Derek!

What is the (red) thing?

The (red) thing is a campaign by Gap to support AIDS in Africa. Bono, from the band U2, convinced Gap, and other companies such as Apple, to make their products red. Part of the money that companies make off of project red go to AIDS research in Africa. Here is a point that my teacher, Clarence Fisher, brought up. “Are these companies only doing this to support AIDS research in Africa, or is there something else involved.” This is a very good point. My teacher also said that publicity could be a part of it. I completely agree. Another possibility is bragging rights. If I were a part of Gap or Apple, I would be bragging my butt off. Even though it is quite childish, you never know, right?

What does this have to do with Nata Village?

Nata is a small town in Botswana, Africa. They have their own blog that tells about their daily lives. CLICK HERE to go to their blog. One of their posts, written on October 25,2006, was about how Nata was featured in Gap’s campaign by Current Tv and Gap. They are extremely proud to be a part of this campaign.

(Above) This is what you would see on Current Tv

(Below) This is what you would see on Gap

My Conclusion

My conclusion is that this is an incredible campaign and I hope it goes well. It also makes me wish our town had the Gap so I could buy a shirt to support AIDS research in Africa. I hope you guys support this wonderful campaign.

What is Information Aesthetics?

Information Aesthetics is a website about different technologies and neat ways they can be used. Usually when I read a post from Information Aesthetics, I mostly see technologies used in forms of art. Information Aesthetics is also on my “required reading” folder on bloglines.

Ambient Clock

This post was written yesterday. It is about the ambient clock. I found it interesting. It’s neat how a clock can remind you that you had to go to a meeting that day. That was just an example, it can be used to remind you about anything. I also thought it was neat how it showed it using colour. For example, it might show red for you have something to do right away. I thought it was neat that ambient clocks are powered by Google Calender. Don’t worry, ambient clocks don’t read your mind! To conclude my response, I thought this post was very well written and the subject of ambient clocks was very interesting. Whoever wrote this should give him/herself a pat on the back!

Visual Poetry

This post was written October 24,2006, which is two days ago. The post was about Boris Müller’s new visual theme he puts up every year for an international literature festival. This years theme is visual poetry. Here is an explaination of how visual poetry works mentioned in the post. “each words correspond to a numerical code by adding the alphabetical values of its letters together.” I could never put that in my own words. Anyway, just from reading that and looking at the picture above, I have a few questions:

1. What do the shapes mean?

2. What do the colours mean?

3. What do the lines mean?

4. How are numeral codes shown to the visual poem?

5. How can I read this?

 This next quote from this post shows some of the answers to my questions. “this number is mapped onto the position on a circle, & marked by a red dot. gray lines connect the dots in the sequence the words appear in the poem. the diameter of the circle on which the dots are placed is decided by the length of the poem.” I thought  it was neat how everything in a poem can be made as a shape and colour. To conclude this response, I thought it was very well written. The only problem is that there are a lot of words that I don’t understand. Other than that, the person who wrote it shoud give him/herself a pat on the back!

What is a knight?

A knight is a soldier mounted on horseback. In the Middle Ages, Knights fought in many battles such as the Crusades.

Who was a knight?

Young, rich men were usually knights. In order to become a knight, they had to buy a lot of things like horses, along with training. This is why people like nobles were usually knights.

 How did you become a knight?

There were many steps in becoming a knight like being a page, then a squire, then fighting your first battle.

Page

At the age of seven, a young, rich boy became a page. He went to a castle to begin his training. The ladies of the castle tought the pages how to sing and dance. They also told stories to pages. Pages also learned how to polish and fix the knight’s armour.

Squire

At the age of fourteen to fiffteen years old, a page became a squire. Since squires had to become big and strong, they usually fought each other. This became popular among the squires. Another popular sport was charging with a lance at a quintain. A quintain is a dummy that looks like a knight. This tought squires accuracy.

First Battle

At seventeen years old, a squire fought in his first battle. If he proved himself worthy, the squire would become a knight in a ceremony called dubbing. At a dubbing ceremony. the squire swears his loyalty to his lord or king. If the squire saved his baron during the battle, the dubbing ceremony was performed on the battle field.

The Code of Chivalry

The Code of Chivalry is rules that a knight had to follow in order to be an “ideal knight”. For example, a knight had to be a ruthless fighter, yet be fond of poetry and music. A knight also had to have a manly appearance. Loving a lady from afar was also a good quality, along with being a good Christian. Since there were so many rules, the “ideal knight” didn’t really exist.

