Doing a bit of blogging this morning about a weekend project, and will be playing a special Yaz's Upstairs at Eric's as background music on #ds106radio. This one is dedicated to @DrGarcia how is by and large my 80s musical twin. Tune in and turn on: https://t.co/vXRNHb42Qcpic.twitter.com/wO8NkzvZiV
Did some blogging in the morning about some of the experimentation I did over the weekend getting my classic gaming streaming rig in order, and figured it would be fun to stream an album on #ds106radio. I spent some time this weekend cleaning up some vinyl I had bought in Trento that was pretty beat up, and Yaz’sUpstairs at Eric‘s sounded much better than when I bought it last year. Still not perfect, but a thorough cleaning definitely made a difference.
I loved this album as a love-struck teenager, and I thought it was the height of experimentation. Plus, Allison Moyet’s voice is hard to deny. This is a European pressing so it has the song “Tuesday” on side 2, which is not on US and Canadian versions. Those versions have “Situation” which was their single in North America, and I learned when doing this vinylcast that Yaz did not want to have Situation put forth by the label as their North American single.
Upstairs at Eric’s vinylcast
As you might have guessed from the bava recently, there’s something in the air besides COVID-19, namely the #ds106 reunion tour 10 years on! I’m not entirely sure how or why, but I am glad it’s happening, and I am going to unapologetically ride the wave for as long as it lasts.
Oddly enough, while searching for an animated GIF from The Outer Limits to capture the spirit of “the vertical and horizontal” bit I have been riffing on when discussing the awesome combination of ds106radio and ds106tv since as long ago as 2011 I found the above post from 2014. It was one of the over 3300 posts I’ve written in almost 15 years, and it is crazy to me how my own messages in a bottle on the internet float back to me at the most opportune times. It also reminds me that I don’t write like I used to, check out this bit:
But the real reason to do it [ds106] doesn’t have nearly as much to do with laying bear the materialism of the web or raging against institutional siloes [sic] or building your network—though all of those would get you a passing grade on the test. The real reason is there’s possibility of magic in such an approach. There’s a point where the time, energy, and faith in a seed of networked learning could transform into an experience of taking over the means of cultural production for even a moment—creating a networked space where you’re course transforms into a community of people become producers, distributors, and consumers simulataneosuly [sic]. The vertical and the horizontal. That’s become the high watermark of online, open, connected learning for me, and my paltry contribution to Connected Courses is trying to share and model how a group of us built the infrastrcuture [sic], communtiy [sic], and ethos around ds106.
That’s pretty damn awesome, typos and all. And while I don’t have any recollection of writing it, it was just the message in a bottle to the internet that I needed to float ashore these days. It’s perfect timing.
I think the culture that emerged from #ds106 remains the high watermark for open online learning, at least for me (though I’m obviously biased), but I wonder if some others out there agreed with their feet. Is that why they’ve come back for more and brought some new folks along with them? I’m not sure, but I still believe in that possibility of magic to transform learning, and the toolbox we have been given to fashion it on the web seemingly knows no bounds, which is the perfect transition to ds106.tv.
In addition to the 25 vinylcasts on the ds106radio I have done over the last 40 days or so, I’ve also been experimenting with broadcasting to a live video stream that Tim setup to revive the idea of ds106tv. In the above video I am talking through how I was able to pull in my Atari 2600 Flashback to OBS using the RCA-input Elgato Video Capture card. The following Youtube video helped me figure this out:
I also talked a bit about how I was able to add a virtual audio device in Loopback to OBS, which was as simple as adding a new audio input device. After that I played the 1982 Atari 2600 game Haunted House for the remaining 10 minutes 🙂
But all of this to say I have been deep in the weeds of ds106tv and it feels good. I was originally play with Streamlabs OBS, which is a fully featured fork of the open source OBS software geared towards gamers. In fact, Tim did a walk-though video of the software that was really useful for me to get up and running, and luckily OBS and Streamlabs OBS are almost identical:
The video is 55 minutes long, and if you have the patience it gives you everything you need to get up and running with OBS, whats more there are more details around using ds106tv specifically here: https://ds106.tv/howto/
I spent some time over the last week moving from Streamlabs OBS to OBS because I was finding Streamlabs was harder on my computer, it was demanding more CPU than my 2015 Macbook Pro wanted to give and once I did the resource issues have gone away.
