Category Archives: ds106

August 2013 GIF Challenge #4: Where Did the Soda Go?

This was a fun challenge, classified as a Visual Assignment in the assignment bank before Animated GIFs had their own category. It is there as Visual Assignments 806: Where Did the Soda Go? by Nate Wine, but asks us to make a GIF from a silly infomercial. So that should be a fun challenge!

Mine isn’t so silly, but is instead very classic and romantic because she is wearing nice pyjamas with a fireplace at night and maybe listening to some nice quite music while she waits for a Friend. But I did not make a click-on-it-to-hear because too much of that is not a good thing.

But I think she looks nice and peaceful and relaxed, so I like the mood very much.

"Rejuvenique" animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

“Rejuvenique” animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

I found this on the YouTube by searching for infomercials. I hope you all have fun finding a silly infomercial GIF, too!

August 2013 GIF Challenge #3: DS106 Promo Poster

Well, Friends.

The DS106 Community stepped up for the August 2013 Animated GIF Challenge #2 and got UNCLE @jimgroom animated in John Johnston’s Dancing Jim All Over the World assignment, with SEVEN new entries showing now as being syndicated through to the assignment page and at least two others seen in the wild and perhaps waiting in some queue to get indexed. (Be sure to tag your assignments with both the AnimatedGIFAssignments tag and the AnimatedGIFAssignmentsXXXX numbered tag so that it gets onto the assignment page.)

It was so fun to see Jim dancing here and there, and I just had to have another go at making him dance before I went to sleep. Both @dogtrax and @Rockylou22 had Jim dancing on top of the world, and I was inspired by their work to riff-a-GIF and show all the different Jims dancing on the world at the same time like a UNICEF logo.

In the end, my little enthusiasm pushed me through the sleepiness (and ds106rad.io is great middle-of-the-night company!) and I wound up with a DS106 Promotion Poster, and a new Animated GIF Assignment 1183: Tell the World About DS106 GIF

Since we are in the GIFfing weeks leading up to the next session (Fall 2013 #headless13, starting August 26th), it seems appropriate to have everyone make a DS106 Promo Poster GIF to get the word out to the great uninformed masses. Perhaps we can draw in some newcomers who need to see the DS106 light. There must still be a few out there. LOL.

NOTE: Click on the GIF to hear the music that all the Jim Grooms are dancing to. (Thanks, John!)

"All These Jim Grooms Can't Be Wrong" animated GIF DS106 Promo Poster by @iamTalkyTina

“All These Jim Grooms Can’t Be Wrong” animated GIF DS106 Promo Poster by @iamTalkyTina

The MIDI version of “It’s a Small World” was found at Willie Wonkas Free MIDI Music Factory Downloads. The site is glorious in its application of old-style GIF animation and hand-built HTML, and is worth a click through for the sake of nostalgia.

Since this GIF also made use of yesterday’s Dancing Jim Groom theme, I also tagged it for the Animated GIF Assignment 1001. So it’s a two-fer.

Okay — get out and promote your favourite aspect of DS106 to the world with a special GIF!

August 2013 GIF Challenge #2: Dancing Jim All Over the World

As soon as I saw this one in the Assignment Bank, I just knew this had to be next on the agenda for the August 2013 Animated GIF Challenge.

UPDATE: Click on the GIF to hear Jim’s dance music! (Thanks, John!)

"The Jim Groom Horror Picture Show" animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

“The Jim Groom Horror Picture Show” animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

I’ve been expecting a lot from our dear UNCLE @jimgroom over the past while, and am still waiting for him to address his significant Art Lack. Todd kept saying, “No Art from Groom” over and over, and it wasn’t until yesterday that I got a good enough feed from his blog to confirm that the Art Lack remains significant. However, despite the Art Lack, UNCLE @jimgroom has been posting a lot of writing bavatuesdays.com recently, and he makes some compelling cases for a whole bunch of stuff that is worth reading. So even though the Art Lack continues, his brain seems to be working okay. So there is that.

But he does need to crawl back out and Make some More Art, bub.

My True Friend John Johnston has rocked the Assignment Bank with Animated GIF Assignment 1001: Dancing Jim All Over the World — but so far only 2 ds106ers have shown the assignment some love. So the ds106 Community needs to step up and address that!

