Month: July 2015

I Resigned and Can’t find a bed that fits….

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village-jim-grooms_John
(this gif by John Johnston will be used to identify my Prisoner106 posts. Look for the Puffin Fairy icon – designed by Rochelle Lockridge for Bugeron106 posts)

Prisoner106 Committee Report Week 1:

During this week I resigned to the village. However I am not a number – I am the Interior Designer/Painter in the Village. I still have tasks and work as part of the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival PR Team and spending time with Bernie Burgeron LaSusa as she meets and becomes acquainted with her birth family. Cousin Ron and others are assisting in helping find where on the family tree Bernie we belong. We do know Bob is our Uncle. Other Burgerons are welcoming, but having trouble trying to figure out how to refer to us, and we are no

Assimilation week was spent getting to know the lay of the land in the village and to start to meet the other residents. I created my information card successfully after some tries and it was accepted by Number 2 and the committee.KOartVillage_InfoCard

Talk Tina has blown away all the residents of the village with her introduction pieces. I will need some of the time ahead to work on reaching that bar. I did however create some introductions.

Flickr: Here is a shot of me in my Village workroom. This is where I upcycle and create things for bungalows and other parts of the Village to keep everyone functioning as well as having aesthetically pleasing surroundings. Happy residents, are residents who can create, so their environment must make them comfortable and feel at home.

Village Intro Picture

Another part of assimilation week was getting my blog in order. Adding the Prisoner106 badge was not looking good in the last theme and it was time to resign it as well as myself. A new theme was put in place and a few tweaks. The theme was cleaner looking – but still lacked some personal touch and identity.

I decided to make a banner to represent the summer retreats. I am able to communicate outside of the Village- but it seems not with everyone – only Bovine County and those involved with the Fairy Tale Festival. I am thankful I have that bit of flexibility and will guard it well. To identify that fact so other residents and family know that the twists of assignments are intended I created a dual banner. As this is a 106 iteration – it had to have GIF features. This also gave me a chance to work on getting deeper into GIFs. The result is at the top of this page.

Andrew Forgrave –  another resident created an assignment to build a repository of Prisoner106 GIFs. Another opportunity to do a different style of GIFfing.

Fuzzy #6

#6 Thinking

Have You Resigned yet?

You Will….

In order to earn my keep and stay in my bungalow at the Village, my work time with Bovine PR had me working on supplying some audio for one of the Artists in Residence and do some first research into sound effects for a retelling of The Goldilocks and the 3 bears.

I also supported the festival and artists in residence by completing a Bovine Badge for identification as some Village residents are also Artists in Residence.

I am using different icons on my own posts to help friends sort out the complexity – well at least a bit – I can’t even keep it straight on most days and I am in the Village and the Trailer! I was reading Holland fairy tales in the Village Library to keep up with the festival timeline and as a result created the Badge, and worked on some web structures for the newsletter sharing. It was a fail for helping the newsletter, but solved some other issues for the future in posting work myself.

What I enjoy most is traveling through the Village and the County to view the work of others. So many things to see and view. I am meeting new residents and family as well as seeing their unique talents. I have more columns in my Twitter Feed to follow and find that as my primary link to what others are doing. I need to get back into the habit of favoriting the tweets to embed them along with some shout outs in the coming weeks. I have come across the Village Philatelist – Geoffrey Cain, and learned about creating stamps as well as some real help in understanding the show. Bill Smith – Retired Eminence, created a Flickr group for residents to add photos to – super for trying to keep all this organized! Thanks Bill.

The most frustrating piece is not being able to do all that I would like in a week.
The part I have the most difficulty with is getting to view the episodes of the Prisoner and tracking the story. It is like reading – I can watch it (call the words) without any difficulty, but when asked what does it mean – eh? not so on top of it. I am learning more from reading the reflections and analysis of others, and the questions and conversations going on about the story then from independently reviewing. I think I have always been like that – I need a village to learn and the back and forth thinking out loud.

Daily Create:

Famous Art Embedded in Daily Life

http://ds106ra.dio/listenUsually in addition or instead of a daily create, I schedule some Sunday afternoon time (2pmCST and 8pm across the big pond) to listen to DS106Radio. #106goodspell and @dkernohan and @VivienRolfe as I work on creations. The shows always seem to pump up some creativity – so I do consider them my own daily create. Kind of follows the topic of the bullet point in #ds106goodspell today on all the ways out there being used by groups to create daily in some way. And not to miss him….I usually find @cogdog spinning vinyl later in the evening to help me through the late night posting catch up!

