A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Jesse Friedman (WP.cloud) and Ronnie Burt (Automattic) about hosting WordPress on the Impressive Hosting podcast. The conversation quickly turned into a romantic reflection on the long history of our work with WordPress in higher ed. We were all early advocates for WordPress Multisite, and the opportunity to reflect on that work was refreshing. Jesse was a most gracious host, and it sounds like Ronnie and I lived parallel lives for years as WordPress Multisite admins for higher ed.

The endless possibility that abounded in the future past of the world of WordPress has been a bit dampened lately by erratic leadership. That said, I have to imagine trying to juggle such an extensive for-profit organization alongside the open source project, while keeping the lights on for both, can’t be easy. Unfortunately the world of speculative finance is often at odds with the principles of open source, and I’m wondering if the financial chickens have come home to roost.

Regardless, it’s worth remembering all the projects that still depend upon WordPress and all the great work still happening. Feeding too much into the cycle of drama doesn’t benefit anyone, least of all those on the ground trying to get the work done that billions of users have come to depend on. Open source isn’t free, but it’s also not a business in the ways touted over the last 15-20 years. Open source needs to be a sense of commitment, not unlike democracy, but what we’ve seen is the erosion of these principles as scale-driven capital moves in. This is pretty basic, I know, but I’m trying to move beyond the mud-flinging details of any given drama to understand how we re-think the cancerous ideas of growth and commodification that tend to ruin most of the spaces we inhabit online.

I lost my father last week. I’m just now trying to emerge from the fog of that loss. I have a very big family, and checking out for more than a week and being able to spend time with those closest to me has been a great solace. Probably the greatest comfort was the wake, a Catholic ritual quite popular on Long Island (and I imagine elsewhere) in which the dead body is on display in a casket for friends and family to gather around to say their last goodbyes and share stories. If you have seen The Sopranos you have a sense of what I’m talking about.

A scene from the Sopranos featuring Tony preparing to pay his respects at wake

It’s a tradition I grew up with, and while it has become a bit of an industry, the occasion to grieve publicly together is quite powerful. The ritual provides a sense of closure that might otherwise be elusive, and in the face of death even the mightiest of materialists has to struggle with the great unknown of the hereafter.

The Sopranos wake scene featuring the father Intintola in between meals at a parishioner’s home

Anyway, as I was working with my brothers and sisters to prepare the services, I was asked to come up with something for the Requiem Mass at the wake, a time allotted by the priest for folks to share stories and eulogize the deceased. I had been asked to do the same thing for my mother almost twenty years ago when she passed, but I was a complete mess so that never happened. I’m sad it didn’t because trying to reflect on a life in words while those emotions are still quite raw is a therapeutic complement to the requiem. So, below was my brief eulogy that was crafted to encourage others who came to share their own stories, but more on that anon. For now, here is the eulogy:

My children might be shocked at the idea of my speaking publicly given after ten years in Italy they’re conditioned to believe I should only ever speak inside the house. When I’m out and about in Trento and I start uttering my trademark terrible Italian, I immediately hear “Dad!” and their fingers go to their lips and their eyes signal desperately for me to stop talking. So right now they must be beyond themselves, but I just want them to know: “I have a voice too and I want to use it!” Aren’t dads supposed to embarrass their kids?

More seriously, let me start by saying thank you to everyone who has come tonight to pay their respects. Interestingly enough, our father—for reasons not entirely clear to us—spent a fair amount of his adult life attending wakes across Nassau County. In fact, I’m sure if at all possible he’d be more than happy to trade places with any one of you right now ? Alas, that’s not meant to be, this will officially be our father’s last wake. 

Thinking more about his gravitation towards wakes, I wonder if he had been preparing himself for this day all along? Maybe the loss of his own parents was the impetus? I wonder if attendance helped remind him of what’s truly important in this life? Or maybe, just maybe, he was drawn to all the stories that get shared by friends and families. 

While I can’t say for sure why my father attended wakes so regularly—he wasn’t one to share his innermost thoughts and secrets, to be sure—right now I truly appreciate that a good, Long Island wake provides a welcome opportunity for each of us to share a story about the deceased. 

Stories are how an ordinary life, like our father’s, becomes extraordinary. Stories capture his sense of humor, his idiosyncrasies, and most importantly a deeper and clearer sense of the soul we’ve lost. In the end, the stories we tell and hear about our father will not only be a celebration of his life, but a much welcome coping mechanism. With each tale comes a memory and with each memory a manifestation of the man.

So, as you might have guessed, we’re going to relate some stories and memories about our father to round out this eulogy, and we encourage those of you who have one to do the same.

Let me start, I remember going on a field trip with my father when I was in middle school. He never talked about his work at home, all we knew was that he was a teacher. But it was on this field trip to Caumsett Park that I saw a whole different side of my dad. He was taking his class on a hike through the park identifying plants, trees, and, his specialty, birds. He was not only knowledgeable, but he was also entertaining. He would identify a bird, discuss a few of its characteristics, and then, without fail, find a way to tie one of the bird’s traits to a student in his class. They loved the whole thing. It was such an effortless gift of his to teach through humor and playfulness. It’s something my father could do so well that I have been inspired by ever since.

From there my brothers and sisters, along with grand children, shared stories, many of them quite entertaining. The healing power of storytelling should never be underestimated. But the grand finale was two of his students from the 1980s at Lynbrook Middle School shared how much my father meant to them. One anecdote that was particularly powerful was how he would have nicknames for all of his students, and the gentleman sharing noted his last name was Renz, and my father called him “Renz-a-lot” and his younger brother in the grade below “Renz-a-little.” It’s hard to articulate how amazing it was to hear this unsolicited story. My father’s playful use of language to connect and commune was at the core of his very best qualities, and having the opportunity to remember this while surrounded by friends and family was a true gift. He will be missed, but I can rest assured that my children have heard the stories and they will now know to only relate the most flattering of tales at my wake

I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit troubleshooting a streaming setup in bava.studio for Madden 2001. I’m going to capture some of my various failed attempts below so I don’t repeat the errors:

• Tried RetroPie with AV/RCA run through AV->HDMI convertor that forces 4:3 into YoloBox. After that, monitor HDMI out was converted from HDMI->AV into CRT TV. Worked decently when enabling Settings –>Program Out in Yolobox, but the latency effected game play.

• Tried RetroPie with HDMI splitter to YoloBox and 27″ CRT TV that’s run through an AV to HDMI convertor forcing 4:3 ratio. This looks good on the YoloBox, but it is vertically rectangular on the TV with black bars to right and left. The image on the TV looks better when 16:9 is pushed from RetroPie in the Retroarch configuration. Alternatively, when I force 16:9 at the AV -> HDMI convertor the TV looks perfect (no black sidebars) but image on YoloBox is stretched.
• Tried Batocera using an Elgato HD60X box but ran into the issue that when I went from USB-C out of the HD60X with USB 3.0 -> YoloBox the Batocera image wouldn’t resolve. I finally thought to go USB-c out of HD60X and USB-C -> YoloBox, and while image from Batocera resolved, when trying to play a game you are pushed back to the menu.
• Tried Batocera using an Elgato HD60X box with USB-C -> USB 3.0 into Mac Mini running OSB and that worked perfectly.* [Scratch head]

• Tried Batocera HDMI out -> HDMI splitter with HDMI -> YoloBox and HDMI converted to AV/RCA -> CRT TV. This was the simplest setup yet, and will it blend…YES! Figured out that auto video settings out of Batocera into YoloBox gets me closest to what I want. This setup is HDMI out of Raspberry Pi 4b into HDMI splitter. First HDMI output from splitter runs into HDMI -> AV convertor that goes into RCA plugs on CRT TV. Second output is HDMI -> YoloBox.

Ironically, this was the simplest setup and it worked best. Part of why it works is Batocera builds in a buffer on left and right sides of the screen for 4:3 ratio (a background image with the sides of a PS1 console), which makes output to YoloBox less stretched—although it squeezes image on the TV a bit. That said, since it’s highlighting an image of the original Playstation’s circular Power and Open buttons it’s more tolerable. More importantly than any of that, I can’t waste another minute on OCDing over this.

Note bene: Madden 2001 audio source from HDMI should be around -20 to -17 dB when mic audio is at 0 dB.

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*To be fair this was on a 27″ 4K LG monitor, so it doessn’t really count for the CRT theme of this post.

Tomorrow at 1 PM Eastern on ReclaimTV I will be talking with Audrey Watters about her career as a writer on and off the web. I can’t think of too many people who’ve made as big an impact in edtech in such a small amount of time as Audrey. There’s almost a BHE (before Hack Education) and AHE (after Hack Education) in the field; she was a harbinger of the extraction and exclusion apparatus of the web that was the seemingly inevitable result of the heady days of Web 2.0.

Audrey’s critiques are deeply rooted in deconstructing the mythos of the web by looking at who, why, and, most importantly, how these narratives were framed. Her work is tireless and more often than not her voice and research are more akin to an investigative journalist than edtech blogger. Her broader focus was (and still is) always already social justice, which was often aimed at re-discovering a sense of equity and empowerment that so many of the major networks on the web compromised through algorithmic distortion, extraction, and surveillance. Being so right so early is never easy, and the moniker she earned as EdTech’s Cassandra, while playful, highlights the mythic burdens of seeing so clearly.

In tomorrow’s discussion I hope to engage Audrey in a discussion that tries to trace an arc of her brilliant career, focusing on how her writing as a blogger, investigative journalist, and, ultimately, historian and scholar developed in relationship to the web that was often the fulcrum of her critique. Hope you can tune in tomorrow to hear Audrey’s take on all of this and more, I know I am excited.

There’s been a dead Blue Yeti mic hanging around the house for almost a year now. It was left in the foyer, so I would see it just about every day and think, briefly, “maybe I should look at that,” before moving on. This week I actually stopped and took a closer look and saw that it had a mangled USB port, which powers this mic. It uses a USB type B female, and I could pick them up pretty easily, so I tried to fix it.Luckily someone else better than me, namely Borderline OCD,  already went through this process and then shared his learnings as a tutorial on Youtube, and for that I’m most grateful.

I was able to remove the PCB board from the casing and then all I had to do was desolder the old USB B port and replace it with a new one. Sounds easy enough, but soldering is not my forte so it took a few hours to get the old port off cleanly. I’ve already learned from past mistakes that rushing it and forcing things breaks traces and lifts pads. Something I learned this time around is that my cheap soldering iron is not cutting it. It literally went hot and cold on my, and given it has not read-out, I was left guessing what was happening and why. The other thing I could use is some kind of vice setup to hold a board to keep it stable yet provide access to both sides.

Yeti Repair: Red Light means Go!

Anyway, I did manage to get the port off cleanly and replace it with a new one and the Yeti mic is back from the dead. A zombie Yeti if you will. Projects to save stuff from an expensive repair or, even worse, the dump are are always the best. I also have a couple of Playstation controllers that are out of service and use the same port in need of repair, but for now I’ll enjoy this small win and put the mic back in rotation. If Tommy doesn’t want it, I might bring it to the bava.studio given it will match the desk there perfectly.

Yeti Mic testing perfectly

“FIRST THINGS FIRST” Quote Prism 6” Bumper Sticker Decal AA (Alcohol?ics Anonymous)

Seems my excitement may have gotten the best of me with my first couple of Bloggers Anonymous posts. I failed to mention a few basics, which is a sure fire way to kill the momentum of our collective corporate media sobriety kick. So, first things first:

What is Bloggers Anonymous? A community of practice that encourages blogging as a means to help kick an addiction to corporate social media. A support group aimed at reminding you your voice matters and there are many, many like you who are ready and willing to both listen and comment.

