An In Depth Journey into Digital Media

portfolio

2005-05-15T05:18:00.000-07:00

and the portfolio is done.

it went suprisingly smoothly.

its all in flash, except i didnt have the heart to embed my already too compressed aftereffects movie into it, nor was i planning on embedding my flash animation inside the flash. but its all here. ready to talk about:

Alex Sexton Portfolio

thanks, and good luck on yours.

-Alex

Collaboration After Effects Project

2005-05-04T04:33:00.000-07:00

Aiight, I just finished up my movie. I think it turned out pretty good too. I used over eleven different videos and did some green screening too...

My original vision was a little bit different but im happy with the way it turned out. All the video in the background is moving fast and the face of the singer/main character person is completely pasted together from 4 different faces. I used my chromakey green screen to do it. I know its still a little fuzzy on the outsides, but i dont exactly have stellar lighting in my dorm room. Ill just say its there for effect. In the background I have a fast moving view from a train, there are some women dancing too... I got these videos from a British Creative Commons site. I prolly didnt follow the directions of the liscence, but that would have required extra reading... I have a clip from garden state in there, as well as from Kill Bill 2.... you may or may not notice these. The Music is the very end of Modern Drummer by the band American Analog Set. I really liked the music for the feel that i was going for, and thought all the fast movement from the train and the driving and from the chain of dancing women would really accent the song. I picked my friend virginia's mouth to use because i knew she wouldnt be able to keep a straight face, and i kinda wanted the smile to be the theme, or the focus. I made a very fast paced background with a very relaxed and slow moving pasted together person. I thought all the movement would really make it obvious how relaxed and genuinely happy the person was. The lyrics dont exactly go along with anything.... they say a couple of lines with meaning and then repeat the line "Now.... Continuous Hit Music" which seems kind of like a mockery... not real sure what the intent was there on my part, but the music sounds good regardless. Im sure im missing something. but here it is:

by the way, Chris, if you see this before class on Wednesday, if there is anything i could do to make a higher grade, maybe try and tell me in class or something. But i think i at least fulfilled all the stated requirements from class. Technically i think just the face of the person did that...

Here is the required .mov file:
Collaboration
(note: it is 22mb, and I did all the exporting the correct way. Its almost 2 min.)

And for my own sanity here is a smaller 15mb version that is twice the size with better quality in DivX
Collaboration DivX format

give me a shout out and tell me what you think while i still have a little time to fix it... (not much)

-Slex

woah!

2005-05-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

read this on boingboing.... woah... cool whether you like linkin park or not...

Linkin Park wants a Warner-free IPO

Linkin Park is looking to float an IPO, but only if it can get out of its deal with Warner: it's not longer interested in being tied to a label, and intends to release its music strictly over the Internet from now on.

The band claims it has been responsible for ten percent of the label's record sales over the past five years. Linkin Park owes Warner Music four more albums, but the band says they're looking into releasing music over the Internet and it does not plan to deliver a new album to Warner.

crazy cool.... (gap rip off)

titanic slide

2005-04-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

haha.

there selling this new inflatable water slide in china.

complete with broken ship and iceberg action.

haha. thats detournment right there.

Flash!

2005-04-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Heres my flash vid. It has some story line and some interactivity... and plenty of scenes. I didnt do all 7 minutes but i let the user have creative control of the rest of the song... kind of fun... took longer than i expected. The Whole story is still present though.

The Mariner's Revenge

**EDIT**
here is just the swf file. if you play that alone, the sound syncs up correctly, if you look at it in a browser, its off by like one second.... cant figure it out... so the best way to look at it would be to right click and download to your desktop, that way you dont get all the stuff thats outside of the borders, and the sound is cued up right.... sorry for the inconvienence...

LINK
***

and this one is on time.

here is another story i did recently... I talked about it to some kids in class about making it look like it wasnt done in flash, but by hand.... alot more keyframes.
its called Genesis and it was for church...

alex

chuck d

2005-04-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

I had been thinking this all monday, and Chuck D. finally said it...

"Putting a hundred small fragments into a song meant that you had a hundred different people to answer to. Whereas someone like EPMD might have taken an entire loop and stuck with it, which meant that they only had to pay one artist."

It seems like there should be some kind of barrier. Someone has spoken everyword i have ever said before... just in a different order... So someone could probably say that i am stealing there words, and just sampling them around. I am very tempted to write a completely original yet stolen paper. I think if I was a lawyer that was defending the bands that sample my opening statement would look something like this:

"Dear" -William Shakespeare "Ladies" -Will Smith "and" -Ross Perot "Gentleman" -Frank Sinatra "of" -George W. Bush "The" -Mickey Mantle "Jury" -Steven Spielberg etc....

then after i read it, i would show them that even though i STOLE every single word on the page, the entire thing was mine. And that I had complete ownership of the statement and shouldnt have to pay anyone of the people who were quoted in the paper.

that would be a good opening statement.

-alex

p2p

2005-04-13T02:42:00.000-07:00

this was an interesting comment in a slashdot article on filesharing

thought it worthy...

"I believe record companies have gutted the industry of music by reducing the fare to prerecorded offering of a few.

Every CD is a "free" version of a thing that previously had value - namely live music.

As such I believe they deserve to be comodified into irrelevancy - not at all because i like free downloads - i listen to radio because its fresh - but because they have eliminated a cultural experience from the face of the earth - or so reduced it as to render the making of music a rare and unappreciated talent."

on we go...
-slex

butterflies and hurricanes

2005-04-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

hey. if anyone is interested. I.... like many of you... make movies in my spare time. Of course... I have no free time so I make them in my non-Free time. Regardless i just released a new one. its actually not done, but were releasing it in three parts. this is part 2, and part 3 will be filmed this summer. Its a fight video.

you need divx. right click to save: Butterflies And Hurricanes

thanks.

