Thanks to CT 101 I can do much stuff, I am thankful for the class to be free and stress relieve. Is my first time having a class like this, so I have abuse that freedom from the class; I believe that I am maintaining a B-, I did all the assignments, but they were not on time; I took a while for those post. I think that punctuality plays a role in grades, and because I was late for almost everything,, a B will be good; but that still is greedy.

I have about the websites, I still get confused with all the design of it, but I am trying to make it look nice. For my website, I still do not know what I would like to focus on, I do not have something that I do every day that I would like to share. I like art, but I do not do it every day; I do not have something that passionates me, which makes me excited. And like to be like that, to be passionate is tiresome. So, that is why I do not know what kind of website I want. But I did my first sketch on a computer, so I think sharing that, for now, is good.

Things that i know are about the website, I never had the need to create a page on the internet and i did not know that to keep a page you need to pay i thought it was free. and now i think that to know about websites can be useful if you are in design.

about the website i am not confident engougth to make sure that i would expand it. but i am grateful with what i know now. And i am going to miss this class, hopefully more people take this class because it helps to be in classes were your feelings as student are not being ignore.

 

What is Copyright?

Copyright is one of the principle kinds of licensed innovation. Permits copyright proprietors to keep others from duplicating or replicating their work. Protected innovation rights give individuals responsibility for things they make, similarly as they can claim actual proprietorship.

 

“Taking the songs of the day and the old songs remixing them to make them something different, its how they (referring as kids form nowadays) understand access to this culture.”

By him saying this I think is true and lead us on onto knowing that music does not have age. You could literally be 15 and still be interested onto jazz from the 1980. Age should not matter when it comes onto your taste of music.

Creative content. The latest list of things capitalism ruins. In this society, the rise of a plethora of creative content has given rise to copyrighting. Copyright is defined as a right provided to an individual or institution, by the owner of intellectual property, through a legal body. In more simpler terms. it means the owner of intellectual property basically says “hey! I give you permission to use my work for whatever reason, under certain conditions.” These certain conditions are usually profit related (*eyeroll; capitalism*).

Now lets talk abut digital content. Things that fall under the category of digital content are music, pictures, blogs, videos or any other type of digital data that can be saved to computer files and/or broadcasted. In most cases, digital content is freely available on the internet. You can save and download digital content, giving you the opportunity to edit original intellectual property. This is usually harmless and includes things such as remixing songs, making song covers, patching and stitching scenes of movie together for content, adding a new spin to videos, etc. The majority of the people online get away with this. Until……..they start making money from it. Once money comes into the equation, things can get complicated pretty fast.

Lets use a classic example. Lets say an artist, like Drake drops new music. You like the song, so you created a remix to it and upload it on Youtube. Turns out your remix sounds very good and its really catching on. Before you know it, millions of people are listening and may even think your version is better than the original. You start gaining publicity and even money from the amount of viewers you’re pulling in. Now Drake is angry, and he wants to come for you.  Things continue to get very complicated and messy form then on, as the copyright “infringement” comes into play. Now all of a sudden you’re facing a very expensive lawsuit, followed by a seize and desist order. Oops.

However if things played out differently and your song didn’t catch significant attention, you wouldn’t be dealing with copyright infringement lawsuits. Now do you see why capitalism ruins everything? Even more importantly, do you see how copyright law can get really complicated especially when a larger audience is involved? To make matters worse, the laws that regulate these kinds of situations are often vague.

This example relates to fair use. lets quickly define such term. Fair use can be defined as access to intellectual property under certain conditions, without explicit consent of copyright owner. These certain conditions are usually non monetary and include research, criticism, teaching and satire purposes. In other words, these fair use conditions are presented to the user, in good faith that they wouldn’t use it for personal gains.

