For my next web assignment, I chose to do Youtube it Your Way.
For this assignment, I used the X-Ray Goggles again to edit the coding on the page and change the title, description and Youtuber. I chose to use a pretty funny YouTube video of a girl dancing with pants covering her arms and legs and chose to pretend it’s a make-up tutorial. Enjoy!
For one of my chosen assignments for this week, I chose to do the Create Your Dream Vacation on Pinterest Assignment because, why the heck not?!
Follow Sara’s board Dream Vacation for DS106 on Pinterest.
It goes without saying that New Zealand is the number one place I’d go to if I could go anywhere in the world. New Zealand has some of the most beautiful scenery, if not the most beautiful scenery on Earth, as well as some beautiful weather and friendly people. I definitely think this trip would be possible someday if I save up enough money. I’m usually bad with saving money, but this is something I’m truly passionate about and an opportunity I can’t imagine missing out on. For this to come true, I first need to find a travel buddy. I traveled alone when I went to Edinburgh, Scotland for four months, didn’t know anyone when I landed and was terrified. If I had someone go along with me, I’d feel much safer and much more certain that I’d have a great time. It would also be helpful to have someone help me save money. I’d also have to find places to stay, to see which island I’d rather stay on, how much time I’d need to free up for all the things we wanted to do, the best way to travel between islands, how much public transportation and food would cost, and how long I’d want to stay there (short vacation or live there for a year and get a job). I don’t believe there’s another language spoken in New Zealand, although they do have different terminology than that which I’m used to, so I’d have to familiarize myself with their accents and phrases.
Can’t wait for this to happen someday!
Woahhhhhh, Michael Jordan’s making a comeback??? Only kidding, this is the web page that I edited to create this post. I did this using the Firefox X-Ray Goggles tool. This tool is actually pretty nifty, it allows you to edit basically any web page to include the content you want. So I could’ve even edited this article to make it seem like I was going to play for the Bulls, which obviously isn’t true. But here are the full set of screen shots for my edited web page.
It was pretty simple, I didn’t really feel the need to edit most of the recent stories on the sidebar of the page. I felt that I could tell a pretty good story simply with this article. I did so by implying that Michael Jordan was coming out of retirement to play for the Bulls. I simply then found some of his statistics, fabricated a quote from him, and WHALA! My webpage was complete. I know I was supposed to include a live version html version of this page, but when I created this I was unaware of this so I exited out of the page before downloading the html. I hope this suffices though.
For everyone’s information this assignment is Storytelling Within the Web. The premise is to simply take a webpage and edit it to tell a story, any story. I found this really interesting, I’ve always been interested in messing around with HTML and CSS, but I’ve never heard of the tool X-Ray Googles before. I really liked it, because it is a good mesh between the tech side of web development and the simple side of it. It caters both to web developers, who can edit the in depth HTML, and non developers, who can simply insert their texts and images. This will definitely be a tool I use in the future to further my knowledge about HTML, CSS, and Web Pages.
I hope everyone enjoyed this post and that everyone had a good week! Til next time everyone.
I found this assignment very interesting. We were to use our pinterest (making one if we did not already have one) and put within one particular board clues to who a particular character was. We needed at minimum 20 pins on that board.
I loved this assignment as soon as I saw it. I enjoy using different apps and I have always had pinterest but never found a reason to use it until now. It is a great way of organizing thoughts and trips and it is perfect for these assignments. I choose my character a little bit randomly and with a hint of influence from my Classics course I am taking right now. If you think Greek and Roman gods you should hopefully be able to piece together my character! I thought it would be a little fun to have people try and guess my character than out right say who they were. All of my pins are a part of the particular character and there are a few witty hints mixed in that I could not resist.
I am also making this assignment my tutorial assignment as well: below are my step by step instructions.
1. Create a pinterest- it is a free app that you can find in any android or apple store. If you do not have a smart phone you can also use your laptop or home computer and go to pinterest.com and sign up with an email and password you create yourself.
2. Create a board: You will go to the far left and click the person. Next you will choose create a board. From there you will give your board a Name, description, and category.
3. You will then add pins that describe your character, you need 20. You will just search for pins using the toolbar at the bottom and pin it to your choosen board.
