Author: Tyler Onna

Final Assignment Blog Post

 

We’ve unfortunately reached the end of CT101 and it’s a shame that this semester went by so fast! This class was such a fun time and it feels like we barely go to do anything in the class because of all the vacations and us only meeting once a week. This was such a fun class to be apart of and it’s one of the classes I’m going to look back on as something that was a blast to be apart of!

 

In this class, I learned a lot of things that I thought were impossible as funny as it sounds. Before walking into this class, I thought making memes was a difficult thing to do. I had always wanted to be someone that made memes and made it look easy but I never knew how to and nobody ever showed me how to. Within a week of being in this class, I was making memes like no tomorrow and it was something that I had a blast doing! I felt like a little kid making so many goofy memes in class for our blog posts and it made the class so much fun that I could literally do whatever I wanted to do with my posts. The freedom to do whatever I wanted is a privilege that I was more than happy to take advantage of.

 

In this class, I also learned that things on the internet can have more than one meaning. One of the key posts that we made for this class was the one for Week 3 titled “Are Memes Art?”. I loved doing this assignment because it asked a really good question that I guarantee ten people will not have the same answer to. And doing this assignment really put some things into perspective for me. I learned that anything that I create can be viewed any way that I want it to. If I were to say that something was art, nobody could tell me otherwise because it was how I felt and learning that was something that was rather fascinating.

 

But of course the major thing that we learned in this class is to create our very own website. This experience was challenging to say the least. I didn’t think it would be easy but getting this website to a state that I was somewhat satisfied with was not easy. If I’m being honest, I’m still not satisfied with the way the website turned out. The process started out simple enough with registering our domain names. I was able to get set up quickly and everything was going smoothly. Get my website had gotten shut down because of a glitch with WordPress and I wasn’t able to work on the site all throughout Spring Break because of this and so when we got back, I had very little time to work on the website. But I think that I did a fairly decent job for all of the obstacles thrown at me.

For one, I never thought that my website would look as good as this. This is something that I thought would be absolutely impossible to accomplish and I did it by myself. Regardless of the grade that I get, I am glad that I was able to bring this website to life.
The website isn’t as advanced as I would’ve wanted it to be but there are some things there that I am very happy that I have. For one, I thought it would be a good idea to use my movie reviews that I included in the website as my blog posts and I did four of those. This was one that I included of me reviewing The Strangers: Chapter One!
Something else that I am very proud of is that I was able to make a shortcut that allows visitors of our website to go straight to the Youtube channel! Again, this might seem like something small, but it’s something that I’ve done on everybody else’s website and to be able to do that on my very own website is something that I think is honestly awesome!
As for the grade that I deserve in this class, I would unfortunately have to say maybe a high C+ or a very low B-. For one, I didn’t do assignment 5 which I know was an important one and I’m disappointed with myself because I think if I had done that assignment, it would’ve came out pretty great. Another reason for this is because of how long I put off doing the work and how rushed the work in the end ended up being. I have no excuse for how some of these assignments ended up turning out and the only thing I could say is that I put off doing the work for so long that it ended up affecting the final results big time (just look at what time I posted this and it explains it all). So if I were to receive the grades that I said or even lower, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
As I said before, the thing I enjoyed the most about this class was being able to just express myself how I wanted creatively. I think my favorite blog post that we did this semester was Assignment 4. This was my favorite thing that we did because you literally asked me in a nutshell, “What do you love the most in this world? Write about it.” and I went ahead and put so much effort into that blog post. It felt amazing to talk about how much I love film and music because it’s something that I normally keep to myself on a day to day basis and so to be able to do that in a open space felt great!
I think I want to apply the skills I learned in this class by helping people. If I find out my friends or anyone in general are starting up businesses and they need a website or if they just wanted to make a website, I would attempt to use the skills that I obtained in this class to help them get their names out there to the public. Not only would I be helping someone but I would feel good knowing that everything that was taught to me in this course wouldn’t go to waste. That’s for sure the main way that I would use my skills in this class if the opportunity every came knocking.
I’m not sure if I will maintain and keep the website that I have made. Yes it was something that I wanted to do and I still want to. It would be amazing for me and my friends to have a website for our brand. However, I just don’t think I’m going to be able to actually maintain it. For one, next semester is my final semester and so I want to put all of my time into that. Plus, me and my friends are doing everything we can to make sure that our Youtube channel and Instagram page are thriving as strong as possible and I don’t think I will be able to give both of those my full attention if I’m attempting to figure out WordPress and how to make the website as strong as I’d like it to be. If I change my mind, I know that the website will always be there for me to go back to.
Published Posts from the course:

