Enzo as Matrix as Megabyte as The Prisoner as Number One

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Megabyte-RESIGNS_1_FlyIN Megabyte-RESIGNS_2_March
Megabyte-RESIGNS_3_Door Megabyte-RESIGNS_4_TeaCup_320_32
MegaByte_Xed_4_320 You-Won't-Hold-Me
Guilty Matrix-and-Rover2

Ah, the Multi-Frame GIF Story assignment, Animated GIF Assignment 880. Gotta love it. 

If you’ve never encountered Reboot (the first full-length, completely computer-animated TV series) then you’ll need a bit of background to fully appreciate this post and the Reboot Season 3 episode, “Number 7″, which references The Prisoner.  Reboot was ground-breaking back in the mid 90s as personal computers, modems, and the Internet started to take off. You likely know the early animation work of show creators Ian Pearson and Gavin Blair from the 1986 MTV Video-of-the-Year by Dire Straits, Money for Nothing.

I enjoyed the show during its first run on the Canadian cable channel YTV (Reboot was animated in Vancouver by Pearson and Blair’s Mainframe Entertainment), appreciating not only the wonderful plays-on-words related to computer tech, but also the myriad pop culture references embedded within. The Prisoner was one such reference, joined over the 7 -year run by others such as Mad Max, Star Trek, Elmer Fudd, James Bond, Ash and The Evil Dead, Austin Powers, Mortal Kombat, Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name, and The Matrix to name just a few. The opening credits to “Firewall” and the Season 3 recap performed to the Gilbert & Sullivan  “A Modern Major General,” are classic examples of the brilliance of the show (both are embedded below for your enjoyment). The day my then-young sons immediately got the Pokemon and Dragon-Ball Z references in the episode “My Two Bobs,” all was right with the world.

Anyway, here is my attempt at a one paragraph summary to set you up for the third season episode, “Number 7,” in case you choose to watch it. If you don’t watch it, you can just appreciate the references to The Prisoner in the embedded GIFs.

In all previous episodes, Enzo Matrix is a young sprite who lives within MainFrame, helping/hindering the system’s Guardian, Bob, in protecting the city from the dangers of Game Cubes and viruses such as Megabyte and Hexadecimal. Following a game loss in the previous episode, young Enzo, his dog Friskit, and his friend AndrAIa are caught in the User’s game and are uploaded from their home system. Between the last episode and this one, time has passed, and young Enzo has grown from boy to man (now going by his last name, Matrix) as they travel from computer to computer trying to find their way home. The episode “Number 7″ explores Enzo’s understanding of his own identity and place in the grand scheme. (Note: There’s a whole “golf” thread which ties back to the usual “game” aspect of each episode. It provides for a few jokes, and the “out” at the end.)

If you choose to watch the Reboot episode Number 7, it is embedded in the prisoner106.us Archive for Week Six. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on what “Number 7″ says about our understanding of Number Six and the overall show. But I think it offers a good commentary that complements the final two episodes of The Prisoner, “16: Once Upon a Time,” and “17: Fall Out.”

If you want to know more about Reboot, you may wish to do a little background reading about the series on either the Reboot Wikipedia entry, or for deeper detail, on the show’s own wiki — and episodes are certainly available on Youtube should you wish to watch more! However, in closing, I highly recommend the two clips embedded below.

#BeSeeingYou

"Be Seeing You (Bob)," animated GIF by @aforgrave

“Be Seeing You (Bob),” animated GIF by @aforgrave

"Be Seeing You (Dot)," animated GIF by @aforgrave

“Be Seeing You (Dot),” animated GIF by @aforgrave

"Be Seeing You (Enzo)," animated GIF by @aforgrave

“Be Seeing You (Enzo),” animated GIF by @aforgrave

Dead-on Bond Parody – Opening Credits for “Firewall”

Brilliant Season 3 Recap to Gilbert & Sullivan’s “A Modern Major-General”

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Design Assignment #2: Carmel Chameleon and Baboon

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When I first heard the Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon,”  I thought the song title was “Carmel Chameleon. “ Because it contained my first name, I instantly liked the song. Later, when I realized the actual title, I still appreciated the song because I think chameleons are cool animals. So, when I saw the snaps I took of a chameleon in Zimbabwe (while doing a photo safari among my travel photos for the first design assignment), I knew I had to use that photo for my second design assignment submission: Paste Someone’s Head On An Animal Or Vice-Versa.

