For the next blog topic we had to think of ideas for the circular narrative project by brainstorming and coming up with a basic outline.
So for this project I decided to design my circular narrative around the 2011 AMA Supercross Series. The five main characters in this circular narrative are (in order of first to fourth): Ryan Villopoto, Chad Reed, Ryan Dungey and James Stewart. The fifth character was none other than myself incognito.
So being an avid dirt bike rider and fan of all motor sports in general this circular narrative project idea was right up my alley.
Consequently, I did some research on all four of the aforementioned riders to find more out about their personalities and what the final results were in the last race of the series in Las Vegas.
This research allowed me to write a circular narrative based on each riders perspective of the 2011 AMA Supercross Season.
I did this by designing a website with a homepage called 2011 AMA Supercross Season and then placing each riders name around it. When you click on the riders name it takes you to another page with a photo of the rider and a spiel I wrote about what I thought the rider might say about his season. I also tried to throw in some of the mannerisms I thought each rider might possess when describing his season.
I also put some information about each riders entire racing career on their personal webpage just to mix it up and keep it interesting.
Finally I wrote a spiel with my take on the season with what I thought about each riders racing and how I personally felt about the results.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Digital Writing - Blog 4
For the fourth blog I had to write out/ruminate on ideas for the Visual Storytelling Project assignment. So after some deliberation I decided to go with a visual story based on a fictional day in the life of myself. I decided to use a comedic theme in my visual story by creating a very muscular body for myself. I did this by downloading a cartoon muscle man from google pictures and cutting out his body except for his head in photoshop. I then used a photo of my own face that I had cut out of an old photo and then placed it on the muscle body. This new body formed the foundation of my visual story.
For my first html I went with a collage of all the different images I would be using throughout my visual story. This turned out to be quite effective and with the combination of a heading titled 'A day in the life of Reuben' it turned out to look pretty cool.
For my second html I took a photo of a weetbix box and then made copies of it and pasted all around my cut out of muscular Reuben. I also cut out a picture of a bowl of cereal and a table and pasted them into my image. By arranging the images a certain way I made it look like muscular Reuben was eating a great big bowl of cereal while being sourrounded by Weetbix boxes.
For my third html I went with the title 'At the Gym'. I took a photo of the local gym that I go to and then using photoshop pasted my fake muscle body onto the photo. I also pasted a cut out barbell image next to my feet making the overall image more realistic.
For the fourth html fictional muscular Reuben was 'Surfing at Narrow Neck'. I used a photo I took of a surfer at Narrow Neck and cut him out of the picture without removing the surf board. I then pasted muscular Reuben onto the surfboard to make it seem like he was surfing.
For my fifth html I put muscular Reuben on a dirtbike. I used a picture I had taken of my brother riding his dirt bike on the MX track at Rover Park and pasted in muscular Reuben. I then cut out a copy of my brother dirt bike and pasted it into the photo. After arranging the images correctly and with a little photoshop work I made it look as though muscular Reuben was riding a dirtbike.
For my sixth html I put muscular Reuben in a photo where he was drinking with his mates. I did this by taking a photo of a local bar and then cutting out an image of my mates and pasting them into the photo of the bar. I also cut out an image of a Corona beer and edited the images so that it looked like muscular Reuben was drinking a giant beer in a bar with his mates.
For my seventh and final html page I took a photo of my bed and pasted muscluar Reuben into the picture so it looked like he was sleeping on the bed. I then found a picture of a hot babe sleeping and cut her out and pasted her into the photo to make it look like she was sleeping on the bed beside muscular Reuben. I called this html 'sleeping with my girlfriend'.
Overall I was happy with the way my visual story turned out and the mark i got reflected the results as I achieved a Distinction for it. I thought that it looked pretty cool and almost realistic the way I had placed my head on a muscular body and then placed it in the image so that it seemed like I was actually doing those particular activities.
For my first html I went with a collage of all the different images I would be using throughout my visual story. This turned out to be quite effective and with the combination of a heading titled 'A day in the life of Reuben' it turned out to look pretty cool.
For my second html I took a photo of a weetbix box and then made copies of it and pasted all around my cut out of muscular Reuben. I also cut out a picture of a bowl of cereal and a table and pasted them into my image. By arranging the images a certain way I made it look like muscular Reuben was eating a great big bowl of cereal while being sourrounded by Weetbix boxes.
For my third html I went with the title 'At the Gym'. I took a photo of the local gym that I go to and then using photoshop pasted my fake muscle body onto the photo. I also pasted a cut out barbell image next to my feet making the overall image more realistic.
For the fourth html fictional muscular Reuben was 'Surfing at Narrow Neck'. I used a photo I took of a surfer at Narrow Neck and cut him out of the picture without removing the surf board. I then pasted muscular Reuben onto the surfboard to make it seem like he was surfing.
