Category Archives: Other Stuff

Writing References. YUCK!

 

OER14 3M-DS106 Trailer

Collaboratively writing a paper and presenting at a conference with two people I’d never met in person was a fantastic learning experience from start to finish. It is totally amazing to me what can be accomplished within the digital realm I’ve landed in with the DS106 community.  I didn’t really experience anything different from doing something like this in person, except that when my ego or perfectionistic habits flared up I had a chance to step back, breathe and get myself focused back to what was best for the paper.  I’m sure each of us had that experience at one time or another, and our higher selves always won out. (The time zone differences helped with that too. 😉 ) I can’t express my appreciation enough to my co-authors Alan Levine and Mariana Funes for their skills, professionalism, creativity, and sense of adventure we’ve shared the last 6 months.

“This case study explores how DS106 tools, methodology and philosophy were adapted into the corporate world at 3M to build community, collaboration, and effective global communication skills. Our hypothesis was the pedagogy and assignments of the DS106 open course could be modified for delivery on a corporate intranet, using internal creation and communication tools standard for 3M employees. We hoped to learn how the course experience could work within cultural and technological constraints of a corporate environment.”

Lockridge, R., Levine, A & Funes, M. (2014). A DS106 Thing Happened on the Way to the 3M Tech Forum. In Proceedings of OER14: building communities of open practice. Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

But what I wasn’t planned on learning, and wished that I could take back those 6+ hours of tedious OCD inducing labor back in February, was how to write the required (and admittedly very important) references for our OER14 paper to conform to the styles of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apastyle.org).  What kind of sick personality makes these things up?

Conform to the styles of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apastyle.org). Citations in the text appear in parenthesis as (Author, year) or (Author, year: page). If the author’s name appears in the text, as Author (year) or Author (year: page). Full citation of literature referred to should be given in References. Arrange the references alphabetically by first author’s name, rather than by the order of occurrence in the text. Punctuate and capitalize as in References of this document. Do not use numbered references or footnotes. References should use the style “reference-list”.

Ku, G. (2008). Learning to de-escalate: The effects of regret in escalation of commitment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 105(2), 221-232.

For further examples see a summary of APA guidelines provided at http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/apa 

Seriously

******************

From: Rochelle Lockridge 
Date: Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: attached are my final edits.
To: Mariana Funes 
Cc: Alan Levine

Spent another 4 hours formatting those stupid references according to the American Psychological Association, 6th ed.  What kind of personality makes this stuff up? By the time I do this again it will probably be outdated and everything I’ve learned this morning will be a waste of time.  GRRR!  I’ve actually compiled the links to the references I used to learn how to create the references. Do I need to make references to those in our paper too. <maniacal insane laughter>

  • When and when not to use italics (boy is that a can of worms)
  • In-text citation verses reference formats (Those commas, periods, spaces, & semicolon placements are a bitch to get right.)
  • Formats for different media, e.g. video, blog posts, newspaper articles, on-line articles, publications by corporations, websites,   (Still a little fuzzy on the formatting for the DS106 website. I say put it back into the text of the document.  We know how to use it correctly there.)
  • The new addition says they favor [blog post] over [weblog post]
  • Citing a personal communication. “DO NOT include in reference list, only in text”
  • Do not include retrieval date unless the source material will change over time (like a wiki page) or it’s a link to a corporate website that doesn’t have a date listed on the source page.
  • Citing & alphabetizing multiple references in the same year from one author.
  • Multiple references from the same author but different years do not use the a, b, c designation.  The year is all you need.
  • Retrieved from not From

Link to paper A DS106 Thing Happened on the Way to the 3M Tech Forum. Do me a big favor and at least read a couple of the painstakingly formatted citations at the end of the paper.  I need to know that someone out there found them of value, other than the entertainment value had by the person or persons who create these insane style formats.

 ****************

Here you go. My links to references about formatting references in case you ever, like me, naively decide to write an academic paper that requires the apa style format.

Postlude:

After doing all this work and whining about it to my daughter, she tells me there are computer programs out there that will do this type of formatting for you in a snap.  And once you have the basic information entered, you can very easily ask it to reformat for another style, say the Harvard Reference Style for example. She just happens to have a quality paid version on her computer that I could’ve used had she known what I was doing.  AAAHHH!!!!

