Matt Elliott – Writing and Digital Media Class Blogs http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com Blogs by Students in the Fall 2014 Section Tue, 05 May 2015 17:14:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.3 10/16-10/20 Presentations http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/10/20/1016-1020-presentations/ Mon, 20 Oct 2014 14:29:24 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=108 ]]> Out of the presentations, I’d would have to choose Prezi as seeming the most helpful with Storify coming as a close second. The advantages of having an application that can really mix up the presentation archetype would be too good to pass up, and despite the learning curve with using it I think the pay off would be worth it. The advantages of an interactive presentation model are readily apparent, and I’m hoping I can find a way to integrate it with out final project.


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10/15 Applications Review http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/10/15/1015-applications-review/ Wed, 15 Oct 2014 23:27:48 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=103 ]]> The big winner from today’s applications has to be Draft. Had I known such an application existed my freshmen year of college, I would have spent a lot of money on it. I don’t know how much I intend to use it for Project 3 but I can see this application being immensely helpful for my post-undergraduate life as I prepare and submit articles. Having easy quick access to a copy-editing service and an easy way to share writings online without using Google docs would be immensely helpful, especially considering the addition of a “confirm changes” option.

I saw Cowbird as potentially being useful as well, but that’s the sort of application I would have to spend some time with before deciding if it was actually helpful or just a new way to waste time.


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750 Words Presentation http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/10/13/750-words-presentation/ Mon, 13 Oct 2014 13:28:05 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=98 Read more →

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Presentation.


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10/12 Applications Review http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/10/12/1012-applications-review/ Sun, 12 Oct 2014 23:17:52 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=101 ]]> With my own application, I don’t see much use in the near and present future but I’ll revisit the idea of using it once I’ve graduated from school. The application that I found most interesting was the PicMonkey app. The user friendly interface appealed to me because the last time I knew how to use Photoshop was circa 2009. The iPhone has some handy applications available that do the same thing as this application but for the sake of working on Project 3, I’d like something a little more in depth without causing me to flounder through countless options and ill defined tools.


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Gif of the Week!: Wolf of Wall Street http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/10/05/gif-of-the-week-wolf-of-wall-street/ Sun, 05 Oct 2014 21:56:33 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=82 ]]> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCHmOAbJBs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YCHmOAbJBs


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Meme of the Week http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/10/05/meme-of-the-week/ Sun, 05 Oct 2014 21:51:49 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=78 ]]> I need to do laundry but my roommate is using the washercarnist 2

carnist

 

if i had one

 

I have to say my favorite meme would be the carnist meme simply because the other ones I came across were familiar to me already. Its major downside is that it will generally only appeal to the already veg*n community and those unfamiliar with veg*nisms won’t understand some of the various iterations of the meme.


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9/22: 750 Words http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/09/22/922-750-words/ Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:56:44 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=61 ]]> I was drawn to the application “750 Words” because of it’s simplicity and usefulness. I’d looked at some of the others and decided against them because, frankly, while they seemed useful to some people they didn’t have much potential for practical use in my own work. This application allows for the daily spew off thoughts that is beneficial for anyone trying to get their thoughts sorted at the beginning of the day. While interrogating the interface for this application I’ll be looking at the advantages of such a simple interface and how the constraints of the application can ultimately be it’s strongest asset.


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September 8th Summary http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/09/22/september-8th-summary/ Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:51:09 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=59 ]]>
  • What I Did
  • I’ve tweaked the color scheme and messed around with getting appropriate links to show up as well. I messed about with page arrangements a bit but this theme seems to have some unusual restrictions as to which widgets can go where.

    • Why I Did It

    The blog currently has an affect that is somewhere between serene literary quote blogger and hermetic self-conversating, cave lurking, blogger. I’ve nothing against either, I’d just like to keep my aesthetic more consistent though.

    • What I Still Need to Do

    I’d like to get all of my main links ( Archives, Tags, Personal Info) all on the top bar of my blog but it looks like I’ll need to teach myself a bit more about how to turn widgets into pages that redirect the visitor. I’m not sure how I want to do it but I would also like to start integrating some more  aspects of multimodal design to add a little pizzazz to the blog to keep it from being a standard drudging site of static pages and blocks of text. I’ve been trying to keep my posts short and I’ve edited them after the fact to make them more concise, because no one really has time for farting around on long winded sentences like this one when they are perusing websites.

    “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
    -Kurt Vonnegut Jr.


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    September 12th Summary http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/09/12/september-12th-summary/ Fri, 12 Sep 2014 14:40:12 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/?p=50 ]]> What I Did:
    1. I added a page with recommended music videos.
    2. I reformatted the titles of my posts and messed about with the arrangements and headers of the posts.
    3. I removed and rearranged some of my widgets.
    4. I changed the header and cropped it.

    Why I did It:

    I wanted to add an aural and visual element to the blog an the most straightforward way to approach that seemed to be to add a personalized page with recommended music videos that emphasized the gestural and aural aspects of design. They’re all fun videos so if you haven’t heard those songs before they are worth watching for just the visual aspect alone. I then reworked the format of some of my posts and added headers to make the blocks of text in my posts more spatially appealing to the eye.

    While working on that I realized that giving my blog a static  front page meant I needed to make the posts  more easy to find so I reworked my sidebar and put the archives at the top so that anyone new to the page would hopefully see it right away. I also changed the header because I seem to be in a constant struggle to find an image that works with this theme’s resolution constraints on the header. I still have some minor editing to do but my last hurdle seems to be finding the right color balance in the limited pallet that my theme allows for.


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    September 10th Summary http://fall14blogs.tracigardner.com/2014/09/10/september-10th-summary/ Wed, 10 Sep 2014 15:00:32 +0000 http://mattelliottsblogshere.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/september-10th-summary/ ]]>     Today I edited the about me section and added a contact form, in addition to messing about with the color palette at the recommendations of two of my classmates. I added in a photo of myself and streamlined my sidebars so that there would be less extraneous information cluttering the page. I also gave my blog a static homepage for the sake of consistency.

        I still need to expand upon my posts and expand my blog now that I have an idea of how to title and arrange the pages. Once I’ve added a few more pages to this blog I’ll need to take a moment to assess the blogs organizational aspects, but for now I can say I’m starting to feel alright about how this blog looks and presents itself.


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