Armour

There were many changes in armour through the middle ages. For example, in the 1100, armour used to be made mostly of chainmail (circular, metal rings). By about 1420, metal plates covered the whole body.

Tournaments and Jousting

Tournaments were used to train knights for battle. These tournaments usually took place in a field just outside of a castle. Earlier in the Middle Ages, tournaments used to be two groups of knights charging at each other. The last team standing won. Since this was to dangerous, popes tried to ban the sport for over 100 years. Then, there was the joust. Instead of two groups of knights charging at each other, only two people charged at each other. This resulted in less deaths of knights and horses, but the sport was still dangerous.

Here are two people jousting.

CLICK HERE to go to a website about knights.

This is what I learned about knights…

 Who is King Arthur?

King Arthur is a famous king in the Middle Ages. He was very powerful. People were jealous of him because he was so powerful.

Many legends were made about King Arthur. Many of these legends were told to people just to get through the day, since living in the Middle ages was so harsh for the peasants. Here is a legend about King Arthur that we talked about in class.

His Birth and Rise to Kingship

Uther, an important noble, was at an important gathering of nobles. He saw a beautiful woman. He falls in love with her. Her name was Ygerne. She turns out to be Gorlois’s wife. Gorlois is an important noble who owned the castle. Ygerne saw Uther staring at her, so she tells her husband. He finds Uther and tells him to leave. Since he did this in an unproper manner, Uther had the right to declare war. Uther asks Merlin, a powerful wizard, to help him get Ygerne, knowing that winning the war wouldn’t help. Merlin says he’ll help, but only if he gets his first born child. Merlin makes Uther look like Gorlois. He finds Ygerne, and makes a baby. Uther gives his baby to Merlin.

 At fifteen, Arhur’s dad dies. A big war starts about who will be the next king. Meanwhile, Arthur is in the care of Sir Ector while the Arch Pope prays that god will find a way to find the true king. Then, at Christmas time, a sword in the stone appears in the courtyard. The Pope said that whoever pulled the sword from the stone, he would become king. One day, Sir Kay, Arthur’s stepbrother, was getting ready for a tournament. He tells Arthur to find a sword. Arthur goes in the courtyard and pulls the sword from the stone. He brings the sword to Sir Kay. Sir Kay recognizes the sword and claims that he pulled it out. Since nobody believed him, he had to insert it and pull it out. He couldn’t pull it out. He tells them that Arthur did it. Then, Arthur pulls the sword out. Now he is king.

Did you enjoy the legend?

Did I get all the facts right?

CLICK HERE  to go to a website about King Arthur.

What is the Youth Center

The youth center is a place where kids in grade six and up can go hang out on Fridays. There is a pool table, fooseball table, air hockey table, ping pong table, a tv, a cd player ,couches, and some books. You can also get food and drinks at the youth center.

What did I do there last night?

The youth center was fun last night. I had fun playing pool and air hockey and fooseball. The music was great too. A funny thing that I remember from last night was that I was playing with the pool stick. It was spining around and around. Then I drop it. It made a big CLANG noise. Then everybody gave me a wierd look then went back to what they were doing. All of a sudden, I hear Ashley laughing so loud my ears could pop. Well, it wasn’t that loud, but you probably get the point. Another thing I remember is that Jordan and I were playing air hockey. It was a close game. The score was tied 9-9. Whoever got the next point one. I thought I was going to beat him. Then, he hits the puck right into my goal. Disappointed, I left.

I had a great time at the youth center and I can’t wait until next Friday!!

The Beginning.

Mr.Fisher gave us a photography assignment, which involved partners. As we were getting our partners, I was just sitting there. Dustin asked me if I had a partner. Of course, I said no. He asked me if I wanted to be partners with him. This was unexpected, but I had nobody else. I said that I would be partners with him. Then, Mr.Fisher said that we had to take some pictures, basically play time.

Play Time!!

Dustin and I took turns taking pictures. I had it one day and Dustin had it the next. Then one day, we went to the computer lab to edit our photos. Mr.Fisher said to explore using all different kinds of effects. Dustin and I, though, usually morphed our photos way too much. Days later, Mr.Fisher said that we had to focus on a theme. Play time was over.

What Was Our Theme?

We went through many changes with our theme. First our theme was nature. Then we found ourselves playing with the effects too much. That isn’t nature. So we decided to do an emotion. Our choices were between fear and anger. This was because we had a picture that suited fear and one that suited anger. We liked the one that suited anger more, but we didn’t know how to make the other ones like that. Then I thought, why don’t we do orange? I said that to Dustin and I’m pretty sure he loved it. So our theme was orange.

