Never heard of Twister before but apparently it is a website that can make fake Twitter-like accounts for well known individuals in the past.  The basic premise is typing in the full name, choosing a date they would have “tweeted” and coming up with something they might say.  The example I had seen was Abe Lincoln with a crude kind of tweet foreshadowing his death.  I tried to be a little more lighthearted and just poked fun at his yellow period. Pretty cool

This was initially really fun but then it became very annoying lol.  So my first story for this was actually a horror story and without realizing I hadn’t logged in, I wrote the whole thing and wasn’t able to get a shareable link.  But initially what drew me to this was that I have never played an interactive storytelling game like this before and when I saw it as one of the assignments for this week I thought why not?

So my initial story was called ‘The Depths’ which interacts with the reader by presenting them with personal questions like if they had siblings, do they look like they’re parents, etc.  But then it goes into more odd questioning like scars from childhood they cannot explain and asking if their memories are patchy from a period in their lives.  As they continue through the game, the point is to lead them to a conclusion that they are not who they think they are and neither are their parents, they keep going and asking questions and each outcome of their answer becomes more and more twisted.  Just as they demand answers it tells them that they have been activated, and the nightmares will soon start in order to get to the bottom of it.  It’s meant to make them feel as though fate has brought them here whether they believe that or not. Then it is revealed that the reason the game is called the Depths is because in order to understand what they have started by playing, is in the very depths of their minds.

Unfortunately, I only have these screenshots of the second story I had to start after losing the one above -____- the frustration of not thinking to screenshot the first story is very, very disheartening.

For the Pinterest Dream Vacation assignment, I decided to find a few places that I’ve always wanted to visit and treat the trip as if money was no object. My board includes locations in Italy, Croatia, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Russia. A lot of people talk about wanting to visit countries in western Europe like France or Britain or Spain, and I would love to visit there as well, but in addition to visiting Italy and Germany (which are also pretty typical dream destinations), I definitely want to see some places in Central and Eastern Europe that don’t get as many tourists but are just as amazing. None of the countries I pinned speak English as their primary language, but there are English speakers and translators all around, and I speak enough Italian and a little German to get by. Visas and shots will also be required. Most of the countries are Schengen Treaty countries, meaning it’s much easier to cross borders from one to the other, but countries like Russia have more closed borders. In addition, I’d definitely have to learn a lot of the social customs of the countries so as not to come off as rude and to avoid confusion. Overall, though, I think it would be a perfect vacation.

This was the Chinese version of the magical wolf shirt on Amazon. I translated this ad and the English translation is really weird honestly, I can’t quite follow all of it. For example, the “Suitable for: Too large” was an interesting translation. The version is “loose version” and it uses “3D effect printing, super vision effect” which just doesn’t sound right! How weird.

Here is a screenshot of Google maps of exactly where I would travel to given the chance! Right around the area of Aspen and the White River National Forest. I’ve heard some of the absolute best things about Colorado as a whole, and am so excited to go one day.

My ideal trip would be to drive out there and make plenty of trips along the way, then hopefully stay in or around Aspen for a week. The best trip would be to somehow incorporate back country skiing as well as some sort of hiking or camping!

For one of the web assignments this week I made a photograph Timeline with Timeline JS. Since I’ve used Timeline JS for another class, it was pretty easy. For the assignment, we had to pick a color and go on a 20 minute walk, basically doing a photo blitz of the color and then put those pictures into a timeline. There are a surprising number of blue things in downtown Fredericksburg, but I still tried to mix up some unusual blue pictures in with what you might commonly see. There were some technical parts of creating the timeline that were kind of annoying, but that is what made it a web assignment, and I learned a little more about Timeline JS than I knew before.

For this assignment, I was able to use one of my favorite sites, Pinterest, and incorporate my character, Annabella Smith, into it. You can see the entire Pintrest Board here. This was super fun and very surprising. I’ve been on Pinterest for a few years, but I was still surprised to find so many cool spy gadgets. I have no idea why people are on Pinterest looking for spy gadgets, but it was the place to go! As a spy, Annabella Smith needs to change her appearance, so I pinned a few disguise-related pins and some outfits where she can hide her gadgets. Some of them are very practical, like a site that teaches you Morse code and fingerprint dust. The other gadgets include eye contacts that let you see in the dark, contact lenses that can zoom in and out, a ring that can cut through rope (if you need to make an escape), a pocket grappling hook, a phone charger that’s also a recording device, and of course a lipstick stun gun.