Daily Create #5162 asks where we sit while we do our Open Education work. So here’s a picture of the new office.
In part, I’m just glad that I got those pictures on the wall reasonably straight and spaced without actually measuring. (My home walls have not fared quite so well.) And they tell a little story – the panorama is Cal Ripken’s last at bat, a nod to growing up an O’s fan and paying more attention to baseball in the 1990s than I do now. I picked up “Artist vs Star” at a campus art sale at Kenyon because I liked it and it struck me as edupunky/DS106-y. The Hot Licks Blues Fest poster of Taj Mahal is for my musical side. And the framed poem was a going-away gift from my friend and colleague Chris Gillen, biology professor and poet. It’s titled “How we got through Covid-19 and the times before and after” and it is up there to remind me that I’m actually pretty good at this pedagogy support thing.
Which is nice, because it turns out this is also bell hooks’ first office at Berea. And that reset my impostor syndrome real good. I mean I’m not filling her chair in any literal or metaphorical sense but… see earlier comment, I don’t not-believe in signs.
Anyway it’s neat to imagine Dr. hooks also enjoying this exact view. (Photo taken in December).
Today’s Daily Create asks us to sketch “what it’s like to be you” and to focus on the fun part of this moment, this perspective.
Sketching asks a lot of me; I have a belief that I “can’t draw” which goes back to not being as good as others in elementary school art class.
But then Randall Munroe has shown you can do a lot with stick figures, so there goes that excuse.
But “in my subjectivity, here and now,” I don’t feel like drawing. So here are some character sketches in words. I don’t know if they’re all actually from my perspective, but what you might see looking in.
A grey-haired man in a blue shirt is at a conference table. Around the table are 4 women and himself, evenly spaced out, each working quietly on their own projects on their own laptops. From time to time he looks around, proud to have brought Writing Group to his new place.
A grey-haired man in a blue shirt is hunched over his laptop at a conference table. He fidgets in his chair. He crosses and uncrosses his legs. Sometimes his fingers fly on the keyboard, sometime they are still. His cup of tea (4th caffeinated beverage of the day and it’s not noon yet) is empty.
A grey-haired man in a blue shirt stares out the window at bare branches dusted with white. He wonders if driving through a low snowbank was a smart choice to get a close parking place. His stomach rumbles and he wonders what’s for lunch. He strokes his goatee and realizes his skin feels drier on the inside than out.
A grey-haired man in a blue shirt finishes his blog post, hits publish, and closes his laptop. He digs a green notebook out of his bag and a cheap purple fountain pen from his pocket. He puts pen to paper and watches to see what happens next.
Well, the great Alan Levine left the right comment on the last post. He asked when’s the next one?
So I’m going to dust off a really old draft and find some way to hit publish on it.
I’ve been having a lot of fun DJing on DS106 Radio. (Usually Friday nights, usually 7 PM-ish Eastern US time.) It’s a free-form, live streaming station originally set up to broadcast the audio creations of the DS106 digital storytelling class/community. “Free-form” sounds pretty artistic, but what it really means is that at any given time, someone might be playing tunes, talking with friends, experimenting with different ways to capture and broadcast sound, playing a produced story, or all of the above.
OK, it really really means “we’re making it up as we go along.” One time on Twitter I said that DS106 Radio is kind of like walking down a dorm hall in college and hearing that your friend has a cool album on with the door open. This is the part I like best – the chat about music (or whatever sound or story is going on) that happens on social media while someone’s on the air.
So this is the post where I say some things about how I broadcast. I won’t represent that this is the best way, and it’s certainly not the only way, but it’s the one which works for me, for the purpose of playing music.
Step 1: Have an idea
I think this is the biggest hurdle. You have to believe that you have an idea which, at a minimum, will entertain you for as long as it takes to prepare and play it. My friends seem to like either what I play, or the fact that I’m playing it. But just in case no one tunes in, I might as well be having a good time.
Here’s the good news: anything is an idea. “I want to play this album all the way through” is a nice easy one. “These are some good songs I’ve heard recently” is a good one. Many of my playlists start that way. I have a standing Thursday night card game, and I usually have my iTunes either playing an album or on random shuffle, and whatever song makes me think “oh I haven’t heard that in a while” becomes the tent pole for the show on Friday.
My show doesn’t have a predictable genre, so a genre set is an idea. (My “idea” from Thanksgiving to New Years is “Christmas songs.”) Recent musician birthdays and deaths work well. I’ve had some fun with keywords – I did a St. Patrick’s Day set that was just a search for the word green.
(I have an open challenge from a friend to “rock around the clock” – a set full of songs which reference the time of day. This one has stumped me but I’d welcome your suggestions in the comments.)
Step 2: Get a big collection of MP3s.
Mission accomplished
This is not a requirement; it’s just how I do it. I do have a cheap turntable I can use for a “vinylcast”, and I know how to get the audio from a streaming source on the air. But most of my listening is based on digital files on my hard drive, and most of my broadcasting is too.