In November 2011, I was on a group tour in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and during a break, one of tourists in the group found a tiny, green chameleon. The chameleon was friendly enough to crawl up this person’s arm, so a few of us took photos of it. My favorite, albeit somewhat blurry, photo is the one of the chameleon getting up close and personal with the camera lens. When I rediscovered this photo, a chameleon “selfie” came to mind. I was also reminded  of the Culture Club song, so I decided to paste my own photo to create Carmel Chameleon.  I viewed the Compositing-How to Put Your Face on an Animal   to understand the steps involved. The one takeaway I had was that one had to work with high resolution image. Unfortunately, the chameleon photo was not, so I had to find a photo of me that was about the same resolution quality. I decided on one of me and a camel taken in Moroccan desert.  I had difficulty achieving the steps mentioned in the tutorial (e.g. creating a mask), so in the end, I used the Eraser tool as well as the Free Transform to paste my head onto the chameleon.

Carmeleon

Carmeleon

Below are the original photos I used: Click to view slideshow.

After this, I was inspired to create another composite. In keeping with this blog post title, I used another of my photos to create a composite with a chacma baboon. Both photos were taken in South Africa’s Cape Peninsula in November 2011. The photo of my face is from a photo of me behind the Cape Point sign. Instead of using my full face, I only pasted my sunglasses and lips onto the baboon.  I wanted to create a happy demeanor in this baboon.  I used the same Photoshop tools as in the photo above: Lasso, Free Transform, and Earser tools. With Free Transform, I also flipped the photo orientation to match the direction the baboon’s head was directed. What do you think of this Carmel chameleon?

What are you all doing in the back of the van?

What are you all doing in the back of the van?

Below are the original photos I used:Click to view slideshow.

Keep reading if you want to know the story behind the additional baboon photos: I was with a group of tourists on a day tour through Cape Peninsula, South Africa in November 2011. On our way to Table Mountain National Park, we spotted a family of chacma baboons on the side of the road. There were other tour vans nearby that had stopped and a few intrepid tourists had left the confines of the vehicles to go near the baboons. Our tour leader, a sweet older lady with years of tour guide experience, told us it was fine for us to do the same. She pulled the van off the side of the road and we all disembarked, cameras in hand. All of a sudden, a few of the baboons broke off from the group and started approaching the tourists. Our tour leader urgently told us to return back to the van and we complied. I was the last one in and unbeknownst to me, was followed inside the van by a male baboon. As everyone, scrambled towards the back of the van away from the baboon, I snapped few photos (no flash!) as I inched slowly backwards. Meanwhile, Mr. Baboon ignored us and went to sit in the front seat (where I was sitting) and looked over at our tour leader (who had gotten in the driver’s seat, ready for us to leave after we were all in the van). fortunately, Mr. Baboon chose to ignore her too, and she was able to leave the van without any incident. As Mr. Baboon was looking around the front part of the van, the rest of us who were huddled in the back managed to exit without any incident through the still open side door. After we had exited, a tour guide from another van came with a fire extinguisher and used it to shoo Mr. Baboon off the van. He exited eventually and we all climbed back into the vehicle. I then noticed that my red backpack, which was set on the floor in the front passenger seat, had been opened and a Ziploc bag of granola bars was sitting, unopened, in the center console. So ended Mr. Baboon’s food foraging attempts.

Roadside baboon warning

Roadside baboon warning

 I will tie this design assignment with the earlier Design Safari assignment. All over Table Mountain National Park were signs warning  tourists about the baboons. However,  the sign that urged  tourists to keep their vehicle doors locked and windows closed(above photo) was situated on the side of the road with rather ineffective typography: the text-heavy signage and smaller print of the action items make the sign difficult to heed when one is driving by it up a curvy road.

Baboon warning sign at the base of the Cape Point Lighthouse (South Africa, Nov. 2011)

Baboon warning sign at the base of the Cape Point Lighthouse (South Africa, Nov. 2011)

Within the park itself are rather simple signs just stating that baboons like to eat. Not really much of a deterence. If the baboon incident had not happened before we got to the Cape Point Lighthouse, I would not have noticed these signs.

