Ok, this one started off at 11MB, I pared it down to 3, and then did layer masking to cut it in half again. 1.6MB isn’t exactly small, but it’s worth it for Falkor nodding in approval.
November, 2019
Finally started playing around with masking in Gimp (did anyone do a tutorial on this? I searched and didn’t find one). Really this scene from the opening of Blade Runner didn’t need much masking but I’m a perfectionist to a fault and wanted it damn near perfect. Also, 492kb! Stoked about that. A few technical notes I’ve found helpful and you might as well:
- When pulling clips from Youtube, search the name with a comma and the letters “hd” to get the best quality source clips you can. You’d be suprised how much high resolution content is on Youtube to use, saving you time trying to rip the material from a DVD.
- When using Gimp, Go ahead and switch your image to “Indexed” mode by going to Image > Mode > Indexed and play around with some of the settings. Dithering helped me a lot on this image where the gradient of the light being cast was screwing up bad.
- If you hide all but the first and last frame you can turn the top layer on and off to evaluate how the transition is working. Often I start with many more frames than necessary and then selectively hide and unhide layers to find the transition that gets it as smooth as possible.
Let the Summer of Oblivion Begin
Readers of my blog are no strangers to the great joy I get from the madness that is ds106. It’s time to fire it up again (did it ever stop?!). The Summer of Oblivion begins June 20th and as an opening salvo I’ve created my animated gif. David Bowie, Tights, that’s right, this shit just got real. Game on brothers and sisters.
Fakebook
It’s easy for me to track the day I deleted my Facebook account. The President of the United States announced that Osama Bin Laden had been found and killed during a mission the night before. I woke up the next day to find the news all over Twitter and, yes, Facebook. But on Facebook it was different. There were the typical “USA! USA! USA!” posts. But as I scrolled down inevitably I came to a gruesome picture of OSB’s severed head being held by the statue of liberty. I realized at that moment this was not my social network anymore. Efforts to curate the list of people I was “friends” with a year after nuking my account once before and “starting fresh” had failed. Perhaps this realization coupled with the fact that I was making real meaningful connections with people on Twitter made it that much easier to jump ship. Regardless it was time to go and I removed my account on May 2nd. Continue reading
Conference Fatigue
I’ve had the opportunity over the past several years to attend plenty of conferences. Typically I’ve managed to get my employer to foot the bill for them and see them as professional development (and often there is no doubt an element of growth and learning at them). But lately I’ve got to be honest and say I’ve got conference fatigue.
I suppose it’s a sign that you’re attending the wrong types of conferences when very few of the sessions interest you and you’d rather be speaking than sitting in the choir listening. No doubt part of the appeal of a face-to-face conference is the ability to network with like individuals and I do love that. But more often than not what happens is the conference becomes the opportunity to meetup with the same individuals you met in years past, or met online prior the conference. If that’s the case, a conference makes for a pretty expensive meeting place. Continue reading
Mutatis mutandis
Today I accepted a position as an Instructional Technology Specialist at the University of Mary Washington’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. It’s almost impossible for me to convey the emotion behind that first sentence, because in many ways this is literally a dream, years in the making, coming true for me. I will join the already incredible staff of DTLT: Jim Groom, Martha Burtis, Andy Rush, and Lisa Ames to continue to push the boundaries of how technology and the open web can change the classroom and higher education and push UMW to new heights. Continue reading
The Big Hip Hop Tutorial
One of my recommendations in the ds106 Toolbox for folks who can’t afford Photoshop (and don’t really need to) is a website called Aviary. Although I refer to it in terms of a photo editor, their suite of tools really does a whole lot more including vector editing and even an audio editor. I’ve decided to make it a personal challenge of mine that I will push the limits of these tools by using only these online web-based programs to complete as many ds106 assignments as possible. In the spirit of sharing and helping others I’m going to record some screencasts to show you the process as well. Hopefully you all will find this useful. Continue reading
The ds106 Toolbox
Looking back on the large amount of work created during the ds106 course and thinking about the reflective advice given by myself and others, it occurred to me that along the way a lot of us have blogged our process as well as the final results. Information like that is invaluable to incoming students and I’m putting this post together as a sort of “toolbox” (primarily Mac since that’s what I use but some cross-platform options) so they can have a good idea of what pieces of software and hardware they will find most valuable for content creation in ds106. It’s not exhaustive, there are alternatives to everything, but these are the parts and pieces of my toolbox that got me through ds106. Continue reading
To Future ds106ers
I’ve thought long and hard about what I could say to convey why this class is important. Why it is simultaneously the greatest and most meaningful course you can complete, and at the same time the most grueling. There’s a lot of great advice out there already for you to read. So I’m just going to let you read a quote from Ira Glass. You’ll be hearing more about him if you decide to take the red pill and fall down this rabbit hole.
Possibilities for DS106TV
After just a few weeks of the TV experiment going live there has been a whole lot of experimentation and it’s generally becoming a fun playground to explore what’s possible with a medium like this. The karaoke night action was fun (and possibly painful for the audience). The joint movie watching via Skype ala Mystery Science Theater might be my favorite format so far. Jim Groom has done a lot of interesting things with DS106 Nightly News (although he might need to change the name to Monthly News if he doesn’t man up and get back in front of the camera). Dr. Garcia roaming around Cali and scottlo pushing the medium with Camtwist. And there are just countless examples of random people going live from phone or computer with (mostly) interesting things to say, do, and show. Continue reading