4. You will then need to send your board to your email to upload it onto ds106. You will click the paper airplane and add the email you want to send it too; from your email you will download and then upload your picture!
Again, I like to sprinkle my assignment posts with details about my likes and dislikes, and one of my biggest likes EVER is The X-Files.
I first watched the X-Files when I was fourteen and home sick from school, and from then on, I was hooked to the mystery, the spookiness, the science, and the subtle but oh-so-fulfilling romance. Dana Scully is still one of my heroines today with her beauty and brains.
Therefore, when I had to choose a character for whom to create a Pinterest board, I knew I wanted it to be Scully!
One of my favorite things about Scully’s character is her depth. There are so many layers to her personality. On the surface, she’s a brilliant scientist dedicated to rationality and logic, but as the series progresses, you find that she is far more troubled by emotions, rash decisions, and doubts than originally expected. As her character grows and becomes more open-minded and comfortable with those closest to her–Mulder in particular–her layers are peeled back bit-by-bit!
By revealing her flaws and fears to the audience, I connected with Dana Scully and loved her more than ever. As someone who loves science herself and tries to be as Spock/Vulcan-like as possible in moments of extreme tension or trouble, watching one of my heroines become more vulnerable helped encourage me to become less guarded and uptight, as well.
This Pinterest board–for her eyes only and for those times when she just “needs a boost”–represents that softer, more human side of the character.
Now, I will take you through the pics one-by-one and explain each one’s significance to Dr. Scully!
SECRET board. Who knows what Mulder would pin if he got a hold of her password?
Scully Pinterest Part 1
Scully’s Pinterest Part 2
Moving from top left to right and starting with Part 1…(All captions/comments beneath the pins are written by me pretending to be/think like Scully!)
1) In Season 3, Episode 12, “War of the Coprophages,” while Mulder is off investigating killer cockroaches and flirting with entomologists named Bambi (this is not a joke, seriously), Scully is seen relaxing in her living room reading Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany‘s. Therefore, she’d totally re-pin a pic of Audrey Hepburn in the classic role, because she’s totally a fan.
Nice to see her RELAXING for once.
2) Scully’s a doctor, so she’s probably into healthy eating. She also likes sweets, as seen again in the above episode when she’s eating ice cream out of a carton (see why I love her?):
My heroine.
Sweets + healthy eating = frozen yogurt covered blueberries!
3 + 6) SPOILER ALERT: Mulder and Scully end up in a monogamous relationship together after years of battling horrifying creatures, government baddies, and aliens.
She would totally think of clever alien cakes and homemade gifts like the alien abduction lamp for his birthday!
4) She has gorgeous red hair and would totally read beauty tips for said color. (Red is not actually the actress, Gillian Anderson’s, natural hair color. Someone told her to dye it red after she got the role of Scully.)
5) Even when not sporting professional pantsuits and skirts as a F.B.I. Special Agent, Scully’s style is still classic and has a lot of blues and neutral colors. Therefore, she’d totally admire the pinned, navy blue, winter jacket.
6) See #3!
7) It’s made clear that Scully is particularly close with her father, who was in the navy. Therefore, I’m sure she’s been instilled with a love of the sea and would re-pin this gorgeous shot of the beach & sea shells.
8) Scully likes wine and totally collects sangria recipes.
9) Again, she has an attachment to the ocean because of her navy father and is drawn to lots of nautical shots!
10 + 11) Attending the University of Maryland, Scully majored in Physics and wrote her undergraduate thesis titled Einstein’s Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation. She would totally dig science nerd/physics humor and Einstein’s genius goofiness.
12) Mulder had this poster in his office. You can clearly see it here:
I’m sure seeing the print online would bring back some memories–both good and bad.
13) Scully enjoys taking bubble baths to relax.
This is also one of my favorite screen caps from The X-Files EVER. The third person in the bottom split-screen is their boss and the assistant director of the F.B.I., if you didn’t know. From one of the funniest episodes ever: “Hollywood A.D.,” written by Duchovny himself.
14 + 15 + 20) Again, as a doctor, Scully values logic and reasoning and would re-pin quotes reflecting this belief. Also, doctor jokes and cool pictures of heart anatomy, yay!
16) “You drive me nuts, but I love you, anyway.” How well does that fit Scully’s relationship with a certain someone?
17) Along with her sharp sense of clothing style, she also has cute hair styles, too!
18) More navy/family love.
19) While she also loves science, Scully’s Catholic faith is a huge part of her character and helps her get through some very rough health problems in mid-to-later seasons. She’s all about faith, and the show overall has a theme of faith: in each other, in trust, in the unseen, in logic, all depending on the situation.
20) See #14
21) To exercise, Scully runs and would absolutely re-pin inspirational running quotes! You find this out thanks to a killer stalker that is introduced in Season 6, so it’s an unfortunate way of discovering a character detail, but this is how she stays fit!
And that’s my version of Dr. Scully’s Pinterest! I just made a Pinterest account with a junk e-mail and deleted it after I was done searching, captioning, and screen capturing appropriate pins. Hope you enjoyed!
All screencaps from this great site!
The next assignment that I decided to do was Google History Maps Story. The general idea of this assignment was to use Google Maps to create a map displaying a journey of a historical or literary character. The character I chose was Walter Mitty, from the movie The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. I chose this character because I love this movie and the meaning behind it, and because Walter’s journey in this movie is incredible, stretching over all parts of the world. Here is my map below:
I know it is hard to see some of the destinations on the map, because some are so close together but here is a list of the destinations in order.
A) Life Magazine, New York City
B) Greenland
C) Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland
D) New York City
E) The Himalayas
F) Los Angeles, California
G) New York City (Again)
It is obvious that Walter did quite some traveling in this movie, and it was awesome to watch. If you haven’t seen this movie, trust me, you need to see it. It is a very insightful movie about making the most of your life, and not sitting back and plainly existing. But living your life to the fullest, doing things that you’ve always wanted to do. If you still don’t know the movie I’m talking about, here is the trailer.
This assignment was worth a total of 3 stars.
Giving me a total of 6 stars for the week, completing my Web Assignments. I hope everyone enjoyed, again if you’d like to check out this assignment you can find it here. Other than that, that’s all for me. See ya!
Chins for the Win: Chinchillas Could Dominate the World
For the Storytelling within the Web Assignment, I knew I wanted to re-make a news article of sorts. I wasn’t sure where to go from there, so it took a while to find some information. I thought I’d have time to think of something to write about while the x-ray goggles were downloading, but they didn’t even need to download! Getting access to the goggles and putting them on my bookmarks tab was the quickest online-thing I’ve ever done.
After that, I went to the Wall Street Journal and found a random article to mess with, and decided to talk about chinchillas. The man in the article “Mike Mikes” is actually my boyfriend, whose name I didn’t want to give away for privacy purposes, and the chinchillas he talks about are actually co-owned by me! I thought it’d be humorous to talk about how painfully adorable chinchillas are on such a serious platform as the Wall Street Journal. The article I wrote is basically just about how we came to find them, adopt them, and how it’s going so far. Funnily enough, as I write this, my boyfriend is crawling around on the floor trying to get one of the chinchillas, Pippin, who just jumped out of his hand and is running around on the floor and refuses to be picked up. Pretty hilarious.
Anyway, enjoy the fake article! I had a lot of fun with this.
When thinking of my dream vacations my mind instantly goes to food. Everyplace on my bucket list has glorious food with a unique spice Platte. Growing up, my best friend was Greek. I would go over to her home after school or on weekends and be surrounded by many of her family members, mass amounts of food, and religious culture as well. Seeing her and her family and the things that made them special made me want to see where they came from.
Greece became my ideal country for a vacation. Greece is as rich in history as it is in food. In a perfect world I would take at least two weeks and just lose myself in Greece. I would start of course in Athens; while there I would visit the Parthenon, the Acropolis of Athens and their newest Museum that allows you to see into an excavation site. I would want to see the temples of Zeus (image) and Hephaestus (image), and the other remaining temples of the Greek gods and goddesses. I want to see with my eyes all places I have read about and learned about in my past courses, and reading I completed just for my personal pleasure. I would then travel to the island of Mykonos and Santorini and see their crystal blue waters and the magnificent architecture old and new. I would travel through each island and eat my way from one to the other. Visit the beaches and caverns, Kayak through the waters, and watch the sunset.