In his TED talk, Larry Lessig states the follow in the context of modern day copyright law. “Common sense here has not revolted yet.” Lessig also says “common sense is rare in the law.” I find these quotes compelling because laws nowadays aren’t really made in common sense. Laws are influenced by bodies for whatever reason, even tough common sense clearly revolts against their reasons. For example, Larry gives an example of the pre-airplane era where land rights for land owners extended indefinitely in the air. Anything flying over this land would be considered trespassing. When airplanes arrived, some congressional bodies as well as land owners wanted to keep this law. Common sense clearly revolts at this because if these laws were kept it would mean airplanes would be violating uncountable trespassing laws. Once a supreme court judge saw a flaw in this law, it was immediately modified, in favor of the technological progress of airplanes.

This can be related to copyright law as well. Digital content is now available online and people are capable of downloading it and modifying it, to create new content. A good majority of people are doing this to explore their creative side of to present a new perspective of original work. This in effect creates more content and creativity to be shared online. Copyright law, however is very restrictive and requires users of intellectual property to obtain explicit content from the owner. It’s clear to see how this sort of thinking is outdated and revolts against common sense.

A fictional example of fair use was presented earlier on. Now lets look at more real life examples. Richard Prince is a artist who was sued by Patrick Cariou for “infringing on his work. The image on the right is the original work and the image on the left is the creatively modified version Prince created.

Andy Baino, another person to get sued for copyright related reasons, is in a similar situation as Prince. Below on the left is the original intellectual property of Miles Davis. On the right is the heavily pixelated created spin Andy Baino created.

Now, in my perfectly honest opinion, there’s not much difference between Baino and Princes’ work from the original. Even though they have some creative additions such as Prince’s photo markups and Baino’s heavy pixelations, the creative works are obviously very similar to the original. In other words, I don’t think they are creative enough.

Both of their creative takes have enough presence of the original work to make it look like a copyright infringement, however good their intentions were.  Does this mean they deserve to get sued? I don’t think so, if their intentions were to purely express themselves. I personally don’t think this wouldn’t have been a problem if both artists weren’t relatively well known. If they were some underground artists that were barely known, I doubt they would be in this predicament. Since they’re well known and have potential to mobilize an entire audience, that’s where fair use really becomes challenging. Its no surprise that intellectual owners become jealous or feel violated when someone else uses their works and it garners a lot of attention, as they should. Even though the modifiers of this intellectual property mean no harm, they easily fall victim to fair use infringement lawsuits. These lawsuits are usually in favor of the intellectual owner and ends up in a settlement.

Fair use laws remain vague and vary from situation to situation. It is about time for a serious change to the laws. I don’t think it’s that hard to distinguish between someone whos using original works for monetary gains vs someone using it for creative expression. This is where the common sense comes into play. Its tie for common sense to revolt on these laws, so a balance can exist between original intellectual owner and creative artists. There is a compromise that exists between the two. Maybe a little pinch of common sense is all it takes to realize it.

I just gave you food for thought, now you do the dishes!

The first assignment was like an open world video game, where we were given the choice to express ourselves to the fullest regarding what makes us happy on the internet. I have a few references from “Regular show” and “The office” because I love to watch videos on the internet. Check out my first blog post https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/internet-happiness-12/ . I had a lot of fun creating my first blog post because I was not sure what to expect from this class.

After we went through our syllabus, I definitely had a duh moment. I thought this class was going to be very technical because I read that we had to create a website. In actuality, this class was meant to teach us how to properly create a website while creatively using the proper tools to enhance the details of our website. Check out my duh moment at https://ct101.commons.gc.cuny.edu/assignment-2-3/.

 

The “are memes art” was my favorite assignment because I was able to create my first 10 memes that really let me express my personality. I never thought of memes as art but after CT101 my perspective has changed.

This assignment was pretty cool because we had the choice to pick a project and complete the project while sharing our process. I have never created a bucket list collage before but with the Befunky website. I was able to put my collage together. I will definitely be using this website to create collages of my future travels.

Here are a few domain names I came up with for my website. Junkorjuiced, gear2gear,speedstars, rockyowhip, flipthewhip, sharegear, feedmyspeed, gasforbrass,speedspectech,speedsweatech. I learned how to embed videos about what my website was about, which was very helpful when sharing the contents of my potential website.

