Visual Assignment “What’s In Your Gullett” 2 1/2 Stars. My day started with hitting the ground and running once the kids and the hubby were off! After all I had the party of the decade to prepare for; my baby would be turning 12 and requested a slumber party to set the party off right. With that said there was no time for breakfast so a Minute Maid Apple Juice sippy box it was. By the end of the night I was a wreck and required a stiff one, hence the Caribbean Rum Wray and Nephew’s. By the next morning I would pay the price and Joe came to the rescue!

Here is a photo of one of my fans!

This is the smaller of my two fans and this picture actually makes it seem really tall now that I look at it. I image that a minifig would see this as some form of a dark spire that possesses wind energy, but that’s just my thought on it. The lightning was not necessarily bright, but that was done to try and make this a bit of a dark picture of a towering object. Unfortunately, since this was a black object, I placed it against a white wall just to contrast it so you could clearly see that this was a fan.

Let me know what you think!

These are the last beverages I have had over the weekend. If you are wondering why they are full, it is because I did not want to sift through my garbage to go and grab the empty bottles, especially since sick materials are the majority of my trash at the moment.

Why go with those drinks?

– Water is just plain good. You never know how much you miss it until you go to another country where the water is not so clean and all you can drink is the purified water they bring you (which I might add will run out very quickly). Dr. Pepper is just another one of those really awesome sodas that are out there. If you are on campus, Seaco actually has really good Dr. Pepper, but not the Nest. Remember that little fact!. Lastly, Mountain Dew is gamer fuel/programming fuel! It is by far my favorite soda. If I’m going to be up all night, I’m grabbing Mountain Dew!

Were any of the meals you had with them extraordinary?

– The meal I had with Mountain Dew was pretty extraordinary. I ordered Chinese since I was feeling better on Saturday and had a bottle of it with some General Tso’s Chicken. It was phenomenal! Yes I do consider this extraordinary, it is not campus food damn-it!

Who did you have them with, if anyone?

– Oddly enough, I did have each one of these drinks as I was talking with my brother over Xbox Live and watching Youtube videos. It is as close as I wanted to get to anyone while I was feeling under the weather. And before you ask, no while I was at the worst of my sickness, I was only drinking water. I literally just had a Mountain Dew yesterday and a Dr. Pepper today (although I’ve got one of each in reserve now).

That’s whats in my Gullet!

What’s in yours?

Let me know what you think!

One of these things just doesn’t belong here… I’m very curious to know if you can find it! This one was simple for me to make because I immediately thought about LEGO.

This did not take long to make, it just took a couple of minifig parts, the correct lighting, macro mode on a camera, and the right little illusion. Kudos to you if you can spot the difference!

Let me know what you think!

So this was an interesting assignment. The goal was to draw something using 4 lines, 5 dots, and 1 curve. I immediately thought of the classic ice cream cone you learn to draw as a kid. I had one big, pink dot, and four smaller ones as sprinkles. Add in a nice caramel curve, and the ice cream itself is finished!

Next came the cone, which required two lines to make (you can sneak an extra curve in if you used the big pink dot). I had two lines left so I decided to cross them to somewhat make a waffle cone.

That was pretty easy! I’d like to see what you can do. Speaking of which, let me know what you think!

Week 5: Visual Assignment #3

For my last visual assignment this week, I chose to GIF animate my day like Ben. I used my iPhone to capture videos that told the story of my day well, however I made the mistake of not reading the directions thoroughly. This assignment called for infinite loop GIF images, but luckily, I captured a few that would suffice as infinite loops. After creating GIF images for the The Wire in the first weeks of DS106, I became addicted to creating GIFs. Sometimes it’s an easy process, and other times it can be quite messy. I chose this assignment because I love making GIFs and thought it would be interesting to GIF animate my own content.

Creating the GIFs
Rather than animating everything I did in one day, I decided to capture several events prior to the start of the weekend. Starting Thursday, I captured videos of my morning meal, doing homework, playing with my dog, and Skyping with my niece Cassryn. I then downloaded these videos on my computer, then used MPEG Streamclip to trim and export the trimmed clips as image sequences. I opened each image sequence in GIMP and made sure to “Optimize them for GIF” before exporting each as a GIF animation. Below are the GIF animations of my day followed by a short description:

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9:00 AM - Have I mentioned Fruity Pebbles are my favorite cereal ever? When I’m craving it for breakfast, I pour myself a hefty bowl of Fruity Pebbles to demolish before my 10:00 AM class. I rarely find tasty gluten-free cereals, but when I found out they started making Fruity Pebbles gluten-free, I nearly lost it. Eating this cereal with a little light almond milk is heaven in my mouth.