Below are a few screenshots I took of my OBS setup, you notice this is the Living Room scene that includes my laptop webcam, a ds106tv text-based logo, and a background image of the UMW Console Living.
The next scene is the Atari 2600, wherein I bring in the ds106tv text, my webcam, and also a window with the elgato video capture card.
The problem with the video capture card window was that capturing video through a window is sketchy at best. Frames skip and the live stream looks terrible. I figured this out after testing with Tim, and that’s why I’m now pulling in the Atari 2600 games using the Full Display input for a second monitor that is running the Elgato Video Capture application full screen. There is some tweaking you need to do around display resolution if you are capturing low-resolution content like I am, but I think the next test will be to run a VHS tape through this device and see how that looks through ds106tv.
But that is just the tip of the iceburg, Tim has been experimenting wildly and right now we are capturing an archive of all live streams as well as building randomly automated loops of shows so the TV is never static. It’s crazy, just the other day I was taken back to 2012 or 2013 when Tina and Timmy were broadcasting from New York City’s Times Square in search of their big toe!
And then Tim was using Dj3D which let’s you DJ Youtube videos on the fly, and folks can join you in what is akin to virtual movie theater filled with Minecraft-esque avatars. You can get a bit of a sense of this from the screenshot above featuring Todd Conaway at the Grand Canyon in 2011 during the first wave of ds106tv.
But crazier then that was once the shenanigans of Tim’s live stream were over I was kicked out to ds106tv to discover a documentary video playing about the life of collage artist Ray Johnson called How to Draw a Bunny and it was absolutely amazing. Turns out that documentary had been live streamed previously and was now part of the random playlist that you might find when you go to ds106tv. Amazing, I spent the next 90 minutes glued to the screen. It’s that magic of the unexpected that is what so many of us love most about the web in action. I know there is much more to come on the TV front, and it is cool to see the playground of Reclaim Video’s stream be so quickly grafted on top of ds106.tv. It always seems that the playing is never in vain, and while the ideas we come up with seem crazy at the time, in retrospect it seems like we have always been paving the way for a return to that thing which brought us together and made us happy.
Last week I talked with Lauren Heywood and Bryan Mathers on #ds106radio, and I had a blast both times. I started thinking why aren’t we doing more of this at Reclaim Hosting given #ds106 and Reclaim go together like chocolate and peanut butter. So last week to the day Lauren Brumfield and I took over the airwaves for an hour or so and chatted about all things #ds106 and Reclaim, and it was fun!
What’s more, it was cool to see Lauren get some much deserved love from listeners, it’s all true! We spent a fair amount of time talking about the culture at Reclaim Hosting, and how that has been a strength. But I will let the audio tell the story, and I highly recommend it cause you can hear firsthand how and why Lauren has been so crucial to the success of Reclaim Hosting. Enjoy!
This is a two and a half hour tour-de-force of a free-ranging discussion about radio, art, and much more between myself and the great visual thinkerer: Bryan Mathers. My relationship with Bryan goes back to chance encounter in 2015 when I met him at a conference in Barcelona (thanks Doug Belshaw!). He has subsequently defined the visual aesthetic of Reclaim Hosting, and for that we will be ever grateful.
Turns out he has been tuning into the #ds106radio, and he wanted to have a chat about that, and if you know how Bryan works, this means great visuals will follow. He is really amazing, he seems inspired by conversation and connection. The art he invokes is in many ways the by-product of a social exchange, it’s the very essence of working openly together. He reminds me why working collaboratively on just about anything is always better, at least for me, than going it alone. He was kind and generous enough to post his first fun at some art that was generated as part of this talk, so I figured it was high time to get the audio out given I had one job, and was already failing to uphold my end 🙂
I really love the idea of hand-stitched radio he came up with as a result of the conversation. Not sure if it was mentioned in the moment, but there is something so perfect about the metaphor:
And it was trippy to me how Bryan picked up on the phone ideas given I don’t think that came up either, but I really love it.
