Walking around Nottingham this 3rd July, I noticed someone had dropped and then abandoned this ice cream cone and thought it would make an interesting context for a street photo. I didn’t get it straight, but I didn’t try a second times since I was in the way of many pedestrians. I still love this image because it tells a story, and in a way, I kind of like the slight skew.

I’ve had a hard time keeping up with my faculty duties and #ds106, and unfortunately that has meant not keeping up with #ds106. My heart is with you, you incredible crazy community! I miss you all terribly. I will be trying to keep up a bit. We have no wifi in my classroom or I would try to broadcast one of my class discussions. I may try recording one if it doesn’t freak my students out too much.

Meanwhile, many apologies for my lack of comments on your work. We’ll see if I can begin again.

I will head out to Cardiff, Wales this weekend to see their storytelling museum and meet one of the original Capture Wales team; more on that forthcoming. For now, I’m due in class shortly so I’m off.

#ds106forlife

@DailyShoot – #ds592 – What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word “deadline”? #ds106

This is actually the second thing I thought of, July first, my imminent departure for the United Kingdom, and all the things that must be completed before then.

The first thing I thought of was an EKG flatlined, the ultimate deadline. But I don’t have access to one for photography, so this calendar will have to do.

First, YES. Accept that creativity is a skill, not a genetic or divine predetermination, and that with practice you can get better at it. All you really need are effort and persistence. Persist! Please. I am begging you.

I appreciated hearing Jim talk about why he doesn’t send his kids to school. I can remember being in 6th or 7th grade, maybe even 5th grade. I can remember that once a day we got to go either to art class or music class for an hour. We didn’t get to choose, it’s just that those two activities were deemed not important enough to do both every day. And in those two places, I had a break, and space to breathe, and something joyous that I loved to do, and while I did them, the things I was learning in the more academic subjects got a minute to percolate around my cranium and associate with other things. I am telling you, I knew these things were happening in my head. I could feel it. Art or music hour always went too fast and then we were back listening to lectures or reading out loud from books or drilling our spelling words or pounding chalk out of erasers or whatever else we had to do.

I remember deciding, right in the middle of an economics or civics lesson, when my mind began to wander and I involuntarily started to hum that song we learned in music class, that instead of being a writer when I grew up, I would be an art teacher. Because I could see that I needed more time and encouragement doing creative tasks. I could tell it actually helped me learn the other things faster. And made it all much more fun. I could literally feel the droning on and on killing my soul, that’s what I thought at the time. I could see the solution, and I wanted to help.

I eventually did become an art teacher, sort of, but for college, not for elementary school. I do still feel like I’m helping, especially when students tell me that my class is the one they look forward to because they can play. They have no idea how much I can relate. Anyway, every semester I hear people tell me they aren’t creative, or artistic. My purpose in life becomes proving them wrong.

I liked Tim’s example of the coffee filter box, depicting creativity’s problem solving side. Also his example of the logo he saw in the urinal…. Since he shared that, I can share that he reminded me of my first trip to New Zealand. I had to buy supplies for “that time of the month,” and found that they had done something with sanitary napkin packaging that no one in the U.S. had the sense to do. Maybe the problem the Kiwis were solving was cranky PMS, or maybe they just wanted to make the whole experience more pleasant. The packaging was pretty, boldly colorful and playful, not pastel and clinical (and U.S. products are starting to go that way). And the little protective strip that you peeled off the adhesive was printed with jokes. Hilarious jokes! And the occasional fun fact or bit of philosophy. It made me almost look forward to changing a pad, just to see something new and funny instead of sitting in a bathroom thinking “ugh, ick.” It was like someone had combined feminine hygiene and Bazooka gum. Take notes, Kotex.

I was especially happy to hear Tim and Jim talking about the incorporation of pop culture into #ds106. I admit to being perplexed last Spring as I popped my head up occasionally to look in on what #ds106 was up to. I didn’t understand why people were doing animated GIFs of films, or four icon challenges summarizing films, or mashups of random album covers using images that weren’t theirs. I wasn’t considering that the point might be to practice doing something creative, or to learn how to make an animated GIF. And I wasn’t looking close enough to notice whether someone was actually using a GIF to make a comment on no more digital facelifts like Stella Meme did last week. From a distance, I saw disjointed riffs on pop culture fluff, and, like Tim says of reality TV, I saw no value in it.

Now I see that it’s play, and practice. It’s marks with chalk on paper as you learn technique. And it’s more, if you want it to be. If you want it to be, it can be layer on layer of art and commentary and riffing off one another, call and response in a great chorus. And, this is probably key, our #ds106 work isn’t necessarily supposed to be fully understood out of context and from a distance, the way I was looking at it. It’s a creative community, not a person working in a vacuum.