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12:00 PM - Coffee for me is the elixir of life (because I feel like death right before I drink it). After my classes are over and I’ve picked up lunch, I brew myself a strong pot of Folgers and fill my mug up to the brim. A big cup o’ joe is always a good (and much needed) pre-homework pick-me-up!

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5:00 PM - Before dinner my dad will FaceTime or Skype me so that I can see my niece Cassryn (who’s all the way in Mississippi). For an almost 2-year old, she’s the smartest cookie I’ve ever met! This little girl knows how to navigate an iPad or iPhone better than my mother. I love watching her grow up and learn new things. Whenever I say goodbye to her on Skype, she always gives me a “flying kiss.”

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9:00 PM - On Thursday I participated in a live Wire106 Radio tweet session of Season 2 Episode 8… without sound! It was an interesting experience trying to figure out what the characters were saying and what was going on using only visuals. I enjoyed sharing ideas with other DS106ers, Jim Groom, and Paul Bond during this live tweet session.

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Friday Afternoon - Apologies for the jump in time! This Friday I went home to Lorton for the day to see my family and attend my sister’s birthday dinner. I’m so excited I got to see my chunky chihuahua nugget! Even though he can be sassy at times, I absolutely adore him. Here he is shaking my hand.

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Saturday Morning - The drive back to school is always both stressful and relaxing. The stressful part of it includes packing, loading my car, and dealing with traffic, but once that’s over and done and I’m driving at a steady speed, I crank up some tunes and enjoy the rest of the ride. It takes me about 40 minutes to get from Lorton to Fredericksburg, and I love watching all the scenery along the way.

Continuing the trend of visual assignments for the week, I worked on an album cover that utilizes random quotes, pages, and pictures. The band name was chose from this wiki article, and the album name was taken from this random quote by Charles Schulz: “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.” I actually thought it was a really nice quote too, and works well as an album name.

The cover art was taken from this random image provided by Flickr. I couldn’t have asked for a better picture. I downloaded it and opened it in GIMP. I provided two layers for each quote, the band name and album name. I used a text placement tool for each, and chose a different font and color. I then used the “alpha to selection” option for both quotes and changed the selection size to make an outline. I then added an extra layer beneath the text layers and filled in the selection with different colors to give the font a border, making it stand out. I then applied a “circuit” filter over the entire image, and lowered the transparency until it was barely noticeable. And there we have it! Looks like the sort of album cover an obscure indie band would use.

Difficulty: 3 stars

I imagine this is the bug’s eye view when The Wafflestomper comes around hiking. I really wanted to get some of the lugged sole in the image, so I played around with sliding it to the edge of an elevated surface.  I could get the camera lens under the boot better that way, which gave […]

Week 5: Visual Assignment #2

Choosing and Brainstorming
For my second visual assignment, I chose to create an Opposites Attract Meme by taking two opposite animals and creating a hybrid animal. I immediately thought about lions and zebras (I’ve seen too much National Geographic), and thought the combination would create a cool looking hybrid animal. I love the pattern of a zebra and chose to have the head be a lion as the head of a lion has more fierce, unique qualities. Using Google, I discovered a variation of the lion that was absolutely perfect–the wild lion. I decided to place the head of the white lion atop the body of a zebra to create my strong hybrid animal.

Creating the Hybrid Animal
First I saved two images: one of the zebra body I would be using and one of a front-facing white lion head. Using GIMP I opened both files. To prepare the lion head, I created a transparent layer on the image and used the paintbrush tool to paint everything I wanted to exclude in the photo (the lion’s body and the background) so as to isolate the head. I then used the automatic selection tool to select and delete the painted-in black area. Using the eraser tool I erased any black parts left behind, and my lion’s head was ready. I copied the lion head layer onto the zebra image, scaling the head and using the blending tool to make the combination look more natural. After merging the finished layers, I added some black and white text saying “Beware the Wild Zion” to make the hybrid look more fearsome. Below is my finished product!