Dearest Fam,
My apologies for my lack of interaction recently with ds106. I’ve been overwhelmed with a second camp that I’ve just started at. I’m short on free time and can’t seem to manage my time between work, Medical Ethics (Phil 226), and MacGuffin.
These next few days are going to be crunch-time. I’ve made a schedule for myself to guarantee that I don’t fall behind again. It’s so hard to stay on top of things when you have so many things to stay on top of.
Until next time (soon),
KG
Oh yeah the Selleck Slide.
Creepin on Sean Penn.
Parents and Dogs,
We are in Radio week, it’s a follow up of Audio week.
First we had to accomplish two daily creates. The first daily create I worked on was to record an “ambient” noise in the location I was sitting in. I was, at the time, in my room. I was playing music, talking to Kobe the dog, and typing away. This is what it sounds like…
The second daily create was to take a picture of something hidden in the image. In moms bathroom there is a window. For the first time in a long time I pulled up the curtain and behold was a empty birds nest. This birds nest was most likely there all Spring and into the early Summer but was hidden away because of the curtain. In the image itself it is pretty clear that there is an empty birds nest. But the point it is something small but amazing was hidden and kept a secret for so long.
Hidden Object © by katherinekd101
DS106 has formed into groups to create a radio show for the DS106 radio station! We have five minute segments and must create our own radio bumper. The group I’m in decided to do interesting places in general or that we have travelled to around the world. I thought it would be fun to talk about my travels to Vietnam and China. However since there are so many things to talk about when traveling to exotic places and stories to tell, I thought I would narrow down on a particular part of the trip.
Vietnam:
Mom sent me over there for the cultural experience to teach English and Photography to elementary school children. What an experience that was. With only a five minute segment I was a bit broad about Vietnam and what it was like. I focused on a few different things, the house I stayed in, getting sick, and the experience with the school children. I mixed in different noises such as a horn honking and rain pounding.
China:
There were so many stories to tell about this place. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and so hard to determine what to talk about. The food, interaction with locals, traveling to rural areas… it was endless. I decided to talk about my visit to the Great Wall of China. It was surreal and magical. It felt like you travelled back in time and maybe even to another planet. I would give anything to go back there. I included music and noises within the story itself.
Next Week is Video Week, but as you know I will be in Lake Tahoe! Hopefully I catch up and learn all about the wonders of video. 
I edited my sounds and story telling together by using Garage Band. It’s completely straight forward and I would suggest it to anyone who is new to audio editing!
Take Care,
Lots of Love,
Katie
A few posts/couple of weeks ago I installed the oEmbed HTML5 audio plugin here. This allows me to upload mp3s and other audio files, the plugin takes care of presenting the audio using the html5 audio tag with a flash fallback for browsers that do not support the type of audio: This plugin converts URLs to audio files (MP3, OGG, WAV) into HTML5 audio with Flash-based player backup
This seemed to do the trick. This morning I noticed that none of my audio was showing in FireFox. I right clicked on the space where I expected to see the player and saw the the Flash file was not loaded.
Looking at the source it seems that it is using a swf file belonging to google:
http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf
and that is Error 400 Not found.
Using Cyberduck I had a look at the plugin’s code. Part of this check to see if the file is an MP3 and the browser FireFox. firefox does not support playing of MP3 via the audio tag so the plugin uses the google Flash file, which is of course missing.
$embed = sprintf( '<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="audioUrl=%1$s" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/3523697345-audio-player.swf" width="400" height="27" quality="best"></embed>', esc_attr($matches[0]) );
On my ‘real’ blog I usually embed audio using dewplayer so I decided to edit the plugin to use that.
I uploaded the dewplayer.swf file to the top level of my site and changed the code, I need to change the name of the var from audioUrl to mp3 and the url of the google swf to /dewplayer.swf.
If you are viewing any of my audio posts in fireFox you should hopefully be less puzzled.
Update: the plugin has been updated: WordPress › oEmbed HTML5 audio « WordPress Plugins
1.1
- Google removed their MP3 Flash player from their website, so we include it in the plugin itself now (it’s still the same player)
Before Ryan Gosling became Ryan Gosling, He was Lars.
I am running out of time before I start packing my suitcases. I am afraid I haven’t got time to record a weekly letter, so instead I will just share this week’s Daily Create assignments.
Above you can see a toy car that is not really a toy car, but my favourite USB stick.
This creepy crawly critter is what I would be terrified of if I saw it in my bunkhouse:
The Daily Create 172 - Sketch the creepiest crawly critter you can imagine
By the way – to create the web-like lines I used Scribbler 2.
Finally, the sound of summer rain after a long period of very hot weather:
The Daily Create 169 - record 30 seconds of ambient sound in your environment
And now I will say goodbye to my friends from the camp and everyone else who is reading this. I am going to a spa and I promise I will come back with a lot of photos and stories to tell.
See you in a week’s time.
As I said in my previous post, we are expected to collaborate on a group radio show project within our bunkhouses. In Slaughterhouse 4 we chose travel as our main topic and the title of our show is A Tourist’s World. I chose a story I often tell – the one about how I visited India and saw the Taj Mahal.
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by betta design
I am not sure whether I am supposed to share my part of the show on my blog or not, but since I am travelling on Sunday and will not be here next week when the show is broadcast, here’s my five minutes:
Looking forward to your feedback.
SUMMER SUMMER SUMMER TIME!!! Time for some summer fun.. RELAX, FORGET ABOUT SCHOOL AND WORK, AND HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!
cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Heart Industry
It is Week 6 in Camp Magic McGuffin and I am running out of time, since I am travelling on Sunday and will be away during Week 7. Still, I have managed to finish my main assignments. I have created a radio bumper for the show I am collaborating on with other members of Slaughterhouse 4. I have also finished my 5 minutes of the show. I wish I could have worked more on it, but there was no time.
At my bunkhouse we chose travel as our main topic and the title of the show is A Tourist’s World. That’s why I decided to play with the magic carpet metaphor. I recorded my voice in Audacity, then used sound effects to make my speech faster and my voice deeper. My idea was to sound a little like a British butler. Then I uploaded the Audacity files to Myna and continued editing the bumper. I chose the tracks from the Adventure section in Myna and I almost happy with it. At least, I like it much better than my last week’s bumper, but then that means that I am learning. Here it is:
So, fasten your seat-belts and listen to Slaughterhouse 4.
Sorry, but camp is over! Head over to ds106
The Campfires have all been put out.
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.....