Gah

DS106 Rocks!

DS106 ROCKS! 3M-DS106 Salon Patroness admiring the work of her co-collaborators for their OER14 paper.

If you’ve been following my communications out to the world over the last few days you know that the OER14 paper, “A DS106 Thing Happened on the Way to the 3M Tech Forum” that Alan Levine, Mariana Funes and I were writing was joyfully submitted on 2/27/14.  We’ll be presenting our 3M-DS106 Salon work at the end of April in Newcastle, UK. (Link to keynote speakers and panel members) For more see my post 3M+DS106+P2PL=OER14+M2M,  which includes a video I created from interviews with the 3M participants and the original abstract for the paper.


The Art used for making the “art”:

With my focus on writing the paper (and my paying job at 3M that is making all of this possible) I haven’t taken much space to create something just for fun.  As soon as the paper finished I jumped back into the “art” game and used the opportunity to show my appreciation for my ‘partners in crime’:  Alan Levine, Mariana Funes, and Giulia Forsythe. (Who at our hopeful request in the final week, does what she does best, doodled a wonderful image to capture the paper beautifully.)

OER14-GiuliaForsythe

“A DS106 Thing Happened on the Way to the 3M Tech Forum” illustrated by Giulia Forsythe (@GiuliaForsythe on Twitter)

As usual, ideas emerged and morphed as I was in creation mode.  The first image created was of the three of us enjoying our time in the Salon. It was sparked by an innocent comment from Mariana on the final draft of the paper and the resulting Twitter DM exchange.

MF: This is now icing on cake – but did you not have a wonderful photo of the Patroness in the days of yore in one of your posts? Could we add it here? And gif it? No. Kidding.”

RL: Thx for final comments. Especially reference comments at end. Are you truly serious about inserting the Salon GIF into our paper?

MF: I would love it. You think it is too much? It would be still for printing but could be a lead in to gif 4 work? or the 1 with work process? would be nice to have something stand out in the dull dull proceedings 🙂 it is a work thing for u so yr call!

There were many layers and tools used in re-making the paintings.  All were produced in Adobe Photoshop CS5.  The more advanced transformation tools available over Photoshop Elements allowed me to do things like warp the little red 3M on the envelope on the side table and Giulia’s doodle seen in the lap of the Salon Patroness, Madame de 3M106 .

I was fortunate to already have Colin the Dog (seen at our feet), and our three heads cut out from previous projects. The biggest issue that took A LOT of time futzing around was matching the color and texture of the new heads to the rest of the painting.  With these two projects I’ve (rather painfully) moved beyond the novice stage of applying layer mask effects. It’s easy once you get it – sort of like making a GIF. But up to this point it was more of an accident than a purposeful action.  See that little check box (Which pops up when you are creating a new layer.) next to “Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask”? We are now best friends.

LayerMaskWindos

Not yet totally familiar with all of the layer effects and filters, I just kept trying stuff out until it looked sort of like I wanted.  I’m not 100% satisfied with the results, but it’s a long way from when I first started. (Nana-Tina-Little Alan REDOI still need more practice.  Look closely and you’ll also find DS106 on the back of the couch on the left side of the portrait and an OER14 on the right side of the mantle. 

But I really like the efffect of the rocking DS106.  This was one of those instances of serediptity.  I wanted to turn the still image into a GIF.  Nothing in the new image stood out as a piece that could be GIFed without what looked to me a lot of work.  I decided to try making the DS106 flash.  Again, playing around with the layer style effects I ended up with some modified images that would give the original flashing illusion I was intending. But stepping back and taking another look, I noticed something I wasn’t expecting. It turned out that creating the animation frames by turning off and on the layer effects of drop shadow, satin and emboss, it gave the DS106 the illusion of rocking in 3D behind my head. I love it when these things happen.

Mariana explains this well in an early draft of our OER14 paper.  (We had to reduce the word count from 6,000 down to 3,500. A lot of good stuff was left on the cutting room floor.)

