Comment on Show Your Work by Alex

What a perfect companion to ds106! I especially like this line: <em><strong>"Amateurs might lack formal training, but they’re all lifelong learners, and they make a point of learning in the open, so that others can learn from their failures and successes."</strong></em>

Comment on Show Your Work by Paul

I've used that book with ds106 a couple times. I think I heard it described as the best book about education that's not about education.

2005 rang, it wants its blogs back.

It’s taken me long enough but I’ve finally tweaked my site design to get it looking, and acting, like a bit of a micro-blogging feed. I want to reclaim my posts and keep them under my own control, where they can be found and read in isolation; without being sandwiched between crypto spam, clickbait, and […]

Bluesky’s Jay Graber on Decoder

A really interesting conversation with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber discussing the differences and between the two big federation protocols ActivityPub (used by Mastodon) and AT Protocol (used by Bluesky). It’s always interesting listening to Jay, very knowledgeable and balanced in her thinking. And also a delightful person in general.

A better blog design

After three or four failed attempts at perfecting my blog layout, I think I’ve finally managed to get it working the way I want. It’s been a frustrating challenge wrestling the WordPress editor into submission. I equal parts love it and loath it, due to it’s very, how can I put this… eccentric way of […]

Show Your Work

I thought I’d post this book recommendation after a series of interesting conversations at work about how our specific team shares their work online. Through blogs, websites, and social media we’ve built an engaged community of like-minded educators, creators, and researchers over the years, but how did we do it? Well, there really wasn’t any […]

God bless the Airport Express

It’s easy to forget about the little gadgets that were once really impressive little pieces of innovation for the home, yet over time end up stored away or recycled. However, there’s something magical about digging out an old relic from the attic and finding that it still works perfectly. That’s exactly what happened to me […]

Unrecord early gameplay looks incredible!

More blogs please.

I hate that social media took over as the primary platform for sharing personal content online. Blogging and personal website culture, which was once a staple of the internet, has slowly been replaced by bite-sized social media updates. As someone who has been online for donkey’s years now, I can’t help but feel nostalgic for […]

Fred Again.. Tiny Desk.. Magical

AI Jay-Z: Indistinguishable from Magic

This isn’t Jay-Z. It’s AI-generated. I heard it first thing this morning but didn’t share at first, because to be honest, I don’t know what to believe anymore 😂. The creator posted that it’s AI-generated vocals based on lyrics provided by the artists. Incredible! I honestly can’t tell that it’s computer generated, and that’s so […]

Chokepoint Capitalism: In Conversation

I really enjoyed this podcast episode featuring Cory Doctorow and Rebecca Giblin talking about their new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, discussing “why creative labor markets are rigged – and how to unrig them” – as one of the book’s taglines describes. It’s a great discussion, with some funny stories, passionate rants, and insightful facts about the […]

Comment on Connecting the Blogosphere to the Fediverse by Alex

In reply to <a href="https://alexmasters.com/connecting-the-blogosphere-to-the-fediverse/#comment-234">bavatuesdays</a>. I agree. I also don’t like the idea of a massive number of followers either, but I do like the idea of facilitating discovery, and bringing like-minded people together, much like the Reader feature built into the WordPress app. I think a follower model for finding and subscribing to blogs would be a nice feature to bring to federated social media, and would maybe help to jump people out of the micro-blogging feed and into our little homes on the web a little more often :)

Comment on Connecting the Blogosphere to the Fediverse by bavatuesdays

Hi Alex, Awesome post, and I have been thinking about trying to tie the bava.blog in through Mastodon somehow, any I have installed ActivityPub and WebFinger for the same reason. I like that the blog becomes followable, but I do worry about any ideas of massive when thinking about blogging. Your critique of Medium is right on, and I think the early context of blogging for me was a group of folks who were in specific field, like edtech. The blogosphere had communities almost like Geocities, folks had shared interests and were working through a long, distributed conversation. I think brevity and simplicity, married with the dreaded follower count in hopes of going massive missed the point. And that would be the one thing I would say here, don't worry about massiveness or readers, blog about what you are thinking, do it on the regular and eventually your work will find its way in to readers who are interested. I think returning the web to a connection of affinities and interests rather than topic chasing for views would be a big step towards avoiding the bandwagoning of things like AI, blockchain, blah, blah, blah. I understand the impulse to understand it, but the need to fashion it as another thing we need seems not that different than a top 10 list for edtech---boring at best, and insipid at always. Anyway, blog for those one of two folks you know are reading and keep the conversation alive, only then will glory, fame and fortune follow you home and steal your soul :)

Comment on My Earliest Memory by Alex

In reply to <a href="https://alexmasters.com/my-earliest-memory/#comment-232">Ryan Biddulph</a>. Thanks Ryan. Also, what an interesting early memory for you to have. It really is fascinating which memories stick and which ones just seem to disappear. Always wondered if they’re all still in there somewhere. I sure could use a memory upgrade!

Comment on My Earliest Memory by Ryan Biddulph

Fabulous memory. I recall being 4 years old, and no joke, Jimmy Carter being president in 1979 LOL. Odd for a little kid to remember that but I vividly picture him on the TV screen and hearing the name. Jogging our memory is fascinating.

Comment on WordPress got pretty awesome by Alex Masters

In reply to <a href="https://alexmasters.com/wordpress-got-pretty-awesome/#comment-229">bavatuesdays</a>. That’s a great point Jim. For a noob it’s no doubt a daunting task to tame the beast that is WordPress. I personally think the editor is better now than the pure php editing system it has replaced, but it’s still quite unintuitive. They seem a little stuck between a total reimagining of the admin experience and sticking to the traditional system. They can’t do both as they are now, I think it’s the worst of both worlds at the moment, but I also can’t see them shifting away from that classic admin experience that’s been the same for umpteen years. As for the block editor, I like it, but again, sticking with the traditional WordPress sidebar and jamming all the settings in nested menus is not nice at all. I think to give power to the people, they should maybe make a simpler WordPress product, something like Medium where you just sign up and type, but an open and federated platform. Cater for both ends of the spectrum. If you want more control, you can level up to full wp.com, then if you want full control, you can go self-hosted and get into some deeper web dev stuff. Or maybe this is where we step in and build what they won’t.

Comment on You can find me on Mastodon by Alex Masters

In reply to <a href="https://alexmasters.com/find-me-on-mastodon/#comment-228">bavatuesdays</a>. I do indeed! My god (flashback!) I forgot blogrolls were a thing. Ooo! I might create blog posts talking about good blogs to read and eventually make a page to feature them all; in homage to the sidebar of old. That’ll help me to have things to write about.

Comment on WordPress got pretty awesome by bavatuesdays

This may be unpopular, but I have to say the latest version of WordPress with the full site editor and Gutenberg is probably the ugliest Frankenstein creation I have seen in all my years of WordPress fandom. I have retreated from them with the classic WYSWYG editor and TwentyTen theme, so I have effectively remained 12 years behind :) That said, I think the latest WP developments have managed to place themselves in the odd position of being really, really hard for a noob and not nearly as elegant and useful as the market they are competing with, namely Squarespace and their like. They seem to be directly appealing to site designer and wanna-be PHP programmers rather than focusing on getting anyone who wants to get online quick and easy with a simple theme and a powerful editor. Which has always been their bread and butter. Maybe this is a push to get more people on wp.com? But with the standalone, self-hosted version it's like you have to have a degree to do the most basic of theme design and post editing with this latest version, and while it is good for many folks who have a deep understanding of web design and how WordPress works, it would be a total nightmare for anyone coming to this tool without it. I can't imagine showing the latest version of WP to a class or faculty member without real pushback. In fact, it has pushed me to play more with other tools like Ghost, which return the writing process back to a very clean, elegant experience that make it not only easier to manage, but more enjoyable overall. I have been a huge proponent of WordPress for over 15 years now, but I have to say their decisions for the last 5-7 years have really been bizarre to me, and I can't see it getting much better moving forward. Some folks who are essentially programmers will disagree, but that is simply because they see WordPress as the most fully featured coding framework on the web rather than the simple, powerful publishing platform it once was. Where's the power to the people, Alex?!

Comment on You can find me on Mastodon by bavatuesdays

I';ll be watching you there, and having comments open is a nice touch. You must know some important people in the blogosphere. Where is your blogroll? Come on now, if you are gonna bring back blogging, you have to go all in. Mastodon will simply be a way to drive traffic to the real attraction #4life!