After following the instructions , I was able to create my website speedspectech.net .

I shared my website with my friends and family and they all left some comments on my first website post. I have a couple friends who love cars so it was cool to get their opinion on what I have accomplished so far.

After visiting some of my classmates websites http://monopillowtalk.net/  https://thereslifeoutside.com/  https://therotatingrock.com/, I decided that I will be adding short stories on my website. It was good to see that my website layout was different than my classmates. I was also able to learn about the content my classmates were sharing, which was pretty interesting. My content was completely different and they did not have any competition content on their websites like I did.

Our last post was about copyright.  I learned a lot about how others may not see your alterations as enough changes from an original idea. As a new creator of a website it is important that I follow the guidelines of fair use. By ensuring that my website does not get any financial gains or increase my likeness by using someone else’s work, I should be fine. At the same time, I will not limit my creativity because there are no real original ideas. Everyone has an idea that stems from someone else and we all have protection against those who chose to steal the work of others for personal gain.

Here is the home page of my website. I created this website to talk about cars and host friendly battles based on which car the viewer likes better. In my week one battle , the Honda Type R had more likes than the Subaru STI, based on the comments. In the second week , I have the Nissan 400z as the first battle car and people seem to be excited about it. I am waiting to see who my viewers will pick as the Nissan 400z rival. One of the hardest things about creating my website was creating the layout because I want it to be more informative. I also want my viewers to have access to adding their own pictures to the website. I am not happy with the current layout and will work on it over the summer because I want to keep my website up. I love talking about cars and this is a great way to connect to other car enthusiast.

Overall I think I deserve an A-. I created a total of 14 posts and I got to accomplish the goals of my website, which was to conduct a car battle and have information about exotic cars displayed. I feel like I should have commented on my classmates posts which would have helped me with more of my classmates browsing and commenting on my website. As my final post I feel like I have learned a lot from this class and I will continue to build my website until it is to my liking.

 

Going into this class I was very anxious about what it had in store for me , mainly because with classes like this I feel i’m better with the visuals of it, i’m more of a visual learner. Fortunately for me I had an amazing teacher and i’m not just saying that because he is the one giving out the grades i’m saying that based on the way he treats and cares for his students. Most teachers look at the students as just students who need to complete assignments without actually understanding that students are people too not Professor Seslow.

Throughout the class i’ve learned how to incorporate gifs into my own media , make my own GIFS and oh yeah I created my own website!! I definitely am so grateful for this class experience and the things I was able to learn in these short amount of weeks. The weekly blog post with the thought provoking questions to get you to dive deeper when answering the question of the week.

This is the hard part on choosing what grade I should get in the class. I feel with the determination I had to complete all the assignments and blog posts leads me to believe I deserve a B+ in this class because I did the assignments to the best of my abilities and I reached out to my professor whenever I didn’t understand something. With all of this being said I believe a B+ is what my work and determination reflects. I say a B+ instead if an A because I didn’t always complete the assignments on time so with that being said I don’t think I should get the same grade as the people who did.

The things I enjoyed the most in class was the flexibility and individuality it allowed me to have. Besides that I really enjoyed the creative side of me that came out in my website. Being able to provide a little piece of sunshine on someones cloudy day is enough fuel for me to keep the website up . I have a-lot of plans for the website which include mental health and suicide hotlines, relationship advice, new parenting advice, even employment opportunities just to name a few.

here is the link to my website so you can get information to help reduce stress! https://kingkyla.com

What Have I Learned?

Wow, it’s the end of the semester!

Wow, I can’t believe it! Even though I have been waiting for this semester to be over. This semester has definitely been the hardest for me. I took a couple of classes that were quite intense in writing (my WORST subject) which have literally kicked my ass lol. I could genuinely say that CT101 has been my escape from it all.

I really enjoyed assisting CT101 and learning things that I never knew I needed. I was fascinated when we learned about Gifs and Memes because I love using them and sharing them in my daily life.

^ This one is my favorite Gif I created! I love the Office and this part of the episode was hilarious so my first Gif just had to be this! I loved learning how to make Gifs, Memes, add them to my post, I enjoyed learning how to hyperlink. (that’s currently my favorite song), adding photos and media to my posts and discovering new elements in every class we had.

I enjoyed creating my website. I would say that this class taught me something that I have always wanted to know, and that is the idea of a website. It was lots of fun playing and discovering new little customizations that I could do on my website and adjusting it to MY liking.

Will I Keep my Website?

I do plan on keeping my website and hopefully be able to maintain it. I recently have taken an eyelash extension course, meaning I want to be my own boss and start providing services for the ladies out there that would love to get their eyelashes on fleek. I would like to transform by Travel Blogs website into an Eyelash website! I can see that this website has great potential in helping me cater my services and help me provide a platform where my work can be portrayed through images, comments, links to social media, and maybe even able to provide bookings through my site. I am honestly excited for what the future may have in store for me and for my website. I know that it will be a beneficial factor in my life.

Final Website Link & Description 

This is my website – http://eyeconicny.com/

My website consists of three pages.

1.  My Home Page – where you will find a photo gallery of pictures taken by me!
2. Blogs page – Where I have three posts published of trips I have taken.
3. About me page – I introduce myself and explain how I will use my website. 

My website is a place where I post blogs of memorable pictures taken on my iPhone of places I go, people I am with, and the things I eat! When I was building this website it did give me a couple of headaches. I am not a very patient person so I would get frustrated when I did not know how to fix certian problems.

I had a little bit of frustration when including a gallery on my website. I wanted the gallery centered on my home page, but for some reason, it would all shift to the right of the screen! Even my heading was shifted to the right of the screen! I watched the professor’s videos in hopes that maybe I could find the answers and techniques needed. I also played with it for about two days lol. I thought maybe my computer was glitching. In the end, I reached out to Professor Seslow and he suggested a couple of videos on youtube and gave me a couple of tips 🙂

I was finally able to center my home page and *sigh* it was such a relief and satisfaction to me. There’s nothing better than FINALLY figuring it out!

After I fixed this issue I had I was on a roll on finally being able to proceed in creating and customizing my website.

What Grade Do I Deserve?

Honestly speaking I would love to give myself an A LOL who wouldn’t! But realistically I believe that I deserve a B- because I am aware that I have missed a couple of assignments and posts which is the reason why my grade might be affected. Although I did miss a couple of posts I did in fact put a lot of work into my website! I enjoyed working on it and making it appear presentable.

 

Hey Classmates! I just published a new blog on my website care to go see it?

Blog

Its about one of my experiences while executing one of the jobs in my business.

Upon the start of CT101, I doubted myself more than I doubted my ability to do what this course requires. I have been writing since I could remember, but as I’ve said before, I lack vulnerability with my audience. Which in my opinion, is key, because anyone can creatively write, but not everyone has something to say.

In our introductory post, I shared with you what was easiest for me to share with people: music. When I sit down and analyze why I feel comfortable sharing music comparing to other of my works, I come to the realization that it’s because it’s content  I have been creating the longest.
Practice makes perfect(ish), but the more you do something, the more confidence you enable yourself to gain.

Following my self-analysis, it dawned upon me that “I did not choose this course; the course chose me, and I almost missed it!” (Click here to read my opinions about CT101 vs other courses). I placed my faith in this course, and of course, professor Seslow, that at every step of the way, I would build more of an intimate relationship with the internet.

A great way to do something new and out of my comfort zone was to create a meme account and explore its possibilities. While writing my “Are meme’s art?” blog, I learned that meme’s have more potential that what people typically see on social media or share with our friends.  Because you can use any recorded content to create something new, with new meaning and intentions, meme’s are most definitely art.

Need practice or to build some confidence? I’ve got you covered. For practice in creating content,  the ds106 Assignment Bank offers a variety of projects you can try and are rated by difficulty which allows you to either stay within your comfort zone or challenge.

Through the Assignment bank, I gained practice in video editing and somewhat of the basic guideline on how to write a terms of service. Heavy on the “somewhat”. But more specifically, I remixed some scenes of the Incredibles animated movie with Yolanda’s Be Cool song “We No Speak Americano” and wrote an Apocalypse Terms of Service that you can read here, in my blog.

Check out the remix:

One of most appalling truths I have learned in CT101 is actually not a technique or strategy, but information. The documentary of Aaron Swartz taught me how vile and unjust the American system is. I already felt this way before seeing the documentary, but I suppose it added to my anger.
However, as I stated in the closing of Internet’s Own Boy blog, “as long as we live in ignorance, we will forever be slaves and puppets. It is time to start questioning”. This truth has opened up a new reality for me, and thanks to CT101’s influence, I will be able to help others find it too.

Following this revelation, and only after fully understanding that the internet is one of the most powerful tools in the world, came the creation of our own websites. And truthfully, It all feels like the cultivation of a very healthy relationship… if handled correctly.

My website, Mono Pillowtalk was created with the intention to “cover topics that one typically suppresses or ignores, that I have silenced, in a creative way”, and thus, far both my short stories Wallflower, Sunflowers, & Petals and Playa Juan Dolio do just that.  Check them out!

My website is my newborn babe. It is currently being neglected due to finals AND the preparation of summer classes (for me), but I do intend to keep it, use it, and grow with it. I will use it as my beginner friendly website where I can explore and fully master customizing and HTML. See what works, visually, so that later when I do feel ready to grow my business through the internet, I can do it all by myself. Growth, baby.

After knowledge, comes the work and the work wont do itself. Thus, thats on me. But if I don’t, what I do know for sure is that CT101 has prepared me for bigger and better things to come.

I am both happy and scared to part ways with CT101, but thanks to professor Seslow, I know I will be alright. Every step of the way was carefully laid out, organized, and explained. It could not be more crystal. The doubt that I had been placing on myself is no longer there. I have the right information and resources to handle my own website or the internet as a whole, and for that I am grateful.

As for my grade, when combining both my literal words and my actions in this course, I deserve an A. What type of A? that depends on the technicalities, which I have unfortunately not have been paying close attention to. So, maybe an A-/ B+ minimum? Sounds about right. I have done all the blog posts, contributed to the class’ meme folder, supported and encouraged my fellow classmates. If I truly had to pick something I wish I did better, it would be turning on my camera more often. Despite of this, I have always been right there. Loud and clear.

How will I be using my website as we go forward?

 

I did my website about my business. I planned about doing it about it since i only have an Instagram account of the business. If it wasn’t for this class i wouldn’t have done it lol.

This website is going to help me promote my business as we go forward in completing it.

The domain name, ugh what a travesy.

 

Had to log in and out trying to see if the website was claim as mines or not, but finally did it.

 

Finally when i registered the domain and thought that the problems were over… we had to download WordPress… so yeah there’s that.

I agree with Andy Baio’s regarding his statement that “everything is a remix”. When you take a look a culture and ideas that are created throughout the years, everything was inspired by something already created or something that is lacking or missing a component to bring an idea to the next level. I also agree with his statement that “the idea of the lone artist or inventor struck by lightning is a myth”.  I support his claims because I always thought to myself, where do people come up with some of the crazy but essential ideas. When you look back at a lot of so-call original ideas, you find out that they stem from someone else’s work or short comings.

Here some similarities between Flash Gordan vs Star Wars

What Have I learned in my time at CT101?

I have learned quite a lot during my time in CT 101 including making memes and GIFs which are form of digital expression as well as learning that there are teachers out here who also hate the outdated system of Blackboard. I registered my own domain name and built a website called therotatingrock.com      which was about giving people show recommendations and other stuff (hopefully I will figure out what to post next).

