I'm headed back to NY today. I've had a really fun visit to Indiana and it was fun visiting with my grandparents and my cousin. The first night I arrived (Sat) I got to go to a concert that my grandfather played in which was really fun. It was a very good concert. The concert was comprised of three pieces: Beethoven's Leonora Overture No. 3, Myaskovsky's Cell Concerto in C Minor, and Brahms' Symphony Number 1 in C Minor. There was a guest celloist, Amit Peled who was very good as well. I think my favorite piece was the Brahms though.
And...just a little bit of bragging on my grandfather. I pulled this off of the website for the orchestra.
Here's me with my grandfather after the concert :)
The next day my grandmother and I did some cooking and made Chicken Paprikas (a Hungarian dish and one of my favorite meals). I made the dumplings from scratch and now that I've learned how hopefully I'll be able to make the chicken for myself.
Mmm delicious Chicken Paprikas and dumplings
I'm cooking!
The majority of the weekend was spent relaxing because as soon as I get back to school I have to start working on my many projects etc.
One last thing...we went to the mall and there was a goose in the parking lot! We were amused.
Today was my last day traveling up to the Bronx for research! So maybe I'll actually start getting enough sleep ^_^
My friend showed me this video and I think it's hilarious so I thought I'd share. It's all about how maybe sometimes we should be just a little bit more in awe of the technology we use on a daily basis. Especially given what I'm studying I think it's pretty relevant. Also I think watching it keeps me a little bit more grounded in reality :P
I know it's been a while since I updated but I honestly really haven't done anything all that exciting. My weekly schedule tends to be the following:
Mondays:
-Get up around 6am
-Leave for the Bronx at 7:30am (This is where the school is that the research group I'm a part of is currently working.)
-Get back from the Bronx around 11am
-Take a nap if I feel I have the time (though I usually don't)
-Do whatever homework I still haven't finished
-Find time to upload the video we shot at the school in the morning in order to clear the cameras for Wednesday's session
Tuesdays: (Tuesday is my light day)
-Actually sleep in!
-Class from 3-5pm
-Do all my homework for my Wed classes
Wednesdays: (aka day of crazy)
-Get up around 6am
-Leave for the Bronx at 7:30am
-Get back from the Bronx around 11am
-Immediately have a research group meeting starting at 11am until 12:30pm
-Make sure I have my homework finished for the day while I eat lunch
-Class from 3-5pm
-Eat something for dinner
-Class from 7-9pm
Thursdays:
-Intern at Nickelodeon from 10am-6pm
-(Every other Thurs) Class from 7-9pm
Fridays:
-Intern at Nickelodeon from 10am-6pm
Which brings me to my weekends where I try to finish my homework for the next week while also trying to see friends and maybe see a show. I haven't actually gotten to see a show since I saw Billy Elliot, but Spring Break will change all of that :)
For the first part of Spring Break I'm going to visit my grandparents (on my mother's side) in Indiana from Sat - Tues and then I'll have one free day when I get back (Wed) and then Thurs/Friday I'll be interning still. Then on the weekend on Sat a bunch of friends and I are going to see American Idiot, and then on Monday I'm seeing MacBeth with a friend. Phew, it's going to be a packed week! But I'm looking forward to it :)
Speaking of my internship, I'm going to start posting links to things that I either created all myself or helped create! Gigantic Photos
I chose all of these screenshots from the episode! And then as the episodes start to air, they will be posting clips and full episodes...which I picked out :)
Have I mentioned how much I'm loving my internship? It has got to be one of the coolest things I've ever done :D
So I guess in conclusion even though sometimes I feel like I've gone crazy with the amount of stuff I have to do...it's worth it and I wouldn't change any of it for the world. Ok, maybe I could do with a little less homework ;-)
On a final note. Last week there was a discussion in the taxi on the way up to the Bronx about the best way to help the students formulate their final essay and what kind of structure to give them. I mentioned that when I was in 4th or 5th grade I was in a Gifted and Talented program and one of the things they taught us was how to organize an essay using the hamburger method. Aka...the top bun is the introduction, the patty and other assorted toppings are the body and the bottom bun is the conclusion. It actually makes a lot of sense. The top bun and bottom bun (the intro and conclusion) are fairly similar but not exactly the same and of course you need lots of details and good stuff in the body to make it a good hamburger. So anyway the other people in the research group thought this was a really great way to introduce the essay concept so they ended up teaching the students and it became something they could refer to with the students as they were writing their final essays last week. Anyway, I found that amusing :)
Alrighty, time to get my day started. I'm actually fairly on top of my homework this week so hopefully today will be fairly low key.
And just for fun...here's a Glee video!
This was a commercial they made for during the Superbowl. Is it bad that this makes me want a Chevy even though I know nothing else about the car?
