Check out the website I built for a local business.
http://www.chimneysaversvt.com

Final Reflection

http://sites.google.com/site/jeffgreenseportfolio/Home
Developing my eportfolio helped me take a look back at my projects and reflect upon the process of my learning in this course. I organized my ePortfolio by links, multimedia, designs and more info because it seems to be the most open for ever growing expansion. I consider creativity to be one of the strengths of my work because with most of the tools we used anyone can make a product however with some creativity you can make it your own. If I had time, I might add more of my flash animations to the site by uploading them into youtube and then embedding them into my eportfolio.
I found to be the most effective technique in creating my projects to be the FATP. The simple process that seemed so trivial to me at first has become a very handy tool to help me get my thoughts organized before getting started on anything. This is something I will at least consider if not write down on my future work.
The most difficult challenge in my ePortfolio was giving it a clear layout that wasn't too busy and had a color scheme that was easy to read. I overcame this challenge by trial and error seeing how different colors looked and stood out against my background as you can see in my multimedia page which is clear, concise and easy to read.
In fact, the major differences between this version and the draft are the color scheme and the new content.

video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDTRo_A3NU

Video Reflection

I had a lot of fun on this project. I got to play with iMovie in ways I never have before the mixture of the photos and videos combined with the sounds and voiceover makes for an interesting result. It was a great way to get the creative juices flowing.

video pitch

An epic story about two ninja warrior forced to go through time no bigger than the end of a spoon. This is the tale of the journey they took to regain their true form.

Story/Script

Ninja Script

One dark day in the land of Ajnin, two of the greatest ninjas accidentally killed the Demon Gato’s beloved brother Neko while practicing their sweet ninja moves. Being a demon, Gato felt he had no choice but to seek revenge on these two ninjas. He decided to exact his revenge in the form of a curse, and what better curse than to shrink the ninjas, thus making their shuriken and katana useless against anything but a blade of grass?
With an evil laugh, he swirled around the ninjas and set the curse. He declared, “From this day forth you shall be nothing but useless little Mininins. Gone are your days of true ninja lifestyle! Now you shall fight nothing bigger than an ant, with a sword no bigger than the tine of a fork. And to think you dared to underestimate the force of the Demon Gato!”
The Mininins, however, are true ninjas who knew better than to accept their fate at face value. With their tiny swords at hand, they set off to find the way to end the curse. They knew they would have to travel a great distance to overcome their conflict with the Demon Gato. In order to find the best way to go about their journey, they sought counsel with the wise sage gnome. He advised that they would need to go on an epic journey to show the Demon Gato that they truly were sorry for Neko’s untimely death. Perhaps then the Demon Gato would lift the curse.
The first terrain they faced was the great jungle.
The second terrain they faced was the barren stone desert, where they once again faced the Demon Gato.
The third terrain they faced was the sand desert.
At long last, they arrived at their last challenging terrain: the great ocean. Fortunately for these two Mininins, they were able to fashion just the right sailboat out of discarded materials. As they say, one man’s trash is a Mininin’s treasure.
They sailed for days and days. Finally, they were able to demonstrate to the Demon Gato that they had paid penance, and they won him over. After a final ride on his back across the final treacherous terrain, the Mininins reached home, the curse was lifted, and they were restored to their final size.

video storyboard

video FATP

Form: video/digital story

Audience: anyone with a sense of imagination

Topic: cursed ninjas are miniaturized and must go on epic journey to remove the curse and regain their original size.

Purpose: to entertain

Animation Reflection

I have to say this project was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the GoAnimate.com set up and all of their tools (which I know I just scratched the surface of). At first I felt restricted thinking well geez I have to pick one of their characters and all I can do is make it walk or slide. I soon realized I was wrong. Finding out that you can switch off the heads of the characters and put them on to different bodies open new doors for me. When I realized how I could affect just the head I was truely sold.

I have to say I found it hard to get a good match with the voice over and mouth movement but what can you do. A free tool that gives you as much flexiblity as GoAnimate is awesome but you can't expect it to be perfect. I had some laughs putting this together although I am not sure anybody else will ever laugh at it. Oh well it was fun.

Gamers Pitch

If you have ever known a gamer you will understand where some of this is coming from. Sometimes I wonder where hardcore gamers come from because for the most part true hardcore gamers don't often get the chance to mate therefore they don't have kids. So one can safely conclude that true hardcore gamers are born they are not made.

GoAnimate.com: Gamers

GoAnimate.com: Gamers by Suprmnvt84

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

FATP of my Comic/Animation

Form: Comic Strip and Cartoon

Audience: Anyone familiar with gaming

Topic: Gaming social life

Purpose: to make people laugh and demonstrate the tools.

Sketchboard Comic

by suprmnvt84 | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

The process of the podcast was a little confusing to me because I have never done it before but at work people suggested that I use garageband to make mine. I couldn't figure it out so then I decided to work with things I knew. I filmed it with iMovie and then separated the audiotrack off of that.
I really liked the whole process and although mine is certainly unpolished I enjoy having the finish product. I enjoy the podcast I have discovered from iTunes especially the Onion Radio News. I think this was my favorite project to date.

