BLOG POST TRES (finished!) Double Team Gifs for my ds106 visual project

I really enjoyed creating these gifs. My friend and me are big fans of the bad/awesome insanity of Double Team, thus we decided to make these gifs to honor its greatness. Exploring film using very specific frames is actually a very unique exercise. You are not just picking out your favorite scenes, but which ones resonate and you can directly pick out from memory. Picking a movie I enjoy for ironic reasons might not be the best example, but it also demonstrates the ways one can manipulate simple frames to create a desired effect.

I used VLC media player to have the film play on the PC from a DVD. The media player allows me to make all kinds of adjustment to the frame rate, speed, angle, and size of what I am playing. Using a frame by frame screenshot add-on from the player, about 4 to 8 shots were taken per gif. The shots were then taken to adobe premiere to be turned into gifs by just having them run in quick succession. A few of them were harder to make than others, but thankfully the program never crashed and allowed me to convert them with ease.

This I believe (ESSAY)

I believe in the Horror Club

      Kennesaw State University is an institution that wishes its students to express themselves. When my friend and I first arrived here, we were impressed by the variety of groups of people.  We checked out the clubs the University had available, but none of them suited our quite particular tastes.  Out of this frustration with the options for extracurricular activities, The KSU Horror Club was born.  For almost the entirety of the 2011 fall semester, my friend and I fought to get our club off the ground, with many false starts and obstacles in our way, it seemed like we were never going to be able to achieve our goal. All our efforts did pay off in the end; we managed to secure room and funding for our screenings and activities in the spring and we have going strong ever since. This silly little tale was written by yours truly not to be just a stupid piece of propaganda for my college club, but to inspire others to create their own groups as well.

      As an individual in my fourth year of higher education, the University landscape is not unfamiliar to me, but to many freshmen it is an eye-opening experience. I see many young students walking around with a bewildered look on their faces, as if their vision of a College was not realized in the one they attend. In many ways, this was the same for me, had it not been for my co-founding member to truly push for our crazy idea, I would have never truly enjoyed my college experience.  Universities offer funds to any student who gets their club approved; they guide and assist them in all ways possible. If a student cannot find a group for his/her particular interests, they are more than welcome to make their own. There will always be people like you to cooperate and make your vision come true.

BLOG POST 3241 NUMERO UNO: Is google making us stupid?

It is funny that after reading this article more than twice now, I can honestly say that I still have the ability to concentrate on a long piece of text from start to finish without any stops or distractions.
    The gimmick behind this reading and the one in the book that was assigned was that they were supposed to tamper with the way we perceived our own reading ability. I managed to completely ignore the outside world on both of the readings. The online article proved to be much more engrossing than the Netsmart chapter, especially when Nietzsche's experience with the typewriter was brought up. The way it explores how the individual will adapt to the way the technology is either processed or communicated really made me think about the way I do my work.
    In order to really test myself, I read the online article three times. The first time I managed to avoid all distractions from both the computer and the outside world. The second time I decided to make it more interesting by letting music play in the background, but surprisingly it failed to make me lose focus. The last time I decided to read the article on my mobile device, which resulted in me losing the trail of what I was reading a couple of times. I believe this occurred because I was in a public place, the screen was smaller, and the writing was already familiar.
     It is funny to me to read an article that is designed to test whether I fit with the average American's attention span. Distractions are something that I can easily avoid, but only with more reflection and experimentation I think I will be able to say that with absolute confidence.