Nobody must know my secret...

Given that one of my finals was so Star Wars centered, this was what ended up in my head when I finally put some thought into what I'd present. I giggled a little at the idea of this actually being the case for this individual.

Class Afterthoughts 4/23

The trash projects certainly a interesting take on things. For me it definitely redefined what I consider trash, as when I hear the word trash, I usually picture the stuff that was brought in with a slimy coating of soda dribbles or animal fat. I'm reminded of when I threw a Capri Sun in the wrong dumpster at school once, the one for cardboard stuff, and how not-unpleasant it was, I mean, it was just a heap of cardboard, yet still trash by technicality I suppose. Turns out when I chucked the Capri Sun in, it didn't splatter everywhere, the corner of the pouch ended up getting hooked on a rouge staple, it was pretty neat.

Fear and it's various faces

Of all the presentations, Sarah's (At least I think it that was her name. A whole semester and you hardly know a person's name.) was probably the most unsettling to me. Spontaneously waking up deaf, or loss of any other sense, rather than having an accident or some time-bomb of a genetic train wreck to set it off is a rather terrifying idea.

Much like pretty much everyone else, sight and sound at the very least I take for granted. I play video games, a lot, and audio is just as important as the video and having one of those halves just yanked away with little to no reasoning seems unfair and would most likely throw me into untold amounts of insanity and depression.

I chose a more tame fear, something I had control over rather than something like this for pretty much that reason. The inevitability of such a situation and that it can't change course once it's set fills me with a genuine lead-stomach dread. The same kind of dread that I'd have for wondering how my family will keep together after my mother's gone. I don't like to entertain the thoughts, even though I know it could happen as soon as anything else.

Fear and it's various science-y bits.

DA OBSERVATIONS
When I was relaying the story to the class, I noted some looks of passive interest, possibly recognition, and maybe a bit of unease when I showed the still of the video in question. As was rather expected at that point, laughs were certainly had by the class when I brought up the unexpected fear reaction from my door being thrown open, which was obviously the stronger reaction from everyone else. Admittedly by the time that day rolled around, even I thought it was pretty hilarious.

COMPARISON TO HYPOTHESIS
Expected class reactions were expected. On my end, having actually read the story behind the image, the significance was... not diminished, but perhaps re-ordered. Having a reason for the image, as a show-and-tell piece to a more eerie story rather than a random video with gibberish audio and a menacing thumbnail. As I watched the video, I thought about the characters in the story rather than the image itself and by doing that the image was less intimidating.

WHAT I COULD DO DIFFERENT
At this point, my only regret was that I didn't record the whole thing. Since I'd gotten over it by the time, I could've easily shared it in class. Perhaps next time, I'll set up a similar scenario with a quickie horror game SCP-87, record all the happenings and read out loud associated materials.

Fear and it's various facets

EXAMINATION STAGE

Fear is certainly a large grey area in the emotional spectrum. From what I've experienced, it's that lump of self-doubt in your stomach when being unable to talk to or convey emotions to that special someone, it's that jolt of adrenaline and sinking feeling you get when know what it means when a storm gets quite and you have to pop your ears twice, it's that feeling of paranoia and dismay at the inability to have nice things you watch Final Destination. It's also that weird thing where you read really intense creepypastas that you enjoy when you read them, but start fearing the dark and monsters again when you put it down and try to sleep, swearing never to do that under the cover of darkness again.

 I was rather fascinated when I discovered creepypastas, how they're so obviously fake, but so masterfully penned that you get invested in the story and get instilled with a general sense of unease, which I find interesting considering I was terrified of such things less than a decade ago.

One lovely side-note of my past and childhood was that I was plagued by a creature in my nightmares, I have yet to find out what he might be or what he represented, but it was a formless, shadowy, human-sized figure. It has no discernible features except for two blazing red eyes, while I can't describe them as more than two points of red light, not unlike that thing outside the window in the original Amityville Horror, but when you look at it you're overcome with dread and paralyzed with fear.

Interestingly enough, a lot of 'lost episode' or 'hidden game feature' creepypasta's feature fanart including a similar setup, darkened monochrome scenes with pitted eyes that glow as if with blood-tainted hellfire. For a while, this was very unnerving for me, going to read/listen to the Lavender Town Missing Frequencies story when off in the 'recommended for you' section I see this staring back at me:

Which for several months made me paranoid about what was just behind my shoulder for about 4 hours after I saw it again.

