For my my final project, I decided to create a digital work similar to Slice. As a work in progress, the most difficult problem I find is polishing and developing a believable story. So I started to think, what makes me believe an author of the interweb?

Seriously, I find myself believing quite a lot these days. Its as if the internet is my encyclopedia and the authors are experts. But it isn't, and they aren't. If anything, a digital work that appears to be truth, can in reality be nothing but a lie created by someone who doesn't even exist.

It's funny to think about how people are willing to believe so much on the internet, especially if it is from a "reputable" website like news.yahoo.com or maybe sciam.com. But unlike fact checked paper, digital stories require trust.

So, that lead me to formulate the hypothesis that if a website seems clear, consise, and desketchified, we as a society are far more likely to believe its claims.

But alas, as with all things that happen in my mind, I get lost in tangents and tangle with tidbits. But what are your opinions? Is there something that you look for when you are reading something fascinating on the internet to determine if it is real or there is any fact behind it? How much do you trust the author?

So yeah, this blog is pretty last minute. I mean seriously, 11:10pm on Sunday night? I guess I really am that big of a procrastinator. So anyways, where are we going? As a class, or time together is growing to a minimum. So now, what are we going to do now? Will you keep blogging?

I find myself at a crossroads. I didn't blog for fun, it was just an assignment. But I enjoyed it. Compared with the normal, run of the mill papers and such it was a well received reprieve. I wonder what this blog was to outsiders, I wonder if anyone outside of our class ever read, and what they thought?

In the future, I want to be an author and a teacher. I want to leave behind a literary legacy, both in paper and in mind, for future generations to explore. Sometimes I wonder if I will accomplish this. I know I am not the best writer, I am not even sure if I have the potential, but that won't stop me. I will try. And in the future, whatever it may hold, will I remember this blog? Will I remember the entries I wrote? Or will it become just another cataloged page in the internet's way back machine?

So, yea.... What to say about A Million Penguins. I think that this idea in itself was a good one. Think about it. What I believe happened was that people weren't given rule and guidelines. Something so new, especially on such a grand scale, need to have rule in order to create some form of unity and coherence.

I mean seriously, trudging through that ridiculous debacle was painstaking. Some of the writing wasn't half bad but couldn't bring myself to care enough to ignore the rest. Again, imagine if penguin had laid out a series of rules to govern the event. For example: 1) all third person limited omniscient 2) List of characters that must play roles throughout the course of the work 3) Even if you disagree with the previous writer, try to follow the mood... at least until an appropriate point.

Maybe I have no idea what I am talking about but I think structure and unity would make this into something truly interesting. Will it be a work of William Faulkner or James Joyce? Probably not. But it will be a work that might one day be studied in an English class, just like its horribly deformed Predecessor.

I got a blackberry for graduation and at the time thought it was the best thing ever. I could get e-mails, go on facebook and everything was great. The first time i broke my phone it was kind of my fault. I was at the beach sleeping on a towel when the tide came up. As you can imagine, i got soaking wet and so did my phone. It was really frustrating at the time but not as frustrating as the process i had to go through to get my new one.

The Verizon store is probably my worst nightmare. You wait online for an hour or more to talk to someone, and when it is finally your turn, they tell you that you need to mail in your phone which is not in stock and you wont get your new one for 5-8 business days...AND they cannot transfer your contacts.

While at school my phone has turned off on my twice and has refused to turn back on for 2 days until it finally decides that it will. Wow, thank you so much for making me insane for two days and then just DECIDE to turn back on. This time, the third time, it decided to turn off and has not turned back on for over a week. So basically, i need a new phone and i could not be happier. I have come to despise my blackberry. The thing i loved so much at one point has become my greatest enemy. The first thing i do when i get home for thanksgiving is buy a new phone that is the least complicated one in the store.

Dakota...awful. Nukorea...awful. I really did not enjoy either of them and just sat and prayed for it to be over. They both lasted too long so I never thought my prayers would be answered.

For Dakota, I do not like the fact that I couldn't read what was being shown to me. What is the point of writing something if no one can read it? I understand that he wanted to show the chaos of what was going on, but it was just frustrating that I could'nt fully understand the entire story.

For Nukorea, the details were a little much for me. Actually, they were probably the only thing that did interest me out of the whole thing. The point i was paying the most attention to was when he was describing the maggots and rats on the dead bodies. Another thing I didn't like about this was how he continuously used transition words to start way too many sentences. It seemed like he had never taken an English class before even though he obviously has experience in the subject. The idea was interesting but it is kind of scary to think that this could possibly happen. The whole thing was also wayyyyyyyyy too long.

One of the funny things is that I think that the music should have been switched for the two pieces. For the first one, i was more interested in the story but couldn't read it because the music was too fast and it was following the music. For the second one, the music was slow and there are a lot of things i wish i didn't read. If the music was reversed i think i would have liked them both at least a little bit more...