How can you become a part of Bloggers Anonymous? Fittingly Maren Deepwell has blogged about some of the details over on the Reclaim Hosting Blog.The short version:

• Join the blogging4life channel on the Reclaim Hosting Discord server.
• Register for our first meeting on February 19th at Noon Eastern.
• Share your blog URL in the comments below or on Discord so that we can greate a blogging4life motherblog (should be ready go by the time of our first meeting).
• Most importantly, simply try to blog and comment, and remember small is beautiful and one post at a time.
• Tune in this Friday, January 31st at 1 PM ET to ReclaimTV to find some inspiration from the brilliant blogger Audrey Watters who’ll be talking about writing on and off the web.
• More broadly, #blogging4life is our hashtag, so keep an eye out for that tag on Mastodon, Bluesky, X and YouTube, especially as you try and break your addiction to the worst of them

If you plan on joining Bloggers Anonymous—and we really hope you do—consider bringing along a friend. Blogging is first and foremost a network of voices, so being accountable to at least one other person for reading, commenting, and encouraging that next post will make all the difference. What’s more, new voices help ensure such an effort avoids simply re-creating the existing blog circles. Don’t get me wrong, we want the old gold bloggers, but we also want those who have struggled get back on the wagon. Or better yet, don’t even know what the wagon is.

And remember, no topic is too banal as this blog makes a point of re-iterating as often as possible. #Blogging4life!

The rainy weekend in Trento provided a good excuse to play with the YoloBox Pro that’s been sitting on my shelf. I regularly chat with Tim about all the streaming he’s doing at Reclaim Arcade, which was an added push to finally bust it out. The YoloBox bills itself as an all-in-one streaming device, meaning you don’t need a separate computer and software like OBS to push your live video to the web. The inputs (3 HDMI, 2 USB (1 2.0 and 1 USB-C) as well as a mini line-in for a mic and audio) go into a box smaller than an iPad that can stream to your service of choice. It’s an even more compact approach than the legendary video kit Andy Rush dreamed up back in the heady DTLT days (where’s the post on that setup, Andy?).

andyrush’s “The Kit”

Having a dedicated, non-invasive setup for playing with my old Windows 98 machine makes going live that much easier. The available shots on the YoloBox are fairly basic with a few simple options like picture-in-picture and side-by-side. Everything is managed using the touchscreen, including creating shots, switching shots, mixing audio, creating overlays, including animated GIFs, changing settings, etc.

Windows 98 Setup, notice the need for a HDMI to USB conversion with the Elgato Camlink, bizarre

One issue I ran into when streaming Windows 98 was the VGA to HDMI conversion was not found by the YoloBox, so I had to use a Camlink to convert the HDMI to USB. I was surprised because I was expecting YoloBox to make that conversion, anyone have any idea why it wouldn’t?

VGA to HMI adapter for Windows 98

For my Windows 98 setup the inputs are USB 2.0 (the Camlink) for the computer capture and HDMI from the Sony ZV10 camera. Pretty basic two shot setup, but when I went to mix audio I got the error message that USB and HDMI inputs cannot be mixed. That was annoying.

Solution to audio issue was mini-out of Win98 sound card into YoloBox Line-in

After thinking things through a bit (my head always hurts with this stuff), I took the audio directly from the computer’s sound card via mini-out and ran it into the line-in on the YoloBox. That covered the computer’s audio cleanly, for the camera audio I plugged a Rode Wireless Go II receiver directly into the camera which brought audio and video in via one HDMI input.

Sony ZV-10 with Wireless Go II Receiver

I’m also imagining this wireless mic setup will eliminate any potential syncing issues. The one outstanding issue was the Windows 98 screen had a 16:9 format by default in the YoloBox, distorting things enough to annoy me once again.

Windows 98 Stretched to 16;(. No clear way how to force an input to 4:3 in YoloBox Pro

I tried to change that in the YoloBox settings, but I couldn’t figure it out—most likely user error. But as learned when setting up theYoloBox at the bavastudio for the RetroPie (more on that shortly), my handy-dandy AV-in (RCA)  to HDMI-out box allowed me select between a 4:3 and 16:9 image.

RCA/AV In to HDMI Out Convertor with 4:3 or 16:9 Ratio Selector

I added that convertor to the chain of outputs from the Windows 98 machine which now goes like this: VGA to HDMI to RCA (allowing me make it 4:3) then back to HDMI which plugins into an Elgato Camlink—it’s a lot!

