Noir Downpour Pt. 2 : A Summary
The second week of Digital Storytelling: Noir was challenging, but rewarding.
There were many writing assignments this week, which were a bit difficult to format and complete, but I received some advice from Ms. Burtis on how to contextualize my posts. This made them easier to read once I went back and made changes.
Mostly, I am thrilled to have created so many new forms of art/media, from some new photographs to a new fictional character named Tom Blair, who I know more about than any other character I’ve ever created.
The Daily Create assignments are awesome in that they encourage (force?) one to actually make things- as someone who constantly dreams up projects but never actually begins them, this encouragement is invaluable.
I am really proud of what I did for the ‘Eye Selfie‘ assignment:
And I actually ended up turning it into something I am even more proud of,
which is now the logo for this site, as well as my cover photo for most of my social media accounts.
My other Daily Creates can be seen here and here. The first I am not particularly fond of, and the second is a reference to how much I dislike the artist Mark Rothko-a subject which would take a whole other post to cover.
The Writing Assignments for this week gave me a bit of a headache, but definitely made my site feel and look more like something that belonged to me. As there were several, I will provide links to them:
Alternative Ending to The Wild Party
and then discuss my favorite one: The Twilight Zone Poem!
There it is-not much to say about it actually, except that I had T.S Elliot’s poem The Hollow Men in mind when I wrote it. Mostly I am proud of the fact that I was able to create the entire poem without adding any words other than the episode titles of my choosing. Each title is separated by either a line, colon, or comma.
Additionally, I’m happy to say that my site looks just the way I want it to (for the moment). I may, however, need to add a bit more to my About page. I think I am waiting to think of the right words, as it is important to me to find the perfect way of expressing myself.
I am also officially following the tags #noir106 and #ds106 on the application TweetDeck, which can be installed for Mac and Windows here.
I managed to install all necessary/ recommended WordPress plugins in such a way that spam comments get blocked, but comments that aren’t spam don’t need to be moderated. At least, I think I have achieved this!
It’s only been a week, but I already have 12 spam comments. Wow. (Question: Does that link work for non-admin visitors?)
The plugin Akismet is what is suggested to moderate spam comments. Here is some information on how to install/ activate it.
Also, I am not positive as to how I achieved this state of not having to approve every single comment, but it likely has something to do with the plugin Jetpack, which is super cool and helpful. All I did was play around with the settings for a while.
Note: Jetpack will allow you to publish your blog posts to the platform of your choice. The option for that is located near the top right of the post editor, in the same box where it says “Save Draft” and “Publish”:
Since I’m beginning to sound like an advertisement for Jetpack, I will move on.
There isn’t much left to say at this point. I do, however, want to share a post that Ms. Burtis showed me.
The post is an alternate ending for the story ‘A Matter of Procedure’, which I also chose to read and discuss in my noir readings post. I think that the author of the post, Janaye, ended the story better than its original author did. I expound a little more on that in a comment that I left on her blog.
Since the comment is still in moderation and I cannot link to it, I will just say that Janaye’s ending provides closure, whereas the original almost makes one feel as though they wasted their time reading the story, waiting for conflict that never really happens.
Also, Janaye has Twitter-commented on one of my Daily Creates (I think it was the Eye Selfie), and judging from her ‘About’ page, is a fan of one of my favorite shows, New Girl. There’s a good chance she and I would get along if we ever run into each other on campus.
Alright, I am officially all blogged out for the moment.
Until next time!