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This video was made by the bots on the web, I received it after Colin, the Gifadog, had died that summer. It captured much of his last year. I only had to make minor adjustments to the video. He will be missed and remembered by many. It was a privilege to have shared 15 years of my life with him. 

RIP Gifadog

@mdvfunes (his human)

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Hello Tumblr! I still love you. 

It is so much easier to get galleries working here. I could not face my Wordpress today but shhhhhhh....don’t tell Alan!

I used Jack’s lovely tutorial. 

And I have done this assignment before but, why not do it again?

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Hey! Wait for me! I’m the slow one...

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Yesterday’s Daily Create asked us to:

“You’re about to start your own tour/travel guide company. What’s your company going to be named? Show us what kind of trips/holidays you’ll be offering to your clients? Show us your poster.”

Where better to go than our very own 106 exoplanet! I have been working on this for a while - such a simple change but it was not easy to work out how to do it!

“Now we can all go to Kepler 106 - where our shadow will always have company!”

Source

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Today’s DS106 Daily Create asked us to work with the most inspiring bot on the interwebz: Inspirobot and create an off-beat inspirational poster. My beloved bot did not disappoint when asked for wisdom that means nothing but seems to mean everything! The message reminded me of the DS106 Summer of Prisoner 106. I spent a lot of time making posters for the Village. I thought I would revisit one of my .psd and add a new message to my collection of Prisoner posters - this one by Inspirobot is very Prisoner 106, no? It was a good chance to update more of my fonts which I lost one an ‘update’ of Photoshop a while back...Be seeing you. 

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Today’s daily did not grab me and I did not want to miss ‘World Chocolate Day 2017′. Who knew it was a thing? Well, it is. And chocolate text is too. There are generators online, there are psd files to mess with, there are tutorials. I used this one  but cheated a little with the text to make it quicker. I used this one and it was easy. This was an online generator of chocolate text. There was this one too but I had enough chocolate for one day! 

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Ha. Playing with fonts - this one is called ‘cracked out’ to fit a cracked screen for today’s daily create: What was the last photo you took before your phone cracked?

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Well, I thought Time Magazine covers were so yesterday....

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Well, I could not resist @gifadog shows his teeth on demand and I am hooked on giffing with the Mosh App. The little guy is my growlery, though. He listens well and always helps me get to smiling again. 

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Well this one is special! The 2001 film runs as a theme in DS106 for as far back as I can remember and I do not why. I remember Talky Tina’s scene in the film and remembered making the gif for something to do with DS106 but cannot remember what...anyways, always a pleasure to make a new poster edit for today. The wonderful image for poster  by JUSTIN VANGENDEREN the rest just DS106 editing fun! (Click on the images for better res)

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Just playing with Dr Seuss and Comic Life. (click on image for better res)

I made a quick sketch first and then tried it it on Comic Life. 

“The daily create turns tears into smiles!”

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Create an artefact that marks a milestone I have reached - this was was hard to reach and I keep re-learning it! 

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A story in two images and in two sentences: We live, we die. (Click in the images for full effect)

My favourite tree in the whole world, the Handkerchief tree and I got to see the flowers be born, live and die this summer. Photos mine.

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I give you: ‘Frank Let The Dogs Out’ a dogged doggie band! 

@gifadog tells me he would pick musicians from dog (or dog related) named bands to accompany Frank the pug, his hero. 

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I have nothing to do with bicycles...ever! I do not even own one. So, just did a quick sketch and added @gifadog to the bike and a wee comic. 

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Well, who knew?

“...while these photos would be very amusing if the photographer had stumbled across such incidents, the simple fact of the matter is that these animals do not engage in these behaviours naturally; These photos have almost certainly been staged, and have almost certainly resulted in the animal being distressed, injured, or worse.”. The cruel cost of cute 

Something did not feel right about the photos. So I went clicking. 

The tweet that was used for today’s daily create was my first port of call. The thread is so long that I could not get to the end of it. Some of it rude, some of it funny, but mostly quite disturbing. The photos have no attribution in the tweet and it is captioned with a funny remark. I found the likely origin of the tweet in the Daily Mail - a UK paper not of the most high brow kind. 

I offer here the same note the article quoted at the start of this post offers:

“Note: While this article will consider the harm caused by unscrupulous photographers, we will not share their photos as a matter of principle. While links to the offending material will be provided for context, every effort has been made to ensure that the photographs used in this article are from reputable sources.”

I did read the article and it seems the name of the photographer is Hendy Mp. He has had quite a lot of coverage with these photos. Yet, not all is as it seems: 

“A Frog Riding a Beetle: Is This a Real Wildlife Photo or a Bunch of BS?”

Says PetaPixel in 2015.

And here is a quote from one of the experts the article consulted:

“I can’t stand these images. To someone very familiar with frogs, it’s really sad to see the poor frog in this situation. I don’t believe that these photos are of a naturally occurring situation. To me, they appear to be highly staged, and there is evidence that the frog is distressed. Frogs are so amazing without being used as props, it’s upsetting that they felt it necessary.”

And there were other articles explaining that ‘fake nature photography’ with fancy discovery stories by famous photographers is a ‘thing’ and that it is thought that some even use string and kill the animals to create the cute photos. It seems some have even won prizes for these feats of unethical photography. 

TIL  that humans will do anything to get internet famous. Nah. I knew that all along. 

I am glad I decided to click on the tweet and spend a little time looking at what was behind the photos; even if there is only a tiny chance that some of what I read is happening to rare frogs and other internet desirable animals, I will not disseminate the photos as a matter of principle. 

Instead I will have an ‘ethically sourced picture of a cute red-eyed tree frog by Brian Gratwicke’ be my daily create today. I did Mosh it!