Notices by Downes 🍁 (downes@mastodon.social), page 25

Now I'm trying a toot with a picture to see if it works properly. Remember this? https://mastodon.social/media/yarv6_QKW4-GkUmL4kM

OK, trying again with a slightly revised IFTTT applet.

Testing my IFTTT applet to retweet Mastodon toots.

September 22, 2017. Yesterday the CBC meteorologist said we should take today off. So I did, and went cycling between Plantagenet and Vankleek Hill, on the Russell Trail. This is Caledonia Springs, about half way along, once the site of one of the best hotels on the CPR. People would come from Montreal or Ottawa to enjoy the country and take the natural spring waters. The last hotel in the town closed in 1955. Nothing left now but a bike trail and a sign. #smallstories https://mastodon.social/media/-pUdrGfSjA-Nmgn41nc

@lauraritchie I think it's just that I work in a building filled with scientists and engineers, and they tend to be more conservative and possessive.

@lauraritchie Oh of course it's useful! Thank you.

My email is stephen@downes.ca

I got an email asking if I'd like to contribute my video thoughts to David Wiley and George Siemens's new course on open education. Of course I would! So I recorded six short videos, one for each week, this afternoon. They'll be shown in the course (maybe) but here's a sneak preview #smallvideos :

Week 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPHYAFcUziA
Week 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVVULztlp1s
Week 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKaJNTgwHWc
Week 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3S3xOK6-GA
Week 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic1sRq46hys
Week 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_IaZG797c

p.s. I love the sort of web and media environment that can move that informally and at that speed.

Anyhow, I looked around a bit for confirmation that this could be an actual thing. I didn't really find anything in the literature related to STM (though it is vast and I may have missed something), but I did find 'hoierarchal temporal memory' being used in AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory

This and the previous post motivated by the last post by @x28de

We perceive an image all at once, as the millions of neural cells in the visual cortex reduce our sensation to objects and shapes we can then recognize by matching them to patterns in our memory.

It occured to me the other day that this is also the purpose of short-term memory (STM), except that it collects sensations (like speech) that occur over a range of time, rather than space. At any given time, STM is sensed in the same way visual information is sense, and is also recognized.

Finally well enough to be back in the office today. It was a persistent cold, the same sort I've had on various other occasions (you'd think I'd develop an immunity, but no...).

I caught a cold or something on the flight home (filled with children because it was August 30) and am spending my Labour Day weekend with sneezes an the sniffles. #bleah #smallstories #smallsadstories #firstworldproblems #achoo

@charlag @lauraritchie I've used it, but not for a long time. Eg. https://speakerdeck.com/downes/learning-in-a-digital-age-the-reality-and-the-myth

@lauraritchie I've been using YouTube Live with xSplit. It has been an exercise in failure thus far (for obscure reasons, eg., it couldn't record at high screen settings one time, another time I was presenting in complete darkness) and of course YouTube is set up a bit differently every time I go to use it, so I still don't have a decent workflow.

Listened to the stream, followed the Zimmerman reference, and made a post. http://www.downes.ca/post/67174 It doesn't always work this way, but this is the way it works. :)

@lauraritchie Did you set up the streaming yourself? What software/system did you use?

@lauraritchie Watching the recording. Audio and video are excellent.

@jennihayman Hiya Jenni, welcome to the social network of niceness and pleasantness. :)

Some photos for you to enjoy (ok, well, a lot of photos for you to enjoy...)

Warsaw: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157687911929886

Krakow: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157685715488574

Lodz: https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/albums/72157685662510830

They're best enjoyed as slide shows but Flickr doesn't link to shows directly - find the toggle in the upper right hand corner of the page. https://mastodon.social/media/6FkNctVfFEjHTC52z0M