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Can We live Outside Google?

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It is only those who do nothing who makes no mistake.

? Pyotr Kropotkin, Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings

This daily create started out with the memory of the common Anarchy graffiti, with the A is a circle.


Anarchy by Jonas B

I presume that I must have had the definition in the back of my mind.

I thought I’d plant a giant A over the Wikipedia screenshot.
On my iPad I took a screenshot and opened in in brushes. At that point I though it might be nicer to use a relevant quotation and of course though of:

If I can’t dance it is not my revolution.

I decoded to do it as a gif and started writing exporting to my photo library as I went.

When I got to ‘dance’ I changed it to gif.
I imported these images into 5seconds, which I find the best ios gif app and made a gif.
Unfortunately the speed slider did not work this time (too many frames?) to I needed to export to Dropbox and open on a mac in fireworks.
Once in fireworks I set the frame rate and did a very quick edit on the colour of gif.

if-i-cant-gif

I decided not to post the image to flickr as I really do not like putting gifs there. Given this was throwaway I just posted it to Google+
I’ve been really enjoying the ease of using google plus for ds106 as well as being dissatisfied with it’s locked in nature. I had even been musing about blogging about it and thinking about possible systems that could replace it. Given the amount of conversation in g+ in this round of ds106 compared to blog comments it is pretty obvious that a lot of folk love it.

And my gif got comments, and I got called out:

g+comments

Quite rightly so. Hopefully the short notes above are enough to cover the daily create. Google plus is another matter.

 Google Plus’ minuses

When I first joined g+ I did not like the experience. To much, to confusing. It was only when I started using it for community activity, first with etmooc, then Mozilla webmakers and now the headless round of ds106 I begin to see how it could be used. The way it can pul different sources together quickly and easily and the simplicity of adding comments makes it an addictive experience.
The first flaw appeared quite quickly, in etmooc I was happily clicking plus one to keep a track of posts I was interested in. In a browser to eg a link to the post you need to pop a menu, choose link to post and then copy the link that shows up. You then need to click ‘done’. Not quick. There is no feed or api for getting information out of G+.
Earlier in the round of ds106 I complained about this, I tried to avoid commenting in google for a week and following the blog flow, but after a while I found that it was the easiest place to follow the action. I still don’t like the fact comments on my posts don’t stick with the post, I am afraid I like comments, conversations and ideas from others. So I end up in g plus, living for the moment, losing my history.

I think one of the reasons that g plus has worked so well for the headless ds106 is that we have a pretty small class size. I do not think it would work so well if more people were posting, but I could be wrong.

The differences between g+ and twitter include a couple of things that are relevant here, the #ds106 tweets are lost in my timeline, I follow too many folk to see much of what passes. I could just run a search or keep one alive in tweet deck but I don’t use tweet deck any more. The other difference is that twitter, despite killing the RSS feeds does have an api, this means something could be built on top of it or it could have been built in.

I really hate the way g+ is designed to keep you locked in, to have such useful facility and not have any easy way to share on another system might be good business for google but it grates against my idea of a fee, open and loosely joined web. Unfortunately for me the people involved in ds106, their activities and generosity keep pulling me back.

What would be great would be something that functioned like g+ but was open and sharable with RSS/APIs etc. If it both posted comments to and displayed comments from the original sources. Of course this would be a can of worms. Some blogs have comment feeds that would work out ok. Then there is youtube, where my comments now seem to be linked to google plus, more problematic, flickr and twitter would need different methods.

A start along these lines might be something like my DS106 Activity Dashboard (very much the beginning of an idea)

After all this thinking I need a couple of quick triple trolls to clear my head:

alan-kropotkin

Young_Kropotkin

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You’ve Come A Long Way, GIFby

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Watch your step on the sidewalk of yesteryear’s Information Highway

I’m 99.9% convinced that the first time I saw and recognized and animated gif for what it was, it was something very much like one of these:

01_07_T JKHAMMER HEVEQUIP
shake_e0_150 Animated GIF assignments, on ds106.us UNDRBIG_

 

Maybe you have similar memories?  (Hopefully they are not PTSD-induced flashbacks!)  Clearly the image of website construction was influenced by the metaphor of building the Information Highway at the time.

