So, the basis of my story is an interactive adventure that I created using inklewriter. The story itself quickly became incredibly complex. Just how complex, I will demonstrate in a moment when I discuss the creation of each section.  For additional media types, I used some elements of design, some animated gifs, some visual aids, […]

So, the underlying plan for my final project, the basis for the story, is the inklewriter choose your own adventure type story.  This week, I began to compose the story, but found that keeping all the threads and possible outcomes in my head, and even deciding them one at a time in order to write […]

For this assignment, I went back to the which ds106 character are you quiz I made for buzzfeed a few weeks ago and incorporated vastly more characters and questions. I created a spread sheet with all the characters, their descriptions for the outcomes, and their answers to the various questions. I hit a hiccup when […]

What would Merrill be interested in if he was given access to the internet? Well, I don’t know that Pinterest would be the first place he would end up, but if he did, I have created a Pinterest board that is his style. I just thought of things that he would be interested in, given […]

Every time that I am inclined to do so, I am amazed, or maybe appalled, at what the internet has become. Instead, in this case, of coming across tumblr or 4chan, there was a few pleasant surprises. I did not complete all the assignments that I found interesting, but I did acquire a few more […]

This assignment is to, using google translate, find something that does not translate well across languages and give some thought to it. Given the western theme of the class, I thought I might take it just a step further, and since many western saying are idioms, mix them up and see what I come out […]

For this assignment, I decided to base the story on Merrill Shale having sold his wagon and upgraded after he started raking in poker winnings. I originally tried with both Autotrader and Ebay motors, but the code was seemingly too sophisticated for X-ray googles, so I went to craigslist instead, which turned out to be […]

So, this week, I started with a 4.5 star assignment that was like one I enjoyed doing last week, but with a little more nuance.  This one fit better together as a complete piece since I already had a story I was trying to tell, and I even fit somewhat of a story inside it. […]

Maybe they grabbed the wrong costumes?  For the photo for this assignment, I put a couple of odd balls in a scene where they do not belong. They look like naturals though, I don’t even think they noticed.  The assignment was to put something in a movie scene that was totally out of place. I […]

I was searching through the assignment bank looking for ways to incorporate my character, Merrill Shale. When I found this one, I considered how I might make a video of an animal talking go along with an old Western gambler, and the answer came straight to me… If you aren’t with me yet, we are […]

So, for this remix assignment, I am supposed to do the “opposite” of the original which was to take an extreme close up of some object and let people guess what it was.. For the answer, click here.

So, for this assignment, I remixed one I had done before, and I added some twists. In the original, I just made a digital copy of myself. For this one, I was going to make a video of the same, but the tool I found that lets me make a video avatar of myself had […]

So, for this tutorial, I am more interested in embedding the StoryMap on a WordPress site than on creating the storymap itself. This is something that I spent a bit of time investigating, so I just wanted to simplify the process for anyone interested. I tried the plugin, and it did a lot of really […]

This assignment used the same basic idea as one I did last week. The emphasis here, though, was to show the age progression in the character and not just highlight some of his interesting roles. I chose Leonardo Dicaprio as the focus for this assignment since he has such  long film history and most of […]

So, for this assignment, I made a montage of Benicio del Toro clips from various movies. I tried to include something from all my favorites, although somehow Way of the Gun was left out. Past that, I tried to isolate the a few intense moment from the scene; the whole thing is supposed to be […]

For this assignment, I did more voice acting for Merrell Shale. The instructions were to make a public service announcement, so I just thought of someplace that Merrell’s voice might be useful and decided to make a video about gambling addiction. I added a slide with some stats, but I could not find enough useful […]

For this assignment, I created a video using old fashioned playing cards to create some Morse code. I used a few different playing cards to distinguish consecutive dots and dashed, and I used transitions to split things apart so it could be deciphered. Highlight the section between here (The right side up cards are dots, […]

So, I spend the first part of this week recovering from a hard drive failure. I had only partial backups, so it took some work to get back to square one. Then, I tried my hand at video editing with adobe premier, but although it seems to have more useful features, it is not nearly […]

So, for this assignment, I made a video of a few really powerful and influential scenes. The one from Band of Brothers and Pay it Forward instantly came to mind when I saw this assignment, but I had to put a bit of thought into coming up with the third. Accordingly, as I viewed the […]

So, for this week, we turned out attention to video where I realized that despite having seen more movies than almost anyone I know, I know almost nothing about the film making process that guides them or what makes them good. In watching the “Every Frame a Painting” my owns were pried open to recognize […]

So, I tried, unsuccessfully, to get this map to embed. I eventually gave up and decided the best way to go about it was to just share via twitter and embed that. Even the tweet, sadly, does not display a thumbnail or anything. So, for this assignment, I made a story map with a twist. […]

So, for this assignment, I reviewed a plethora of the characters from fellow ds106ers and pulled out a couple that I thought I could get into their mind the best. I typified their personas a bit, but isn’t that the point of a buzzfeed quiz? I created 4 questions to try and prevent ties, but […]

So, this week, I listened to the various radio programs and tweeted along when I was available to do so. I am still bummed that I was on my way home from class when my program played. It would have been fun to listen to my work shared in such a way. I did read […]

So, of the radio programs I listened to this week, Tumbleweeds was the one that I was interested enough to reflect on. I like the approach that they took using the different perspectives to tell the story. Better than that, however, was the production value of their program. The music, the sound effects, the sudden […]

My DS106 experience this week consisted mostly of creating the radio show. It was in some way a welcome reprieve from creating assignment after assignment on my own and fun to work with a group, which is odd because I usually dislike doing so. Maybe it was because this was a creative process more than […]

So, this week was a far more exciting week for our radio show. I spent most of the week thinking about different stories and approaches to telling Western news. I settled on a few ideas, and then changed them, and then changed them again. I originally planned to do a piece on a gambling tournament […]

I designed this logo for our radio program group using gimp. I had a rough plan at the outset, a circle with w’s twisted to different angles, but I did not like the outcome. So, I just experimented keeping things I liked any moving on until it looked complete. I used one of the western […]

For this assignment, I decided to make use of the fact that since I need a commercial for the radio show, I might as well get some stars for the week making one. I have mixed feelings about the final product. Probably some of that is due to the lack of copyright free music that […]

So, for this assignment, I am supposed to tell ann important life story in under two minutes. I decided to put a little twist on it, however, and do it from the perspective of my character, Merrell Shale. This story is his account of the story I included in his background that accounts for how […]

So, this week was a bit slower than weeks previous. We made in some headway in at least laying a bit of a road map for creating our radio show, more details about which are here. I also put my design skills to use, limited though they are, and designed a logo for our radio […]