Twain Figure

Here are some photos of the Mark Twain figure that I created for the stop motion film below. I used a Sigmund Freud action figure and modified him to look like Twain. Its kind of cool what a little paint and yarn can do. I think he turned out pretty good.

Music!

I love music! Anyone who love music raise your hand. I thought you would. And because you love music as much (maybe even more) than I do, I will share a wonderful site with you. Pandora is a great site that lets you input an artist and then provides you with artists of a similar nature to listen too. The down side of this is that they only give you one song for each artist and they will only let you listen to so many artists within an hour. Still a great way to discover new music.

Twain Project

At the end of Dr. Nelson's Mark Twain course, English majors are required to submit a final project.This project can be whatever they wish to create. I decided to create a stop-motion video with some other attributes as well. For anyone interested in how I did it; I used a program called Stop Motion Animator. The program is a free one and while it is a good program it does lack some ease of useability. I imported my video into Microsoft Movie Maker and added text slides and video transitions and effects.Here are some pictures of my setup and finally the video. I altered the video some but because the previous one would not play you won't be able to know the difference. This one should work, so enjoy!

To The Winter Wind

A poem that I have recently composed. Enjoy.

West wind blasting
Fridged seasons
Through the leafless
branches of an oak.
Face numbed from
The intense onslaught
Of a late season;
Solid soil, beige patches littered
About the neighbourhood lawns;
A backdrop, the azure sky
Defining black bottoms,
Geese slowly sailing
Through heaven’s sea;
Monotone visions
Guiding my eyes,
A directing pattern formulates;
Should I follow?

The rapid vibration
Of every muscle
Is a painful reminder
Of what’s to come.
Frosty dawns and fridged
Day blasts into the
Present time; night
Brings the comfortable
Glow of a half-crescent moon;
Piles of fleece
And down heaped
Upon the slender frames,
Two bodies sit, intermingled;

Thoughtless exchange of temperature
As images entertain
Cones & rods & nerves;
With a horizontal flip
The flicker of RGB
Graffities bodies
Dancing, laughing, crying;
Radiating heat permeating,
An amalgamation
Of 98.6 degrees; 197.2
Degrees sweltering beneath
The fleece mountains & valleys.

The soft gentle grasp
Of her hand
Boiling the blood
In my arm;
I sink
Into the molded foam,
The worn brown fabric,
To entertain the dilated
Pupils with flickering embers.

Collaborative Project

For a collaborative class that I am taking, we have been examining the nature of collaborative writing. Our first project was completed by the entire class (six of us including Dr. Weinstein). For this first project we examined the nature of collaborative writing and composed a paper explaining the process of it in addition with how we collaborated on the project. We are now on the second project of the class in which two groups have been created and required to compose a column such as any newspaper column. We are about finished with our second project which we had to create a collaborative environment utilizing any tools that we felt were beneficial to the project. After the final draft of the column we will then review our process and suggest changes or express approbation of our process. If you would like to view how my group's process and composition has taken place visit http://adamleebruns.wordpress.com/. There you will find links to other aspects of our process. I hope that you find any of this useful and perhaps even use some of the tools and process in your collaborative efforts!

Stop-Motion

Here is a short stop-motion film I made. Enjoy!

Tattoo

Have you ever wanted to get a tattoo but were too squeamish about the whole needle tapping into your arm thousands of times thing. Well, now you can! Here is a photo of me that I doctored in Photoshop. We had to emulate a magazine cover and since I have always wonder what I would look like with arms full of tattoos I chose... you guessed it, a tattoo magazine. I found a wonderful tutorial on the web that showed how to alter images on a body so that they appear as tattoos. Here is the link for any of you that want to try. I alter the process a little for my needs but it basically staid the same.
The photo is just me with tattoos; its not the magazine cover.

A Little Help

What's to say. Today, for some odd reason, I decided to delete my MySpace and Fackbook accounts. I think my reasoning behind this is that I devote more of my interest to these trivial pages of social interaction than I do to my school work. Why do I feel the need to know that Jim is now "chillin' in his room." Should I care that Jim is chillin' or should I be concerned with Darl and why he torched a neighbors barn with his mother's body inside.

The semester is coming to an end and I am feeling a little frazzled. Have I done enough this semester? I feel vapid and clueless, as though my brain has puttied and will not longer spew forth anything worth merit. I feel defeated and am finding no refuge in the things I previously have. What is the problem? Perhaps it is just a case of finals blues. I hope this to be the truth because I want to think again! I feel that I should focus towards the goal; one small step at a time.

Kent Meyers

Here is a post from my personal blog that I feel should be on this DSU bolg because it definitely relates to school. The post concerns a Mark Twain selected authors course that I am taking. Enjoy:

Kent Meyers, a published author and professor and BHSU, visited a literature class of mine today. His advice for writing: write, write, and write. This is what I caught from his presentation. He also preached observation which is something that I think all great and good writers possess. Today he discussed a story of his titled "Light in the Crossing."

His process for writing is what intrigued me the most. He doesn't begin by outlining a story or even really thinking about it ahead of time; his process for writing this story was to write. He began writing and continued writing (over a period of time) until this story emerged; this was fascinating! I too thoroughly enjoy creative writing and found this writing process out last summer. I would retreat to the library where I would begin reading until I no longer wanted to read and then I began to write. I did start the writing process with anything specific in my mind, but instead thought of a situation and built it from there. to my surprise the story emerged and I became enveloped in it! What a connection.

He also spoke about tension and this is what he looked for when writing. He wanted to find or create a situation in which this tension, between two people perhaps, would play out. He would keep within the moment and space where the tension was created and elaborate. I loved hearing him speak about creative writing and now have some framework for my future writing. Thanks Kent Meyers!

Font, what's a font?

Have you ever come across some really cool text and you wished you knew what it was; well now you can. If your like me and have had to reproduce something and needed to use a text that you were not familiar with then I offer you a solution. There is this great web-site that allows you to upload an image file and then it presents you with comparable fonts. It isn't always the most accurate and depends greatly on the resolution of your image, but I promise you that it works; I have used it. Sometimes the site will direct you to a pay site for your font but with a little determination, you can search for the font and hopefully find it on a freeware site. Searching for the font, again, does not always result in felicitous circumstances. But to all of you that are in need of such a tool here it is:
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

The Beginning

Hello all. This will be my first post on my DSU blog! I will update periodically and hope to inform any who visit this page. A little about myself, I am in my fifth year hear at DSU, I know five years but I love it, and I am an English for Information Systems major. What does EIS mean? Well, it's just a fancy name for and English student who likes technology. Basically I learn to use technology and writing with language in mind. I hope to graduate soon and plan on attending graduate school (if all goes as planned). I will try to post every week, so enjoy!