I know it’s a little weird to talk about virtuous consumption and pirate radio at the same time, but the fact is, artists make a lot more money when we buy their works than when we stream it. So this choice is important to me.
Full disclosure: I do end up spending something between $2 and $20 per show most weeks, depending on whether I’m buying singles or springing for whole albums. (Honestly $20 is rare, but $10 isn’t.) So it’s a little unclear if this is a hobby, or a habit.
Step 3: Get a copy of Mixxx
Why Mixxx? Because it’s free. Yeah, at the end of the day, that was my whole thought process. I didn’t know if this was going to stick, and I didn’t want to spend $70 on Audio Hijack and use it once. Anything Icecast-compatible should work.
Mixxx is imposing to look at. Definitely from the “more buttons is better” school of interface design. Explaining Mixxx is also where this post has consistently ended up in the drafts folder, so maybe I just need to promise that I will do a more specific “here’s how I make Mixxx work” post so I can hit publish on this thing.
If I had one major gripe with Mixxx, it’s that I keep thinking that all those buttons and especially dials would be easier if I bought a hardware controller. (Dials are awesome in analog but really suck with a mouse.) I’ve resisted so far but…
Step 4: Make a playlist
The next step for me is to create a new playlist and start dragging songs onto it. This is technically about the same as doing it on Spotify or Apple Music or probably any other digital music player, and conceptually the same as using a double-deck boombox to make a mix tape.
Mostly, I spend a lot of time previewing the starts and ends of songs to see how they’ll go together. Probably the next thing I could do to get better would be documenting songs that could be shorter – noodley intros and outros, long chunks of applause or banter on live tracks – so I could mix around them.
I also try to keep an eye out for the maudlin section which gets into most of my playlists. Three sad songs in a row is pretty much my limit. Well, it’s not my limit, but it’s the limit of what I want to inflict on my friends and an unsuspecting public. (My friends, really, should know the sentimental fool they’re dealing with.)
Step 5: On the Air
Then, for me, I go live and play it. I like doing this in real time, dragging tracks from the playlists to the decks and deciding when to hit play. I like announcing in real time too. For me, the Friday evening show is a ritual, and I want the focus of the live event.
That said, Mixxx has an “autoDJ” feature which will run through a playlist on its own, and I’ve found it useful when I want to broadcast but also split my attention. And I’m impressed by eLearning Techie, who prerecords her entire shows, and broadcasts them free of technical or verbal flubs.
OK, that’s enough for now. I will try to have the “seriously, how do you make Mixxx work” post together in less than another 3.5 years (which is how long this one sat in draft).
We had the good folks from Storycenter back for a workshop. Given everything that’s going on, we took it as an opportunity to process, to think about how we’ve been getting through this time.
I’ve been amused by the #15secondshakespeare phenomenon, so I was pretty stoked when it showed up as a daily create. I actually thought I was going to do a different old standard… but then, in honor of making another trip around the sun, I picked this one. Honestly, I’m kind of hoping it’ll go viral. Surprise your friends with it.
The music is “Go From My Window“, a 16th century folk song as arranged by John Dowland and performed by Frank Hiemenz, under a CC-BY license. (It’s really quite pretty when I’m not over-acting over it.) I dumped it into GarageBand and recorded my voice in another track. Lining up my voice at the end of the first phrase was a pretty clear choice; I had to fade the guitar down (further than I thought I’d need to) and adjust the spoken volume up a bit.
No, that’s not right – not just a story to tell. A story to share, a story to ask us to carry. An invitation to help them process, as they made decisions about possessions, and places. Maybe a request to be remembered as an individual, not as a statistic in a historical episode.
That is part of the point of storytelling, in any form. Memoir, fiction, nonfiction, mashup – we try to make a connection, form a bond, refute entropy. We make stories, and make sense; in telling or listening, we expand ourselves.
The Stream is a funny thing. A friend sharing pain, a cat video, an echo from the political chamber, a friend announcing joy. When the same information feed serves as my newspaper, my editorial magazine, my entertainment, and my connection to my friends, it’s hard to remember to treasure those acts of deep sharing.
“You said crossing the streams was bad!” – Peter Venkman
So, I guess, we beat on, boats against the tide. We smash the Like button, we write “hooray” or “I’m sorry” or “I’m with you.” We retweet and reshare, and we hope it’s enough to make the world a safe space for stories. Sometimes we open an email or pick up the phone. Or we write a letter to the papers or the government and we give money and we vote. And sometimes, we open a word processor or blog post or image or video or audio editor and make art, dammit.
All because we hold you in our hearts. Because we listened, and we grew, and we bonded, and we remember.
“open, yes we’re open” by Derek Bridges, CC-BY 2.0 at https://flic.kr/p/8d67SR
Still from Ghostbusters, from https://ageofsteam.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/crossing-the-streams.jpg
I had the distinct pleasure last week of hosting Joe Lambert and Brooke Hessler from the Center for Digital Storytelling for a workshop at Kenyon. I believed that I was going in as the on-site tech support guy, so I didn’t think I was going to make a story. See, I was going to be helpful to other people, and watch Joe and Brooke to really learn how to facilitate a story circle.
