Well, this week’s stream was a train wreck. Luckily I could do some post-production to excise close to 25 minutes of mistakes. Audio continues to be my bane, but luckily the bava has always been a “b” blog. Special thanks to Meredith, Lauren and Taylor joining the live stream for letting me know my audio was not working so I could salvage a fairly decent 26 minutes of the show post facto.

But now for some show notes for those of you who will—intelligently I might add—avoid the carnage above

Reclaim Hosting

• The Reclaim EdTech team did its first formal presentation around Domains for the folks at UT Austin who are getting the Domains project up and running thanks to Heather Pleasants and Adam Rabonowitz. I love the way they are framing the session around digital presence and identity, and using the platform as a way of thinking through this across various departments. I wanted to show the following video by Tressie McMillan Cottom riffing on not being a brand when it comes digital identity, but time got away from me in the session, so sharing it on the bavaweekly cause I love it:

The benefits of marketing yourself as a brand has been explained from every possible angle. Tressie McMillan Cottom offers another idea in the 5th #BigHomieTips: “Don’t.” pic.twitter.com/UpyQc0KNIL

— Rap Portraits (@RapPortraits) January 30, 2022

• Lauren and I caught up with Jerry Slezak and Shannon Hauser at UMW to see how things are going, and that was really enjoyable. That makes Andy Rush, Shannon, and Jerry in one week, I might have to call Martha Burtis and Patrick Murray-John just to complete the circle
• Taylor and I caught up on Friday for a ds106radio chat about some of the awesome work he has been doing fixed the one-click Azuracast installer in Reclaim Cloud, as well as more expansive thinking around an open source media ecosystem that could be imagined through some of the next generation tools available in the Cloud. I blogged and linked to audio archive of the conversation, and if web-based radio, video, and streaming get you excited, this might be a fun one for you.

Talking Open Source Media Ecosystems on #ds106radio

• The chat with Taylor inspired me to spend the weekend installing PeerTube on a domain I have been squatting on for a while, namely reclaim.tv. That led me down a rabbit whole of using the PeerTube CLI tool to import all the Reclaim Hosting videos on Youtube over to reclaim.tv—it was fun and returned me to a few other projects I’ll blog about more here shortly.

bavacade

• I spent some time in this video pointing out some of my terrible soldering on the Stargate circuit board. I have replaced 4 chips at this point on the board, and I think I might have done more harm than good on the last soldering sojourn, but I won’t know for sure until I get the 7474 chips from Germany. I also took the leap and posted on the KLOV forum for help, so I am not flying totally blind, but it also a good reminder how far out of my element I am. Here is to hoping the 74HC74 chips I substituted for the 7474 are the cause of the green screen, but I am not optimistic. The bavacade pain continues

Stargate Arcade Machine with Green Screen of Death

Watching

Tess and I watched True Grit (2010) — my second time, Tess’s first—and we loved it. The writing in this film is just amazing, and Hailee Steinfield puts on a career performance in her first first film. Here is a clip from Mattie Ross negotiating with a horse trader, it is amazing!

We also watched the first two episodes of Severance, which I enjoyed, but had the strange feeling I had seen it before. It is very much like a self-conscious Black Mirror, but not sure it can sustain on just the one conceit—that said the acting is on point and I remain compelled. Also, the fact the tech company that the story centers around is called Lumon Industries was not lost on me, I wonder if Wiley can sue over one letter

I also watched an hour-long Untold documentary on Netflix recounting the Malice in the Palace incident back in 2004 when a full blown brawl cum riot took place at a Pistons Pacers game in the palace stadium in Auburn Hills. I had heard about this in passing, but not being a huge basketball fan it was just surface, but watching the documentary and seeing it was crazy. A lot of interesting ideas about thugs in sports and the racialized condemnation of the media weaved into the career altering fight for players like Jermaine O’Neal. Also the insanity of fandom and the ridiculous expectations for these young players, it does reinforce a growing inclination to avoid professional sports more generally given it can bring out the worst in everyone and is all too often the bastion of a pernicious nationalism.

Anto and I tried to watch Bigbug (2022) on Netflix, a film about futuristic house with android servants and smart appliances that attempt to protect their masters from the cyborg revolution. Maybe I had a hard time with the comic translation of this scifi dystopia, but the two registers didn’t work for me and I abandoned it after 30 minutes or so. We then tried to watch Tammy (2014), which was equally as bad—although I do like Melissa McCarthy at times a lot. Netflix can really suck you into some horrible choices, I am increasingly hating that service.

Finally, whenever I have those frustrating Netflix experiences I go back to the vault and pull out a old and arguably equally bad film like Continental Divide (1981)—but at least it wasn’t on Netflix This was John Belushi’s penultimate role, which has him auditioning for the romantic comedy genre. Not sure it is really his strength, and the remarkable thing about this film is how unfunny he is throughout most of it. The other remarkable thing is Tony Ganios (Perry from The Wanderers or, “leave the kid alone”) playing a Brooklyn football star come pre-historic mountain man. The above scene has Blair Brown, the ornithologist Belushi comes to interview, have a play-acting attack/love scene in the woods while Belushi watches. It’s all so bizarre, but I loved it.

Personal

• It is confirmed, I have the genetic blood disease hemochromatosis—that and $4.50 will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Gaelic warrior literally runs in my blood. Kind of a relief to know what it is that has been driving the iron carrying protein levels so high in my blood.
• Additionally, got some good news on the health front, my liver scan for damage from those consistently high ferritin levels came back clean, so looks like it is bloodletting and management of those levels from here on out, or so I hope.

Dante presiding over the Saturday market in Trento pic.twitter.com/RwdiWElkhE

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) February 19, 2022

• Other than that just work and walks with Duke. I have been preoccupied with the health related stuff and trying to remain constant, but not always as easy as I hope it will be, but that’s life!