“HELP! Alan and Martha are Missing in Minecraft !!” by aforgrave, on Flickr
Our two Camp Magic Macguffin co-coordinators, Alan (@cogdog) and Martha (@mburtis), have gone missing in Minecraft. News is sketchy at this point, but it would appear that they vanished at or near the surface to a “ZoneStone Mine” at the border between our world and that of Minecraft, during a series of explosions at or about 19:20 EDT on July 30th. If you have not yet seen it, you may wish to view the news video feed embedded at the bottom of this post. (Caution: May upset some viewers.)
We are marshalling support for our colleagues at this moment. If you can provide assistance of any kind, please add your information to this form.
We are all hoping for the safe and soon return of our beloved friends.
The following news feed provides further details surrounding the disappearance of Alan and Martha. (Again, some images may be disturbing.)
We will be using the tag #106lostinminecraft in aid of the search proceedings.
12:03 PM July 31st Update: Close viewing of this artifact seems to reveal a number of “loops” in the video feed, frequently accompanied by an out-of-sync audio commentary. In the simplest explanation, it may be that our colleagues were somehow spirited away PRIOR to the apparent explosion, and their likenesses remained visible due to the re-played images. In a more chilling, yet possible explanation, Alan and Martha may have been caught within some kind of “Moebius effect,” often implicated within looping or repeating instances of time.
The Moebius Reflux Wave majestically sweeping over and returning Earth home. by Stamp
With visions of screaming drill sergeants and mean, sand-kickers going medieval all over everyone’s case, I decided the best thing to do was to play along and do my best to meet the challenge, and encourage others to do the same. Alan’s Charles Atlas comic taunt was sufficient to prompt a similar Charles Atlas response.
I was out of town during most of the intervening days, but with pretty much everything I needed in my backpack (with the exception of my USB mic, which was with me in my wheelie bag), the bits and pieces necessary to keep pace were close enough at hand. Tethering to my phone let me post from my non-internet enabled location.
I’ve already written about this one in “Tornado, Revisited,” but here again is the “drawing,” and then my subsequently animated GIF-version of the drawing process.
“Tornado” by aforgrave, on Flickr
Tornado: TDC185 (animated GIF)
Day Two: July 12th: tdc186: Make a photo of an outdoor scene free of any human artifacts.
My little holiday get-away had me hanging out on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river in Québec near Rivière-du-Loup, and walks along the beach during low tide were part of my daily practice. While collections of a variety of items, including “sea glass” and other human artifacts were of interest (a couple great stories to come over the next day or so), there were also wonderful opportunities to get images of nature, undisturbed.
“Nature’s Artifacts” by aforgrave, on Flickr
I snapped this image using my new 50mm lens, and later marvelled at the wonderful detail captured in this pic. Check it out in a larger form. On Monday, while in Ottawa (and dropping by the Rideau Centre Apple Store) I took a moment to view this image on a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. Wow. Amazing.
Day Three: July 13th: tdc187: Make a video of what is playing on channel 106 on your cable? (or make it up).
This one was a natural “make it yourself” opportunity, since there was neither Internet nor Cable (and thus no Channel 106) where I was staying during the week. Although I sorted out an idea (based on a photograph I took on the beach), plotted an outline, gathered the footage, wrote a narration, and started to translate it, there wasn’t time on Friday to complete everything (a short film, entitled “Sur la plage”), and so what I edited together (while on the bus to Montreal on Saturday), wound up being a channel-surfing excerpt entitled “Les Escaliers” — a portion (and actually, only the final paragraph of the thirteen-paragraph narration) of the concept. Good thing my time was limited. The short film would have been waaaaaaaaaaay to much for The Daily Create. As it was, this took hours.
Kudos to Spencer (@robertssw87) for the channel surf inspiration. I switched it up with a bit of a rationalization behind the meaning of the “ds” for Channel ds106 on cable. And waiting for the “static” file to download over my tethered connection while on the bus heading towards Montréal was worth it in the end.
Day Four: July 14th: tdc188: Make an annoying 30 second pre-recorded telemarketing call.