This is a really different approach to digital storytelling than I take when I teach it. I follow more of a Center for Digital Storytelling model. I spend several weeks helping students scratch a personal narrative out of their heads before starting working with digital tools. We literally sit around a circle and tell each other stories to develop them. We give each other feedback – non-verbal reactions while listening to a story, and verbal feedback afterward. We form a creative community, too, one where lifelong friendships develop sometimes. Then we move on to recording audio, and putting together book and video versions of our stories, supporting each other as much through the technical process as through the creative development. It’s hugely fun. Here is the first digital story I made following this method, in case you’re curious.

I’ll say right now, I don’t think my way is better than what we’re doing with #ds106. But I will say that I do still value the personal narrative aspect. Or maybe that term is too confining, because I also enjoy the personal snippets, the little expressions of the now, the micro stories, even if they last only an instant. I got into this media literacy / digital storytelling / art making stuff because I am mostly sick to death of mainstream pablum produced by people with a lot of money who have something to sell. I am not nearly so interested in watching you make a four icon challenge summarizing a movie like, say, Friday the Thirteenth part 666, as I am in learning more about who you are and watching you explore your interests. The more you that you put into your #ds106 work, the more I will love it.

And that’s the best thing, the thing I love most, about listening to Tim and Jim discuss #ds106. Part of what motivates me to teach digital multimedia classes is that I really want to hear or see something unique for a change. It’s about damn time that higher education, heck, all education, stopped wholesale ignoring that we don’t need gatekeepers anymore. We don’t need some film or music (or whatever) producer with a fat wad of cash and a slew of investors to greenlight what we have to share. We don’t need committee approval. We don’t need anyone but us to decide that it’s good enough, and to make it, put it out there, and let our work find its audience. We just need ourselves. And I really want to see and hear this stuff. Our stuff. Not another vapid sitcom or remade movie. Not another infomercial or staged reality show. Just you, your ideas, your voice, your experience, your art, your stories. Get to it, everybody.

@DailyShoot – #ds587 – Make a photograph today that illustrates attraction.

My big fluffy cat is attracted to the lap of anyone wearing black.

While under the hood I removed the laurel from a 2007 “first annual” film festival that has never been repeated and nixed the delicious.com badge. There is much more work to do, but I thank #ds106 for starting me on the road to recovery over here. I don’t want this site to to say I don’t care, but that’s what it’s been saying. I may not be able to get it the way I want it before I have to leave for a month in England, but I can at least get started.

My laptop battery has begun expiring with no “low battery” warning, somewhere between 30-40% power. This means my laptop shuts down completely no matter what I’m doing, with no warning at all, and I lose work if I’m not paying very close attention. When I charge the battery back up, it never just stays at 100%, instead exhibiting the utterly annoying behavior of bouncing back and forth between 99% and 100% capacity. Very visually distracting.

Now I have to decide if I can live with it until summer, when hopefully new MacBook Pros come out. I guess whoever I sell this laptop to would appreciate a shiny new battery, so I may as well buy one.

I’ll try recalibrating it, but I’m not optimistic.

• made my own glass cleaner and used it to clean mirrors
• spent a few hours planning the great declutter project of 2011
• clean my bathrooms
• make soup from leftover beef bones
• make bread (mmmm warm bread)
• vacuum up cobwebs and dust elephants

Little House in the Suburbs has lovely simple recipes for cleaning products in her third post in her Home Management Notebook series. I can vouch that the glass cleaner works great, even when you scent it with a few drops of lavender essential oil. I’m going to try all the other Homemade Cleaning Solutions on her list as well. I can’t make my husband stop buying expensive brand name cleaners, but since I’m normally the only one doing any cleaning, I can just keep saying “nope honey, we haven’t run out of it yet, no need to buy more.” I’ve reached the end of 2010 more committed than ever to dropping out of the market for as many products as possible.

My latest bout of anti-consumerism was brought on by the great o.b. tampon debacle, which you can search on your own or wait for the full-blown post I will eventually write about it. You can also choose not to hear about it at all, filing it under the TMI category.

Anyway, that’s my sharing for the day. I find when I’m doing other productive things, sharing feels productive too.

Mr. C. opened this bag of cat kibble around breakfast time to give the outdoor cat some food. It took until noon for our indoor cat to figure out the bag was open and learn how to help himself. I’m impressed enough to document this for two reasons. One, that he can get the food out without knocking the bag over and spilling the contents. Two, that he can eat hard dry kibble with no teeth.

(Actually I think what he’s doing is astonishingly cool. I can’t wait to see what he ultimately builds. Drawing a circle is just a test for being able to cut a circle from a piece of metal.)

I will be returning to spend a good four or more hours in the Experience Room. I’ll shoot better video then, I promise. But in the meanwhile, Janice’s expression sums it up. Playing music with friends is pure joy.

Bonus points if you can name that tune.

This message is set as an autoresponse to messages matching the following criteria:

subject contains “Course quota exceeded: SCC.MSTR.ART100.COLAN_C”

Your message has been rejected by the intended recipient because its content is useless. Your message states, in full:

“LS-CS quota manager alert:\nCourse has exceeded the absolute quota limit (250000 K): SCC.MSTR.ART100.COLAN_C (disk usage 2525371 K).”

As you can see, your message alerts me to a problem without providing any indication of what I should do to fix it.

I previously replied requesting that the course file be deleted as I no longer need it. No one responded, and I continue to receive your useless message on a daily basis.

I know my course quota is exceeded. I have been told by Maricopa’s Blackboard support that the course file itself was likely corrupted during the transition to Blackboard 9. After Fall 2010 I will discontinue any further use of Blackboard since it has been nothing but a nightmare this term. If it were in my power to remove the file, I would do so.

Please just delete the offending course file and quit bugging me about it. I will not be making any further attempt to remedy this situation. Further messages will continue to be auto-rejected by the district email system, which may not have been updated in a long time, but at least it actually works.

Good day.

Yes, I really applied this filter. After waiting two weeks for a response. Crickets.

It’s fun playing with my mom. We’re both decent players and neither gives up. Sometimes she whips my butt, sometimes I whip hers. Here are samples of our games.

It’s fun because we can text back and forth even though she’s not on a phone. Now I’m playing with my mom every day. That’s pretty special when you think about it.

Click image to enlarge

If this is for real, and I don’t have reason to think it isn’t, nor any confirmation that it is, the mom of a soldier serving in Afghanistan is asking for slingshots or wrist rockets for her son’s batallion. Because they don’t want to shoot the teenagers insurgents are sending with bullets. And the U.S. government won’t provide rubber bullets. There are so many things wrong with this that I can’t even start, but somehow this message on Freecycle, where my neighbors are normally trading mattresses and moving boxes, renewed the nightmare horror of the business of war in my head.

At the same time my dark side thinks there should have been a “Slingshots for Soldiers” scene of some sort in War, Inc. Perhaps just before the Tamerlane’s prosthetics kickline.

What I forgot to say in the video: Email from the Guardian gives brief article summaries and links to the full articles on the Guardian web site. If the full article text came in my email, I’d be happy to get the email. But I have to read the articles on the web site whether I get the email or not. So why can’t I just skip the email?

Update

I guess at least one other person has looked into this. These are not the results I’m looking for:

http://twitter.com/cherylcolan/status/20325811564

http://twitter.com/robb1138/status/20326282271

http://twitter.com/cherylcolan/status/20326514198

http://twitter.com/robb1138/status/20326898286

http://twitter.com/cherylcolan/status/20327785699

And by “this” I mean, of course, the “Modify Your Subscription” statement at the bottom of every email stating that my account preferences are in my control and can be changed, which I linked to as a screenshot.

Anyway, many thanks and a follow to @robb1138 for at least replying. Still nothing from the Guardian. This isn’t going far to convert me to a paying subscriber. Why pay $30 a month when that comes with daily emails you don’t want to receive?

About a month ago my husband asked if I needed a watch repair. It was on his list of errands. So I gave him two that had stopped running for battery replacements. Off he goes on the errand running, and I forget all about it because I rarely wear a watch (I just look at my mobile phone).

Today, more errands are happening. Usually he tells me where he’s going in case I need anything from there too (see above). But today not so much, which I thought was very mysterious, but nothing to be concerned about. So I’m minding my own business when hubby bursts in and presents me with:

The Starkist 25th Anniversary 1961 – 1986 Charlie Tuna Watch

I think I got this watch by sending in a bunch of tuna labels or something. In 1987 I wore it every day on a month long tour of England, Scotland and Wales, along with my normal watch. My normal watch was set to local time wherever I was, and Charlie always told me the time at home. So I have odd associations of comfort and home attached to this otherwise silly branded item.

Evidently the watch had to be sent to Hong Kong to get a new movement put in it. I have no idea how much this cost. I hope it wasn’t much, but these days, it probably was much.

Love

Today I can’t think of anything sweeter my husband could have done than have this stupid thing fixed because, even though it’s stupid and silly, I love the thing.

Thanks, honey.

Our 1943 Christmas

The food was good but the chicken was tough
But we chewed and chewed ’til we had enough
For health and food we all were glad
But best of all we had our Dad

Some hunted, some talked, and some even walked
At doing things for us none even balked
As for the children, naught could be finer
Than to stand in the yard and see the Streamliner

At games, puzzles and cards, all of us played
And far in the night soft beds were made.
The children were tired and sleepy – not cross
And we soon showed them we knew how to boss.

So soon they were sleeping quietly away
And knew nothing more ’til early next day.
While we silly old folks sat till our games were all done
Then we too retired, long, long after one

Next morning was fine and all in a glow
The children went out for a romp in the snow
Then late in the day to their homes they went back
Leaving Grandpa and I alone in our shack

We felt very lonesome and each dropped a tear
Wanting all of our children at home with us here
We can yet hear them calling “Merry Christmas” so clear
“Merry Christmas to you and a Happy New Year.”

12-27-43
Grandma Warner (Anna Warner)