Not only for the call-in radio idea, but also because in 2012 or so Grant Potter created an 800 number for #ds106radio that would allow you to get right on the radio from anywhere, something I did a few times from a payphone in NYC 🙂
I love the use of the phone for the radio, in 2011 @grantpotter setup an 800 call-in number for ds106radio that brought you straight to air, it was ridiculously awesome https://t.co/Jgh2BQh6IApic.twitter.com/Qty9W3SnP6
Ahhh, and Dr. Oblivion, what can I say other than he was always a visionary, and well ahead of his edtech time. I think he might be the patron saint of ds106tv more than the radio, but an icon all the same 🙂
I don’t ever need an excuse to jump on a call and chat with Bryan Mathers, so the idea he wanted to chat about #ds106radio was double treat for me, and while the conversation is long and fairly indulgent, the fact I may have turned him onto Bob Ross makes it an instant classic regardless.
Rowan Peter came on the radio blasting some Depeche Mode through the microphone lo-fi style, so I offered to play him some vinyl. He obliged, but he is a hippie that wants more talk than music, where I am trying to legitimize this radio
I bought this album in Virginia a few years back at Fat Kat Records when they were still around. It is a 12″ 45 with 3 songs, all re-mixes. Master & Servant is 8 minutes, and kind of interesting, but the 3rd remix on side 2 Are people people? Is really wild. Definitely a bizarre mix that makes the original almost unrecognizable.
it was a fun, quick cast, and I chatted a bit at the end.
Antonella told a great story of her calling Gordon Gano’s house in the mid-80s on the Jim & Anto show so I took that as the cue for today’s #vinylcast the Violent Femmes self-titled album from 1982. It’s a classic from the 80s, and they became on of the decades most successful bands as a result of this impressive debut.
I picked this album up in Galway while attending OER19 at Bell, Book, & Candle. It was an awesome little shop, and I bought a few albums, but this one was the one that has been in constant rotation. I also found a few interesting reviews on Amazon that I read. This was a fun broadcast, and it really is a last moment of British New Wave from the 80s before grunge took over the world.
I bought this album at a record store in Trento, and after a listen I realized how good it was from beginning to end. Not one I owned in then 80s, but one that was everywhere in 1987 and 1988, during my junior year in High School particularly. And this is the second time listening to it through since buying it and it holds water – just about every song is a potential hit single. Long live Austrialian pop rock!
I spent another 30 minutes futzing live on the radio trying to figure out my inputs and recording my findings. It was an experimental futzing session with the accurate assumption no one was listening. I was able to get my Audio Hijack settings in a pretty good space:
My Audio Hijack setup for #ds106radio
I have my turntable (USB Audio Codec) and Yeti mic as two inputs with peak and VU meters (which will keep Nigel off my back 🙂 and at the moment I am using using iTunes and Chrome as two other audio sources.* All of which are going into the radio broadcast, which I am then recording locally and monitoring with my headphones. It is slick, and the fact I have the broadcaster built-in means I do not need Ladiocast anymore, and can use Loopback for more specific use-cases for the radio and or ds106.tv. It was also really helpful to see Anne-Marie Scott’s setup so I could try and figure out where I was
I really liked the way she broke up the sources into a kind of broadcasting pyramid work-flow, so I want to re-work mine accordingly. Anne-Marie has been DJing the awesome triumvirate of radio: Tannis Morgan, Maren Deepwell, and herself every Sunday evening at 11 Am PST, which is the most respectable radio on the #ds106radio air alongside the South pacific, which is holding down like a mothertrucker as I write this right now. Did I mention the radio is good lately?
Anyway, here is my futzing cast getting Audio Hijack working on the radio, which is not at all instructive by any means, but it is a pretty good recording 🙂
I might mix those down to a single source from Loopback, but more on that in another post.
My understanding of what is known as the house metaphor is a house as a tool to understand how web addresses, websites and web hosting relate to one another. This metaphor can then be extrapolated further to explain that an individual needs to have some initial understanding of the “web-based plumbing, electric, interior design, etc.” if they are to make spaces on the Web and to make them “liveable”.
Once an individual has built understanding of how the Web works and how they can start building their own spaces, including making them “liveable”, it is at this point that the individual can build confidence and agency to realise the potential of Domains initiatives as relates to Virgina Woolf’s arguments in ‘A Room of One’s Own’ (1929).
For me that’s where the metaphor ends.
I really love the way Lauren understands the broader vision of Domains as always already a project in providing possibility to students and instructors alike to build the web. It’s a mission, not a metaphor. So, I asked Lauren if she would be interested in having a follow-up discussion about the house metaphor for Domains on the mighty #ds106radio (always be branding, people!).
She agreed, and two days ago we had an hour long discussion that was pretty awesome. I know the great David Kernohan was tuned in…
@BryanAlexander – "he kind of looks like Rasputin", "I like him, I like his style", "unapologetically goth" – NOBODY gives compliments like @jimgroom on #ds106radio
And it was awesome to see my old, dear friend Shannon Hauser who is now an instructional technologist running Domains at UMW was tuned in. My worlds combined in some beautiful ways at that moment, and the radio was good!
@jimgroom@LaurenHeywood Thanks for the great conversation! Would love to hear from you all again. Lauren, you definitely have a voice for radio. Jim, you have the face for radio 😉 #ds106radio
So, in the interest of trying to both preserve and share some of the radio magic that’s been happening for me these last days, weeks, and soon months, here is a recording of that discussion.
I hope it encourages folks like Lauren Heywood, Alex Masters, and Shannon Hauser (a sampling of the next generation of edtech) to get on the radio, whether ds106radio or their own international broadcasting network. And we need to do the same at Reclaim Hosting with our ridiculously talented group inclusing Lauren Brumfield, Meredith Fierro, Chris Blankenship, Gordon Hawley, and Katie Harcraft. This is not a time for the established edtech thought leaders (and I have to incriminate myself here) to suck up oxygen, but to lift up the folks who will have to make sense of this field when the dust settles and the work on the ground still needs to be done. I hope we can build more inclusive, diverse networks that strive for that rather than self-serving platforms for the next Gates Foundation funding opportunity.
is an ongoing conversation about media of all kinds ...
Testimonials:
Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet anymore. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning.
-Joe McMahon
Everything Jim Groom touches is gold. He's like King Midas, but with the Internet.
-Serena Epstein
My understanding is that an essential requirement of the internet is to do whatever Jim Groom asks of you while you're online.
-James D. Calder
@jimgroom is the Billy Martin of edtech.
-Luke Waltzer
My 3yr old son is VERY intrigued by @jimgroom's avatar. "Is he a superhero?" "Well, yes, son, to many he is."
-Clint Lalonde
Jim Groom is a fiery man.
-Antonella Dalla Torre
“Reverend” Jim “The Bava” Groom, alias “Snake Pliskin” is a charlatan and a fraud, a self-confessed “used car salesman” clawing his way into the glamour of the education technology keynote circuit via the efforts of his oppressed minions at the University of Mary Washington’s DTLT and beyond. The monster behind educational time-sink ds106 and still recovering from his bid for hipster stardom with “Edupunk”, Jim spends his days using his dwindling credibility to sell cheap webhosting to gullible undergraduates and getting banned from YouTube for gross piracy.
I bought this album in Virginia a few years back at Fat Kat Records when they were still around. It is a 12″ 45 with 3 songs, all re-mixes. Master & Servant is 8 minutes, and kind of interesting, but the 3rd remix on side 2 Are people people? Is really wild. Definitely a bizarre mix that makes the original almost unrecognizable.
it was a fun, quick cast, and I chatted a bit at the end.