While many of my TDC items early in the week were influenced by my visit to the beach, this one wasn’t. This attempts to include some of the more annoying aspects of recorded messages which I get — most notably a continually received message that always starts in the middle of the message loop. I’ve also incorporated the content from a regular spam text/email notification that my Android phone number (don’t have one, likely never will), was randomly selected as a winner for a free MacBook Air w/2 TB drive (out of stock). I know you can’t get 2 TB notebook HDs yet, and pretty certain you can’t get 2 TB SSDs yet either.
Day Five: July 15th: tdc189: Philosophy series; Tell us about “Technology You Can’t Live Without.”
By the time the prompt for this Create had been posted, I had arrived in Montreal. My initial inclination was to choose from between the iPhone (likely contender), iPad, MacBook, or Sony NEX-5 camera, technologies I enjoy using on a daily basis. But that’s not what I wound up choosing, as Karen (@KarenJan ) was quick to notice:
I’d been spending some time working on learning to make my first cinematic animated GIFs (still working, but a post coming soon), and had been thinking a lot about my once-most-favourite movie, Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner (it lasted as the fav for almost 20 years, and is likely now my second most favourite, supplanted in the early 2000s by Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) When I first saw Blade Runner, I was living in Toronto (now the most populous city in Canada, fifth-most in North America). At the time, the incessant rain in the film, together with the ongoing images of decaying buildings, made me ponder the question, “Where would I (along with the millions of other folks in Toronto) go to get water,” if suddenly one day I turned the tap, and nothing came out? And this was before the modern commoditization of (un-sparkled) bottled water. It wasn’t too many minutes after reading the prompt that I had my “technology I can’t live without.”
Walking around the city of Montréal that day, in an incredible heat, and climbing all the way up the switchback paths to the summit of Mount Royale served to provide wonderful grist for my iPhone video camera. As it turned out, the heat the next day in Ottawa only served up additional images, and so this little Daily Create turned into a bit of a mega project. The spoken commentary at 2:00 minutes was done in one take — I edited it a bit with Audacity to remove a couple “ums” and some slightly-too-long “thinking gaps,” and then layered it back over the original video for that segment back in iMovie.
Having this TDC lens in front of my eyes for the day was a prime example of how The Daily Create can really jump start your creativity. Despite the time spent on this one, I really enjoyed putting this together. The free water handed out by the Vitamin Water folks was pure serendipity (wonderful shirt!), and the contrast provided by the vending machines at the summit of Mount Royale — and that long red hose watering the flowers, presumably pumped all the way up from the river level in the city far below — were moments of pure “found example” joy. The non-functioning “dry” fountain at the end was a great closer to punctuate the message. And the title of ‘s song from Jamendo is just another wonderful little bit to make this work.
Day Six: July 16th: tdc190: Flip the decibels. Make a loud sound soft, or a soft sound loud.
By the time this one arrived, I was back home. And a bit tired. And certainly hot. So it wasn’t much of a stretch to join up Brahms’ Lullaby (I went with an anonymous MIDI version to avoid the potential of hurting anyone’s feelings with the manglement) and the fan, duking it out for the loudest influence on the pending sleeper. Clearly, the sleeper (me) won out in the end.
Day Seven: July 17th: tdc191: Illustrate attraction in a photograph today.
The reality of the pending Seven-Day-Challenge Mashup hit this morning, and I toyed with the idea of returning to the tdc189 “Technology I Can’t Live Without” iPhone “attraction” as a means of tying the week’s work together, as a chunk of it was facilitated by the phone. I also spent some time grabbing some video from Minecraft — scenes of how the critters there are attracted to wheat (it’s fun to run in circles and have a mass of chickens chase you), and how pairs of animals will be suddenly attracted to one another (and make a little baby animal) when you feed each of them a sheaf of wheat. But then I found myself shooting pics of coins attached to the magnets in my pdo iPhone case. And as I moved around the room seeking some better light, I suddenly found the inspiration in shadows and location to create something more than just a photo of some coins stuck to my phone.
“Creative Attraction” by aforgrave, on Flickr
Still, the photo alone seemed like a bit too little effort for the seventh day of the challenge, and I was inspired with @cogdog‘s enthusiasm to generate interest in The Daily Create, and so I spent some time turning the image into a poster, and then a new ds106 Design Assignment, #611: “‘Celebrate The Daily Create’ poster”.
