Who has two thumbs and made it through digital storytelling boot camp? THIS GIRL!!!! Oh yeah!!!.. Ok, that’s enough.

This week, I learned a lot about Word Press and blogging. I would be lying if I said that it was all easy. I set up my very own email through word press – which is very cool. If you would like to email me, you can  – – [email protected] {when you email me there it forwards to my gmail account; and yes, it works!}. My blog is listed with all of the other class blogs. That’s me right there, lucky number 13!

Also, this week, I got to customize my blog. Boy oh boy did I have fun with this. I think I spent more time on deciding between the different blog layouts and colors than I did any other homework assignment this week {shhhh! don’t tell anyone!} Customizing my blog was very easy. All you had to do was install and activate the theme of your choice. I did this about 52 times. So believe me, it doesn’t take long and was very simple. I love everything about the theme I chose. I love the colors, font, header, everything!

I also got to do this exact same thing for my welcome site. I created that by installing another Word Press. On that blog, I uploaded my own background and header images. I did this because I didn’t want to use the same theme as I did for this blog and no other themes really appealed to me. From my welcome site, you can get to this blog by clicking the ‘DS 106 Blog’ Menu. It took me a while to figure out how to link the 2 sites, I found a tutorial video on YouTube. You can watch it {here.} I hope to build more on this site later on this semester. Right now this site just has a link to my DS blog and the about me page, which is also on my DS blog. I would like to actually start blogging on that site and still have a link to my digital storytelling site. I found out that I like to post blogs and I think that would be relaxing and enjoyable.

I installed 3 plugins; Akismet, Jetpack, and Awesome Flickr Gallery. I browsed through the other plugins and got overwhelmed because there were so many!! Installing these 3 plugins was very easy, the only one that took a little time was Akismet just because you need a key code. BUT, that is worth it because that plugin catches spam! Installing widgets is also another task we had to complete this week. You can do this right on your dashboard through Appearance -> Widgets. It’s very simple to drag what widget you want over and click save!!

This week’s Daily Creates (DC) were very fun!!!!! I had so much fun creating them :) I am looking forward to all of the other DC this semester. I blogged about the DC that I chose to do for this week. You can read about them and see them {here!} The DCs that I chose didn’t take long at all, although maybe that was because I knew exactly what to do the moment I read the prompts.

OK- here it goes. The moment you have all been waiting for………………………………………my animated GIF:

The assignment was Say it like the peanut butter {to create an animated GIF from your favorite, or least favorite movie}. Well I have two favorite movies: The Hangover {which I already used for one of my DCs} and The Lion King. So, I chose to do The Lion King because I wanted to spice my assignments up and not show favoritism. This GIF is when Simba and Nala are singing “I Can’t Wait to be King”. I chose this specific clip because it looks like those lion cubs are playing peek-a-boo, and I just couldn’t resist. I know you know this song, it’s ok – you can sing it to yourself….

Creating this GIF was the hardest thing I have had to do in this class so far. There was one point when I thought “I’m not going to make it through boot camp”. Well, I did {so take THAT ds boot camp!!!!!}. I started by downloading the Fastest Youtube downloader, because that’s where I found the video. Then I downloaded the MPEG Streamclip. Both downloads were fairly easy and free {and who doesn’t like free stuff?!}. I downloaded my clip and thought everything was going as smooth as can be when suddenly, I ran into a problem. I DIDN’T HAVE QUICKTIME. So I thouht that would be another easy download…wrong. It was very annoying stressful. I had to delete my iTunes even and start fresh. That’s when it worked. I was so happy when I got it to work, that I watched it over and over and was happy. Now, since I have been writing this post and the clip is embeded into my post, I have seen it out of the corner of my eye play roughly a thousand times. Still happy because it took a lot of time to create and I am on proud bug.

Now that I am a graduate of DS boot camp {wahooo}, I can go on to bigger and better things {specifically, week 3 and on}. Overall week 2, and boot camp as a whole, was challenging but I never gave up! During this week, I figured out how to do things on my own. When I needed help, I watched many tutorials and read many how-to directions. Although boot camp was challenging, it was also rewarding because I see the finished product immediately.

Again, I will say: TAKE THAT BOOT CAMP!!! See you later alligators! :)