Arrival Afternoon in Downtown Inverness #OER23

I did something I haven’t done in a while, I actually posted images to Flickr I took within a few hours and write titles and descriptions, and even tagged them. I know, crazy, right?

Old High Church Cemetery, Inverness

In many ways this seemingly moribund practice was resurrected by this discussion with Jon Udell on Mastodon. Jon was generously responding to my post about comparing Web 2.0 and Web3 for a presentation at OER23 this week, and his contributions were insightful (no surprise there) and started me thinking about the way many folks used to blog before the centralized social media sites. It was often for more often, a mix of long and short form, and not nearly as much psychological overhead at the idea of “writing a post.” You were just posting, it could be an image, a quick thought, or an essay, but long and short forms of writing lived together more comfortably, a practice Udell points to mico.blog as helping to preserve. More fodder for the presentation, thanks Jon!

Now, pair this with my recent post remembering the magic of the  blogging conference NorthernVoice, and you might think I am heading for a web nostalgia tailspin. Fair enough, it might be the case, but one thing that was so cool about my looking back on NorthernVoice was the tags in Flickr that allowed me to see and remember the people, spaces, and general sense of that important moment. Many people caught it, and looking back visually was magic. I was like, damn, that’s a cool way to remember.

Northern Voice 2007

Scott Beale’s “Northern Voice 2007”

In fact, the founder of Laughing Squid, Scott Beale, wrote a post that included the mage above (forgive the Laughing Squid ads if you click through), providing a textbook example of just this kind of short-form blogging back in the day. He threw up some links to Flickr, quickly let folks know he was in Vancouver at a groovy blog conference hobnobbing with Anil Dash in less than a full paragraph. Not bad for a few minutes work 🙂

Old High Church Cemetery, Inverness

So, in that spirit, just wanted to let everyone know I arrived in Inverness, Scotland for the OER23 conference that will kick off with  workshops and pre-conference events tomorrow, and then get going Wednesday and Thursday for two full days of re-connecting with some amazing people. I’m not sure what it is, but I am in the conference spirit right now and I am blogging like it is 2007! I will be uploading my pictures from the conference to Flickr with the tag OER23 and will also be posting here on the regular. I might event try and live blog a session or two, can you imagine that! What did Faulkner say? The past isn’t dead, it’s not even the past! Or something like that, that crazy southener!

A View over the River Ness

Old High Church, Inverness

Ghoulish Graves at Old High Church

A Computer Centre [sic] in Inverness

Pedestrian Bridge over River Ness in Inverness

Leaky's Book Store, Inverness

The Manson Murders Hardcover

Inverness was pretty glorious this afternoon.

Posted in blogging, OER23 | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

What Happened? The EdTech Pandemic Podcast

I want to get this out of my head and on to the blog because I had this idea while in conversation with Reclaim’s Pilot Irwin and Occidental College’s Jacob Alden Sargent yesterday, and after sitting on it for more than 12 hours I think it could be interesting. The idea is pretty simple: channel my best Terry Greene and talk to folks about their edtech pandemic stories, and the subsequent fallout. This is a topic that came up again and again while traveling with Brian in February, and it’s no secret the sector was hit particularly hard, and seems many are still shell-shocked professionally (not to mention the broader personal toll). This was already one of the themes I planned on writing about from the road trip given there was a tentative sense of trying to move on.

And yesterday while talking with Pilot and Jacob, the impact COVID had on Jacob’s edtech group came up once again and the stories are powerful and important. Sounds very much to me like folks are still trying to make sense of what happened. So, in that spirit, I would be interested in just talking to people about the the impact of COVID on their edtech affiliated group(s). How did it play out? What was the aftermath?

In other words, “Jim Groom, what happened?” said in my best Dr. Oblivion voice. I understand folks may want to avoid this topic like the plague (pun intended). I also understand this may be a terrible idea. What’s more, someone may already be doing it, or want to do it, and in that case go for it. But if not, and folks are interested, I would love to have some conversations with any interested parties about their edtech group’s institutional story during COVID, as well as get a sense of where they are now. Maybe I’ll have a couple of folks interested from OER23, and I would love to put together a bit of an archive to capture these stories before they get lost in oblivion.

Posted in edtech survivalist | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Getting Back in the Conference Swing for OER23

I was wracking my brain before starting this post to ensure I was not wrong before proclaiming that OER23 will be the first face-to-face conference I’ve attended since Domains 2019is that possible? Has it really been almost four years since I was at event like this in-person? I’m not entirely certain because my mind cannot be fully trusted, but I think it’s true. We did a Reclaim Roadshow in Los Angeles in November 2019, and I think the next conference on the list after that was OER20, but by April 2020 that conference was forced to pivot fully online in just a couple of weeks. Oh the good old, early days of the global pandemic. Now to be clear I travelled a quite a bit during COVID to help build an arcade in Fredericksburg, VA, but in terms of the professional development and relationship building that conferences like OER23 afford, it’s been all online for nearly 48 months. Crazy!

Image of a container ship with VHS tapes as containers

Reclaim Cloud is made up of a bunch of containers that look like VHS tapes, true story

But next week that all changes because Lauren and I will be heading to Inverness, Scotland to present about the “ACTUAL” Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (spoiler: its containers!) and how Reclaim Cloud provides a powerful space for sandboxing the apps and infrastructure undergirding the present/future web.

I’ll also be doing another presentation focused on what happens when “Web 2.0 and Web3 Walk into a Bar…” or how these two moments of the web might be understood in relationship to one another. Having come up as a blogger during the hey day of Web 2.0 and sticking around long enough to watch the space shift towards more populated, centralized networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., it’s been interesting to see the fediverse emerge as an alternative that’s intentionally resists platform centralization; questions the logic of amassing followers; and sneers at the seemingly inexorable logic of becoming a brand on social media.

That said, I struggle with these generalizations a bit because my introduction to Web 2.0 had much of the same liberatory rhetoric around moving the conversation away from mass media networks and creating independent nodes to publish and syndicate as one pleases with fairly easy to manage tools. It’s these unevenly reported parallels that fascinate me, so I’ll be trying to work through some of the early tenets of Web 2.0 (the social web) and Web3 (the federated web) to understand where there’s crossover and consider some of the realities that served to jettison the early optimism of Web 2.0. I figure it’s worth considering if and how any new instantiation of the web can resist the creep of capital.

Anyway, it’s a work in progress that I’ll continue to plug away at for the next several days. And then, if all goes well, I’ll get to share it on Thursday in a room with other colleagues at OER23 who might have similar questions. I relish the idea of connecting at OER23, it’s been way too long!

Posted in OER23, presentations, reclaim | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Building Community with Discord

Image of Reclaim EdTech GIF featuring a TV with Discord log in front of static

Next Tuesday is the start of the free Reclaim EdTech Flex Course focused on building community on the social platform Discord. In the first episode airing next week on April 4th at 12 PM Eastern Lauren Hanks and I will discuss some of the inspirations that led us to using the social platform Discord in combination with the live streaming service Streamyard to run our sessions for OERxDomains21.

Image of the OERxDomains21 Schedule

MBS’s TV Guide-inspired design for theOERxDomains21 Schedule

That experience was so amazing on so many levels, and it led us to use that same combination soon after to run our Domains Workshop for admins in June of 2021 (still referred to as the Reclaim Roadshow). Lauren built out a template for the work she did during OERxDomains21 in Discord, as she will do, and over the course of the next year we used that for our workshops.

Our first full blown virtual workshop after OERxDomains21 integrating Discord and Streamyard to great effect

But we felt like we missing out on some of the potential for more sustained interactions and connections Discord offered, so we started imagining what it might be like to hold more regular events for our community in an always-on Discord server to start getting more intentional about outreach and community building. And in April 2022 a whole new division of EdTech at Reclaim Hosting was born using Discord and Streamyard as our primary means for running regular workshops and flex courses. We learned a lot in our first year and we’re planning on unveiling what’s in store for year two of Reclaim EdTech at Reclaim Open, but in the interim you should really join our Discord server next week to see how you, too, can build community in Discord!

Posted in OERxDomains, OERxDomains21, reclaim, Reclaim Edtech, Reclaim Roadshow, reclaimopen | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Reclaim Open’s Unconference

Image of the poster art for 2007 Northern Voice

Darren Barefoot’s “Art for 2007 Northern Voice poster”

With just a little over two months before Reclaim Open happens I’m thankful we had the forethought to add a day before the official event to host an unconference. My first event of this kind was back in 2007 at Northern Voice’s MooseCamp, and I have to say it was transformative. If you follow the previous link you’ll see the sessions that were run that day,* and I have to say many of them seem quite relevant 15 years on.

But the thing about MooseCamp that was so special were the souls who showed up and worked together for the first hour or so to pitch topics they wanted to discuss, and as a result a schedule for the day emerged that was for and by the people. It allowed for an informal space for folks who may not have had the time or inclination to submit a formal presentation to share, which made room for all kinds of serendipitous connections, different voices, and impromptu discussions that were timely and relevant.

Northern Voice 07 - Moosecamp

Image of the wall of sessions pitched the morning of MooseCamp
Image credit: Cyprien Lomas’s “Northern Voice 07 – MooseCamp”

What’s more, it was foundational for my own sense of an edtech blogging community that was thinking more broadly about how these new publishing forms would impact our culture—in many ways MooseCamp was far more memorable that the official event the following day, and part of that was because it took on the shape of those present in that moment in some truly powerful ways. Also, while only remotely connected to him as a result of the NorthVoice events I had participated in, I was really sorry to hear of the recent passing of one of the organizers of that amazing conference, namely Darren Barefoot—his final post in this world tells the tale of a life worth living.

I’ve since participated in other unconferences, mot recently the University API at BYU, and again found this sense of connection, generosity, and community generative for a memorable event, so I figured it was high time to try it for a Reclaim Hosting conference. And, as often happens, the need for it has becoming increasingly more apparent. Just yesterday Shannon Hauser asked about whether we might be able to fit in another panel to our already full programme about web archiving. And while previously we might have had to politely turn it down, as of now we have an entire day wherein anyone can propose and run sessions about anything from web archiving to Geocities to photography to the fediverse to privacy and security, or whatever else folks with a shared interest care to come together and think through. It’s in many ways a huge attraction of Reclaim Open, the ability to show up for a full day where you can share your interests in the moment if you like, as well as support and learn from others who want to do the same. And who knows, you might even find some magic like I did back in 2007.

__________________________________

*Getting to run a session about using WordPress for “More Than Just a Blog” alongside Candace Nast and D’Arcy Norman remains one of my all-time favorite conference moments. People were truly in it.

Posted in reclaim, Reclaim Open | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

bavacade work log 3-28-2023

I’ve been pretty busy knocking out my to-do list for the bavacade. I created a long one after returning from the US, and I’ve gotten through most of it, so might be a good time to create a log with work done over the past month or so.

Pac-man Glossy Finish

Back of pac-man painted

  • Touched up Pac-man paint with new glossy yellow as discussed in this post, and finally painted the back door and finished that cabinet once and for all—although I may find myself doing one more round of touch-up 🙂
  • Added the multi-game, high score save kit to the Pac-man board, so now this cabinet has both a modded board that plays Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, PengoPacman Plus (as well as fast version of those games save Pengo) in addition to the BitKit2 I already installed. I think that puts a fork in Pac-man for now.

Pac-man Multi-game HSS Kit

Pac-man Multi-game HSS Kit

  • Added a high score save kit to the Venture board, so that game is also all but done. I am debating adding another coat of glossy white paint to truly finish it off, but we’ll see.

Venture High Score Save Kit

High Score Save Kit for Venture

  • Sent the Cheyenne ROMs out so that the 440 Exidy Mod kit that plays several games can be fixed. Turns out the issue with the Cheyenne board was related to the mod kit I bought, which is kinda lame, but Mike now has the ROMs and should be able to fix that, which would be awesome.
  • Extra Condor board that Mike fixed is ready to go, will hopefully have that and the Cheyenne board shipped to Italy together if they’re ready to go here soon.

EPROMs from Sound board

Cheyenne original ROMs

  • There’s a graphical issue at the top of my Joust game, and it turns out it is pretty common and there is no much you can do about it, so was able to cross that off the list, although a Williams FPGA may fix this, but had trouble with that board in this machine.