“Celebrate ‘The Daily Create’ poster” by aforgrave, on Flickr
If you’re not yet following The Daily Create, the assignments are posted daily at 10 AM Eastern Time. Check out The Daily Create online and follow @DS106TDC on Twitter.
Seven-Day-Challenge Wrap Up (and beyond)
Given that these items represent the individual The Daily Create elements for Alan’s Seven-Day-Challenge — the next task will be to complete a mash-up of items from the past seven days into some form of narrative, the final stage in completing the Seven Day Daily Create Challenge (and Mashup Thereof).
That, and continuing towards my self-challenged #21daychallenge. As of tdc191, I’m on the 11th consecutive TDC.
Who else is looking to extend their Seven-Day-Challenge towards a consistent daily habit? It’s fun! Unleash your creativity!
On Wednesday, @cogdog issued a seven-day-challenge for The Daily Create, and the prompt for Day One (June 11th), was TDC185: Draw a Tornado. Given that my drawing tools at hand were somewhat limited, I elected to “draw” the requisite tornado using a stylus on my iPhone, and used a photo from the day as my background and ink source. This is the original photo, taken using the Pano app on the phone.
Original PANO photograph (before Tornado)
To introduce the tornado, I used the clone tool within the iRetouch app, borrowing sections of the existing clouds for paint, trying to introduce swirls (not too successful with that), and saving my work periodically. When it was done, I posted it to Flickr and tagged it with the required tdc185 so it would be added to the assignment page along with the others.
@DoremiGirl was a bit taken aback by what I had “drawn,” …
… but I’m comfortable with the artistic license offered by these sorts of daily challenges. Although am keen to continue to develop my actual drawing skills (for real, with paper and pencils), this was the result for the day.
It wasn’t until I was offloading my photos from the last two days that I came across the successive “saves” of the process, and realized that they might collectively make a nice animated GIF. As it would turn out, Photoshop CS6 has a Timeline feature where an Animation feature stood in CS3, so it took me a few minutes to get that sorted out (good learning!). I added in some hand-made “in-between” frames, and here is the result. (Sorry if it doesn’t represent the proper stages of formation of a tornado — these actually represent the stages I took in drawing this tornado!!
Towards the end of 2009, a number of friends on Twitter proclaimed their intent to participate in a project 365 photography adventure, and I decided to rekindle my interest in photography by playing along. Supported in part by @duncan‘s TheDailyShoot, I managed to get into the daily habit of making time for photography, and sharing a photo a day to my account on Flickr. By the end of 2010, I was pleased, not only with the collection of photographs I had accumulated, but with a number of other incidental results:
a significantly improved understanding of my camera (primarily pocket-cam, a Canon Digital Elph Powershot 1000, at the time);
an improved eye for composition and techniques related to photography;
an appreciation for the work and shared community of other photographers;
a wonderful collection of images reflecting memories and experiences from throughout the year;
a serendipitous engagement with writing, as descriptions of photos sometimes turned into mini-essays, commentaries, and juxtapositions of thoughts.;
and, perhaps most importantly, an understanding that a conscious effort, applied on a daily basis, was easily capable of instilling a new daily habit, whether it be photography or any other kind of endeavour. A technique that could be transferred, to other areas, be they intentionally creative, or otherwise.
My enjoyment of the 2010/365 project led me to continue on into 2011/365. Armed now with a self-bestowed boxing-day present, a Sony NEX-5 DSLR (actually, an EVIL or MILC camera, the choice after conversations with @digitalnative and several months investigation), I continued taking photographs, using the new Sony, the older Canon, and the ever-present iPhone to capture daily events and thedailyshoot photo challenges.
However, In August 2011, things got particularly busy (numerous trips, photo outings, and other things), my laptop hard drive became filled to capacity (Aperture and even the OS ground to a slow crawl as space for page swaps became virtually(pun) non-existent), and my habit faltered. September brought the return to school (numerous variables there) and October saw the end of thedailyshoot (after 690 prompts, it folded on October 6th, 2011), and by that time, the habit was upset. Despite a couple of attempted jump-starts (drives to visit the Muse Tree, for example, and the arrival of a new 2012/366 self-challenge), the daily practice of shooting and posting a photo to flickr had been disrupted.
