all started when Dave Cormier pic… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

A Generator for Martin

I saw Martin Weller’s tweet out for a randomizing text generator: He got lots of replies (which is what make twitter useful when often it can not be), though many were just offering tools, no… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Map Making With Leaflet.js

As the second part of a series of posts about a leadership model web site created for project managed at JIBC, this one is about some of the early interface explorations I dabbled with. In the firs… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Episode 10: Low Frequency

It’s been 148 days since our last episode; does the low frequency of publication mean we are no longer… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Maybe the WordPress Dashboard is Not Always the Best First View?

I’m staring at it right now. No big deal. I log in to my blog, and boom! Black menu bar left, lots of links. Menu top, more links. Boxes of information. It’s all familiar. If you’… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

The Map is Not the Territory nor exactly the Metaphor

It’s time I back blog on a project I have been dabbling on since April. There is a WordPress site to be shared soon, but this is part of a new series of posts about the development (because I… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Net.Art Now.Web

What does the quirky web art of the 1990s, an era before networked video was viable, palettes of 256 colors… have to do with the web of 2019? Maybe everything. Through my old tech ways of sco… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

That Time I [mistakenly] Impersonated a Media Lab Funder

In light of the scandal, the stench of pocketed dirty money at the MIT Media Lab, it’s time I confess an act of fakery of actually no consequence (or to be honest only a shred of relevance). … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Now With Post Publishing Mods: TRU Collector SPLOT

My data suggests the world is definitely post-SPLOT, it’s fallen to the bowels of the hype curve? I am almost ready to offer bribes to what I thought was a major accomplishment, blogged here … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Bot the Author

Meet the AI storyteller? I could not resist the try of StoryAI after seeing this mention from Zach Whalen. After nothing the first results were “conventional”, Zach gave it a good test … | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

A SPLOT Fork in the Road

Can you believe this is yet another blog post about SPLOTs? Has anyone stuck a fork in them yet? Not me. I’m considering a rather major change which ultimately make them less complex to set u… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

8 and 18

They made everything easy for me, from entrance to this world right up to today, the single day I can mark their exit. Today in 2001 Dad took his last breath in hospice, the cancer winning the batt… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Web Writing… like it was not 1995

Some colleagues are pegging one of the best blogging genres, blogging about blogging or writing about writing. Kate Bowles started a wave with lamenting the weight work related writing, Martin Well… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Eventually? Now… a New WordPress Calling Card Theme

I’ve had the itch for a while to do another in my series of WordPress themes based on HTML5Up templates. Here is the first demo version of WP-Eventually, built up the original HTML one that c… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Did Someone Say New SPLOT Writer Features?

It’s SPLOT season around this blog. Or maybe it’s Fire Up The Stale Blog season. Regardless. I kind of thought the release of demos and first generation code for the TRU Writer SPLOT as… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Handing Off WordPress Data to Javascript

This dog’s head has been deep in code in preparation of what I see as a next big step for SPLOTs… (update as this post lingered in draft, the plugin is out and about, please test, pleas… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Congratulations, Mrs. SPLOT, It’s a Plugin

After a longer than expected delivery period, the baby is breathing. Now it’s time for some folks to give it a tickle. There are two sites now running the very first versions of the TRU Write… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Lunar Optimism

It’s a bit past the apogee (see what I did there?) of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. Maybe a long time for us, but to the moon, that’s but 0.000000011 of its histo… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

Yet Another Wood Pen Gift Story

Can one every have enough hand made wood pens made by friends from wood you have given them? I bet most to all of you never pondered this question. Cori and I are currently sitting on the deck of t… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago

I’m Breaking the Web: I’ve Come to Bury Feed2JS (maybe)

I’ve done my fair share of railing against entities that destroy web sites, be it Wikispaces, Storify, Google… today is my turn to be the reaper. As far as I can tell, Feed2JS my long r… | Continue reading


@cogdogblog.com | 5 years ago