Just because I can…

(see it super sized)

I got to thinking about Morgan Spurlock’s self experiment on fast food after reading the ever rapier like Jonathan Rees Sentence First– verdict afterwards:

What kind of professor “experiments” in front of tens of thousands of students? Gerry Canavan is right – one who already knows the results. And the results are, of course, that MOOCs are a resounding success (even if that requires moving the goal posts all the way back to your own ten yard line).

…

So for what feels like the 67 millionth time: Nobody is trying to take anyone’s MOOCs away. It’s just that some of us simply refuse to assume that MOOCs are by definition successful because they reach more people than traditional education does. Real higher education (as opposed to mere information transferal) depends upon direct contact with the professor. MOOCs may “evolve,” but unless they eschew their essential “MOOC-iness” – namely their mechanical, impersonal industrialized nature – they’re not going to educate anyone any better. If they do, then they’ll no longer be MOOCs.

My Photoshop funnery is totally standing on the shoulder of Zack Dowell, who saw it coming in December 2012

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Zack Dowell

I’ve yet to see a technology that is able to bottle teaching magic. For now, or until such time as legislators change the law in the interest of efficiency, I hold on to the hope that this “regular effective contact” will accompany and keep honest any attempt to create drive-through solutions for undergraduate bottleneck course problems.

If that McDegree comes with a fun meal badge, would you like that here or to go?

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

Today’s ds106 Daily Create was “Take a photo of a personal object in an unusual location” — and I started the day rummaging for objects of my Dad I have around here.

This is a tooned photo of the old wooden level that was in his garage in Florida. I brought it home after we cleaned out the house when Mom passed in 2011. My hammock here in Strawberry, which usually exists to catch debris from the juniper trees, reminds me of one of my earliest memories with Dad, not that I remember myself but have seen it many times in the old family (silent) 8mm videos. In the late 1980s I worked briefly at a camera shop and had the home movies converted to VHS, and later while I worked at Maricopa, I used an analog to digital converted to make a few clips.

This 13 seconds scene in the green hammock is at the house on Ridgewood Avenue (the home I do not remember since we moved when i was 2) holding me as an infant. His joyous smile in that silent film is huge, where you can see him mouth “Say Cheese”. I cannot quite make out what he said before that. But it’s that smile of his that makes me smile now.

Twelve years ago was last I got to wish my Dad happy Father’s Day directly to him. In his honor I organized my tool shed, but stopped short of washing the truck.

Some things to make me remember Dad.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

My own hammock. I ought to use it more.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

That old wooden level. You do not find tools made like this anymore. What could be more symbol of the reliability, trust, perseverance of my Dad, then a level?

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

Dad was not a gas man on the grill, he was all charcoal. He was always trying some new method- a metal chimney I recall, but the one that sticks out in my mind is that rather than using bellows to blow air on the coals, he had a dedicated hair dryer. That was my Dad, out there blow drying the barbecue. Funny as it was… it worked.

Then there was the time he was grilling a steak for visiting company. I was out there watching. As he flipped it, the steak slipped off and fell on the grass. He just grabbed it, tossed on back on the grill, turned to me and said, “that’s special seasoning”.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

I have a few of his tools in my shed, I thought I had more. But this worn screw driver is definitely a Dad Artifact. They don’t make wooden handle tools anymore do they? Look how worn this one is– I remember the sheath that always slipped down. It’s been held a lot. That’s a sign and story of time the acrylic handles never tell. I recall him using it to pry open paint cans, And that’s how I use it too.

The loss of parents is something that never really heals completely. But it would be more of a loss if I did not have all these memories and stories. I hold these artifacts dear as all of them. In some sense they are just objects, and pretty worn ones, but they are the gateway to much more.

Cherish Dads and their artifacts.

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine

At 3:18 am june 14, 2013, the annoying presence of IamTalkyTina, documented previously in my confessed creation story, has disappeared completely. An intense Rim to Rim Grand Canyon hike, 24 miles hiked in 18 hours, 11000 feet of elevation gain/loss, did the trick.

The doll is gone. I am whole.