There is so much beauty to withhold in Greece, and the contrast between the ancient world and current times makes it all the more fascinating. For me this trip is 100% possible. I would have to save up for two or three years to ensure I would get to do everything I would want to see but in the long run that is not a long time to see a place you will remember for the rest of your life.
Visiting Greece does not require any shots but I would need a tetanus shot before I went just so I would be up to date on them. I would see up a medicial kit for myself for an accidents that could occur, or to prevent any pain from food that I might not be used to. I have flown many times and the high altitude does not bother me so I would not need the medication helping with altitude sickness. I would need to get a passport before I would be able to leave the country but if I purchased a blue tourist passport I would not need a visa and I could stay up to 90 days.
If I were to fly to Greece at the end of May to June flight tickets would vary but the O+B hotel in Athens would be about $174, with it being within walking distance from the Parthenon, dining, and shopping it would not be outrageous as far as hotels go. Pezoules hotel in Santorini which would be my first choice hotel would only be $70 dollars a night and it possess a breath taking view. For Mykonos I would choose the Vencia hotel, if I booked through booking.com it would be around $180. Both of the island hotels overlook the ocean, and the towns they are in, and the both possess a charming demeanor. I would not be in my room for very long like most vacations, but they would be a refreshing place to come back to and the end of the day.
The first Web assignment that I chose to do for this week was Create An Host An Interactive Story Using Twine the goal was to use the app Twine to create a story. Twine allows you to create a story board like style for stories and such. Twine allows for connecters from state to state allowing for steps and progressions the story being created. Upon the final build of the story, Twine, creates an html visualized version of the story.
For this assignment I essentially did a typical day story, and how the choices made can affect the outcome of the day. You can find it here.
As far as organizing this story goes, it was not too difficult. Creating the storyboard was pretty simple, I just wrote my prompts and the options to continue the story. i then simply linked the options to new states. Here’s what my storyboard looks like:
I hope you guys enjoyed this post/story. This was my first Web assignment for the week and it is worth a total of 3 stars.
Giving me a total of 3 stars for the week. Til next time everyone!
I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I particularly love Russian history. My interest started when I was a wee little thing and first saw the movie from Fox Animation called Anastasia.
MAGICAL. (credit linked in .gif)
Of course, I didn’t know the true, tragic story of the Romanov family at this young age, but when I was old enough to handle such details, I was addicted to finding out all I could about this Russian grand duchess.
I’ve spent years studying this family and followed the mystery faithfully. I’ve cried many tears for their lost lives and the suffering of the Russian people as a whole during this turbulent time.
If I had to choose, this final years of Imperialist Russia would probably be my favorite period of history to study. I knew I wanted to create a social media post based on one of the people during this era.
Writing as a member of the imperial family or a Bolshevik just seemed too sad, so I decided to focus on one of the points that lead to the Revolution’s crescendo: the murder of the monk Grigory Rasputin.
Long story short, the monk–despite his drunkenness and habit of sleeping with and beating prostitutes–was considered a mystical, holy man by the Tsarina or Empress of Russia. She believed that he could heal her son, the Tsarevich or Crown Prince Alexei, when he had bouts of pain and near death experiences from his hemophilia.
Rasputin’s visits did help ease the Tsarevich’s pain, but his influence over the Empress (he often gave her advice–which she followed–on handling governmental dealings and decisions) and general nasty appearance and demeanor struck a sour chord with the Imperial Court.
The Prince Felix Yusupov lured Rasputin to his home one evening on the pretense of dinner and then killed him with a friend’s help. The monk survived poisoned food and gunshots to the chest, only finally dying after they dumped his body in the Neva River and he drowned–not even kidding. How creepy/eerie is that?
The death caused an uproar within the Imperial family. Prince Yusupov was exiled and the Tsarina was distraught. The family arguably never recovered from the dramatic consequences of the murder.
Now that you have a bit of history, take a look at my tweet:
Not such good company after all, huh?
I tried to use the Twister app provided by Alan, but the picture the generator spewed out for Prince Felix here was blurry and unattractive. I wanted to make a new, clearer tweet, so I used a different site that allowed me to upload my own pictures, screenshot the result, and then did some further editing in GIMP.
I hope you learned a bit about Imperialist Russia, and I hope all of your future dinner experiences are far more pleasant than Rasputin’s and Prince Felix’s!
