Monthly Archives: February 2011

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.

Respect is Validity

Me, Myself, I

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I really can’t pick my favorite work that I’ve done so far because I like all the work I’ve posted for other people to see.

However, I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback for my Superhero, not quite valentine valentines, which has been awesome! They’ve turned out to be more of a smash hit than I expected:

I like them because they were fun to make and they make me smile every time I see them. I also love how collaborative the process was: I first got the idea for this because Tim Owens posted about these valentine’s on his blog. Then when  I needed to come up with clever lines for these I asked my roommates to help me. So was this created 100% me? The answer is equally no as it is yes.

Most of the work that I end up do creating is a response to someone else’s work or idea, or in the event I am actually original, it’s often helped along by a friend (like today when Megan helped me out with my daily shoot). I am really lucky to be surrounded by such creative influences, both online and in real life. For this I thank you.  ^_^

Also, thanks to everyone who has featured my work, it makes me feel really special/ talented. It reminds me a lot about this artist statement by Tess Buccigrosso who is currently displaying her work in the senior art show in the UMW Gallery right now (if you live in Fred, check it out before it’s taken down!)

Oh and I really like my icon. But again, I got the person from thenounproject.com and just added the hair which was part of a brush set created by someone else. So maybe not that original?

Like Duh

You are my fave ;)

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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

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.

Another 5 Card Flickr Story

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For Aliyah 😉

Five Card Story: Creep….Creep…Creep

a ds106 story created by Cali4beach


flickr photo by relaxkid55


flickr photo by ravnclaw89


flickr photo by Imfutbol


flickr photo by srodgers2


flickr photo by cogdogblog

These past two weeks, I’ve feel like someone has been watching me. Especially when I am playing the piano in the practice room, I see a shadow on the edge of my vision. But when I look no one is there. I’ve also been hearing a strange snuffling noise outside my door at night, but there is never anyone in the hallway when I open the door.

My friends thought I was just imagining things until Valentine’s Day when I heard a loud tapping on my door around 1 AM. I ran to the door and wrenched it open to find an empty hallway. In front of my door was a bouquet of flowers and attached was a note:

“Dear Cali,

I’ve seen you around everywhere for weeks and words cannot begin to describe how I feel about you. You are beautiful and amazing…. I love you.

Please meet me tomorrow on the patio outside of Eagle Landing at 3 P.M.

– D.”

D? Who the hell is “D”?

I immediately woke up my roommates who said I should go meet him tomorrow and see who he is. If he is a stalker, we need to make sure to get a picture of his face to report him to the police. So my friends and I start planning a little trap for him…

But still I’m majorly creeped out!

To be continued…

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 (???)

———>

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: