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Part III: Infection

This next DS106 assignment, The Role Playing Game, was probably the most thought provoking challenge I have done yet. Not only does this assignment test one’s writing skills, it also tests one’s creativity to bring an interesting story to the blogging and DS1o6 community.
I will refrain from going into too much about how I wrote what I wrote, because I don’t believe that stories gain any more meaning that way. I think that, on the contrary, it takes away something from it. In this post, I have listed the previous two parts (in italics) before mine , in order for you, the reader, to have an easier time getting into the story. One of the previous posts was posted by Roundhouse slap, so maybe check out her page, too, and tell her what you thought!

Just so everyone knows, the original entries were not titled with the names “The Beginning: Part I” or “The Beginning: Part II”. I added them to make it easy for you to discern who’s work was who’s and make it look more structured as well.

When you’re done reading, please feel free to leave a comment below. I will be more than happy to answer any questions you have, as well! You should try to do it, too, and try to add your own twist to the story!

Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Beginning Part I: Exodus

“Joe the clown was not a happy camper this morning. This was evidenced by the fact that he had put four lumps of sugar into his coffee, instead of the regular two. He only ever broke his two-sugars rule on special occasions, so going by that particular string of logic, this was a very special occasion indeed. Nevertheless Joe had little time to sulk, hunched over his kitchen table with remnants of buttered toast still clinging to the sides of his lips. And so it was that with a labored sigh he propped himself up off his seat and began the dreaded walk towards the front door, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a red rubber nose as he did so. He finished fixing the rubber implement on his own nose at about the same moment that his other hand fell on the cold, brass doorknob that led to the outside world. He paused for a moment, just a little longer than what he would usually allow himself (but this was a special occasion, remember). He then took a deep breath, turned the knob and stepped outside into the cold chilly morning air. It was time to have a word with the neighbours who had kept him up all night…”

The Beginning Part II: Victoria Powers

The moment that Joe stepped over the threshold of his apartment, the blinds on his neighbor’s window quickly flicked shut. “He’s bound to head over here to complain.” Victoria assured herself as she tugged her black leather gloves so they fit ever more snugly upon her fingertips. Her eyes flicked from the window down to the floor, where the motionless figures of the home’s actual inhabitants were sprawled.  She had only precious little time before the effects of the drugs wore off. She stepped gracefully but purposefully over their slumbering bodies as she moved on to the task at hand.

She quietly traversed the room until she was poised behind the front door. Reaching into the pocket of her coat she withdrew a rather large syringe, filled halfway with an opaque yellow liquid. She was both delicate and determined as she removed the cap and flicked the tip of the half-inch needle with the back of her gloved fingertips. A little pressure on the end of the syringe with her thumb forced a single droplet of liquid out of its tip. It was at this moment she heard Joe’s steps come to a halt on the other side door. The edges of her lips tugged upwards into a satisfied smirk.

In one swift motion the door swung open, and before the clown could react they were pressed up against one another. A passer-by could have mistaken this as an embrace from afar; Victoria, much shorter than Joe, looked like she had rushed into the arms of her lover. However, hidden betwixt their mashed up bodies her hand held and empty syringe, its needle buried deep into the clown’s chest. She wrapped her free arm around his back as his form slumped lifelessly onto hers, and dragged him into the home as the door shut behind them.”

Part III: Infection

The house, of late Victorian style, was quite bare on the inside. Contrary to the incredibly well maintained, lavish exterior of the house, the interior was surprisingly dull and bare. The first floor was quite open, partially exposing all the rooms except for the kitchen, which was, from the entrance of the house, completely obscured from sight. Immediately upon entering, one was first greeted with the sight of an ancient winding staircase that led up to the higher floors. Once inside, Victoria, with an unexpected strength, carried the limp, twitching clown up the stairs. As they ascended, the heavy door to the entrance slowly closed behind them.

