This is my final post. I have had a lot of fun and learned a lot.
This is the blog post I published on my website. I fist decorated my website with a logo before adding finishing touches –>






CUNY York College – Digital Storytelling
This is my final post. I have had a lot of fun and learned a lot.
This is the blog post I published on my website. I fist decorated my website with a logo before adding finishing touches –>
For my blog post I chose to write about maximalism.
Growing up my room was a mess. It made absolutely no sense. My room was essentially the definition of clutter. In a literal sense there was not trash everywhere. However, every piece of furniture had no business coexisting together. Picture two bunk beds, one metal and one wooden, facing each other. This accompanied by a dresser of a different finish of wood than the bunkbed. A toy chest of a different shade of wood than the dresser and the bed. And finally the top bunk of each bunkbed lined with folded clothes. I have since gotten a new room, thank God. The thing is growing up I did not think much of the design of things. This was the room I shared room with my sister. We were impartial to the design and our only complaint was, “Mom, can you use your own closet”. All of the clothes made our New York room seem even smaller. Other than that we were in perfect peace with our room…. until I discovered HGTV.
From then my goal was a new room. I got my sister on board and we both agreed a minimalist room with nothing in it but a bed, a dresser and a rug was ideal. We got rid of the bunk beds and it was a fairytale for a while our voices bounced off the wall and our echos made the room feel even more spacious than it was. Once the euphoria of getting rid of the bunkbeds subsided we realized our room was too empty. And in that moment we became maximalist. Maximalism just makes a place feel lived in and homey. I do not quite know how to define maximalism in words but I can show you.
The three main components of a maximalist space are texture color and layers. These three component do not have to all be present, but at least two have to be present.
Going into customizing my website I knew that i wanted the color scheme to be black and white with dark green accents. I first went onto the dashboard –>
This week we are registering our domain names. I first started by cicking the reclaim hosting link in the assignment #8 directory. It led me to this page –>
I then enetered a name I thought of in my previous post and suprisingly it was availible.
And registered my domain name.
I changed the admin Information. Then finalized the intallation.
This is where I was taken –>
… and this is my website–>
Domain names….
Im using G0daddy to see if the names I come up with are availible.
And it turns out I did not come up with certain names because evey name I look up seems to already exist.
This made me think of a domain titled anoriginalidea.com, where people can come and check if their ideas exist already or are infact orignal… the only thing is… it already exists.
So… Its time to reflect on everything so far this semester…
Right now, I think I am doing just alright in this class. I am a bit behind on my blog posts and struggling a bit with procrastination. I am going to use this break to be up to date-with what we are doing in class. So far, however, I do feel that I am learning new things. One thing is different Writing styles in blogging. For instance, for Assignment 4, my style of writing was more on the informative side than in previous weeks.
Also, I feel more well-equipped to understand different storytelling tools and how to use them fully. We learned in class how to make our own animated gifs, of course, but it is not only that, I appreciate the opportunities we have to venture out into new tasks, like the mmm. page assignment.
Now, what grade do I think I’m maintaining in this class?…
I am actually not quite sure. Right now, I am missing one assignment before this assignment, the mmm. Page assignment (I’m currently working on it), and assignments 7 and 8. Based on the posts I have published and am working on, I see my blogging expanding in terms of writing style. I will say I can definitely work on proofreading my blogs before posting them. That is the feedback I received. And I went back to look at my work and realized it was rough draft material.
I do comment on my classmate’s posts, but I should comment more frequently. I know this is a hybrid class, but I mostly view classes on zoom. I will definitely attend class in person more often to be able to participate in our lessons. I think that will keep me more up-to-date with my posts.
Reflecting on my reflection, I do see that I have some work to do, and I look forward to getting it done.
For this assignment I chose to look into the visual Assignments section of ds106 assignment directory.
The two assignments I chose were a gif assignment and an Adobe illustrate assignment.
Right off the back I knew that I could complete the Gif assignment, as this is something we have been working on in class. The assignment asked that I choose a clip from my favorite movie scene and turn it into a short animated Gif. Which would highlights the essence of the chosen scene.
The secound assignment which I was less confident I would be able to do asked that I use photoshop to create a clipping mask image. One that utilizes shdows to make it more realistic.
I was not too sure that I could complete this assignment being that I am not too familiar with photoshop. I had not used photosop beyond the object selection tool and resize image tools.
I found a tutorial on youtube detailing haow to use the the clipping mask tool.
After watchng the tutorial I realized that the assignment was actually easier than I imagined. The terminology just made sound slighly difficult.
I first dowloaded adobe illustrator and created a new file–>
I found a picture of grass on google and added it to illustater by dragging it from my desk top.
I then opened a new page added text and the grass image.
selected the text only and bought it to the front.
Following this i selected the text and made it a compound shape.
I selected both the grasss and the text hit control + click and made them a clipping mask.
whcich combined the grass and text. I found an imageof dirts and sent it to the back layer. Object–> Arrange–> send backward.
next i ateempted to add adrop shadow in illustrator however it did not seem to work for me. So i transferred both the grass and the dirt as two seperate layers to photoshop and added the shadow.
click the text layer–>effects–>drop shadow.
This is the finished product–>
During this semester I think we should expore new varrying projects like this more often. I think it is useful to gain a better grasp of different storytelling and design tools. After this project I feel a bit more tech savy. And I look foward to learning how to create things like this.
Are memes art?
When I typed those words into the google search engine, this is what I found… an article posted to a website named Owity and another to a website named spoken vision , they both had the same answer to the question, yes. I agree. See you later.
Art is not just a painting or a sculpture. I honestly do not back the controversy. Memes are one of the most artistic components of the internet. Let us unpack that.
Webster’s dictionary defines art as a “skill acquired by experience, study, or observation” and a meme as, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture”. With that being said if we do the math,
If a part of art is acquired knowledge or skill and the making of a meme includes acquired knowledge and skill through observations, then the = sign must be used in an equation, when both variables are present.
Even without the math memes are a form of storytelling, which is artistic in itself. It is the art of telling stories through images and videos. The art of common understanding through clear communication.
+
=?
Im new to the whole communication technology major. When i declared it as my major i barely even knew it existed.
I thought I had majored in communications technology minus the technology.
Looking back the technology was always there because my minor is communications so i honestly do not know what got lost in translation. I was approaching the point where I had to declare a major and I still had no idea what I wanted to do. So you can imagine my surprise when I read each syllabus.
gasps upon gasps. I was never really big on technology or my idea of technology and each syllabus really shivered my timbers. It all sounded like rocket science to me.
However upon attending class I realized it was never that serious.
Even though I felt I was not very tech savy memes are a part of the internet I believe I have a decent understanding of. CT 101was beyond my expectations because I had never really considered memes in the light that this class has shown me. But it truly really is a huge part of internet culture. Ct 101 is by far one of my favorite courses im taking this semester. Ireaaly appreciate the opportunity to be creative and speak the language of memes. This class compared to others is a bit more free and easygoing interms of what the assignments entail. Additionaly I look foward to learning new skills that use internet tools specifically in this class because I appreciate the teaching style.
Now… joining the debate of the centurry, is it gif or jif? The correct way (in my mind aleast) to pronounce “gif” is JJJJif. Spelt with a g and pronounced with a j.
The creator of Gif, stephen Whilite also goes with this pronounciation (read here).
Exhibit b:
Personally I try my best to stay off of the internet *(I heard it boosts productivity). But I still find myself scrolling endlessly through the internet daily. If I had to choose the best part of the internet it would be google search engine. I REALLY LOVE GOOGLE!
You can find the answer to anything as it pops into your head. It is like a personal genius at your side constantly. This past week I saw an article about how humans were evolving in the age of cellphones. I could not locate the exact article but it was also about peoples sculls changing because of cellphone use. I started wondering how evolution could even be possible. Because it contradicts some of the basic facts of life, you know. Like it is common knowledge that people are born with all of their ovaries… so how could the genetics of the the next generation remember to adjust to real world adversity and events if they already exist and can not change their genetic code because it already is what it is?
Like if you were in an escape room that you could only exit if you completed a sequence of tasks… but you did not know that you were in an escape room because you’ve never heard of an escape room… how could you be expected to know to complete the puzzle? Thats how I was looking at it. I also saw another article about how researchers discovered the oldest star ever…. How could they know how old a star is? I wondered.
So I looked to google. And it made me realize the internet kind of is productive. It promotes new thoughts and shows you new things. And new is great. Above that thinking is also fundamental. Without the internet, specifically google I would be a tad bit uninformed. So I love google.