About Me
Perhaps an advantage of being one of the last students to be added to the course, is that I have had the advantage of seeing everything you all have posted already, before having to create my own. A disadvantage, maybe then, would be that I’ll know all of you, and you aren’t even likely to see me at all, since most of you finished all of Week 1 before I was even registered to the course.  So, if you stumble across my page, here’s a little bit about me that you can read and enjoy.  (The photo I included is only my *favorite* one of me ever…so no pressure or anything, but just in case you wanted to see some real photos, I let flickr handle those, and it, along with a whole bunch of other social media sites, are linked on the drop-down menu under ‘about’ to make life easier for all of us – professors, please let me know if this is not acceptable.)

Reflecting on the Media (or, oh, right, this is a college class)
Now that the ‘me’ details are out of the way of this post, I should be totally honest – I understood little to none of what Robert Hughes was trying to tell me about art.  Not because he used big words, though.  I just can’t understand English through that accent very well.  My husband’s maternal grandmother was 100% English, and as a result, the English sense of humor has always had a special place in his heart, and so he often tries to share this or that kind of British show with me.  I try my best, I really do.  But I can’t watch any of it without subtitles.  Not even Monty Python.   So, I gave good old Robert my best, and at least 5 or 6 viewing attempts.  But still, I didn’t get much out of it aside from ‘because it isn’t, and it doesn’t, and nobody cares.’  I don’t know what he was saying, but I like his passion in that moment. And at the very least, there is a certain kind of art in passion, don’t you think?

Stephen Johnson’s whiteboard sketch presentation certainly delighted me, as it did everyone who saw it, I think.  It was fun and entertaining to watch, very clever, and drew some sound conclusions which, while not immediately obvious, would nonetheless be difficult to disprove.  Maybe we are lazy and distracted and it takes less thinking power for us to come upon the same level of intelligent, informed conclusions, but wasn’t that the goal all along? What’s the value in an idea that is left unshared, after all?

My favorite media by far, though, was Cage’s rules. And while I did love the actual content of the list itself (as a returning student with a second chance after 10 years of waiting, the value I place on learning is exorbitant, and the apathy I see in some students here now makes me want to feed them Cage’s rules for breakfast every morning)…what was my favorite part of the media?  It was the visual and artistic effect of the crumpled page which was photographed.  It’s the fact that it looks like the sheet of paper came straight out of an old-fashioned type-writer, and was perhaps long-neglected, until like me, the owner of the paper found it again and realized its preciousness, and did their best to salvage it.  The sharpness of the page can never be restored, but the value of the advice on that page is still untarnished after all these years.

Okay, enough of my rambling (about that stuff, anyway).  I absolutely love the idea of the weekly summaries.  What a great way to organize all of our work in a presentable fashion.  Seriously.  So I’ll go ahead and get on with it.

From ds106-er to tdc-er, in 3 days or less!
First and foremost *drumroll please* – this week I completed my first TWO ever Daily Creates!! *cheering*

It started with the keychain video, which I stressed out over *way* too much.  In all honesty, I was happy with the first video I took, but my husband texted me twice in the middle of it, and the sound on the video was loud, scary, obnoxious, and completely distracting.  So then I had to start over, and once you’ve started over once, you’re a starter-over, and that’s how that goes.   But I did it – I posted a video of MYSELF, taken BY myself.  Never thought I’d see the day.

And if that’s not out of the ordinary, what in the world would you call it when I’m coming out of my shell enough to sing, record, and SHARE my own mini-theme song?!  Don’t believe me?  Here:

So there.  Two tdc’s this week.  That makes me feel better.   Really, I’ve always had a love and appreciation for all things art, and an opposing fear of trying to create it myself.  So I’m loving this whole concept (especially the ‘try to do it in 15-minutes or less’ part, to keep me from over-thinking it).  I think it’s going to push me from being the appreciator to the maker.  And that’s thrilling.

And now, time for embed...

@mburtis I still don’t know what I’m doing – can’t believe I’m even trying to use Twitter. This is only for you, #ds106

— Crystal Rose (@CrystalRose0784) September 1, 2012

Did I *really* get a twitter account for this class?  Just wow.

It definitely has been a crazy week so far, and I’ve already made plenty of mistakes.  Computers don’t like me much, so that makes me nervous sometimes relying on one or two of them completely for the entirety of this class.  But as long as they don’t decide to both suddenly die on me, I should be able to learn *a lot* from this class.

If there’s one thing, though, that I’ve learned from coming into this class a few days late: Catching up is HARD.  They‘re not kidding.  Stay on top of the work.  Pay attention, and check in daily.  I think as long as I can do that, I’ll surprise myself with how much of this I can really do.

There – done.  …I bet it’ll be a while before you ask *me* to provide a ‘substantive’ post again, eh?