After a while, I'd gotten back into creepypastas and found the wiki dedicated to gathering them in one place and finally sat down to fully read more famous ones like "Ben Drowned (Majora's Mask)" and "Lost Silver (Pokemon)." Eventually I'd made my way into the "Lost/Missing Episodes" section and saw this bugger again. I'd decided to man up and read the story behind the image, which honestly didn't really have anything to do with the image at all, and unsettling in other ways, but it seemed to take the edge off the image itself.

EXPERIMENT STAGE

I plan to play around with the various pastas that deal with this black-image-red-eyes scheme seeing what about it makes it so unnerving to me.

HYPOTHESIS STAGE

Depending on how and who is in the class, I imagine something between silent understanding, to attempted dream interpretation, to flat out laughter if the experiment goes awry.

EXPERIMENT STAGE
I'm going to present that backstory as well as introduce a few creepypasta images/idea to educate the class to make sure everyone's on the same page. What I'll then be telling about is how the experiment went.

The experiment itself will be getting into the mood by reading a few creepypastas, and then attempting to watch Squidward's Suicide, and then try to carry on with my nightly activity without running frantically to a door or light switch.

RESULTS:
Well, lets set the scene: It's 2am, I've been up two hours past my bedtime, the reading's relaxed me to almost sleep, yet my mind's in a half-paranoid state from the actual readings. My room's window is open and the porch door is open in the living room because I live in a 3rd story apartment and it's been FREAKING WARM the past week. As I get to a crescendo in the video a slight breeze kicks up outside , nothing too bad, it'd been doing that all night, but the pressure difference in the rooms threw my previously-shut door open rather loudly.

I screamed like a little girl and slept entirely under the covers that evening, any regrets for doing that I had wore off over the next few days.

Things that have maintained perpendicular orientation.

This class was certainly different from what I expected, even with the stories, tales, and recounts of previous classes. First day of class was certainly memorable, when my idea for an egg project that I'd held over from last semester had been shot down with the introduction of the bead.

Singing bowls, man, those things are something. Well enough that I find that a bowl can make a resonant tone like that, then find it could be used on any old bell? Mind = blown. A close second to this discovery being all the fun stuff I learned about large cats and their associated hybrids (and how much free time science apparently has)

Of the class so far, I can say I like how open-ended the assignments can be. (if not flat-out BS'ed) I like to be able to flex creative muscles towards other goals/assignments while not having to worry so much about how the grade will turn out. It's how I feel the educational system SHOULD be, gauged on an individual basis, not a group standard.

I'm hoping that the class finally starts to warm up to each other and be a little more social. I realize that such a large class makes this difficult, but a little friendly topic discussion beats being talked at any day.

Class afterthoughts: 3/5

Half-sleep is interesting. Your mind's partially engaged, occasionally taking in snippets of the world around you, the rest of the time it's making brief movie clips from those snippets. Needless to say this got weird with the art critic that thinks calling an art piece phallic is a compliment.

The potter sounded like my kind of guy, doing art because he wants to, rather than he has to, and screw and ulterior motives, he's just relaxing. I like to art for the sake of art sometimes, so I can understand. However I find it irritating when, like the art critics, despite the pieces' stated purpose, find deeper meaning that's simply not there. I call this "Scarlet Letter Syndrome" since I felt especially in that novel the english teachers were reaching for meanings that simply weren't there.

In summary it just enforced my thoughts as thus: 

Keep on art'n potter dude.

Something Unexpected

Fluttershy reminded me that I needed to set aside some "me time" to unwind every now and again. I had other pony merch laying around, and my room is absolutely riddled with LEGO figures. I had the idea to do something I hadn't done since I had my Transformers all those years ago: partner them all up and have an all-out battle royale.

Pictures in the album here show who all was at the start of the match. It took a while to get back in the swing of things, but eventually I was voicing and narrating the characters like I used to and was having a blast! However, after about a dozen contestants removed, I realized it was 4am and that I needed to get some sleep so the battle is still on.

When it concludes, the winner will be posted here, but until then enjoy the mental image of pastel ponies battling each other with (relatively) giant robots.

Class afterthoughts: 2/27

As expected, different things make different people happy. Some certainly had a deeper meaning than others, and some may be deeper than they let on to. I mean let's be honest, how relaxing COULD brushing a pony's mane be? As stated, to me it was one of the serene moments I've ever experienced, it was just me, an empty apartment, and my pony, and everything felt right with the world for those few hours. I can only hope that that was the experience that the rest of the class had, for it's an experience worth having.

What really amazed me was the singing bowl that was brought in. I suppose the idea shouldn't have surprised me like it did, seeing as it's the same principal as crystal glasses, but to see it doable with a brass bell was rather mind-boggling.