I am working on some Bovine County visuals and may or may not get to more Village work so posting early on Sunday. 🙂  My #Burgeron106 Summary  – and I may end up combining them in future weeks -so watch for the icons within the post to help guide you through my thoughts. Plenty of time to relax in the Village again on Monday. See you around.

http://ds106ra.dio/listen

Fail of Webbing Fairy Tale News

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puffintransblogWeb Assignments – Week 1 Summer 2015

Nanalou has a newsletter…….and she wanted it embedded into the family story blog. She used an email service that gave her a good choice of templates and ease, but still very basic. NanaLou went through a lot of hoops to present her information to the rest of the family at the level she is known for – but way too much work on detail things when she could be spending the time on sharing her other talents.

This prompted me to identify this as my web assignment. While it is not telling a story of Holland Fairy Tales – it is a #ds106 tangent of which to pursue. More on the Holland fairy tales later – I did dive into them and enjoyed the tales!

Vertical Response – great free tool, but limited in features – doesn’t print to PDF, doesn’t archive. The work around is to use the View Online link and post it as a text link where ever you want others to access it. Not a bad solution -but I also found that NanaLou did that and the page that comes up is a registration page. This might explain the 50% open rate (which in marketing circles is pretty darn good – usually success is marked at 30%). Vertical Response support tickets had a similar request in its logs and this was the answer:

Jaime (VerticalResponse) 

Hi there Laura,

While we do not generate a link so that you can archive older newsletters on your website, we do have a workaround. In order to generate the link,  you will have to insert the “View Online” link into your email. It is normally added by default. If it is not there, you can add it to a text box by using the “Insert” drop down menu on the right hand side and selecting “Hosted Version Link”. Once you’ve launched the email to your recipients, click on the View Online link and copy the URL in your browser’s address bar. This is the link that you can put onto your website. Please ensure that you are only doing this with launched emails as it will not work with test emails. Feel free to let me know if there is anything else I can do for you!

Regards,

Jaime W.

Verticalresponse Support

The first thing I did was try and find a URL that would go back to the newsletter without having to login. I found one, but also wanted to make sure it did work and just was not accessing because of cache or other things on my machine. I found it was working by using another computer in the house and someone elses profile. I then created a shorter url for the link because it was way too long!! I am not sure if Vertical response stays consistent with its URLs – we will see. Nanalou – I did update the links in your post so that others did not hit dead ends.

The Burgeron site is also using WordPress.org and not a self hosted version so plugins are at the mercy of WP. This made finding solutions more difficult as the subscription is set up to help maintain security and is not as open to plugins.

Tried iFrames – but WP.org scrubs those out and makes it irrelevant. I searched the available widgets and no luck – nothing that would allow embedding another site or html. Suggestions were to create a new page. I tried that and came up with nothing usable.

PDF conversion didn’t work either and is not supported by VerticalResponse.

I have been working around with my Google account for this site so thought I would try for the Burgerons. Using Google Drive and docs is coming along nicely and was worth a shot.

Trying to get the newsletter as formatted with active links proved difficult. I could import and put things in a Google Doc but Copy and paste loses formatting from the template for the newsletter. It also smashed columns together. If it was a little different that would have beennewsembed2en okay – but it was more like a cut and paste that was like spaghetti on a barn – some stuck and some didn’t. It didn’t meet quality criteria.

Even though it didn’t look quite right – I wanted to find out if it would embed and actually work if it was a GDoc. I titled it and then went to File>Publish to Web and chose embed. I copied the code and pasted it into WP – it worked! Great scroll bar and you can also resize the window of the embed in the code for different purposes. Filing that one for sure!

 

It still did not solve Nanalou’s issue. I tried Google slides, and draw – neither accepted the template features where they looked good enough to consider a solution.

I also tried taking the source code from the newsletter and pasting it in as text to see if it would replicate. It added a whole load of text and the newsletter. Might work – but to putzy for a solution.

newsembed  Copying and pasting the newsletter itself added extra lines and table features that would be a bear to go through and delete.

So at this point – I have spent a good amount of screen time and futzing. I have come up with a better handle on using Google for embed into WP and if info is created in Google first to look good, that will be a solution.

Also did come up with the ability to use the links for accessing the Vertical Response newsletter. Creating a standard Newsletter header or graphic to hold the newest link and another going back to an archive of links might be a good solution and still add some visual.

 

Nanalou created a Pinterest page to give a visual for the newsletter. On that path I found this in the support logs. I don’t think it would have saved anytime or hoops – but it is what is available by the tool support.

