Daily Create Story

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I am an author.  When people ask me why I write…

Writing can have many different purposes.  Sometimes it can involve artistry and poetry…

Other times, it can involve simple documentation.  Such as recording the actions of these incredible women.

DS106 Showcase

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It’s pretty incredible the amount of work that this class has created.  There are some great minds in this class.  I was perusing many different assignments, seperating out those that especially struck my fancy, when I noticed a bit of a pattern.  All the assignments I was picking were visual.  Perhaps this is related to the fact that we are visual creatures, or perhaps it is simply that I am not a very good visual editor myself, and no how difficult it is to work with GIMP and Photoshop (hence my admiration).  Regardless, here are my top picks.

showcase1

I specifically remember seeing this blog post a while back, which inspired me to try my own hand at creating a medieval story.  I remember being impressed with the visuals of the storytelling, and with the ability to successfully utilize a much older art form.

showcase2

This is also from a post I remember seeing this semester that truly impressed me.  The visuals are striking.  The crumpled American flag immediately brings up connotations of broken politics, while the spade evokes the idea of cards (quite fitting for House of Cards) and the idea of chance or gambling.  Beautiful piece of work.

showcase3

This last piece is from a post that I don’t recall initially seeing.  I of course loved the reference to the Lord of the Rings, but was also impressed with the post itself, which was very thorough.  The image is simplistic, but also powerful.  Eyes are great symbols (as evidenced by Sauron) and is apparently a reference to Dragon Age.  This was obviously quite time-consuming, and therefore warranted my appreciation.

Google Translate Sings the National Anthem

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Browsing through possible assignments, I saw this one, and was immediately reminded of Google Translate Sings.  It’s a fun channel that takes songs, runs them through Google Translate, and then translates them back into English to see what changes ensue (most of which are pretty humorous).  I decided to run our national anthem through Google Translate.  I first began by plugging in the English lyrics, and translating them to Armenian.  I then translated the Armenian results to Norwegian, followed by Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and then back into English.  The results are below.  I think most of the major changes came when having to translate between different alphabet systems, especially in regards to Japanese, which has a very different structure than the original English.  Personally, my favorite section is where it states that we must “overnight document” that our flag was still there.

Oh, you say that you can you can see,
By the light of dawn
We welcome the fact that with pride
Finally, I will flash the dusk.
Who broad stripes and bright stars
For dangerous fight
We saw on the wall
Galant?
And, it lights the rocket red!
Bomb will explode in the air!
Overnight document
That our flag was still there.
Oh, they are the Stars and Stripes are still referred to as the wave
In a free land
And brave of the house.

RadioListen

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I’ve opted to review the Memes Show.  The topic is particularly relevant to our focus on the Internet.  The spread of memes is an excellent demonstration of the phenomenon of “going viral” and their popularity is incredible.  Naturally I was intrigued as to how a radio show would cover this topic.  I appreciated the structure of the show itself, first beginning with definitions and history regarding the memes before discussing some very popular/relevant memes.  I felt that some of the initial history segment was rather slow-going, but this quickly moved on to the memes themselves.  I appreciated the observation that some of the best memes seemingly materialize from nowhere.  This is very true, as you cannot predict what will become a meme.  I also recognized many of the memes discussed, including the Willy Wonka and Kermit the Frog memes.  In regards to audio work, I thought the use of background music was a nice way to tie everything together.  Sometimes there was some crackling in a few segments, especially when transitioning, but overall the show was pretty smooth.  Overall, excellent job!

 

A Pro-Sauron Retelling of LOTR

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I’ve really been enjoying fiddling with web pages, so I decided to take X-Ray Goggles to YouTube for this next assignment.  As a Lord of the Rings enthusiast, I decided to alter the video where Eowyn famously declares “I am no man” before stabbing the Witch King.  I changed the description to “Classic tale of boy meets girl” to imply a romance.  In a similar fashion I edited the name of the channel that posted the video.  I also altered most of the LOTR related suggested videos on the righthand side to have a pro-Sauron bent.  For example, I described the Mouth of Sauron as a diplomat who was brutally murdered.  This was another fun exercise demonstrating the power of words and context, in addition to the ease with which the web can be altered.  The full site can be seen here.