After reaching the second floor, Victoria casually strode into the room directly in front of the stair case. Contradictory to the rest of the house, this large, spacious room was quite cluttered.  Like stacks of paper, several bodies in piles of two littered the floor. Apparently accustomed to the sight, she proceeded to walk over to a single, lonesome looking creature and began to place the body of the unlucky performer she held, on top of it, in a most particular manner. After examining her seemingly dead captives on the floor, she became slightly irritated. Victoria, always in complete control of the situation, was deeply bothered by the scene before her. Something was wrong, but luckily she knew just what it was and how to fix it.

Slowly but surely she began to make her way back over to Joe the Clown. As the elegant figure reached the near lifeless lumps of flesh, she gracefully stretched her arm forward and plucked off Joe’s bright-red nose piece. After fingering it in her hand for just a moment, she tossed it callously into the far left corner of the room.

The visage of Joe the Clown without his signature cherry-colored snout, seemingly lifeless on the floor, pleased her greatly. Ready to move on to the next phase of her plan, she quickly exited the room just as she entered. Curious as one may be, to peer into her thoughts now, one would find the truth to this grisly reality.

The thought of several potential hosts for her “children” is what really made her shiver with joy. The yellow liquid injected into the chests of the victims, now coursing through their bodies, contained a single egg of a being that was not from this world. Unknown to the human incubators covering the floor, her terrifying plan was already underway with chance of little interference. Victoria’s curly, auburn hair bounced gently off her soft, supple cheeks as she further admired her victims, relishing the fate that she has brought them.

Part III: Infection

This next DS106 assignment, The Role Playing Game, was probably the most thought provoking challenge I have done yet. Not only does this assignment test one’s writing skills, it also tests one’s creativity to bring an interesting story to the blogging and DS1o6 community.
I will refrain from going into too much about how I wrote what I wrote, because I don’t believe that stories gain any more meaning that way. I think that, on the contrary, it takes away something from it. In this post, I have listed the previous two parts (in italics) before mine , in order for you, the reader, to have an easier time getting into the story. One of the previous posts was posted by Roundhouse slap, so maybe check out her page, too, and tell her what you thought!

Just so everyone knows, the original entries were not titled with the names “The Beginning: Part I” or “The Beginning: Part II”. I added them to make it easy for you to discern who’s work was who’s and make it look more structured as well.

When you’re done reading, please feel free to leave a comment below. I will be more than happy to answer any questions you have, as well! You should try to do it, too, and try to add your own twist to the story!

Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Beginning Part I: Exodus

“Joe the clown was not a happy camper this morning. This was evidenced by the fact that he had put four lumps of sugar into his coffee, instead of the regular two. He only ever broke his two-sugars rule on special occasions, so going by that particular string of logic, this was a very special occasion indeed. Nevertheless Joe had little time to sulk, hunched over his kitchen table with remnants of buttered toast still clinging to the sides of his lips. And so it was that with a labored sigh he propped himself up off his seat and began the dreaded walk towards the front door, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a red rubber nose as he did so. He finished fixing the rubber implement on his own nose at about the same moment that his other hand fell on the cold, brass doorknob that led to the outside world. He paused for a moment, just a little longer than what he would usually allow himself (but this was a special occasion, remember). He then took a deep breath, turned the knob and stepped outside into the cold chilly morning air. It was time to have a word with the neighbours who had kept him up all night…”

The Beginning Part II: Victoria Powers

The moment that Joe stepped over the threshold of his apartment, the blinds on his neighbor’s window quickly flicked shut. “He’s bound to head over here to complain.” Victoria assured herself as she tugged her black leather gloves so they fit ever more snugly upon her fingertips. Her eyes flicked from the window down to the floor, where the motionless figures of the home’s actual inhabitants were sprawled.  She had only precious little time before the effects of the drugs wore off. She stepped gracefully but purposefully over their slumbering bodies as she moved on to the task at hand.

