Creating Known:
Well to start off I clicked on the Known link and subscribed because I thought that was what I was supposed to do…I was wrong. Oh well, you live and you learn. I learned to keep scrolling to watch the video that was there about how to set up my known. When I did that it was easy peasy. Didn’t take hardly any time at all. It was easy to link my accounts to because I was already logged into them. I did my first post immediately to make sure it worked. I checked it on twitter and on the hub and it was in both places so that made me happy.
It was also easy to set up the subdomain with the help of the video. If I had to do it myself I may have been lost but luckily it was there.
Moderating comments:
This week I learned how to moderate comments. I was able to figure it out on my own before I watched the week 2 video that Groom put up, luckily. I almost had to because I got emails about them and it annoys me when I have emails in my inbox so before I deleted them I had to approve the comments. My slight OCD got me on that one.
Adding plug-ins:
Activating Akismet was a bit of a struggle for me. I didn’t realize that it was already installed so I went to install it and there was no install option so I was confused. Then I explored a little more and installed JetPack and when I went to my installed plug-ins Akismet was there and there was an activate button. So I activated it and JetPack and that was that. Easy enough.
Renaming my Blog:
Though the name of my blog was not “My blog” it was “Brittany’s Blog” which is just about as bad. I figured since my name and blog both start with B I could play on that alliteration, so I did. Thus my blog name is “The Beatific Blog of Barefoot Brittany.”
Daily Create Number 1:
Well obviously since I like softball so much my logo should have included it. So I made my “i” a bat and the tittle a ball and my “a” a ball as well. Voila, it is my logo.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/126431197@N07/14936625747/
Commenting:
http://www.tpeedhispants.com/uncategorized/the-right-logo-for-me/#comment-10
I loved Travis’s logo. It was actually a logo (unlike mine) and you can tell that he put a lot of effort into it. As I said, I thought about doing something with my initials or my monogram but I decided to go basic with it and just do my name in bubble letters.
http://www.mydomain-sreutter.com/uncategorized/if-today-was-a-logo/
I loved Stef’s logo as well. I really like how she incorporated how she was feeling and the weather in her logo. Her flames turned out really well also. I like how you can tell people’s personalities based on what they do for their daily create—who is more artistic, who is more tech-savvy, etc.
https://twitter.com/Brumface/status/506870560501268480
I really liked Lauren’s logo as well. I think it looks like an actual logo for a company or something. It is really cool and I wish I knew how to work photoshop like that.
http://blogs.jessicareingold.com/ds106/assignments/now-youre-in-the-game/#comment-4
Jessica did an awesome job with her GIFs. I was super impressed. They looked like ones that you would see on Tumblr or Twitter or something like that. I also like how she adapted like she said the first one was too slow and the second one too fast but after that they were perfect.
http://blog.raptnrent.me/2014/09/07/summarizing-bubbles/#comment-12481
You may not be able to see this comment yet because it is still in moderation but I loved how they made the assignment their own, tweaking it a little. I also liked that they chose Bubbles as he is one of my favorite characters in the show. The scenes that they chose to explain Bubbs were also great.
Making GIFs:
Well this has been more of a struggle than anything else I have done thus far in this class. World’s Fastest YouTube downloader refused to recognize the links that I was putting in for the first half of the week. On Wednesday I tried again and it recognized them and told me it was going to do it and then it said it was connecting even after I waited ten minutes. Maybe I’m not patient enough, I’m not sure but I may try a different way. Woohoo! Tried a different downloader called Free YouTube Downloader and it worked super-fast and without hassle!
Alright now when I get it into MPEG and trim it down and everything and go to export, MPEG stops responding (insert angry face here). Woo it finally exported! Turns out I didn’t have it in the right file format. I wasn’t careful enough when looking at the options for how to download it and it was a movie file. I obviously needed it in pictures. I finally figured out how to do that after trying to open the movie file in GIMP and it not working.
Trying to put my gif out there via known and I had to figure out where I had to put the caption in order for it to translate to twitter and flickr. Figured out that I had to put it in the title section, not the description section so I had to delete some posts/tweets. I also thought that since flickr showed up that the gif would work on flickr. I was wrong about that one too so I had to delete that post. And apparently I still didn’t figure out how to name it right so that it would show up on twitter (insert angry face here)
Woohoo, second GIF went a lot better than the first. Once I cut down the clip shorter it exported with no problems and it makes it a lot easier to edit when it is short. After I figured everything out (keep the GIF shorter than 6 seconds, merge the text and pictures, etc) it got a loooot easier to do. I figured out that MPEG stopped responding when my gif was too long. Anything longer than 51 frames would crash the program and I would only get those 51 frames.
Second Daily Create:
The first time I read this daily create I didn’t know if I wanted to do it. It seemed too complicated. However when I thought more about it I figured it would be fun; kind of like a logic puzzle (which I love). So then I picked the movie that I know best, She’s the Man. J It is one of my all-time favorite movies. I can pretty much quote every line. So this thing was pretty easy for me to make once I thought about it.
https://twitter.com/brittanyns13/status/507273478626885633
Third Daily Create:
The third daily create I did was the Calvinball one. It was relatively easy for me. I have played both soccer and softball. Sometimes in softball they make us hit old, deflated soccer balls to work on our hand speed so this was kind of a natural thought process for me. Honestly, I didn’t photoshop it either, I used the DoodleBuddy app and just stuck a stamp on a picture. It took me longer to download the app than it did to create the picture. But I think it is funny because the ball looks so huge compared to Big Papi.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/126431197@N07/15128703206/in/photostream/
Fourth Daily Create:
The final daily create I did was in the final hour of Saturday. I realized that I needed one more daily create for the week and that one seemed fun so I decided I’d do it. The book I chose was The Sword and the Shield because I thought it would be ironic that a book called The Sword and the Shield was shielding me.
https://twitter.com/brittanyns13/status/508461430308216832
Wire Episodes 10-12
Episode 10:
One thing that I don’t pay nearly enough attention to are the names of the episodes–I will start paying attention now that it has been discussed in the discussions. It is interesting how they make Kima “the cost” of all of the work that they have been doing. And then later it is Wally. I didn’t really think about it like that.
First of all, I loved at the beginning when Bubbles was watching kids play with bubbles! It made me laugh.
I also thought it was funny when the judge tells McNulty: “I hold you in contempt.” Then McNulty says, “who doesn’t?” I like how he pokes fun at himself and his situation inside of the department even though it could mean the end of his career if he is not careful.
Woooo, the scene when Orlando still goes through with the drug deal even though Avon told him not to and it ends up being undercover cops. The fact that he gave them Avon’s name really surprised me. He put himself on the chopping block with that move.
I thought it was interesting when Bubbs’s friend from the NA meeting told him, “You wanna kick this shit, you gotta forgive your own self.” I think it made Bubbs realize that he needs to stop seeking forgiveness from his sister or from Kima and that he needs to forgive himself for doing drugs so he can move on and stay away from them.
The corruption theme shows up again with the cops when the two cops that McNulty brings beer to say they don’t care about what everyone else says, they like him–but they are only saying that because he brought them beer. It is also there when McNulty got drunk at the station and stayed there overnight.
I thought it was super ironic when D’Angelo was standing in front of “The Love Zone” because his love life is going nowhere. He is not happy with his baby mama and his kid. And then his side chick left him because she figured out what was going on behind the scenes at Orlando’s.
Wally gave up a lot of information without the cops even pushing him hard. It seemed to me like he was done with all the crap that came along with dealing drugs, especially after he saw what happened to Brandon because of something that he did. I think he was trying to numb the pain with the drugs that he was doing. But Wally also showed loyalty because when they pushed him about D he didn’t say anything bad even though he thought about it.
The corruption theme shows up in the drug ring too when Orlando is in jail. His lawyer makes him sign a back-dated transfer of deed and liquor license so that Avon wouldn’t get in trouble. Despite everything that he has done for Avon over the years, he didn’t move up in the ranks. When he tried to get himself a little more money on the side they dumped him.
Another parallel is drawn between D and McNulty in this episode, they are both having love life issues. McNulty still loves his ex-wife but is sleeping with another lady. D doesn’t love his baby mama and loves the side chick but she doesn’t love him.
I thought it was interesting that they put together the part about Wally not having been to his grandma’s house since he was nine with the fact that he didn’t know what crickets were. It makes him seem more naive even though he is a drug dealer.
Alright, I have to preface this section with the fact that I already knew that Kima was going to get shot (thanks, Twitter). But because I knew that I could notice more about what happened to her in the scenes leading up to the shooting. I noticed that in the background of Kima and Bubbles’s last conversation a bell was ringing–for whom the bell tolls? I also noticed that in the last shot as she is walking away from him the camera is halfway behind a tree. She walks into the darkness that is the tree, kind of walking out of his life into death maybe? There was also a super intense look between Greggs and McNulty before she is about to get in the car with Orlando. And then she gets shot, which I was very unhappy about.