Her sing song yibber yabber voice droned on for the 7 hours of descent via the North Kaibab trail. All that talk of her “True Friends” and “Open Friends” and “People Like Me (or else)” and how offended she was by the “Nasty Mean Word” was a constant nuisance and distraction to the peacefulness of that place. The nocturnal birds, cicadas humming, the thundering sound fo Roaring Springs and rushing waters of Bright Angel Creek tried to drown her out, and yet still she went on and on, yabbering, spinning her head, those window shade blinks of the soulless eyes staring at me.

But, perched on my backpack, she was not paying attention to the low hanging wires of the Black Bridge as I walked across that metal structure after 3AM, and FWOOP! She was knocked off by a support wire, last heard screaming as the Colorado River swept here away, downstream. maybe perhaps to wash up waterlogged and creepy in a few years time at Lake Mead or ripped apart by bored river trout.

Listen in:

imtalkytina disappears into the colorado river

After that… sweet silence. She is gone.

Now you may have seen tweets and comments from “her” or someone pretending to be her (I am looking at you Ben Rimes and perhaps his doppleganger alt, Brian Bennett, and @dkernohan).

But those are the pre-programmed remnants of the AI bot she forced me code for her. This morning I finally found the backdoor password into the codebase (it was “Dollsg3tLuvWithInt1mid@tion”) and was able to invoke to self destruct module every good programmer thinks of). The destruction was total and complete.

As you can see it was effective- the @iamtalkyyina twitter account is gone:

(click for full size)

as is the web site and domain:

(click for full size)

(click for full size)

If you believe you are still seeing remnants of her activity, clear your cache. If you think you are still seeing communications, well then, you might have to dig deeper and dig your own psyche as it is likely creating the false signs. Her lasting power if suggestion is THAT stronger. Ask Erich Streator, see how he was “loved”

I for one, see nothing, and am free of the Creepy Doll Curse. The feeling is tremendous.

All it took was a 24 mile hike over 18 hours. I am not sure if you need to go through such Exercism to drive out the Creepy Dolls, but it is possible. See how good this trip was.

As for me, I feel great, and the internet is free of that nuisance.

4ever.

They may “Do No Evil”™ but they can “Take Away Web Stuff That Works For No Credible Reason”.

There is goes. Bye bye Reader. #GoogleNot4Life pic.twitter.com/2Yt4X7xuje

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) April 6, 2013

If Google cannot afford the expenditure or running a web service, how are they funding the raft of experimentation? This is but a thin veiled attempt to funnel web reading into Google Plus. That’s me paranoid theory.

Anyhow, in the next two weeks I am left with finding the less than optimal platform for feed reading.

You know what I'm not up in arms about GReader? CAUSE ALMOST NO ONE BLOGS ANYMORE!

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) June 8, 2013

This of course is a valuable lesson in what is ours and what is theirs in the internet space. Just wait and see what happens to search, because Google Controls The Forces of Gravity

I thought I could hold out, but because of reasons I am outlining below, I am admitting right here, as the eternal truth.

I invented the character, twtter account, web site named after the Talky Tina doll from the Living Doll Twilight Zone episode. It was all me.

You see, the strain of managing alternative personality has caught up with me. Even after sleeping 8 hours, I wake up dead tired, only to find out that SHE was up all night, blogging, and creating badges, and taunting poor guys like Ben Rimes.

@techsavvyed Look over your shoulder, bub.

— Talky Tina (@IamTalkyTina) June 10, 2013

I really do not know how people like Todd Conaway manage creating these personas and sorting out themselves from their characters.

Like the way Jim Groom described his conflict in 2011 playing the Dr Oblivion character, I am feeling almost a breakdown. So my therapist has recommended just being public, with the hope I can drive her dollness out of my psyche.

But I am scared. She terrifies me. And She is me.

I have always found dolls creepy, my sisters likely tortured me with them as a kid. Yeah, I blame them. I recall watching “Living Doll” as a kid and spent a year not able to go down the front steps from my house; my parents had to rig a sliding board out the kitchen door.