Class afterthoughts: 2/20

Times like these where I with I had a UV lamp handy at all times. It never really occurred to me that mundane minerals lit up funky colors under various UV frequencies, but I suppose the paints have to come from somewhere relatively non-toxic.

I was surprised at how few people deviated from the tiger theme. I'd read the assignment instructions, and saw that it was insinuated that you could draw from that for projects, so I did. I felt a pang of "I did it wrong" for a bit until someone else owned up to non-tiger themes. Luckily I'm not too worried about being 'different' in this class, since if all else fails, bullshit until it does fit the theme.

Admittedly I'm having a bit of an anxiety flair from the upcoming assignment. As it asks and emphasizes that the object in question be important I worry of it's fate when we bring it to class next week.

What if: The older gentleman's "Why?"

What if…?

            I did a recording with tigers being the seed of the conversation?

            I did something based on a sentence from a randomly picked time?

            I randomly picked a sentence from a book and related it to tigers?

            I did a madlibs where all the adjectives had to pertain to tigers?

            Tigers didn’t have stripes, would they still be distinct?

            That tiger at Disneyworld really likes to scare small tourists?

            Ligers had shown up in the wild on their own?

            Would a Liger or Tigon ruin an ecosystem or mesh with lion/tiger groups?

            Science had better things to do than hybridize big cats?

            If tigers had an elemental characteristic, would it be lightning or fire?

            Humans domesticated cats before they domesticated dogs?

            How adapted to urban jungle would big cats be after people?

            Stripes were actually a barcode for genetic history?

            The internet actually was tubes full of cats carrying pictures of naked women?

            How would viruses be coded for such an internet?

            Would spam be tolerable, if only for the fact cats delivered it?

            Would the connections be unreliable due to how fickle cats are?

            Would the dial up noise be of cats purring or hissing, or some combination?

            Nyan cat was something other than a poptart, like a bagel or something?

            Would the apocalypse be less frightening if it was about the clash between longcat and tacgnol?

           

            Would anon be a force to fear if they were more organized?

            Is it possible for such a concept to be organized?

                Could cats rule the world if they weren’t so lazy?

              Why does cat food look so much better than the food we get?

              Is the Cheshire cat wrong, and that dogs are the ‘mad’ ones for growling when angry?

              Could Soundwave be a good cat person, or is he too logical to do much with them?

              Has Ravage ever done something very cat-like that’s silly?

              If Beast Era Transformers were more successful, would there be more cats or dogs?

              What if Transformers had a one shot cheesy western?

              Would the player piano be transformer or played by one?

              Would they all have cowboy hats or only the Autobots?

              Would all of the Decepticons have cheesy villain moustaches?

              Did Hasbro plan for their products’ shows to be good again to draw in the parents as well as the kids?

              Is Transformers making more money from younger or older people?

              Is My Little Pony noticeably benefitting from it’s surprise demographic?

              Was Hasbro secretly in charge of my childhood until I turned to Lego?

              Would other if any large corporations run an on-again-off-again long term strategy like that?

              What would a feasible LEGO car run on/with that wouldn’t melt it?

              Would you download/order models for said car, or just build one yourself from a large tub of parts?

              I wonder what my toys would do if they came to life when I wasn’t around.

              Would they act like the character they are or have they developed their own personality?           

              I wonder how they clean up the mess they’d make from a full-scale battle quickly?

              Perhaps they’re the reason I misplace things when I’m in a hurry in the morning?

              I wonder how these dark, gritty Bionicle characters reacted to the ponies when I got them.

              I wonder what the personalities of toys without a back story would be like.

              Do the toys carry some of the powers their character has?

              Do they play with other inanimate toys or play board games when they’re active?

              If I let them play Minecraft overnight for a week, what would they have built?

              Would the LEGO toys make other models or enhancements to themselves?

              I wonder if the toys could help clean up a little when they were done playing for the night.

Class afterthoughts: 2/13

Admittedly I thought my mind's way of working was something unique. While I fully believe it still is, it's interesting to know that there are people with similar internal workings that I have. My mind works from a project-to-project basis when it's fully awake and well fed, otherwise it's all sorta in a haze.

When sitting in class and listening my mind had wandered over to the list of homework I have to do and how this week is due date free compared to the all-night weekend that I had just pulled for audio homework. Then with all immediate obligations out of the way it wandered over to pet projects that I have on the back-burner, specifically a few drawing requests that I hadn't gotten around to.