Default open cultures generate the environment needed for innovation and creative thought. Zweig (2011) suggests that generating an environment that enables ‘structured serendipity’  may help us be more creative. From a cognitive perspective, Funes (2003) research suggests creative thought has at its core ‘bridging’ activity; creativity happens at the point of discontinuity when bridging from one domain to another. DS106 teaches bridging through an environment of structured serendipity via its focus on what Rheingold (2014) describes as ‘product orientation’ but is referred to in the DS106 open community as ‘Just make art, damn it!’

Credits for DS106 ROCKS!

Original painting: ‘Madame de Pompadour’ by François Boucher

Wall Painting Riff:

I cut out the center section of this original painting by Jean François de Troy (Paris 1679 – Rome 1752), “Reading from Molière” around 1728 found on Salon (gathering) Wikipage

Jean François de Troy (Paris 1679 – Rome 1752), “Reading from Molière”

I use a riff of this painting as the 3M-DS106 thumbnail image.

DS106 walkers small

Side Note:

I was formatting references for the paper for 6+ hours all told.  I’m going to get as much mileage out of that tediously boring work as I can.

 

My dad died…

Thurs. Jan 30, 2014
ring… ring…. that’s strange… my sister rarely calls…. Is Mom in the hospital again?….

“Hi Lee.  What’s up?”

“We just found out that Dad died on January 11th.”

“What? That long ago? How come nobody told us?”

“I called around to the funeral homes to see if anybody had him. I ended up calling the coroner’s office and found out he’d died on the 11th of COPD and lung disease from all his smoking all these years. They said his daughter, Heather, had him cremated. ‘You mean his STEP daughter’, I told them.  I can’t believe how !#$%&@ up this whole thing is. They could have at least contacted someone in his original family to let us know.  It’s not like they didn’t know who we were.  Both Mom and I had gone to visit him not too long ago.”

“I can’t believe this. I’d heard from Mom that he was really sick when she went to see him, that he was small and frail and couldn’t even talk. I think 1997 was the last time he and I had spoken.  When I questioned his assertion that dinosaurs and man were living at the same time, he never talked to me again. And strangely enough earlier this month I’d had a surprising dream that he had come to talk with me.  I was even seriously considering calling him.  I wonder now what the actual date of that dream was.”

…. beep…. silence… click…

“Hello? Are you still there? The phone is cutting out.  We are driving through the mountains to get to town and see if we can find out where he is now. I’ll call you later tonight.”

RochelleAndDad-6mth

Dad and 6mth old Rochelle (I refinished that rocking chair and it sits in my living room today.)

As with most of us, my relationship with my parents was and is complicated.  My dad was a very narcissistic, self-centered and selfish man.  And he did it all with a smile on his face.  He was manipulative and proud of it- especially the seductive power of charm he had over women.  Then when I was in my early 20’s my Mom had enough and they divorced.  Within a few years he found another family.  Telling my sister when she asked why he wasn’t coming around to see his grandson anymore,

“No need to feel bad. I’ve found a new family now and I don’t talk with any of you kids anymore.”

Ouch….. But it was also from my dad that I got my love and passion for projects… my creativity to figure stuff out and make things out of what I have available around me… my curiosity as to how things work. I learned how to be an invaluable assistant, to follow directions, to learn quickly, and not to be “in the way”.  And I learned about photography using his old Pentax 35mm camera that he eventually gave me.

RochelleGuitar-1

Rochelle (age 15) playing guitar at a family reunion

But the biggest gift was playing guitar.  I’d heard him joking for years about trading in my aging mom for two young hot hippie chicks who played guitar. (A common site along the roadside in Northern California in the late 60’s, early 70’s) Then at the age of 12 I signed up for guitar as an elective at school.  He told me the best way to learn was to teach somebody else, and he let me teach him what I’d learned almost everyday after school.  Then he helped me to buy my first guitar by paying half of the $110 I needed to buy that coveted Suzuki Kiso W-150 12-string guitar from the Maxon’s Music shop.  Guitar playing was eventually brushed aside by Dad as he moved on to a new more exciting project.  But it stuck with me, and was my savior growing up in a dysfunctional family as a teenager, and opened several doors of opportunity then and as an adult – even today.  (You can listen to a bit of my playing and singing with my daughter, Amber, joining me, and see some of my video storytelling projects here.)