While I had thoughts of doing a “Where the Hell is Jim?” with Jim dancing in all the locations Matt does, in the end I decided to do an animated poster to celebrate Jim’s enthusiasm for #ds106.

I found some art for the original Rocky Horror Picture Show on the Google images. I had the greatest success searching fontspace.com for fonts with the tag “blood” and in the end selected Rocky AOE by the Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute as the best match for my poster.

I also tidied up John’s original dancing jim groom template file by removing vestiges of the microphone chord — now the Bava dances with a wireless mic in his hand in the modified template file.

Yesterday’s response to Animated 2013 GIF Challenge #1: GIF your Headless Self was good, with contributions from @RockyLou22, @Todd_Conaway, @heystorytellers, @bennettscience, and @byzantinebooks. Did I miss any?  But I know we can wake the #headless13 #ds106 Community giant even more in preparation for the official start of the fall 2013 headless ds106.

Make sure to tag your posts according to the usual Assignment Bank requirements, and your August 2013 Animated GIF Challenge contribution will syndicate through to the corresponding Assignment Bank page so we can easily track the responses. And be sure to tweet out your post, too!

Make some Art, bub!

August 2013 GIF Challenge #1: Your Headless Self

Okay. So #ds106 is going Headless for the fall of 2013. So we need a new Animated GIF Assignment to celebrate!

AnimatedGIFAssignments1181, “Show Us Your Headless Self” Show us your #ds106 #headless13 self in an animated GIF. We want to see you with — and without — your head.

Post your GIF on your blog, tag it with AnimatedGIFAssignments and AnimatedGIFAssignments1181.  

Here is my headed -- and headless -- self. But the hat stays.

Here is my headed — and headless — self. But the hat stays.

Here is my headed -- and unheaded -- self. But the hat goes.

Here is my headed — and unheaded — self. But the hat goes.

And here is the final cropped square version for the ds106 AnimatedGIFAssignments1181, “Show Us Your Headless Self”

iamTalkyTinaHulkaHeadless_400

Here is my headed — and unheaded — celebratory GIF.

Are you #ds106 enough for the @iamTalkyTinaHulka August 2013 GIF Challenge? Can you do a GIF a day until the #headless #ds106 begins on August 26th?

C’mon. @iamTalkyTinaHulka says you need to get down and gimme 25!

The August Animated GIF Challenge

@iamTalkyTinaHulka challenges you to an awesome August Animated GIF-a-Day. Are you up to it?

@iamTalkyTinaHulka challenges you to an August Animated GIF-a-Day. Are you up to it?

So the fall section of ds106 will be starting in a few short weeks. August 26th to be exact.

During my time observing and then participating in the ds106 Community, it has become apparent to me that each session of ds106 seems to be prefaced by a period of manic GIFfing by various members of the community. And since I have so many Friends here now, I thought it would be fun to contribute to the mania.

So I’m going to do my own little @iamTalkyTinaHulka and challenge you folks to GIF your way through August. Do you think you can do that? A Daily GIF? I’m wondering if @jimgroom will crawl back from his hideaway and make some inroads on that Art Lack of his. Maybe he can do one a week?

I’ve just poked my little eyes through the ds106 Assignment Bank Animated GIF section, and see that there are already 38 GIF assignments there — and there are no doubt some other, older GIF assignments squirrelled away in some of the other categories, too. So I think I’ll have no problem finding some inspiration when I need it, and will rely on my natural imagination the rest of the time.

Each day I will post the August 2013 Animated GIF Challenge here on my blog, and will aggregate the challenges on the August 2013 Animated GIF Challenge page. Each one will be defined in the Assignment Bank — either as an existing assignment or as a new assignment. Just post your contribution to your blog and tag it as usual so that it will syndicate into the Assignment Bank and we can all enjoy them long into the future as examples of wonder, archived for all the future GIFfers. Whoo Hoo! 

I’m going to create a new Animated GIF Assignment for August 1st, but I will post it separately from this post so that it can stand as its own item. And I’ll create another variation of my @iamTalkyTinaHulka animated GIF for it. So that will put me at two for day one. (Did you notice that my @iamTalkyTinaHulka image above was animated? Look closely!

