The Retired Prospector

Levi spent his 40s, and the ’40s (1840s that is) panning, digging, clawing, mucking and chucking for gold in them hills, them dales, them vales and them northern, western and southern climes. Everywhere. He found enough to get by, if still being alive means he ‘got by’. But he’s down enough fingers and toes to be counted as statistically significant. And a bit of earlobe. And he ended the decade 45 pounds lighter. Let’s just say he wasn’t the best or luckiest prospector. So what did he get out of it? Stories. Stories that started in the Yukon and ended in Mexico. Started with a fortune, and ended in tragedy. And ones that went the other direction. That one’s not his though. His started near average and ended well below that. The graph looks mountainous. Not Himalayas though, more like Appalachians. And the end state of his story is not up any hill but down on the prairie. He spent his retired days telling them stories to anyone’d listen and buy him a round. You could tell he hadn’t given up the hunt for gold yet though. He was always hinting at that.  I’ll tell you more about Levi’s retired days later.

Broncos aren’t just for Super Bowls

1915, Oregon. Bonnie McCarroll didn’t have any trouble with the Broncos. Must not have been a Patriot.

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Week 2 Roundup

Week 2 is in the past. It’s now been a fortnight. What did I learn, you may ask? Or you may not. Either way, keep reading to find out.

Well, GIFfing ain’t easy to do as I blindly stumbled through figuring out GIMP and other GIF making things. But the results are fun so I’ll try it again sometime.

A little bit of western kindness was sent out to the Syrian Refugees settling in to our area quite nicely. Almost don’t really need any words to tell that story. Just need to see the smiles on their faces.

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A couple of Daily creates involving cows kept me up and running. These are the lifeblood of the experience for me. Baby steps for me.

And the biggest step forward, almost a grown up step, was what I learned about building your own Personal Cyberinfrastructure.  It was a great big realization for me. An epiphany even, if that’s not too strong a word. I work in a place where learners are trying to become more independent, adult learners. Putting the building of their own infrastructure into their own hands is a great big, key idea. The ideas and tools put forth in the lectures and article made a big shift in my thinking about how to achieve this. Thank you for that #Western106!

Let’s see where next week takes us! See you out in the wilds!

 

Say it Like The Peanut Butter

First ever GIF here for Western106 assignment and I went ultra complex using two whole images making the results worth two thousand words. Although lots of those words are the same so if you cross reference, eliminate remainders and carry the zero, it’s worth about 1150.

I fear I did not quite capture the essence of this scene, but this visual from Trainspotting always stuck with me. From Holy S%^t to S%^t-eating grin in 100 milliseconds. GIF is a hell of a drug.

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Western Kindness

Daily create is to tweet some kindness to someone you don’t know. No simpler kindness than to say thanks.

So I’d like to say thanks to some Newcomers to Canada for reminding us that the cold, white stuff bombarding us at this time of year in Canada actually has some simple, fun applications. Look at the smiles on their faces!

 

Approaching things

Just catching up on weaving my web… Yesterday’s daily create was to depict this here life pro tip visually: Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from either side.

That puts Mitch (a noted fool), this bull and this horse in a real sticky situation.

 

Have a Cow, Man

Today, the daily create is to paint a cow. I for one chose not to paint, but instead to spin around 453 times under the instruction of my two year old daughter and see what a cow looks like then. The result is above. This method causes no trauma to or paint on the cow. You may not want to do it to yourself more than zero times though.

 

The Lonesome, Crowded CyberInfrastructure

Full Disclosure: As an Open Participant with full-time work and a lovin’ family, I ain’t got a lot of time to ruminate on this here course. So what I got to give (and get), I got to give and get it quick. Enjoy it, but quick.

Today I watched the lecture and read the article about our Personal Cyberinfrastrcuture. And let me tell you, I dig this stuff. And the Wild West motif fits so well. Progress is messy and we don’t know where to start without a little help. Give me an idea of the equipment I can use and which stuff works and I’ll get started. Without the equipment, I’m just going to lie down in the sun here. Get some rest. Then get some more. With this stuff I’m gonna saddle up and go looking for gold in exciting places. 

This course/not course has given us that equipment by suggesting to us what to go out and get. Now I got a bunch of stuff, some idea how to use some of it, and most importantly, a drive and excitement to see what comes of it. I have a Soundcloud app on my phone. Still don’t know what it’s for exactly but I look at it with fun anticipation rather than thinking of a future chore. That’s because the other things I got and have used for this (like WordPress, Twitter, Digital Comic Museum etc) have been fun, useful and productive. Building a Personal Cyberinfrastrucutre could be a lonesome, overwhelming chore, but with a guide and some  pardners, it’s exciting personal progress. I reckon I’m gonna gonna do some panning for gold. Maybe make some myself (probably the fool’s kind, but it’s shiny, too).

Here’s some gold for ya to brighten your day

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