About Michael Smith

Posts by Michael Smith:

I’ll Tumblr For Ya

Jun 4, 2013

My poor blog has been ignored for far too long in favor of another. Yes I’ve been seduced by that simpler, easier, reflection-lite blogging platform Tumblr. Seven months ago it started innocently enough with a post including a few animated GIFs. I thought that it would be a great place to deposit GIFs that I’d made and never found a way to post here. But then I discovered the inconsistency of Tumblr’s GIF requirements and some of the voodoo-like solutions. So I left…

Four months later while creating an assignment for ds106, I discovered this idea of creating an animated GIF of a moment of television I watched in my youth in an old TV. So I put it on my Tumblr blog as well. I also sorted out how to get GIFs to work and posted a few more – and from the number of likes/reblogs, I discovered there are a lot of stoners on Tumblr. But then I got an idea…

A really good idea (at least I thought). How about I make a lot of little animated TV GIFs and put them in its own Tumblr blog. And born was Don’t Turn That Dial. How much fun I’ve been having watching old TV and creating these GIFs is something I will write in another post soon. But for now I need to keep going, there’s more to this Tumblr story.

Around the same time I started making TV GIFs, in another class, I was hosting a week long daily creative challenge with my students. I was participating and I decided to remix an image one of my students had posted. It was an animation inspired by an artist Ryan Seslow introduced me to, General Howe, who creates bloody re-visionings of 80s GI Joe cartoons. I loved these remixes and the spontaneity of trying to think of a way to animate any still image presented. The posted ended with this:

Never bring a JPG to a GIF fight – or I’ll animate the crap out of you.

Via Twitter, Ryan Seslow latched onto this idea, invited General Howe to discuss, and we created GIF Fight! – a weekly remix animation challenge. Another Tumblr blog yay! This time with collaborators, which has grown to four and we’ve been at it now for eleven weeks. To give you a sense of what we’ve been up to here’s what was made in round four with the three wheeler prompt:

I just love how each GIF Fight player has a completely different approach. Another Tumblr blog that needs its own reflection post.

But there’s more! Tim Owens, Daniel Phelps, and I have been collaborating on a Maker Commons (another post needed) and throwing ideas back and forth about integrating maker projects in the classroom. Daniel has been building a makerspace at York College and we got our first 3D printer. And one of the early learning curves with extrusion based 3d printing is calibrating the thing. Failed prints are very common as you’re getting to know your printer, and if you happen to not be around when this happens… PLA spaghetti mess! But sometimes the failed prints can be quite interesting:

I’m not the first person to notice the unique qualities of these objects one might find on the Island of Misfit Prints. And so why not aggregate these amazing images in a Tumblr blog! Enter SpaghettiBot! I think a lot of these pieces are actually quiet extraordinary and say something about the ‘failures’ in mass production (yes this needs to be written about as well in its own post).

With four Tumblr blogs going already, you’d think that was enough. But somehow there been room for one more. Back in the creative challenge class, we concocted this idea of meeting weekly to continue the practice. We framed it as a way to collaborate, learn some new digital tools, be creative, and hopefully make some cool stuff. Somehow memes became the motivating force (no pun intended, see below) behind what’s supposed to be a weekly challenge. And one of the first we tackled was Vadering:

This project is pretty young, and with the school year now over it might lie dormant until the fall. I do think our best effort was our Success Kid reenactments. It’s been lots of fun to make work with the students so I hope we continue Meme Fridays – yes another Tumblr blog (and writing about this one can wait a bit I think).

So while neglecting this blog in favor of five different Tumblr blogs, I’ve discovered a few things. First I love Tumblr for project blogs, they make so much sense if you have a simple concept and want to share it in one place. Don’t Turn That Dial has gotten a ton of ‘Notes’ and followers, which is really gratifying to see it well received. One post even received an infamous blue moderator tag for GIF, which leads to the post being promoted. I think it must have had something to do with the fact that a favorite 70s commercial character was used in a Family Guy episode – Look a Wagon Wheel!

Also, I’ve been exploring the blogs of the people who ‘like’ or ‘reblog’ my posts. And it has blown my mind how much content is aggregated into these mostly personal Tumblr blogs. People will sometimes have hundreds of posts, mostly reblogged, of things they find interesting. And it occurred to me that these are the digital equivalents of personal scrapbooks, school lockers, and notebook covers which include clippings of our favorite bands, fashion, celebrities, films, etc. cut out of magazines and pasted. It also made me think about how my scrapbooks could be stored in my mom’s house and forgotten for years, and then years later retrieved. But what happens to a Tumblr digital scrapbook forgotten for years, there’s potential for link rot and who knows, Tumblr could shut down – Posterous did. And all that interestingness you collected and might want to look back on years later is gone (this needs it’s own post too).

So almost three months and five Tumblr blogs I’m finally giving this blog, my real blog some love again. And as I’ve described, I have a lot more blogging to do!

All MOOCs and No Play Makes University Dull

Mar 22, 2013

A few days ago Audrey Watters tweeted a Say What Again Meme about MOOCs.

I pictured this particular Jules as a faculty member or instructional technologist finally freaking out on the administrator that is pressing him and the college to hurry up and join the future of higher education. Yes the MOOC craze could lead to gun violence. Believe it.

Here’s another kind of MOOC crazy that I thought I’d share. This one comes from the Overlook Hotel where a number of higher-ed administrators went on a retreat to discuss MOOCs and plan for the future. A curious faculty member stumbled upon a draft of their white paper. To her horror this is what she discovered.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Print a Nuclear Bomb

Mar 13, 2013

So the conversation about the future of 3D Printing is being highjacked by a man that is proselytizing that real openness only exists if we can have access to ‘things that institutions and industries have an interest in keeping from us – things like access, drugs, goods, guns.’

Yes guns! We need to print guns! Libertarians will see 3D printing as the ultimate solution for the citizenry to defend itself against ‘regulations in all its forms.’ 3D printers will become ubiquitous and then everyone will start printing guns.

Eventually we’ll be able to print enriched uranium. Then we’ll all be able to print a trigger and encasement for this fissible material. Small enough that every human being on the planet will be able to carry a concealed nuclear weapon. The football will be in everyone’s hands and that will create the perfect level playing field.

All I Need Is a Tasty Ethos

Mar 4, 2013

I think I get what Jim’s going after with this new animated GIF assignment, At Least It’s an Ethos. At first I thought I should just discover a well articulated life philosophy and Spicolli’s renouncing the material life is well, perfect. But then there was the thing about attaching an -ism to this ethos. So I did the best I could to find one.

Three Wheeling After Bambi

Feb 26, 2013

This animated GIF is built using another graphic gift I made from a 1983 Montgomery Ward Catalog of the boy on a three wheeler. Once I cleaned up the PNG, I was trying to think of how I might race this three wheeler. But before I decided to run down Bambi, I first set out how to animate the wheels, as it would look silly if they stayed static. This GIF of a wheel was a good resource as it basically illustrated that some motion blur and a couple of different versions would likely do the trick.

I think the front wheel did alright, but the back wheel looks a little static. The funny thing was once I chose the clip from Bambi, I didn’t need to worry about the wheels anymore. They ended up getting covered by the snow.

I love the old animation techniques where there are clear background, character, and foreground. Typically the background and foregrounds are static paintings and only the character is animated. But in the case of the snow scene there are these beautiful painterly splashes of snow in the foreground animated.

Fortunately these splashes of snow were fairly easy to select with the magic wand. These became new foreground mattes over the three wheeler as it trucked across the frame.

These mashups end up taking a lot longer than I expect, but I’ve really enjoyed pushing myself to get better and better with animation. Hope you dig it.

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Beastie Boys When I First Saw Them

Feb 20, 2013

I recently came across via BoingBoing this graphic designer that hosts a site Phil are Go! where he occasionally posts ‘graphic gifts.’ These are pieces of clip art that he’s created by lovingly extracting a particular graphic from a vintage advertisement.

This exercise would be a great ds106 assignment for a couple reasons *UPDATE now a ds106 assignment. One it’s a great for working on digital imaging skills. A good graphic gift would require a student to work with selections, the eraser tool, image touch ups (via contrast, sharpening, and possibly the clone stamp to remove scratches), and image resizing to create different versions. Also to maintain transparency and post to the web the image should likely be a PNG file.

The second benefit is that students would be creating interesting clip art that could be used by other students (or anyone on the web actually) for design and remix.

As for discovering good resources to work from, I like Phil are Go’s approach which is to look for vintage ads as a resource. I had actually downloaded a number of images of ads from Flickr a number of months ago, intending to use some elements for remix projects. It’s important to start with an image that’s fairly high resolution like this old ad for televisions that I found.

cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo by Wishbook

I decided to work on the top television with the feet. The two versions of the TV below are both PNG files where the screen is transparent. The idea is that some one could put anything in the tv (even a GIF) and use it as an old fashioned TV. At the top of the post I used the TV to put the Beastie Boys on a TV the way I originally saw music videos in the 80s.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The End of the World

Feb 17, 2013

With its atomic bomb-sized shock wave, the meteor that struck Siberia instantly caused end-of-the-world fears and has spawned a likely fleeting interest toward increasing our vigilance of the heavens above. But Slim Pickens knows how to ride out the end of the world:

Now let’s get this thing on the hump – we got some flyin’ to do!

Keep It Sealed – Keep It Clean

Feb 7, 2013

The #ETMOOC animated GIF conversation hosted by Jim Groom last night ended with a brief discussion of the potential the GIF to be cooped by the advertising industry. Seeking to capture the eyeballs of the ever shorter and shorter attention spans of the browsers of the internet the GIF seems perfect.

*UPDATE – This is actually a ds106 assignment too! Where did the Soda Go?

I thought I might give the corporates a look at what a proper GIF advertising campaign’s assets might look like. Your lovely video has me wondering how I might spray your lovely solution over every surface of my home to keep it free from dirt, marks, and/or stains. But these little GIF nuggets are the real viral bits to slather all over the internet.

Isn’t That Just Like a Rabbit?

Feb 6, 2013

Brings a knife to a gun fight.

I’ve been really enjoying the week long creative challenge that my commtech juniors and seniors have been undertaking as part of our portfolio class. They’ve shown me new sides of their work including a lot of drawing, mashups, and a particular meme in which someone has me throw a student out the window for asking the wrong question. I promptly let him know how serious I am about lazy students. But as soon as I saw DarkLordDre’s cartoon of Bugs Bunny vs. Mickey Mouse I was ready to try out a little remix based on the GI Joe Explodes GIFs by General Howe. The GIF is also a consideration of the scene from the Untouchables in which Sean Connery’s character is setup by a knife wheeling hood, only to be gunned down on his fire escape. Connery’s famous quote, “Isn’t that just like a wop? Brings a knife to a gun fight,” has been part of a regular trope in fiction:

A character comes into the scene armed with what he thinks is sufficient, only to find out he is severely outclassed weapon-wise, because he brought the entirely wrong type of weapon (usually the superior weapon is revealed after the first person has committed to a fight).

It’s possible though that I could say to my students, ‘Never bring a JPG to a GIF fight – or I’ll animate the crap out of you.’