Concetta (who had been in our 2012 workshop), said that was sad, because I’m a good storyteller. (Which is not, to be honest, something I’d gone into this workshop considering.) And there was a ripple of agreement in the room, that my colleagues wanted me with them as a participant. And Joe said “no free riders.”
So I started wracking my brain for a story to tell.
The penny dropped when, during another person’s turn in the story circle, Joe pointed out that writing a letter to someone can be a great storytelling prompt. I started thinking about people I’d like to talk to, people I might owe a thank-you note or an explanation.
From a storytelling perspective, shifting the audience made all the difference in the world. By making it a piece for Melanie, instead of for “the world”, clarifying an in-joke became sharing an anecdote. And technically, relating the story out loud, and getting feedback from a room of supportive colleagues, helped me find a lot of the connective tissue which I didn’t find alone with my keyboard.
So thank you, my Kenyon and CDS colleagues (and my wife, who saw a rough cut), for sharing your courage, for your aesthetic input, and for sharing this story with me.
I already drew a map which tells a story, so when TDC 1237 challenged us to make a map which explains nothing, it seemed like a fitting challenge. I was inspired by the map of “Super Bowl Wins By Country” on the TDC page, so here’s:
Change in MLB Batting Average by US State 2005-2014
(Edit: this used to be an interactive map. But Google killed the product. So here’s a screenshot.)
This map is made with Google Fusion Tables. The team batting average data comes from Baseball-Reference.com; the state shapes are a resource file within Fusion Tables. (This introduces the one unintentional inaccuracy in the map – I couldn’t quickly find a shape file including both U.S. states and Canadian provinces, so the Toronto Blue Jays are just left off the map.)
More importantly, its story is a mess. For starters, who would compare team batting average over 10 years? There are so many differences in lineups and managers (and probably even park effects) that it seems like a pointless comparison. (My baseball geek friends are welcomed to debate that point.)
“Batting average by state” is almost as meaningless as “Super Bowls by country” – maybe more so, because it suggests specificity. But if there’s a useful reason to compare the average batting average of the 5 teams in California with the 1 in Maryland, I’m at a loss to explain it. (And you can barely see the poor Nats in DC.)
The state statistics are actually an average of team batting averages in the state, but every team doesn’t have the same number of at bats, so that introduces a little inaccuracy. Not much, but it would show up out at the 4th digit.
And then there’s design. Google only labels the top and bottom of the legend, so we know the bounds, but not what the middle colors correspond to. I picked a green color for half the scale, on a map which is mostly green – very bad for readability, especially in the Satellite view. I also set green to correspond to the biggest declines, and red for the biggest increases, which I think is the opposite of American expectations.
But I did learn a little about Fusion Tables, and practiced normalizing data, so that was fun!
(Kids, ask your parents. Or possibly your grandparents.)
As you can tell from the watermark, I used WeVideo to make this. We’ll be using it next week at a workshop run by the Center for Digital Storytelling, and I’m the local tech support, so I thought I better try it out. It’s a web-based video editor, with a clean interface; I can see why it might work well as an intro tool for new video editors and in community outreach situations.
Also, it can import video from a USB webcam, which apparently iMovie can’t. This shot comes from my Logitech webcam, perched upside-down on top of my monitor. (That simultaneously solved the problem of how I can film my own hands, and how I could get the writing right-side-up.) My hands aren’t quite in frame enough at the end, but it got the concept.
The silence at the beginning is a little disorienting; if I were going to work more on it I’d try to capture the sound of pen on paper or maybe add a soundtrack. Let’s file that under “lessons learned”, and certainly not under “regrets!”
Daily Create 1180 asked us to create a soundmap of our town. Instead of following the prompt as written, I picked one moment in my day – walking home in the early afternoon from a Krudas Cubensi concert at Kenyon College.
It was early April – the trees were starting to bud, and you can hear a light spring breeze blowing through the microphone at places. The birds have returned, and you can hear them chattering at each other. But it’s too early for the hum of lawnmowers, not warm enough yet for the drone of air conditioners. Gambier is a rural town; I think in the 6 minute walk you’ll hear 3 cars go by.
You’ll also hear my feet. Boy, will you hear my feet. I really thought I was holding my iPhone high enough to not get so much of that noise, but apparently not. So, there’s an excuse to learn something new – I opened up the graphic equalizer in GarageBand, turned on the analyzer so I could see where the frequencies of my footfalls lay, and turned those ranges down. They’re still prominent – it is a walk, after all – but I don’t think they’re as dominant as they were in the original.
This is my walk to work. I’ve probably taken it more than 4,000 times. But I usually take it with my headphones on and music or a podcast going, so I miss these sounds – which means I miss the chance to contemplate the seasons and the neighborhood. I appreciate TDC reminding me that there is value in taking a walk just to listen.