Taylor12String-Duluth

Rockylou’s current guitar is a Taylor GA3-12

I still own that original guitar and have upgraded only twice in 40 years of playing. I bought a Seagull 12-string for $500 to celebrate getting my first job working for 3M in 1990.  And just a few years ago, I felt I could afford upgrading once again to my current guitar, a beautiful Taylor 12-string, model GA3-12.  Not gonna talk price at this point. 😉

 

 

My grieving process will most likely be as complicated as my relationship was with my dad. I am sad and sometimes angry at his selfishness and abandonment of his family and me. He met his granddaughters less than ten times in their lives.  And yet I am sincerely grateful for the gifts I received from him.  Parts of who I am that I love the most are because of my dad.

I don’t have many pictures of him, and most of them were scanned with poor resolution over 10 years ago when the technology wasn’t so great.  Here’s what I have.

Remembering my dad… Herbert Samuel Rogers:  Nov 26, 1942 – Jan 11, 2014

 

UPDATE 2/9/14: The following day from receiving the news that my dad had died, my sister located his lawyer, who expressed his appreciation at being informed of his client’s death.

“I intentionally omit to provide for my three adult children.”

OUCH… One last time we were merely pawns in his twisted game of life. Out of spite and anger towards our mother for divorcing him, he left everything to his now deceased second wife’s rumored illegitimate granddaughter. We could care less about any money or possessions.  It’s the “intentionally omit” that hurts.

Fri, Jan 31, 3:59 PM (text message exchange)

Too upset to talk. Got Will & it says ‘I intentionally omit to provide for my 3 grown adult children’.  He left everything to Cheyene, (Linda’s grand daughter)

Message received

Oh you mean a big $@#% you again from dad!!!

Yep

Sun, Feb 9, 2:48 PM (text message from sister)

Ironic…. Dad worked so hard to spite mom & now she’s getting his social security.  $700 month more than she was getting on SSI.  Woooooohooooo!!!! LOL.  That’s retribution!!!!!!!

Ode to Surfer Dudette

Surfer Dudette had her last wipeout on Nov 18, 2013.

To ease my grief I wrote a poem (with Humpty Dumpty as my model) and produced the video Ode To Surfer Dudette in memoriam. Her tenure on my mantle and her guest starring roles in DS106 Daily Creates have come to an end.

Her first appearance was a stop motion daily create  “Surf’s Up Dudette” back in July. Then she reappeared Riding the Dopamine Wave , which led to a recurring role as a DS106 Daily Create random image.  This video is in memoriam of her time here. I graciously thank Cathleen Nardi , Talky Tina and Alan Levine for their art and inspirations that added to my tribute. As well as my friend Beth who accidentally dropped her and unleashed a “big wave” of creativity.

Aloha `oe my poor little nalu wahini.  A hui hou kakou. 

OdeTitle_Hawaii_green

Surfer Dudette in Hawaii courtesy of Cathleen Nardi

ODE TO SURFER DUDETTE 

Surfer Dudette… a gift from her daughter
Surfer Dudette… she surfed in the water
DS106 projects and daily creates
For creativity she highly rates
Surfer Dudette… on the mantle she sat
Surfer Dudette… from her perch she did SPLAT!
With Rockylou’s Resources and Rockylou’s Spin
We’ve made Surfer Dudette a star once again.

 

The Production:

The video was produced with doctored images in Photoshop Elements 12.  The selection tool was used to pull Surfer Dudette from her perch on the DS106 Nordic Track.  She was overexposed in the original photo, so I had to make adjustments with the brightness, contrast, hue, and the burn tool to adjust the color and darken her a bit.  Lots and lots of fiddling around!

Jenny_gift_greenShe was placed in various locations by adjusting her size and rotation.  For some of the composite photos, like when my daughter is holding her in front of a 1986 Christmas tree, I needed to use the selection tool again to capture pieces of Jenny’s hands to make new layers that could go over the top of Surfer Dudette. (She was actually a gift from Jenny given to me only a few years ago after a trip to Florida.)

The circling birds were a great find in the animated effects that came with Adobe Premiere Elements 12, my video editing software.

Getting the text font, color, style etc. to look nice and consistent was a much bigger deal than it looks.  I tried all sorts of versions before I settled on the one you see in the video.