Hi there Mel.

To better assist you, may I ask what format your poster is in? i.e JPG, GIF, PNG. If you do not know, you can right click on the image and select properties. A window should pop up displaying the file type. As long as it is in one of the image formats I listed above, you should be able to use our Social tool to create a social post. Here are step by step instructions, along with a video tutorial, to walk you through the process: http://helpcenter.verticalresponse.com/articles/VR2/Create-a-Social-Post/

I don’t have a product that came out of this web assignment, but it was time to spend on solution finding and trying new things out within tools and systems so that I can apply.

Holland Week:

Thanks to NanaLou, Cousin Ron, and Sappho with work on Holland fairy tale history and creating. I am at this point on the consumable end of fairy tales over creating them. The resource links of stories has been great to use. I find I read and enjoy them and then remember I was supposed to be looking at how they are constructed, the style and flow etc. Instead – I have been purely enjoying them as a good story.

Reading the stories and seeing what others are creating is also helping in my support work on the Bovine PR Department team. Sappho had mentioned in a post that if Prisoner106 had a badge shouldn’t the Burgeron’s and the Fairy Tale Festival. This took me on the path of creating an animated GIF badge and with the support of the family a usable outcome came out of the efforts. It is great to have others give that gentle push to reach a little farther. Thanks Family!

And while not directly a Holland fairy tale – I did work on walking out of my comfort zone and recording audio for Mama Boo and Christina Hendricks for a remix of the 3 Bears and Goldilocks. It was actually fun and may make the next audio of self be a little easier to add in a product. I also spent some time looking for first sound effects for consideration by the group.

A few daily creates thrown in for some exercising some creative muscles.
TDC1271

One week into the festival summer and it seems everyone is giving one and gaining many. Totally cool!

 

Prisoner GIFFING – Number 6 Repository Adds

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After a couple of days working on GIFs I have to admit – the ones from video clips come to me as storytelling and drawing out and explaining meaning or understanding from the work of others stories. Creating GIFs from scratch to add to one’s own story is different. They are both great and fun to create – but there are different GIFs for different stories and purposes. Great to be learning the difference and how to make them!Taking the GIFFING Challenge thrown out by Andrew Forgrave.

My submissions to the Prisoner repository – Assignment 1744

Fuzzy #6

Fuzzy # 6 without gas – after looking this seemed a better fit and still tells the story.

#6 Thinking

Have You Resigned yet?

You Will….

I used Mac Downloader and went to YouTube to capture the opening sequence of the Prisoner.

After scrubbing through the clip I selected In and Out points and then trim. This gave me my clips.

Saved as Image Sequence and exported out.

I went to Photoshop and used Scripts- Load as files

I added and cleaned up any images as needed.

Went to Timeline and then created frames from layers.

Played with timing of frames to get what I wanted.

Export>Save for Web (Legacy).

Number 6 was born in 1928! So in the first episode he was 40 years old. Today he would be 87!!! Wow!

 

Split Geography Residences-New GIF Theme Banner

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All the new adventures for this summer of 2015, it just seemed right to update the blog and give it a fresh look for the work ahead. It also gave me the opportunity to follow up and do another GIF after creating the Bovine Badge for Artists in Residence to see if I actually am learning or if it was chance and luck that things worked out. I think I am learning! Look above for the outcome of the banner. DesignAssignments, DesignAssignments1412

Summer 2015 and I am now a multiple residence individual. Wisconsin folks often have a primary home and a home “up North” that they go to on weekends, vacations and certain times of the year.

This summer I will be an Artist in Residence at the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival and staying at the Burgeron Trailer. Looking  forward to nights around the campfire, listening to Nanalou and others tell stories and maybe a cup or two of family made beverages that will help me overcome my fear of music week!

My other residence will be The Village. I am not sure where it actually is located. Most check in and even when checked out can never leave. I am getting there and back via Dr. M’s teleporter from her treehouse near the trailer and also by hitching a ride with Cousin Ron on his famous time cycle.  I am looking forward to meeting some of the residents there and find out what all this number stuff is about. Number 6 seems to have a real need to leave the place and is providing some interesting down time for me in trying to follow his adventures.

To finance my stays I am working on the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival PR team in Bovine. I needed a little more funding – so I am also the Interior Designer and Painter at the Village. Hopefully, between jobs and traveling, I will be able to keep up with my creating and assignments. I hear if things are not done according to schedule in the village, I will lose electricity in my bungalow. That won’t help keep my laptop running to get things done.