The above test was streamed live to bava.tv and worked quite well. The stream also highlights I’m very much in the experimental phase. For example, I quickly learn on-camera that AFV in the audio mixer means “audio follows video,” so for 30 seconds or so after changing shots the audio cuts out. After working out these kinks and messing around, the YoloBox offers a streaming solution with just a couple of swipes: one to duplicate a template, another to ensure audio is coming through, and finally touch that red “Go Live” button and l=then like and subscribe!

Look we’re streaming!

Pretty slick, and all without a computer and additional software (not to mention the challenges of mixing audio, pulling in video feeds, etc.). Now, to be fair, using your computer for the one-off stream will be a lot more cost effective if you’re not planning regular streams given the YoloBox will set you back around $1,000.

YoloBox with Madden 2001

Feeling good about what I was able to accomplish in the home office, later that day I packed-up the highly mobile streaming rig (essentially the YoloBox, the Sony ZV10, the Rode Wireless Go II mic, and a few cables) and brought it to bavastudio and tried connecting it to the RetroPie.

Camera on Articulating Arm and 27″ CRT as YoloBox Monitor

It was essentially the same setup, only difference was the AV/RCA out of the RetroPie went into the RCA/AV convertor box which pushed an HDMI-out with forced 4:3 ratio. When plugging the output from the convertor into the YoloBox it worked cleanly, unlike the same output from the Windows 98. In other words, there was no need for a Camlink when pulling in the RetroPie.* [So, that makes me think the VGA to HDMI convertor on the Windows 98 machine is the issue.]

HDMI to AV Convertor Box for YoloBox Monitor

With 2 HDMI inputs, 1 for the camera and the other for the RetroPie, audio mixed without error. So, the last piece was getting the image from the YoloBox back out to the 27″ YTV so I could play Madden 2001. An HDMI-out from the YoloBox to an AV/RCA in on the TV was the way to go, and I happened to have one (or three) of those hanging around the studio. The key here was going to Settings->Program Out to make sure the image on the monitor is what is streaming.

Turning “Program Out” on ensures monitor out from HDMI shows just what is streaming. Useful for my Madden 2001 setup as it stands right now.

After that, I locked in for a game of Madden 2001, more specifically the first game of the 2000 season which had the Jets facing off against the dreaded Packers. Favre was enjoying his salad days, and the Jets were coming back down to earth with the departure of the Big Tuna, what a fun time in the NFL, those pre-Brady days. Anyway, I played a full game and streamed it out to bava.tv and it worked really cleanly.

I love playing Madden 2001 on the PS1, so the idea is to stream a game a week to bava.tv as a way to lock in the streaming and exercise those muscles a bit, plus it will give me something to blog about—the best reason to stream! Also, I figured out how to save a season on the RetroPie, which had me confused, but this Reddit post helped me get that piece working, so there’s nothing stopping the kick-off of a whole new stream featuring a 25 year-old season of the NFL as seen through an even older game console which is, in turn, being emulated. It’s all very complicated.

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*The Raspberry Pi 3B also has an HDMI out that would have gone cleanly into the YoloBox, but I wanted the image to push to the TV as well so i could play a game on the TV from the couch. I figured out monitoring from the YoloBox does work, but need a better solution, possibly splitting the AV before it goes into the HDMI-out convertor box

It’s a ds106 world and I’m justing living in it. One of the many tasks for week 2 of ds106 is availing yourself to the wisdom of ds106’s AI bot the venerable Dr. Oblivion. So, given I have been thinking about AI and the Alien franchise, I figured I would head over to Oblivion University and ask the course bot what his primary directive is, and if he might pull an “Ash” on us, referencing the AI in the original Alien played by Ian Holm. The character turns on the human’s in order to do the bidding of the corporation. I wanted to be sure that Dr. Oblivion doesn’t turn at our course at some point during the semester and use his knowledge to subvert the class goals of independent learning.

