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!