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Designing my dream rooms?! This assignment could not have come at a better time! I’m moving into a new apartment in a few weeks so this really called out to me when I came across it. I always need decorating ideas! Not to mention, I’m a Pinterest addict so what better excuse to spend even more time on one of my favorite websites! I started by creating a board specifically for the assignment. Then…well I resurfaced about 2 hours later with quite a selection! Going back through my choices, i definitely noticed I color scheme I leaned towards. Greys, tans, blacks, and muted versions of pinks and blues showed up over and over again. I also focused a lot on wall art and decorations as opposed to the furniture itself. I don’t have much creativity outside of baking so all the different ideas really helped me to be able to picture it. I especially liked the idea of having a little reading nook/corner and seeing a couple different ideas for a working desk since obviously I’m still in school. I even found a post for my dream closet! Its the size of a small bedroom and has built in shelves and everything! To top off the board, I added a few ideas for a master bathroom. I’ve always loved the ocean and the beach so I fully intend to have a sea themed master bath. I’m sure you’ll see that come through in my choices. Happy decorating!

Dream Room

This assignment was pretty cool. As a CS major, I end up downloading a lot of neat things for classes, or someone in a class mentions something that is open source that I should get.

How many open source programs do I currently have?

Currently on my computer I have Firefox, R, Paintbrush, GIMP, Audacity, VLC, Pandas, and Numpy.  There may be a few other I had used before such as Ubuntu, but that is a separate operating system.

How many commercial software programs could be replaced with free and open source alternatives?

I am a very cheap person, and am willing to always go out of my way to save a few dimes. This includes not having to pay for software such as Adobe Photoshop. I had originally used photoshop during a free 30 day trial, but that expired long ago. I currently use GIMP, one of the open source pieces of software that I currently listed. So I currently don’t have any programs that can be switched because they’re all already free.

What media are you using that compromises your personal data, count the programs and devices?

There is a simple flowchart to follow to see if your information is being followed. Was the program free? –> Yes —-> You’re info is being sold. Facebook is probably the worst offender. I use a facebook just to keep track of things going on with the rugby team and even then it’s invasive. Zuckerberg himself said that people are dumb for giving him all their information for free, which he just then turns around and sells. This is the same for apple and google. Just remember, if the product is free, you’re the product.

So the main assignment for this week was to write a story using the web I usedMozilla X-Ray Goggles tool to complete the project. I wanted to try and pick a website I did not think a lot of people would pick but also one that was not completely obscure. So I decided to remix the Instructables page. Their home page offered a lot to work with because it had lots of image spaces and text to mess around with. Here is how it looked originally.

I decided to recreate the website to still be an instructions website but one geared towards spies. With helpful instructions on activities like  forgery, hacking, or tunneling. For each activity I wanted to include the submitter of the instructions as a member in the class because it seemed fun. But hten problem one hit. About 20 minutes or more into working on the page trying to find cool and propperly licensed images I made a mistake and accidently clicked a link. Which meant that the page reloaded and I lost everything. It was a setback for sure but I resigned to be more careful and started back again. This time I took some screenshots as I worked just in class. Two hours later of picking funny spy images, and categories for those instructions I was getting towards the wrap up part where I would add in people’s names to creators of the project. It was super late though so I decided to just keep it up on my computer and finish that in the morning.

This is where mistake number 2 came in. If anyone in the class also lives on UMW’s campus you know Apogee the wifi networks been having some problems lately. Today when I came back to my res hall to finish up my project I bumped into an Apogee guy who was trying to solve the problem. He asked if I had a Mac and if so could he look at it to see if he could figure it out. (Spoiler he still didn’t know what was wrong when he left) While looking at my computer he was supposed to be in systems preferences but for some reason without asking me if it was okay he shut down my chrome browser. Now usually that’s not too much damage you reopen tabs maybe lose a bit of info but not awful. Except I had been creating the spy site in chrome meaning that I lost 2 hours of spy website time… gone. I’ll admit to being a bit upset and frustrated at this because in the craziness of this week I had a bunch due today.

So the good and bad news.

Good  first I can show the screen shots of the cool site that I did take to give an idea of some of the changes I made before it died a sad death.

This Rest of the photos:

The bad is a two part deal.

Part one after the chaos of the lost spy site I went to Twitter as one does and told the world of my failure. Which is when someone altered me that there actually had been a way to save your progress (this deepened my sadness more but you bet I will be saving from now on.)

@libcal3 Actually you can by right clicking on the page you are editing and saving the actual page html.

— Nicholas Sebenaler (@NickSebenaler) March 24, 2017

The Part two bad. There was not enough physical hours in today to complete the amazing idea site I had planned out and worked on this week. So instead I had to create a new less involved site in order to make the deadline of 12 and still produce something fully formed. So here is what i do have for you: Ballooning for Spies based off the umw.domains site!

Here is the new version of my Google page:

Google remixed

I first figured out a way to use X-ray Goggles by dragging the button directly onto bookmarks toolbar. Then, after visiting the most popular search engine, Google, I clicked on all of the texts that I can change. I could not change the main “Google,” however, since it was a logo and not text, but I was able to change everything else. I changed the “I feel lucky” button where it outputs different texts everytime you click on it. This was pretty fun because I felt like I was creating my own search engine (eventhough all I did way modify! =)

WebAssignments, WebAssignments1438

For one of the Web assignments this week, I created a Buzzfeed personality quiz about some of the weirdest rulers from Early Modern Europe. This assignment definitely warranted its star rating. I’ve taken a ton of Buzzfeed personality quizzes, and despite how much crap they get, this gave me a new appreciation for how hard these quizzes are to make. First, I had to read about how to make one. The first step, according to their guide, is to think of the answers to the quiz first. Makes sense, but it’s still a bit of work. I’m a huge history geek, of course, so that was my go-to. But I had to think of an area of history where I had a lot of knowledge. Unfortunately, even though I specialize in a few periods, I’m not an expert on the biographies of some historical figures, so I went with some of the more eccentric figures from the Early Modern era: King Henry VIII, Vlad the Impaler, Peter the Great, and Elizabeth Bathory. The real ground work was in finding some (mostly) accurate biographical info about them and finding images to accompany the questions. I had a lot of fun coming up with the answers. Check it out here!

For my second web assignment, I decided to do a personal search engine. To start off, I got x-ray goggles and did a mini tutorial with it. I just want to note that the tutorial is not helpful at all.

I decided I wanted to do a spy-themed search engine and went off to google and started editing. I got pretty far until I realized, I can’t actually edit the google logo since it is an image. So I created my own image and tried to input it in, but that didn’t work either. So honestly, I gave up and developed a hatred towards google.

I decided to try another search engine and started editing that one. I didn’t need to change the picture because I felt like it fit well with my spy theme (sort of, I have to explain) 

So this is my final product. I changed the text but kept the duck because I feel like, for a spy search engine, you have to be discrete. You can’t just have a bunch of spies everywhere and a duck is perfect cover.

This assignment was rated 4 1/2 stars but really should be 5 because it is really frickin hard!

For this assignment I hand to go through the history of DS106 and find an old assignment that I could redo and make my own. I decided to go with the assignment “Love is Something You Can’t Live a Day Without” from the DS106 fall 2016 course. I first found this assignment by googling #ds106 and then going through the assignments from previous semesters. I picked this one in particular because I liked the message that is conveyed.

I was able to turn this assignment into my own by adding a video of myself and local kids that I coach on the local USA Swim Team the RAYS. I am very passionate about swimming (I was once a former college swimmer) and the kids that I coach. What this video is, is me diving into the pool wearing a tutu and clothes because I lost a bet with one of the kids. I told him that if he went a particular time in one of his events I would do something silly, and this is what he chose as my punishment.

I love my job and I love the sport of swimming. I hope you enjoy this video and get a good chuckle out of it!

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I loved this assignment! It was super fun for me because I enjoy browsing Pinterest on my spare time and getting ideas for my dream home (since I’m 22 and will be on my own and starting a family soonish). I have pretty simple taste. I like things to look nice and neat but also enjoy bold looks mixed in. I would say that my style is contemporary with a little bit of rustic chic. I like neutral colors but also enjoy a few pastels for tranquility.

I love this style of headboard. I love the big headboards with the tuft fabric. It is cozy and simple but also elegant and timeless.