What Did We Do With the Photos?

None of our pictures were naturally orange, so we used effects to make them orange. We also used a lot of effects. Then, Mr.Fisher advised us to take pictures of things that are actually orange. So after school, I took pictures of things that are orange. At school the next day, we put them on the computer and worked on them. We thought we were done with our photos, and put them on a website called flickr. Flickr is a website where you can either put pictures on there or look at other peoples photos. Then, I decided I wanted to edit some of them the next day. So I did and them put them back on.

Today…

I went on flickr today. I looked at what our class put in. I also looked at my photos. When I looked at my photos, some of them just didn’t look right. So, I deleted them. Then, to get it over with, I named them. They are pretty lame names, so they will probably be changed. For example, there is “Stand Out” and “Pottery Clay”. As I was naming them, I slowly realized that these pictures didn’t look real. I knew this was because we put way too many effects on these photographs. To take advantage of this, I changed the theme to orange fiction. The official theme, I can finally say, is “Orange Fiction”. Then, I looked at the other peoples photographs again because I had nothing else to do.

What’s Left?

All that’s left of this photography assignment is to describe our photographs. Yes, we’re almost done. I can’t wait ’till we are done with this photography assignment. This means we are going to do more fun things with Mr.Fisher!!

Some of Our Photos.

 Kodak’s Top Ten Tips

I looked at Kodak’s top ten tips for taking photographs. I thought they were very helpful, especially for first time photographers. CLICK HERE to look at Kodak’s website. I recommend it! Here is Kodak’s top ten tips:

1. Get down on their level
2. Use a plain background
3. Use flash outdoors
4. Move in close
5. Take some vertical pictures
6. Lock the focus
7. Move it from the middle
8. Know your flash’s range
9. Watch the light
10. Be a picture director

Did you like these tips? Do think all of them are necessary?

My Opinion 

I think that these tips are very helpful, especially for first time photographers. Not all of them, though, I think are necessary. Here are my opinions on each of Kodak’s top ten tips.

Get down on their level

This is an awesome tip! If you go down to their level, you can see things from their point of view. Also, I think you can see more detail like more colour, more line, and more shape. This is probably my favourite tip out of them all.

Use a plain background

This one I’m not so sure about. Most of them would look nice, but others might need something in the background. I think this one depends on what theme or subject you want your photo to be.

Use flash outdoors

I think this one is obvious. Of course you would use flash outdoors, especially when it’s dark out (duh!). Although, this might not be obvious for other people, like people who never even seen a camera before. I think this one doesn’t really need to be in the top ten.

Move in close

This is an awesome tip, but you have to do it exactly right. There are two ways to do it. The obvious one is that you just take the picture close up. HELPFUL HINT: If you want to do it this way, make sure you flash isn’t on when you take the picture. If you do, it will turn out to be a flash of light. The other way is that you edit it to make it close.

Take some vertical pictures

This is a neat tip. It is very helpful, especially when you take a picture horizontally and you can’t fit something in the frame. It also adds a neat effect to most photos.

Lock the focus

This tip I didn’t quite understand at first. Now that I get it, I can tell you what it does. Locking the focus makes the picture look more sharp. This especially works if the subject is off-centered. I think this tip is awesome. For one, I learned something new. Secondly, you might have learned something too.

Move it from the middle

 In case you’re wondering, “it” means the subject. Moving the subject from the middle adds a neat effect. In my opinion, though, if you make it way off-centered, you can ruin a photograph.

Know your flash’s range

This tip helps with understanding flash. If you don’t know your flash’s range, you can ruin a photograph. This tip is probably the most helpful out of the ten.

Watch the light

I think this is an obvious tip as well. If you take a picture and there is light in the frame, it’s not going to turn out so well. The trick is to but your back against the sun and take the picture.

Be a picture director

This is probably the most obvious one. When you are taking picture, you are already being a picture director. You decide what to take pictures are and you know what to edit and delete.

My tip: Think of Thirds

I was surprised that thinking of thirds wasn’t in the top ten tips. Incase you don’t know what thinking of thirds is, it is taking a picture of something that looks like it is in thirds. They don’t even need to be equal thirds. 

Here is an example of thinking of thirds:

This is an exellent example of thinking in thirds. One third is the water, the second third is the boat, and the final third is the sky. This may not be an artistic way of showing thirds, but it is easier to understand.

 Who won? Kodak’s Top 10 or My Opinion?