McCloud Reading (1/31/14)

I'm choosing to write about McCloud and his notion of icons because the things that he describes about icons and how pictures come together aren't really well thought out by audiences who just read words and move on without paying attention what is actually there. For example, McCloud drew himself very plain and not very sophistacted so that the focus remains in his texts and not his picture. As a reader, McCloud really nailed the focus on text part instead of himself by adding less detailed to his avatar. Most readers won't even take into consideration that McCloud purposely made himself look so very plain so that he can deliver his message. To be more clear, what i am trying to say, is that the writer must truly understand his audience before getting his message across. So lets elaborate on what I mean by this and how McCloud see things. McCloud is a writer who notices what a reader wants to read while I am a reader who reads what McCloud is writing.

Hahaha I bet i just lost you there... okay let me put more examples to try to get my point across. McCloud is trying to deliver his lesson through text by using comically drawn icons to deliver it. People like pictures and like following a constant flow leading from one image to another and will be more willing to read text if there is a picture there even if that picture is totally useless and not informative. He drew himself a couple of times with different emotes but it only had him in the drawing a couple of times but with different words placed on the picture. Now as a reader, the text he puts in his image were short and concise which didn't scare me and I mind as well read it since the picture takes up more room than the text. If McCloud were to draw himself smaller than the text, I might have just not read it and just skimmed it because I would feel too lazy to read all that text. That would destroy what McCloud wanted and he wouldn't have accomplished his mission in getting his point across.

In addition, McCloud did not focus in details when he was drawing out icons, especially himself. He showed us a face that look a lot more detailed and explained how our attention will be drawn to his detailed face instead of his lesson. He was right with that because I noticed if the detailed is so great, I just wanted to look at the pictures and move on without reading any texts which isn't what McCloud was focusing on.

Therefore, I realized that McCloud uses simple font and images with texts to get his point across by understanding his audience and how they would react.

Food For Thought....
If the world was faced with a massive threat like an asteroid heading towards earth which would wipe out all life on earth, do you think we can set aside all the differences we have with other countries and combine our brightest minds to develop a plan to avoid such problem? Will we be able to stay United as one world? If that did happened, do you think the world will be a better place since every countries are allies? Will our technology far surpass anything that we created since all the money that went to war is now going into science and development which leads to new irrigation or food culture or making the environment a better place with more advance solar technology?

Audacity and Sound (1/24/14)

Oh my, looks like I already discussed audacity for last week blog... Hmmmm OH, i'll just tell you guys the new things i was able to learn in audacity. For example, amplifying the sound by using the effect -> amplify keys. This made it so easy to hear my voice with a not so good mic. It can also lower the volume of the recording which is helpful when you want to overlay music over your talking/podcast. I also learned how to increase the speed of my voice making me sound like a chickmunk which is pretty awesome. This would go very well if i wanted to make a recording that is purely for entertainment or maybe i can sing with the chickmunk voice and not feel embarrassed cause that's not my real voice! bahahaha good ol audacity...

Let see.... audio tied to text.. what does that mean? What does that mean... I'm going to interpret as this; audio and text are related to each other due to what is going on in your head. Let me elaborate, when you read a paragraph of text, what is the voice you are using it when you read it? That voice that you're reading it with in your head is also the voice that you would use when u record yourself reading that text. So that's how i see audio and text being related. If you still don't understand what i'm saying lets say you read something like "the cat went meow"; did you or did you not make that meow sound like a cat?? I know you did because that's how audio and text are coming together.. its a natural thing!

how is audio not tied to text.. hmmm good quesiton... how is it not tied to text.... hmmmm let me think... still thinking... uhm.... I think i got it.... audio isn't text in a way that you are not able to know the tone of the text while when a person first says a word you are able to know what he is feeling. For example, read this outloud..."There is a cat in the tree".... did you read that normally? Well if you did you are wrong because the last few words were going to be "said the man in a very loud voice". Now you know that the sentence that you just read was actually a shout and making us know that the cat is in danger. BUT now if I were to just say "There is a cat in the tree" just using my voice; you will definitely know straight up that the cat is in danger without knowing the next sentence or phrase that will come out of my mouth as if u were reading a text. If you are still confused by what I mean uhmm oh wells you just gotta live with it hahaha..

Food For Thought
If you were asked to survive for 30 days on an a mysterious island like the movie Cast Away by Tom Hanks, but instead of having nothing, you get to pick 3 things; anything u want that will help you survive those 30 days; What will those 3 things be? (Note: if you decide to pick a human being to be your companion think about how you are going to provide for yourself as well as for that companion... things could go chaotic and you guys end up eating each other :O!)

Engaging Response (1/17/14)

I have learned something very interesting in the past two weeks. The program that I am most fond of was screencast-o-matic. However, the assignment was discuss about the readings and videos that I have read/watched. I really enjoy learning how to use the Audacity from watching a couple of videos online. It is a very neat program and it comes in handy when I am recording gaming type videos while having myself talk as well as inserting a song in the background. There is a link below on what I did with the screencast-o-matic as well as combining that with Audacity to show what I have created with these two simple programs. (I did use something more advance to polish everything but the concept of putting audio and video together remains the same). How my writing process differs depending on the tools and technology I used for this kind of writing is a question I do not understand lol. However, I can say that my reactions to these programs was like this

And then after learning those programs I was like this

And as promised here's the work I did with those programs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUgFru6FZqw; This video is 5 mins long and contains content you might not understand but the voice over and music over starts kicking in the beginning and you'll see that I was able to combine footages and audio into one video. Enjoy!

Food For thought...

If you had a choice to be immortal; to be someone who just cannot die, to experience all the new technology that human can come up with, to read every article, to study all subjects, to be able to travel in space without space suits or protective gear, to explore the universe and try to find other higher life forms... Would you do it? 

Short Biography

Hello there, my name is Tim. I am a 5th year undergraduate student majoring in Biochemistry. Aside from spending all my time studying metabolic pathways and doing experiments, I also work at UCSB Residential Dining Services for a minimum of 12 hours a week. As for my hobbies, I enjoy running, working out, playing basketball, playing video games, and thinking of what if questions. I take great pride in myself that I have not consumed any alcoholic beverages and will not plan on doing so.

I am currently taking Writing 105M because my biochemistry major requires us to know how to edit and format pictures as well as making short videos so that we can reach out to a bigger audience when proposing a research plan or writing a grant proposal.

I have made countless of videos and edited many photos because I am also a gamer. So I have some idea on how to make a video using either window video maker or using something more advance like adobe premier pro. I also have an idea on how to edit photos using photoshop as well. What I wish to gain from this class is to understand more programs that are out there that can be even easier to use for smaller projects.

A little word of wisdom the next time you do something that goes against your morals

What makes a person great is not one who has a lot of money or knowledge, but the fact that the person is able to resist temptation and never give up on what he/she believes in.

Food for thought....

If you had the power to go back in time once and relive everything from that point on, where would you go and what would you change (granting you that you have all the knowledge you posses right now)? Will you meet the same people again even though they could have hurt you in ways such as love or would you choose a different path like studying harder and going to another college, erasing all the bonds you had with all the friends you met at UCSB?