But it all faded as I moved into adulthood.

Of you recall, in February of 2011, I invoked Talky Tina in the Scary Stories from Strawberry ds106 radio show I performed with Bryan Alexander. This may have been what invoked her in my mind. Note that comment on that post from Jim Groom:

I was one of the two, and I was blown away, it was so much fun to hear you two go, and the actual alien abduction/choking scene was pretty crazy. And the tiny tina voice from Twilight Zone was brilliant—it is a blast, and the more we play in the radio space the more I feel like it s something I want to make an integral part of my web experience from here on out. It really does ramp it up to 11 when you have a live platform to experiment with.

How prescient that was that Jim started talking earlier in this year about making The Twilight Zone a theme for the current summer class of ds106. And I started hearing Tina’s voice more and more in my head, she was telling me things she wanted to say. So I thought setting up a wordpress.com site would suffice at http://iamtalkytina.wordpress.com/ in early February.

But that was not good enough for her. She is so insistent.

So following her commands, I registered a domain at hover, iamtalkyina.com:

(click to see the details)

To cover my tracks, rather than hippiehosting.org, on February 9, 2013, I set up hosting on A Small Orange:

(click to see the invoice)

Not only did we set up a website at http://imtalkytina.com but she taught me some API syntax and walked me through some ruby coding to set up a twitter responder using some slovenian coded intelligence API engine, and a tweet scheduler to throw off timing, all to keep her communications going even when I was elsewhere.

She is pretty tech savvy, you know.

In a creepy way.

But her later thoughts are going beyond just gioving out badges for friends, she has bigger plans for those who are plugged into ds106 and I am worried what she might do to that community.

She must be stopped.

I do not know what happen when I publish this. She is sneaky. Vengeful. She plays on people’s softening at a doll’s countenance. And I bet there will be denials, accusations, a real flow to counter my admittance. She cannot do her work without me being her puppet. But I cannot do this. Anymore.

Tomorrow I am hoping to escape her reach, I am headed to the Grand Canyon for a long hike with a good friend, who has promised to watch me when I sleep, to make sure she does not emerge. But do not be fooled if I am quiet on twitter, she will be going strong, blogging, trying to rally her true, open, friends and who knows what. BEWARE! SHE IS DANGEROUS! I would not be surprised to find out what other tricks she has had me do in her name, without my knowledge.

I created her, but I cannot seem to destroy her.

I am hoping the majestic and pure scenery of the Grand Canyon will be soul cleansing.

The only thing is…

.. it is one giant staircase.

Please help me.

I am @Iamtalkyina

cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Bruce McKay

When the clams and worcestershire get Scottlo too low to do his daily show, well, they can call in the Dog, that is CogDog, to lend a paw (it’s tricky fitting a pencil behind the ears). This is my first run at doing a show, and depending on how His Lowness reacts, it might be the last.

LoDown Number 24

Justing coming off today’s marathon ds106 zone radio show really energized me; I am not reviewing the shows in detail, but want to commend everyone for the work down to produce the shows, and emphasize all that stuff to get there is as much the learning as the final show. I do note the ginormous magnitude of week 4′s tasks, which is actually only half of week 4 given that the first round of movie work is due Thursday.

And the reaction? Claire and Jessica were quick to tweet the reaction

Omg. This week in #ds106 is going to be killer.

— Claire Patrick (@Cekp1234) June 10, 2013

Just looked at this weeks schedule for #ds106 #omg #somuch #dontknowwhattostartonfirst

— Jessica Ledford (@JessicaCole22) June 10, 2013

I offer some obvious advice, and outline what is important in doing video work, no matter what software used. The big thing students, is not to let your wheels spin too long, ask for help sooner than later, or not.