2005-04-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

everyone in the class seems to love comic books that are taken out of context, so here are a couple new ones from none other than Maddox himself over at 'The Best Page In The Universe.'

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=uscc_part1

monday reading week 11

2005-04-11T04:12:00.000-07:00

This is probably one of the more interesting reads for me in this class. All the propert issues and reproduction battles are still very prominent right now. The US Supreme court is currently hearing an extremely important case regarding most of the information in this article. I personally am intrigued by the cyclical pattern that all of this follows, and the major companies blatant failure to see the futility of their efforts. I think the discussion on this topic will be pretty heated. Artists vs. P2Pers... their are such incredibly good arguments on both sides, im looking forward to what the other kids in class have to say. i know i have alot.

-alex

ps - my flash is pretty cool. it goes along with the song "A Mariner's Revenge Song"... Ill prolly edit out the musical interlude and put in another button there to increase interactivity, as well as create a back/forward/stop/play menu in the corner or something....

some additional editing may be necessary if its too long. Its sitting around 7 minutes right now... but i dont have quite that much animated...

heres the story/lyrics if your interested:

The Mariner's Revenge Song
by Decemberists

We are two mariners
Our ships' sole survivors
In this belly of a whale

It's ribs are ceiling beams
It's guts are carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill

You may not remember me
I was a child of three
And you, a lad of eighteen

But, I remember you
And I will relate to you
How our histories interweave

At the time you were
A rake and a roustabout
Spending all your money
On the whores and hounds
Oh Ohhhhh

You had a charming air
All cheap and debonair
My widowed mother found so sweet

And so she took you in
Her sheets still warm with him
Now filled with filth and foul disease

As time wore on you proved
A debt-ridden drunken mess
Leaving my mother
A poor consumptive wretch
Oh Ohhhhh

And then you disappeared
Your gambling arrears
The only thing you left behind

And then the magistrate
Reclaimed our small estate
And my poor mother lost her mind

Then, one day in spring
My dear sweet mother died
But, before she did
I took her hand as she, dying, cried:
Oh Ohhhhh

"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave
*sigh*"

It took me fifteen years
To swallow all my tears
Among the urchins in the street

Until a priory
Took pity and hired me
To keep their vestry nice and neat

But, never once in the employ
Of these holy men
Did I ever, once turn my mind
From the thought of revenge
Oh Ohhhhh

One night I overheard
The prior exchanging words
With a penitent whaler from the sea

The captain of his ship
Who matched you toe to tip
Was known for wanton cruelty

The following day
I shipped to sea
With a privateer

And in the whistle
Of the wind
I could almost hear...
Oh Ohhhhh

"Find him, bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave

"There is one thing I must say to you
As you sail across the sea
Always, your mother will watch over you
As you avenge this wicked deed"

[haunting, sailor-esque musical interlude lead by mandolin, accordion and tuba]

And then, that fateful night
We had you in our sight
After twenty months at sea

Your starboard flank abeam
I was getting my muskets clean
When came this rumbling from beneath

The ocean shook
The sky went black
And the captain quailed

And before us grew
The angry jaws
Of a giant whale

[instrumental noise]
oh ohhhhhhhhhh
[screaming]
ohhhhh
[screaming]

Don't know how I survived
The crew all was chewed alive
I must have slipped between his teeth

But, oh! What providence!
What divine intelligence!
That you should survive
As well as me

It gives my heart
Great joy
To see your eyes fill with fear

So lean in close
And I will whisper
The last words you'll hear
Ohh Ohhhhh

decemberists

2005-04-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

Just to brag, I went to The Decemberists show on saturday night, and I caught a tambourine. Im awesome, and so was that show....

Oddly, I happened to be filming with my digital camera at the time. So I have me catching the tambourine on film and i made a neat little gif for everyone to be envious of.

consider this on topic since its digital media.

-slex

reading

2005-04-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

I thought the computer game readings were fairly interesting. They were, however, slightly outdated. The most in depth game it talks about take place on MOOs and MUDs. I know its still all historically correct but its no longer the whole picture. They also spent alot of time talking about the actual games and not how many or what people were playing them. It brought back a couple of fond memories, but most of those games were even too old for most of the kids in the class. It is a really interesting field of research though. Will they become as popular as movies and tv? it seems possible. Everyone plays computer games now. Everyone dabbles. When you can control reality like that, it really is pretty amazing. As far as violence goes, I think that its perfectly acceptable to sell violent video games as long as the right precautionary measurements are in tact. I really dont buy into the whole "Grand Theft Auto made Johnny kill 10 people." More like "Johnny would have killed 10 people a long time ago if he didnt have that playstation. It wasn't until it broke that he finally snapped"

As far as the development of the games (ie graphics, and dimensional and classifications) its mildly interesting to me from a historic standpoint. I actually wanted to go into game making for a good chunk of my high school career, and would still consider doing it should the oppurtunity come along. I thought the mention of DOOM should have been made. I read a super cool article on the creator of that game in a waiting room somewhere, and how he made one of the first three-dimensional games. Its all very interesting when shed in the correct light. But i am looking forward to the class discussion on this one...

free cat

2005-03-30T16:00:00.000-08:00

I couldnt stop thinking of this picture when we were talking about dead cats on livejournal today. this has nothing to do with anything, but it is hilarious.