For my fifth html I put muscular Reuben on a dirtbike. I used a picture I had taken of my brother riding his dirt bike on the MX track at Rover Park and pasted in muscular Reuben. I then cut out a copy of my brother dirt bike and pasted it into the photo. After arranging the images correctly and with a little photoshop work I made it look as though muscular Reuben was riding a dirtbike.
For my sixth html I put muscular Reuben in a photo where he was drinking with his mates. I did this by taking a photo of a local bar and then cutting out an image of my mates and pasting them into the photo of the bar. I also cut out an image of a Corona beer and edited the images so that it looked like muscular Reuben was drinking a giant beer in a bar with his mates.
For my seventh and final html page I took a photo of my bed and pasted muscluar Reuben into the picture so it looked like he was sleeping on the bed. I then found a picture of a hot babe sleeping and cut her out and pasted her into the photo to make it look like she was sleeping on the bed beside muscular Reuben. I called this html 'sleeping with my girlfriend'.
Overall I was happy with the way my visual story turned out and the mark i got reflected the results as I achieved a Distinction for it. I thought that it looked pretty cool and almost realistic the way I had placed my head on a muscular body and then placed it in the image so that it seemed like I was actually doing those particular activities.
Digital Writing - Blog 3
For this blog we had to use an online widget to create a comic strip and then load the comic strip onto our blogs. This was my lame ass attempt at making a comic strip haha ...
The Robber by Reubz
If you would like to make a comic strip of your own go to the link below:
The Robber by Reubz
If you would like to make a comic strip of your own go to the link below:
Digital Writing - Blog 2
For my second Blog tutor Jason has requested that I write about my experiences using Google maps as a story telling mechanism.
Well I never would of thought of using Google Maps to tell a story before this class. Being the budding journalist that I am (lol jokes), I decided to try and make it a more practical exercise rather than just making up a random story that lacked any real purpose and placing this story within random locations on Google Maps.
So I decided to make a map of the best places to ride a dirt bike in south-east Queensland. This turned out to be quite interesting and challenging and my eureka moment almost succeeded in chasing away the dullness that had washed over me when I first heard what we had to do.
The most challenging part was trying to find the motocross tracks and riding parks on Google Maps. I visited their websites first to gather an address which I then typed into Google maps in an attempt to determine their location. The funny thing about Google Maps is that it is not always that accurate and at times I found myself searching for up to half an hour for the track or park even though I had the address.
Once I found the track or park I placed a marker on the map and wrote a short spiel on what I thought of the place. If I had not been there I studied the track/parks website in order to get an idea of what it was like. I also added my own picture at the top of each place by uploading the pictures to Jason's' server and linking them to Google Maps. In some cases I also added video footage from you-tube that I had made of my mates and myself riding at the track/park. I also added a link to the park/tracks website with their contact details and address
I added the following tracks/parks to my Google Map story: Manar Park, Rover Park, Reedy Creek MX track, Stanmore MX track, Emu Creek Extreme Retreat, Black Duck Valley MX park, Motocross Mountain, Parklands MX track, Coolum MX track, and the proposed Wyralong Trailbike park.
In the end it turned out to be a fun and enjoyable exercise. I also later realised that my Google Map Story could also be added to the website I was constructing called Bikes n Boards, as Google Maps provides you with an embed code that can be copied and pasted into your website quite easily.
Overall Google Maps is an interactive and easy to use tool for most people with moderate computer knowledge. The only criticism I have on the site is that things I typed or uploaded into my map often disappeared without a trace forcing me to upload them again, often numerous times.
You can find my Google Maps story at the following Link:
http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&vps=1&jsv=338b&msa=2
Well I never would of thought of using Google Maps to tell a story before this class. Being the budding journalist that I am (lol jokes), I decided to try and make it a more practical exercise rather than just making up a random story that lacked any real purpose and placing this story within random locations on Google Maps.
So I decided to make a map of the best places to ride a dirt bike in south-east Queensland. This turned out to be quite interesting and challenging and my eureka moment almost succeeded in chasing away the dullness that had washed over me when I first heard what we had to do.
The most challenging part was trying to find the motocross tracks and riding parks on Google Maps. I visited their websites first to gather an address which I then typed into Google maps in an attempt to determine their location. The funny thing about Google Maps is that it is not always that accurate and at times I found myself searching for up to half an hour for the track or park even though I had the address.
Once I found the track or park I placed a marker on the map and wrote a short spiel on what I thought of the place. If I had not been there I studied the track/parks website in order to get an idea of what it was like. I also added my own picture at the top of each place by uploading the pictures to Jason's' server and linking them to Google Maps. In some cases I also added video footage from you-tube that I had made of my mates and myself riding at the track/park. I also added a link to the park/tracks website with their contact details and address
I added the following tracks/parks to my Google Map story: Manar Park, Rover Park, Reedy Creek MX track, Stanmore MX track, Emu Creek Extreme Retreat, Black Duck Valley MX park, Motocross Mountain, Parklands MX track, Coolum MX track, and the proposed Wyralong Trailbike park.