I took a look at the student’s who started out of the gate fast, the rest of you have 2 days to burn! Cited in the podcast are:

• Bowties and Skulls (not sure of their name, an “About” page would be nice) got a great start with Look, Listen, Analyze scene from Nightmare at 20,000 feet, Exploring Nightmare at 20000 Feet Even More, and What Are the Genres of YouTube?: “Internet Killed Television”. I note that the genre she described reminded me of maybe the first internet video peek into someone’s everyday life, back in 1996 when Jenny Cam started.
• Kelly’s Play by Play (please, aim for some more clever titles! That’s what grabs our attention

and her Making a scene from a horror film preperation

• Jessica’s Macarena TDC (to I Want Candy)
• Andrew Thomas Macarena (with coach in the mirror!)
• Katy’s Out of Focus Daily Create photo

Music used in LoDown 24:

• “Low” by Cracker
• “Dig The Dog” by Night Trains (hat tip to @easegill for turning me on to this song via ds106 radio)
• plus some lifted clips from LoDown 015

And that’s a wrap!

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by sharyn morrow

Will the open connected web as we once knew it be some quaint artifact we will only peer at as we swipe through apps on our mobile devices? Probably not. But still…

I was enamored by a nifty technology from Wibbitz that took the content of an RSS feed and rendered it as a video, and it was dynamic- check it out (while it still works). In the inbox today… they are casting off this technology to package it as an iPhone app:

Hi there!

First of all we wanted to thank you for using Wibbitz and for all the great feedback that you’ve sent us over the past few months. We took it all into consideration and worked hard on improving our technology.

After reaching over 17M videos viewed per month and over 50K sites that are using the Wibbitz technology we understood that people most like to watch video summaries while their on-the-go.

As you know reading long articles on your mobile device is a difficult task, that’s why we’ll soon be releasing the Wibbitz iPhone app to allow anyone to watch all the news they want with a single tap.

As a result we will soon be pulling the plug on our previous service in the next couple of days and will notify you as soon as the app is available on the app store.

We invite you to stay up-to-date on the latest news and become a partner publisher for our new and exciting mobile offering.

Follow us @wibbitz to stay tuned for more!

Cheers,
The Wibbitz Team

“We will soon be pulling the plug on our previous service” seems to be more the norm. A few years ago a start up tech’s hopes might be to be bought by Google, now it is to get a toe hold, yank the content, and wrap it in an app.

The irony is they like will still be using the web open standard of RSS to package web content inside a shiny closed box. Nicely done. Each time this happens Tim Berners-Lee’s cat cries out in pain, stop hurting the cat.

What is a web when we weave things and then remove them? A ragged tattered fabric. What happens when we say yes to wanting “to watch video summaries while their on-the-go” (Wibbitz, I shall ignore your grammar faux pas, I have more typos then you). I did a screen capture of the Wibbitz functionality, cause they are going to pull the plug on it.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by lesley middlemass

The web is unraveling in front of your eyes, can you not see it? I’ll just end up that lonely old guy in the park, muttering to himself about that open web thing which society knows no more.

Are you even listening? I’ll I see is your face planted in your phone.

Last week the third of a 3 week cross country trip by train. I was not planning to be part of a ds106 radio show project for the summer 2013 5 week madcap section Jim is teaching.

But this idea got in my head, in that ds106 way that I know I will put aside almost everything else (eating, sleeping, doing productive so called work) until I got it out of my system.

Submitted for your approval, To Serve Learners, done in about 2 days with audio assists from Giulia Forsythe, Brian Short, Rochelle Lockridge, Brian Bennett, and Jim Groom. This was edited completely during the 32 hour train trip from Chicago to Flagstaff, AZ.

My first thought was a redo of the William Shatner freakout Nightmare at 20,000 Ft recast for my trip by railroad, but got lost on figuring out what the monster would be doing to the train from the outside. Sometimes you have to let the idea simmer.

The big idea came out of the blue (actually when I was looking for episode scripts), and To Serve Man always ranked as my one of my all time episodes, for the hook that you should have seen coming but did not. But it also plays into our hopes and expectations for magic solutions to complex problems… maybe some friendly 9 foot tall creepy headed aliens might help? For just their altruistic spirit? Yeah, just walk onto that spaceship for the promise of a better planet.

I found a full script online, and set about re-writing in a Google Doc, with the idea I would invite other open participants to help write and record (you can find this script and our working notes).