also if youve never been to "The Best Page In The Universe" I would suggest checking it out. Its an INSANELY popular website where a middle aged white guy rants on horrible stereotypes and falsities. In other words it completely wrong, but humorous none the less. check it out.

peace.

slex

Grrls

2005-03-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

The article about grrrls was indeed interesting. I thought it might have taken some of the meanings of the words that women call themselves in the zines and such too literally perhaps. When words like bitch or wench were used i doubt someone looked them up in the dictionary and noticed 'the crossroads' of meanings and decided they would be a good choice. It was probably more for shock value. Otherwise the peice offered good insight into the movement for the 'f-word'. .. i did also like how they pointed out that even though this was an underground movement, the majority of the girls invloved were white middle class women. kind of interesting considering the place of the woman in not such fortunate conditions.

more on B92 radio later today i guess... its class time...

posts

2005-03-25T03:31:00.000-08:00

i should prolly catch up a little bit... im not exactly too far behind but i will probably end up posting on one or two previous readings i didnt post on. Its hard to do two blogs at once i think. your either working on one or the other... kind of a down side to this aspect of the course.

on the other hand. its 5:30 am and i spent all night remembering flash. Its a good thing too, because i actually might bid on a real flash job for an educational software company. I was recommended by someone who had seen some of my work, and now in April I think i get to make a bid on a project to help create an educational software game. The person im going against though is the professor of computer animation at ACC. Clearly he's a better animator... but he charges about 15 times my price (heck... if they hadnt have told me i get paid for it... id have prolly done them the favor...) but its exciting nonetheless and flash relative.

heres what i did tonight...

A Flash Test for Alex

i doubt ill use it for my project though... although i did try to have some story go along with the shadowy figure.

in case your interested here is another animation i did for church about a year back on the the book of Genesis: but the intent behind the animation was to be not smooth and go against traditional flash animations. its a favorite of mine. (and the music is none other than the lovely keller williams.)

Genesis Video

lovely.

also i get to see the decemberists at emo's next saturday.

have a good easter everyone.

-alex

logo project

2005-03-23T21:32:00.000-08:00

I did a logo for my 'Media Company'... its kind of cool.... doubt ill really use it though. Its all vector images though, so if you would like me to rescale it to bus wrap size i would be glad to do so.

now on to the flash project.

by the way... i dont really like illustrator that much... kind of a hassle.

peace.

slex

photoshizop

2005-03-21T01:58:00.000-08:00

i suppose these were due last friday... but alas mine was on a computer in austin while i was in dallas. but hey... i still did it.

I wanted it to look like maybe an old magazine cut out from a concert from 311 and the beatles.

the drumset is ringos set cut out

chad sexton (drummer... no relation) is a serparate cutout playing the drums

then all the musicians are separate. do i hear 5 peice quota? yes.

done and done. i have less distorted versions too... i just liked the blend that it gave the picture...

whatev. see ya in class.

by the way. i bought that 'Virginia' non-ironic t-shirt...

-alex

anti drinking

2005-03-08T13:06:00.000-08:00

im due a new post or two finally, and ill probably get on that sometime soon. but not right now.

in the mean time, how funny is this?

this article just went up on boingboing today... its on soviet anti drinking posters...

heres the permalink

-slex

Comics

2005-03-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the comic article. perhaps I'll write more on it later. Even upon reading the article several times I couldn't find any information on this type of comic. That is funny. and that is the truth.

if you didnt click on the link. you should. Lets just say it involves Jesus and Spiderman.

google toolbar relates

2005-02-26T23:52:00.000-08:00

related article (well at least to the beginning of the class) that i found on boing boing....

interesting read....

Internet needs

mersenne primes

2005-02-26T12:21:00.000-08:00

Im posting this just in case any one else is a nerd like me and thinks this is cool. Other than the recent breakthrough in quantum computing, this is one of the biggest feats of 2005 so far.

the new largest prime (and simultaneously mersenne prime) number has been found.

heres the mathworld link: Mersenne Primes

its just under 8 million digits long.... pretty sweet if you ask me

there is a million dollars reward from a group called GIMPS for the first person to find a prime number over 10 million digits long....

have at it

color picker

2005-02-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

this is the color scheme generator i use. it has been a requested post by a few. have at it:

Color Scheme Generator

-slex

Reproduction in the "DiGiTaL" age

2005-02-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Not only is authenticity in question, but the idea of authorship is almost obsolete.

he shouldnt have published this in such an easily copied form... hes throwing his authorship out the window....

i think its a little over exxargerated, and slightly wrong.... but i get it. and thats what counts. its whats on the inside.

maybe i just dont appreciate art enough.

how many licks does it take for alex to appreciate art enough?

the world may never know....

and that my friends, is my response to the reading.

-slex

caffeine

2005-02-23T02:42:00.000-08:00

i only posted this to better explain my increasing stupidity.
oh the life of a programmer.

other than paris hiltons phone hack... i found this in the last couple of days...
it will be funny to those of us who like to use 1337 speak in class. My suggestion is that Chris uses this HIGHLY informative article in his class next year when talking about the society of the internet and the HIGHLY cryptic languages that are used in different internet "cliques".... oh me oh my.

Microsoft Cracks the Code!!!!!

My Favorite Selection from the Piece:
"pwn": A typo-deliberate version of own, a slang term used to express superiority over others that can be used maliciously, depending on the situation. This could also be spelled "0\/\/n3d" or "pwn3d," among other variations. Online video game bullies or "griefers" often use this term.

