I pretty much Tweeted my entire thought process for the week,  I’ll begin with those, chronologically:

I think that pretty much sums up my week, but I’ll continue for detail and…summation’s sake.

I’ll add in here that I was floored after checking out someone else’s Alternate Ending.  It started off at the same point as mine, and had almost the exact same interactions, except they removed my scene with Nick talking to George inside Henry’s.  The end result was the same.  I’d actually been talking with my father about Chinese ripoffs of American companies’ products.  I noted how American manufacturing plants are in China already, and with how closed-off their society is from ours, that it was almost a no-brainer they would use American patents for their own gain.  Well, I’d equate that to my posting my story earlier than who I believe plagiarized my work.  They could have been reading around to get inspiration. I get that.  They could have liked my story. I get that, because I did, too.  But it just seemed like they struck out the good parts of mine, and changed the dialogue ever so slightly that it wasn’t the exact same.  The idea is still there, though. And it makes me angry.  I didn’t even have a comment from that person on my post, telling me they enjoyed my work so much that they would try something slightly similar–I wouldn’t be as mad as I am right now had that been the case.  I tried to find the person on Twitter to contact them, but couldn’t, so I decided to post about it.  You stay private? I’ll go public. Simple defense of my idea.  I did a little poking around and noticed the person’s reading of The Killers was very close to mine, as well. Although that person had read one more story than I had, the only three I read were also included in that person’s readings.  Now, I get it.  I like noir, too. But we only had to read three, so why post for four unless you feel guilty for skimping on your own work? /rant. Time to move on.

Speaking of readings, I read Hemingway’s “The Killers”, and was disappointed by the lack of…killing.  After that, I read The Shadow “The Death Triangle” and really enjoyed the twist ending, but still wanted more from the Shadow, himself. I concluded my reading for the week with Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.  I was thoroughly impressed by Postman, but chose to focus on Frank’s character, or lack thereof, rather than even attempt as close a reading as I had with “The Killers” and The Shadow.  I’m glad I read them in that order.  “The Killers” introduced some gangsters, but left me wanting more action.  The action in The Shadow made up for it, though, and made me start to wonder how many noir works were almost low fantasy.  I wanted something gripping next, and I got all I wanted and more in Postman.

After a nice sampling of noir, I thought it would be a good time to start writing out my character, Donnie Rawlen. I made him, essentially, torn up completely.  His father died when he was young, and his wife and child died later in his life.  I made him a writer, so that he wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, have a small vocabulary.  I was excited to start work on him.

I needed a little break from hard-hitting plots, though, so I decided to work on his development as my final assignment for the week.

I’d been writing in my personal journal, brainstorming ideas for how I wanted “The Killers” to end, which happened to be useful for my Alternate Ending so I used my own reading as inspiration.  I called it The Hit: The Killers, Sawed-Off. Now it has death, and some more dialogue from Nick, since he visits Andreson, and was silenced for the tense part of The Killers.

It was around the middle of the day, and I’d just finished eating some blueberry muffins my wife had made the previous day (pictured in my collage), so I decided to write a Haiku Recipe.  I decided to write an Apple Pie-ku Recipe. I thought it was short, and sweet–delicious.

Next, I focused my time on creating a Seven Character Story.  The end result was Six Slingers and a Singer, a pilot episode, introducing a mysterious pinstriped threat to the now-assembled crew of misfits. I’m really proud of that story.  It’s the first time I actually felt at home, and confident in my creative writing style, which was one of my goals for the semester.  I think noir lends itself very well to an amateur writer such as myself. I can include as many details as a want, but the story still revolves around dialogue.  I gave my character an inner monologue, so he can even give the reader a play-by-play, essentially.

After posting that, I took a bit of a break to have dinner, and then amalgamated my Daily Create assignments into one post.  I’d thought about including them in this post, just embedded, but decided I’d rather not clutter up my summary post like that.  I knew I’d already have a ridiculous amount of Twitter statuses, and, since I link to all of my new posts from Twitter, they would already be visible.

