Episode 9:
I thought it was interesting how right off the bat I realized that they weren’t aiming so they weren’t going to hit their targets. Did I think a stray bullet would go through a second story window? No, but anything can happen when you don’t aim. I also thought the fade from the mom screaming into the opening song was interesting.
The cops know that the dock guys are onto them because of the way they are answering the phone and things like that and limited use of phones that they think the cops may be onto. The cops plan on waiting them out and Daniels says, “Well I, for one, am a patient mother f@#^%$.”
String is worried about the cops being all around trying to figure out who shot the kid so they have to shut down ops for a while. String also tells Bodie to dump the guns in the harbor so he cleans them and throws them over the bridge…right onto a boat.
When the police came storming into the pit, the people didn’t care but there was one shot of a kid looking out of a window, that was sad for me.
String is taking Prop Joe up on his offer for a better product in exchange for Prop Joe getting some of their better real estate. String knows Avon won’t like this one bit.
I hate Ziggy’s character because he is so stupid. You know he is going to get in trouble at some point, it’s just a matter of when. He is out of drugs and into stealing cars now.
The whole thing with McNulty and the sex hotline was funny. I thought it was interesting that Freamon gave him the idea to use an accent. I’m sure McNulty wasn’t happy with their timing busting into the place. I also thought it was funny how Jimmy was chicken pecking the keyboard typing up his statement.
I did the “Six Word Memoir” but for Daniels. Though it is not a direct quote, it is pretty much his motto through the first two seasons. He waits out the police department even though they treat him like crap, he stuck it out after his wife told him to quit, and he is willing to wait on his law career. I’d say that classifies him as patient.
How I did it:
I used GIMP. Imported the picture from here as a layer, added text, re-positioned, re-colored, and re-sized the text. I then found a plain, manly font that I liked and ended up going with Gill Sans MT Bold. I then exported the picture and uploaded it to Twitter, Flickr, and the Hub via Known.
My second design assignment this week was “DS106 Post Secret” (2 stars). The basis of this assignment was episode 11 when Stringer told Omar that Brother killed Brandon. I think the reason Stringer said this was because Brother was messing up his deal with Proposition Joe. So my secret was “I told Omar that Brother killed Brandon so I wouldn’t have to deal with him messing up my deal with Prop Joe.”
How I did it:
I used GIMP and opened the picture of the gun and the picture of the paper as layers. I also downloaded a font from dafont.com called “Colors of Autumn” because I thought it looked like what Stringer’s handwriting would look like. Because I had GIMP opened before I downloaded the font, I had to restart GIMP to have the font in there. I had to open an Alpha Channel on the top layer and then I enlarged the paper and erased most of it, leaving just a part to put the font on. Then I added the font on the paper and exported the file.
My third assignment this week was “Minimalist TV/Move Poster” (3.5 stars). I did it for The Wire since I figured it would be easy because it’s basically about drugs.
How I did it:
Went on The Noun Project and searched drugs and I really liked Drugs by Ed Harrison. I thought about putting the Baltimore skyline in the background but that defeats the purpose of the whole minimalist thing. So I went with red because it was a big color in the first season. I made it in GIMP and opened both of the images in it. I had to resize the drugs picture so it fit on top of the red. I also downloaded a font from dafont.com called Delius and had to restart GIMP so that the font would be loaded. Unfortunately I exported and uploaded the picture with other words on it before I remembered that I had to make it specific to these episodes of The Wire that we watched this week. So I changed the tagline to “I need to get clean.” I liked it because it didn’t only apply to Sobotka.
The first daily create I did this week was the Empathy Map. I was quite obviously feeling stressed when I made it.
How I did it:
It was weird for me to think of what I was seeing and hearing and doing and saying and feeling and all of that. Usually I just feel one emotion. But when I actually thought about it I realized that I was feeling a lot more than stressed. No matter how much I have going on in my life, I know that I am blessed. The fact that I could only hear my air conditioning was good because that meant I didn’t have to hear my roommate stomping around upstairs. The fact that I could see my messy room, while wasn’t ideal, meant that I had a roof over my head. The fact that I have things to be stressed about (school and softball) means that I am privileged enough not only to go to school but to play a sport for my school. And the fact that my body was hurting from workouts meant that I was physically able enough to lift weights. This not only made me think about what I was feeling, but also why I was feeling it and it made me realize that it was a good thing.
The second daily create I did was “Trace Yourself!” Rather than use tracing paper, which I didn’t have any of, I pulled up the picture on my computer and turned up my lighting on my screen and traced it straight off of the screen. I am happy with how it turned out (minus my lips haha).
My fourth design assignment was “Lyric Typography Poster” (3.5 stars). I did “American Kids” by Kenny Chesney, a song which I love and listen to entirely too much. It also happens to have good, visual words.
How I did it:
I used Word Art in Microsoft Word. It was actually pretty easy once I figured out how to navigate the new word art…I haven’t used it since like middle school. I downloaded three new fonts for this project: CF Jack Story, USA Flag, Baby Blocks. I had to mess around with different text effects until I found ones that did what I wanted. For the “Jesus” I had to make the S separate so I could stretch it without stretching the whole word. The “blue” and “jean” are supposed to look like a pair of pants. The rest of them are just fonts but I wanted to make it flow while not being too cluttered. I then screen shotted it and pasted it back into word and saved it as a picture. I used Microsoft Photo Editor to crop it.
I did the “Powers of 10” daily create as my last one this week. I decided to collage some of my more softball related daily creates because—let’s face it—there are a lot of them.
How I did it:
I went on my flickr and saved these pictures onto my phone. I then used an app called PicStitch to put them together. I exported them to my photos and emailed them to myself so I could have it on my computer. From there I saved them to my computer and uploaded it to Flickr, Twitter, and the Hub via Known.
Design Assignment #1: Take Two:
I got a new picture of Daniels and imported it into GIMP. To make it more artsy I went to Filters>Artistic>Cartoon to make him look cartoonified. I then tried to add text in GIMP but I realized that either I don’t know how to do it or you can’t morph and move text as much as I wanted to. So I exported it as a jpg and then opened it in Microsoft Word. I added the words using Word Art. When I had the words like I wanted them I zoomed in and screen shotted it. I copied and pasted it back into Word and saved it as a picture. I then opened it in Microsoft Photo Editor to crop it. I didn’t re-upload since it was my second attempt but it is on my blog.
Things I liked: how he said that every detail is important because the end result is the sum of the details; that designers have three levels of responsibilities: to ourselves, the client, and the public; that design should be clear, simple, and enduring; the repercussion of ugliness is endless; and how to use white space. Things I didn’t like: how he wrecked the American paper size (is it that big of a deal?) and how he tried to make design a proper noun. Newsflash: it’s not. (Sorry I am kind of a grammar Nazi sometimes)
Episode 10: “It pays to go with the union card every time.” –Ziggy
I liked how they used “Walk the Line” for the montage of everything that they have been up to and Prez rearranging the board. “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine, I keep my eyes wide open all the time…Because you’re mine I walk the line.”
Herc and Carver still think that no one thinks they can do anything worth anything.
When the East Side boys first come into the West side Stringer has to come with them or else his boys won’t believe him—and even still they don’t believe him. But even though the East Siders were there, the West Siders sold the drugs for less than what the new guys were selling it for.
We also learn that Brother is serious. Not only is he smart, he is willing to use his gun. You can tell he has a bad rep because Prop Joe doesn’t want to put money on his head because he knows that it’ll come back to him and Brother will mess him up. And this quote was interesting to me: “If Stringer want the East Side up in here, then why Barksdale got a man here running them off?”
And the feud between Major A$$hole and Sobotka continues. Valchek brings in the FBI to work with the Baltimore Police Department to get Sobotka on something. I thought the faceoff between the FBI guys and Bunk and Freamon because you don’t know at first whether they are kidding or not. This is mostly because Freamon is the one who starts it and he doesn’t normally make jokes so you assume he is serious. Because the FBI got in on it, they sent stuff to the guy in San Diego who has an in with the Greeks, so the Greeks know that the police know about what they have been doing. I’m glad Prez punched his father in law because he deserved it, but unfortunately he’ll probably get in trouble.
Ziggy is such an idiot. His character irks me. For one he drives around with the radio blasting as he puts the Mercedes in the can. I thought they made a good song choice in “Radio On.” And then he took one a drove it around like it was his car. Everyone at the docks knows that he doesn’t drive a Mercedes nor does he have money to buy one so people probably knew that he stole it. And then he goes over to do a deal with the shop owner who tries to pull one over on Ziggy. Of course as Ziggy does, he took it too far. Shot and killed the guy, shot his worker, left money, and then didn’t leave the scene. How stupid can you be? He deserved to get arrested for that. When Nicky goes to tell Frank what happened and Frank goes “What the f^%$ did you do this time?” And then Frank tries to blame Nicky and Nicky turns that back around on Frank.
Side note: dogs were barking when Nicky and that girl were at the playground and while Omar was at the bar.
