Do the Right Thing… Ernie

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Reverend

Searching for the opening credits for Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (the “Fight the Power” sequence with Rosie Perez), I stumbled upon a different kind of gem in the vein of some interesting videos Bryan Alexander has been posting as of late. It’s a parody that mashes up Sesame Street and Do the Right Thing, now what can I do with my complete Smurf collection -a little The Battleship Potemkin or Alexander Nevsky maybe?

Self censor: On second thought, maybe this one is a bit too much for my purposes here, if your interested search for it on youtube 🙂 Is it time for another blog under a pseudonym? -I think it is.

Posted in movies, video, YouTube | Tagged | 1 Comment

WordPress: power and simplicity

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Reverend

Subtitle: Are we ready to take WordPress as a CMS seriously yet?

Power Lines

This is a post that was inspired by both a question on OLDaily as well as a post about Drupal documentation on Half an Hour. I originally threw out a flippant response to the “Joomla or Drupal?” question in regards to open source content management systems, that was appropriately handed right back to me. This, along with a recent momentous event, further encouraged me to sit down and spend some time framing a series of thoughts about WordPress (bordering on a misguided passion at this point) I have been raving about for well over a year now.

The common criticisms I hear about WordPress are that while cute for blogging, it can’t do much in terms of sophisticated Content Management and more granular permissions. Let’s take a moment here and think about these two “shortcomings” in relationship to how many of the best minds in ed tech have begun to conceptualize distributed learning networks in terms of more personalized spaces. In turn, these ““Personal Learning Environments,” “Virtual learning Environments,” and/or “Virtual Learning Spaces” (the terminology is still uncertain and in flux but all share a common core of an online space where users can shape their learnings through content creation, links, aggregation, integration with 3rd party online services, etc. -see recent discussions here, here, and here) while being in a direct relationship with others that feed out into the various services and designated spaces while also quickly and easily ingesting, feeding out, and represent information to reflect the goings on of a distributed learning network -and hopefully with some intelligent filtering, variegated coupling, and visually pleasing re-presentations. Stephen Downes says it better:

Very similar to EduRSS in concept design is the student version of the same idea, generally known as the Personal learning Environment. The PLE differs from EduRSS in that it depends explicitly on external services (such as Flickr, del.iciop.us, Blogger and the like) for data retrieval and storage. The ‘node in the network’, with the PLE, is actually virtual, distributed over a number of websites, and also very portable (ideally, it could be implemented on a memory stick).

Now the point has been, and should remain, that and individual within a given network should be able use the numerous tools she prefers and “they” (they! who in the hell is ‘they‘?) should find ways to aggregate, filter, and reflect relationships through topics using RSS, RDF, category tags, etc. (also known in certain abject circles as EDUGLU!).

Given this as a basis to move within and from (while at the same time acknowledging that web authoring tools may once again radically change or become interchangeable some time soon) -why are so many folks so quick to discount, or fail to even consider, WordPress as an ideal content management system for the more distributed learning networks that have been on so many people’s minds as of late? Why is a more simplistic blogging platform with an insane user and development community an ideal CMS for distributed learning networks? Well, it’s ideal in a few senses within some very specific contexts, let me try and be both specific and clear.
Continue reading →

Posted in drupal, plugins, WordPress, wordpress multi-user | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Digg Down, DRM Up

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Reverend

Digg Reader

I was scrolling through my google reader early this morning when I realized that something was amiss with Digg. Just about every article title in my digg folder either displayed or made reference to Hurley‘s jinxed holy grail of HD-DVD numbers (or the decryption key to unlock HD-DVDs). Additionally, users were prefacing these numbers with titles like “Censorship and the downfall of Digg.” I realized that the users were “revolting” against the editors choice to pull all posts that contain these sequential numbers. Thousands of users were forcing each and every article with the forbidden key to the front page. So, I followed a link to see what all the craziness was about when I got the following message screen:

Back Shortly

The digg site went down briefly (whether taken off line or just over run is unclear), soon after which the following message from Kevin Rose (Digg’s founder) appeared:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

As Brian Lamb said via IM as this was all unfolding, “It would make for an interesting case study.” It sure would! I have very few facts, but that won’t stop me from imagining!! Think about it, here’s a service, (fill in corporation, university, government, etc.) that actually had to answer to someone for its actions or be called out continuously until they offered an explanation. Reminds me of a process I wanted access to while listening to the Vice-President of Haliburton on C-Span expediently dismiss any and all of her corporation’s accountability for earning billions of dollars as a result of murder, terror, and carnage while at the same time failing to honor its government contracts, agreements, etc. During this numbing discussion which took place in dialogue with several Senators, I found myself saying, “Why can’t we just revolt against these vampires that are sucking the world dry?” Well, it’s never that simple, but watching my reader light up with people who were frustrated and tired of being continually violated brought a small inkling of promise to a weary political soul.

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Second Life is more interesting…

Posted on April 30, 2007 by Reverend

Another deep thought brought to you by the spammers of bavatuesdays:

Flower Apr 30th, 2007 at 12:54 am Edit

This is a good article…..But I think joining the secondlife is more interesting….You could make youself more beautiful in secondlife than
in real life…And could find some sexy girls (boys) friends & partners in there,it is so funny……

100% Free Dating Site of SL *** http://www.secondlifepartners.com ***

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Joomla or Drupal or WordPress?

Posted on April 28, 2007 by Reverend

Following the Joomla or Drupal conversation at OLDaily, I decided to throw in my own 2 cents by way of a comment -half serious and half in jest.

Joomla or Drupal

Within a fraction of a second I got my response.
Nonsense Comment

Well, thanks for thinking about it anyway

Posted in drupal, WordPress | 5 Comments

Commodore 64 theme for WordPress

Posted on April 28, 2007 by Reverend

BoingBoing has linked to a Commodore 64 theme for WordPress.

So, having spent so much time as of late trying to make WP aesthetically pleasing, fluid, integrated, and easy to navigate, it was nice to set up a blog that represents quite possibly the most difficult and least accessible user interface for the uninitiated command line commie. Che divertito!

Commodore 64

Also, I would like to see if the spammers can crack this one!

Posted in WordPress | Tagged | 6 Comments

8-Minute Abs

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Reverend

One of the few things I have been unable to share on my blog is my daily work-out regiment. Not so much because I am shy or embarrassed about it, rather until now I haven’t had an effective way to explain its cinematic complexities and nuances -and some may even argue its transnational poetry. So in the spirit of sharing everything, I had my last session recorded and mixed so that you all can see what I’m up to before work on a daily basis. Enjoy!



In all seriousness though, I found this awesome video through Luke Waltzer’s precision post on Syncretism and Web 2.0 -it’s a keeper! The work of art above is from the Dvinsk Clan-Le Parkour. What’s Le Parkour and why am I interested in this as part of Web 2.0? -well Luke says it much better than I ever could:

This video features the Dvinks Clan, a parkour/free running group based, I think, in Latvia. Parkour was invented in the French suburbs, and inspired by the moves in 1970s Kung Fu flicks. This video echoes French New Wave cinema, draws upon the California skater videos of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and uses French hip-hop as its soundtrack.

Yeah, baby -mashing it up has as much to do with physical movement, cinematic styles, transatlantic hip-hop and decayed urban spaces (as Brian Lamb alluded to yesterday in his masterful Mashup talk) as it does with virtual technologies. Marrying the two makes them both that much more conceptually powerful and accessible.

Posted in video, YouTube | Tagged | 7 Comments

A Bliki -what’s a Bliki?

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Reverend

get_elements_by_tagname(‘div’);
foreach ($divs as $div) {
if ($div->get_attribute(‘id’) == ‘column-content’) { //grab only the body of the mw page
$contentDiv = $div;
}
if ($div->get_attribute(‘id’) == ‘jump-to-nav’) { //kill navigation div
$parent = $div->parent_node();
$parent->remove_child($div);
}
$div->remove_attribute(‘class’); //clear off classes to avoid style collisions. might need to do the same if style attributes are present
}

$h3s = $contentDiv->get_elements_by_tagname(‘h3’);

foreach ($h3s as $h3) {
if ($h3->get_attribute(‘id’) == ‘siteSub’) { //kill the reference to original mw page
$parent = $h3->parent_node();
$parent->remove_child($h3);
}
}

echo $wppageDOM->dump_node($contentDiv); //spit it out!

?>

Posted in WordPress | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Thinking History Digitally

Posted on April 22, 2007 by Reverend

Tomorrow a few of DTLT’s finest are going to meet with some folks from the History and Historical Preservation departments to talk about the technological possibilities for the emerging Center for Digital History at UMW (nothing official yet!). This is very exciting because we all know the faculty in these programs quite well, and I think that they are genuinely interested in what we have to bring to the table in terms of imagining and planning for such an academic resource center. I guess the benefits of working at a small liberal arts college manifest themselves in moments like these.

So, by way of a bad transition, my family and I spent the day at a “retired” plantation just North of Richmond in Henrico County called Meadow Farm. This site was the Sheppard family’s tobacco plantation for almost 250 years. The actual museum on the site was underwhelming, and I often find myself intellectually disgruntled by such historical landmarks -especially since the possibilities for learning about the history of such a place is often limited to a few generic placards. I’m not one of those hippies that believes that just because you are on the ground where history took place that by some kind of mystical osmosis you will begun to understand the events -I actually need something to read, conceptualize and interact with (I’m that kind of learner:)).

Anyway, the grounds were beautiful and the day was spectacular (blue skies and 85 degrees), but I left wanting a bit more from my experience. I mean Gabriel’s Rebellion, one of the most significant failed slave revolts of the early republic was foiled at this farm by two of the Sheppard’s house slaves -whom soon after were given their freedom. There was very little in the way of dealing with this history -whether by contextualizing it, exploring it, or further examining the history of slavery in the US. In fact, the only place I saw any mention of the slave revolt was in the historical marker at the entrance to the plantation.