(Perhaps, I should also acknowledge to myself, in hindsight, that I had become engaged in the fall of 2011 with a new regular (though not daily) practice of broadcasting on #ds106radio …)
At any rate, very shortly after January 1st, 2012, @timmmmyboy tweeted out a few test posts related to something new, TheDailyCreate, which would provide a daily prompt, not always for photography, but also for audio, video, and other sorts of creative inspirations. After providing a few test posts, I saw the value in this new prompt source, and decided to try it out.
Skipping forward over February – June, we arrive at July 11th, and what do I see but a challenge from the @cogdog , somewhat uninspired by the recent summer engagement in TheDailyCreate (yes, folks are on summer holidays, relaxing, BUT you still need to nurture that daily creative habit, folks — and to that I can attest!), and so he presents a seven-day challenge. Do the daily create for the next seven days. Starting today.StartingNOW.
CogDog’s Charles Atlas remix “Seven-Day-Challenge”
Now, a couple years back, I employed a “follow 30 people for 30 days” mantra when introducing new folks to Twitter, as a way of helping folks “see, over time” how the social media service could be supportive of their work as educators. And if I recall correctly, research somewhere has indicated a “23-day” adoption period during which a daily application of a routine will result in the forming of a new habit.
So I’m going to prematurely suggest that once you meet Alan’s seven day challenge, you repeat it, twice more. I figure 21 days ought to be close enough to 23 days for you to get the gist. And at that point, why stop?
One caveat. You may find yourself pushed to complete some of TheDailyCreate challenges. I would suggest that if you struggle with one of them, go back in the Archives and complete another one from that same category and post it, with its respective tag, instead. While I’ve not employed that strategy yet, I’m going to deploy it starting today.
In response to Alan’s visual seven day challenge, I reply:
“Twenty-One Days to a Creative Habit” by aforgrave, on Flickr
Get your create on! Get it on on a daily basis. The Daily Create can get you started.
BTW, two days ago, I replaced the hard drive again in my laptop. I’m currently starting out the summer with a glorious 620 GB of free space on my drive. Yesterday, I managed 200 photos on my Sony, and when the battery ran out, I took another 108 on my iPhone. Both batteries are now recharged. And I just “created” that cartoon. Time to draw a Tornado. (There are currently seven posted. Will you ad yours today? Now?)
The ds106 Digital Storytelling course Sound Effects Story Audio Assignment 70 gave me an opportunity to devote some time developing greater familiarity with Audacity and the sound source website, FreeSound.org. While I normally would turn directly to Apple’s GarageBand for something like this, I wanted to see how layering and track editing worked in the open source sound editor.
I was pleased to be able to sort out the various tools without turning to documentation — although I didn’t sort out how to effect a pan from one channel to the other (left to right, in this instance). This will have to be a challenge for the next task. I also missed a simple way of naming the tracks to allow for their easy identification (although the waveforms do develop an identity after you’ve listened to them a few times). However, I did enjoy being able to toggle the interface for each track down to a very slim profile, as that made it easier to align two tracks that didn’t lie adjacent to one another in the stack. Cutting sections from one track was intuitive, and pasting sections into a newly created track worked just as expected.
While most were edited into the story pretty much in sequence, I did a fair amount of adjustments to the levels of each at various points using the envelope tool, and spent some time blending the Simulation of NASA (rocket) launch clip and the 20061105Furnace clip to get the rocket whine and engine launch. Each of the other three files was clipped, separated into sections, and in some instances (the fly) used multiple times to support the story.
The Andy Griffith Theme Song was sourced at: TelevisionTunes, with the intent of bracketing the story with an audio intro and outtro.
How would you like to have the support of six seven classic authors sitting at your table, collaborating with you as you compose your next great piece of writing?
My friend and colleague Doug Peterson has a new blog post waiting every morning at 5:01 am, and this morning’s post prompted me to immediately launch the web browser on my iPad to test out his latest find on the web, Google’s demo Masters Edition. Shortly thereafter, I was sitting at my computer, running a screen capture as I pounded out the opening lines to my next great epic.
