Category Archives: DS106

First took this class my final semester senior year at UMW and I can say that it has definitely changed my life! I feel I am much more inspired to make art #ds1064life

And the award for world’s best procrastinator goes to…

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Me!

So I’ve been trying to work on a paper for class all this week and every day since Thursday I’ve been saying: “Ok, today is the day I am going to get it done!” and then five seconds later I tell myself “Ok, I will start in a hour…” then three hours later “Okay I really, really will start in an hour” then nighttime rolls around and then I say, “Definitely tomorrow I will get this done.”

And so this horrible pattern has repeated itself until it’s now 3pm on Monday and while I have a lot of fab ideas, not much of it is down on paper. D:

Anyways, in the spirit of procrastinating I’ve decided to share some random/ odd/ weird things I’ve come across while trolling the internet for research/inspiration:

1. Ganguro: “is an alternative fashion trend of blonde or orange hair and tanned skin among young Japanese women that peaked in popularity around the year 2000” (Wikipedia).

I don’t know if you seen pictures of this, but this is frightening! They look like freaky barbie dolls. **shudder**

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Tru TV Crime Library: Criminal Minds and Methods

This website discusses famous criminals and their crimes. You don’t really want to know about these all heinous crimes but you just can’t stop reading…

3. How to write badly well:

This website is really funny as the author shows examples of bad writing. My friend Zack sent this to me as motivation to actually get words down on the page.  Of course, I wasted like twenty minutes reading this blog, but it was worth it because the post about the red herrings made me laugh out loud.

And now to work, for real.

My Final Project(s)

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So for my final project, I’ve actually decided to do two projects! Before every student in the class starts hating on me for doing two projects let me explain why I am doing this.

My first project is continuing on with the Daily Shoot assignments. As I have mentioned before, I am a photography nut and really enjoy the challenge of the Daily Shoot assignments. Sometimes I think I come up with really great stuff, like “The Masks” set, and other time I capture just an okay photo. But I’ve decided that it’s a personal challenge of mine to make this my #365 day project and take a Daily Shoot photo everyday for a year.

I feel like this might be a little tough for me to keep up with since I tend to get distracted easily, although so far I’ve lasted 32 days!

I keep meaning to post about this experience of taking the photos, but have been swamped so far by other  class assignments. However, I promise that this week I will def have some reflection posts up!

Now for project #2: Postcards.

Last Spring Semester I studied abroad in Townsville, Australia and experienced some of the most  crazy/awesome/intense/amazing experiences of my life. It was really hard for me to leave Australia and last fall semester I was really sad to be back at UMW for various reasons. Now that I’ve been back over a year from Australia, I think it would be an interesting study to parallel my life week by week over in Ozland versus my life week by week here.

I decided the best way to do this would be by creating my own postcards, because in real life I am a postcard/letter writing fan and each week I send numerous postcards and letters to my besties. I was also inspired by the awesome postcards from LOTR created last semester.

I’ve made a couple of postcards for my US life the past few weeks and have just started working on the ones from Ozland. I plan on posting them sometime this week, so look forward to that!

My “Blonde” Moment at the Airport

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Last Friday night I was planning on going home because Saturday morning at 6:15am, I had to leave from my house to Dulles airport in order to catch my flight to Florida with my mom.

But things happened and instead,I decided to stay at my apartment and just wake up early Saturday morning and drive home. I ended up getting 1 hour of sleep and then left around 5am to go home.

The roads are nice and clear at 5 in the morning, but I still arrived home with only ten minutes to finish packing before we had to leave for the airport.

I had already packed a duffel back at my apt, but I decided it would be easier traveling if I used a rolling suitcase.  I wanted to use my red carry-on suitcase so that I wouldn’t have to pay more $$ to check a suitcase under the plane (I planned on putting my toiletry kit in my mom’s suitcase), but my red carry-on was no where to be found.

In my search for it, I wasted about seven minutes and now had only three minutes left to pack before we had to leave.  I ended throwing most of my stuff in a random purple rolling carry-on and put whatever else didn’t fit in it, into my mom’s suitcase and my backpack

My family was rushing me out of the door and so in my haste I grabbed my backpack and ran to the car.  My sister and dad drove us to the airport and the whole way there I was quiet in the backseat because I was feeling grumpy and tired.

We pulled up to the airport and got out of the car. My sister helped my mom with her suitcase in the trunk, but I didn’t see mine anywhere.

“Hey, where’s my suitcase?!?” I ask, starting to feel panicked.

Blank faces. My mom asks, “What do you mean? Didn’t you put it in the car?”

“NO! I thought you did! You guys were the ones rushing me out the door! @$&$ &$*$ #(@#!!” I yell so loudly that everyone nearby turns to look at me screaming profanities.

My family started laughing and laughing at my stupidity while I got pissed off because I had no clothes for the next four days in Florida except for  traveling clothes I was wearing and random items I had shoved in my backpack.

We didn’t have time to go back to the house to get my suitcase, so that meant I ended up going on a shopping spree in Florida.I love getting new clothes, but I rather not get new clothes at the expense of having a total blonde moment…

Morals of the story:

  1. Get more than 1 hour of sleep a night
  2. Don’t wait until the last minute to pack
  3. Check to make sure suitcase is in car before leaving!!
  4. Don’t scream profanities loudly outside an airport. It makes people nervous and they shoot you funny looks.

DS106’s Ride

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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! 🙂

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.