My podcast

http://jgreen.podbean.com/mf/web/rxqqdn/podcast.mp3

Houndbites would not let me join so I found podbean to get the job done. My podcast is a movie review of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

http://www.jamendo.com/en/download/track/15655/do?output=contentonly

http://www.jamendo.com/en/download/track/145949/do?output=contentonly

http://www.transformersmovie.com/

FATP of my Podcast

Form:Podcast

Audience: Anyone

Topic: Movie Reviews

Purpose: To express my opinions about movies, that I have seen and inform others about them.

Podcast reviews

I download several podcasts many of them video but one audio. The audio one was the Onion radio news, it was pretty funny an one minute blurb about spacesuits smelling like wet astronaut. The others were video podcasts they were also comedies, one was a series that I have been familiar with for a while called Ask a Ninja, and the other the proffessionally made in association with HBO for the show the Flight of the Conchords.
Both were funny however it was interesting that each of them that the first podcasts in each series that I got were sales pitches. One for all HBO shows and the other for an iPod/iPhone app. It took me a minute to figure out how to download other episodes but once I did I was not disappointed. Specific casts to check out; Flight of the Conchords - Sugar Lumps, and The Onion Radio news, Space Suit Smells Like Wet Astronaut and Water Park Promises More Fun Than Water Is Capable Of Delivering, all very funny.

Presentation Reflection

I have to start by saying that I have been without a house phone for a month(since I moved), and I had to leave work early today so that I could be here when the Fairpoint Technician showed, they didn't. So when I started to come this presentation all I could think about was how bad they are at doing their job (as a company, I am sure they have very hard working employees). So the focus of this presentation was to vent to other disgruntled customers and show other people out there that they are not alone in their struggle. I think I have succeed in this regard,and I feel a little better about the whole thing too.
It has been a while since I have used anything but flash to make a presentation, but for variety's sake (and I probably would have struggled posting a swf) I decide to use powerpoint. i have to say that it was a bit frustrating. I kept having this problem when I tried to place a picture part way below the frame the whole program would spazz out (that is a technical term I work in IT ;) ). But it did pretty well otherwise and I got my presentation finished to my liking. When I uploaded it to slideshare I had to take it back down edit it and reload it. All my opacity disappear I had font problems and color issues more frustration. I realize I gripe a lot on this blog and for that I apologize, but this has been a doozey of a day.

Miscommunication

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Miscommunication

View more presentations from JeffGreen84.

Composition

I had trouble with pulling the pictures I took with my phone off of it and putting them on my mac apparently motorola doesn't support mac os. So I put together an impromptu photo session. These were my results. My composition comments are in the descriptions.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40407625@N05/?saved=1

Before and after

Before: this was me the night of my sleep clinic at DHMC.

First I selected and cut out the background. Then after selecting just the cut and pasted background I played with the channels until I settled on the one I chose I then went around on the background and blurred it. The result is as follows.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40407625@N05/

Gimp overview

I think that Gimp is a neat program for a freeware. I was kind of annoyed that it had to be ran in x11.
We use jing in my school district so I did my demo using that to view it click the link below.
http://www.screencast.com/users/JeffGreen/folders/Jing/media/400bc8c7-0a02-46ff-840a-fb6a7c943c65

Google Docs: A Review

Google Docs is a great tool for collaboration. It allows you to create documents of various type. (see below).

Once created you can share your document with others with google accounts. Share to allow them to read or edit the work so a spreadsheet can quickly be a group spreadsheet. For example a group of kids working on a lab report for chemistry class with google docs the can each write their part on the same document and the others can see what they have done, and check it for mistakes if they want. All you need to invite someone into a collaboration is an email address it is quite amazing.
Now the next question I had was what about documents I already have is there anyway I can upload them and yes there is you click the upload button and get a browse button for your whole computer(below.)

You can upload word processed documents, spreadsheets and presentations and collaboration in the same way as a created google document it really is quite impressive.

Check it out: http://docs.google.com/

Oops

The link to my ePortfolio is...


http://sites.google.com/site/jeffgreenseportfolio/Home

ePortfolio Reflection

The link below is the basic intro to the reflection that will follow.
http://jeffsmultimediaclassblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/project-1.html

I just finished creating my ePortfolio website. I have never created a free website before and I have got to say that there is more freedom than I would have thought there would have been in the process. I found it rather smooth and quite intuitive process. Having created and worked on websites in flash and dreamweaver I have to say that while google certainly isn't nearly as powerful as them it does get the job done.
I was however disappointed when I couldn't put up a good chunk of the content I wanted to put up because google does not support .swf files. This seems odd to me because flash is the most widely accessible website type in the world and the files are small so why not support it. Hopefully this is something that will come down the road, until then I guess I have to think about putting my animations on youtube and link to them that way. All in all it was a simple process with little frustration. Thanks google.