The final video segment was from her first appearance in my stop motion video “Surf’s Up Dudette”.

The Hawaiian words above were found on-line at  http://hawaiian-words.com/basics/common/.  My apologies to Cathleen Nardi if I’ve used them incorrectly.

  • Aloha `oe (farewell to you)
  • Nalu (wave or surfer)
  • Wahini (woman)
  • A hui hou kakou (Until we meet again)

A few more Hawaiian words I wanted to use but couldn’t figure out how to fit them in.

  • Kai (sea, seawater, seaside)
  • Ohana  (family)
  • Tutu (Affectionate name for grandmother or grandfather) – I just loved this one.  @Rockylou22 is the perfect twitter handle now.

Attributions:

Link to Seagull Sounds: http://freesound.org/people/juskiddink/sounds/98479/

Music:

 Special Thanks:

Riffs Sprouting Up Overnight

GAKC-AliceDJ-Mush-CCat-Smoke-Colin-CatPil_Rabbit

 

UPDATE 12/06/13: Check it out we were featured on the GIFaChrome Connects blog.

Another fun aspect of DS106 being an open online course that attracts global participation is that you can go to bed at night (usually way past a healthy bedtime because you just “had” to finish one more thing on that project) and wake up in the morning to find a comment on your posted work, or better yet that someone(s) have delightfully riffed on your creation. DS106 Never Sleeps! Such was the case with my DJ at Stonehenge photo I originally created for ds106 daily create tdc669.

From Wikipedia: A flash mob (or flashmob)[1] is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.[2][3][4] Flash mobs are organized via telecommunicationssocial media, or viral emails.[5][6][7][8][9]

Here’s what the ds106 flash mob created between 11/11/13 to 12/06/13:

  1. A giant DJ is spotted at Stonehenge.
  2. Mushrooms sprout up overnight.
  3. It’s all a dream reflected in Alice’s looking glass as shown by Cathleen Nardi.
  4. It gets curiouser and curiouser when a patch of spinning mushrooms and the  Cheshire Cat show up.
  5. Over night another patch of mushrooms spring up and smoke is seen gently rising from within.
  6. Colin dog is spotted lurking in the trees holding his stick ready for play.
  7. Alan Levine’s radioactive caterpillar notices the smoke rising among the mushrooms and crawls on back to see if his buddy is hanging out there.
  8. Cathleen Nardi notices a rabbit hole appearing in a flash in the bottom left corner with a pair of ears just poking out.
  9. Rochelle Lockridge coaxes the little white rabbit out of his hole.
  10. The story is captured with the new GIFaKidChrome imager in development over at the GIFaChrome labs.

You can witness the evolution of the composite image right here as it unfolds. I plan on updating this blog entry if it morphs further.  And links are provided to the posts so you can follow the comments and story line as it develops.  (Suggestion: By subscribing to comments on this post you can get the latest updates directly.)

Note: All of the image GIFs and layered .psd files are attached below so anyone can join in the fun. Most current Photoshop file can be downloaded here

Original Photos and evolution of our ds106 flashmob collaboration:

StoneHenge

Photo 1: Stonehenge – Feb 2010 photo taken by Rockylou

25. Pull Train

Photo 2: DJ opening toy train for his 2nd birthday (Aug 2013)

Nov 9, 2013 @7:57pm Minnesota, USA or 9:37am Hawaii or Nov 10 @12:37am Scotland

Photo 1 + Photo 2 + Rockylou’s sense of humor+ Photoshop CS5 => DJ at Stonehenge for ds106 daily create tdc669: “Take a photo of something very small and make it look big.”

 

DJ_StoneHenge

1st Composite: DJ reportedly “eats” left hand side of mushroom and grows huge (DS106 Google+ Community post  )

Some little blonde girl gave DJ a mushroom while visiting Stonehenge. He took a bite of the lefthand side before we had a chance to stop him. This is the result.  No need to worry though. He took another bite on the right hand side and was back to normal by the time we returned to the tour bus.

Let The Riffing Begin!

