So I know I haven’t posted as frequently or as fun-ly, but I actually got a second job recently, so things have been busy… 😦 but YAY MONEY!! $$$
Anyway, it’s coming to summer, so that will make posting easier, with more time on these hands.
SPEAKING OF SUMMER, Guess where I’m going!!
…
Ya guess??
…
I’ll wait…
…
Ok, give up?? (My mom says I’m funny.. :3)
TWO PLACES!!
I am going to FIREFLY MUSIC FESTIVAL in DOVER, DELAWARE, and to THE OUTER BANKS in NORTH CAROLINA!!! YAY TRAVEL!!!
So Firefly is going to be sick. The Red Hot Chile Peps are headlining along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. If that’s not enough to make you want to “Ship Your Pants” all the way to Dover (If you don’t understand the reference, you NEED to watch this commercial…
)
then guess who else will be there: Foster the People, Ellie Goulding, Capital Cities, Dr. Dog, The Lumineers, Vampire Weekend, and many many many many – 3 DAYS OF MANY more!!!
If you want to know more reasons why you should check it out, read dis!
And The Outer Banks is just a family vacation, but we have this giant house right near the beach, and I’ll be able to surf, swim, play with my friends, family, and cousins, and have an incredible time, so I’m REALLY excited for that too!
Anyway, that’s really all I have for you folks today. Love all! More on those ^ to come! ❤
Hi guys! So this week in class we had a discussion on memes, their history, and their impacts on internet popular culture. It was really interesting because memes aren’t normally a subject that you think much about, you just use them to share humor or other things without really delving into the idea of them. But really, memes are a very intriguing aspect of our pop culture, and involved in more than you would think.
So using the website Know Your Meme, I’ve decided to share with you all something that I found really interesting – Hyperlapse Photography. Hyperlapse photography is this kind of photographic film making that involves “revolving the camera around a fixed point” and then speeding up the pictures in post-production, putting them together to create an awesome, super-speed kind of movie. It’s all explained on the website. But this is really cool when you think of the idea of travel and touring places. I think using this technique, like in the video shown on the website, you can take a quick tour of a city before going there and see what it’s like in a really cool super speed style. It would also be a neat way to share vacation photography, creating a high-speed video of a compilation of things from vacations or places you go or things you do! Anyway, check it out! I’ve seen this a couple of times before, and I think it’s a really cool idea and meme that’s spreading around and there’s a lot you can do with it. Also, check out the website! It’s a great place to find memes and other cool stuff to share! 😀
Okay so last week in my class we were talking about fair use and copyright laws, and what makes something good to use and not. So to go along with this I have this really neat picture that I found on Flickr:
So this picture is of The Snow And Ice World Festival that takes place in Harbin, China. Just a neat thing to check out. But what I really want to talk about is how I got this picture and why it’s okay for me to use it. So I got this from this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/derekharkness/3238519038/.
I found that link using the Creative Commons Search Engine, which helps to find media and content that are in the public domain and therefore up for grabs. There’s also this Fair Use Checklist: http://vizedhtmlcontent.next.ecollege.com/CurrentCourse/Fair%20Use%20Checklist_33E9.pdf which is more or less a document saying where I found this content and why it’s okay for me to use it. For example, in this case my purpose would likely be comment. The nature of it’s use would likely be factual or nonfictional based. The amount would be small quantity, and the effect would be no significant effect made on the market or potential market for copyrighted work. This is a standard fair use form, and based on all of those boxes, my use of this content is favorable, and therefore it is okay for me to use this picture.
Personally I think copyright laws are important, but I also thing that they are a little strict when it comes to how much sharing actually happens. Regulation of sharing content will never be fully achieved, as someone will always find a way. However, copyright laws are important when the innocence of sharing, which actually helps to promote the original creator’s work, is taken into the realm of actual profit. But that’s just my personal opinion.
Stay tuned for more guys!! (More fun stuff to come!)
So I have a shameless plug to do for a class assignment. Self-promotion is one of the most valuable tools available to writers in today’s digital world, as popularity is more or less equivalent to success on the internet. Therefore it is extremely important to promote everything you do. So, in exchange for giving you guys some tips on self-promotion, I will humbly ask that those of you who like what I do here to please use the tips to help me promote myself! Pay it forward, ya know?
So social media is one of the most powerful tools at a self-promoters disposal. The “share” button on Facebook alone has the power to make 300,000 users available of a litter of puppies that are for sale (that actually happened to my neighbor, not kidding). But sites like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. are all great tools for self-promotion and promotion in general.
Now here’s where I come in. You guys want some karma points don’t you? If you are to use those powerful social media tools sitting at the tip of your fingers, you can help me promote my blog. With promotion comes more followers. With more followers, I will have the power to include more feedback in my posts, shape my blog based on feedback, and create more interesting and fun posts based on the type of growth and fan-base I develop. The more fans I get, the more this blog can grow, and the fans that I have already can enjoy that growth while being able to say, “I was following it before it was cool!!” (Hipster glasses optional).
How can you do this you ask? Wellllllllll…… Statuses!!! Just post a status with my link, Tweet about it, Instagram a screenshot, or post to your Tumblr! These are easy things that take only a moment, so for the benefit of my blog and your karma, feel free to promote! And I will pay it forward for sure! 🙂
So I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but I am a DJ for 90.3 The Core, a Rutgers based, student-run radio station, and I’ve had a few shows this semester! Woo!
It was something that I wanted to get into since my first semester, so it’s so cool to think that I’m doing it now and that I’m having a great time with it.
I joined last semester and it was so much information!! I was terrified to go on air because we have to operate the board ourselves and there’s SO MANY BUTTONS!!!