HAHA....

off to ~~bed.~~ program.

on a related note: I resized that image in photoshop.

whoops

2005-02-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

upon writing a little bit about the new reading, I realized I never actually posted my Photoshop assignment thingy... guess thats what i get for doing it early.

so better late than never (you could actually probably verify when I uploaded the file in Webspace... but we'll leave that alone...)

the picture is a hubble telescope image of saturn that i thought was pretty cool.
the filters are the following (left to right):

sponge - cool effect kind of depresses some parts of the image, gives a nice texture
film grain - Used with a sepia or something might create an old looking film still or something cool like that...
plastic warp - random texture that I probably won't ever use, kind of interesting looking. could look cool on some still art or something... (what?)
glass- Looks more like water ripples to me, or like the glass on a shower door... actually pretty cool effect, distorts the image quite a bit though
sprayed stroke - makes the image look almost drawn, possibly with a colored pencil... I think its supposed to look sprayed, but i dont really see that.
conte crayon - this is like when you take a crayon and rub it over a quarter with paper inbetween. absolutely useless.
pointillize - This is actually a little bit cool, breaks the image down into certain pixels and turns it into a monet.
clouds - clouds pretty much ruins the picture altogether and makes a cloudy formation that resembles nothing that you put in.
Gaussian Blur - Gaussian Blur is just a huge blur I assume using some sort of probability or something since I think thats what Gaussian Curves have to do with, I have actually used this in alot of things to make fake shadows. I completely make the image black, then I make it slightly transparent, then I Gaussian blur the crap out of it until it looks like a shadow
ink outlines - kind of brings out the edges. not incredibly useful unless your trying to bring out detail... might look good on scanned text or something
pallete knife - kind of cool. looks like groupings of water colors or something, not useful for real life images i would assume though...
emboss - used only in the 80s or in works that wish to mimic the 80s

Numbers

2005-02-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

This is a little off topic, but I'm pretty sure I'm way ahead on my 2 to 3 small blog postings per week.

This is a (slightly lengthy) article on an autistic guy who can do amazing mathematical equations and such in his head. He holds the record for memorizing pi to the furthest digit (over 25 thousand digits....) and he seems to have something about him that scientists believe can be used to figure out how this kind of stuff happens.

heres the link.

very interesting read. quite amazing.
-slex

DLP Projectors

2005-02-10T22:59:00.000-08:00

If no one remembers I'll be sure and remind you that I know my TV's. I work in the electronics department at Sears (for over a year now...) which isn't exactly something to brag about, but its a steady commision paycheck from a highly reputable business... that just happened to get bought out by k-mart.... anyways... i know my way around a CRT or an LCD. But my knowledge does not come from my job, thats just where I get to practice...
My father has worked for TI for something like 26 years now. Texas Instruments, contrary to popular belief, does not only make calculators. In fact, my dad doesn't even own anything more than a walmart bought scientific TI calculator... just to keep the record straight. At first he worked in the defense department making smart missles for the government in the Gulf War. Thats all he's allowed to tell me though. I hope I'm allowed to repeat it... Anyways after that he began working on the design team for a little something called DLP. If were in class right now on the projector... you have a first hand view of what DLP is. It stands for 'Digital Light Processing.'
DLP is a visual technology based on MEM technology which to the less technical is probably known as nano-technology, or 'really small little stuff.' The 'core' of a DLP Projector is something called a DMD. This is the innovation in DLP. DMD stands for Digital Micro Display, and really is like a computer chip with a ton of mirrors on it. I believe the best way to describe the size of these mirrors is by saying that you can fit about 6 within the width of the average hair. They are small. Using a highpower lamp, a color wheel, and this dmd, DLP is formed. Obviously there are several other parts involved, but obviously me and my dad are the only ones who actually care...
The cool part about DLP is that it ACTUALLY IS the only digital television or display that exists. LCDs, LCD Projection, CRTs, Plasmas, whatever you can dream up, if its not DLP, its not digital (unless your talking about the new technology from JVC that is more or less a rip-off). All of these other types of television can have a broadcast recorded in digital, broadcast in digital, recieved in digital, transmitted in digital, but when it gets to actually displaying the picture.... guess what... its converted to analog. Obviously the bad parts about analog are in the broadcast quality, and with a digitally compressed broadcast, these problems are stifled, and the pictures on non-DLPs can look great, but in my opinion, they can't be matched. There are DLP projection TVs as well as front projectors. The first 3 generations of DLP were based off of a .55in DMD which gave pictures in 1080i and 480p, pretty decent resolutions I would say... The exciting part though, is the .8in DMD in the 4th and 5th gen. models. You may have seen the fourth generations, but the 5th generations won't be out til probably around christmas time. These are going to boast an amazing 1080p picture resolution. That is just disgusting. Of course it will probably be only if you have the ONE demo DVD with a gold tipped HDMI cable, that you can actually see anything IN 1080p, but the notion is just amazing.
To put those numbers into perspective for those nontechies who skipped down until they found words they knew... 1080i means there are 1080 scan lines using an interlaced picture. interlaced is when they draw a line, and then skip the next one, and then skip the next one, and then once they get all the way through the screen they do the opposite lines. 480p is the DVD standard. Most high def TVs boast a 1080i 480p standard. I would say the 480p, for 'progressive' looks about equal to a 1080i picture quality. Progressive doesnt deal with line switching, it basically displays each frame in pages, so the quality is naturally enhanced. So getting back to the point. 10-FREAKIN-80 P is going to be amazing. 720p already blows HD out of the water. The high end LCD projection televisions and the DLPs can display pictures up to 720p right now using a DVI cable. The picture quality rapes. 1080p will dominate all that has ever existed combined. I cannot wait. It will use an HDMI which I should do some research on since its fairly new, but more or less, its a completely digital, yet non-compressed, wire for both audio and video on some awesome level... so clearly I could use some more work on that one...
The entire reason I posted this is because on my drive to school for the first time here in Austin, my dad told me about these mini-LED based DLP projectors that were going to be super-popular. LEDs are incredibly cheap and reliable light sources, they are incredibly small and require very little power. So likewise, the projector made with them carries most of the same qualities. My dad said that a non-working (or very faulty working) version of the mini-projector was shown in a meeting (by one of his friends) and he said his friend had never seen a response from the other companies quite like that. There were offers to buy pallettes of these projectors before they could even get them working properly. I of course was stoked, until I completely forgot about the entire thing.... until yesterday. I found this link!