Now granted, I didn’t give The Masters a lot to work with. And I would assume that in their day they needed editing for context and syntax in their writing, too — in this instance, their contributions didn’t necessarily always get the gist spot on. Perhaps I was expecting that their additions would automatically improve the quality of the writing piece, and rather, need to see them more as collaborators, merely contributing suggestions. It must be up to us as the writer to make the final call.
Here is my tentative text, augmented with colour to highlight each author’s initial contribution. You will note that a couple of extra lines were added by Poe and Shakespeare after the video capture was stopped. Clearly, those two weren’t paying attention at the time.
It was a gloomy and stormy night. Snoopy comfortably esconced huddled over his typewriter. That dratted Black Baron was up to no good again.
Suddenly, Woodstock as well as his tiny little yellow friends appeared, flittering around the dog house, attempting to cheer Snoopy up.
Under the canopy of darkness, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage, the triplane of the nemesis of all good. “What shall I do presently?” imagined Snoopy, as he lowered his goggles and wrapped his scarf tightly around his neck. “This wilt be the undoing of me and my tiny little feathered friends!”
As the shining eye of heaven rose, and Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel rose into the sky and headed into battle, the birds began to issue forth their morning war cry, and the day was good. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. … Let not sloth dim your horrors new-begot.
Tally and My Assessment of the Contributions
I’ve indicated below my take on the contributions (how many of their suggestions “might work” out of the total number of suggestions offered).
• Nietzsche 0/0 no contributions • Shakespeare 1/4 I kind of like “shining eye of heaven” in place of “sun” • Dostoyevsky 0/0 no contributions • Dickinson 0/0 no contributions • Dickens 0/1 totally out of context, man! • Poe 2/7 points for effort, Edgar! Not sure about that cat comment though.
While I don’t know that I would select any of Poe’s suggestions specifically, at least, “gloomy,” “as well as,” “presently,” and “imagined” kind of fit into the flow. So half a point each. But changing the Red Baron to the Black Baron is right out.
I would be remiss if I didn’t give Shultz a nod: • Shultz Great characters, that dog house setting is a little sparse.
So. This initial attempt results in a question. Would a longer engagement with the Google Docs: Masters Edition result in improved product? (Maybe a bit more engagement on my part might help?) Perhaps the act of contemplating the suggestions of others is the intent — whether their suggestions themselves are incorporated, or rather simply serve as springboards, and create pause for reflection. Would I press on with more formal narrative writing, looking to see improvement from this tool? Or is it more of an amusement?
Perhaps you can give it a whirl and offer your own thoughts?
By the way, while a search on Google resulted in multiple instances of Shultz’s image of Snoopy typing “It was a dark and stormy night,” these two images both came from a post titled “11 Great Writing Tips and Overcoming Writers’ Block.” FWIW.
If you are interested in seeing the real time authoring, I’ll be posting it to the Youtube.
This is a preliminary post which will be added to over time. Members of the ds106 digital storytelling group The Monkey House may be interested in some of these resources and hints for use with MineCraft.
1) Monkey Skins are available for your MineCraft dude (while you are waiting to customize your own).
You can either download the .png skin file for use further editing, or you can upload it directly to your Minecraft profile so that you immediately look like a proper chimp.
2) Monkey House Texture Pack: Following on a question from @BenjaminHarwood, I investigated the Texture Pack feature, and created the beginnings of a Monkey House theme that substitutes a banana for the apple, and introduces some simple monkey artwork. To achieve this end,
a) download the Monkey House Texture Pack: MC_mONkEyhouse_v1.zip to a spot you can locate on your computer. The texture back is in a ZIP file format. Do NOT unzip it.
b) Run Minecraft. If you already have Minecraft running, make sure you save and quit the world: you need to be in the main menu to continue.
c) Click Texture Packs button.
d) Click Open Texture Pack Folder button; this will open the folder where minecraft stores all texture packs. If nothing happens, you need to find the folder manually. Depending on your operating system it is:
Windows XP/Vista/7: %AppData%\.minecraft\texturepacks
Linux: ~/.minecraft/texturepacks (This folder may be hidden in the Home Folder)
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/texturepacks (This folder may be hidden)
e) Do not close Minecraft. Place the texture pack (ZIP file) in the opened texture packs folder, do not unzip.
f) In a few seconds the texture pack will appear in Minecraft. Select it and click Done. The texture pack is now applied, you may load your world and see the difference.