I had a bit of an issue while starting this summary, actually. Twitter stopped working for me at home.  I couldn’t get to my tweets from before Friday, because my scroll-down updating wouldn’t load.  So, I took myself to Starbucks! (Hooray, triple-shot vanilla mochas!)

I’m having a pun-derful time creating post titles. I don’t seem to be getting many comments on my site yet, but I’m starting to be more active in the #ds106 and #noir106 community, and that’s starting to feel much more conducive to a good learning environment than any classroom has been for me as an adult.  Having a support structure, with the professors and students communicating constantly makes this class feel alive all of the time, and makes me want to create more.  In a regular classroom, it’s pretty much just an extremely limited instructor-pupil relationship, but being able to tweet other professors, Groom and Burtis, makes it seem like there’s a lot more going on. I really like how you three have set up this class.  It’s a lot of work, undoubtedly, but it’s fun, creative, work, where learning is almost second-nature.  I get to see someone’s cool collage, for example.  You only normally get to hear other students present, and only really get to look at Powerpoints in the classroom.  Online, I can actually talk directly to other students somewhere other than in the classroom or passing by each other on campus.

So noir‘s got me. I love it. It’s the dirty underbelly of American culture, focused on the hardships and vices of man, rather than just solving a mystery, like in The Shadow, there’s often life on the line, so it’s tense.

Finally, my blog customization.  I chose to keep Coding Spencer for a few reasons. First and foremost, I’m a computer science major, so coding is kind of my thing. Secondly, I recognized that “coding” is also how doctor’s refer to patient’s whose hearts are stopping or have stopped. That’s the intensity of noir, right there.  I changed my tagline, though.  It’s kind of a joke about programming.  In my life, I fiddle with Object-oriented programming, so I figured I’d throw in another pun where I could.  I chose Objective-oriented blogging, since it melds DS106 with my passion.  I don’t think I’ll stop customizing my blog. I’ve taken a class on CSS and HTML, so I think I’m going to go in deep soon.  I didn’t really like any of the other themes, though, so I stuck with Twenty Fifteen. It seem like a good base for further work, since there isn’t as much complicated scripting under the hood.

 

 

 

 

I pretty much Tweeted my entire thought process for the week,  I’ll begin with those, chronologically:

I think that pretty much sums up my week, but I’ll continue for detail and…summation’s sake.

I’ll add in here that I was floored after checking out someone else’s Alternate Ending.  It started off at the same point as mine, and had almost the exact same interactions, except they removed my scene with Nick talking to George inside Henry’s.  The end result was the same.  I’d actually been talking with my father about Chinese ripoffs of American companies’ products.  I noted how American manufacturing plants are in China already, and with how closed-off their society is from ours, that it was almost a no-brainer they would use American patents for their own gain.  Well, I’d equate that to my posting my story earlier than who I believe plagiarized my work.  They could have been reading around to get inspiration. I get that.  They could have liked my story. I get that, because I did, too.  But it just seemed like they struck out the good parts of mine, and changed the dialogue ever so slightly that it wasn’t the exact same.  The idea is still there, though. And it makes me angry.  I didn’t even have a comment from that person on my post, telling me they enjoyed my work so much that they would try something slightly similar–I wouldn’t be as mad as I am right now had that been the case.  I tried to find the person on Twitter to contact them, but couldn’t, so I decided to post about it.  You stay private? I’ll go public. Simple defense of my idea.  I did a little poking around and noticed the person’s reading of The Killers was very close to mine, as well. Although that person had read one more story than I had, the only three I read were also included in that person’s readings.  Now, I get it.  I like noir, too. But we only had to read three, so why post for four unless you feel guilty for skimping on your own work? /rant. Time to move on.

Speaking of readings, I read Hemingway’s “The Killers”, and was disappointed by the lack of…killing.  After that, I read The Shadow “The Death Triangle” and really enjoyed the twist ending, but still wanted more from the Shadow, himself. I concluded my reading for the week with Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.  I was thoroughly impressed by Postman, but chose to focus on Frank’s character, or lack thereof, rather than even attempt as close a reading as I had with “The Killers” and The Shadow.  I’m glad I read them in that order.  “The Killers” introduced some gangsters, but left me wanting more action.  The action in The Shadow made up for it, though, and made me start to wonder how many noir works were almost low fantasy.  I wanted something gripping next, and I got all I wanted and more in Postman.

