Webstory: Taking over Twitter

So I decided for my firebug webstory project that I am going to take over twitter. I don’t want to reveal too much of the story, but basically it’s going to involve a day in Dr. Zach Whalen’s life when he has to advise two people, “Alaina and Carah”, for their independent study. For those of you who don’t know him, Dr. Whalen is a professor of New Media studies in the English Dept at UMW.

Jim Groom is also going to be involved in this story as well.

Already have written the script with the help of my roommate Elena and so for tonight all I got to do is put it in action! I’m excited. 😀

DS106’s Ride

This past weekend I went with my mom to visit her sister in Ormund Beach, Florida.

Ormund Beach is just a town away from Daytona Beach and we just missed the Daytona 500 by a weekend, grr!

But we did get to check out Ormund’s Art Gallery (located next to the botantical Gardens) which was featuring an exhibit about the history of Daytona’s races.

The exhibit had a wall with a bunch of car drawings which was covered by a sheet of plexiglass. They had a bucket of dry erase markers next to the wall so kids could color in what they would want their own car to look like.

Lookie here!

Car Wall

I thought this was awesome, and of course, I started to draw on it for fun. Soon a docent came over to talk to me and I ended up talking to her about why I was in Florida and what I was doing for school. I happened to mention DS106 and suddenly it struck me how this entire wall of cars was telling a story:

It was telling a story about who drew on the wall, where these people where from, what colors they liked, why they chose this car over that car. I like how all of these drawings came together to form a collective narrative about the people who had been here at the exhibit, a record of their past experiences.

This isn’t just a random part of exhibit meant to entertain children; It was a work of art in itself, as valid as any other piece of art hanging from the gallery’s walls. Except this art is more unique, it’s just a temporary story that lasts until the next spay of cleansing fluid.

That’s why I decided to add Jim Groom’s famous words “DS106 for Life!” above my car because this work of art represents what our class is all about: creating art and giving it a life of it’s own.

Baby, you can drive my car

DS106's Ride

I don’t know how long this will stay up there (the docent says the things she likes stay up longer than the random scribbles), but I wonder how many people will see this and wondering “what the heck is ds106?” Maybe they will even Google it (it’s currently #2 on Google Search)

For those wondering why this specific car and colors out of all the cars and color options to choose from, it really came down to convenience: this car was at perfect drawing height, close to the marker basket and I like these colors.

So DS106er’s, here’s a challenge for you: show me another DS106 ride, or at least a better DS106 ride! 🙂

You are my fave ;)

When I found out I had to do a write up of the favorite things I’ve seen from #ds106 the past six weeks, I was stumped.

I’ve seen so many really awesome photos, gifs, videos, blog posts, posters, etc. from most everyone in class so to pick my top few is really hard.  Especially since I’ve seen a lot of really good blog posts about what people liked which has shown me more things to like. 😀

So below is just a scant list of people who have created things that has impressed me/ made me jealous and/or laugh and smile (if you aren’t are on here and I haven’t commented on your stuff before, give me a shoutout because I want to see your awesome work!)

Megan Mc! This girl is on fya with getting assignments done for #ds106.  She’s actually my “pseudo-rival” for the class in terms of getting stuff done. The nerd valentine’s she’s done makes me laugh, especially this one:

You are the one

and I really love this Big Caption by her:

Muhaha

Erin has also been blogging a lot and creating some really good memorable stuff, like her story about the traumatizing effects of a swarm of mosquitoes. I also think it’s awesome she started a story for others to add on too, great group collaboration!

I really love Andrew’s introduction story about his favorite color (follow the masses!) and also think that he created a really cool DS106 Trailer song.

Colleen created one of the best Big Captions ever when she used this photo:

Kiiiilll youuuu

Be scared

Jordan made me laugh with her fruit mobile glog and her Big Captions too, like this one:

Get out!!

Leave.

I really like Tom Woodward’s Stranger Portrait series because it takes a lot of guts to ask a stranger if you can take a photo of them:

Tim Owen’s old school book cover for Harry Potter is pretty legit too:

Finally, to end my post I would like to say how awesome it was for  Noise Professor  to create this picture; Makes me laugh out loud every time I see it!

Peace my child

Survey the World- DS106 Radio Poster

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! 🙂

ideas from Gardner Campbell

Since I read Gardner Campbell’s essay and watched the youtube clip, I’ve been trying to decide how to best incorporate what I’ve learned. I know some people have written tradition blog posts, or poems, or songs, but I’ve decided to do something different.
I’ve created this Wordle with the words and phrases that stuck out in my mind the most from what I’ve heard from Campbell.

Engl314 & Dr. Whalen prepared me for this class

So I would like to thank my Engl314- Literary Magazine class and Dr. Whalen for helping prepare me for DS106!

For the entire last semester, I was working on a online literary magazine, Times Zones Lit Review, devoted to traveling and adventuring. As a result of this, I learned how to add many of the widgets that I needed to have on my blog here.  I wasn’t the main person responsible for putting everything on the magazine website, (shoutout to Andrew who’s also in this class), but I learned through association. Not to name drop or anything, but Dr. Claudia Emerson and Jim Groom also helped out with this project, as did my other teammates (shoutout to Colleen who is in this class, surprise, surrprise!) and if you are interested at all in traveling, check it out and/or submit to the next volume!

What also has helped me in creating my blog is the few classes I have taken with Dr. Whalen which has taught me various internet skills and also lead to the creation of: Pluto Strikes Back (also made with several teammates including the same Colleen as above.)

They got you

The only app I had a problem with at first on this website was the one I am using for youtube, but that was solved once I actually read the directions [see I can be very smart (: ]

Also, thanks to the person (his/her name is escaping me now) who posted about how to get a gravatar!