This was a very big week for me because I accomplished a lot, while also understanding more of what I was doing. I have a feel for more sites than I did before and I am delving deeper into my blog. I posted this picture of a painting with a bunch of other paintings within it because it reminds me of how complicated the web is; layer upon layer of technology.
I started the week by updating my blog a bit. I changed my existing blog posts to have better titles and then continued to make my posts sound and look interesting whenever I added another. I also personalized my website with a about page that gives a quick snapshot into my interests as a student and young adult. The frustration did encroach a bit when working to install Akismet and Jetpack, but I eventually sorted them out. I also downloaded the Known app after creating a subdomain to my website. It was a struggle, but the directions online really helped me. I updated my theme on Known to look more in line with my website and then personalized my about page. I then linked up to my Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and SoundCloud accounts to Known and started using Twitter through Known. I am still working out how to do the other social media sites, but I have Twitter down at least! Although I did manage to use flickr through Known to upload and tweet my game mashup for a daily create.
Through Known I tweeted about the daily creates and blog posts that I did throughout the week. I found an interesting article about the digital remastering of the Wire and wrote a tweet and blogpost to open up the conversation within the class. The daily creates were a lot of fun this week. I did my first ever on September 2 where I created a logo by hand and then updated it to Flickr. I did the same process over the next few days with the daily creates on a transit map of the Hobbit story and a map of the Internet with my house in it. I drew all of these by hand and then uploaded them to Flickr before tweeting out my work. I hope to be able to work on more online stuff, rather than resorting to drawing, but it will be an interesting learning process I’m sure. Although for the September 5 daily create I physically mashed up two board games, to make my daily create more 3D.
The daily creates are a lot of fun though and I wish I had done more last week. I like to post them on my blog so I can keep track of my work and eventually look back through all of the daily creates I do during the semester.
Logo:
Transit Map:
Map of the Internet:
Game Mashup:
I also branched out of my own blog this week by posting on a few others’. I really liked this because I was able to see other student work and find out that I am not the only student in the class lagging behind in technology. Seeing Brittany’s blog post about figuring the gif project out made me feel like I was not the only one struggling with this new technology base. That was indeed a comfort. I loved seeing other students work and how we are all using this class as a network to bounce ideas off of each other.
Here are the blogs I posted on:
The Beatific Blog of Barefoot Brittany
I binge watched episodes 10-12 of the Wire this week because they were all so intense! I have a separate blog post going into each episode and my overall reaction because there is too much venting to go here. For the gif project I decided to do episode one because it is the episode in which all of the main themes and lines of contact are established.
In order to make my gifs I downloaded GIMP and MPEG Streamclip. I first had to download episode one form online and then drop it into MPEG Streamclip. I then cut the section of the video I wanted with in and out buttons. Then I saved my few second clip into frame jpegs on my desktop, about 40-50 frames per gif. From there I opened GIMP and finalized the frames I wanted before uploading them into layers. They were all saved at 12 frames per second.
I put text over two of gifs, which required much more work. I put text overtop of all of the layers with a quote from that scene in the show. I had to put the text in between each frame and then merge the two so the text would show seamlessly over every frame. I thought these four gifs summarized the better part of the episode and pulled out the main issues that are followed upon later in the season.
For the first gif I showed McNulty asking about the name of “Snot Boogie” because it seems to show the miscommunication of the two “sides” of the drug war, as well as the detachment of people within each group. The quote used really shows that Snot Boogie is just one more person lost to the drug war; he will not be remembered and is but a pawn for the dealers.
The second gif shows Stringer’s lovely sketch, which he shares with McNulty. Stringer’s own writing, “Fuck you detective,” was perfect in itself to describe the relationship between the cops and drug dealers. This is within the scene where Stringer and his comrades have turned the case from the cops in order to get D’Angelo free. This is the set up of McNulty against the triad of Avon, Stringer and D’Angelo that goes on throughout the season.
My third gif was a little sarcastic on my part. I played off of Kima’s earlier comment about “fighting the war on drugs” and paired it with this scene where a high ranking cop stands smoking a cigar over a dead body and telling it not to come back as a reported murder. This scene really showed the disillusionment of cops and detachment from the dead bodies that constantly pile of from this business they are trying to uncover. The slow pan down worked really well with the gif and the text and it is my favorite of the ones I made.
The actual wire of the Wire is shown in my last gif, where I highlight the opening interest of McNulty in using wires to breakdown the defense of Barksdale’s drug crew. This was the perfect gif to end on because it covers the beginning of the main line of technology used by the cops in the war on drugs in the show.
I uploaded all of my gifs to flickr and tagged the class to share them faster and to let people see them before my blog post was published. Making the gifs was really hard and confusing at first and I sought help from Lauren Brumfield, who is also in the class. We watched some how-to videos, but after I went through the process with my first gif, I actually understood it all for the most part. I am proud of the fact that I now know how to make a gif and that I managed to summarize an episode of the Wire in so few. I feel I covered the main themes in this episode that establish issues that are discussed and put on trial throughout the first season.
I am really proud of what I’ve done and learned only two weeks into this class. For someone who uses only Facebook, I feel accomplished in having downloaded and learned to understand (somewhat) these new social media outlets, not to mention being able to make gifs!