I definitely want a window seat in my future bedroom. Or at least in on place in my house. I think that they are so calming and cozy. I can totally see myself relaxing with a cup of coffee in the window seat of my bedroom or living room on a rainy saturday morning.

This is the same picture as above but with a different view. I love the colors of the room. I definitely think I will be doing a neutral light blue or grey for my wall color and then using artwork and decorative pieces to bring color to the rest of the room.

For 4 (1/2) stars I completed the How It All Began Assignment. I decided to talk about the origins of the radio show group I had been a part of these past two weeks. I went through and created a page dedicated to the members of the show, the shows content, and how the group formed. I also included some of the promotional material we produced as a group. I actually created the assignment as it’s own separate stand alone page on my menu but have replicated it below as well.

THE AGENTS ON AIR

The Agents on Air are a group of radio show hosts who’s show appears on the DS 106 radio network. The show’s hosts consist of Agent Zero, Agent Reveal, Agent Jones, and Agent Fawn. The show’s purpose is to report on ongoing missions that the hosts are currently working on or on missions other fellow agents are completing.  The goal of the radio show is to help out agents who cannot figure out how to best complete tough missions. The show operates as a way to bring the secret agency community together (which can be hard with all the secrets)  it also strives to make connections between the larger community. Another portion of the show is dedicated to agent gossip and news. Reports about mission success, blunders, and team ups help keep the community informed about who to look out for in the secret agent world.

How it all began

The radio host group Agents on Air began only a short while ago this month from a transmission from the DS106 Agents Headquarters. (DS106 Headquarters of course serves as the greater agent hub to connect all agents both freelance and agency committed. It is an organization dedicated to bringing together the secret agency community more generally.) The transmission sent out a call for new radio shows for the longstanding DS106 Radio network. Immediately many agents jumped at the chance to take part in the community and many agents started communicating with one another via the agent networks about potential radio show concepts. Agent Fawn had been mulling through ideas about radio shows and decided to post a bulletin to the agent networks on Twitter full of potential ideas. She was then contacted by Agent Zero who had been looking to form a radio team as well. Agent Zero offered up other interesting concepts and the two decided to team up. Agent Fawn then posted a second bulletin to Twitter now incorporating their pairs team interests. At that point the team was contacted by an Agent Reveal. A trio of radio show hosts was thus formed! At this point the group received a few other potential offers of co-hosts who later decided to work on separate projects. As show ideas were due in the group realized they needed a fourth host to round out the network project, that’s where Agent Jones came in to the picture. Agent Jones rounded out the group and the four hosts set to work on creating their show.

Host Bios*

Agent Fawn

O’Dell started at a clerical job at the Central Intelligence Agency for a number of years, after gaining access to certain key strategic documents her job assignment changed to fit with her new found expertise. She now works with securing and transferring important information for the agency both at home and abroad. Her ability to blend in and remarkable memory skills make her an asset.

Agent Jones

With her husband dead, Kate “The Marksman” Jones’ husband dead, she’s on the hunt to find the killer and make him wish he was dead.

Agent Reveal

Lynn was recruited by the FBI in 1984. At 20, she was able to do things that no other agent was able to. She is a very valued agent that has been able to go under cover for many special ops programs and has come out successful. Agent Reveal is fluent in Arabic and English and has been able to translate Arabic for the FBI for 30 years.

Agent Zero

“Waiting. Like it or not, it’s a skill all spies have to master eventually.” (Note: Little is known about Agent Zero other than their employment by the CID)

*Note: no images of the agents are available as photographs could potentially reveal them to enemy operatives. Promotional Material created by the agents has been used instead to capture their personalities.

This assignment http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/youre-a-pinteresting-character/ which was worth 2 ½ stars. This assignment finished off my 8-star requirement of web assignments for the week! “You’re pintresting character” was to create build a Pinterest page of at least 20 pins for a character of your choice. I decided to create a board for my secret agent character, Agent Zero. Because Agent Zero is a secret agent, I searched Pinterest for several pictures that I believed would correspond with her life. The only hard part was deciding what pictures I wanted to represent my character. After I figured it out, I had no problem in pin those pictures to the board. So here are some pictures about my character: