For my second assignment, I chose to create my ideal room. Well really it will be my idea back yard because I love to spend time outside and that really is my ideal room. The internet gives us the power to research and look for ideas that we like from other places. In essence that is what pinterest is really all about, sharing creative ideas for the average person! This is great because humans no longer have to visit somewhere else to get an idea. They can do it right in their own living room. Anyways, the assignment is worth four points and the link to the prompt is:

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-your-own-room/

I plan on having a house with a lot of character. I really like older rustic stone country homes. So my back drop to my back yard will obviously be that. Off the back I would like a good mix of gardens, grass, and a pool. I have never had a pool growing up and have always wanted one so thats at the top of my list. I would also like to have some sort of outdoor entertainment with a fire pit and grill, maybe even a bar. The possibilities are are endless. So without further gibberish these are the pictures that I found on pinterest for my ideal back yard.

 

This shows the ideal english garden type back yard with doors that open up to create an extension of the house out on to the pool deck and into the yard where the gardens are.

This would be my outdoor entertainment area with an outdoor kitchen and wine bar.

My english gardens with plenty of flowers and shrubs out away from the pool.

Somewhere out in the gardens I would like to have a secondary entertainment area with an outdoor fireplace where you can sit in the middle of the gardens.

Somewhere out in the garden I want to build a huge treehouse for the kids because lets be real, if everything else is that nice the kids need their own space to go have fun and be creative.

I chose to do this assignment because I really enjoy thinking about the future and what I plan to do. I cannot wait for the day that I can create something like the images that I have inserted from pinterest here!

This assignment was fairly easy to set up. The hard part was choosing what images to use! Once I created a folder on pinterest, I pinned 15 ideas then went through and chose the ones that I liked the most. From there I saved the pictures to my computer and then inserted them as media on this blog post.

For my first assignment from the assignment bank, I chose a 4-star Web assignment called “create your own room.” Here is the link: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-your-own-room/

I had SO much fun with this assignment. First off, it uses Pinterest, which I use all the time anyways. Secondly, I love designing rooms so this was great for me. I chose to design my dream bedroom.

Here is the link to my board: http://pin.it/s3nUcK8

 My dream room would have high ceilings, lots of windows, and would be very spacious.

My color scheme of the room would be very cozy and nature-inspired, with light blue walls. I think these colors are really relaxing and are easy to match decorations with.

I love taking pictures and displaying them, so it’s important to me that I have a lot of space to display things that are important to me. I also love making things and designing walls, so I loved the collage wall and picture clip ideas.

This is my favorite part of the room! I would have a corner with a huge reading chair and a bookshelf for all my books.

Here is the rest of my furniture for my room. The rustic look of the furniture would go really well with the overall comfortable theme of the room.

 

Reflection:

I didn’t run into any problems doing this assignment because I am (too) familiar with Pinterest, but it was pretty time consuming! I have had an idea of what my room would look like if I had an endless amount of money, and this was a fun, creative activity. It reminded me again of the “Show your work” article because it reminded me that you don’t have an artist to be creative, and there are so many ways to show your creativity. This assignment shows how the internet has changed the game for interior design–it is so easy to design a room with the internet!

Here’s how I decided what to pin:

First I decided what type of theme I wanted for my dream room. I love sleeping and relaxing, so I definitely wanted my room to reflect that. I like a rustic theme and that is very comfortable to live in, so I went from there. From there I chose a comfortable paint color I liked, then I picked my furniture, and then I chose the finishing touches and decorations. I was a little nervous about doing these assignments, but this was a fun and doable project for me!

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For my second assignment from the Assignment Bank, I’m going to be finding a digital tool and writing a tutorial. To be specific, the tool I’m going to be using is Inkscape, an open-source vector graphics program. In case you don’t know, there are two major types of graphics: raster and vector. Rasters are based on pixels, while vectors are based on more math-y things like points, lines, filled areas, etc. Raster editors include Photoshop and MS Paint, while some major vector editors are Inkscape and Illustrator. I use Inkscape a ton for my worldbuilding and conlanging. For example, I use it to make maps, flags, and glyphs that can be used to make fonts. Here’s an example of a flag I’ve made with it:

During this tutorial, I’m going to be making a flag for an tiny archipelago in a world I’m working on. Here it is on a cropped part of the map:

With the background information out of the way, let’s get into the actual flagmaking process.

1) Preparation

When we open Inkscape, it should look something like this:

You can use the + and – keys to zoom in and out to get a good view of your workspace. First of all, we need to set the flag’s proportions. The most common flag proportions in the world are 2:3, 1:2, and 3:5, so we’ll choose one of them for this project. You can really choose any proportions (for example, the real-life flag of Togo’s proportions are the golden ratio!), but let’s stick with one of the simple ones for this.

To change the aspect ratio, we go to File > Document Properties. It should open up a window like this:

About halfway down the window, you can see a section called Custom Size. We’ll set the width to 900 and the height to 600, a 2:3 aspect ratio. Close out of the window and you’ll see that the working area is now in the correct proportions:

Now we need to add a “background” for our flag. This is just to make sure the flag isn’t transparent. On the sidebar on the left side of the screen, there’s this button used for adding rectangles:

Click it, then click and drag in the workspace to place a rectangle. Size and location don’t matter here. Up at the top, you should see W and H followed by numbers. Type 900 into the W box and 600 into the H box (the proportions we set earlier). To align this new rectangle correctly, click on it, then go to Object > Align and Distribute. Your screen should now look something like this:

We’ll align it relative to Page. Click both of these buttons to center the rectangle on the workspace:

Then, in the spectrum of colours at the bottom of the screen, click the colour you want the background of your flag to be. For this example, I’m just going to choose white. With all this done, we’re ready to actually start designing our flag!

2) Design

Now that we’ve prepared everything, our workspace should look roughly like this:

Now I’m going to add another rectangle. This one’s proportions will be W 300 (1/3 of the flag’s width) and H 600 (the whole height). In addition, I’m going to set both the X and Y values to 0, so the rectangle will be aligned correctly. I’m also making it a nice blue so we don’t lose it in all the white. The screen now looks like this:

Next, I’m going to add a circle. To do that, use the circle tool on the sidebar. That’s this one:

Once the circle’s added, let’s set its W and H to 300 each (we want a circle, not an oval), and its X and Y to 125. This should put the circle in the middle of the flag vertically, and centered on the border between the white and blue rectangles horizontally. Let’s make the circle a golden yellow, since sun imagery is really big in Sarkik:

Now do the same thing over again, but set the values to W 350, H 350, X 125, Y 125. Then, using the colour picker tool on the sidebar, pick the colour of the blue rectangle. Lastly, click the “lower selection one step” button at the top to but this blue circle beneath the golden one. For reference, here are the two tools:

Our flag now looks like this:

This’d be a perfectly respectable flag, but I’m going to make it a little more Sarkik-y. Take this cropped map of Sarkik and copy and paste it into the Inkscape workspace:

Set this image’s W and H to 225 and 205, respectively. Now, using the star tool, put some five-pointed stars over the locations of the islands. For a better effect, make the size of the star relative to the size of the island. The star tool and the appropriate settings:

If you hold the Ctrl key while placing the stars, they’ll snap to some shaper angles, so you don’t end up with stars at 37.652°. Once you’ve placed the stars, feel free to delete the map. Now, click and drag over the stars (or Shift-Click each one). Then, go to Object > Group. The stars should now be grouped as a single object. Now we should have something like this:

While you have the stars selected, Shift-Click on the yellow circle. Once you have both selected, go back to Object > Align and Distribute. This time, we’ll be aligning relative to Last Selected. Click those same buttons as we did earlier to center the stars inside the circle. Once you’ve done that, the flag should look like this:

And that’ll be our flag! It’s not the most complicated thing in the world, but I don’t think it looks too shabby.

3) Saving/Exporting

Now just save it as a .svg file (that’s an acronym for “scalable vector graphics”. It’s a common vector file type). To export a raster image, go to File > Export as Bitmap. Make sure you have the Page option selected, then just click Export and you should get a .png file of the flag!

Once all that’s done, we end up with this:

(I’ve added a black outline so you can still see the flag correctly on this white webpage)

And that’s how you make a flag in Inkscape! There are some more complicated things you can do, but flags tend to be relatively minimalist (unless you’re a Liberian county) and simple, so you won’t need to do anything too complicated for most of them. Now you know how to make flags, and I have a flag for a country that I’ve been putting off making a flag for (honestly the reason I chose this assignment. Multitasking!). We both win!

Also, check out this cool animation of our flag waving:

or the high-quality version on the waving flag generator.

The tools I used to make this post:

• Inkscape (obviously)
• Gyazo (for taking the screenshots and the gif)
• Online Flag Waver (rad tool for generating a waving flag animation)

For my last DS106 assignment bank creation, I wanted to do something I had not done before from a “new to me” category. I had also determined in last week’s course reflection that I wanted to involve my family in this week’s project. So, I worked with my husband to choose the “Buzzfeed Personality Quiz” assignment.

The assignment itself is pretty straightforward: create a personality quiz using the Buzzfeed site. There are some additional parameters for minimum number of outcomes and questions, as well as a requirement that photos be included.

My husband helped me choose a quiz storyline that fit into my course theme of “the future.” After bouncing a few ideas around, I landed on “What’s Your Post-Apocalyptic Community?” I wanted to bring my theme back to current trends in popular culture wherein people discuss possible disaster scenarios in semi-serious, semi-joking ways. I worked with my husband to create four future communities and six questions to help determine community membership.

Now would be the perfect time to try it out and see where you land.

I spent way more time on this quiz than I would have imagined. It was also the assignment which developed the most as a story behind the scenes – lots of thought and discussion went into exploring potential storylines. I worked with my husband on the initial bits, ran several ideas by co-workers and friends, and found myself contemplating my various future communities at random times of the day. It was a lot of fun feeling that invested!

In addition to writing up the quiz sections as outlined by the Buzzfeed layout, I created a number of pictures and tracked down different images through the Flickr search for images licensed for reuse. I made sure to give each image proper credit (I appreciate that Buzzfeed includes a spot to do this), as well as the url for each photo.

I feel accomplished having created this quiz and trying something completely new-to-me. I also have some ideas for Buzzfeed’s community suggestion box based on features that I would have liked to include in my quiz, like tie-breaker questions, multi-path options and secondary responses.

 

 

 

The Story

Running can sometimes be very boring to me if I don’t have something to keep my entertained or new ways of switching up. This is the first week I got to choose my own assignment from the ds106 Read more…

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