Nov 11, 2013 @12:14pm (6:14pm Scotland, 8:14am Hawaii )

DJ-Stonehenge-mushrooms

Riff 1: John Johnston discovers mushrooms sprouting up at Stonehenge and posts to DS106 Google+ Community

Nov 11, 2013 @1:52pm (9:52am Hawaii)

DJ-Alice

Riff 2: Cathleen Nardi reports that it was all in Alice’s mind and posts photo to DS106 Google+ Community

Nov 11, 2013 @11:38pm (Minnesota, USA)

It gets curiouser and curiouser with the addition of spinning mushrooms and a Cheshire Cat.

DJ-Alice-MushSpin_500px

Riff 3: Rockylou riffs on the evolving creation by adding spinning mushrooms and a Cheshire Cat to enhance the Alice in Wonderland story line. Posted to ds106 Google+ Community

Downloadable Spinning Mushrooms + Cheshire Cat Photoshop CS5 .psd

Downloadable Spinning Mushroom .psd

MushroomSpin-Transparent

Downloadable Cheshire Cat .psd

Cheshire_cat

Cheshire Cat GIF

Nov 11, 2013 @12:34pm (6:34pm England)

Mariana Funes shares this beautiful GIF  in a post to ds106 Google+ Community wondering how it was made.

smokecoffe_oph6aatl

Nov 12, 2013 @7:05am (Minnesota, USA)

Rockylou reports more mushrooms sprouted up over night and smoke is seen wafting up from behind. Observations posted to ds106 Google+ Community.

AliceDJ-MushSpin_Smoke_500px

Riff 4: Who could be hiding smoking their Hooka Pipe back there amongst the new patch of mushrooms?

Cropped Smoke GIF

smoke_RLLl

Downloadable Cropped Smoke .psd file

Nov 14, 2013 3:07pm (9:07pm, England)

Mariana captures Colin lurking in the trees, wondering what the cat is grinning at and is that girl going to throw him a stick or not.

I can see Colin coming out of the back trees to scare that grinning cat.  I was thinking about using  this http://theds106shrink.tumblr.com/post/58186170782/i-managed-to-get-colin-dog-to-wiggle-yes-the and adding it to it 🙂

AliceDJ-MushSpin_Smoke_500px-cd

Riff #5: Colin dog lurking in the shadows joins the fun with Mariana’s  post to ds106 Google+ community

Nov 14, 2013 @11:15pm ( Nov 15 @5:15am England)

Rockylou couldn’t stand seeing the rogue white background flashing through on the spinning mushrooms and fixed it while creating a new clean .psd file adding Colin dog as its own layer.

AliceDJ-Mush-CCat-Smoke-Colin

Riff #5 edit: Rockylou cleaned up the spinning mushroom GIF and created new .psd file with individual layers in comment to Google+ Community

Screencast tutorial on adding Colin to the Photoshop file as a single layer.

Colin Dog original photo by Alan Levine

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/10545712185/

Transparent .png of Colin

ColinDog

 

Nov 15, 2013 11:00am.

Alan Levine’s “radioactive” turquoise caterpillar joins in.  He’s last seen crawling up towards the mushroom patch in the back to check out if his buddy is back there.

Download the Photoshop .psd file here.

AliceDJ-Mush-CCat-Smoke-Colin-CatPil_2

Nov 20, 2013

Cathleen Nardi adds the rabbit hole we last talked about.

Alice in Wonderland with Rabbit Hole

 

Dec 06, 2013

In participation with the DS106 GIFaChrome final project Rochelle Lockridge adds a white rabbit popping out of the hole and turns it into a GIFaKidChrome image.

GAKC-AliceDJ-Mush-CCat-Smoke-Colin-CatPil_Rabbit

 

Tiptoeing thru HTML to Make Borders

Thanks to a recent post by John Johnston “Flicking a Five Card Story”  I brushed aside my anxiety, took the leap and dived into the HTML. Well, let’s be real… I just dipped my toes in the shallow end… but I did it. I created borders around all of my images in my 5 Card Flickr Story post,  5 Card Poetry – Sharing My Story YAY!!!!!!!