You should now see the world through a Monkey’s eyes.
This texture pack will likely evolve over time. I need to address the object naming, create a golden banana, and turn the regular cake into Banana Cake. Other suggestions?
Here is a shot of some of our members of The Monkey House posing in front of one of the monkey pictures, with the pile of “apples” replaced (from my perspective) with bananas.
Members of The Monkey House with bananas and monkey art
3) Building Branches in The Monkey House tree.
While a short video tutorial has been requested (might be a nice little project), the basic process that I’ve used to build branches involves using the following bits.
1) the basic wood block for our tree
2) the dirt block
3) the fourth sapling
4) bone meal
5) the dark green leaves
6) the vines.
By placing a sapling on a dirt block and applying bone meal, a tree can instantly be grown on a branch. (remove the dirt block after and replace it with wood). Then add additional leaves and vines to arrive at your aesthetically pleasing result.
NOTE: For when creepers, zombies, skeletons, and spiders come wandering around, having the bow and arrow handy lets you get rid of the monsters without any explosions or collateral damage to The Monkey Hut.
Here’s an external shot of The Monkey House tree with the original large big branch. The plan will be to add additional large big branches such that each monkey can build a tree house of their own in the upper reaches of the foliage.
"The Monkey House tree" by aforgrave, on Flickr
4) Select and Name Your Temporary Bunk: We have prepared a good number of bunks in the main level of The Monkey House tree. Select an unoccupied bunk, and then update your sign (break, then replace) with your name, your twitter name, and the type of monkey you would like to be.
"One Funky Monkey Bunk(s)" by aforgrave, on Flickr
5) Members of The Monkey House can use our #tag when posting to Twitter:
We are #mONkEyhouse106.
So! Campers have started to explore the MineCraft incarnation of Camp Magic MacGuffin in droves! Last Friday evening, a good number of folks showed up simultaneously within the virtual space, and by Tuesday evening, the area surrounding the Camp Centre had been transformed with a whole slew of new construction. With a multiples of folks now working here and there, the opportunities for group photos start to occur. Of course, why settle for a static pose when you can go for the ubiquitous simultaneous-on-the-count-of-three-everybody-jump shot. Three images (one repeated, then looped) to produce a little animation.
Giulia, Shannon, and Ben on the Beach at Camp Magic MacGuffin on Tuesday evening
Of course this becomes more difficult with an increased number of people.
Not only was the co-ordination of the jumping a bit less synchronized with five, but the rapid capture of screenshots using the native MineCraft screen capture (F2 key on PC, FN+F2 on Mac) introduced a whole slew of filenames superimposed on the successive images, which I had to edit out. But the result was worth it.
INSERT 5-PERSON ANIMATED GIF HERE (revised image to come … )
After getting switched to Creative Mode (to avoid the MineCraft Monsters), folks have been getting the basics of manoeuvring and flying down. @timmmmyboy, @mburtis, and @leelzebub have been particularly helpful and responsive in getting new arrivals out of danger (Survival Mode) and flying around.
After getting oriented, most folks are getting together with their bunkmates and working to build their bunk houses. The Camp Centre has taken a few hits as Creepers continue to roam and blow stuff up, but everyone seems to be pitching in to make repairs.
After seeing that Bunkhouse Five (The DigiOuijas) was casting a nasty shadow on the centre camp at high noon (causing the night-creatures to come out at mid-day), @timmmmyboy graciously removed and relocated Bunkhouse Five and introduced a shadow-free transparent floor at the same time! Tuesday evening he spent a good chunk of time working to get his piston-elevator system working. I had a chance to test it out — and while we both encountered a bug or two …
You Moved Too Quickly (Hacking?)" by aforgrave, on Flickr
… it did manage to transport my MineCraft self up to the top of the world.
