reply | Chris Aldrich

Replied to Misnomer on Twitter (Twitter)

Justin Bieber is 25, Tom Cruise is 56.

Challenge an actor 31 years older than you to a fight. I’ll go first…

Sam Waterston, you’re a punk, and due for an ass beating. Name the place. pic.twitter.com/DZGjmzPvUD
— Misnomer (@Misnomer) June 10, 2019

So here are some of my choices:
Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Ben Kingsley, Joe Pesci, Malcolm McDowell, Bill Duke, J.T. Walsh, Sam Shepard, Wallace Shawn, Chevy Chase, Creed Bratton, Hervé Villechaize, Gary Burghoff, Paul Michael Glaser, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Mick Jagger, and Keith Richards

If death is on the line, I’ll take the Sicilian!

Replied to a tweet by

John Stewart (Twitter)

What are ways to engage students in conversation around “salvation through technology.” #domains19

One example I’ve heard: “No worries about our planet with plans for space exploration.”
— Keegan Long-Wheeler (@KeeganSLW) June 10, 2019

There's a long history of using tech and rhetoric around tech as a way out of Malthusian limits on resources. Tech as salvation has been a dominant way of thinking, but needs to be challenged/critiqued. #Domains19
— John Stewart (@JohnStewartPhD) June 10, 2019

I bookmarked a great post by Jim Luke (@econproph) a few weeks ago on scale and scope. I suspect that tech’s effect on education is heavily (if not permanently) scale-limited, but scope may be a better avenue going forward.

I also suspect that Cesar Hidalgo’s text Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies may provide a strong clue with some details. To some extent I think we’ve generally reached the Shannon limit for how much information we can pour into a single brain. We now need to rely on distributed and parallel networking among people to proceed forward.

Replied to What’s In a Domain Name? by

Alan Levine (Extend Activity Bank)

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/dream-sign-the-earth-utopia-279345/

Before one even starts learning how to manage an internet domain of their own, they face the step of choosing a name for what will be their street address on the internet. What should be on the left some of “something” dot “something” as one’s own internet address?

Some people stick with something close to or based on their name, so it clearly identifies”all their web sites?

Others have chosen a name that is more thematic, a play on words, a reference to interests or just a playful attitude.

There is no “correct” answer (but plenty of search result suggestions)- it’s a matter of what fits better for your personality, and as long as you are creating and sharing at that address.

What was the thinking behind your domain name?

This Activity was created June 7, 2019 by Alan Levine (@cogdog)
Difficulty: 1 (rated by author; 1=easy <--> 5=difficult)
Module: Domain Camp
Category: Domain Camp Week 1

My current domain name (boffosocko.com) came from a crazy brainstorm several years ago when I was registering a handful of domain names related to ideas in the entertainment industry. I was surprised that there were a handful of well-known and commonly used industry phrases that were freely available, so I scooped them all up. While I was doing that I noticed that the Variety-speak words related to boffo and socko were also available. In particular, I thought boffosocko.com was pretty cool and one day I’d come up with a use for it.

After a few years I decided that since I hadn’t been able to register my own name as a URL (there was a web designer who had beat me to it), I would co-opt boffosocko.com into use, and really, what could be a better name for a personal website?

“Boffo” and “socko” are neologisms in the family of Variety-speak after the well known business trade journal covering Tinseltown (often better known as Hollywood aka the Coast, aka H’w’d.)

Their definitions from Variety’s “slanguage” dictionary follow:

boff (also boffo, boffola) — outstanding (usually refers to box office performance); ” ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ has been boffo at the B.O.” (See also, socko, whammo)

sock (also socko) — very good (usually refers to box office performance); ” ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ has done socko B.O.” (See also, boff, whammo)

Incidentally, one of the first movies I saw on cable via HBO when our family first got it when I was a youth (and easily saw over 100 times that summer) was THE MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN. Within it, there’s a great scene where Kermit schmoozes a big Broadway producer (played by John Landis) that I’m sure must have had a profound effect on me.

Boffo Lenny! Socko Lenny!

Kermit the Frog, Impressario
in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

Replied to a tweet by

Bryan ✻llendyke (Twitter)

Slides from #HAXTheWeb @Apereo 19 -- https://t.co/UCLFRa0iTp #webcomponents @elmsln #NGDLE

Has way more content than I got to cover in a 45 minute talk.
— Bryan ✻llendyke (@btopro) June 4, 2019

Bryan, if you’re still in LA and have time, I’d love to sit down for coffee/drink and chat about HAXTheWeb and IndieWeb.

Replied to #oext356 #oextend Find a Desire Path | The Daily Extend (extend-daily.ecampusontario.ca)

Desire paths are “the trails that are instinctively chosen and created over time” in spite of constructed pathways.

In a recent post on The Open Faculty Patchbook, Maureen Glynn reflected on her experience with desire paths, both literal and the figurative ones we see in our courses.

“students will always find unanticipated and wonderful ways to enter, exit, and navigate through the learning events and environments that we design…”

For this Daily Extend, we ask you to either find and take a photo of a real desire path near you, or describe a “desire path” in the navigation of a course that you either took yourself or witnessed students taking. Bonus points for taking some kind of desire path route to completing this Daily, or the June Daily Extend Challenge as a whole!

“Caminito de deseo_desire path_Girona” by felixphs is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I mentioned it yesterday, but my “desire path” for the June Daily Extend Challenge is to accomplish the entire trip using only my personal website and just a few feeds in my feed reader rather than using Twitter directly.

smeuse n. \ ˈsmyüz, -üs\ plural -s
dialectal, England
: a hole in a hedge or wall, often created by the regular passage of animals

I always knew that it was more valuable and powerful to have my own domain and post my content there. Sadly, like many, around 2006 I started taking the well-paved roads provided by social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al. But in 2010 a few people began a “desire path” of travelling back through a more open and free internet. They created a proverbial smeuse called the IndieWeb through which many have now passed and which, over the passage of time, is becoming larger, better worn, and even comfortably paved with sidewalks and custom lanes for bicycles and other modes of transportation in many places. Best of all, they’ve created a system which doesn’t require travelling down the roads of others, but provides a lot more freedom and self-determination. They’re slowly, but surely, making it easier for everyone to choose their own desire path on the internet.

I consciously re-started down my old desire path in 2014 and have found a variety of students, teachers, and even friends have not only benefited from it, but that it opens up the ability for them to pick and choose their own paths.

Featured image: smeuse (animal path) flickr photo by debs-eye shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license