2012 celebrated the 25th anniversary of the GIF, and provided many wonderful examples of how the venerable image format has matured into a platform for art, and as a source of ds106 Assignments. I was so pleased when Alan Levine selected the “man digging quickly” GIF to represent the new Animated GIF category in the Assignment Bank. Alan’s GIF icon fits right in above (second row, centre) doesn’t it?

After posting my Daily Create 386: Blue Screen of Death animated GIF  yesterday (“Windoes has detect s aystem fluat”), I realized that I needed to tweak my blog theme theme (the standard-vanilla base Gantry theme, used with the versatile Gantry Framework plug-in) to allow for a full-page width image — a custom page layout that does not have sidebar. Normally, I can easily do this within this theme (I use it on a number of sites), but for some reason, the current installation on de•tri•tus is being problematic, and I’m going to need to go into Maintenance Mode and likely re-install a few things to sort it out. (I will likely switch to the WP-Maintenance Mode plugin at the same time.)

It was at this point that I then got distracted into thinking about a custom “Under Construction” animated GIF for de•tri•tis.

Let’s Bring the “Under Construction GIF” forward into this Century!

A search on FlickrStorm led me to a nice CC-licensed image from 2006 by Brandon Daniel (bdu on Flickr) , which I then re-worked into an animated GIF. I then personalized the GIF with my blog name and a nice subtle message about the site being in a maintenance situation, and wound up with this.

“System Maintenance Animated GIF (de•tri•tus 2013)” by aforgrave, on Flickr

This sounds like an ideal opportunity for a ds106 Assignment, yes?

I checked the existing assignment bank, and found 2 existing yet different enough animated-GIF assignments:

 

Neither one of these exactly captures the drive for a new, sophisticated “under construction” GIF  for use on your own, personal web page or blog.

So, let’s make one!!

The Challenge

To honour this little progression of the animated GIF, and to provide all new and existing ds106 bloggers with a challenge, I’m suggesting a new Animated GIF Assignment 911: “Sophisticate Your Own, Personal ‘Under Construction’ GIF”.  We all have blogs. We’re all working with GIFs. Make yourself your own, personal animated GIF to use when you are messing around with the gears, or the  innards, or the unicorns, or with whatever keeps your site humming behind the scenes. And give yourself an extra bonus point if you find and use someone else’s CC-licenced image. You need to do the attribution and all that good stuff to claim the point.  Model appropriate blog maintenance, great design aesthetics, and a conscientious web-citizenship sharing ethic all at once.

Got it? Are you up for it? Are you ready? Go!  Be sure to share your result. We aren’t likely to actually see it in use — ’cause we keep our blogs up and running most of the time, right?  – so make sure to show it to us now!

But wait! 

A Little Reflection

As I went to Google “under construction animated GIFs” on the web to use up at the top, I found the result page to be strangely quiet. (Try it!)  Google Images turned up a page of construction images, but they were oddly static. So static, in fact, that I suspect the obnoxiousity of these have resulted in them being systematically purged from Google’s results in an attempt to avoid their resurgence. Not an entirely bad thing. Conspiracy theory aside (or maybe just judicious for-the-better-of-society editing), in the end I had to seek out that media-format of the 90s, the optical disk.

For the first time in years (as I think about it), I visited the shelf in my office cupboard where all of my CD/DVD-based software has been stored. That I didn’t stir up a layer of dust was surprising. I never used it any more. The Internet and things like iTunes and the App Store have changed how we get at our media. Heck, a lot of the apps we use are even web-based now.

However, I found the “Web Graphics” disk from a multi-disk set I purchased long ago (I think it has a quarter of a million graphics and photos distributed over maybe 13 optical disks) and on it was a directory with Animated GIFS. In there, I found a directory labeled “Construction,” and from there, I selected the representative samples shown above.

Knowing that I may likely never revisit this disk (though I think I may just copy the contents to my HD for future use), here is the list of categories provided on this disk, for posterity, and as a little snapshot of what was available in 1997.

