Tag Archives: ds106

Woes of the 5 Minute Show

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QUESTION:

Can anyone explain how in Audacity you can put together mutiple audio tracks easier? For example, if I had a track of me talking and a background track of music that I then wanted to add to something exactly like that, how could I do this without cutting and pasting 2 tracks? Is there a way to do it all as one track?

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[audio:https://imlikesoblonde.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ds106-3_Freedom.mp3|titles=5 Minute Sesh of Freedom!]

So Aliyah and I really started working on our radio show last night although we had a we had a good idea about what we want to do for the thirty minute radio show.

We decided it would be fun to go back to the old school day of radio which is why for our project we are re-creating the radio play “I Saw Myself Running” by Anthony Ellis which Aired Feb 22, 1953.

We even managed to get my suitemate Elena to help record some voices for us. She has a great acting voice and it’s a lot of fun to get more people to help us out as it is just the two of us (POWER DUO!! [Aliyah picked this song, hahahahah :D)

It took a lot longer than expected to record and piece together all the audio we had. We ended up working on it from 8pm until 12am and that was only to get the 6 minute section of our show up D:

We ended up using an extra song because while we were originally going to have 1 oldie’s song play, the way that the timing worked out, we would have less than 5 minutes of audio. We didn’t have time to work on another segment of the mystery audio, so hence the song for tonight.

But Aliyah and I have plans to work on it tomorrow before break and during break as well.

Audio Info:

1st Song: Elvis Presley “That’s All Right Mama”

2nd Song: Bill Haley and the Comets “Rock around the Clock”

#1 Music for Audio Bumper –> Script we based our #ds106 bumper off of

#2 Radio Show Intro Music – Horror

#3 Creepy Ambiance  Music


Legos!

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Found this the other day when I was surfing the web. Love how someone took something so simple as Legos and used them to create old school album covers, seems like something someone would do for #ds106 🙂

Also, this guy, Nathan Sawaya created lego scupltures, pretty badass! I just don’t have the patience for that kind of thing.

Wonder how much Nathan has spent on buying legos, he probably gets a bulk discount O.o

Bilingual/Bilingüe: a Poem by Rhina Espaillat

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On Monday I was helping someone in the Writing Center with her paper analyzing the poem Bilingual/Bilingüe which is a very structurally interesting poem. Notice that the Spanish words are closed off from the English words until the very end. What does that say to you about the poem?

Bilingual/Bilingüe

by Rhina P. Espaillat

My father liked them separate, one there
one here (allá y aquí), as if aware

that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart
(el corazón) and lock the alien part

to what he was–his memory, his name
(su nombre)–with a key he could not claim.

“English outside this door, Spanish inside,”
he said, “y basta.” But who can divide

the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from
any child? I knew how to be dumb

and stubborn (testaruda); late, in bed,
I hoarded secret syllables I read

until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run
where his stumbled. And still the heart was one.

I like to think he knew that, even when,
proud (orgulloso) of his daugher’s pen,

he stood outside mis versos, half in fear
of words he loved but wanted not to hear.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

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“Hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband”

A Sound Story by Jabomba (Aliyah and Me)

[audio:https://imlikesoblonde.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/sound-jam-2-bitchhhh1.mp3|titles=Texas Chainsaw Massacre]

Audio tracks from Freesounds.org

The Creation Process*:

Aliyah came over Thursday night (so handy we are friends/ live in the same building 😉 to discuss what we had to do for the assignment since she had been at UVA performing with the UMW Bhangra team during class. (“So much better than going to DS106…Just Kidding….maybe… (: ” -Aliyah)

We brainstormed what our sound story should be and thought it would be funny if we did a ripoff of “the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movie. Aliyah’s words: “Oh my lord… this is going to get scary! D: ”

Then today we sat outside enjoying the beautiful weather all the while listening to screams, bone crunching, slurping, chainsaws, and evil laughter. We also listened to the guys on the first floor whose living room window was open; they were singing songs like “A Whole New World” from Aladdin and “I want it that way” by the Backstreet Boys. Very entertaining!

We played around with Audacity before the assignment, but found it a little tricky to get all the bits and pieces of the story to play together right. Finally once we figured all that out, it was a bitch to have the song exported as an MP3 file. We had to download a lame file which didn’t download right at first and this created all sorts of problems/ took forever to figure out.  Once that was taken care of, we uploaded the Mp3 file using Audio Player (a handy audio plugin for wordpress! Thanks to Andrew for finding it)

From there on out it was smooth sailing! I’m looking forward to working more with Aliyah and our other partner David. For now our group name is Jabomba, which is what I thought Aliyah’s twitter name was the other day. Turns out her twitter name is Jamabay so I was totally wrong, but I think Jabomba sounds cooler.

The Idiot’s Guide for getting a Favicon for a WP site

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This past weekend I spent several hours trying to figure out how to get a favicon ON my site and also trying to find a favicon that would DISPLAY WELL for my site.

It was kind of a pain in the ass because the internet sites I was using to help me do this kept mentioning terms just confused me for a barely computer literate person (okay, so maybe I know more than the average joe, but I’m not like a programming genius or anything) and was just super complicated with many steps.

So that others don’t have to waste their precious time hunting around to learn how to do this, I have a few simple steps for you to follow:

1: On WordPress dashboard go to Plugins

2: Add New Plugin

3: Search for “AmberPanther Favicon for WordPress”

4: Download and Activate

5: You are good to go! You can find the plugin below Settings tab and from there upload a picture for you to use for your favicon!

Now in terms of the favicon you want to use, a few words to the wise: SIMPLE, SIMPLE, SIMPLE!