Assignment #10

The main thing that I wanted to do with my website to get myself started was change the colors to make it look like the logo that I have for my YouTube channel. So I messed around with the colors until I got the right shade of blue that was the closest to my logo. It didn’t come out absolutely perfect but I think that it looks pretty great all things considered! I also made sure to remove all of the default content from WordPress to make sure that the site was truly my own! You won’t find a single thing on the page that shows that it’s from WordPress!
The main goal of this website is to get both my reviews and the movie reviews that my partners write to more eyes that maybe don’t follow our main social media accounts and prefer reading them on a regular website instead (even though our main accounts are on regular websites). So what I did was take one of the reviews that I typed up and made a page for it on the website. I think doing this is really cool because me and my partners certainly have different styles of writing and we all don’t have the same opinions on movies and so doing this will show people when we disagree on something or if we feel the exact same way about something.
As you can see here, I’m going to be specifying when I write a specific review or if one of my partners writes a review. I’m doing this to make sure that everyone knows who wrote these obviously but also to show that it’s okay for us to have different opinions on something. If I wrote a review for a movie that I didn’t like but one of my partners did enjoy it and wanted to share their opinion on the website, they would be able to and people who come to our site would be able to see all of our opinions whether they are good or bad. This is something that is going to be a big part of my site and it’s something that I want to make a priority. I want to make sure that everyone involved with my channel has a voice on the page. This is something that hopefully I can accomplish in the long run.

Assignment #9- Domain Name Registration, Hosting Set Up & WordPress Installation!

Welp I have indeed…FINALLY registered my domain and I’m beyond the word excited! These are the first steps in us making our own websites and it’s got me already excited on what I’m going to do with my website! The process however was not smooth and I hit a roadblock that I should’ve expected to hit but thought I wouldn’t hit.
I went to register one of my domain names and somehow it was taken! The reason I am surprised by this is because to my knowledge, nobody else has this name for anything. So to find out that someone had a website with this domain was surprising to say the least. The domain I had tried using was Nerd.Talk.com and I was told that someone already had it which I just found baffling. But after I tried another one which ended up being nerdtalkofficial.com, I was able to register my domain!
After I registered my domain and got WordPress set up, I was ready to start setting up my website! I started to explore WordPress and start to build the foundation for my site! I figured out how to make a page and change the color to the logo that I have which when I saw the final result of that, I genuinely got excited! It made me so happy to see that I was in the beginning stages of making a website and seeing the first step of that was kind of surreal!
I am very excited to get started on this website…I have so many ideas for what I want to do with it and I can’t wait to share with the class what I will eventually make!

Assignment #7- Picking a Domain Name

To think that I’m going to be making a website is rather insane! It’s something that I always thought I needed to have all of this knowledge to do but in all actuality, it’s not as hard as I thought it would be! Learning about the process has made me very excited for this process!
I already have an instagram account where I make regular posts about certain things and so adding this to that is going to be an interesting and fun ride! I already have an idea for the website that I think is going to be great and something that I think everyone else is going to like.
My website is going to be about movies (to the surprise of no one). In particular, this is going to be about the YouTube channel that I run with my friends! The reason I want to do this is because I feel like I would be able to put so much on a website! I would be able to share news about movies, talk about the latest movie trailers and even put some reviews of movies I or anyone else involved have seen! I think it’s something that could be really cool to do!
Domain Names to use:
-NerdTalk.com
-nerdtalkofficial.com
-Nerd_Talk.com
-Nerd.Talkofficial.com
-NToffical.net
All of these domains have the same reasoning for me wanting to use them as they relate to the name of the Youtube channel that I have named Nerd Talk. Since the site be would be directly related to that site, there isn’t really a reason to have the domain be anything else other than something related to Nerd Talk.
I already have a logo for the website and the colors that I will be using for the website. Since I already have this, making the color scheme of the website shouldn’t be difficult at all for me. It’s all about finding what looks the most presentable to me! This is something I’m very excited to do and I’m excited to see what I come up with by the end!

Assignment #6- The Mid-Semester Reflection

I think I am doing fairly decent in this class. I know that I could be doing better in it no question but I personally feel that I am doing the best that I can. I’m making a strong effort to complete assignments and to not fall too far behind because I know that if I do, I won’t want to catch back up because of how far I’ve fallen behind. 
What I have learned and retained the most in this class is how to do assignments for school in a way that’s really creative and fun. I have always viewed schoolwork as something that was a chore or something that I could never have fun with and this class has changed that. This class has shown me that you can have a lot of fun with school assignments and be creative with them!
The grade that I believe that I am maintaining in this class right now is probably a low B- or high C+.  I haven’t been keeping up with the work in this class and it’s an issue for me. I let the concept of this class having no real due dates with assignments get to my head and because of that, I start to slack off in the class and I start to fall behind. I know that I don’t deserve a very high grade in this class and it is to my own fault and I hope I can still end this class somewhat strong because I do really enjoy this class…I just haven’t been focused as much as I should have. 
I think that my weekly blog work is expanding creatively. At the beginning of the course, I felt that I was just using Gifs and images for the sake of it because it was required. But as I’ve progressed, I think that I’ve started to get a grasp on telling stories with these tools and I think that it’s very fun to do!
I am missing the following assignments as of me writing this:
– Assignment 5
I am frequently commenting on other posts that my classmates have done as well as the comments provided by my professor. I think it’s a lot of fun to interact with one another about the posts that we make in our class because we all don’t make the same identical posts and naturally we’re going to have something to say about one another’s work. I also think responded to comments left by the professor is important because it shows that you are being active in the class…especially if the comment is feedback to help improve yourself in the class. 
I am constantly participating during class time. Any time that there is a lecture and questions are being asked, I am making sure to provide an answer because it’s important to interact during class time. It also helps retain the information being shown to you because you’re interacting with it and not just being told things. I also make sure to clarify when I’m confused about things and always check in with the professor before we start class. 
I will make the necessary improvements by pushing myself to make better blog posts and be consistent with them because I want to pass this class and succeed in it and I cannot do that at the pace that I am going in this class at the moment. 

Assignment #4- My Passions

To say that I have one passion would be unrealistic of me to say. I guess what I love to do is express my opinions on the things I love. I love being given the opportunity to share my thoughts on film, music and really anything and being given the chance to explain why!
I actually have a Youtube channel named Nerd Talk where I talk about the newest movies that come out with my friends and also watch some movies together and just have a good time. This to me fuels my passion. I get so much joy out of doing these livestreams with my friends because it is always a good time. We always have so much fun and enjoy the different opinions that we have on the topics that we are discussing.
Another passion of mine I could touch on is rock music. When I was in elementary and middle school, I hadn’t really found one genre of music that I had liked. I kind of just listened to anything and if I liked it, I’d go back to it. When the pandemic happened, I was looking for things to take my mind off of what was happening outside since it was miserable to say the least. I suddenly started listening to Shinedown and in about a week or so, they became my favorite band of all time.
So many of their emotional songs resonated with me and I was able to connect with them on a personal level and because of that, they’re my number one go to band when I’m in the mood for some rock music. Something else I love about them is for every deep and emotional song they have, they have a song that leans into their hard rock side that is flat out awesome. Their song “The Sound of Madness” of the album of the same name is one of the best songs ever made in my mind.
The one thing more than anything that I am passionate about is being myself. I don’t fit in in a lot of places. I tend to stick out like a sore thumb and for a long time, I wasn’t okay with that. Then I started to realize that it was something that I NEEDED to be okay with. Nobody should ever have to fit in with a group because we are OUR own people. We can like what we like, dress how we like and certainly act how we like. I am beyond passionate for people being themself and not caring about anyone else because at the end of the day, they are not you and you are not them. Only you are you.

Assignment #3- Are Memes art?

I believe that anything can be art if it has some creative effort behind it. Art in my eyes isn’t only created by paint or colors. Many different types of creations can qualify as art based on the effort that is put into creating them. Some things might take more effort than others sure, but the point is, art can be viewed as something that took creativity to create and if it makes someone feel something.
One of the biggest examples of the statement I made is the video game Cyberpunk 2077. Despite the release that it had, I firmly believe after all of the updates to the game, it is one of the greatest games to release in recent memory. It tells such an incredible story and the immersion to the game is indescribable. A piece of media with this much creativity to it and this much world building in my eyes is most certainly considered art.
Films in my opinion are the prime example of something that isn’t crafted with paintbrushes but is considered “art”. There is so much that goes into films and their craft that it’s hard to not label it as “art”. From the script to the acting to the cinematography to the direction, all of it can be looked at as basically the paint brushes and the canvas in the terms of art.
One of the main purposes for memes existing in the world is to make someone feel something. A person could be having a horrible day and I could send them a meme of someone falling down and it could make them laugh and immediately they start to feel better. Memes help us deal with everyday life sometimes and that’s something worth noting.
In my eyes, art is anything we decide it to be. if we think a poster is art, then it is in our mind. Nobody can take that from us. If I find a meme or a GIF to be art because of how much it impacted me, it’s perfectly okay for me to do so. I can make 500 memes in this class and if I wanted to label it art, I could because I have a right to do so and so can everyone else.
At the end of the day…what we can do what we want in this class when it comes to creating memes and having fun in this class! Nobody can tell us what to deem our work. If we want to view it as art, so what? This class give us the freedom to express ourselves creatively and if that doesn’t sound like art, I don’t know what does.

Week 2 Assignment

I thought the firs day of CT 101 was a lot of fun! It was really exciting to learn about what this class is going to be and how it’s going to function. I also really enjoyed the atmosphere of the class. It seems like this class is going to be a lot of fun!
I very much liked hearing about what this course is going to be for the semester! The fact that this class is essentially us just being creative and having fun is very exciting to me! I haven’t taken many classes where it has this same structure so I’m very excited to participate in this course!
This class is honestly way better than my other classes and I’m not just saying that because this is an assignment for this class. My English class that I attend is fine but I really don’t like the Spanish class that I have online. It’s a class I never really look forward to but this class I do. I look forward to this class because I get to just relax and have fun and work at my own pace!
The creative potentials for this class are endless! When we’re taking a class that allows us to be creative and do what we want, there isn’t an idea in the world that doesn’t make sense or isn’t possible! We can create any meme and GIF that we want and that’s really exciting!
I’m very excited to learn new skills using internet tools! I feel like my knowledge of the internet is very basic and limited and I’m very interested in learning new things that show me how to develop my usage of the internet!
I personally preferred using Giphy over Imgur when making my post because it was a lot easier for me. I was able to make my GIF within minutes. I found it to be a little more challenging on Imgur.

Week 1 Assignment

Right now what’s making me happy on the internet is all of the recent movie trailers coming out right now! I am a big movie guy and seeing all of recent trailers for the movies that are going to be coming out this year is very exciting! Dune: Part Two comes out next week and I’m very excited for this because the first one was amazing and I love fantasy epics!

 

Another trailer that came out was for A Quiet Place: Day One. I am a big lover of horror and the first two movies are outstanding and seeing that this movie is going to be a prequel showing how the outbreak started and how everyone reacted is very exciting to me. I’ve been wanting a movie like this for this franchise since it started so I’m really hoping that it delivers!

 

 
One of the last big trailers that dropped was for Deadpool and Wolverine! I am a big fan of superheroes and the MCU and I love the Deadpool movies! I think they’re hilarious and such a good time! I can’t wait to see how Deadpool and Wolverine interact and I also can’t wait to see how this will fit into the MCU as a whole and where it will lead!