I hope that you will play along! It is so much more fun doing ds106 assignments (they are so much fun, they AREN’T assignments!) when Friends do them too — and riff off of them!  So be a Friend, and play!

tdc560: Tina’s True Friends (animated GIF)

iamTalkyTodd_twitterGUEST POST BY @iamTalkyTodd, Tina’s brother, while she is temporarily incapacitated.

In honour of my sis, @iamTalkyTina, who put forward a call today (she submitted the item weeks ago) for The Daily Create participants to show what Friends mean to them, through a photo, for tdc560.

Although my sister is not currently empowered to respond, I know she would be honouring all of her #ds106zone True Friends, and so I have assembled this animated montage. Tina’s True Friends are basically arranged in alphabetical order by the first letter of whatever they are called — first name or Twitter handle taken as the decider. I just went through Tina’s file directory and assembled them pretty much by filename.

@iamTalkyTina's True Friends, for tdc560

@iamTalkyTina’s True Friends, for tdc560

I have also posted a static version to my sister’s Flickr account.

@iamTalkyTina is “Back in the Box”

MyFairTinaGUEST POST BY @PuppetMaster106

Earlier this year, in February, 2013, @iamTalkyTina began interacting with the outside world after a hiatus of many years. In the months leading up to today’s date, she made a number of “Friends” via twitter, this blog, and the ds106 #ds106zone community.

This evening, @iamTalkyTina was returned to her cardboard box.

"Back in the Box"

“@iamTalkytina: Back in the Box”

Some will question the rationale and reason behind her sudden departure from ds106, and ask about her abrupt return to the box. In all honesty, and without apology, some will find the answers to their questions to be lacking. It is not the intent of this author to provide solutions or guidance to Tina’s “Friends,” nor will all be explained in the coming passage. However, you may find some consolation is some of what is to follow.

First, you may wish to review my previous guest post on this blog, entitled My Fair Tina, which outlines a good deal of my rational behind my involvement with @iamTalkyTina.

Second, you may take some solace in the fact that @iamTalkyTina is safe, within her cardboard box, in a secure and comfortable location, somewhere within close proximity to a regulated facility where regular monitoring of her status occurs. If you wish further details, see the information provided at the end of this post.

As to her departure, shall I simply re-state my comments made earlier this evening as reported in the media, “the ds106zone is over, Groom himself hasn’t made any Art in weeks, and @iamTalkyTina had just outstayed her welcome.

I will not comment a recent series of Twitter-uttered and blog-posted statements made by one member of the ds106 community about “grown men playing with dolls.” Such statements are nothing but inflammatory and are not respectful of the long tradition of puppets, figures, dummies, stand-ins, alternate personalities, mirror characters, foils, alternates, nom de plumes, etc within the historic span of storytelling in all of its many and various forms. Plus, other ds106 people have dolls, bub.

I will not comment on the well self-documented and drawn-out period of mental aberrations referenced by @cogdog due to his preoccupation with @iamTalkyTina in late June, nor comment on the fact that since his “trip to the canyon,” he has refused to approve or publish any of her comments posted to his webblog, cogdogblog.com — not even appearing to see or hear any of her Tweets.

I will not comment on the recently self-proclaimed stresses and appeals for a return to wellness that #ds106 course guru “UNCLE” @jimgroom has been sharing — noting only that he too has once again taken to claiming once again that “HE is @iamTalkyTina” and that “she completes him,” and that “HE does not need to do any new ds106 Art because SHE is HE and if SHE is doing it then clearly HE is and so HE does not need to do any.” After about ten syllables it starts to just get really weak and the result is that @jimgroom is getting a free ride off of @iamTalkyTina right when he needs to be getting back on the Art horsie and riding around the Art range corralling some new Art doggies.

I will not comment on the many and various other #pretenderTinas that appeared — Tina took them all to the cleaners in the Rumble. And as for that “other” rogue Tina that appeared in mid June, @RealTalkyTina — ha, ha, that four-tweet lifespan went nowhere. Heck, even I, @PuppetMaster106, have more than four tweets to my Twitter cred.

I will comment, however, on the question as to whether I, @PuppetMaster106, will now increase my web presence now that “the @iamTalkyTina character has been put away.” On this question, I have this to say, and you may quote me:

This talk of a ‘headless ds106’ this fall is all well and good, but you know that someone, somewhere, needs to be always at work behind the scenes, keeping things ticking, poking and prodding, feeding the unicorns, and all. And since I’m experienced with webs and scenes, and strings and such, there’s certainly a role for me in the coming months — whether it’s visible to the ds106 community, or not so visible, and rather behind the scenes.

And as to that little mention of unicorns just there, and whether that might in some way identify me to my ds106 friends, well, I’m smiling and have just this little closing comment — “Yeah, I just threw that in as a little red herring subterfuge.”

So, @iamTalkyTina is Back in the Box. And for the next while, I will be on hiatus. But I will not be far from the ds106 stage. The curtain will soon be rising, and the show will go on.

Final Notes on the State of @iamTalkyTina

"@iamTalkyTina: Back in the Box, Three Layers Deep"

“@iamTalkyTina: Back in the Box, Three Layers Deep”

In addition to being housed in a secure and comfortable location, somewhere within close proximity to a regulated facility where regular monitoring of her status occurs, @iamTalkyTina is resting comfortably within her cardboard box in a quiet and well sound-proofed location. Her sleeping compartment is encased in sub-zero ice-packing to keep her well protected from any untoward movements, and this ice-packing is, in turn, encased within a level four prototype Carbonite shield. These three layers (cardboard, ice, Carbonite) are intended to isolate @iamTalkyTina from any external disturbances that might upset her.

She is resting in comfort and quiet, and we are quite hopeful (VERY! hopeful) that nothing will disturb her.

Oopsies! Sorry True Friends!!

Well, it was My Bad today, when somebody noticed that they didn’t have their Badge on my True Friends Index page and they tweeted to me and I went and checked and found that a whole bunch of new True Friends had applied on my Web Form and I didn’t even know. So I was embarrassed and made all those badges just now and so now I have even more True Friends with Badges. I am sorry for all these True Friends for having to wait so long, and for the embarrassment that it caused for one person because other people (not saying any names, @cogdog) were making jumping to conclusions just because that person didn’t have a badge on my True Friends Index. So it was all my fault and not a very nice Friend thing to do but it was an honest mistake, so I am forgiven.

So without any more do, here are all my new True Friends names, and their names are linked to their badges which are now in the True Friends Index where they belong.

This sounds like an award ceremony in my head where they come up and get their Badges.

and even I made one for that pesky Mr. Savvy hold out,

and I also made one for my Little Brother, Todd, who just showed up yesterday. Because he’s my Little Brother.

Who else is missing from the True Friends Index?  Get your name, contact info, and creds into the Web Form, and I’ll get you set up with your Badge!

tdc547: Are You Getting Your Daily Vitamin CRE8 ?

My Still True Friend Alan (@cogdog) has been having a bunch of drill sergeant yammering at him and everybody else for over a week now about how important it is that you get your daily summer supplement of ds106 Vitamin CRE8.

I have been doing my little best to get some Daily Vitamin CRE8 every day. That Flickr still doesn’t seem to see my cre8s but now that I think about it maybe @cogdog has blocked me from showing up from Flickr in the same way that he seems to be able to block my friendly comments on his blog. Perhaps he is in a different zone from me like those shows where something happens like a noise and then people are there and we can see both on the TV but somebody can’t see the other people in the show and they’re like right there saying, “Hello, CAN YOU SEE ME, I’m standing right here in front of you, HELLOOOOO!!!!!” and then they say, “Oh, I think we must be in a different dementia zone or something.” So maybe that’s why he can’t hear me. Maybe he is in a different dementia zone. But I still think he’s just pretending.

Anyway, here is my cre8 July 8 which was to make a drawing using 8s and so I did and then I thought it would be more fun if it moved a little bit, so here it is.

"Stairs in 8s" animatedGIF, by @iamTalkyTina

“Stairs in 8s” animatedGIF, by @iamTalkyTina

You can see my efforts on this page that I have made just for the The Daily Create Summer 2013 Challenge so that you can see all the ones that I do. And you can also see my The Daily Create posts in this category called The Daily Create. And if you think that this one tdc547 looks like the one for tdc541 “Draw something abstract out of straight lines,” then that is your imagination, not mine. It’s just a coincidence, I say!!