Episode 11:
Interesting camera shot at the beginning of the episode. The cameraman was milling around the crime scene like he was one of the officers. I thought it was interesting how a little later the big guy was saying there were too many people at the crime scene. Interesting use of camera shots there. I also like Paul’s take on this–that the camera person is confused and doesn’t know what is going on. That isn’t how I saw it but I can see how he would think of it in that way.
Rawls finally did something semi-nice to McNulty by saying that he was not the reason that Greggs got shot. He said he hated him and would tell him if that were the case but it wasn’t. Like Groom said, it is a weird dialogue but it really captures the mood of the moment–everyone is kind of on the same team at this point.
Stringer is the brains behind the drug operation. I like how they have him wear glasses when he was telling Bey what to do. Makes him seem wiser and like he knows what he is talking about. Then later in the episode when he is talking to Avon he doesn’t have his glasses on and it is when Avon is telling him that he messed up.
I was very upset when Bubbs got arrested for trying to page Kima and then got beat up by the “big, bad” cop. Having McNulty respond to that situation was kind of a snap back to reality for him–he has to deal with what is in front of him right now, he can’t worry about whether or not what happened to Greggs was his fault.
McNulty says to the judge: “So who’s my daddy now?” Play on when the judge asked McNulty who is daddy was because the judge did something for McNulty that he needed done. This shows that when something the judge wants is on the line he isn’t willing to do what he normally would for McNulty.
The song on in the background when D and Bey are going out doing what Stringer told them to do: “another nigga down and out, crackhead, no name.” Kind of plays on how Avon and company do business. They don’t care about individuals, just their overall goal (money). D thinks something is going on; I think he thought he was going to die and then when Bey turns on the lights and sees the fish tanks he is relieved. I think maybe the director made you think that he was going to die, especially with that song that they were listening to.
Herc and Carver took some of the money from under the mattress. You would think with the issues that they had with it before they would have learned their lesson–I guess not.
The fade from the wire to Kima’s heart monitor was interesting to me. They did a great job with it.
Episode 12:
Kima getting shot lit a fire under Daniels’s butt. The whole group has something to work for now–they don’t want Kima getting shot to be for naught. They want something material to come of the case.
There was a weird thing with Stringer’s hands in the first scene after the credits when he is taking away the pagers. First he didn’t shake hands and then they zoomed in on them and then D was looking at them–not sure what it meant but it caught my attention. This was also an important scene in the series in my eyes–like they discussed in the video–because it was kind of making them more vulnerable by moving to cell phones. They are more traceable than pagers but they had to do something because they knew that the cops were onto them.
It seemed to me like Avon was oblivious to the cops being onto them the whole time and that Stringer was the brains behind the operation, Avon is just the name. And again, when Stringer knew more than the other people in the room he had glasses on.
Deputy Ops thought he was putting crap on Daniels by making him keep Freamon and Prez but really you could tell Daniels was relieved when he said keep them. They did a lot of the dirty work behind the operation.
D is sticking up for his boys again–this time Wally with Avon and Stringer because he thinks they are going to kill him.
I thought it was funny how when Chardine is listening to Avon and them in the room, the sign behind her says strickly rather than strictly. It made me laugh. Something else that made me laugh was when Freamon asked if anyone had been in the military and when they hadn’t he said “Draft-dodging-peace-freaks, huh?”
Two things were said to Wally before they killed him that foreshadowed his killing. One was someone said the soft link breaks the chain and D said something to him before that about snitching. It’s like the director wants you to mentally prepare yourself for them killing him. I was very upset that they killed Wally, especially since they didn’t even know that he talked to the cops about them. Both of the boys wearing black was also foreshadowing the fact that they were going to kill him.
I loved when Daniels stuck it to the man and told Deputy Ops that he didn’t care about his future and that finishing out the case was for Greggs. Like they said in the video, too, he is FINALLY standing up for himself and is less worried about his future and what they think about him.
It was funny when Avon told Stringer: “Open it up man, no sense in ruining a good case.” They knew that they were in for it. You could also tell that Stringer was surprised that they couldn’t arrest him–does he now become the brains behind AND the name in front of the operation.
I loved the shot of the empty couch where D and his guys always sat. Kind of like a “case closed, nice try but we got you” kind of shot.
Looking forward to another great week in DS106!