Memory Lane: Animated GIF Collections on a 1997 optical disk
3D Balls
Alphabet
Anatomy
Arrows
Backflip
Bouncers
Bullets
Buttons
Computer
Construction		 Creatures
Dividers
Elements
Entertainmant
Flags
Flamers
Holidays
Home
LInks
Machines		 Mail
Miscellaneous
Money
Music
Notices
People
Plain 3D
Planets
Science Fiction
Shapes		 Signs
Sports
Statics
Technology
Time
Transportation
Wood Door

 

When I think about how we are using GIFs now, for telling and augmenting stories, there is no doubt that the GIF has come a long way, baby. And as a technology, it is far from dead.  It’s just gotten a lot more sophisticated.

So let’s (carefully) bring back the “under construction GIF.” Sound like fun?

Now go make your GIF!

“Optical Disks Montage” by aforgrave, on Flickr.

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Since Inception, DS106 Radio Is TOPS! #2years #4life

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“Since Inception” by aforgrave, on Flickr

Are you listening? Well, ARE you listening?  You better be!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DS106RADIO !!!! YOU ROCK !!!

#ds106radio is celebrating its second birthday this weekend. Of course you’ve listened to the open, online, free-form internet radio offshoot of the University of Mary Washington’s Digital Storytelling course, DS106, RIGHT??

I’m sure that DS106Radio’s stickiness comes directly off of Grant Potter’s duct tape. The ds106 community embraces, encourages, supports, and requires the striving for creativity and expression.

Happy Birthday, ds106radio!

The image is captured from Christopher Nolan’s 2010 mind-bending film, Inception, from the scene were Cobb confesses as to how he tricked Mal into understanding that they were, indeed, in Limbo, and needed to return to the “real” world. I’ve made several GIFs of the top from the film. As I was finishing this one, the pun came to mind.

At which point GIF became considerably more involved.

Originally down to 15 frames, with an interval of 0.1 seconds per, the rotation rate of the top seemed and looked right. Longer intervals would have made it move slowly, clunky, and defeated the illusion of the endlessly spinning top. So to get enough frames for the text (rather than just an on/off static text at the end, I wound up using the copy all frames – paste after last – reverse selected frames technique to lengthen the loop. That extended it to ~30 frames. Then, as I started adding new layers for the text and checking the timing, I found that things needed considerably more time so as to not look too rushed. And I decided to split the top line into two pieces. And then have ds106radio stick around to resonate with the #4life once all the other text was gone. In the end, there were 90 frames in the final GIF.  They were still based on those original 15 layers/frames, with 5 additional layers added for the text. And then hand toggled on or off (with gradual adjustments to text transparency) to get the end result.

Originally the text was even closer to the dark colour palette (mostly grey), but it was just a bit too subtle. I settled on web-safe #333333 — it might still be a bit subtle, but I’m good with it.   I’m going to stick this one into Animated GIF Assignments 869: GIF the ds106.

It’s been especially fun listening to ds106radio the last few days, as folks drop in and play tunes and celebrate. Although I think the current playlist is on a second repeat since I started listening earlier today. Might need to do something about that.

Is it your time to give Otto a break??

Thanks, DS106radio, for your role in supporting this artistic community.  And now, go make us all some art, dagnabbit!

 

 

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Wishing You the Best for 2013 !!

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3_TheBigFireworkShow_640at256

Wishing you the very best for the coming year!!

This animated GIF is made from a series of screen captures from MineCraft, where the sign for 2013 was built during the last two hours of 2012. Rather than using Lego this year (I’ve kept my previous builds for 2010, 2011, 2012 — I’m running out of blocks) this sign was built from hand-crafted sandstone blocks, and decorated with torches and hewn nether rack. Unlike the 3 previous years, where the signs where smaller than me, in this instance (relatively speaking) the sign is several times my height in the Minecraft world. Ladders, climbing, jumping, falling, … and eventually, flying were involved.

Many thanks to EDU Gamer MineCrafters extraordinaire @liamodonnell, @melaniemcbride and @jasonnolan for the wonderful New Years’ fireworks that added so much to the lighting of the 2013 sign. You EDU Gamers truly rock!

A number of different images of the in-world fireworks from various screen captures were composited onto the existing ones so that the final image (with added message) could reflect the true excitement of the transition to the New Year.

