Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

When Dean guest blogged for me awhile back, he introduced a “humor” category and shared a few movies, so I figured I would do the same!

Remember the sound of a modem connecting over a phone line? Remember when the existence of “emoticons” was actually worthy of a news headline? Check out this blast from the past, I suspect from the early 1990s, from a television station in Toronto, Canada!

Wow have we ever seen a lot of changes on the Internet in a short amount of time! Via Linda Uhrenholt.

Other than the few that I mentioned in my original post, no one else bit. I was going to try a little matching game but it would likely be too easy. So here are the results and my analysis as to why they are indeed their wallpaper.

	Tim Lauer …leaves twitter to play catch with Nando.
	Steve Dembo….corporate…claims he was doing a presentation at the time. I hope there’s a baby or Cub image now
	Alan Levine (uses a rotating image script of which this is one) seeking relief from the Phoenix heat.
	Stephen Downes…a true east coaster
	D’Arcy Norman …Mr. Maui…seeking warmth from the Calgary cold.

All have some other great images on flickr. As a subscriber to their photos, these come as no surprise. If you think you know who someone is by their reading their blog, try looking at their photos. What is that saying about a picture being worth…?

Technorati Tags: flickr, wallpaper, desktop, alanlevine, stephendownes, timlauer, stevedembo, darcynorman

My wife snapped this photo at her elementary school’s water day. Care to add a caption?

I was perusing the EdubloggerCon photos and was trying to attach names to faces. Some were fairly recognizable but few names were tagged. This photo from Brian Crosby caught me eye. The gentleman in the bottom left has a large baseball for his wallpaper. I immediately figured it was Jeff Utecht and I was right. Jeff’s passion for baseball is revealed during his many twitter updates on Mariner’s baseball which he follows closely despite the time difference in Shanghai.

I commented on his blog and he let me know that it was a bit weird. This is part of the appeal of twitter as it tends to allow people to share more personal information among friends. (So maybe I shouldn’t be blabbing it here?…too late Jeff). It builds community and provides an opportunity to mini-blog without too much thought given its 140 character limitation. Many others have written much better stuff on twitter so I won’t go on too much here. Read Alan’s twitter stuff to understand it better.

So I thought it might be fun to play a little game. Email me a link to your current wallpaper or attach it and a link to your blog. If I get at least 5, I’ll set up a little matching game. I’d especially like these because they are major flickrites.

• Tim Lauer
• D’Arcy Norman
• Stephen Downes
• Steve Dembo
• Alan Levine

• Any EdubloggerConner or NECCer would be great

In case you had any doubt, here’s my current wallpaper:

Technorati Tags: wallpaper, edubloggercon, edubloggercon2007, necc2007, jeffutecht, flickr, briancrosby, twitter

Found this handy tool via twitter and I think Darren? Easypost.ca allows you to write a letter and send it to someone’s real address. I tried it and it worked great!

I thought it was kinda cool. Must be an upstart company as indicated by this on their FAQ section:

Who operates EasyPost.ca?
Some cool people from Canada and a small team of hamsters.

Anyway, it’s only in Canada…I love saying that. Maybe there’s a US equivalent?

I’ve changed theme for the first time in over a year. Rob’s new Mandingo theme looked good to me but it did require some customizing that I hadn’t got to till now. I not only liked the clean look but also it was more accommodating for larger screen resolutions. My previous template was best suited for 800×600 which would seem to fit the lowest common denominator approach. Being a hack of a designer, I know I don’t always take accessibility issues into consideration when designing but feel like I should be moving to a larger size site.

I had to configure the header to allow for my random header script. This was easy enough and now there are many options for this. I’m a big fan because it allows me to share and reuse my favourite photos. (Sorry D’arcy no Maui pictures, but if you like golf…) Okay, so it looks like I completely cloned D’arcy’s site, honest I didn’t mean to and I’ll try and figure out a way to make it different. In fairness,  although D’arcy’s been lamenting his switch between Drupal and Wordpress for a while, I was reading it in my reader and never did visit his site. Likely many reading this in their aggregator may never pop by for a visit and this entire post will seem useless.

My header fonts changes from image to image, does that count as being different? (This is beginning to sound more like a twitter post) Maybe this is how women feel when someone shows up at a party wearing the same dress? I may have to go home and change.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, themes, dnorman, shareski, mandingo

My wife is big fan of reality tv. I know, I can hear it already: “It’s not reality”, “I don’t watch a lot of tv”, “blah, blah, blah”….. I actually like a few as well.

This summer Fox has unveiled, On The Lot, a Mark Burnett production to give aspiring filmmakers a chance to strut their stuff and have a chance to earn a 1 million dollar development deal with Dreamworks.

There are great lessons to be learned for digital storytelling. In Monday’s episode, 18 contestants had to produce 1 minute comedies. Each was critiqued and contestants were provided feedback on their work. The show helps you see the challenge behind good storytelling. As an observer, you get insight into the qualities of good film making. Viewers can also submit videos for review.

Here’s one great example:

With summer coming and the television lineup dwindling, this might be something worth checking out.

Here’s my mother’s day tribute.

I’ll likely use this in church on Sunday.

Technorati Tags: mothersday, mothers, video, shareski