Cole W. Camplese

Elfin Angry Bird

Buddy the Elf strikes again. Last night with a full on Angry Birds game.

The.gif

Discovered via Jim Groom as I follow his exceptionally ambitious ds106 open/resident course at the University of Mary Washington. I knew as soon as I saw it I wanted to participate, but I also knew there was no way I could give it the attention it will demand. Next time.

The thing that really prompted this post has been watching the Bava's animated gif interest grow. It blows my mind that the animated gif is making such a huge comeback. Honestly I love the complexity and simplicity of the animated gif. Once the purveyor of website construction status is now becoming one of the more powerful ways to express feeling online -- simply.

I remember actually learning how to do this as a Masters degree student back in 1995. Of course our animated gifs were really, really lame. But in hindsight they were actually really exceptional given the times. Makes me realize just how young the web really is ... that makes me smile.

Pirate Talk

Saw a great feature in Facebook today that changes the native language to English Pirate. Made me really laugh and it is easy to do ... 1) Scroll to the bottom of your Facebook page. 2) On the bottom left corner, click English: US. 3) When the language selection appears, click English: Pirate. 4) watch what happens. Nice when there are still things that can make me laugh.

For All My Canadian Friends

Really no need to say anything ...

Gus Porter, American Legend with Thomas Haden Church from Thomas Haden Church

Tag!

We've been crazy about making tag stickers for all sorts of events. We use moo.com and take images that either we create in house or ones people coming to the events submit to us. Last summer we had some really cool ones made for the Learning Design Summer Camp from personal icons people submitted to the wiki. A few months earlier, we had an amazing set of them made for the 2008 TLT Symposium that became quite the popular item around campus and beyond. I even stuck some to my laptop and the back of my Cinema Display!

For one reason or another we chilled on the tag stickers at this year's Symposium and instead got a bunch made that were really designed to be a save the date. I have to say I missed not getting a brand new killer book of them, but seeing that I still have a bunch left over from the last several events I think I'll live. Well, here is the really strange thing ... and this is a little beyond odd. I was in the Men's bathroom in our building on campus the other day and I noticed a tag sticker under the toilet seat. I'll have to say it shocked me, but it is a hell of an advertising location -- either that or someone is trying to tell us something. Either way, you can now save the date for March 27, 2010 for our next TLT Symposium. We just landed Michael Wesch as our opening keynote and I know the program and planning committees are already starting to do their work. Perhaps this new sticker location is the work of the marketing and communications committee?

Quick Note on Usability

We've all heard the jokes and snickers about Microsoft's infamous usability (ahem) in their tools. Today I have been working on my presentation for the NMC Symposium on Mashups that I am to give next week via Adobe Connect. I know Connect fairly weel as I use it here at PSU with some regularity and we have perhaps one of the best ACP for teaching and learning experts (I am a little biased) in the country sitting down the hall from me in Yvonne Clark. So when I need to know something I can feel certain I am getting a solid answer.

Anyway, I am working up my slides using PowerPoint instead of Keynote for the first time in four years or so just so I can load it into ACP and let it run the right way -- I am even using the shiny new and very good looking PPT 2008 for my Mac. The software looks OK, but I have to admit it is slow and just doesn't seem to work the way I want it to ... not that solid usability starts and stops with my needs, it should at least not make me feel totally out on my own. At one point I was trying to use the new and improved transition feature and thanks to the perfect placement of the tooltip popup I couldn't see what transitions were hiding beneath. Not a big deal, but an obvious opportunity for a screencap ...

All I am going to say is that Alan, you owe me one ... only b/c of the PPT lock in!

Happy New Year!

Not much to say at the moment ... I am actually relaxing and enjoying being off the grid. I am getting ready to do some travel in the coming weeks -- I am heading back to Arizona to give a couple of talks back in the Maricopa system. I did one there last year and really enjoyed the people I got to talk with their. For now, I am staying off the grid and will probably be posting pictures of my travels over at Flickr. For now, I thought I'd share a quick picture of some really bad signage I saw yesterday at Downtown Disney.

Who wouldn't like a Hot Roast Beef Smoothie?

Just a Little Funny

Just got back to my office after a lunch meeting and thought I'd do a little RSS before my 1:30 ... tried to hit Google Reader and I see the following:

The rest of the Internets is fine, just Google ... no calendar either. Never thought I'd see that one.

Santa Owns Me ... No Really

My friend Brad beat me to this one ... last night we took Madeline to get her picture taken with Santa at the Nittany Mall.  Let's just say it was an interesting experience.  Not only was the big guy 45 minutes late coming back from the "feeding the reindeer" break, but the whole thing was a bit unsettling.

As we were standing in line, Madeline asked "do I really need to sit on that guy's lap"  Let me remind you that she is turning 5 in a couple of days, so she could see right through this "Santa's" makeup.  The thing that blew my mind was the poster shown below that offered not only the picture of the photo shoot, but the ability to purchase the copyright of said photo for a mere $22.00 dollars.  As my friend Brad asked today during the latest ETS Talk Podcast, "do we all need personal IP attorneys walking around with us?"  Something tells me that we are on the verge of a major societal collapse when Santa wants to own the images of children all over the World.

Net Neutrality III

Yes, it does appear as though I get all my news from the Daily Show. That would be ridiculous ... the "real" news is on sometimes when I am out to dinner and I can read the crawl from across the room. At any rate, here is yet another wonderful piece about Net Neutrality on the Daily Show. Wonderful explanation, actually.