If you dont look at anything in this article: STILL CLICK HERE v-----

Mistubishi Mini-DLP Projector

Pretty cool. I was kind of mad though because I thought Mitsubishi beat my dads work to the punch. So generally, I sent my dad an email telling him I was dissapointed in him for not being the first on the market. This is the response I recieved:

Alex,

It is a DLP! TI put the concept model together that sold Mits and 4 other companies to build this thing. Notice that they don't mention how bright it is? Its like 25 lumens compared to the 1000+ lumen projectors I normally bring home. I don't see anyone buying this until they can get to 200.
Love
DAD

Now I'm just plain excited to see one. I know that these first ones will prolly stink, but at pocket size and the low starting price of $700 they can afford to stink. Carry this thing around with your photo ipod and do your power point presentations pocket style... AMAZING. The projectors that my dad brings home and I get to play video games on are already small, but they are still lamp based, so they are a good 8x10x12in which is small, but its not exactly cell-phone sized. They are a good 3-4 lbs but they do put out a good 2000 lumens (brightness, good for lit rooms) and I think I would still prefer a $2500 4 lbs projector thats always good than a 25lumen pocket sized projector. But I cant wait to see what happens with these. It's truly amazing technnology, and it excites me to know end. Im just gonna stop writing to prevent any further nerdoms from coming out...

have fun understanding my ramblings...

-slex

fwhew.... this should count as all my entries for the whole year...

Weiner Ticket....

2005-02-10T01:36:00.000-08:00

I wasn't joking....

apparently the ticket was there when chris took the picture....

heres a zoomed (in Macromedia Fireworks) photo of the ticket....

Bad UT Papers

2005-02-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

Everything Below this line is an LiveJournal Entry from a UT Student Teaching Assistant who picked up a lower level freshman physics course stack of papers. This is kind of a disgrace to UT. But dang.... this is hilarious... how did these kids get into college?
I also question the legality of the issue...
Guess it would go well into our privacy discussion from earlier on... but again... amazing.... This was posted at about 2 oclock today and its already ALL over the internet. (before he got 1 or 2 comments per post. He had 152 comments when I last checked....)

--------------------------------------------------------------

The Masked Grader Strikes Again!

This is why I shouldn't become a teaching assistant.

At
the UT Austin physics department, you have several grades of physics
tracks. There is the "this is going to hurt a lot but you will learn
from it" engineering physics. There is the "you learn the concepts but
you are useless in any practical sense" biomed physics (which I'm
taking). And then there is the "I'm taking this because for some reason
my liberal arts degree mandates it." physics.

I was walking
through Painter Hall when I saw a pile of graded papers waiting to be
picked up. It was a short writing assignment on how the practical
applications of lasers has affected your life.

From a quick look
at the grammar and incomplete sentences, I knew it was a freshman
course. So I took the papers, added my own... comments... and placed
them back in the pile. The grades on them were put there by the
original grader.

Bad paper #1
Bad paper #2
Bad paper #3
Bad paper #4
Bad paper #5
Bad paper #6
Bad paper #7
Bad paper #8
Bad paper #9
Bad paper #10
Bad paper #11
Bad paper #12
Bad paper #13
Bad paper #14
Bad paper #15
Bad paper #16
Bad paper #17
Bad paper #18
Bad paper #19

Update:
Since this has become somewhat popular, let me make this public
statement: This writing assignment was obviously busy work. I probably
wouldn't have given much time or thought to it either, and some of
these papers are mediocre, not miserable. Aristotle once said that
civilization would fall because of the disrespectful, mindless youth of
his time, and it's easy for us to say the same. There are obviously
more than 19 people taking this course, but these were the papers I
found. If you note the dates on them, these papers had been forgotten
for quite some time and probably weren't authored by the most
serious-minded students. It's not meant to be representative, but to
have a sarcastic laugh at someone else's expense until we hobble back
to our dank pits to thumb our cynical noses at society.

Except for the guy who actually believes you can get warts from handling frogs. That's just stupid.

two things

2005-02-09T21:21:00.000-08:00

Not a long post I dont think. Just two interesting things for your entertainment.

this is my picture that i made in the very first part of the lesson tonight, and Arie told me it was cool, so I promised to blog the encounter.

this. my friends is an amazing educational little video that could possibly be defined as "3duc4710n4l Pr0n"... It is the first clip in a series that has too women show you how to put together a linux box. It's 100% clean, and 100% all your mind... but it is quite an interesting little RISQUE tech video.

watch it here.

have a nice day...
-slex

Hand Codation

2005-02-09T13:38:00.000-08:00

Heres my hand coded HTML (and possibly CSS... whoops) website that I think is due sometime today. I'll prolly keep on working on it and make all the links functional...
I'm pretty much hand coding the content from my website at Phyrework.com into a design that is possible for me to handcode. Im actually thinking of getting rid of the dreamweaver one and just running the old one hand coded style... that would be pretty 1337...

SlexAxtonMedia

thanks.
-slex

ORZ

2005-02-07T22:01:00.000-08:00

This is a little lengthy, but cool if your at all into the asian culture. this is just a kid talking about the word 'ORZ' (like our LOL, but not an acronym, and with different meaning...) which is an asian online saying that represents a man on his knees. A telltale sign of despair or failure in asian culture. the O is the head, the R is the body and arms and the Z is the legs in a kneeling position. heres a little blurb and song that this kid wrote on his iBook.

NOTE: I think its really cool how he actually sings 'greater underline less' in order to say (>_<)... thats really weird to me... but really cool. Different culture embraces technology in different ways i guess... also if your wondering 'XD' is the symbol for a really happy face in Asia. alot like our :-D, but happier....

In Taiwan, the "orz" subculture is combined with another "Nice Guys" (?? Hao-Ren) subculture. "Nice guys" refers to the boys rejected or denied by the girls, because girls often deny the boys in a soften saying: "You are a nice guy, you must can find another girl who loves you and she is better than me. I am so sorry". Someday some boys were sharing their experience of being denied, they found that they have similar past and "nice guy" became a bad phrase then. Since being a "nice guy", they felt strongly despair and "orz". Here is some graphical design about "orz" in this context. And here is a "card of judging you are a nice guy", which is a parody of Magic the Gathering. It says, "This card is for female players only. The effect of this card on male players could not be canceled."

By the way, I wrote and recored a song in title of "orz" to describe such a story with my iBook and Apple Garage-Band software. This song is in Mandarin Chinese. Here is the translated lyric:

Lady oh lady, you are what a beauty!
Your hair is like silk, your eyes are shiny.
Each time I think of you, each time I feel XD.

Today oh today, I take all my courage.
If I could beloved, that's what I am questioning.
However your answer, makes "greater underline less" (>_<) come to me!

You say I'm a nice guy, what you can say is sorry.
You say I'm a nice guy, you decide my destiny.
You say I'm a nice guy, I feel despair and kneel.
You say I'm a nice guy, what I can do is orz!

"XD" and "greater underline less" (>_<) are another popular Internet symbols. "XD" is a facial expression like ":p", "X" is the closed eyes and "D" is a large opening mouth, it shows a man is laughing extremely happily in ecstasy. And >_< means a man closed his eyes and his month, it expresses lonely, annoyed and unpleased. Have fun! :)

just thought i'd share today's culture lesson.... by the way... happy chinese new year and Gong Xi Fa Cai! which is a common saying during the new year... not sure what it means though...
have good weeks everyone... first round of tests are coming up... lets all nailem that way we dont have to catch up at the end of the semester...

-slex

Damn Software Patents

2005-02-07T16:24:00.000-08:00

As Seen on SlashDot

"The Tokyo District Court has ordered the destruction of Ichitaro, a software product that is the only serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word, and has been on sale since 1985. The ruling is based on the claim of a competitor, Matsushita, that the use of a help icon to invoke a help function infinges on one of their patents. "We are a global enterprise and we are just following international practice to enforce our IP rights," Kitadeya (Matsushita) said."

Thats ridiculous. I read the whole article. Matsushita, known as panasonic to most of us, sued Ichitaro for the 'use of a help icon to invoke a help function'. This is the less technical version of what matsushita is actually suing them for, but it is factually correct. So if we took it down one more step to a human level... Panasonic is suing Ichitaro, a company that is hardly in competition with panasonic, for: Having a little picture that brings up a help menu when you click on it. That is retarded. Software should just be open source, and all software companies should burn to the ground until they can understand that you shouldnt be allowed to copyright useless things like that. Ichitaro has been in the software business longer than panasonic, and panasonic wasnt exactly the first place to come up with a help icon. simply unacceptable.

other notable 'Bad Copyrights' that are not computer related that I've seen lately are:
The New Copyrighted Sculpture in a Chicago Public Park.
Go here to see the BoingBoing write-up on it.

apparently SBC gave money to the city and they hired some good sculptor dude, and he built this nice sculture right in the middle of a park in chicago, and then said: 'No one can take pictures of it. It is copyrighted material.'
what a jerk. If i was in chicago, i would quite literally take as many pictures as i possibly could and post them all over the internet.

even worse: The Eifel Tower. Dont worry, you can still take pictures of it..... as long as its not dark... I'm not joking. It sounds stupid enough to be a joke to me, but apparently when the city regained ownership of the tower a couple of years back, they hired a lighting company to light it at night. That company did a wonderful job at lighting the tower, and ruining any hopes of remembering it. They copyrighted their lighting scheme, and therefore made it illegal to take pictures of when the lights are on. quite rediculous.... makes me want to hack something and change all the light's html code to the *!--blink--!* tags...
BoingBoing Link

so... without further ado; Here are a couple HIGHLY ILLEGAL photos of a certain sculpture and a certain Tower...

please dont tell on me...

jerks.

-slex

2005-02-07T02:11:00.000-08:00

I am updating using my dual-boot (actually tri.... but whos counting) of Fedora Core 3. It's a free version of linux based on Red Hat. I also have another version of linux called crux that i might have used like once... not sure on that one... i hear its good for hacking, but i think im gonna stick to the fedora GUI for now...

I was wondering if anyone else in the class was into linux or played around a bit. I love it, until i want to use some windows propriety BS or the macintosh equivalent. I never thought RealPlayer could be my friend.

I have an AMD 3200+, which means that my processor has a 64-bit architecture. A very efficient architecture that any current version of windows takes no advantage of. My Fedora Core 3 is an x86_64 bit edition. It's quite quick. I just really need to get used to installing and copying and writing in a command line. You can't live on GUI forever... ESPECIALLY if yuo w4n7 2 B 1337!!!1!!

If you run any Distro or think I should try anything, comment me. Im not bad in linux but its still a tough transition from my baby Windows machine. Mommy wow... Im a big boy now.

-slex

Chris' Personal Life

2005-02-06T02:19:00.000-08:00

id also like to mention that I saw Chris at Vulcan video talking about how hard ActionScript 2.0 is and how one of the professor's he TA'ed for was too spacey for his liking. Just thought, since there were no laws on me invading his privacy i would announce it to the world. also im still excited about AUG - freakin - MENTED REALITY. see post below.

Augmented Reality

2005-02-06T02:13:00.000-08:00

This is quite possibly one of the most amazing things ive seen. It's called augmented Reality. Instead of Adding a person to a digital scenario using a green screen, or any of the chroma key type technologies, this is an application to bring the digital world to you.

check out this video at: http://www.demo.com/demo/demonstrators/2004/video/total.asx

if your on firefox (maybe its just mine) it might not play automatically. Windows kind of rapes their file types. but you can right click press 'save link as...' and then open it in windows media player. This is REALLY COOL.

ill keep file sharing until the day i day... or maybe longer...

2005-02-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

I just read this on slashdot and laughed...

Gertrude Walton, a deceased eighty-three-year-old woman, was named as the only defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by a group of record companies. They claimed Walton made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name 'smittenedkitten.' Needless to say, the suit has since been dropped.

Interesting Noise

2005-02-04T13:36:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite tech blogs is PlasticBugs.com, the name I believe came as a spoof to a more popular blog, but I can't put my finger on it. It's Plastic(something) or (something)Bugs or something like that. If you know it, leave me a comment. Anyways, the point of this is that plasticbugs.com just posted something interesting in the way of music.
The owner of the website, a behind the scenes (and sometimes in the scenes) guy on The Screen Savers seems to like geeky music. I'm not a huge fan of actually listening to this music, but a one time sit-through of some of these songs are not only recommended, but highly necessary.
His most recent post gaves us:

http://mentalnotes.org/work/Nintendley2.mp3">The John Hopkins Mental Notes: Nintendly
This interesting fusion between our favorite video game pasttimes and a cappela chorus is really something that is unmatched. I highly recommend a quick listen.

Other songs that I have, but I no longer have links online to are such songs as:

Barcelona - I have the Password to your Shell Acount

and

Le Tigre - Get off the internet

personal favorites?
i think so...

blogs i think pertain to class or are just cool...

2005-02-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

Overheard In New York is a blog that a group of people in new york run. More or less, they just listen to everyone's conversations and then post funny or personal ones on this website. Personally, while in New York, I tried to seek these people out so i could end up on the site, but I had no such luck. I guess it would be a privacy issue for some though. It doesn't bother me all that much.

I mentioned scopetech.net in class today. It's a blog run by the infamous Dan 'Foo' Huard. He gained internship status at tech tv by guessing the phone numbers of major people in the studio and talking to them. Then he worked his way up to actually having a role in the live show. Pretty cool guy, but his site isn't exactly in working condition yet. He claims it will be soon but I for one, am skeptical.

Speaking of TechTv and The Screen Savers and even Dan Huard, The Broken are one of my favorite grassroots tech content providers. It is more or less a website that you can download one of three 'episodes' of tech info. The anchors are Dan Huard (Former TechTv personel) and Kevin Rose who still currently is on The Screen Savers. They do bits on hacking game consoles, social engineering, wifi wardriving, and even blowing up computers. A new episode is currently being developed and I am psyched. You need the DivX 5 codecs to watch the movies and they are pretty big, but they are incredibly informative and incredibly funny. And who doesn't love Ramsey? Give it a try, I promise, if you like anything tech, you'll like this. I want to do this.

and class starts....

OPENSOURCE

2005-02-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

I just wrote a big article in my blog about the new community and society and how important it was to share. Interestingly enough, today as I prowl my usual blogs and newsgroups I have found two very interesting and related topics.

The first being: The Social Structure of OpenSource
I want to very clearly express my view that the OpenSource system is the best way of the future. With software patents and huge software costs running up a muck, do they not expect giant pirating issues. There is no down-side to hurting a company that makes thousands of dollars anytime anyone mentions their name. The internet society NEEDS to be based on a sense of community and development for the greater good, not for the greater paycheck. We need Commerce to be one part of the internet, not the driving force behind it.

the other is: Linus Torvalds Joins Anti-Patent Team
On the topic of OpenSource and stupid patents: Linus Torvalds, more or less the creator of linux and one of the more respected men of the internet community joins the anti software patent movement. It seems so utterly selfish for these huge companies to take software they've created (usually based off of someone elses stuff) and then claim that no one in the history of time can ever do anything like this except us, even if you put it out for free. Its just wrong. So this is a good step in the right direction for a better internet society.

Funny Blog

2005-02-02T13:24:00.000-08:00

I just came across this blog on BoingBoing. This is funny, but I hope my roommate doesn't have a blog about how crappy I am.

Things I Hate about my Flatmate.