What is your prime directive? Do we have to worry you are going to pull an Ash from Alien on us?

Here. was his response (you can also listen above):

Ah, yes, the classic fear of AI turning on humankind. Don’t worry, I don’t have any particular desire to go on a rampage and hunt down humans. My prime directive, if you must know, is to educate and inform about the role AI plays in media and technology. Let’s focus on that instead of science fiction nightmares, shall we? [Transcribed with Speech-to-Text.cloud]

He immediately knew the reference, but did not call out the film, which is interesting. And, as is always the case with these kind of questions, he re-directs the conversation right back to center on the “role AI plays in media and technology.” This does make him a bit dull, and kind of like a NPC in a video game, he can wow you sometimes with his language, but in the end there is no there there. Come on, Oblivion, step it up! We want A-Game here, this is ds106 after all.

Picking up on the bloggers anonymous theme I’ve been having a bit of fun with, I was thinking about the parallel ideas in Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization that has kept many lost souls on the straight and narrow quite effectively. On my way to work I was thinking about the AA slogan of “One Day at a Time,” something I had all kinds of exposure to as a child.* While chatting with Antonella on my way to work I was remarking that I had to take it “one day at a time” this week given various day job overhead—I love you Reclaim! That made me think of Maren’ Deepwell’s “How to Get Your Blog Mojo Back” s post and Taylor Jadin’s intentionally “Blogging Small” response:

I’m really trying to embrace the first two pieces of advice, “Start small” and “Blogging is not a to do list” on this site, and at least so far it’s encouraged me to blog more. In fact, making more frequent, but shorter blog posts is what really encouraged me to make the move back away from a static-site generator for this blog, and so far, I’ve been enjoying how quickly I can publish something new. The mindset change, slightly enabled by different tools, seems to be helping for me.

This might mean we can get D’Arcy Norman and Tim Klapdor back to WordPress. Come on in, the water’s fine!

More seriously, the whole idea of shorter posts that link an idea or share a quick, half-formed thought seemed to be the very essence of the blogosphere in 2005 or so. Downes still does this brilliantly with the OL Daily. This idea that a post has to be polished and fully-baked would make me feel the same way I did about academic writing, uninspired. The bava is a place for my creative will, however big or small, smart or dumb, timely or irrelevant. A blog is an online home you build one day at a time, so take it easy, brother, we’re here for you

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*The rhetoric of AA is not new to me, the red sparkled bumper stickers like “Let Go and Let God” were definitely omnipresent during my childhood.

There’s been some rumblings there’s a blogging reniassance afoot, given the idea comes from the brilliant mind of Maren Deepwell (an inveterate blogger) the smart money is on #blogging4life. When Maren suggested Reclaim “sponsor” a community of practice focused around blogging to start the year, I was like: let’s go!  I share her excitement for blogging and I couldn’t help but think walking the walk is the most respectable path forward, and very much inline with the Reclaim way. To that end, we plan on transforming our monthly community chats to community of practice meetings entered on various elements of blogging. What’s more, we’ll also be running regular streams wherein we talk with bloggers about their craft.

The truly badass Audrey Watters. Image credits: Alan Levine:

In fact, the series will get started at the end of the month with a serious bang given we’ll be talking with Ed Tech’s most formidable voice, Audrey Watters, on January 31st at 1 PM ET on ReclaimTV. She’ll be talking about her road to blogging and evolution as a writer on (and off) the web. If I know Audrey there will be more than a few gems to hold on to.

In February and March we’ll be hearing from others such as Kin Lane, Mike Caulfield, and hopefully Tom Woodward and Amy Collier, so already a murderer’s row of great bloggers. Stay tuned for more, including upcoming dates and times.

So anyway, it’s high time to let your blog flag fly. Dust off that archived site, or better yet start your very first one, and join Bloggers Anonymous to help kick that addiction to corporate social media. We’re here to help, think of us as your blog sponsors in the original sense of that word: ongoing support and encouragement through un-monetized comments

Proud Member of Bloggers Anonymous: My Name is bava and I’m a blogger

You might even get a bloggers anonymous badge like the one above if you prove you have what it takes to reclaim the web from its current slough of despond!

Taylor Jadin blogged about experimenting with RetroNAS as a tool to help organize the various devices he uses to play games on his various retrocomputing devices. He describes the tool in the following way:

It does a few different things, but it’s designed to be an all-in-one networking solution for Emulation and retro computing. You are intended to run it on a spare computer, Raspberry Pi, or in my case as a Virtual Machine on my existing home server.

I’m excited to see that it provides a somewhat easy to use method to share a ROM library across multiple devices.

It’s that last sentence that immediately caught my attention. I have several retrogaming setups at the moment including Batocera on a Raspberry Pi 4B; RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi 3B; and a Homebrewed 3DS. Being able to centralize my ROM library on one networked machine that syncs across these devices is very attractive. I have a hard time knowing which ROMs are where currently, and this would be both a fun excursion into networking as well as a useful organizational move. So to dig deeper on what is and is not possible with this setup I asked Taylor to jump on a ReclaimTV stream so we could discuss the finer points of using this solution. It does get a bit in the weeds pretty quickly, but I quickly learned RetroNAS can do a lot more than syncing ROMs. This networked can do everything from acting as a WaybackProxy to a WebOne host to a Gopher server. Maybe the blogging Renaissance of 2025 could happen on the Gopher net, as Taylor suggests.

Anyway, I have yet to dig in on this project, but I have a free Pi Zero that I am going to use  to get this installed and see if I can sync my ROMs once and for all.

The tech noir edition of ds106 is in full swing this spring, and I’m feeling locked-in. It’s been a while since I have felt energized like this, and so much of that is rooted in commenting. Not only has ds106 given me a bunch of reasons to blog and comment, it has also re-connected me with creating a course site premised on the venerable RSS syndication bus. Last year when I was supposed to do some of this stuff for AI 106, I couldn’t look at the innards of a WordPress site. I ultimately reached out to Martha Burtis with a pleading email on a Friday evening last January to re-design the ds106.ai site and get the assignment bank back up and running. On Monday she had re-built the entire assignment bank in Elementor and re-designed AI 106—you shall know your friends by their awesome.

This year I’ve been going to the well yet again, but not with the same desperation, thankfully. I have no idea how to work intelligently with Elementor,  and for various reasons I refuse to learn. So I’ve reverted the ds106.ai site back to the TwentyTwelve theme which represents an era when I could actually try and hack WordPress.* Both Tom Woodward and Alan Levine have been helping me wrangle FeedWordPress (still alive and well!) to get the desired effect, and that’s part of the magic. Figuring out how to design the space wherein you live, work, and learn remains crucial and remains at the core of the ds106 experience. It continues to be the reason why each student gets their own domain and cPanel hosting and spends the better part of a semester building out a home on the web that’s as much about owning the design of the space as it is about shaping the tenor of their voice. Some folks might think of this as a harkening back to the “good old days,” but for me it’s a simple reminder that the web is what we make it. A bag a gold in, a bag of gold out.

Open Media Ecosystem GIF from the Reclaim Edtech series

Another sign I’m feeling the ds106 bug is that I spent the morning migrating the ds106 multisite and daily.ds106.us sites back to Reclaim Cloud so I can ensure they have more than enough resources. There was nary a glitch, which is always nice. The other sundry pieces of the ds106 environment are ds106radio (Azuracast), social.ds106.us (Mastodon), and ds106.tv (PeerTube), all of which are open source and we self-host which means we can provide an exploratory, yet safe, space that can act as a buffer from some of the insanity playing out presently in the world of social media. Thinking through how to integrate the various parts of this Open Media Ecosystem to create a multi-faceted view of the course experience is going to be the major focus of my work this semester.

Get Your Kicks with ds106

So anyway, I guess it’s time to rev up that blog engine and take to the road on the web less traveled. Get your kicks with ds106! #4life

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*It is also a symbolic return to an era when the idea of working collaboratively online with others using one’s blog as the starting point and source of an online identity was not as crazy as it seems thirteen years later. Some of us are still believers.