A video version of the animated GIF is posted on Flickr. It’s not as sharp as the GIF, despite being a much larger file.

And so, again, my very best wishes for 2013. Be creative, innovative, positive, strong, purposeful, focused, playful, humourous, happy, collaborative, energetic, insightful, wonderful, sharing and caring … and any other fine adjectives that strike your fancy!!

The year has begun!

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The Beginning

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My second ds106 assignment was Comments for Kids. Basically, the idea behind it is to encourage kids who are blogging to keep it up. The ds106 site also give you a quality comment guide link, to a site made by a third grade class. (Can I just add here that I have no idea what to do with life when third graders are creating web content?)

To start with, I went to the list of participants. I have to say, my shock level was sky high when I realized that the youngest was only six. In some ways, this entire thing is really kind of awkward, as the children are, like most bloggers, putting images of themselves up. It’s nothing bad, exactly, but having been raised in a very “We don’t put pictures up of ourselves ever” kind of household, it’s very kind of “…” for me.

In any case. I went through and figured out who I wanted to comment on. This, for me, was really difficult — because there are so many people there, and because it’s always really odd to comment on someone’s blog when you don’t know them. (I know, I know, I have really odd ways of thinking about things, I’ve been told.)

So I wandered through. The assignment called for three to five comments — I decided that four was a nice, reasonable number. (I like using the middle number, what can I say?) I’m not going to tell you where I  made the comments, but feel free to read these blogs and make comments of your own. Some of the blogs are really kind of cool, with game apps and the like (one had a Magic 8 Ball which I played for several minutes, because it’s been ages, and it was fun). Of course, others are terrifying, because girls really like sparkles, and the backgrounds may blind you.

Have a great day!

~Ekhlami

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Insert Interesting Post Title Here

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That sassy title is for you, Jim Groom.  I told you I would try and improve my post titles.  But really, I do hope this post will be interesting.

I did not do a post about the Sound Effects Story my group and I made in class on Thursday.  Nick, Candice and I were all set to do a boring story about a pretty typical morning routine until Jim decided to rain on our predictability parade.  Our morning-themed story was pretty boring though…

We listened to one example of a Sound Effects Story before we were let loose to come up with our own.  The example story was full of suspense and a pretty dismal ending was implied. Listening to it seemed to induce creative lock-in.  Have you ever been in a situation where you’re told to use your own creativity but once you’re given an example it becomes the only thing you can think of doing?  Kind of like the whole, “Don’t think of white elephants!  What are you thinking about?  I bet it’s white elephants!” deal.  Almost every group in the class came up with a suspenseful story with a negative undertone.  I speak for myself but maybe some of you would agree – it was not our best work.

So I’m not linking to it.  Sorry if this breaks the rules or just negates the assignment entirely, but I’m ok with that.  Because here is the more important thing I learned in class on Thursday:

What I create is always a reflection of who I am.

That is awesome and scary at the same time.  If I can’t stand by a piece of work I create then something about that needs to change.  I can hear my parents telling me right now, “A job worth doing is worth doing right.”  That anecdote is overused (by my parents and possibly yours too) and under-appreciated (by me).

It’s difficult to put 100% into every class, assignment, project, relationship, etc., but I’ll be damned if you can tell me the results are not worth it.  I can honestly say the most difficult class I ever took in college was by far the most rewarding.  My closest friendships are with individuals that challenge me just as much as I challenge them.  Life would be pretty mundane if everything was easy and perfect all the time.  Obstacles bring out our strengths and help us identify areas of weakness to improve upon.

I was reminded in Thursday’s class that even the little things count when it comes to creative work.  What might seem like just a two minute story is actually a two minute opportunity.  One hundred and twenty seconds to tell someone else something that they might be able to relate to, something they might be able to connect to.  My focus was not there Thursday and I fell into a trap my creativity couldn’t bring me out of – how could there be any other type of story?  The world is only told in two types of stories: those of morning routines and those of morbid suspense!  False.  So false.  There are infinite types of stories in this world.  And that is beautiful, beautiful thing.

What’s my two minute story?  Consider it the blog post you just read in about one hundred and twenty seconds.

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