After a nice sampling of noir, I thought it would be a good time to start writing out my character, Donnie Rawlen. I made him, essentially, torn up completely.  His father died when he was young, and his wife and child died later in his life.  I made him a writer, so that he wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, have a small vocabulary.  I was excited to start work on him.

I needed a little break from hard-hitting plots, though, so I decided to work on his development as my final assignment for the week.

I’d been writing in my personal journal, brainstorming ideas for how I wanted “The Killers” to end, which happened to be useful for my Alternate Ending so I used my own reading as inspiration.  I called it The Hit: The Killers, Sawed-Off. Now it has death, and some more dialogue from Nick, since he visits Andreson, and was silenced for the tense part of The Killers.

It was around the middle of the day, and I’d just finished eating some blueberry muffins my wife had made the previous day (pictured in my collage), so I decided to write a Haiku Recipe.  I decided to write an Apple Pie-ku Recipe. I thought it was short, and sweet–delicious.

Next, I focused my time on creating a Seven Character Story.  The end result was Six Slingers and a Singer, a pilot episode, introducing a mysterious pinstriped threat to the now-assembled crew of misfits. I’m really proud of that story.  It’s the first time I actually felt at home, and confident in my creative writing style, which was one of my goals for the semester.  I think noir lends itself very well to an amateur writer such as myself. I can include as many details as a want, but the story still revolves around dialogue.  I gave my character an inner monologue, so he can even give the reader a play-by-play, essentially.

After posting that, I took a bit of a break to have dinner, and then amalgamated my Daily Create assignments into one post.  I’d thought about including them in this post, just embedded, but decided I’d rather not clutter up my summary post like that.  I knew I’d already have a ridiculous amount of Twitter statuses, and, since I link to all of my new posts from Twitter, they would already be visible.

I had a bit of an issue while starting this summary, actually. Twitter stopped working for me at home.  I couldn’t get to my tweets from before Friday, because my scroll-down updating wouldn’t load.  So, I took myself to Starbucks! (Hooray, triple-shot vanilla mochas!)

I’m having a pun-derful time creating post titles. I don’t seem to be getting many comments on my site yet, but I’m starting to be more active in the #ds106 and #noir106 community, and that’s starting to feel much more conducive to a good learning environment than any classroom has been for me as an adult.  Having a support structure, with the professors and students communicating constantly makes this class feel alive all of the time, and makes me want to create more.  In a regular classroom, it’s pretty much just an extremely limited instructor-pupil relationship, but being able to tweet other professors, Groom and Burtis, makes it seem like there’s a lot more going on. I really like how you three have set up this class.  It’s a lot of work, undoubtedly, but it’s fun, creative, work, where learning is almost second-nature.  I get to see someone’s cool collage, for example.  You only normally get to hear other students present, and only really get to look at Powerpoints in the classroom.  Online, I can actually talk directly to other students somewhere other than in the classroom or passing by each other on campus.

So noir‘s got me. I love it. It’s the dirty underbelly of American culture, focused on the hardships and vices of man, rather than just solving a mystery, like in The Shadow, there’s often life on the line, so it’s tense.

Finally, my blog customization.  I chose to keep Coding Spencer for a few reasons. First and foremost, I’m a computer science major, so coding is kind of my thing. Secondly, I recognized that “coding” is also how doctor’s refer to patient’s whose hearts are stopping or have stopped. That’s the intensity of noir, right there.  I changed my tagline, though.  It’s kind of a joke about programming.  In my life, I fiddle with Object-oriented programming, so I figured I’d throw in another pun where I could.  I chose Objective-oriented blogging, since it melds DS106 with my passion.  I don’t think I’ll stop customizing my blog. I’ve taken a class on CSS and HTML, so I think I’m going to go in deep soon.  I didn’t really like any of the other themes, though, so I stuck with Twenty Fifteen. It seem like a good base for further work, since there isn’t as much complicated scripting under the hood.