remixing-eowyn

Mayonnaise Search

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I wanted to experiment some more with X-Ray Goggles so I decided to take on the Personal Search Engine assignment.  I decided to make mine somewhat ridiculous, so… some backstory.  For years I have used the phrase, “Mayonnaise, peanuts, and cucumbers,” as an exclamation of frustration.  “Mayonnaise” for short, when the situation is only minimally frustrating.  So I decided to create the Mayonnaise search, with natural derivations such as Mmail, etc.  I also altered the “I’m feeling lucky” button to give you options such as, “I’m feeling peanuts.”  The hardest alteration was to adjust the name of the search itself, as Google was placed as an image.  Luckily I was able to erase the image and add my title as a heading.  Other personalizations included putting some science and politics search tabs towards the bottom, and being more forceful in encouraging citizens to vote.  Ultimately this was a fun exercise that again emphasized the malleability of the Internet.  The full site can be seen here.

my-search

Magical UMW

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Using the X-Ray goggles was much easier than I anticipated.  I’ve had some experience with html before, but this plug-in took care of the technical work for you.  I ultimately decided to edit UMW’s main site to make it fit within the Harry Potter universe.  I essentially made it appear that UMW is a magical school, reflecting this in much of the terminology and labels on the site.  I think my favorite part is a very small piece of editing towards the bottom, which states “Trump’s unconventional campaign has magical analysts puzzled.”  It makes it seem like the wizarding world is utterly perplexed by the rise of Trump!  Overall this was a fun exercise that demonstrates how malleable the web is and allows us to see how small changes can have big implications.  The full site can be viewed here.

Week 7 Summary

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This week’s focus was on the radio project.  I have to say this was a great experience as far as group projects go.  We were able to successfully coordinate and meet up in person four times during the week, and everyone contributed.  Most of the work came in the form of figuring out logistics and editing the sheer amount of audio recordings that we had generated.  But overall, this was a very positive experience.

In addition, the daily creates this week were a bit more image oriented.  The first one required some quick editing to mashup two images/historical events.

And the second involved going outside to perform some photography.

Radio Show Progress Week 2

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The radio show project went well and seemed to be relatively painless.  Our group met in person for the first time Monday morning.  During that meeting we finalized our show format and divided work assignments.  Essentially we decided to fully flesh out four events that recently went viral, and each of us would become experts on one of these topics.  Then during the show, we would present our information to the group, leading to a full discussion of each story. We agreed to meet Tuesday afternoon in the HCC to try recording our show.

We successfully reserved the recording studio for Tuesday, and, while we ultimately did not use any of the fancy equipment, we took advantage of the quiet space.  During this meeting we discussed the details of the project (for instance deciding that we would have one main host in charge of transitioning us from topic to topic).  After these final decisions were made, we launched into recording our show on Audacity.  The process was relatively smooth, and we successfully saved our initial footage.

We then met up Wednesday morning to go through our footage together to edit out extraneous bits, obvious pieces of outside noise, and areas where we broke off of the show to plan ahead for the next section.  I kept the file and attempted to upload the audacity project to google drive to allow for easier group editing, but this resulted in coded gibberish.  So instead, I did another run through of editing (tightening up distracting pauses, etc.) and placed some of our initial bumpers into the piece.  We then decided to meet up Friday morning for final editing.  During this meeting we inserted our commercial segment, played around with volume levels, and posted the result to soundcloud.  The final product is below!

Week 6 Summary

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This week really focused on getting us prepared for the radio show project.  Our group quickly put together a google doc for planning.  I used some of my weekly assignments to contribute to developing the project.  One of the assignments I completed was a fun little commercial for a fictitious Gods Away Spray to assist Xena when she has to deal with the meddling of Greek deities.  It’s lighthearted and funny, and I was quite proud of the end result.  I also completed a promo poster for our radio show through GIMP.  This took some playing around with, but I believe the outcome successfully communicates our theme in a clear and concise, yet engaging manner.  The full assessment of our progress can be seen in this post.

Other audio projects, while perhaps not directly assisting with the radio project, did help with improving my familiarity with Audacity.  I was able to experiment with tone while mimicking the style of Don LaFontaine.  I also had the opportunity to reclaim spam.  Finally, I continued my recurring theme of using Xena at every possible opportunity by creating a fictitious voicemail for the character.  Overall, this week really focused on audio, and more specifically with preparing us for this radio show project.  And I believe our group is ready to tackle the challenge!

In addition, the daily creates were somewhat more involved this week.  One involved making a gif:

Another involved poetry:

And the last one involved creating clones through messing with panoramas.  This one was especially fun as I was literally running around the room getting into position.  3 clones is pretty successful!