I'll openly admit that I worked on a request during class, much like how we discussed driving being an automated or background function of the mind, I usually draw when engaged in some listening and speaking activity because straight-up drawing gets tedious after awhile. Left brain was still actively engaged and still scrambling to think of 50 what-ifs, tiger idea well on it's way.

For those curious, this was what resulted from said request, the pony Berry Punch rockin' the mic:

Bringing Books into the 21st Century

I myself still like to curl up with a good old fashioned book, hard-backed and steeped in that old book smell. Mmmmm, old book smell. Many a night when I was younger I burnt through several light-based toys and even using my alarm clock to read under the sheets when my mom had taken my flashlight.

Looking at that video, I was rather intrigued but at the same time overwhelmed. Given that I was the last person in high school to get a cell phone (A Motorola Razr that I still have. It's old enough that 'texting' was the hip and happening thing when I bought it) and a facebook page, I'd probably be the last to invest any sort of money into an electronic book, much less the money up front to purchase an iPhone for those with poor dexterity iPad.

Given what I've seen of reading and tablet tech so far, each device has one feature or another that I'd like, but not all together as one thing. I like the interactivity potential of the iPad. However my qualm, other than pricing, is that most of these devices are hard on the eye after awhile. I like how the Kindle works its voodoo magic in being readable in sunlight as well as being easy on the eyes. What I would add to this wondrous device in the making would be a soft LED light up option. Not a backlight, but put into the side of the screen like those $5 electronic card games you see in the back of the toy isle at Target or something.

As far as visuals, I much like the presentation of PDF's in Adobe Reader, how the pages flow like a contiguous whole (or if you want, flip like pages for this theoretical device) with a pull-out menu on the side for the table of contents or any bookmarks you have made. As a user-friendly feature, I'd add something that will let you highlight a word and have it's definition or translation pop up when you ask for it. All in all, this device is just a battery powered book with a search button, but I'm much a fan of keeping it simple.

Now if only I could make this device have the scent of a large library...

To do list: Book and stuff

I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t like this assignment because if felt like a laundry list of things to do much like that ‘silly homework’ that was given out on the first day of class back in elementary school.

Go to a library, bookstore, or your own book collection and look through the books. Please do not read any. Just pay attention to what catches your eye.

·       What is it that stands out to you?

·       Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Manga

·       Why?

·       It has a very expressive and colorful face on the spine, mixed with being closer to my actual self when observing my bookcase

Choose a red book and open it to page 6. Close your eyes and put your finger on the page somewhere.

·       What did you find?

·       I landed on the word ‘beneath’ in the midst of the introduction.

·       If your finger landed on a paragraph, how many times does the letter P show up in that paragraph?

·       One, surprisingly.

·       If it landed on a picture, how many straight lines are in the picture?

·       N/A

·       If it landed on white space, what is the white space surrounding?

·       N/A

·       Can you imagine the white space as a sea and the other parts (words, pictures, etc.) as islands floating in white water or space?

·       With great effort, yes.

Using your other senses, explain what the paper feels like.

·       Is it slick or rough?

·       I always thought this book’s paper and the rest of the series was coarse compared to most other’s

·       What does the cover feel like?

·       Smooth plastic

·       Can you feel the ink of the words if you close your eyes?

·       Part of me thinks I can, the other part thinks it’s the texture of the paper

·       Do different colors feel different with your eyes closed?

·       Can’t say they do.

·       What else can you discover about the paper?

·       It’s rather wrinkled where there’s text

·       What about the cover?

·       Many creases have formed in it’s old age and many readings. Mostly from where I hold it when I read.

Without destroying the book, unless you own it and want to, see if you can figure out how the book was constructed.

·       Is it stitched?

·       Nope

·       Is it glued?

·       Yes

·       Is there any cloth on this book or is it all paper?

·       It has several ‘plugs’ of fabric in the spine going horizontally, like rings in a binder.

·       Is it a hardback or paperback?

·       Paperback

·       Does it have signatures? (Hint: you may need to look up what signatures are in the context of making books…)

·       Nope

·       If it has signatures, how many pages are in each and how many signatures are there in the whole book?

·       N/A

·       If it does not, look at the glue on the ends of the spine and discribe what you see.

·       Two very thin lines between the pages and the outer cover, I’d guess they’re what holds the binding fibers together rather than holding the book itself.

Flip through the pages and look at the end papers.

·       Is there any writing in the book, other than the printing?

·       Yes

·       If so, what does it say?

·       Other books in the series, where it was printed, and that apparently without a cover when purchased the book is considered stolen.

·       Why is it there?

·       Legal, where the work has been, advertise for the rest of the series

·       Who wrote it?

·       Can’t say for sure.

·       If you do not know, then imagine who might have written it.

·       Most likely the author did not put it there, but the team of people and editors that see it before it ships

·       If there is no writing in the book then how does it make you feel to know you are the first person (possibly) to think about it?

·       N/A

Examine the book more.

·       Are there any stains on the book?

·       No

·       Are there any fingerprints?

·       Nyet

·       What do they look like?

·       N/A

·       How might they have happened?

·       If I ended up missing them, I’d wager they’d be there from whatever snack food I was eating while I read it.

Look at the pages of the book.

·       What is the color of the pages? I bet they are not really white.

·       Off-white coupled with the beginning of yellowing.

·       How would you describe the color? Is it warm or cold? Bright or dull, etc.

·       Very dull, like being in an place where everything’s tinted by a weird colored light bulb.

·       What other visual things can you explore with the book?

·       There’s a greyscale add at the back of the book. Oddly enough when viewed with my indiGLOW  alarm clock, my brain seems to fill in the color for it.

Think about the history of this book.

·       Can you see any other evidence that someone else has handled this book?

·       Many creases in the middle of the front

·       What are the edges of the pages like? Describe them.

·       The edges are still ‘sharp’ but curve inwards towards the top

·       Can you imagine what someone else might have been thinking as they read this book?

·       Had they not read the series, I’d imagine confusion, if they had, probably that the main character is  quite the badass

·       Do you think anyone else has used this book like you are right now instead of reading it?

·       Doubt it.

Flip through the pages quickly.

·       Can you hear the sound? If so, describe it.

·       I’m reminded of the softer flap of a flipbook or a well worn Animorphs book.

·       If not, what is your experience like?

·       N/A

·       Can you feel the breeze?

·       Yes

·       Can you move something with the wind generated from the book?

·       With some effort I could blow receipts around.

·       Could you use this book to win a game you created using the book's wind power?

·       If the goal was to have minimal impact on the game field, like NOT moving a house of cards,  perhaps.

Drop the book on the floor.

·       What did you experience?

·       The interesting experience of not knowing where and how the book was going to land.

·       Did you sense the vibrations the book made?

·       Yup

·       Did you feel it in your feet?

·       Actually, I hit my foot. >.<

·       Take your shoes off. Now drop the book. Was there any difference?

·       I felt the vibration in the floor, rather than my foot

Hold the book between your hands with one hand on each cover and the book closed. Close your eyes.

·       Is the book cold? Hold it like that for at least one minute.

·       The book is neutral

·       Now feel the cover. Can you feel the temperature change from where your hands were to where they were not?

·       Yes, never really noticed it before.

·       Have you ever been aware of this before when you were holding a book to read it?

·       Nope

·       If your heat transfers in this situation and you noticed it because I asked you to, why do you think you have never noticed it before?

·       N/A

·       If you have noticed the temperature of a book you were holding before, describe why you noticed it.

·       N/A

Smell the book.

·       What does the smell make you think of?

·       Many other books from the series it’s in

·       If you can't think of anything, describe the smells you can sense. (Interesting fact: Did you know that I have friends [many librarians, actually] who choose their books partly based on how they smell? Honestly.)

·       N/A

I do not recommend tasting the book for health and safety issues… :-)

Now, finally, read the first page. If it is just pictures, read the story of the pictures. 

·       What is the title of this book?

·       BIONICLE Adventures #10: Time Trap

·       Based on the first page, explain why you think the book was titled that.

·       Can’t really say, but as the chapter is titled ‘Introduction’ I’d wager I’d be explained rather soon.

Reflect back on this entire exericise.

·       What is your experience like with the book now that you have experienced it differently?

·       It will likely be added to the many shreds of memories I associate with particular parts of a book, like where I was when I read certain chapters and so forth.

·       Do you still find books to be boring, assuming you did in the first place?

·       I never found the books I owned to be ‘boring’ exactly

·       What, if anything has changed for you in regards to books?

·       I feel like I should have taken this book out to dinner first. :\

Now think about this class.

·       How did I "fishbowl" this assignment?

·       By giving a laundry list of things to do with a somewhat specific book.

·       What do you think the point is of this exercise?

·       Seeing how ‘out-of-the-box” we could get with many constraints as opposed to few.

·       What can you take from this exercise that might help you with future projects?

·       Eloquent and unique wording can be as much a freedom as being able to do anything