Daily Create 152: Tell as story about your most random job.
A lot of folks are doing some really fun album covers, so what the hell. Let me get in on the create too.
Here’s what you need to know:
Band name: Galeophobia
Wikipedia does not have an entry for Galeophobia, so if you have some time to kill perhaps you could fill that Wikipedia void. Wiktionary says that Galeophobia is (1) a fear of cats and (2) a fear of sharks. I have no idea how sharks and cats are related. There is also another term for the fear of cats. It’s called ailurophobia. But all of this is boring. Back to the fun stuff.
Album title: Part of Your Essential Being
I didn’t have a specific photo editor in mind. I knew I wanted to use something I’ve never used before. I did a search for web photo editor and selected Befunky, because it was kind of near the top and I am not discerning. It’s an easy tool to use though the font choices are limited. There are lots of photo effects though. I also like the fact that the tools can be used without registering as a user.
I’m pretty sure that Galeophobia is a metal band, so I selected some gothic fonts and made them as hard to read as possible, which is what metal bands are wont to do. I did the “Galeophobia” first and applied my changes. I wanted to change the positioning of the band name after applying said changes, but was unable to figure out how to do that without redoing the image. I then added the album title, played around the with coloring, and called it a day. Here it is:
First go
I was having fun though and I had some time to kill before graduation, so I decided to do another cover. Fun times!
another album cover, because a band has to have choices.
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!
There are far more definitions of shit talking than I ever dreamed of in my philosophy, but the one I am referring to is the act of “saying things to amuse people and playfully mock them.” For me the web has many faces, but one of its most appealing is that it provides a uniquely playful space to banter with people. Spaces like blog comments and twitter provide remarkable opportunities for talking shit. For example, this afternoon I had joked with Tom Woodward (who is awesome at taking such things to the next level) and in turn he created an animated GIF to let me know I was skating on thin ice with my earlier remarks. Here is that GIF:
I wasn’t sure what the hell it was, I just knew it was nutty. Turns out it is a scene from this music video of that crazy South African Zef band Die Antwoord. I had mistaken it for an Alabama house party 
Funny thing is, this started a bit of a back and forth on Twitter with me talking a little shit about how I could out exercise Tom, how I made ds106, etc., etc., run-of-the-mill stuff for me, getting under people’s skin is too easy on twitter, but it is also kinda fun. Sometimes there is a thin line, but within the right community a little friendly banter and back and forth can lead to great things. For example, after a fun back and forth with Tom he went on to create six more Die Antwoord GIfs that are all both disturbing and amazing. See for yourself.
I would venture if we weren’t going back and forth on Twitter they might not have gotten made. Would that be the end of the world? Maybe not, but he did make them, it was fun, we did connect, they are awesome, and as usual they are generated out of a sense of fun, play and shit talking. One thing is for sure, ds106 as a community is the better for it. Why? Well, two more of ds106′s finest artists, Giulia Forsythe and Michael Branson Smith, started to play along as a way of using the animated GIF to talk shit on me. Giulia oh so subtely suggests I might have had too much coffee with her bava attacks shark GIF:
And then pulls out another GIF to ask the question “what are you really made of?”
And then there was some allusions in the twitter banter about me being the ds106 overlord, kind of “the man with no eyes” prisoner guard in Cool Hand Luke, so Michael Branson Smith provided the visual—a little trigger happy Groom.
And what you start to realize pretty quickly is we are jamming, people are making stuff on the fly, having fun, talking smack through all kinds of media, and then the moment passes. And that’s that. It happens all the time in #ds106, these are the interstitial moments that are impossible to reproduce in your course systems—the hallway spaces that have little to do with the course and everything to do with the people in it. You shouldn’t look too hard for these events because they’re always there balled up in the potentiality that are the awesome people all around you—it just sometimes takes a little shit talking to activate them. As my good friend Todd Conaway knows all too well:
Make some art dammit, and talk some shit.
More Time (Taken with Instagram)
How it should have ended.
Done with GIMP, having fun with layers.
Or, we could take care of the problem even earlier in the story.
I have given up trying to figure out which Visual Assignments these are, and I don’t have the heart to add more to the long list! :-)
I have been keeping myself busy at the Macguffin Camp - reading about photography, doing my Daily Create assignments (did each and every one so far this week) and thinking about my visual assignments. I have completed two and the third is under way, but nobody knows about them. The reason why nobody knows about how diligent I have been is that I haven’t updated this blog of mine.
I am going to be brief here, since I desperately want to go back to thinking about my visual assignments. I swear, they are addictive. These days I can’t wait to get home so that I can update my Daily Create and play with my photo editors. I have even started carrying my camera with me and today, when my students left the classroom, I took some more photos (of the classroom and out the window). I did this, I reasoned, so that I could catch the light. Most of my Daily Create photos so far have been Nightly Creates, as I usually do them when I get home from work.
Anyway, what’s this story of my ship coming in?
Visual Assignment 379 asks us to photograph our best daydreaming window and alter it to show what we are dreaming of. I am dreaming of the holiday and of the time I am going to spend at the sea-side with my family. It is as simple as that. Though, while I am at the sea-side, I will have to abstain from the Daily Creates and other Camp activities. You can’t have it all.
And here’s how I did this task:
I used PhotoFiltre. It is not in our packing list, but it is free to download and use. I wrote about PhotoFiltre here.
I copy-pasted the ship onto the window as shown in this video:
After that I painted the area around the ship using the brush tool and some dark red paint matching the window.
The result is amateurish, but not too bad.
In the last couple of days I have been wrapping up a Shakespeare experience of Romeo & Juliet with my ninth grade students. In an effort to keep things light and entertaining when introducing students to Shakespeare, I use a … Continue reading
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.....