Interesting camera angle when Kima and her wife are talking. The camera moves to where you can only see Kima and not see her wife. What I would think is that that would mean that her wife is going to be out of her life in the near future, at least short term. I think this because in the episode when Kima got shot, there was a similar angle when she was with Bubbs for the last time.
Bunk on the boat was funny. “Y’all tryin’ to drown my a$$ for sure.” It was funny how the second time he got on the boat he acted like he belonged there. It was then funny when they were trying to figure out technology (text messaging). They figured out how to get the texts that the Greek was sending (thanks to McNulty) but they were in Greek so they used the internet to translate them.
Episode 11: “I need to get clean.” –Sobotka
Nicky picked a good time to spend the night at someone else’s house because he left his parents and his girlfriend to deal with the raid at 6am. Plus the fact that none of them had any idea he was dealing drugs. I did think it was interesting that the dog was barking as Nicky was walking into his house. Sobotka and his brother were talking about the boys and Frank told him that he know they were into bad stuff. His brother was NOT happy about that.
Kima did find the residue from the Greeks washing the drugs down the drain so that’s good but there wasn’t any more information that they could get. And the only person who was helping them was White Mike. He was giving them all kinds of information, just not who was above Sergei and Eton.
Valchek is super proud of himself when he finally gets to arrest Sobotka.
Stringer and Omar meet and talk about Brandon. Stringer tells Omar that Brother killed Brandon, now Omar is going to try to kill Brother. I think Stringer did that either to get Omar or Brother killed off (or maybe both).
Discussion between Ziggy and Frank at the jail was interesting. It took Ziggy getting arrested to finally get his dad’s attention. Ziggy even said it himself. Frank said he should have come to him but Ziggy said he wouldn’t have cared, he was too busy. I thought it was interesting, though, that the Greeks wanted to get Ziggy out of jail because they don’t want Frank to talk to the police.
The whole thing between Omar and Brother was interesting. Omar used the two girls and a dog to distract Brother’s side kick. Omar knocked and Brother thought it was his watcher dude (apparently he didn’t hear the ruckus before that). Omar shot him on sight. But he didn’t kill him. I think that was the plan because he wanted to torture him the way Brandon was tortured. Brother said it wasn’t him that killed Brandon and Omar believed him (which surprised me). Omar must have figured out that Stringer was using Omar to kill Brother for him.
Russell surprised me with how well she followed Spiro. She was a lot more ballsy that I would have been. I would have been satisfied with seeing what floor he got in. I wouldn’t have gotten off with him, geez.
Frank is cooperating with the police because he wants Zig treated right. But at the same time, Nicky is working with the Greeks and they are telling him that they are going to take care of Ziggy because they know he has a soft spot for him. But, can the Greeks really do what they say they can do? Because Frank told Nicky that he was talking to the police and Nicky told the Frank that the Greeks can get Ziggy out of jail in return for loyalty. But the guy in San Diego called the Greeks and told them that Frank talked to the police so they’re probably going to kill him in the next episode.
Comments:
http://blogs.jessicareingold.com/ds106/assignments/cheap-sunglasses/#comment-180
http://www.sydthek1d.com/design/says-read/
http://rambling.wafflestomping.com/ds106/brother-mouzones-library-card/#comment-589
Typography:
I love the simplicity of the typography on this sign. The font is simple, so is the style it was typed in–middle justified. The repetition–due to the simple nature of the words–also emphasizes the simplicity of it. I also love how “love” is emphasized using color.
Unity:
Unity is the relationship between independent parts of the picture and the picture as a whole. To me–and probably not to others–this picture represents unity. The unity is not only visual, but is also in the context of the picture. This is a picture of me (taken by a former teammate) at my scrimmage on Saturday. The visual unity is the ball, my bat, and everyone’s focus on the ball. The contextual unity is the culmination of all of my work this fall coming together for this scrimmage. Everything coming together had a good result, a double!
Balance:
Balance is equilibrium. I figured that my field would be balanced, especially looking out from behind home plate. Well, it turns out that the Eagles Softball in center field isn’t exactly in the middle. So that kind of messed up my balance idea. I still think it is a pretty balanced picture besides that. This is pretty much the most balanced picture I could think of.
Color:
Color creates mood and draws attention. I would say that this sunset picture definitely draws attention to the focal point of the picture–the actual sunset. I don’t like that it was a little blurry but I was in a car so it was hard to get a clear picture that actually showed the colors. Obviously this picture does it no justice, but it is still pretty. I also like that it isn’t the whole sky that is lit up in color. I like the contrast between the yellow and pink and the grey of the sky and clouds above it.