In the end it turned out to be a fun and enjoyable exercise. I also later realised that my Google Map Story could also be added to the website I was constructing called Bikes n Boards, as Google Maps provides you with an embed code that can be copied and pasted into your website quite easily.
Overall Google Maps is an interactive and easy to use tool for most people with moderate computer knowledge. The only criticism I have on the site is that things I typed or uploaded into my map often disappeared without a trace forcing me to upload them again, often numerous times.
You can find my Google Maps story at the following Link:
http://maps.google.com.au/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&vps=1&jsv=338b&msa=2
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Digital Writing - Blog 1
For the first blog our tutor has asked us to write something intelligent about three different works found at the following website, http://directory.eliterature.org/works
DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 1 - 10:01
The first piece of digital literature I have chosen to analyze is called 10:01. When I first opened the website it started off by showing me a few random quotes made by unknown people, or at least people unknown to me. Then it changed to a picture of a group of people sitting in a cinema. I could not see any of their faces however if I clicked on a person a text box would appear with a story inside it about that person.
Basically from what I can gather this websites main purpose is to tell us a fictional story about each fictional individual sitting inside the fictional cinema watching the fictional movie. I cannot see what the point of this website really is besides being extremely boring and having annoying sound effects. Whoever made this website obviously had too much time on their hands and no life.
Heres the link http://www.lanceolsen.com/1001.html check it out if you want but I personally would not bother.
DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 2 - Oh
The second so called digital literature piece I analysed is called Oh. It first appears as a series of dots on a white screen which if you hover the cursor over make rather amusing Oh! sounds. The dots have a ripple effect that reveals part of a poem or what the author calls a concrete cyber poem - what ever that is supposed to be. After a short period of listening to a bunch of pointless Ohs! the ripple effect clears to reveal the poem in the background. The poem goes something like this, "Oh rain Oh writes in the puddles Oh Oh Oh".
Once again this website also seems to be completely pointless, however it is slightly more amusing than the first one I analysed. The poem does not make the slightest bit of sense either. I guess whoever made this website would probably justify its pointlessness by arguing that they were being creative but the whole website is just very random if you ask me.
Checkout the link if you like, http://nonfinito.de/oh/#top but there are better things you could waste time doing.
DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 3 - Jabber
The Jabberwocky engine by Neil Hennessey is designed to produce nonsense words that sound like English words. It does this by bouncing around a bunch of letters inside a box. When the letters run into each other they calculate the probability of them appearing contiguously in the English lexicon. If they do appear contiguously they then join together to form nonsense words. The Blue words are fragments, the green words are compound words created from two blue ones, and the red words are garbage words.
The point of this website honestly eludes me. All I can put it down to is people with too much time, no life, and lots of creative madness sit down and design these websites, which begs the question what am I doing analyzing them? Do I have no life as well? .... I am a university student of course I have no bloody life, haha.
Check out the link to the Jabber website:
http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/winter2004/jabber/index.htm# it really is just a bunch of Jabberwocky.
DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 1 - 10:01
The first piece of digital literature I have chosen to analyze is called 10:01. When I first opened the website it started off by showing me a few random quotes made by unknown people, or at least people unknown to me. Then it changed to a picture of a group of people sitting in a cinema. I could not see any of their faces however if I clicked on a person a text box would appear with a story inside it about that person.
Basically from what I can gather this websites main purpose is to tell us a fictional story about each fictional individual sitting inside the fictional cinema watching the fictional movie. I cannot see what the point of this website really is besides being extremely boring and having annoying sound effects. Whoever made this website obviously had too much time on their hands and no life.
Heres the link http://www.lanceolsen.com/1001.html check it out if you want but I personally would not bother.
DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 2 - Oh
The second so called digital literature piece I analysed is called Oh
Once again this website also seems to be completely pointless, however it is slightly more amusing than the first one I analysed. The poem does not make the slightest bit of sense either. I guess whoever made this website would probably justify its pointlessness by arguing that they were being creative but the whole website is just very random if you ask me.
Checkout the link if you like, http://nonfinito.de/oh/#top but there are better things you could waste time doing.
DIGITAL LITERATURE ANALYSIS 3 - Jabber
The Jabberwocky engine by Neil Hennessey is designed to produce nonsense words that sound like English words. It does this by bouncing around a bunch of letters inside a box. When the letters run into each other they calculate the probability of them appearing contiguously in the English lexicon. If they do appear contiguously they then join together to form nonsense words. The Blue words are fragments, the green words are compound words created from two blue ones, and the red words are garbage words.
The point of this website honestly eludes me. All I can put it down to is people with too much time, no life, and lots of creative madness sit down and design these websites, which begs the question what am I doing analyzing them? Do I have no life as well? .... I am a university student of course I have no bloody life, haha.
Check out the link to the Jabber website:
http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/winter2004/jabber/index.htm# it really is just a bunch of Jabberwocky.
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