  • Replaced the Big Blue capacitor on the Dig Dug power brick, but that did not solve the loud hum, so this issue is still outstanding, but I did swap the Dig Dug power brick with the one that is in Millipede, and that solved the hum in Dig Dug by transferring the noise to Millipede 🙂

Big Blue Capacitor (Atari Power Brick)

Big Blue Capacitor (Atari Power Brick)

  • Replaced one of the leaf switches in the 8-way joystick for Venture, and that seems to work well. But I have some extras should I need to to replace the rest.
  • Followed-up with Buffett about the Hanterex Polo chassis from Cheyenne he’s working on, that will hopefully be finished up shortly.
  • Tried to look at the florescent light in Dig Dug that was blowing tube after tube, but decided to take a shortcut for now and add a 12V LED tube in its stead. It works so well I may need to get some window tint to obscure the brightness a bit, I am using masking tape at the moment, but I can find a better solution.

12V Power Switch for LED Marquee Light in Dig Dug

12V Power Switch for LED Marquee Light in Dig Dug

  • Disassembled Millipede, and Alberto is presently adding wheels to that game and doing some minor cosmetic work.

Still to do:

  • Got a few varistors from the US that I need to add to the Joust power brick, but this goes in the to-do list
  • Need to look at Moon Patrol bootleg sound board I picked up in US. Everything is working except for the sound, so need to figure this out.
  • Need to do the cap kit for the K4600 chassis that came out of Venture
  • Need to do the cap kit for the G07 chassis that came out of Condor
  • Tried to find two additional bolts/screws for the Venture joystick, but the US vs. EU sizes stumping me there, still need to sort this
  • Tried doing a remote procedure with Zach Davis to add a high score save kit to the Moon Cresta cocktail cabinet in Portland, but that went sideways. Have no idea why it stopped working when we reverted everything before the surgery, frustrating. Anyway, may need to have that board shipped to Mike to get a second opinion.
  • Need to buy an assortment of screw, bolts, wire ties, and more.

Posted in bavacade, bavarcade | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A New Milestone with Galaxian

While I did happen to set a personal best on the Galaxian cabinet in the bavacade as my account was being migrated to our newest shared hosting server named after that 1979 classic alien space shooter, that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the amazing work Reclaim’s sysadmin Chris Blankenship has been doing behind the scenes to get our cPanel servers running on Ubuntu. It’s a long story and Chris does an amazing job narrating why we have to move our infrastructure from Centos7 to alternative Linux distros on his blog, but the short version is they killed Centos7 and Kenny, so we have come up with alternatives over the next 18-24 months. Read Chris’s post for the bigger, longer, and uncut version of the story.

via GIPHY

The milestone the post title refers to is running a cPanel server on top of Ubuntu rather than CentOS, the shared hosting server Galaxian located in Frankfurt, Germany is doing just that, and I believe we’ll have another, Galaga, running on the West Coast of the USA. It’s a big deal because we wanted to ensure in 2023 that all new shared hosting servers were were running on Ubuntu in order to future-proof our server fleet. The upgrading of our existing infrastructure will be a big job and we will be doing it over the course of at least two years, but this moment highlights the beginning of that shift, and that is really exciting. Sometimes the work of infrastructure can be not only invisible but thankless given the only time folks are knocking on their door is when something goes wrong. So join me in celebrating the awesome work happening, as hidden as it might be, when something not only goes right, but marks a path for moving our entire fleet of servers into the future. Avanti sysadmins of the world, and avanti Reclaim!

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Leading with the Art

One of the smartest things Reclaim Hosting has ever done was to partner with Bryan Mathers for our art. The prospect of sitting down with Bryan to collaboratively brainstorm how to communicate what we do visually is an absolute joy, I cannot recommend the experience highly enough. Our brand was in many ways grounded in his first Reclaim Hosting vinyl logo Bryan doodled while we were chatting in Barcelona back in April of 2015. It was love at first sight. And that has since been the basis of an entire Reclaim brand that has been consistently fun and fetching.