Also:

1) Try to save the file type as ICO (you can use an online program to do this) otherwise it might not show up on other browsers.

  • Mine shows up on Firefox but not Internet Explorer because I have it saved as a PNG (Will need to fix this soon)

2) The size of the image is recommended to be 16 X 16 pixels.

  • I went through about four different favicons trying to get it to look good and not like a total indistinct blob.  Not sure how keen I am on the one I have now, but it’s my temporary one until I come up with a better idea or someone has a better suggestions (???)

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For those who are more interested in my process about getting the crown favicon I got now here it is:

I started with wanting to have one of the map of California( from noun project),  however soon discovered that would be too big to look good.

Then I decided to switch to having a person  with uber blonde hair. I used photoshop to add the hair on, which I downloaded as a photoshop brush.

Like Duh

I realized that the whole person would be too big again, so I tried cropping the photo to just the head. However, when I put the favicon up it looked like a little black and blonde bob, nothing distinctive (shown here it’s more than a blob)

Then I decided to switch to a crown because it reminded me of a queen bee stereotypical blonde.

But we were losing the distinctive features of the crown so I switched to a much more simple crown.

Like I said earlier, I’m okay with it but couldn’t think of a favicon that screams: I’M LIKE SO BLONDE.COM  So any suggestions would be nice 🙂

Superheroes V-Day Cards

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So the other day while I was checking out the twitter update feed, Timmmmyboy posted about the retro superheroes valentine’s day cards.

As I love hearts and getting cards on Valentine’s Day, I decided it would be funny to make my own versions of the cards, preferably funny and not so cutesy. I was inspired by someecards.com and also be my anti-valentine.

Although there is only about fifteen minutes left until valentine’s day ends (which was pretty crappy for a lot of people; I know of two relationships that ended today) I hope you can share some laughter/joy with friends/family:

no more booty calls

Let's Just Be Friends

Check out my photo set with all the cards here:

5 Card Flickr Story

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Five Card Story: Snowy

a ds106 story created by Cali4beach


flickr photo by ashleymeganlove


flickr photo by ravnclaw89


flickr photo by les.epinards


flickr photo by nessman


flickr photo by ravnclaw89

Today I got the phone call I’ve been dreading. Kyle was coming over in thirty minutes to pick up his cat.

OH SHIT! How am I going to tell him that Snowy ran away! CRAP!!

I decided I needed to make a cup of chamomile tea to calm myself down as I figured out what to say.

Suddenly, Jesus Jim Groom appeared before me in a razzle-dazzle color whirlwind.

“Be calm, my child” he said. “Bake Kyle some sugar cookies and all will be well.” Then Jesus Jim Groom disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

Better get started on baking those cookies!

Survey the World- DS106 Radio Poster

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As with most of the assignments I end up doing, they happen because I get distracted with my original idea with another idea, or a few more ideas. (ADD much? Or just inspired by greatness? O.o?)

So how did I end up making this poster for DS106 Radio?

OR ELSE!

DS106 Radio

Well it started with Patrick’s blog post about the assignment he created for creating your own album cover. Check it out for step by step details.

I loved the photo he ended up using because it’s the Santa Monica pier which I grew up near when I lived in California 🙂 and because of this I decided I should create my own album cover. I did the Wikipedia article randomizer to come up with the band name and after refreshing a few times  (the article titles I first got were really bad. And I mean REALLY BAD) it came up with: Casper Jørgensen (Casper is a Danish professional racing cyclist FYI)

Then I used the random quote generator and ended up with the phrase: “Survey the World”

Now for the photo, I tried using what Patrick suggested for getting photos from Flickr,  but I kept getting “All Rights Reserved” photos, so I headed to the Commons. The photo I ended up with wasn’t so random because I kind of scrolled through the photos, but I thought this was the funniest. Love that it’s part of an Australian war memorial and that the cat looks like it’s “surveying the world”

Now that I had my three ingredients for the album cover it was time for photoshopping. I was putting all of this together when I suddenly had a flash: Instead of putting Carl Jørgensen on this album cover, why not make a poster for DS106 radio? It would be more fitting for our class and all the radio lovers would go nuts for it.

So now instead of having another visual assignment under my belt, I have a design assignment done, woo woo! 🙂

Love Story (of sorts)

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This all started with today’s assignment for the Daily Shoot:

“Power plugs are ubiquitous. Can you make a creative photo of such a common thing?  #ds448”

It took me pretty much all day to figure out what I wanted to take a photo of because power plugs are so ordinary, I couldn’t think of any idea that wouldn’t look really trite. However, after looking a few photos that were already up I got an idea:

What if I took a photo of an Australian Plug trying to fit into an American outlet? American outlets always look so sad, so if I took a photo of something that couldn’t fit in the outlet, it would be even more sad.

Luckily I was at home for the Superbowl and was able to find my phone and charger that I used when I was studying abroad in Australia last year (funny note: my phone which has been off since mid-July still has a 1/2 battery life!)

I took a lot of photos of putting the Aussie plug into the American outlet, but this is the photo I liked the best.

Irreconcilable Differences

Then I was trying to think of something cool I could do with all the photos that I had left over from the shoot since some of them were kind of cool. Originally I was just going to do a complied screen shot, but then I noticed that all the image titles were numbers like: 2156.

I decided it would be funny if I made a song playlist poem for the photos, similar to what Colleen has done.

The poem turned out a tad more weird/creepy(?) than I thought it would be, but it was fun to have a different twist on the assignment!

Here is my masterpiece in all it’s glory (also check it out on my flickr gallery if you want)