Tag Archives: Assignments

Mini Assignment 6: Make a Gif

There’s been a lot going on with my family lately, so we decided to take a little mini vacation over the long weekend. I’ve never gone on vacation in the middle of a semester, but I managed to do so without missing classes or falling behind!

Yes… that’s my mom eating a salad on Big Thunder Mountain. I love my crazy family.

Peer Review 3: Taking Life by the Love Handles

For my peer review, I am reviewing Jenella’s blog titled Taking Life by the Love Handles.

A quick glance of her homepage, I know why she chooses this theme. The pink tones and colorful photos of food are welcoming. The white is a nice contrast to highlight her blog content and it helps accentuate the colors of her photos. It’s appealing and easy on the eyes. It compels me to read more!

As you scroll down her homepage, her social media pages are easily available. To me, this is showing that she markets her personality with her blog. They go hand in hand and I believe she includes her own ‘self’ into her content. Where she eats tells something a little bit more about herself.

Food is the center of her brand, and she makes it clear. On her About page, she explains why she loves food and why it’s important to her. This idea and how she presents it is creating a space where she expresses herself and why she writes about food. She even addresses this when she shares her personal experience on doing something other than food on her Food and Friends blog.

These ideas are present and explained danah boyd’s It’s Complicated where she writes about the feeling of togetherness and through networked publics, communities can be connected through technology. For Jenella, she is creating this blog of togetherness. Almost all her times eating out are with friends! She shares her physical experiences through this network and her other channels.

She does a great job showcasing this physical space too. With her social media presence and her appealing photos, she is spreading wide on multiple channels. The pictures serve as a tangible step to a purely networked space. As seen in the Youtube stars’ trend on publishing books,  it’s good to have a balance of online and offline content. Her blog posts have a balance of media and text. It’s a bonus that she takes great photos!

I do want to suggest a way to have these ideas better presented in her blog. I feel that she has a lot to say, and it doesn’t have to sacrifice the content she already writes.

Hot Ones on Youtube

Hot Ones is one of my favorite web series because it brings a fresh take on interviews; eating very spicy wings and talking. What I want to highlight for Jenella’s blog is the fact that some guests do a great job conversing about the wings and about their careers well that it becomes an interview for both. Alton Brown comes to mind. Each restaurant she goes to does not necessarily need a ‘deep’ or ‘introspective’ conversation with her friends, but I see her as being part of the content too. I’m curious to see why she chooses this restaurant or what is exciting or familiar about this restaurant? These elements would give more ‘food’ to the readers about who she is and exemplify the reasons she loves the food.

Peer Review #3

Introduction

For the third peer review of this course, I’ve been assigned to review Joaquin’s blog – Belly Good Food Review. From the about page and the general recent content on his blog, it is apparent that this is a food review blog. I’m going to be categorizing the review of this blog in terms of general user experience (design) and content, relative to the demographic of the blog.

User Experience (Design)

Joaquin’s primary demographic for his blog would be foodies, or other food reviewers. I’ve personally known quite a few foodies myself and from hundreds and thousands of Instagram posts, it is common knowledge that they are famous for their appreciation for art and aesthetics. This brings us to the homepage of Belly Good Food Review, which is in my opinion, fantastic. The background of a picture with a filter of cool colors is complimented by the white texts of the name of this blog and the introductory statement. Further down the page, the background transitions to what looks like wooden panels, overlaid by individual posts with white borders and a picture that’s relevant to the post. The layout of the posts on the homepage is probably one of my favorite aspects to the blog as a user. I appreciate that the sizes of the posts are sufficient to showcase the content with a large picture, but not large enough to become a nuisance to have to scroll through.

The design of this blog is simply aesthetic, and generally a pleasant experience to surf through. That being said, there are some minor tweaks that I would suggest for this blog to make the user experience even better. As I scrolled through the posts, and commuted my way to page 3, I wanted to take a look at the “About” page, however, I could not find a navigation menu. I feel that a navigation menu is critical to help keep your audience oriented on your website, even more so as you add more content. Adding a navigation menu is a means of saving time and hassle for users, though a few seconds to go back to the home page and click on the “About” page might sound insignificant, but in my opinion, I feel that every second is valuable from the user’s perspective.

Content

The first impression of the blog from the homepage that I had was that it was going to be a fun read. This is because the introductory statement showed a sense of humor, that I just haven’t found in other blogs. “Peas to meat you! Orange you glad you discovered this site? Lettuce get right to it and taco ‘bout some gouda food!” word play genuinely brightened my mood, and I feel that it has and will continue to do that for his other viewers as well.

The first impression of the blog from the homepage that I had was that it was going to be a fun read. This is because the introductory statement, and the title from some of the blog posts like “New Design, Who Dis?” showed a sense of humor, that I just haven’t found in other blogs. The word plays in the introductory statement on the homepage “Peas to meat you! Orange you glad you discovered this site? Lettuce get right to it and taco ‘bout some gouda food!” genuinely brightened my mood, and I feel that it has and will continue to that for his other viewers as well.

Conclusion

After reading some of Joaquin’s blog posts, I feel that Belly Good Food Review’s most marketable trait is Joaquin himself. The personality and rapport that’s created on this blog is phenomenal, the light-hearted comedy would be the secondary or even the primary factor that people return to this site. With more functionality that’s based towards the user experience like adding a navigation bar, I feel that this is a website that I’d visit daily, even when I’m not quite a foodie!

 

 

 

Mini Assignment #4 Remixing

In this assignment, I mixed sound into the scene of Interstellar. Showing the original version first, it describes the original mood of the scene. I added an audiotrack on the top of the video, and the song is “Home Alone Theme” by John Williams.  The mood of the scene dramatically changed as I mixed the audio, and at the same time, I also added a laughing effect. That totally reversed the mood of the scene. In this assignment, I did the sound effect, how important the sound is, in a film, especially, in the movie. I used Adobe Premiere program to edit the video, and I downloaded the movie scene from Youtube. I also downloaded sound files from Youtube.

inter

Mini Assignment 4: Remix Something!

Hi, my girlfriend took a really cute interaction of 2 dogs. We both love a Shiba Inu so this is extra great to me. She did her own edit to it, but I wanted to make my own remix to it. This is my mood for how aggressive all this productivity is to me. I chose the biggest looming figure over me that’s intimidating me. It’s not the smartphones that I’m writing about. It’s this:

yup.