Blog Against Time: March 31 and shhhhhhh its about scientology

So in Clearwater they have an anti-gravity machine and a time travelling device. Hence why Tom Cruise can look the same over twenty years and scale buildings like a champ.

Blog Against Time: March 31 Hactivist

I found that the hacktivists led a good cause and fought for what they believed in, which is more than what most teens do today. The actual participants seemed to be complete trolls which made me happy since they did not actually change who they were just because of a camera in their face. All in all I love their message and if i knew how I would join the fight.

Blog Against Time: March 24, Free to Play ( A DOTA love story)

As an avid gamer myself, Free to Play was amazing. It really showcased the devotion that gamers put forth to play at such a high level. Gaming is no longer a hobby that will cause you to be reprimanded, it is now a career. I do believe that it will never reach large enough exposure in the athletic heavy nation of America, but through live gaming stream sites such as Twitch, it can and will garner mass amounts of fans from the states.

Blog Against Time: March 3, Minaret Article

So since the site itself is down and I have no way of finding my comment since it likely cant be found, I''ll take the zero on this one. My bad.

Blog Against TIme: February 10, How a Video Artist Made Don Draper Gay

The idea of taking something set in stone and melting it down and molded it into your own is something absolutely enthralling to me. I love the idea of remixing and what Kreisinger is doing is absolutely wonderful for both women and society as a whole. I loved doing my remix piece and plan on doing more in the far future.

Blog Against Time: January 29, Google Yourself

Before "googling" myself, I was already aware that there is a fairly popular saxophonist with my name and that that was who would show up once I searched. In terms of the exercise as a whole I am absolutely fine with people looking me and am more than satisfied with my presence on the Internet. Potential employers would only find beneficial things about me such as my volunteer work, mostly because I make it a point to make a post on all social media about beneficial qualities about myself about twice a month. This ensures that employers discover traits that i want them to discover. Some criticize that I am exploiting the system, but can you blame me?

Blog Against Time: January 29, American Psychosis

While reading American Psychosis in the past five minutes, because im a lazy bum who didn't do this on time, I couldn't help but notice the author's distaste for popular culture, among many confusing instances of incorrect punctuation. While I do believe with her argument to some degree, I do not believe that we as American's are under any illusion to the problems today. I can assure you that single mothers who work three jobs to support five kids are not under any illusion to the problems of poverty that they face. Only those interested in such trivial nonsense such as popular culture can become entranced by them. If my house is on fire, I'm going to be looking at that, not at the burning television.

Blog Against Time: January 22, Iphone presentation and how smartphones have changed me

We have come pretty far from freaking out over touchscreen capabilities to the point that we are truly ungrateful for the technology we currently have. Imagine the impact social media and these devices would've had on past events such as the Civil Rights movement.

Regardless of our appreciation of what we have, it is what it is. Personally my smartphone has caused me to realize that I truly dont need it since I had to go roughly four months last semester because i had broken mine. Sure the first month was dreadful but I soon adapted and it was a harder transition to go back to communication through phone once i was able to.

The Blog Race Against Time

In today's final installment of my blog I will attempt to create for most of the ones that i missed. May luck be on my side.

Final Project: Finding Interest on Pinterest

PLSo after a two week hiatus, I finally get back to this and I'm extremely with how it turned out. So here's how I made my chrysanthemum mirror. 

First I went out and found a poster board and cut out a 19 inch diameter circle from it so I would have a base. 

I then went out to walmart and got 2 100 spoon boxes for $2.48 each. All in all I used about 260 spoons. I cut off the ends of the spoons for use and yes i recycled the unused plastic. Then I placed a small hand mirror in the center. 

That went on for quite some time and I just had to snap then manually which is pretty painful but it had to be done. Then I started to place them down with some homemade glue ( see Give It Back for details). 

That went on for some time and I would just go inwards row by row from there. 

And I finished it and it just needs to be painted now. But first let me take a selfie. 

 Yeah the mirror is pretty nasty so I used windex

Then I started working on a color schemed gradient from red on the outside to a pale orange in the center. I mixed some paint as I went inward to make a very nice and smooth gradient. 

And finished last row

And craft center

Had a great time making it and my mom will love it I'm sure 

Give Back Project

The biggest roadblock I faced while doing the Pinterest chrysanthemum mirror was trying to find glue. Normal Elmer's glue would stick well enough and I didn't feel like shelling out $5 on a hot glue gun or Krazy glue. So I resorted to what my mom (who this whole project is practically dedicated to) used to use as an adhesive. She would put gumballs in the microwave on high for 2:30 and it would turn into a sticky and very hot solution. So I decided to follow her lead and make my own hot glue and decided to share it. 

Step 1. Make sure you have heavily condensed gum. My mom would use gumballs which is dense. I didn't have gumballs so I went with "Ice Cubes" gum. Which were denser than a common stick of gum. 