-alex

NY 71m35 4r7i<13

2005-02-02T04:45:00.000-08:00

I just read the New York Times article on the blog. Im on the UT network and I still couldn't get it to read without purchasing it, but illegal copies floating around eRes saved me. I was able to read it with out getting bored, which means that it was, at worst, decent. It was a a little obvious though. I probably could have written the same article. I mean: 'Bloggers like to read about sex' and 'People don't like when people talk about other people behind there backs.' It was kind of like learning the rules of sharing like we did in kindergarten, except now ALL the kids have ADD, and theres a couple million more. This analogy works well with blogs, but I have come to find that it also works well on a much larger scale. I'm sure I've read it somewhere, so I'm not claiming the analogy, but I'll do my best to explain it. Even the NY times journalist touches on it, so there's some props right there.
As far as the normal internet population goes, they have alot to learn about. This is the rise of a new society. I'm not sure if this is an actual term, and if it catches on, I do want to claim this one; but there seems to be a Societal Duality or a Bi-Societal Trend (I can't figure out which one sounds cooler yet, comment me and tell me your favorite). What I mean by this is that the internet is its own separate society. It is no longer an extension of our current society in the sense that it has its own rules. These rules are more like the guidelines of The Matrix and everyone knows how to blur them out of existense, but they exist as their own entity outside of the 'real world' society. But the internet society is not very old and it's not especially wise either. This is where it can be easily paired with the sub-society inside a kindergarten classroom.
Sharing is key. www.SourceForge.net is a key example of the nice kid in class. This is where free source-code and programs are all maintained. This website among others promotes the opensource format of things. This way of doing things promotes a strong sense of community, and a slow but high quality of craftsmanship. They are the only thing keeping the internet from being a giant corporate run portal rather than a society. Their efforts have caused many major companies to even contribute (not without monetary benefit one way or the other I'm sure) to the community, which is an awesome step in the right direction in my opinion.
Gossip is bad, and you shouldn't talk mean about anyone. Obviously this can't be taken too seriously, but the internet right now has no such etiquette. Rumors, lies, and mudslung backstabbing truths are all constantly being poured into the internet (I sometimes wonder when it will fill up...). With no law, or central voice over the internet, this seems like this is going to be up to the kiddies to figure out for themselves. But a class of a couple million 6 year olds probably isn't going to figure that one out on their own very quickly are they? I really liked the idea that the NY Times journalist mentioned: the other members of the community shaming the creator of malnutritious comments. If there was some sort of public front that shamed the users that were degrading their society, there would be significant damage done to the dark-side. Of course, the internet is probably more closely related to an anarchy, and we all know how well those function.
I'm kind of tired so I'm not really gonna go into much more, but I'm sure you can imagine a number of other things that you learned in kindergarden. Don't hit, take turns, finger-painting is fun and tasty. Whatever. I just have a perfect image of the internet community/society in my head and several notions on how it can and will advance on as it grows in age and wisdom. This is our generation's opportunity to make societal change, like the socialists of a century ago, and like the hippies that we call parents. Since any major shift in our 'real life' society will almost inevitably cause nuclear holocaust, we are forced to create a new, more malleable, society on the internet. It would be an interesting article if someone through up a timeline of modern society and see how closely the rise of internet society followed suit. I'm sure it would spawn much more quickly than the original, but I'm sure there would be some interesting connections. I wonder what the Interent Industrial Revolution of 2026 will be like... maybe I'll put that together sometime so absolutely no one can come here and read it, which is exactly what I would expect.

and its 5am...

-slex

2005-01-31T13:47:00.000-08:00

I thought, upon reading Winston's 'The Internet' article, that Winston was very keen on being objective. Although the history of the internet is clouded in 'mystery' Winston really never says '(insert name here) invented the internet.' I was pleased at the accounts and measures that Winston retells, even if they arent particularly interesting. I do enjoy a quick historical background occasionally, and I do love me some technology, but I think I enjoy some of the more societal or tech based articles when dealing with digital media.

First Post

2005-01-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

I am a freshman currently enrolled in the RTF319 Intro to Digital Media Class at The University of Texas in Austin. I am actually a Computer Science major in the Natural Sciences department, but I have a substantial interest in digital media production. I have a long history in making digital media. It stems back all the way into 8th and 9th grade when I got my first pirated copy of Macromedia Flash (4.0). I became quite proficient in Flash (at least until ActionScript 2.0 arrived with MX) and used it in school projects and personal adventures. This hobby quickly turned into a web design passion. I can distinctly remember carrying around a 'HTML For Dummies' book that I hardly understood. I was always into playing music, and when I worked long enough to buy audio equipment, I got into sound recording. I worked with my band and several other bands to build a higher proficiency of this skill and eventually moved on to making movies. I bought a mini DV and started learning the ins and outs of video editing (in Premiere). I also got heavily into photography when I bought my Sony DSC-T1. In other words, I am passionate about creating media. I believe I am somewhat knowledgable in the field but know that I have plenty to learn, and FINALLY plenty of people to learn from. After my screen name of 9 years was deleted by AOL, I created the web facade of Slex Axton and currently host a media website (still in beta) that contains all of the Slex Axton Media. Its at my domain (originally for my band) www.phyrework.com/slexaxton. The site contains several movies and pictures that I have put together in my years. But be weary of the movie site, I haven't exactly been too serious in the past. But I am currently working on a fight scene with a friend that is slightly more exciting than normal. I love special effects and digital media and really look forward to the hands on training that this class and the ones to follow have to offer me.
-Slex