Original Reclaim Hosting visual Bryan Mathers doodled

We have used him innumerable times since then to prepare our various products as well as teaming with ALT to build out an entire conference theme for OERxDomains21—which may be a high-water mark for our collaborations. Anyway, Bryan is amazing and few months ago we worked with him to not come up with an aesthetic for our upcoming conference Reclaim Open (which we have yet to unveil in its entirety) as well as try and upgrade our main site header image to subtly suggest the changing nature of our business thanks to the advent of Reclaim Cloud—which is now almost 3 years old, which is insane to even think about.

A sneak peek of some of the Reclaim open art in technicolor

As you can see from the header old reclaimhosting.com header image that we had on our site for close to 8 or 9 years, the VHS tapes were applications that could be easily run within cPanel, such as Drupal, WordPress, MediaWiki, Scalar, Omeka, etc. All supporting the “Zombies” home recorded tape 🙂 All of this not only assumes the coming of the copyright zombies and the learning undead, but also that you would be “playing” these tapes within cPanel.

Old Reclaim Hosting Header image

Our new header image sticks with the VHS metaphor (although it might be begging for a laserdisc or DVD makeover here soon) but cPanel is now just one of the tapes you can play. What’s more, several of these tapes (namely Scalar, WordPress, Omeka, and WordPress) can be played in either cPanel or Reclaim Cloud, while others (like PeerTube, Ghost, and Docker) are exclusive to the new Reclaim Cloud containers. It begs all kinds of format and backward compatibility parallels that the old media metaphors real map on our shift from an exclusively cPanel shop to a much broader library of applications for folks to choose from.

Image of Reclaim Hosting's new site header

Reclaim Hosting’s New Site Header

Again, Bryan works on so many levels that are both inviting and soothing while at the same time epitomizing these subtle, yet crucial, changes we are trying to communicate to our community. What’s more, all of these tapes on the Reclaim shelf fall under the aegis of a new element of Reclaim Hosting rolled almost a year ago now: Reclaim EdTech. And that tapes sits horizontally above the other to highlight an umbrella of support for both cPanel and Reclaim Cloud. It’s so beautiful!

You’ll also notice nothing changed with the “My Blog” tape, that one is sacred 🙂

Posted in art, OERxDomains21, reclaim, Reclaim Edtech, Reclaim Open, reclaimopen | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Bello Yellow Pac-man

As with the Dig Dug and  Venture post, most of this was originally published as part of the bavacade repair log from February 9, 2023.  But in service of celebrating the greatest video game of all time, a dedicated permalink to share the Pac-man overhaul love was not too much to ask.

PAC-man Teardown: Pac-man side-art before teardown

After fitting Pac-man with the BitKit2, I decided that cabinet needed to be on wheels and the bottom looked over closely given the floor was feeling tenuous under any kind of pressure. There were early signs of wood rot that may have been a result of water damage, although it was definitely not extensive.

Pac-man without underpantsPac-man without underpants

Pac-man's old floorPac-man‘s old floor was feeling its age

I stripped the cabinet down to its bones and sent it out to Alberto, who worked his magic. He replaced the floor entirely, while leaving everything else in tact, and added a base pedestal to hide the new wheels. Once I got it back I taped around the original artwork and painted the cabinet with the Scramble yellow I had left-over from that project, and did some touch-up on the black paint, but otherwise left the original artwork untouched. The yellow from Scramble was matte, which meant the color was a bit muted compared to the original Pac-man yellow.

Pac-man painted

Pac-man w/ wheels

This was probably the fastest I ever completed a strip down, re-build, and re-paint. It was all done in less than a week, including Alberto’s work—which was crazy fast. I took a ton of photos, and you can find them in this Flickr album. I was also racing against time given I had planned travel back to the US, so it was nice to get it done.

Pac-man Refurb

That said, once I returned from the US the matte yellow from Scramble I used for touch-ups was bothering me. So, I got that yellow mixed as glossy, and then re-painted the sides, front, and back of the cabinet with the new glossy paint, and now the difference between the yellow around the original artwork and the yellow I added to clean things up is much harder to notice.

Pac-man Glossy Finish

It’s looking good! I still need to paint the back of this cabinet, which was also yellow. I’ll take care of that once I return. This dot gobbler is the crown of my collection, so it needs to be beautiful! In fact, you can get a better sense of the before and after effect with the two side-by-side images below.