"Top of the World" by aforgrave, on Flickr
@BenjaminHarwood and @GiuliaForsythe chose a location for Bunkhouse Two (The Wäscälly Wäbbits) and did some serious digging in, both in terms of into-the-cliff-burrowing, and front-entrance garden planting. They also spent time working on a Pirates of the Caribbean boat attraction, and I had an opportunity to experiment with MineCraft TNT at their site while trying to create an exit for the trapped boats. Check out the proud Wabbits in front of their collaborative digs.
"Two Wäscälly Wäbbits" by aforgrave, on Flickr"
@shauser and I returned to the site of the new BIG HUGE GIANT tree for Bunkhouse One (The Monkey House), and spent some time working to make it bigger and more tree-like. – It’s getting there. But we also had some fun when we managed tofall out of the world while visiting Ben and Giulia.
aforgave fell out of the world
<aforgrave> did you cover up that hole?
<shauser> yup, planted that sapling where you fell through
<aforgrave> how deep is the dirt?
<shauser> like three deep? should it go deeper?
<aforgrave> tree?
<shauser> i don’t know, i had a sapling on hand so i planted it
<shauser> in memory of you!
<shauser> but you didn’t really die
aforgave fell out of the world
shauser fell out of the world
<aforgrave> yes — unless we want to make it really thin and let others follow!
<shauser> haha yes lets fix
In fact, the experience was so enjoyable, we enjoyed it a couple more times:
aforgave fell out of the world
shauser fell out of the world
aforgave fell out of the world
shauser fell out of the world
We then repaired the original hole at the Wabbits site, but not wanting to say goodbye to the fun, we built an amusement ride for all to enjoy at the Camp Magic MacGuffin beach — The Fell Out the World Fun Ride. Enjoy, everyone!
"'Fall Out the World'Fun Ride" by aforgrave, on Flickr
Shannon and Tim and I also took a little excursion to try to find some of the sights I encountered during my Lost in the MineCraft Wilderness Expedition, and some more work was completed on The Monkey House tree house, but those details will remain for a later post …
Skincraft: A MineCraft Skin Editor
See? I made a Gumby skin for my MineCraft dude
Why settle for some off-the-shelf Steve skin, when you can Create Some Art and make your own with this handy skin editor?
The editor gives you a tiny little .png file. This is what I uploaded to my profile at minecraft.net to skin my dude as Gumby …
Who would you like to be in MineCraft? What key features do you need to capture to make your character’s skin instantly recognizable and unique?
Use the embedded editor below. Just click Play. Make some MineCraft Skincraft art!
The Bunkhouse One group for Camp Magic MacGuffin is looking to establish an identity through a name and group logo.
Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of short stories by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in 1968. Maybe we could be The Monkey House?
"The Monkey House DRAFT 1" by aforgrave, on Flickr
The DRAFT 1 logo is designed to fit a traditional square avatar/icon footprint. I’d like to make some adjustments to the spacing around the edges — the ears are too close to the boundary for my liking.
"The Monkey House DRAFT 2" by aforgrave, on Flickr
Draft 2 is nice in that it includes all three of the retro icons together. Another option would be to have three variations on Draft 1, with each of the typewriter, microphone, and camera substituted in the centre.
The oh-so-cool retro icons are by Mike Demetriou — they really seem to capture the visual, auditory, and text modes of storytelling as exemplified by ds106 The Daily Create in an old-school Vonnegut kind of way.
I replicated the monkey from an old clip art image using vector objects in Fireworks. In these drafts, the three monkeys are identical. In a later draft, I’d individualize them — possibly adding hands to wind up with the See-No, Hear-No, and Speak-No monkeys.
So, does Bunkhouse One like the homage and idea (and catchy title!) of being Monkeys?
Update: 1:33 PM June 1st At this point, there are 26 suggested names for Bunkhouse One. Eight of them feature Monkeys!