What grade do I believe I am maintaining?

Around a B+ to and A since I haven’t been as forthcoming with the blogs as I should have been. I do take this class seriously however with my other business classes breathing down my neck with pages of work needed to be done and my poor time management skills I mostly do my blogs the day (or a couple days after :'() they are due.

What skills have I developed, cultivated and displayed regularly?

My Creativity has surely improved with these blog posts and I’ve realized I used to hold back on what I would say like” Maybe I shouldn’t say this before the professor says that this makes no sense” I should say when writing essays but for blog posts the information usually flows out of me of what what I wish to portray. I love this class gives us a freedom of expressing your creative side.

What do I know now that I did not know before taking this class?

There was  a couple things I didn’t know tbh. How to make a website from scratch and how to customize a website. I had watched a couple videos on YouTube on ho to build one but never really started the process and even thought about coding but it never actually did anything to start until now.  Also, I learned ho to do other thing like creating a GIFs and memes.

 

The first website I checked out was https://therotatingrock.com/ because I am a big anime fan and Castlevania was a great short story anime on Netflix. I like how the website gives you insight on various shows that a star rating system cannot give you. Season four for Castlevanina was recently released and I think that giving a small amount of controversial information about different seasons would generate some interesting comments.

Finally, it is my last blog post on CT101, well you know what they say…

How do I feel? My heart is going to burst because it is full of rainbows, just kidding. But yeah I feel happy and excited at the same time. First off this is the very last assignment that I am gonna be submitting or doing not just for this course but as an undergraduate student at York College. Yeah, you guessed it. I am graduating. I would not have known about CT101 or been in this class if not for fulfilling the credits. Now, that I have been in this class for one whole semester I was wondering…

It was an amazing experience and one of my favorite classes of the semester. Like I said before a million times in my other blogs. I have learned a LOT through this course. This class has made me learn and do things that I never thought I could do myself. CT-101 really brought out the creative self in me. The greatest learned asset in this class was being able to photoshop and edit images. I was able to develop, cultivate and display a lot of skills throughout the semester through CT101 digital storytelling.

Analyzing my work throughout the course a few of my best works in the class were on Are Memes Art and DS-106. Working on the DS-106 assignment was so cool. I was able to develop some digital art skills through that assignment working on the movie poster mashup.  Another is the writing skills through these weekly blogs where I got to create GIFs and memes for the first time. Just reposting my favorite work of art in this class that I created using Photopea online editor remixing the movie posters Alien and E.T. with Stranger Things:

 

Now the most thrilling part of the class was… Of course, starting my own website The World Around Us; which I did not even expect I would get a chance to own and run by myself when I signed up for this class. Now, that I own my own website platform, I definitely want to use it in the best way I could. Currently, I am using my website as a platform where people could go in and enjoy reading some fun, interesting, and scientific facts in the world. My very first blog post on the website was on the topic: The world through the eyes of animals.

The world through the eyes of animals

My favorite blog post to work on was: World’s smallest animals where I got to research and create some interesting GIFs of small cute animals, at the same time write about them.

World’s smallest animals

My website is all about having fun reading and educating oneself at the same time. I love researching and writing about such unique topics.  But I might shift the ideas I work with now and expand them further. I am still stuck with a lot of ideas and ways juggling inside my head that I would like to convert my website in the future for professional uses. Finally a website owner!

The class had given me a whole new view of blogging where I have only been reading other people’s blogs on the internet before and now I got a chance to learn that for myself here at CT-101.  I think I deserve an A because this semester was pretty rough for me but I was still able to complete every single assignment works. Also, I know I started off weak in this class but was able to show a great deal of improvement throughout the course which I am happy with myself. Overall, this was the unique and most fun-filled journey that I had this semester. And I am glad I was able to make it to the very end of the semester even in the middle of these hard times. All thanks to Professor Seslow, for making this class so interesting and easy-going. Adios CT101 🙂