Reflective Post Week 14

Hey hi howdy people!! Fair warning this will be a long, long 500 words as I try and figure out what to write about. So basically, this week I have done no work on the final project because I have 3 other final projects for other classes due Friday/Monday that have taken precedence this week. Hope that’s ok to say but I guess this is my reflection blog post so we’re gonna roll with it (insert laughing crying emoji). I don’t know how to actually put the emoji so for the purposes of this I will be putting that ^.

Reflective Post Week 13

Another week, another week of project work. In my head that flowed a lot better ya know like “another week, another dollar” or whatever the saying is. But anyways this week was a good week filled with lots of changes in my personal life but some steadiness in the work of classes. As classes are winding down and there is less work to be done as we just have projects and studying for exams, it is nice to have some sameness in this class. We always have this due on Fridays, a constant. We don’t have readings or work on Wednesday anymore but we do have work for our project, so let me run through what we did this week.

Reflective Post Week 12

While this week we didn’t have any readings or technical things to learn, we still had a lot to get done. For the final project, I chose to work with a group, which has been great! Honestly, I am normally not a big fan of group projects but working with my group this time has been great. We all get along well, get our work done, and contribute to what needs to be done. Everyone is very patient and has contributed so many ideas, our project really wouldn’t be the same without all these ideas.

Reflective Blog Post on What is an Audience?

I normally do these on Friday, but I have a busy week and wanted to knock this out! So, this week we talked about audience. More specifically, the implied audience vs. the real audience. Dr. Pilsch went in-depth about both audiences as well as other topics. He talks about how the implied audience is one who has a particular role to play or expects a certain set of expectations from the document. We then see some questions outlined that may help us in our search to find the implied audience for our writing and to make sure we are catering to them as well as to our real audience. After learning about implied audience we discussed real audience and it is described like so, “Real readers, meanwhile, are less a question of an abstract class or category of reader and, instead, put forth the idea of imagining who readers are as real, specific humans with particular characteristics that must be accounted for.”

Reflective Blog Post on What is Aleatory Poetry?

This week we learned about “aleatory poetry,” which is the process of using chance to generate text. We learned its definition, the randomness of it, and how to use tracery to create. This has been a really fun week for me because when doing the reading this week, I actually understood everything and the html didn’t look like a total mess. I think that is because I am starting to finally understand everything we’ve learned and that is so exciting for me.

Reflective Blog Post on What is Hypertext?

This week we learned about hypertext, the history of it, and some examples of it. We first read about Wikipedia as hypertext and the wiki rabbit hole. Then we read about twine, a program that makes it simple to create interactive fiction and games. We also got to watch a video on how to create a Twine game and honestly, I’m a big fan.

Hands-on Activity for What is Hypertext?

I really enjoyed the hands-on activity this week because the twine games are very interesting to me. I kind of clicked through all of them a little bit but ‘A Tale of Crowns’ is the one that seemed most interesting to me so I spent time playing that game. I chose this twine game because after reading the intro’s for all of them this seemed similar to a book I would love to read, little did I know this is actually more like a book and less like a game. I don’t really feel like it was like a traditional game at all because for me when I think about games I think about how there are players you can see and it is interactive in the sense that you can move the players around or something. Essentially I think of a traditional game like something I would play on a DS or PS4 or XBOX or something. I think this twine game is similar because you do get to make decisions but it is different in the sense that you read the story and see what is happening in that way. I think I would say this twine game is more like a traditional short story because it has all the same aspects and I know I spent more time reading than anything else. I think the only difference between this and a traditional short story is the fact that you design your character and get to make decisions. Overall, I actually really enjoyed my experience with the twine game because I love reading and getting to make decisions so it was perfect for me and I can’t wait to play it more and other games!

Reflective Blog Post on Where Are My Files?

This week we learned some more specifics about GitHub and how we have been using it for its pages support as a blogging engine. We dove into specific things that you can do to make it all run smoother on your computer, however, per usual this all went way over my head.

Semesterly Recap Over Week 7

This week we learned about CSS or cascading style sheets. We went over how CSS works, how to apply it to HTML and markdown, and how to extend built-in styles in Jekyll.

Reflective Blog Post on What is Style?

This week we learned about style and boy was I excited when I heard that because web design and making things pretty is my favorite thing! However, I have never worked with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) before or really any of the things we learned about. In our reading for the week, we looked at how CSS worlds, how to apply it to HTML and markdown, and how to extend built-in styles in Jekyll. Normally, I like to write about how I was able to learn more through our Hands-on activity because I truly am such a do it to learn it type of person. However, I got a chance to go to office hours and get some instruction so I cannot wait to apply what I learned there next week when I finish changing the style of my blog!

Reflective Blog Post on What is Metadata?

This week we learned about metadata and how to add categories to our websites. Simply put metadata provides information about the data that we encounter every day. Some examples we talked about were analog card catalogs at the library, LOC information lists, and the copyright page you can find at the front of books. I know for me it was surprising to hear about how much metadata I interact with every day and had no idea about. I began to look up different examples of metadata to see if I could find more that I interact with often or find interesting!

Reflective Blog Post on What is Markup?

This is one of the first weeks where I truly feel like I have a good grasp of the reading. HTML is very confusing to me so when markdown was introduced I was very excited to get to learn more about it and I feel like I could use it very easily after completing the class readings and activities.

Reflective Blog Post on What is a File?

This week, yet again, I learned something about files that I previously had little to no knowledge of. We read about files as a metaphor for the data on a computer, different types of files, a plain text as a special type of file, and editing and viewing plain text files. I’ll be honest after reading the whole ‘What is a File?’ reading, I was still kinda confused. There was so much information covered I felt like I couldn’t take it all in. But, it all got better with the hands-on activity this week. Reading this and spending time learning how to actually create the file’s helped so much, guess I’m learning that I am a do it type of learner!

Hands-on Activity for What is a File?

Here is the link to my page: https://kmaclin17.github.io/about/me.html

Reflective Post on What is Data?

I have never learned about data before, let alone thought about it and I’ll be honest at first I really was wondering what this class had to do with getting my English minor. After reading the first part of, “What is Data?” where it says ‘the idea of data, as a computer sees it’ I began to see why it is important.

Hands-on Activity on What is Data?

So, I have learned more about data this week than I have in my whole life. I am still learning and do not feel like I have fully grasped everything yet. With that being said, I believe that these visualizations use both scalar and compound types of data.

First Post

This is my first post.