Freeware

I think that freeware/opensource is a wonderful thing. In the school district I work in we have OpenOffice on all of our computer images, and often suggest it to people who are currently using appleworks or microsoft works programs that are still out there floating around and causing trouble for anyone who uses them. OpenOffice is a great alternative to word or pages, whatever you use and it is available to people who don't have the money to spend on software. I just think it's a wonderful thing.

Discussion Board

I felt that there was a good amount of discussion on the discussion board this week but sometimes I feel it can be redundant to have both the blog and the discussion board.

Project 1

Form: (How: Website, Slideshow, Video, Essay, Letter, etc.)
Audience: (Who are they/When or the context/Where are they from)
Topic: (What: content or themes)
Purpose: (Why: To entertain, inform, sell, persuade, etc.)

Form - Website
Audience - potential clients
Topic - my work logos and websites I have designed and animations I have created.
Purpose - to sell my work and myself.

http://share.xmind.net/suprmnvt84/eportfolio-1/

At first upon watching the video Maximise the power of your brain - Tony Buzan, I thought that it was a little silly and that he was kind of like a televangelist selling his ideas as truths, but as I continued through the process I found it was a tool I was underrating. I have always been a just do it and get it done kind of guy, not much for preliminary processes like mind maps however a problem I have run into as a result has been organization. I found that at least so far the mind map has directly addressed that problem.
I think that the branching system will help me with setting up navigation systems now and in the future for websites. I am also pleased to create an ePortfolio to have to sell my work in the future.

Common Craft

I have to say that I love the common craft overviews of the purpose and basic functions of all of the web 2.0 tools that are out there. Lee Lefever has a great way of boiling down the basic principles of blogging, social networking, etc. and presenting this information in such a way that exposes the purest nature of these tools. I also believe that his use of only a marker and his hands is great, you know how you shouldn't use a word in its' definition, well sometimes it is good not to use too much technology when you are introducing new technology to people. If you throw too much at people that they aren't familiar with all at once they will reject it or get intimidated by it, I have seen this personally introducing smartboards to teachers that are, well, less than tech saavy. Lefever's low tech intro to high tech ideas is a great way to allow anybody of any age or technical ability to at least understand the what a tool does.

Social Networking, bookmarking, and start pages.

Social networking is a simply what it says, networking, sharing and exchanging information, socially, with people. Facebook and Myspace (twitter is growing in popularity) are the most popular social networking sites for peoples personal network of friends, family and old classmates. These sites allow people to keep in touch with many people that they would otherwise loose touch with. Linkedin is for professional use it allows you to network the job market and get in touch with people who can help you get jobs or hire for jobs. Accessing these sites is as simple as having an email address and filling out a few boxes.
Social bookmarking fills a few roles first it keeps your bookmarks so you can find and easily access all of your favorite websites. Social bookmarking and tags also allow you to easily organize all of you bookmarks, which is handy. Finally the social aspect of these sites like diigo is the most interesting piece you can actually see other peoples bookmarks see the sites that other deem useful enough to tag. Those others can be peers, celebrities or even experts in whatever field you happen to be researching. Again signing up for this is as easy as having an email address and filling out a form, although there is a download and browser plugin you will have to install to use these.
Start pages like netvibes are very cool, completely customizable homepages that contain what you want them too and only what you want them too. With applications called widgets you can have access to your email, jokes, sports scores, the weather, stock updates whatever your heart desires and nothing is dictated to you as have to haves. Once again if you have an email address you can quickly have a start page of you very own.

Are Blogs Fazing Out?

It seems there was a time when everyone who was web sophisticated was blogging, however as time goes by and we get more connected, people are using tools like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter more and they are using these tools to say the things that they need to say. They're getting more bang for their buck with these tools too. With Facebook you get an impressive social networking tool that allows you to form groups with people. Anyone in the group is notified when another person in the group has added something and all can respond if they choose too, this sounds to me exactly like blogging. Unlike blogging Facebook has picture galleries you may post, instant messenger, and microblog like updates on your friends. Myspace is more or less a personal website that while it doesn't have the groups feature, like Facebook, you may write down anything you please inside of it. Myspace also has galleries, and includes a very extensive music library at your disposal. Now both of these tools are rather personal, so I can see where blogs have a less direct connection. Facebook also doesn't allow people who aren't your friends to read what you write. That is where Twitter has seemingly inserted itself as the latest trend. Through microblogging you may chose to follow anyone you choose and read any thoughts they deem worthy of sharing. So I ask you with these new super charged tools are the days of traditional blogs numbered?

First Blog: The Setup

I enjoyed the set up experience for this blog. I created a logo with illustrator and had some fun with that. Options are quite open for color schemes and things like that. I am still working on mastering optimization especially on illustrator drawings I make, but I just kept playing around with "save for web & deivces" and eventually found something that works and has only a one second load time on cable. All in all it was a positive experience.