I am truly in love with Jacob Black from the movie/book saga Twilight. I know I am a little to old to be obsessing over tween movies.. However, he is super hot! I simply cut my face out of a picture I already had, and laid it over the face of Bella Swan.
#obsessed
Dear Mom,
I think I’m officially a hooked DS106er! I’ve learned and created so much this week. Make sure to check out my blog to keep up. I learned to make GIFs, take photos, edit photos, make my own currency, used soundcloud for the first time… the list goes on.
Most importantly I’m getting a better grasp on the concept of creating an online space. My blog is shaping more and more into… myself. Despite things being a little crazy this week in terms of work, school, camp, and personal life… I’ve hung in there. I can’t wait for my course to be finished so I can invest more time into camp though. It was also nice coming home for Marwa’s graduation, I’m so proud of her! and I’ll upload the pictures I took of it soon! Well, write back soon. I’m gonna get going, still have a test to study tomorrow to study for! Good night!
Sincerely,
Mohamed T. Moaz
These are my daily creates (the visual ones) from this week. I really got to explore taking photos and editing them. I have never been one for photography or getting my picture taken. Only in the past 2 years of my life have I allowed people to take a lot of pictures of me, because I realize that they capture memories more than anything. I have friends who are always trigger happy with a camera, but now I understand why. This week, I think I’ve discovered a new passion for photography. I’m no expert, but I love the fact that it not only captures memories… but emotions. Not only those of the subjects, but of the photographer. The lighting, angle, and editing of a photo are an expression of my individuality as the photo-taker. I really got a sense that I was creating an online identity this week. I’m putting more of myself and my aesthetics into my creates and assignments.
I learned about how lighting is important, it can alter the clarity as well as the mood of a photo. Also the angle and positioning of the subjects make a huge difference. I used pixlr and GIMP on these photos. I’ve been going on and on about these 2 programs, but they really are amazing!
Click on each picture for a better view, and some commentary on it!!
For this visual assignment mission, I had to take 10 pictures of a place familiar to me and show them in a strange way, with odd zooms and effects.
I took pictures of things around my room. Some of the pictures I left as-is b/c of a natural blur in them, or very zoomed in view. Most of the pictures though, I edited using pixlr. I’m loving this online software, it is so much easier to use than GIMP for me, and some of the features it has are awesome! I went a little crazy with some of them, but hey that makes it all the more unfamiliar.
This is a preliminary post which will be added to over time. Members of the ds106 digital storytelling group The Monkey House may be interested in some of these resources and hints for use with MineCraft.
1) Monkey Skins are available for your MineCraft dude (while you are waiting to customize your own).
The Skindex currently shows 23 skins when you search for “monkey.”
You can either download the .png skin file for use further editing, or you can upload it directly to your Minecraft profile so that you immediately look like a proper chimp.
2) Monkey House Texture Pack: Following on a question from @BenjaminHarwood, I investigated the Texture Pack feature, and created the beginnings of a Monkey House theme that substitutes a banana for the apple, and introduces some simple monkey artwork. To achieve this end,
a) download the Monkey House Texture Pack: MC_mONkEyhouse_v1.zip to a spot you can locate on your computer. The texture back is in a ZIP file format. Do NOT unzip it.
b) Run Minecraft. If you already have Minecraft running, make sure you save and quit the world: you need to be in the main menu to continue.
c) Click Texture Packs button.
d) Click Open Texture Pack Folder button; this will open the folder where minecraft stores all texture packs. If nothing happens, you need to find the folder manually. Depending on your operating system it is:
%AppData%\.minecraft\texturepacks~/.minecraft/texturepacks (This folder may be hidden in the Home Folder)~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/texturepacks (This folder may be hidden)e) Do not close Minecraft. Place the texture pack (ZIP file) in the opened texture packs folder, do not unzip.
f) In a few seconds the texture pack will appear in Minecraft. Select it and click Done. The texture pack is now applied, you may load your world and see the difference.
You should now see the world through a Monkey’s eyes.
This texture pack will likely evolve over time. I need to address the object naming, create a golden banana, and turn the regular cake into Banana Cake. Other suggestions?
There is more information about Texture Packs on the Minecraft wiki.
Here is a shot of some of our members of The Monkey House posing in front of one of the monkey pictures, with the pile of “apples” replaced (from my perspective) with bananas.
Members of The Monkey House with bananas and monkey art
3) Building Branches in The Monkey House tree.
While a short video tutorial has been requested (might be a nice little project), the basic process that I’ve used to build branches involves using the following bits.
1) the basic wood block for our tree
2) the dirt block
3) the fourth sapling
4) bone meal
5) the dark green leaves
6) the vines.