And the premise, my one, was to change it up so the aliens were not from outer space, but from outside education:

The aliens in this case are from Silicon Valley and the galaxy of Business Innovation, the UdaXerians, and they arrive unexpectedly at an EDUCAUSE conference with all the answers to educational problems, via their superior technology. Educators are enthralled with the massive potential and cost savings, and are eager to accept the Udaxerians pledge to serve learners everywhere, for free. The skeptical are ignored, but one woman finds a tablet device left behind, and is able to hack to to find out what the “To Serve Learners” app is– the real thing the Udaxerians are seeking- what powers their systems are the minds and personal data of people crammed full of MOOC courses. But most of education blindly goes aboard the MOOC ship, with promises of a Perfect Pedgagy at the San Jose headquarters, and no one can hear her cry– “IT’S A COOKBOOK”

For reference, the original version

Working at Dr Garcia’s learning center at Oakton Community College, I found it took way longer to write the script– because as I started comparing the script to the video, there were significant differences, first noted in Serling’s opening and closing remarks, but entire sections were changed. I assume the script is a first draft.

So it ended up talking maybe 3 or four hours of transcribing/re-writing. It was fun, though I wish I had found Draft a cool new web writing all that allows you to embed a video/audio and transcribe in the same space.

I put a call out on twitter

I have mad idea for #ds106zone radio show. Seeking open participants to mod script, record audio, on short schedule. And it mocks MOOCs.

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) June 5, 2013

And my friends noted above responded… fast, not only volunteering, but selecting roles, sending me audio. Special hat tips to:

• Rochelle “Rockylou’ Lockridge for being first to sign up, and starting a list of sound effects in the doc
• Giulia Forsythe for doing a dramatic CEO of EDUCAUSE and for roping in a few Brock University faculty Dale Bradely, Barry W.K. Joe, Amanda Bishop, and Derek Foster to record some short parts. I asked her to do a graphic and hope she still does, but I just snuck in a photoshopped in a quick one cause I want to publish this baby.
• Brian Bennett for doing a granite smooth Rod Serling and the assuring scientist voice in the video
• Brian Short for his crazy voices! OMG he had my laughing loud on the train, especially for his ad-libs

"Not one bit, or drit, or drip of ulteriority in our motives" u crack me up @heystorytellers

— Alan Levine (@cogdog) June 7, 2013

• Jim Groom for chiming in 3 different voices.
• Grant Potter for finding the music only version of the Twilight Zone intro.

Let me remind you, the writing and content gathering took 2 days, and I spent another days worth of time editing. This show went from idea to final in 3 days.

One thing I found in going from a TV script to audio – you need to be explicit (more than I did) in having the characters address each other by name so we know who they are. I only referred to “Oblinger” once as CEO of EDUCAUSE, and the UdaXarian, while had the name “Thrun” in script (could have easily been any other MOOCer), was never addressed. There are nods to University of Mary Washington, and inside joke to my friend Kevin, for a CIO of a certain large university named “Cantrell”.

Brian Short also made this funny teaser video (kudos for reviving BAGMAN!)

Now this is different from the usual ds106 group projects, because I bypassed all the group dynamics of sorting out the show concept and script by just defining it and asking people to help- it really was my silly idea not a group’s. But still, for those that say you cannot do creative work in an online class, bullshit. To those who think all you can do in MOOCs are stuff a machine can grade, well maybe if that’s all you care about. To those that say you cannot remotely collaborate on anything besides discussion forums, bullshit. We do it all the time in ds106 not for a grade, not for a certificate, not to get a job- but for the sheer love of making story art.

On the production side, I did this project in Audacity, here is a snapshot of the entire project:

(click to see full size)

A challenge of Audacity in dealing with so many small bits is keeping track of the tracks. Ideally every different bit should be its own track (especially when you get some sound in mono or at different sample rates). I started with tracks for different kinds of audio (music, sound effects, characters) but just started using them willy nilly.