I'm not really an athletic person. Nor am I a slave to the gym and working out. In 18 years, I obviously haven't had any major issues, so I don't really feel the need to start changing that. However, I do exercise occasionally and feel better about myself by getting out and doing something somewhat physical. I used to play soccer, and I like to play tennis and ski.

I thought about joining a team/intramural sport here, but it didn't end up happening. Too much of a time commitment and not enough skill :) So I looked around the Campus Recreation website and found that the University offered various fitness classes. There was a weird type of yoga, self-defense (which I seriously considered), a few others, and then I stumbled across belly dancing. This was one of those things where I always thought it was cool, never had any exposure at all to it. So for $40 I decided why not-I'll give it a shot.

The class met for six weeks, and there were 10 or 12 of us in the class, depending on the day. Our instructor was really chill - she was very much into the dancing, how it's an art form, and very pro-female empowerment/getting in touch with yourself. It was really cool actually. We learned really basic moves like belly rolls, shimmies, and hip drops, and put together two different choreographies to help learn the moves. One day, the instructor brought in veils and belts that jingled so we got to play around with those. I really enjoyed the class and loved getting out once a week and doing something fun and stress free.

Here are a few videos of belly dancing courtesy of youtube. Generally, belly dancing is a solo dance for a woman...



...but men can do it as well...Personally I think the women are more impressive than the men...



for the record, I along with everyone else in my class, don't even come CLOSE to these people :)

I found this on another blog and thought it pretty interesting. This being the case, I am going to summarize what going on with Burger King Wallets. So it turns out that those cheesy, no pun intended, Burger King commercials where the King gives people money is becoming reality. Reportedly, Burger King decided to drop 5,000 wallets with, get this, between $1 and $100 dollars of actual cash and gift certificates for Burger King in them. Along with the nice surprise is a driver's license for the king, and note indicating what the wallet is, and a map to Chicago or Orlando's Burger Kings.



Although at this point only reports suggest that they will be dropped in major Urban area of Chicago, they could be headed this way. So next time you are a hungering for a burger, just look at your feet, and maybe, just maybe, you will find that magical burger wallet to guide your hunger.

So there are a fair share of science fiction movies, books, etc that depict a future where organs can be "manufactured" simply, inexpensively, and reliably. Think about all those patients that wait for years in an organ donor line, often succumbing to the failing organ before they ever get the transplant. But even if they are among the lucky ones that get the organ, they have to take heavy medications for a long period of time to subdue their immune system from killing the new resident.


But it seems that science and technology continue to trace our imaginations. It seems that Claudia Castillo, a mother of two, has undergone the first transplant of a synthetic organ created from her stem cells (attained from her bone marrow.)It was a team of British scientists that one the global race to create the worlds first organ from adult stems cells. This time, the organ was Castillo's windpipe and the surgery seems to be a brilliant success.

Are we approaching a future of endless possibilities? Where new organs can be created and implanted based of your own stem cells? It seems to good to be true, but in tomorrow's yesterday it seems that it is happening.

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So, the other day I stumbled upon Time's top 50 inventions for 2008. Like all things, some weren't all great, in my opinion, while others were simply fascinating. Take for instance a camera for the blind. That's right. A specially designed camera is held to the forehead of a blind person. After the picture is taken, a brail representation is created on the backside of the camera. Seriously.


Another fascinating invention was a Bionic lens. It works just like a normal contact but with one huge difference. Using LEDs that are powered by solar cell and radio frequencies, lol yeah all this stuff being beamed into your eye, the contacts can display information like maps, pictures, etc in the wearers view of vision. In other words, data and such will appear to be floating in front of you. It'll be like your very own video game.

Finally, one other invention that both mesmerizes and invokes fear is the synthetic organism. J. Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, spliced together man made compounds to create a genetic organism. Although it was one of the smallest genomes known to man, it is still an amazing feat, with about 582,000 pairs needed to be spliced. Although the organism has not been proven to be alive yet, Venter believes it will be by the end of next year.


Source

This was such a cool idea for a way to tell a story. First of all, Google Earth is probably one of the coolest things that has ever been thought up. It's so easy to use, unlike Mapquest, which just sucks. I love the fact that it gives you actual satellite images of the place that you're looking up.

Using Googe Earth in this story added a whole new level of interacting with the story. Instead of having to visualize all of the places that the guy (sorry forgot his name) went to, you could see it mapped out on the screen. The red and blue lines that showed him moving and where he was going really helped me to see what was going on, instead of just reading about it. I tend to get confused when I read about places and distances, so actually seeing him riding around London in a taxi, or flying on a plane to Edinburgh was quite helpful.

It reminded me of a few different books I've read and movies that I've seen where the main character has no idea what is going on, but he/she has to do these various things. Sounds kind of vague, but I really like stories with this type of plotline-action, suspense and a little bit of mystery. Reminds me of James Paterson/John Grisham/Dan Brown....