The Monkey House
the mONkEy House (reference to Bunkhouse One)
Monkeys with Typewriters
Monkeys with Sticks and Birchbark (older school, rustic camp setting for writing)
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
Explore your Inner Creativity: The Daily Create
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012Towards the end of 2009, a number of friends on Twitter proclaimed their intent to participate in a project 365 photography adventure, and I decided to rekindle my interest in photography by playing along. Supported in part by @duncan‘s TheDailyShoot, I managed to get into the daily habit of making time for photography, and sharing a photo a day to my account on Flickr. By the end of 2010, I was pleased, not only with the collection of photographs I had accumulated, but with a number of other incidental results:
My enjoyment of the 2010/365 project led me to continue on into 2011/365. Armed now with a self-bestowed boxing-day present, a Sony NEX-5 DSLR (actually, an EVIL or MILC camera, the choice after conversations with @digitalnative and several months investigation), I continued taking photographs, using the new Sony, the older Canon, and the ever-present iPhone to capture daily events and thedailyshoot photo challenges.
However, In August 2011, things got particularly busy (numerous trips, photo outings, and other things), my laptop hard drive became filled to capacity (Aperture and even the OS ground to a slow crawl as space for page swaps became virtually(pun) non-existent), and my habit faltered. September brought the return to school (numerous variables there) and October saw the end of thedailyshoot (after 690 prompts, it folded on October 6th, 2011), and by that time, the habit was upset. Despite a couple of attempted jump-starts (drives to visit the Muse Tree, for example, and the arrival of a new 2012/366 self-challenge), the daily practice of shooting and posting a photo to flickr had been disrupted.
(Perhaps, I should also acknowledge to myself, in hindsight, that I had become engaged in the fall of 2011 with a new regular (though not daily) practice of broadcasting on #ds106radio …)
At any rate, very shortly after January 1st, 2012, @timmmmyboy tweeted out a few test posts related to something new, TheDailyCreate, which would provide a daily prompt, not always for photography, but also for audio, video, and other sorts of creative inspirations. After providing a few test posts, I saw the value in this new prompt source, and decided to try it out.
Skipping forward over February – June, we arrive at July 11th, and what do I see but a challenge from the @cogdog , somewhat uninspired by the recent summer engagement in TheDailyCreate (yes, folks are on summer holidays, relaxing, BUT you still need to nurture that daily creative habit, folks — and to that I can attest!), and so he presents a seven-day challenge. Do the daily create for the next seven days. Starting today. Starting NOW.
CogDog’s Charles Atlas remix “Seven-Day-Challenge”
Now, a couple years back, I employed a “follow 30 people for 30 days” mantra when introducing new folks to Twitter, as a way of helping folks “see, over time” how the social media service could be supportive of their work as educators. And if I recall correctly, research somewhere has indicated a “23-day” adoption period during which a daily application of a routine will result in the forming of a new habit.
So I’m going to prematurely suggest that once you meet Alan’s seven day challenge, you repeat it, twice more. I figure 21 days ought to be close enough to 23 days for you to get the gist. And at that point, why stop?
One caveat. You may find yourself pushed to complete some of TheDailyCreate challenges. I would suggest that if you struggle with one of them, go back in the Archives and complete another one from that same category and post it, with its respective tag, instead. While I’ve not employed that strategy yet, I’m going to deploy it starting today.
In response to Alan’s visual seven day challenge, I reply:
“Twenty-One Days to a Creative Habit” by aforgrave, on Flickr
Get your create on! Get it on on a daily basis. The Daily Create can get you started.
BTW, two days ago, I replaced the hard drive again in my laptop. I’m currently starting out the summer with a glorious 620 GB of free space on my drive. Yesterday, I managed 200 photos on my Sony, and when the battery ran out, I took another 108 on my iPhone. Both batteries are now recharged. And I just “created” that cartoon. Time to draw a Tornado. (There are currently seven posted. Will you ad yours today? Now?)
Posted in @digitalnative, @duncan, alan levine, bunk1, Camp Magic MacGuffin, CampMagicMacGuffin, cogdog, Colin Harris, commentary, creativity, dailyshoot, ds106, duncan davidson, flickr, imaginages, Learning, magicmacguffin, mixed-up media, openonline, Project 365, Seven-Day-Challenge, something made, The Daily Create, TheDailyCreate, thoughts, Twenty-One-Day-Challenge, twitter | Comments Off on Explore your Inner Creativity: The Daily Create