During most of my training, I was more or less thinking:
BUT! I got a show! And I’ll admit, my first one didn’t go well. Like at all. It was actually terrible. Started off with about 2 minutes of dead air, played announcements over and over again because I kept hitting the screen, couldn’t figure out the CD player so I wound up playing songs I didn’t even know or like – BASICALLY everything that could have gone wrong went SO INCREDIBLY WRONG.
But the next show, I decided not to panic. And then I got the greatest invention known to mankind:
THE RCA CABLE! Now I can play directly from my computer!
So finally, I am able to, using that beautiful wire, connect to my laptop and play songs straight from my vast library on iTunes (6,000 songs strong and growing!). Anyway, so my last show went great! I finally, after four shows, figured out the board and am able to use it competently!
WOO BASIC POWERS OF DEDUCTION, YEAAAA!!!
…. anyway, SO my show is called The Summer Vibe with DJ Niks (That’s me) – Saturdays at 1 PM, on 90.3 FM The Core. If you want to check out some of the music I play, here is the set-list from my last show, and I’ll be posting what I play from now on every Saturday! You should check out The Core, check out my show, check out la musica. :)))))))
St. Walker – Young The Giant
All Over Again – Lost Royals
Can’t Get Away – Third Eye Blind
Tiptoe – Imagine Dragons
Supremacy – Muse
Weight of this World – The Kingston Springs
Rocket – Home By Hovercraft
Color On The Walls (Don’t Stop) – Foster The People
Kittens – Herra Terra
What you Know – Two Door Cinema Club
Quesadilla – Walk The Moon
How Will I Call You – Water Liars
Setting Son – Teenage Kicks
Company – Third Eye Blind
Summer Vibe – Walk Off The Earth
A Modern Age – The Strokes
(Technically, this is my midterm assignment blog post, but I also missed a lot of prime-posting time because this week has been crazy, so here is me getting back on track.)
SO I thought it was time that I told you all about my beautiful idea for a beautiful study abroad trip to beautiful AUSTRALIA.
That’s, right, I’m headed to the great down under to swim with sharks and play with kangaroos in my senior year, and I’m so excited.
So basically here’s my plan:
I’m going to go in the Fall of my senior year. I’m going to spend the summer beforehand working myself to the ground to make sure I can pay for it. Then I’m going to go. I’m going to have an awesome, super-fantastic, amazing time. Then I’m going to come home and commute for the second half of the year to help cover the cost.
Not bad huh?
What are some things I’ll be doing??
Funny you should ask, dear internet friends.
SURFING.
LEARNING.
BEACH-ING.
FRIEND MEETING.
BAR-CRAWLING.
GREAT BARRIER REEF-ING.
ANIMAL TIME.
AUSSIE-HUSBAND SEARCHING.
So you can see where my excitement comes from. The main thing that I am going to have to work really hard at is…
DUN DUN DUN.
BUDGETING.
I have to work crazy hard not to overspend so I don’t wind up not having enough money to make it back.
However, that fear aside, I’m very excited for my trip! It should be an amazing once in a lifetime experience!
Keep an eye out for more posts, when my trip comes closer I’ll post tips on how to save/apply/plan for a Study Abroad experience. 🙂
If anyone has any Study Abroad experiences they would like to share, feel free to leave beautiful comments! Excelsior!
So I went through some frustrating stuff last night trying to get an assignment done, and I came to one conclusion: Don’t stress!!
And it will all work out fine.
So here’s what happened.
Yesterday I had to do a screencast for an assignment for class. It took me over two hours, and I was supposed to have it up last night, but I wound up falling asleep while the video was finalizing in iMovie (my bad… ).
BUT I finished it!
So basically this is what happened.
We had to make a tour of a well designed blog using screencasting with the program Jing. So earlier in the week I made the screencast and I made the voiceover serparately on my phone so that it would be better quality, and then I figured I would splice the two together using iMovie and then I could add some music and fun transitions and stuff. Sounds easy enough right???
Well, turns out that Jing only exports screencasts as .swf files.
Dun, dun dun…..
So an .swf file is annoying and mean and doesn’t upload to pretty much any other program or website. I downloaded about 5 different file converters that all said they would convert an .swf to an .avi or .mov or something I could use, and nothing worked!! I tried uploading it with Adobe, and YouTube, and Screencast.com, and downloading it to iTunes, literally everything I could think of and NOTHING WORKED.
It was extremely frustrating, I’ll be honest. Basically, after working through it for 2 hours and yelling at my computer, I decided to email the professor, as I had more or less hit a wall. So, thankfully, he got back to me very quickly and said I could take a video of the screencast with my phone, and even though it’ll be worse quality, it will suffice and probably look pretty cool. He was right! And I think it came out awesome!
Finally, I took a quick video, plugged in my phone, and imported it into iMovie right from my phone. EASY PEASY!! So I started editing, put some transitions in, put some music and my voiceover in, edited the sound, added title page, real easy stuff.
My frustration was GONE!
All was well in the world again.
I’m really well-versed in iMovie because I had to use it just about everyday for a class I took in high-school, so that part was easy, and I think it came out really good! Unfortunately, though, I still don’t know how to work with an .swf file though, so if anyone has any advice PLEASE feel free to share!!
Anyway, once I got through the rough patch, this project was actually pretty fun!! I like the end result, even though I sort of winged it with the voiceover because I didn’t really know what to say…. But I think it came out good regardless. Alright, the movie is down below. Let me know what you guys think!! 🙂
pictures courtesy of tumblr.
oh and the music is from M83. the first song is “Year One, One UFO” and the second is “Up!”.
I’ll post them on the song page soon. Thanks for reading!!
Bad Nomad 