After much internet searching and help from friends, I finally figured out how to upload my flash assignments to here! *crosses fingers*. So here is the collection of all of my assignments from last semester. I'll do a brief explanation before each one so you can kind of see the progression of what I learned. The amazing thing is if you think about what the first one is versus what my final project or even my midterm is. There is a major difference :)
Some terms I will be using that you may not be familiar with:
stage - basically the window where all of the objects appear.
object - each individual shape on the stage.
This is our first assignment before we had learned how to animate anything and basically we were learning how to add objects to the stage.
This is all made using a single black circle sized 50x50 pixels. So it is made by changing the properties of the circle (like transparency or size).
This is one of the first things we did where we started to use buttons that actually do things when you roll over them or click them. We still hadn't learned how to actually make the buttons do anything except change color yet though. So in this one you can click on the buttons to make them change color and you can click where it says "lumos" to see a star! (There is also a scroll bar!)
This was remaking the previous webpage into something where things would actually happen when you clicked the buttons. Each button is a different spell from Harry Potter :) (Lumos makes the stars appear and if you roll over them they twinkle and Nox makes the stars go out)
For this next one we started to learn how to animate things. Other than that this webpage isn't all that exciting. But I do like Little Women!
This one I actually really like. You have to keep clicking on the butterfly. The assignment was to have the text change as you click on the object (in this case the butterfly) and after 3 or so clicks a filter was supposed to be applied (the red) and after a few more clicks the object was supposed to disappear.
This is my first actual "game". I say "game" because it's not really that fun haha. Use the start race button to get the game going and get the computer runner to start and then use the right arrow key on the keyboard to make the other runner go and see if you can beat it! There is both a win and a lose state and if you want to start over just click on restart runners.
The next two are my two biggest projects, my midterm and my final. This was my midterm. We were supposed to make a webpage that had roughly 6 pages of information (or rather 6 buttons that changed the text). So I did mine about the Elsinore! The buttons are all the ones with the rotating stars and it will give you some background info on the Elsinore, then there is a short quiz and also a game!
And finally, this was my final. We had to make a game like program that would also teach something. So I'm teaching (or really actually reinforcing) the colors in the rainbow. There are directions and if you need help (or more directions) click the winged guy in the corner of the page. Also I forgot! I was reminded by the lovely Kachina that yes, I cannot take credit for the winged guy as he was drawn by my amazingly talented friend Justin who so graciously let me borrow his artwork as my artwork only extends to the point of drawing clouds and shapes and re-appropriating things off of the internet. Thanks Justin!
And that is what I did last semester in Flash I :) I'm honestly pretty proud of myself since I was so terrible at learning Java (a different programming language).
The same class I created all those other videos for, I made another one. This one was supposed to be our own version of a Where I'm From poem written by George Ella Lyon. You can read the original poem at http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html. I guess there's not a huge amount of other back story necessary. Basically this is the story of where I am from :) I hope you enjoy!
2 posts in one day?! *gasp* What an amazing occurrence!
Last Saturday I bought tickets through TC to see the musical Billy Elliot. It was really good. Specifically, the dancing was spectacular and the little kids in the show were amazing. It reminds me when I saw Oliver on stage for the first time and I couldn't believe how talented all these little kids were who were running around and dancing and singing in sync with one another. The boy who played Billy couldn't have been older than 12!
There were a few annoyances during the show though. One, I think their accents were a little obnoxious at times...they definitely weren't all amazing accents and sometimes it made the dialogue hard to hear. The other obnoxious thing was that since I got the tickets through TC (and they were cheap) we were up in the back of the balcony. I expected this. What I didn't expect was to be surrounded by a high school class who clearly couldn't care less if they saw this show or not. They did not know how to behave in a theatre. They were texting, talking, kicking the seats, showed up late and so we couldn't see the first few minutes while they were fumbling about in the dark trying to find their seats. Ugh.
I know not everyone has had the same kind of theatre background as me. And I realize that probably the majority of the world have never been taught theatre manners. Fine. But don't sit next to me. On a similar note I think it's a little sad that I had to enter the word "theatre" into the dictionary on my computer so that it would stop trying to underline it in red and tell me it was spelled wrong. For reference, in my mind "theatre" is the stage and "theater" is movies. I'm not sure if that's right or not, but that is how I usually differentiate.
Anyway, back to Billy Elliot! Talented cast, beautiful story, amazing dancing :) I want to include a couple of videos in this post instead of my normal Tony Award performance one because there are some really fun moments associated with Billy Elliot.
Here is the normal performance from the Tony Awards:
This is the acceptance speech of the three boys who share the role of Billy when they won the Tony. This is the first time 3 people have won a Tony award for the same category so not only is it Tony history, but their acceptance speech is really cute!
And finally, this is the opening sequence from the 2009 Tony Awards where they perform a tiny snippet of each of the nominated shows for Best Musical that year. (Did I mention Billy Elliot won?). Billy Elliot is the first one and it really shows off how talented these kids are.
A few days ago for class we had to do another video response kind of like the last one I did about my interaction in digital communities. This response had to be based on a book we read called The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming. I definitely recommend this book. It's a short read and is set up in the form of a graphic novel. It's actually based on a movie that this woman made and is about her journey to find out more about her great grandfather who, it turns out, is a famous magician. Her book was really good and inspired me to talk about how I receive the stories of my own family. My response is not fabulous (I didn't have a lot of time to devote to it), but I think it isn't too bad and is a nice tribute to my family :). Also...the new version of iMovie is terrible and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do something as simple as fade out audio. That is the reason the video ends sort of abruptly....I'll get those kinks worked out another day. So without further ado...
I have a lot to do to prepare for class today so this will be quick, but here is some of the things I've been working on for my classes this semester.
For my TV & Youth Development class I have to keep a TV Journal in blog format about different shows and their educational value. If you're interested in reading head to:
Please DO NOT comment on that site since it's for class :)
Though speaking of commenting, feel free to comment on this site! I have it set up so you don't even need to be a member or sign up for anything you can post with whatever name you feel like or anonymously (but that's not as much fun as then I don't know who you are).
The other bit of work I wanted to share is a video I made as a discussion response in my Culture, Media, and Education class. I'm actually pretty proud of it.
The question I was answering is as follows:
How would you describe the nature of your participation in various digitally mediated communities? Put another way, in what ways are you from your communities in which you participate?
I hope you enjoy watching it :)
I'm off to class! I'll post soon about my internship :)
So again...late update. But late is better than never, right?
In this edition of Allison's life...three weeks after it happens.....
*swooshy sound effects and a lot of fog*
Allison goes to the theatre! (I know it sounds strange, I mean after all I never go to the theatre.....)
A couple weeks ago there was a lot of snow in NYC. So much so that we actually got a snow day! That's right, TC closed its doors and I had one class canceled. Unfortunately the class that got canceled only meets every other week so my first class won't even be until two days from now. But oh well. That was the day I was planning on going to the orientation for my internship (more on that later) and that, however, was not canceled so I trekked down to Times Square and went to my orientation.
I was supposed to meet my friend for lunch back up on campus, but the orientation ran late so I texted her to see if we could reschedule so I didn't have to make her wait. Instead, she came down to Times Square and we had lunch there.
As I was wandering down Broadway waiting for her to arrive I found myself looking at the half price ticket booth (or the TKTS booth as it is formally called). As I looked up at the sign that said it would open in a couple of hours a thought struck me....wouldn't it be awesome to see a show tonight? Usually I have at least a couple days of advanced warning when I see a show (so I can get cheaper tickets) so I don't usually do these spur of the moment types of things. When my friend arrived on the scene, I jokingly mentioned how it might be fun and crazy to drop everything and find a show to see that night. Her automatic response was, "Ok. What show?". And this is why my friend and I get along so well :)
So we had lunch and mulled the idea over. Seeing a show would be awesome of course, but did we want to spend the amount that it would be, even at half price? Finally, after, well not very much debate at all actually, we said, "oh heck with it, let's go see a show!". We spent the next couple hours wandering around Times Square going to all the box offices of shows we were interested in and asking about their rush or lottery ticket policies. Note: Wicked does a lottery 2 hrs before the show (tix $26), Spiderman is doing rush tix starting 10am the day of any show (tix $30), Lion King does NOTHING!, Other shows do things too but those were several that we were particularly interested in. This isn't counting shows that we knew we could find at TKTS.
So after, more debate this time, we decided on a course of action. At 5:30 (2 1/2 hours before showtime) we would get in line for the Wicked lottery. Basically you stand in a huge line with a gazillion of your new closest friends, you write your name on a piece of paper, then you wait until 6pm when they shout the names of 6 or 7 lucky individuals (they give away the first row which is 13 seats and each person is allowed to sign up for up to 2 tickets). Those individuals get to pay $26 for front row seats! It's pretty cool but I think you have to be really lucky to get your name picked out.
Our names were not, however, pulled...but no worries...we had a back up plan! We figured we probably wouldn't be lucky enough for Wicked tickets so...on to TKTS we went! The line (that is always huge right when it opens) had died down enough that it was, well, almost non existent. But the important thing is they still had tickets left for La Cage aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammar, which is what we wanted to see.
It was an amazing show. That about sums up that experience. The actors were incredible, Kelsey Grammar was incredible, Douglas Hodge (playing the other lead role) was incredible, the show itself is incredibly written. Basically a fun fun night for all involved.
Here is the basic storyline as posted on Broadway.com:
Georges is the suave owner of a glitzy drag club on the French Riviera. Partnered romantically with his high-strung star performer, Albin (who goes by the stage name Zaza), the pair live a charmed life—until Georges’ son, Jean-Michel, turns up engaged to the daughter of a conservative right-wing politician who’s coming to dinner.
Probably one of the most impressive feat were these guys....dressed as girls....doing flips and cartwheels and amazing dancing...all in 6 inch heels!
The story itself is also really sweet and all about love and family. So basically I had an amazing time and it was totally worth it!