I’d been wanting to do this since my first WordPress based blog post.  It was very easy to do when I was programming my websites using RapidWeaver.  I just clicked on a picture formatting box, chose my style,  and it was all done for me.  That hasn’t been the case with this blog.  Maybe I just haven’t located the right WordPress widgets and plug-ins yet.  But I agree with John (and Alan Levine) that it is good to know how to work directly with the code.  What was it Alan said? “Code or Be Coded”. Let me show you what I did.  And then you can give it a try too.

I wanted to take this image I had taken in February 2010 outside a small cafe in Salisbury England, and give it a border and a shadow to produce a more finished 3D look.

EnglandRainChair

By opening the text editor tab, I located the code that inserts this image into my post.

<a href=”http://rockylouproductions.com/blog_wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/EnglandRainChair.jpg”><img class=”size-medium wp-image-2841 alignnone” alt=”EnglandRainChair” src=”http://rockylouproductions.com/blog_wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/EnglandRainChair-300×225.jpg” width=”300″ height=”225″ /></a>

What I needed to do was to add an extra bit of HTML code to add some STYLE to the image. I found a quick tutorial on-line on how to create borders around stuff at:  http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/borders-pt-1/

For a border around an image, you insert a style definition between the img and the src tags of the image code: <img style=”border:1px TYPE #HEX;” src=[etc. etc.]

  • TYPE refers to the border type (solid, double, dashed, dotted, outset, inset, groove, ridge).  You can see examples here.
  • #HEX is your color. I used this easy Hex Color Picker site to grab the code.

Then I opened John’s post so that I could view his source coding.  He did things a bit differently by doing something with the CSS code I think, but I haven’t touched that yet. I could still locate where he added the HTML code to create a shadow though.

#fivecards{height:320px;width:500px;} #fivecards p{text-align:center;; } #fivecards img{max-width:500px;max-height:300px;border:solid 1px;padding:10px;box-shadow: 5px 5px 2px #888888;margin:5px} #fivecards a{color:#000}

The final additional code I needed to insert within the text editing view was:

style=”border: 8px ridge #FC0356; box-shadow: 5px 5px 2px #888888;”

This told my blog post to format the picture with…

  • an 8px border around the image
  • formatted as a ridge
  • with a red color variation identified as #FC0356
  • Add a box-shadow (Link to explanation of box shadow properties.)
  • with offset dimensions 5px horizontal shadow, 5 px vertical shadow, and a 2px blur spread
  • with a greyish color identified as #888888

NOTE: It’s very important you get all of the quotation marks, commas, and semi-colons exactly right.

The final HTML code looks like this:

<img class=”alignnone size-medium wp-image-2841″ style=”border: 8px ridge #FC0356; box-shadow: 5px 5px 2px #888888;” alt=”EnglandRainChair” src=”http://rockylouproductions.com/blog_wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/EnglandRainChair-300×225.jpg” width=”300″ height=”225″ />

Giving me this beautifully red bordered and shadowed image.

EnglandRainChair

or alternately by changing the Hex color number to #6E6E6E I can produce a dark grey border.

EnglandRainChair

If you are really ambitious and want to learn how to program with HTML and CSS I found this site http://www.w3schools.com/ helpful a few years back when I was just starting out.  Once I started “programming” with RapidWeaver I didn’t feel I had a need for it until now.

DS106 Invitation to 3M

This invitation was posted on my internal 3M blog inviting my colleagues to join a DS106 experiment I wanted to run from behind the firewall of a corporation. 

Your Invitation

FdeTroyLectureMoliere_DS106-3M

Coming soon! DS106@3M

Want to have some fun improving your 3M digital communication & collaboration skills? This is your invitation to join me in creating our first 3M DS106 Salon*. Where we’ll develop our digital presence and learn the power and responsibilities that come with good digital citizenship – more important than ever as our digital lives blur between private, public, professional, and proprietary. The goal isn’t just to learn the technology.  It is to do something much larger by using these tools as resources to improve our positive impact and effectiveness inside and outside of 3M.  You can participate as much or as little as you like, drop-in, drop-out, drop back in again, as we create and collaborate alongside the 15-week open-online course in digital storytelling, DS106 headquartered out of Mary Washington University, which begins August 26, 2013. 

* A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation.  [Source: Wikipedia  Salon Image Source ]

Intrigued and want to learn more?

Try a link or two…

Still interested in joining the fun?

 Contact Rochelle Lockridge ASAP to let me know you’re interested.  Feel free to use your favored communication mode: e-mail, spark, text, phone, blog comments, etc..

image 

   

Chatty Cathy- Talky Tina’s Older Sister

Rockylou gets a Chatty Cathy doll for Christmas

Rockylou gets a Chatty Cathy doll for Christmas

Did you know that @IamTalkyTina and her brother @IamTalkyTodd had an older sister named Chatty Cathy?  Yes siree…  The infamous star of the DS106zone and the 1963 Twilight Zone episode, “Living Doll” was patterned after the very popular talking Chatty Cathy doll first introduced by Mattel in 1960 to the delight of little girls everywhere.  Including one little Rockylou who you see above opening hers on Christmas morning and who most likely watched this 1960’s commercial preserved and posted to YouTube. (Fun fact: She cost around $20 back then, with inflation that would be $148 in 2013 –  inflation calculator)

My doll was a rarer brunette with brown eyes and when you pulled the ring on her back she randomly “spoke” one of 18 phrases (not the original 11) that were played from a type of record player in her chest. I actually remember her saying most of these while playing with her.

  • I love you.
  • Do you love me?
  • Give me a kiss.
  • Let’s have a party.
  • Please change my dress.
  • Please brush my hair.
  • Where are we going?
  • Please take me with you.
  • I’m hungry .
  • May I have a cookie?
  • Will you play with me?
  • Please carry me.
  • Let’s play house.
  • I hurt myself!
  • I’m so tired.
  • What can we do now?
  • Let’s play school.
  • Tell me a story.

I also remember fondly, oddly enough, how curious and fascinated I was when her talking mechanism broke and my dad took her apart to show me how she worked. I still like doing things like that today. 🙂

Rockylou_TT_GIF

Talky Tina with little Rockylou

I knew that Talky Tina seemed more familiar to me than she should.  Even after I had created a video tribute and lengthy blog post a few weeks back [link here] about the DS106zone ‘relationship’ with Talky Tina, I had no idea that Chatty Cathy was the inspiration behind the “Living Doll” episode with June Foray providing the voice talent for both. My journey to making the GIF below and finding all of this out had simply started on a whim to find the picture of me with my much loved Chatty Cathy doll and replace her head with Talky Tina’s. (See image.)

Chatty Cathy & Talky Tina are sisters.

Chatty Cathy & Talky Tina are sisters.

Creating the new image was trickier than it may appear.  Simply using the lasso tool to extract Talky Tina’s head from a photo and ‘pasting’ it on was not going to work. The hair styles were different with Chatty Cathy having her pig tails on top of her head.  This problem was eventually solved by flipping Talky Tina’s head and using the clone tool to ‘create’ extra arm and dress for Rockylou. The arm was especially tricky because I had to extend the brown shadow at the top of Rockylou’s arm to a new part of the arm that was now magically visible.

Rockylou gets a Chatty Cathy doll for Christmas

1. Original PhotoRockylou_CC_DissolveLayer  2. Edited using clone tool to extend arm & create more dress

Final image with Talky Tina head.

3. Final image ‘Talky Tina’ doll

I’ll end this post with another vintage TV commercial for a Chatty Cathy stroller – which I didn’t have.

DS106 ‘Mad World’ Challenge

ds106_edited-1

Hangin’ out waitin’ for the Headless ds106 to begin at the end of August? Care to join me in the fun of creating a parody remix/mashup of the song “Mad World” by Gary Jules, but with new ds106 centered lyrics? You get me new lyrics, I’ll record them and then pull together media to create a video that I’ll post to YouTube.  (Similar to my TalkyTina video)

Link to Google Doc for original lyrics and a place to post your new ds106 lyrics

I’m pretty sure TalkyTina and the Headless ds106 will be prominently featured. But that will all depend on the new lyrics.

 

 

 

It could even become part of our PR package for our Fall 2013 headless experiment.

 

 

MAD WORLD lyrics by Gary Jules
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere

Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very, very

Mad world, mad world

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen

Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me, what’s my lesson?
Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very, very

Mad world, mad world, mad world, mad world

ATTRIBUTIONS & LINKS