Meadow Farm Plantation

This day trip to Meadow Farm rekindled an idea I had been bouncing around in my Museum lab class this semester given the ever increasing ease of creating mashups. The idea was quite simple, have a group of students take images of historical markers in Virginia from around the state -just like the one pictured above- and put them into flickr, geo-tag them and create a resource of historical sites that might be used in several different ways. In order to create a more comprehensive resource for the over 1500 historical markers from around Virginia we could open up the project to all UMW students, allowing for a distributed means of collecting the markers quickly and easily. The logic being that we have students from just about every nook and cranny of the state, get them excited about adding to this project by creating a flickr group that would make it easy for them to make their contribution. In fact, this is by no means novel, something like this has already been done in print and online -although the online version is a apparently a one-man 1.0 project. The idea in an educational context would be to open the images up for more conversation around the political, social and cultural events in Virginia’s history, as well as a way to graphically track and interact with more recent and local history.

Then, serendipitously, Alan Levine linked to Will Richardson’s post on Google’s My Maps, and I started to see just how much easier and contextualized this process might be. The final push came from Jeff McClurken’s (one of UMW’s finest digital historians) post about a Surreal Mashup Moment which brilliantly illustrates the possibilities for Google’s My Maps to think history digitally in some powerfully interactive ways. So why not create that flickr group of Virginia historical markers and build them into a Google My Maps account (both of which are registered and administered through UMW’s new Center for Digital History). Let the students explore with these tools, let them mash it up, and while they’re at it let them create a dynamic evolving teaching and learning resource that can be used, re-used and abused?

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Open, Connected, and Social

Posted on April 21, 2007 by Reverend

Pulling teeth

D’Arcy Norman has already announced the (MAC) Learning Environments presentation that will take place this Wednesday, April 25, 1:00pm EST (10:00am Pacific, 11:00am Mountain, etc…). D’Arcy, Brian Lamb, and Alan Levine will be re-visiting some of the generative ideas from their 2004 presentation “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” (you can see the archived wiki here) that was premised on framing a learning environment using decentralized, web-based tools -even before K2 was widetized for WordPress! If you want some additional information about the presentation, or are already sold and just want to sign up for this completely free and open presentation, go here.

Now, to set the record straight (I do this a lot), these three guys owed me on account of a little wager I placed for them on the Chicago WhiteSox back in 1919. So now, as a result of their rigged misfortune, they have to slum a bit. Their lack of options aside, I am extremely excited to take my five or ten minute portion of the jam to act as a stand-in for the hard working folks at Mary Washington’s DTLT (and UMW more generally) whom, through the leadership over the past year-and-half of Martha Burtis and Gardner Campbell, have taken the small tools loosely joined philosophy and ran full speed ahead with it. So, to quote Lee Harvey, “I’m just a patsy!”

In hopes that the MAC folks -those geniuses!- would want to see the possibilities of online learning environments, I took some familiar tools (and a snazzy new rug that really ties the room together! -thanks Andy Rush) to frame out a space where intensely open, connected and social learning could happen. Moreover, all of this within the framework of open source applications like WordPress, WPMU, and MediaWiki, applications that play nice with Web 2.0 services such as flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, etc. That’s right, start with a little open source then pull in some open content, and we got ourselves the beginnings of a learning environment that is closely modeled upon the small tools loosely joined philosophy.

The site for the presentation can be found here, and I invite any and every one to join in on the fun. The idea is that this is going to be a classroom/learning environment, and let’s pretend the course is on “Web 2.0.” Now all you have to do is get in there and offer up some content. It’s easy. Here’s how:

  • Create a blog here
  • Play around a bit with over 25 attractive themes in the presentation tab
  • Add in some videos or music from your favorite online services (like YouTube, Revver, etc.) by testing out the Anarchy Media Playerlook. Simply look for the yellow A on the text editor toolbar and copy in the relevant url.
  • If you’re still bored, you can always add a flickr stream, del.icio.us bookmarks, recent tweets, etc. using your sidebar widgets. And presto, your hard work over the past months is already there waiting for everyone during the presentation.
  • Not impressed? Well, the wiki is also wide open, so feel free to frame out my portion of the discussion for me while you’re too busy being underwhelmed :)

I can’t offer you much in the way of fame and fortune for testing it out. But maybe I can convince you all by stressing the fact that any and all examples of a dynamic, open source learning environment that plays well with the Web 2.0 services we have all come to know and love is well worth collaboratively testing out and highlighting for corporate entities that are used to hand delivering the “next, best thing!” The work we are doing is not about companies, it is about people and the importance of keeping the highly socialized connections amongst us open and free. So take a few minutes and give it a test drive, it won’t be used as some lame advertisement, and it shouldn’t be any worse than having a tooth pulled -I promise!

Posted in WordPress, wordpress multi-user | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment