Dear Mom,
I am still having fun at camp, however it has proven to be a learning experience. I just had a website put up for me, and I am still trying to figure it out. Since I am new to all of this, it has proven to be a little tougher than I initially expected. This is a big difference than sitting in my room for long hours writing code.
Love,
Jasmine
Dear mom,
With everything going on last week, I forgot to write you a letter home. Camp so far has been…… a new experience. I takes a lot of involvement, if you think that you are able to sleep the day away in the sun, think again! So far I have made a youtube, twitter, flixr, and a few other accounts. These are all new to me, but I am having fun with them.
Love,
Me<3
From the looks of things here, it would appear that I’ve got it in for Keeme. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. As mentioned in this second installment of The Totally Fun and Good Podcast, he is one of the good guys in Second Life. I had the good fortune of reconnecting with him today while trying to shoot a trailer video for an upcoming project: The Scottlo Daily Rounds.
The half hour or so we spent talking about doing media stuff in the coming months was for more exciting and interesting than the trailer would have been. We had to cut our chat short so I could go to work. On the way in, I recorded this little podcast.
Hopefully, Keeme will be joining in for an upcoming recording. This fellow has got some stories to tell.
As for the trailer and the project, they will be coming very soon.
Two weeks down here at Camp Magic MacGuffin. There’s definitely a monster in the lake, my bunkhouse is called Slaughterhouse 4, which just feels like a bad omen, and people have gone missing.
I had a busy week with my Daily Creates, which you can see here.
I watched a video of Vonnegut telling the shape of a story, and I read some of Bryan Alexander’s book on digital storytelling. It was a pretty successful week, despite a few setbacks on my end.
Overall, I just opened my eyes a little bit to the possibilities that storytelling has, the different forms it can take, and the shapes that they take. I’m starting to wonder how my own life will fit a story… Which parts would I leave out? Which parts will I lie about? Which life lesson will be the one I focus on? What’s my tragic flaw?
Dear Mom,
It has been such a crazy week! I really got into the nitty gritty stuff w/ my website, got to play around a lot with wordpress, made videos, took pictures. Camp is really starting to pick up! I’m realizing though that it will be tough balancing my UMW course and this camp for the next 3 weeks, all the while still trying to work. but I WILL SURVIVE!!!
Here is a link to my website btw… http://www.mindofamasri.com. It is where I am keeping track of a lot of the stuff I’m doing in camp.
I did 3 daily creates this week! My 2 favorite were these…
- This was a picture I had to take of stone, water, and clouds… I am really amping up my phototaking abilities! haha
The second one is this…
which was a picture of the sky, for some reason I find it really asthetically pleasing to me.
On top of all these cool camp activities (check my website for more stuff!), I’ve been learning javascript and xhtml in my Web Application Development course. It is time consuming, but AWESOME stuff! Also worked a lot this week, I’ll be home for Marwa’s graduation on Friday though! I wouldn’t miss that for anything! See you in a few days.
sincerely,
mindofamasri
After reading Bryan Alexander’s introduction, I never thought of a blog as a diary. New Media, and specifically blogs really are amazing… they’re a forum that you can share with the entire world. Which brings up another point of censoring your information because, again, the whole world can see it. Employers are talking about starting to discuss whether or not it may be acceptable to go onto candidate’s Facebook profiles.
I was thinking about this, and the idea of sharing your life online with the whole world, and so long as you manage what you say and don’t put up pictures of yourself doing anything super illegal, you should have nothing to hide. A Facebook or a blog that you can be proud of can act as a supplement to your resume, which is limited to one page.
On Bryan’s site, I found a thing about political digital-storytelling, and Obama’s use of the web to branch out and reach a broader audience. Julia’s Story is very easy to read, interactive, and has lots of information without crowding the viewer.
I watched this video that I found through “Dr. Nemo’s” website. I liked the flow the video had. By flow I mean I liked how the music in the background paired with the narrator’s monotone voice. Normally monotone can be a negative statement to make about a narrator, but in this case it is not, it fit.
Most people can relate to the generational differences that are felt between youth and their grandparents or great-grandparents. We (the youth) just smile and nod as we try and decipher their ramblings and the repetition of their conversations and actions. Then one as we age, we realize we do the same things. We create a tradition from this. The narrator creates a tradition of having bread and butter on Thursdays.
This story is just that, a story. A family story that is shared orally/visually. It is like a modern day version of oral storytelling, because it is recorded oral storytelling. Just like “Dr. Nemo” discussed in his book, this story is like this man’s journal. It is something personal to him that he is sharing with, well…the world.
If I were to describe the shape of this story I would say that it is like most typical accounts of youth-elder interactions. The youth do not understand the ramblings of the elders, the elders die, the youth age, the youth understand the elders now.
Based on Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Shape of Stories“, and being a sucker for romantic comedies, I chose to focus on the most recent movie that I saw, The Five Year Engagement with Jason Segal and Emily Blunt.
An adorable movie, the film starts out with a picture perfect couple living in San Francisco, until Violet gets an offer she can’t refuse in Michigan. The two move up and both try to tolerate the situation until they can’t anymore, and you can see the relationship falling apart.
Then, after their split, they get their lives on track individually and work their way back into each other’s lives. A lovely happy ending for the lovely couple. A lovely, typical, but awesome ending.
I had a lot of fun with this week’s Daily Creates…
My first was TDC143, Look up today and make a photo that favors what’s going on in the sky. I chose to use a photo of the hawk that watched me as I packed my car to move out of my home in Charlottesville to my new house in Fredericksburg. The hawk has been terrorizing my parent’s home recently and has taken up residence in our backyard. It spent some time sitting on our sunroof, screeching at my parents through the glass, so they got a motion-activated owl that they put on the roof to scare it away. Shortly after we put it there, the hawk attacked it.
This is the vicious guy himself:
My second TDC was number 145. Not my best work. Womp womp.
Draw Bugs Bunny (Just Like Chuck Jones)
My third TDC of the week, I chose Take a photo that represents descruction, number 146.
This picture I like because it describes my current living situation pretty well. The bathroom has been gutted, but nothing says destruction like not having plumbing. I almost cried as they knocked it all down. Soon enough though, it’ll be all great again!
Okay, so many people are familiar with the Nancy Drew book series. I was addicted to them throughout elementary school. I always loved going to Costco with my mom because they sold Nancy Drew books in packs of 6 there. So every time I went to Costco with her I was able to buy a new pack of Nancy Drew books. They were easy and quick reads, I could finish them in like half a day. But if you ever read Nancy Drew books, you know they are predicable.
After about my 3rd Nancy Drew book I was able to predict what would happen when I read them. Nancy somehow comes across a mystery that needs to be solved and her friends would help her solve it and often times they would have to travel to do so, or they would already be traveling when they came across their mystery. Nancy would get herself into a dangerous situation while trying to solve the mystery and then she would be saved by either her sweetheart or friends. Then she would eventually solve the mystery.
Sorry, but camp is over! Head over to ds106
The Campfires have all been put out.
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