By placing a sapling on a dirt block and applying bone meal, a tree can instantly be grown on a branch. (remove the dirt block after and replace it with wood). Then add additional leaves and vines to arrive at your aesthetically pleasing result.
NOTE: For when creepers, zombies, skeletons, and spiders come wandering around, having the bow and arrow handy lets you get rid of the monsters without any explosions or collateral damage to The Monkey Hut.
Here’s an external shot of The Monkey House tree with the original large big branch. The plan will be to add additional large big branches such that each monkey can build a tree house of their own in the upper reaches of the foliage.
"The Monkey House tree" by aforgrave, on Flickr
4) Select and Name Your Temporary Bunk: We have prepared a good number of bunks in the main level of The Monkey House tree. Select an unoccupied bunk, and then update your sign (break, then replace) with your name, your twitter name, and the type of monkey you would like to be.
"One Funky Monkey Bunk(s)" by aforgrave, on Flickr
5) Members of The Monkey House can use our #tag when posting to Twitter:
We are #mONkEyhouse106.
Just a quick screenshot from #mONkEyhouse106 in Camp Magic MacGuffin. I’m still mostly hopeless in Minecraft but my bunk mates built an entire tree house. Not everyone came to tonight’s social but those who did learned a ton! Led by Andrew Forgrave, we managed to add basic bunks for everyone, and some nice torches for light, and we began adding on more tree branches while dear Shannon forged ahead alone making a spiral staircase that runs up the trunk of our giant tree from the deck level to the top. At some point Kathleen and I learned how to rid pigs (in our tree!). Unfortunately neither of us could get back OFF so we kind of messed up the house for awhile, but it’s all back in order now, and the pork chops were delicious. Shout out to Tim for turning day to night and doing a few teleportations of lost campers. And to camp director Alan who managed to join our social for a few minutes before heading to dinner – come back and visit anytime!
The newspaper poetry blackout assignment is a project I’ve wanted to do for awhile. I’m a big fan of the fridge magnets that give you a limited set of words to work and create with and I see this kind of assignment along the same lines.
I grabbed my free copy of the Free Lance-Star Weekly and started looking through the articles. I found a couple of good candidates that contained words that caught my eye. I started on one and decided I didn’t like it as I moved along. I was mostly eyeballing my way down the columns and not really circling things so I easily got lost when I went back to find the poem again. Perhaps I should circle stuff in pencil first?
The article I chose was about a local former detective building a film career so there was an abundance of really good words to use in the poem. As I went down I spotted “pursuing”, “rumored”, “alive”, “challenge” but, I ended up not using them because I wanted to keep it simple. I decided to start at “life.” and treat it as the title of my poem and also a framework for what I wanted to talk about. I found that maintaining a good sounding poem and an aesthetically pleasing image is a double challenge that can be frustrating at times.
What I ended up with was this poem:
life.
a little odd familiar space where bodies get to keep up this act.
I was quite pleased with the final poem (although a bit cynical) and the way the visual of the poem turned out.
I can see myself becoming addicted to this kind of art. I definitely see myself doing more of these in the future for fun.
For my first Visual Assignment I chose the “Make An Album Cover“. I’ve done this before on some other blog of mine but, I enjoy the random elements to this assingment.
The first step is picking the band name via the random page function in wikipedia. I landed on a page about the Carex nudata, which is apparently a species of true sedge.
Next is the album name through another random function of Quotations Page. The random quote ended up being, “Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.”
Lastly, the hardest part, finding an image on the Explore Page of Flickr that had a creative commons license on it. By the third roll I lucked out with this one:
Credit to Michael Lamberty for the original photo
Also does anyone know what good practice in when remixing someones photo when they put their name at the bottom of the photo? Is it ok to delete that? Or should I maintain that as a way to connect back to the original source? Deleting is probably ok as long as I give credit somewhere, right?
So the first thing I notice is the nice open space at the top of the image. A good spot to put some sort of text, right? I chose to place the band name there and stick with the kind of italics I associate with scientific naming of things.
I also noticed the brightness of the flowers might be a good place to drop some text. So after typing it in and playing with a bit of transformation in Gimp I got it to look mostly the way I wanted it to. I liked the combination of the word “closed” and the strike-through at first. I’m still not sure if I love it but, I think it works.
Once the text was placed I wondered what would happen if not only the far background was blurred but all the image surrounding the flower. As I began playing I noticed it made the flower pop and seem almost surreal. It lost a bit of its flower look when it became disconnected from the rest of the image but, I think I like the fact that it became this lone, weirdly shaped object. If I was a bit more daring I think I would have blurred the background even further to really isolate the flower.
Overall, I like the way this one came out. I imagine this band would be some kind of folksy, alt-rock kind of band. You know, a hipster kind of group that would think a scientific name was clever for a band.
Party with The Monkey House. We’re rocking it. We will discuss throwing a dance party on DS106radio or perhaps in Minecraft when we get to the audio section of our course. So stay tuned to The Monkey House folks!
So! Campers have started to explore the MineCraft incarnation of Camp Magic MacGuffin in droves! Last Friday evening, a good number of folks showed up simultaneously within the virtual space, and by Tuesday evening, the area surrounding the Camp Centre had been transformed with a whole slew of new construction. With a multiples of folks now working here and there, the opportunities for group photos start to occur. Of course, why settle for a static pose when you can go for the ubiquitous simultaneous-on-the-count-of-three-everybody-jump shot. Three images (one repeated, then looped) to produce a little animation.
Giulia, Shannon, and Ben on the Beach at Camp Magic MacGuffin on Tuesday evening
Of course this becomes more difficult with an increased number of people.
Not only was the co-ordination of the jumping a bit less synchronized with five, but the rapid capture of screenshots using the native MineCraft screen capture (F2 key on PC, FN+F2 on Mac) introduced a whole slew of filenames superimposed on the successive images, which I had to edit out. But the result was worth it.
INSERT 5-PERSON ANIMATED GIF HERE (revised image to come … )
After getting switched to Creative Mode (to avoid the MineCraft Monsters), folks have been getting the basics of manoeuvring and flying down. @timmmmyboy, @mburtis, and @leelzebub have been particularly helpful and responsive in getting new arrivals out of danger (Survival Mode) and flying around.
Quite a few crafters now have customized their Minecraft Steve with a unique skin. (Search The Skindex if you want to choose from a huge selection of pre-made skins, or see the embedded skin editor, Skincraft, at the end of this post.)
After getting oriented, most folks are getting together with their bunkmates and working to build their bunk houses. The Camp Centre has taken a few hits as Creepers continue to roam and blow stuff up, but everyone seems to be pitching in to make repairs.
After seeing that Bunkhouse Five (The DigiOuijas) was casting a nasty shadow on the centre camp at high noon (causing the night-creatures to come out at mid-day), @timmmmyboy graciously removed and relocated Bunkhouse Five and introduced a shadow-free transparent floor at the same time! Tuesday evening he spent a good chunk of time working to get his piston-elevator system working. I had a chance to test it out — and while we both encountered a bug or two …
You Moved Too Quickly (Hacking?)" by aforgrave, on Flickr
… it did manage to transport my MineCraft self up to the top of the world.
"Top of the World" by aforgrave, on Flickr
@BenjaminHarwood and @GiuliaForsythe chose a location for Bunkhouse Two (The Wäscälly Wäbbits) and did some serious digging in, both in terms of into-the-cliff-burrowing, and front-entrance garden planting. They also spent time working on a Pirates of the Caribbean boat attraction, and I had an opportunity to experiment with MineCraft TNT at their site while trying to create an exit for the trapped boats. Check out the proud Wabbits in front of their collaborative digs.
"Two Wäscälly Wäbbits" by aforgrave, on Flickr"
@shauser and I returned to the site of the new BIG HUGE GIANT tree for Bunkhouse One (The Monkey House), and spent some time working to make it bigger and more tree-like. – It’s getting there. But we also had some fun when we managed to fall out of the world while visiting Ben and Giulia.
In fact, the experience was so enjoyable, we enjoyed it a couple more times:
We then repaired the original hole at the Wabbits site, but not wanting to say goodbye to the fun, we built an amusement ride for all to enjoy at the Camp Magic MacGuffin beach — The Fell Out the World Fun Ride. Enjoy, everyone!
"'Fall Out the World'Fun Ride" by aforgrave, on Flickr
Shannon and Tim and I also took a little excursion to try to find some of the sights I encountered during my Lost in the MineCraft Wilderness Expedition, and some more work was completed on The Monkey House tree house, but those details will remain for a later post …
See? I made a Gumby skin for my MineCraft dude
Why settle for some off-the-shelf Steve skin, when you can Create Some Art and make your own with this handy skin editor?
The editor gives you a tiny little .png file. This is what I uploaded to my profile at minecraft.net to skin my dude as Gumby …
Who would you like to be in MineCraft? What key features do you need to capture to make your character’s skin instantly recognizable and unique?
Use the embedded editor below. Just click Play. Make some MineCraft Skincraft art!
(It’s a .swf file, so you’ll need to edit on a device that supports Flash)
Skincraft © 2011 The-Swain | Afro-Ninja | Mike Welsh Sponsored by Newgrounds
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.....