You can squeeze tracks together vertically using the little divider line between tracks to see more on a view. But it is pretty essential to assemble the project in time, from left to right. If you go back and try editing or inserting into tracks, it can messup the timing later down the track. At some point near the end I was fiddling and managed to really munge things up- I had to save the project as a new file, extract the new bits, and modify the last saved version (save often! save often!)

My tactic was to keep a scratch Audacity file open to import my clips into, then edit or select the parts needed, and copy to the main. I aim to layer my sounds so there is never isolate dialogue without some kind of ambient sound, I got the throbbing of the spaceship from the original, and used some other sound effects to be the machine noise for the technical lab.

A part I could have done more with was the EDUCAUSE audience sound; I used some random crowd sounds that Rochelle had found on Freesound, they are actually in non English languages, but is not exactly the sound for a conference audience. To mix them up, I sometimes layered 2 or three tracks, and messed around with the levels using the Envelope tool. I could not isolate the bridge and dramatic music of the original (well worth listening to the way they used music), so I used repeatedly this track Ice Demon from the ever useful Incompetech royalty free music collection.

Other audio credits include (I hope I got them all)

• Twilight Zone Opening Theme (Grant Potter sent me an mp3 but can be extracted from this YouTube vlide) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk
• We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place (The Animals) – 1.5 seconds used to represent when Chanbers drops his iPod in the opening sequence, get it? I have the tune but it of course is on the tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxNEiZhpinY
• Click the start button and computer starting (machine news for lab and for start-up of video) http://www.freesound.org/people/Zabuhailo/sounds/146957/
• RG Wall Punch (opening scene when Chambers is frustrated) http://www.freesound.org/people/cmusounddesign/sounds/95839/
• Footsteps ( http://www.freesound.org/people/jmdh/sounds/178990/
• Ice Demon (dramatic music, used in background of Chambers’ narration and musica bridges) http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1200061
• Door close (used when Pat Brody enters the lab) http://www.freesound.org/people/THE_bizniss/sounds/53269/
• Laptop keyboard (used when Pat Brody explains her decoding) http://www.freesound.org/people/guitarguy1985/sounds/52052/
• Large Crowd Chatter (background at EDUCASE conference) http://www.freesound.org/people/Kyster/sounds/124027/
• Crowd in Opera Lobby (background at EDUCASE conference) http://www.freesound.org/people/makosan/sounds/34709/
• VCR Tone (misc electronic noise for start of decoding device) http://www.freesound.org/people/AMPUL/sounds/29719/
• Lab Sound http://www.freesound.org/people/heatfuse/sounds/13302/
• Light Switches (subtle, in second lab scene as Chambers is shutting off machines) http://www.freesound.org/people/klangfabrik/sounds/117788/
• Takeoff airplanes (when Chambers is taken away at end) http://www.freesound.org/people/mario1298/sounds/155787/
• Computer Lab 1: The sounds from the computer lab I work. People walking by, me typing, and the continuous hum of the printer. http://www.freesound.org/people/shewbox/sounds/59868/

Okay, so once again I am mocking MOOCs. They are so mockable. And Cole Camplese might get his shorts twisted over it (dude you know it’s not a cookbook). I am not saying that the MOOC companies are out to eat us literally. But it’s worth considering– before we buy into all the promise– what are their motives? What are we ceding?

Finally, to illustrate the brilliance of the original show’s writing, and something I did not notice until I was poring over the script. In explaining how she was trying to decode the book, Pat Brody explained:

I’m studying their language. I remember a professor of mine told me that language reflects the basic assumptions of the people who use it.

And therein, snuck in the script, is the real plot, how we read language and may miss the basic assumptions of the people using it, in this case, Serling played with the implied meaning of the word “serve” (though critics of the plot make some hay about the same double meaning being part of the alien’s language).

For no real good reason- this is based on a single photo, duplicated in PhotoShop as layers. In each layer, I selected the glass and applied different settings of the Wave Filter, just to make it seem like a strange world inside my glass.

Combining two of my interests into one act.

For no good reason at all, except to act out “what if…”

(click for in your face experience)

Jeez, anyone can wear their google glasses in the shower.

The next horizon is below the hips.

Get Google Ass.

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