She quietly traversed the room until she was poised behind the front door. Reaching into the pocket of her coat she withdrew a rather large syringe, filled halfway with an opaque yellow liquid. She was both delicate and determined as she removed the cap and flicked the tip of the half-inch needle with the back of her gloved fingertips. A little pressure on the end of the syringe with her thumb forced a single droplet of liquid out of its tip. It was at this moment she heard Joe’s steps come to a halt on the other side door. The edges of her lips tugged upwards into a satisfied smirk.

In one swift motion the door swung open, and before the clown could react they were pressed up against one another. A passer-by could have mistaken this as an embrace from afar; Victoria, much shorter than Joe, looked like she had rushed into the arms of her lover. However, hidden betwixt their mashed up bodies her hand held and empty syringe, its needle buried deep into the clown’s chest. She wrapped her free arm around his back as his form slumped lifelessly onto hers, and dragged him into the home as the door shut behind them.”

Part III: Infection

The house, of late Victorian style, was quite bare on the inside. Contrary to the incredibly well maintained, lavish exterior of the house, the interior was surprisingly dull and bare. The first floor was quite open, partially exposing all the rooms except for the kitchen, which was, from the entrance of the house, completely obscured from sight. Immediately upon entering, one was first greeted with the sight of an ancient winding staircase that led up to the higher floors. Once inside, Victoria, with an unexpected strength, carried the limp, twitching clown up the stairs. As they ascended, the heavy door to the entrance slowly closed behind them.

After reaching the second floor, Victoria casually strode into the room directly in front of the stair case. Contradictory to the rest of the house, this large, spacious room was quite cluttered.  Like stacks of paper, several bodies in piles of two littered the floor. Apparently accustomed to the sight, she proceeded to walk over to a single, lonesome looking creature and began to place the body of the unlucky performer she held, on top of it, in a most particular manner. After examining her seemingly dead captives on the floor, she became slightly irritated. Victoria, always in complete control of the situation, was deeply bothered by the scene before her. Something was wrong, but luckily she knew just what it was and how to fix it.

Slowly but surely she began to make her way back over to Joe the Clown. As the elegant figure reached the near lifeless lumps of flesh, she gracefully stretched her arm forward and plucked off Joe’s bright-red nose piece. After fingering it in her hand for just a moment, she tossed it callously into the far left corner of the room.

The visage of Joe the Clown without his signature cherry-colored snout, seemingly lifeless on the floor, pleased her greatly. Ready to move on to the next phase of her plan, she quickly exited the room just as she entered. Curious as one may be, to peer into her thoughts now, one would find the truth to this grisly reality.

The thought of several potential hosts for her “children” is what really made her shiver with joy. The yellow liquid injected into the chests of the victims, now coursing through their bodies, contained a single egg of a being that was not from this world. Unknown to the human incubators covering the floor, her terrifying plan was already underway with chance of little interference. Victoria’s curly, auburn hair bounced gently off her soft, supple cheeks as she further admired her victims, relishing the fate that she has brought them.

Part III: Infection

This next DS106 assignment, The Role Playing Game, was probably the most thought provoking challenge I have done yet. Not only does this assignment test one’s writing skills, it also tests one’s creativity to bring an interesting story to the blogging and DS1o6 community.
I will refrain from going into too much about how I wrote what I wrote, because I don’t believe that stories gain any more meaning that way. I think that, on the contrary, it takes away something from it. In this post, I have listed the previous two parts (in italics) before mine , in order for you, the reader, to have an easier time getting into the story. One of the previous posts was posted by Roundhouse slap, so maybe check out her page, too, and tell her what you thought!

Just so everyone knows, the original entries were not titled with the names “The Beginning: Part I” or “The Beginning: Part II”. I added them to make it easy for you to discern who’s work was who’s and make it look more structured as well.

When you’re done reading, please feel free to leave a comment below. I will be more than happy to answer any questions you have, as well! You should try to do it, too, and try to add your own twist to the story!

Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Beginning Part I: Exodus

“Joe the clown was not a happy camper this morning. This was evidenced by the fact that he had put four lumps of sugar into his coffee, instead of the regular two. He only ever broke his two-sugars rule on special occasions, so going by that particular string of logic, this was a very special occasion indeed. Nevertheless Joe had little time to sulk, hunched over his kitchen table with remnants of buttered toast still clinging to the sides of his lips. And so it was that with a labored sigh he propped himself up off his seat and began the dreaded walk towards the front door, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a red rubber nose as he did so. He finished fixing the rubber implement on his own nose at about the same moment that his other hand fell on the cold, brass doorknob that led to the outside world. He paused for a moment, just a little longer than what he would usually allow himself (but this was a special occasion, remember). He then took a deep breath, turned the knob and stepped outside into the cold chilly morning air. It was time to have a word with the neighbours who had kept him up all night…”

The Beginning Part II: Victoria Powers

The moment that Joe stepped over the threshold of his apartment, the blinds on his neighbor’s window quickly flicked shut. “He’s bound to head over here to complain.” Victoria assured herself as she tugged her black leather gloves so they fit ever more snugly upon her fingertips. Her eyes flicked from the window down to the floor, where the motionless figures of the home’s actual inhabitants were sprawled.  She had only precious little time before the effects of the drugs wore off. She stepped gracefully but purposefully over their slumbering bodies as she moved on to the task at hand.

She quietly traversed the room until she was poised behind the front door. Reaching into the pocket of her coat she withdrew a rather large syringe, filled halfway with an opaque yellow liquid. She was both delicate and determined as she removed the cap and flicked the tip of the half-inch needle with the back of her gloved fingertips. A little pressure on the end of the syringe with her thumb forced a single droplet of liquid out of its tip. It was at this moment she heard Joe’s steps come to a halt on the other side door. The edges of her lips tugged upwards into a satisfied smirk.

In one swift motion the door swung open, and before the clown could react they were pressed up against one another. A passer-by could have mistaken this as an embrace from afar; Victoria, much shorter than Joe, looked like she had rushed into the arms of her lover. However, hidden betwixt their mashed up bodies her hand held and empty syringe, its needle buried deep into the clown’s chest. She wrapped her free arm around his back as his form slumped lifelessly onto hers, and dragged him into the home as the door shut behind them.”

Part III: Infection

The house, of late Victorian style, was quite bare on the inside. Contrary to the incredibly well maintained, lavish exterior of the house, the interior was surprisingly dull and bare. The first floor was quite open, partially exposing all the rooms except for the kitchen, which was, from the entrance of the house, completely obscured from sight. Immediately upon entering, one was first greeted with the sight of an ancient winding staircase that led up to the higher floors. Once inside, Victoria, with an unexpected strength, carried the limp, twitching clown up the stairs. As they ascended, the heavy door to the entrance slowly closed behind them.

After reaching the second floor, Victoria casually strode into the room directly in front of the stair case. Contradictory to the rest of the house, this large, spacious room was quite cluttered.  Like stacks of paper, several bodies in piles of two littered the floor. Apparently accustomed to the sight, she proceeded to walk over to a single, lonesome looking creature and began to place the body of the unlucky performer she held, on top of it, in a most particular manner. After examining her seemingly dead captives on the floor, she became slightly irritated. Victoria, always in complete control of the situation, was deeply bothered by the scene before her. Something was wrong, but luckily she knew just what it was and how to fix it.

Slowly but surely she began to make her way back over to Joe the Clown. As the elegant figure reached the near lifeless lumps of flesh, she gracefully stretched her arm forward and plucked off Joe’s bright-red nose piece. After fingering it in her hand for just a moment, she tossed it callously into the far left corner of the room.

The visage of Joe the Clown without his signature cherry-colored snout, seemingly lifeless on the floor, pleased her greatly. Ready to move on to the next phase of her plan, she quickly exited the room just as she entered. Curious as one may be, to peer into her thoughts now, one would find the truth to this grisly reality.

The thought of several potential hosts for her “children” is what really made her shiver with joy. The yellow liquid injected into the chests of the victims, now coursing through their bodies, contained a single egg of a being that was not from this world. Unknown to the human incubators covering the floor, her terrifying plan was already underway with chance of little interference. Victoria’s curly, auburn hair bounced gently off her soft, supple cheeks as she further admired her victims, relishing the fate that she has brought them.

15. never mind the **** (ds106 #6)

During this new section of Cyberspace and Society, we’ve been prompted to try to do each DS106 assignments from a different category because some student – aka me – have a tendency of just sticking to one category – aka my beloved design category. So, I spent a bit of time throughly browsing all the options (and there’s seriously so much to choose from, it’s amazing!) and a few stood out to me as things I really want to do. Amongst others one is a fanfiction assignment (the Un-Scene Scene), to appease the part of me that’s still in junior high school (yeah I totally did write fanfiction back then. Dreadful ones as that) and, then there’s this one that I’ve done here: Remix an Album Cover from the Mashup category. The assignment itself was pretty straight forward, and there’s a lot of fun to be had with it!

Find an iconic album cover and remix it to represent a something different. It can be a play on the title, the image, the aesthetic, genre, etc

Now, the quality of my taste in music is debatable, and as much as I’m quite pleased with what I listen too, there’s very little in terms of cover art that’s iconic like some of the classics that you’ll see on a Rolling Stones list. So I decided to give one of my favorite groups, Korean 9-member group Girls’ Generation, a make-over in the style of easily one of the most recognizable album covers ever: Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols.

The Process:

I wanted to retain a very close resemblance to the original album, so I searched up a duplicate of the iconic Sex Pistols font from dafont.com, and used it throughout. I wasn’t quite sure what font had been used for the The Bollocks part though so I think I just ended up using Times New Roman or some standard font like that. Anyway, I knew the new covers had to pink, which is the group’s representative color (we could get into a whole essay here about Korean pop groups, fanclubs and colors but I am going to cut it here for your sanity). Also, I decided to go with the girls’ Korean group name So Nyeo Shi Dae (thus SNSD) on the front, to have it start with the same S as the Sex Pistols, and to go along with that I used the title of their 3rd album, The Boys to replace to The Bollocks to keep the same B. Yes I put too much thought into this.

Anyway, making the cover was actually really easy: opened up a new image layer in a set size (700x700px), wrote out the text and drew a white box for the So Nyeo Shi Dae part, added two layers of texture by Clawsandfangs set in Softlight to give it a more realistic look, and a thin black gradient set in Softlight on the left side to give it some dimension. Holy run on sentence. If it didn’t make sense let me know and I’ll upload the .psd file.

But yeah, so I thought it was quite simple to do, and because I had already but some thought into figuring the basic process out – I decided to replicate the back cover as well.

This was kind of almost more fun to do, haha. Since I could just use the same color layer, textures and gradient as the front cover, I got to play around a lot more with the font (the letters look different depending if you write it out in caps or not) and also racking my brain for ways to draw those annoying box shapes! Looking at it now I realize I made a mistake with two of the song titles (Top Secret and Mr. Taxi) where I should have turned some of the text white. Might go back and fix that. Or you know, be really punk and leave it. Uhm. Anyway, I decided to also include that little record label sticker at the top as well, and so if you click on the cover and look at it in full-size you can see that I changed the “Printed in” from Holland to Korea, changed the Virgin logo to the logo of S.M. Entertainment (the group’s company) and I changed the codes to include nine 9′s. Which would make sense if you’re a fellow sone maybe? :p

 

So yeah, if anything in this process description doesn’t make sense, let me know. I know I have a tendency to ramble.

Stereogranimator

Steriobear

NYPL Labs : Stereogranimator

Create and share animated GIFs and 3D anaglyphs using more than 40,000 stereographs from The New York Public Library.

Since I’ve spent a fair bit of time animating gifs for DS106 of late this was interesting.

Stereoscopic photography recreates the illusion of depth by utilizing the binocularity of human vision. Because our two eyes are set apart, each eye sees the world from a slightly different angle. Our brains combine these two different eye-images into one, a phenomenon that enables us to “see,” ever so slightly, around the sides of objects, providing spatial depth and dimension. Stereoscopic views, or stereographs, consist of two nearly twin photographs — one for the left eye, one for the right. Viewing the side-by-side images though a special lens arrangement called a stereoscope helps our brains combine the two flat images and “see” the illusion of objects in spatial depth.

and

The Stereogranimator joins these latter-day adventures of the venerable GIF, mashing up an important early genre of internet folk art with a nearly forgotten species of folk photography.

You get to play with the creation of the gif, this creates a 2 frame animated gif and alternates between them.

Bonus link:Create 3D anaglyph images with 3 lines of Ruby code « saush

Update Colin maxwell tweeted Start 3D photos: 3D photo sharing and printing made easy

Wale or Nay?

If I had a dime for every time someone told me I look like Wale I’d be a millionaire. So I mashed up two portraits to compare. What do you guys think?

AudioAssignments36: Radio Bumper

RadiobumperDS106 by annie_belle1 This is my first-ever shot at making a radio bumper. I got the inspiration from this assignment posted by Jim Groom. I did some research, but I’m not 100% sure I understand what a radio bumper is. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a sound effect or a mash-up of [...]

flickrSounds for #ds106

One of the things I’ve really been enjoying about DS106 is riffing off the ideas of Alan Levine (CogDogBlog) like many edubloggers I’ve been following and being inspired by his blog for years. 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story is a standard teacher 2.0 text I’ve also, like many, used Feed2JS on several occasions. A while back I even tried to get a piratebox working after reading of the Storybox.

Anyway it is great to watch Alan teach his ds106 sub group and to follow his hyper activity on his blog. The other day, playing with the current #ds106 audio section he blogged: CogDogCodeAcademy: A Random Freesound Generator – CogDogBlog, this struck a cord as I recently posted #edtechcc Assignment 2 The Sight of Sound using the wonderful Freesound site. Revisiting it and looking at Alan’s code I notice that Freesound has an API. This looked interesting. I’ve now managed to create what I hope may be a ds106 Assignment flickrSounds.

flickrSounds

flickrSounds is a simple mashup that searches Freesounsd and flickr for the same word. It then display the sound and picture. You can reload either until you get an image and sound you like. This can be added to a list, and the exercise repeated. Once you have a set of picture/sounds you can grab an embed code to put hem on a blog. A set of pictures/sounds could create a story, illustrate a quote, saying or slogan.

Example

This is for searching for ds106 4 Life. I clicked through a few images and sounds for each word.

ds106

by electrovert
Attribution-NonCommercial License

intro.mp3
4

by California Cthulhu (Will Hart)
Attribution License

4-23-10 20 distort.wav
life

by dingatx
Attribution-NonCommercial License

lookoutbehind.wav

DS106 and Over Branding

Jim Groom Color

I’ve built in a Jim Groom busy widget into the webpage, the default search is dog, my example plays off the ds106 4life meme. Stephen Downes suggested in a comment that ds106 might be being over-branded I love ds106 but I think it?s being over-branded, this didn’t go down too well, but has inspired a lot of interesting stuff:, Martha Burtis’ The Cult of 4LIFE a graphic jokey one and I?m Still Chewing on that Over-Branding of DS106 Comment | mbransons and the comments on that post stand out for me.

It was an interesting idea, as someone just joining in I can see what Stephen Downes means. A lot of the DS106 rhetoric is fairly full on, there is a lot of self reference and pride/ego involved. I also could be put off by not sharing a culture with many of the other participants, being much older, having different frames of reference etc. Looking across the Atlantic it there is a very USA vibe. Lots of other folk with different backgrounds would have different reasons, I can see how DS106 could seem a bit hard to penetrate when looked in on. I thought a wee bit before joining in. but…

There are a couple of things that point the other way, DS106 is incredibly welcoming, the instructors are obviously giving a huge amount of time to the course and still have time to engage with the drive-by participants. They even made an effort to include my rather non standard blog RSS feed in the ds106 site. This seems to me to more than compensate for any exclusivity that ds106 might project.

The over-branding can be seen as glue, very important when you are trying to get participants to work together, and is more over more often than not obviously jokey, mocking the course and the organisers. #jimgroomart (eg: Blue Jump Suit #JimGroomArt #ds106:) is just an example, mock the teacher is one way to strengthen the connection, personalise the course, have fun and in weird way honour the amount of effort Jim makes to comment and make folk feel welcome in DS106.

I am also blown away 1 by the delight ds106 participants take in someone else grabbing what they have created and playing with it. The flickrSounds page is an example of this, without Alan’s positive reaction to my first tests I would not have carried on with this and had so much fun learnig a wee bit more JavaScript.

Code Thoughts

The root of this bit of fun was Alan’s post, in it he compares ds106 style learning with the new badges style learning:

Heck, I would rather do my own code challenges than someone else?s monkey see, monkey do. Thats the rub with this stuff, the motivation changes completely when it is something you need/want, versus someone else?s rote exercise for badges.

I commented to the effect that I found codeyear quite useful. I’ve been trying to keep up with the weekly JavaScript lessons there (just 3 weeks behind at the moment), as an afterthought I noted that Freesound have an API. This got me started on flickrSounds. In a way this proves Alan’s point, I’ve spent much much longer playing with this than I have in several weeks of codeyear. Partly because of the intrinsic interest of the task and partly due to Alan’s encouragement (blog comments and twitter).

But… I have messed about with javascript a few times now, but this is much neater code than usual (still horrible but relatively better). some of the improvements came from my experience of another CogDog/ds106 inspired piece Visualize That Quote but partly due to codeyear, where for the first time I’ve had the beginnings of an understanding of the basics of JavaScript.

There is a way to go with FlickrSounds, I need to add the ability to remove sound/pics from a ‘saved’ set and I need to test in IE, I’ve never manages to write any JavaScript that worked in IE first time.

Spirit of DS106

This has not been a ds106 assignment, I’ve not done any this week. I’ve only done one daily create, but I feel pretty much in the ds106 zone this weekend.

Footnotes:

1.
blown away is the nearest I can get to the DS106 comment style. This is much less reserved that my usual nice;-)

flickrSounds

This is a simple mashup that searches Freesounsd and flickr for the same word. It then display the sound and picture. You can reload either until you get an image and sound you like. This can be added to a list, and the exercise repeated. Once you have a set of picture/sounds you can grab an embed code to put hem on a blog. A set of pictures/sounds could create a story, illustrate a quote, saying or slogan. Make flickrSounds at http://johnjohnston.info/flickrSounds/

Seven Ciggies

Quickie Sales

The hazards offered at Seven Eleven

Think of anyplace you spend money, and what you most often buy at that place. Then redesign their logo to incorporate your favorite product. Do as many as you want.

The Consumer Mashup made me consider where I spend a majority of my budget.  Initially, I considered incorporating discounted fish from AEON, but realized most of my money is spent on the lung blackening sticks offered at the Seven/Eleven.  To create my alternate logo, I started with the original.

I decided to experiment with different photo editing software, so I used pixlr for this assignment.

A google search of “Cigarettes” gave me many options, so I selected a photo containing a straight cigarette.  Using the magic wand feature, I clicked the cigarette photo and copied its inverse.  After pasting the inverse on the original logo, I erased all of the excess.  The remaining was one straight cigarette which I copied multiple times and rearranged to lay on top of the original logo’s lettering.  After the cigarettes were in place, I switched to the background layer and erased the green ELEVEN to eliminate any visible green.  Here, I changed the white logo background to black to represent the hazards of smoking and make the new lettering easier to read. The red and oranges of the original logo complimented the change nicely by representing the fire from the cherry against the smokey black.

I found pixlr quite easy to use, more so than the overwhelming Photoshop.  I am glad I tried it out, I believe I’ll be using it more in the future.