Gotta go – the Sunday deadline is approaching and Number 2 and Rover will be looking for things. I also have a load of Holland fairy tales to pile thru and figure out the trail of web story they have left.

 

GIF a Badge – #Burgeron106

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The summer of 2015 brings several groups in #ds106 coming together to make art.

Two of the groups are open groups: Prisoner106 and Bugeron106. there is also cross participation between the two groups (Villages).

Prisoner106 has set up as a more structured format after the #ds106 format and a calendar.

Bugeron106  is a revisit of the summer of 2014 and continues the story of the Burgeron Family of Bovine County who are now leading the Bovine County Fairy Tale Festival.

The two villages in addition to cross participation has also created some friendly challenges. Prisoner106 created a badge for blogs and has specific design elements. To meet the challenge, I worked on a badge for those in the Burgeron106 group. And of course since it is #ds106 it had to be GIF.

As the Bovine Fairy Tale Festival started to get off the ground, @RockyLou22 and @NanaLou had created a series of Puffins for the festival. Nanalou also organized the family by providing some focus points thru a Around the World of Workshops for each week of the summer so that members can align more easily in work together.

I decided since these images were an organizing part of the group that I would use them and not introduce new visuals. We are all involved in many things, and asynchronous collaboration can bring about confusion if too many things are circulating at once.

My first attempts were individual pics that would be used in frame animation in photo shop.

I was happy with the concepts and was really glad to have been able to create the puffin animation of it moving through the frame. The result was too spastic and more like a fast slide show than a GIF to me. It had about 60 frames and used frame animation in photoshop. There was futzing and putzing with each image by capturing it, scaling and cropping. The standards are high in the Burgeron106 and ds106  families so sloppy work was not acceptable by the PR department. More work was needed.

I have friend who shares access to her Lynda.com account for help when needed. Looking at Photoshop is overwhelming. So many available  courses and screen casts. They really show how complex PS can be. I hopped around and saw a few things to explore – but my brain was not in a place to go through the tutorials. I opted for some exploration, but maximizing features that I have found already.  I know there must be a way to do what I did, faster, smoother, and with good results.

I spent a day working with the images. The frame animation was a lot of duplicating and minor changes. I also had to do a lot of merging of layers as I added things.

The result was less than satisfactory – but a little better.  A shower and some lunch to clear the head, move the muscles, and fuel up and I went back again. This time I went back to some of the first GIFs I made as part of the open course a few months back. At that @cogdog – Alan Levine was facilitating the You Show in Canada and thru his blog I found a tutorial which used video in PhotoShop. I decided to try video editing to GIF instead of frame animation. This allowed for a smoother transition and motion.

I saved the ground work of the basic images of each section. I went to timeline and created a video. I set a work length so that I stayed within a certain time sequence so that the GIF didn’t become an actual movie in length.

Adding transition, changing opacity and putting in motion. All of this was done with pure abandonment and free will – no logic or system. Lots of do it and try to then undo it. Lots of saving versions to have something to go back to if steps did not work.

Once I thought I was close – I changed the video to frame animation so that I could tweak some parts and to try to cut frames that are not really needed as a GIF to cut back on file size. Doing that worked well – but I lost some layers and changing things after the switch caused more issues to correct – like losing the Holland graphic and key frames that didn’t translate smoothly. It did however get me to pare down even more which was good for design.

I went back to a saved version and this time did more timing within video. This was a little cumbersome at first – but actually made more sense to me than working with the frame animation with such a large number of frames. I was able to get some images resized and placed without losing or chain reactions. I am still not able to explain how – but my mouse hand found the rhythm and pattern to repeat.

This time I went to save for web right from the video. I found by paring down and making sure that layers that were not used deleted instead of just turned off helped make the file smaller. Saving as video did not create a larger file than animation – so it worked.

The last step was getting a font installed so that I had one that I liked more from a design point. I started on my laptop which has different fonts than my desktop. This was a risk as I had a good result and changing the font meant re-establishing a base layer composed of 5 merged layers. I made sure things stayed named the same and that the one layer remained as the foundation. The digital fairies were watching over me – and I got through it without an issue. Once I got those changed and put in – it was a save as for web and done. Whew!

For use by others I saved 4 different sizes and put them in a Google Drive for access.

and….to meet part of my Prisoner106 tasks – the bike is in the GIF to represent the Artists infiltrating the Village. 🙂

I think I will be seeing Dr. M at her tree house soon!

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