Step 2. I found a pretty wide container since I was a little paranoid that the gum would expand out of the container and ruin the microwave 

Step 3. Pour out about four cubes (or more depending on container size) into the container

Step 4. Evenly place them in the container to create a leveled paste to prevents it from spilling over. 

Step 5. Find a microwave

Step 6. Make sure the power level is on high and since I wasn't using gumballs I lowered the time to just 2 minutes

Step 7. Grab a towel and take out the container carefully since it will be incredibly hot and be gentle so the plastic does not melt. Wait for it to cool and then enjoy! You have your very own yummy smelling gum glue. 

Vine

The rising action begins with a biker and a innocent civilian texting and not paying attention. The climax of the story is when he is hit by the biker. The resolution is him getting kicked while he's down and no getting back up. This story follows Freytag's Model because it contains a beginning, a tension-filled middle and resolving end.

Working as a group was inspirational because we all contributed unique ideas. We all worked very well together. Haleigh Purvis, Liz McGovern, Marcus Mitchell were in the group. Haleigh filmed, while Liz and Marcus acted in the video. 

https://vine.co/v/Milri7tg0nu

https://vine.co/v/MilgUEq5VFa

https://vine.co/v/MilHa6dF2qO

Final project progress

I'm making a decoration for my mom which is a small mirror with a floral ring around it. The ring is made out of plastic spoons. Seen here. 

My mom wants a mirror so I figured I'd make her one. I plan on coloring the spoons though and I'm practicing with some to find out the best way to separate the heads and color them. I figured i would do this before buying over 300. 

I found out the best way to snap them is to just bend them by force. I tried scissors to no avail and snapping it was quicker regardless. 

I then worked on organizing the spoons to reflect the floral pattern and found that an overlapping/underlapping pattern best matched. 

I then pulled out a sharpie and quickly scribbled on the inside of the cut head and rubbed it with my thumb to spread it and coat it smoother. 

Up close it looked rough but it looked seamless when placed in the pattern. I am going to try out spray paint and then acrylic paint to see which works best. 

All in all I like the way it's headed. I still have to find a backboard for it to be glued on but I will probably use cardboard. I'm gonna pick up a mirror from Walgreens and go section by section once I get all the materials. I don't plan on spending more than ten dollars and hopefully it all works out. 

Glitch Art

I decided to use Nelson Mandela as my revolutionary figure due to his actions in the South African Revolution. 

First I used a photo of young Nelson Mandela when he was actively in the civil rights movement and the amount of glitch I used reflects the unexpected trouble that he brought his opponents. 

Next I used a photo of Nelson Mandela in jail and used a larger amount of glitch because this was the point where Mandela was at his most troublesome as an inspiration to others while at Robben Island. 

Then finally I used a picture of Nelson Mandela after being president and I used little to no glitch to represent the change from a revolutionary figure fighting a corrupt government into the president of South Africa. 

The Ballad of a Nintendo Junkie

I was raised off of Nintendo. My parents both played the SNES like it was their job and had two systems in case they wanted to play something different at the same time. Once I hit 3 I started to play on the SNES until my hands grew big enough to play on the Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64 was my drug and when I wasn't earning stars, I was playing Super Smash Bros. I had every generation of Gameboy besides the Color and I've been playing Pokemon for my entire life. I have two 64's, two Gamecubes, two Wii's, and now an Xbox. 

  My brother plays the Xbox for its war ganes but I only play it for FIFA, which is the soccer variant of Madden. FIFA games can either make or ruin my day and it brings out my competitive drive. I've screamed, laughed, cried, and nearly broke my TV in celebration while playing the game. 

   But for all it's worth, I still prefer playing Super Mario or Pokemon over sports and shooting games anyday. I just need to find a 3DS now. 

LinkedIn

Pretty easy to use site. 

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marcus-mitchell/92/b62/421/

Young Money Finale -Disney Remix (EXPLICIT!)

Remix project

This was easily my favorite project that ice had in college so far. Was afraid that I bit off more than I could chew but I managed. Put in about 14 hours of editing into this tiny three minute video. 

I decided to go with vidding so I could work with songs and my initial plan was to remix "Say Something" by A Great Big World with incredibly sad disney moments. But realizing that it wasn't really a remix since the mood and tone was basically the same and I wasn't bringing anything new in. So I decided to switch the song to the most Anti-Disney song I knew, which was anything by Young Money. I connected the two through the fact that they are both corporations who have monopolized their trade, whether it be animated films or rap music. I chose the song "Finale" for its efforts of collaboration between multiple artists which added a challenge, to an otherwise repeated idea. 