Pac-man after the work

Pac-man after the work

Pac-man before the work

Pac-man before the work

Posted in bavacade, bavarcade | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Dig Dug on Wheels!

Like the Venture post before it, most of this was originally published as part of the bavacade repair log from February 9, 2023.  But in service of searchability and documenting these cabinet overhauls more individually, I’m breaking this out into its own post.

Broekn Corner in Dig Dug Cabinet

Broken corner in Dig Dug cabinet

There was a big gouge in the bottom rear corner of the Dig Dug cabinet that was bothering me to no end. The cabinet was otherwise quite solid, and I have to say the seller ensured everything in it was original, which is always nice. One thing that struck me when taking this apart was how well designed the Atari cabinets are. This was the first one I disassembled, and it was the easiest yet by far. I love the way the light and speaker are combined onto one piece of plywood for easy removal.

Dig Dug Light and speaker mount

Light and speaker mounted unit for Dig Dug cabinet

The coin door setup is also super easy to remove with a genius design that allows you to attach and detach the coin box easily and tighten the door with all bolts seated using attached, movable nuts. When you disassemble enough of these machines you begin to appreciate good design choices.

Dig Dug Coin Door Unit

Bolt system for coin doors for the Atari Dig Dug cabinet

The cabinet work for this game was a bit more straightforward. Epoxy for the gouged lower corner and for the various imperfections along the trim. I have new t-molding on order, so this game should be mint very soon.

Taping Dig Dug for Paint

Some taping of Dig Dug for touch-up paint

There were a few places the cracks in the sides meant I needed to do some touch-up paint work, and the base color of his cabinet is closer to off-white than pure white, so I found myself adding yellow to pure white paint to get a better match, and that was fun. It’s not perfect, but you would need to know what you are looking for in just a few spots to see the difference. It’s approaching perfection for me, so more than passable for most I hope. Also, none of the original artwork was touched, so this was already a pretty impressive cabinet, that just got awesomer!

Matching Off-white paint of Dig Dug

Dig Dug After touch-up paint and before light sanding

There are a couple of things I still needed to attend to, and I got around to them after returning from travel. The first task was fixing the marquee light that blows every florescent tube I’ve put in there. I believe it’s the ballast on the light fixture, but I decided to go the easy route for the time being and just attach a 12V switching power supply to convert 120V power line to 12V in order to attach a 12V LED light strip.

Image of 12 volt switching power supply in Dig Dug cabinet to enable LED marquee to work

12 volt switching power supply in Dig Dug cabinet to enable LED marquee to work

That worked well, although the light is a bit bright, so I am looking to find some opaque tinted tape to dial down the lumens. Right now I have masking tape as a work-around, but that might not be the best idea 🙂

Image of LED strip in Dig Dug marquee masked to dim light was some masking tape

LED strip in Dig Dug marquee masked to dim light was some masking tape

That said, the marquee is now working quite well, and it is an original glass, not pasltic, marquee, which is extra special:

Image of Dig Dug marquee lit up

Dig Dug marquee lit up

Next up, the power brick was pretty noisy, so I thought it might be a big blue cap that needed to be replaced. It’s an easy job, so I brought a couple back from America and swapped out the existing one. Unfortunately the noise persisted, so in the interim I switched the power prick from Millipede, which is dead quiet, with the one from Dig Dug. I did this not only because Dig Dug is in the foyer and the noise can get annoying, but also because Millipede is next game up for a quick refurbish and wheels. While Alberto is working on Millipede, I’ll see if I can figure out what is making the loud humming noise on the Dig Dug brick.

Image of wiring for a Big Blue cap on an Atari power brick for Dig Dug

Wiring for a Big Blue cap on an Atari power brick for Dig Dug

Finally, the smooth, black t-molding is on order, and should arrive soon. But apart from that, this is another mint cabinet that sits alongside Donkey Kong Jr, Galaxian, and Pac-man in the bavamanse foyer!

Dig Dug Re-assembled

Dig Dug is re-assembled and looking groovy

Posted in bavacade, bavarcade, video games | Tagged , , | 3 Comments