My inspiration also came from the observation of the lack of African American culture in Disney movies. Some may argue that there was the Princess and the Frog but Tatiana wasn't even a real princess and the prince was from Africa and not an African-American. So I chose Disney characters who were as close to being black as possible. They include the genie who is pretty gangster from what I've seen. Aladdin is an Arab but he could pull off being Egyptian which is in Africa. The beast from beauty and the beast because he's brown. Stitch is an alien but his speech is pretty thug. Dory was the closest thing to a black girl other than the aforementioned Tatiana. Frozone for obvious reasons. And Steamboat Willie as the CEO of the corporation because he is literally black...and white. 

All joking aside, there is so little "black" culture in Disney movies so I took this opportunity to help them out. 

Meme

The term meme is shortened from mimeme, Greek for "imitated thing". Richard Dawkins coined the term in 1976 and the word has transformed into meaning an expressed idea regarding cultural phenomena. 

My personal favorite meme is the Successful Black Man which takes stereotypes of black men and turns them into unexpected results. Here's my favorite memes out there. 

Mixtape

After experiencing severe struggle trying to work the app, I finally figured it out thanks to the help of Liz, who taught me how to import from my history. Regardless, I stand by my rant earlier this week in that Mixtape lacks a certain sleekness in its design. 

In terms of the actual project I chose to do mine about time itself and how it constantly keeps moving. Time never stops. It can feel slower and it can feel faster but it never stops. And in turn it moves us.

http://mixb.it/_1TbXrF56

Top 5 Remixes

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x132a29_funny-cat-jumps-on-sail-song-awolnation-hit-music-video-parody_music

This is a cat acting perfectly to the beat of Awolnation's hit Sail. Or it should be called Fail. 

http://www.youtube.com/embed/NQ9zKd1kZ6A?autoplay=1

Eminem's obsession with his mom's spaghetti

http://www.youtube.com/embed/hPdB2jFBhq4?autoplay=1

Classic but still great

http://www.youtube.com/embed/tnCBQAyY814?autoplay=1

Songs in real life remains as a top choice to watch when I'm bored

http://www.youtube.com/embed/g87Xyt2agWQ?autoplay=1

Rapping Brian Williams is still the greatest thing to ever be made

Current Remix Progress

Everything going smoothly on my end as I finally decided on the song Finale by Young Money. The song incorporates ten or eleven rappers as they collaborate together for about five minutes. I'm going to lip sync the track over ten or eleven disney characters which is fairly generic in concept but I plan on crossing over different movies giving my project a little edge from others. The toughest part will be matching the words with mouths but once I can nail that it should be smooth sailing.

Mixtape fails in comparison to Vine and Instagram

First off, yes I procrastinated on this. I opened the app on Friday intent on getting this over with and being done with the project. And this post is not an excuse for why I did not do the assignment by any means. With that out of the way, the app mixtape is just a disappointment in video edit technology. 

The source material available by others for you to incorporate in your own videos is so shallow that you'll be lucky to actually find the kind of video you're looking for. This is mostly due to the fact that the search engine runs off of literal keywords. For example, searching for the song "Say Something" is practically impossible because you get videos ranging from "Jimmy is going to say Hi to me today" to "Something is in my shoe ugh". The app does not separate videos into categories either which further clunks everything together as well. None of the users on Mixtape use more than one hashtag, a staple part of Instagram which allows users to browse through keywords at an accellerated pace. 

Then there are the actual technical difficulties that I faced. It might just be me but for the life of me I could not figure out how to save clips from other videos. There was no help section to assist me and I still doubt that it is even possible to incorporate other people's work into mine. I recorded about 15 seconds of material and looked to finish it off with a decently funny video clip I found on the site. But the closest I could get to saving the video clip was copying the URL which did absolutely nothing for me. 

All in all, I was actually excited when I heard we would be doing an app project since I never heard of Mixtape before and it had a neat concept. But the execution was so disappointing and it looked and felt more like a poor man's Vine instead of its own separate entity. 

Project One: Final Results

Project One: Self Portrait

When first trying to do this project I think I was trying to be too creative and too involved with a deep thought provoking presentation. At one point i was even considering taking a video of me setting the photos on fire to symbolize the new person I have become, like a phoenix, and then bring in the ashes as the physical proof.

But no. That's not who I am. I'm not a pheonix. I'm simpler than that. But not to the point of boredom. I have my unique characteristics. So i went for a different approach to this project. I am personally more complex than a simple photo grid or photos cut into different shapes. I feel that I'm more complicated as a person than a 2D presentation so I set about finding a 3D form to present my photos.

So then I thought of my personal interests to decide what exactly I wanted to do and at first I was going to try and incorporate soccer, since it is a large part of my life, but I chose not to because it isn't the whole part of who I am. So I thought some more and realized that I value wisdom and knowledge more than any other quality. After this, I decided to turn my photos into the embodiment of wisdom and i turned them into fortune cookies.

It took me roughly five hours to properly fold them but I am more than satisfied with the outcome. Enjoy.