Entry #11: The Final Blog About Blogs

Blogging has been a unique experience I have never done before nor would I ever have if not for my English 102 class. The act of sharing my thoughts for the world to hear has been rather fun even if no one is really around to read them. I have been using this blog almost as a personal journal using the free-write entries to highlight and share some of my favorite things with the world. Blogging for me has been an experience of making the things I am interested in interesting for other people, which has been something I have rather enjoyed. I never really took the blogging project overly serious besides making sure it done for my grades. I always just took it easy and let whatever I wanted to write about be what the entry ended up being rather than trying to force something or plan out my entries, I tried to just let the writing come naturally. I will probably not continue blogging in the future but I am happy to have had the experience of blogging. 

Actually blogging has changed my opinion on bloggers as well. They have to put more thought and effort into their works than I had originally given them credit for. While there are still bad bloggers out there that spread mis-information and use their blog to promote an agenda there are also plenty of interesting and fun blogs out there. 

There is a lot to learn with blogging. Blogging makes the author think more about who their audience is than normal essay writing does. Furthermore the author has to consider the fact that the blog is accessible to everyone and must be more thoughtful of what is being posted. No one wants the blog they wrote in community college to end up being used against them in the future.  Beyond just academic learning I learned a lot about my class mates by reading their blogs. They shared a lot of personal and interesting things that I would never have found out without the blog project. 

As an assignment for class the blog project was great for highlighting the importance of choosing your audience and writing in such a way as to appeal to them. Overall it was an interesting aspect to take rather than having us do another essay. I appreciated the fact that the work was spread out over time rather than having another large assignment to do in a short amount of time. I think the commenting on other’s blogs could should have been expanded, I enjoyed giving others comments on their blog and receiving some on my own. 

The main place I did not like the blog project and felt restricted by it was when I had to write on very specific topics that I had no interest in. While this is a good writing exercise in and of itself it was hard to generate an entry that I found was worthy to post when I felt like I had nothing worthy of being said on the issue. I noticed that many of my class mate’s blog posts were rather short, being around a paragraph in length. Personally I found that these posts were terrible to make comments on and usually did not say much. Adding a guideline of what a minimum blog post should be might be helpful to give students a better perspective on what a good blog post involved. 

Entry 5: Ducey's Deuce

I found this (http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2016/09/17/arizona-needs-more-college-grads-ducey/90363958/) article that basically doesn’t say much written by Gary Ducey. This article is a simple rallying cry for Arizonians that sort of informs us of the new policy Ducey is trying to enact. It talks all about the importance of education and the benefits the state will have from having a highly educated population. He talks about the economic benefits and increase tax revenue.

Ducey does not explain his plan in depth beyond increasing education spending. He does not specify where this money is going beyond what type of schools will be receiving this funding. He does not mention if it is going to teachers, to new books, nothing; no clue as to what the actual plan is in order to help students achieve this. He lists “better career readiness” as one of the goals but doesn’t define what this is or how this plan will achieve it.

As a student Ducey’s plan doesn’t really concern me unless it will somehow help me pay for college. Then yeah sounds good but otherwise I think it’s nice to try and get more people educated but Ducey’s article is more of a piece that says this should happen than anything about how. If it raises my taxes and doesn’t help me that is something I wouldn’t be a fan of but not try and repeal or anything since money going to school is good in general. 

Entry 6: Protesting the Protests

Blog 6
                I was going to avoid writing about the election, really I did not even want to bother with such a highly charged and emotionally raw topic for a lot of people. Personally I did not care which candidate won, I will start off by saying that to me really the “good” option didn’t exist there was the crook and the bigot and neither should be leading this country. That is just my opinion but it helps you to see my bias and opinions on the issue.

                For the last couple of days people have been protesting en masse about the election of Donald Trump. At first I thought they were protesting the results and I could not understand how they could be protesting the results of democracy, the system working as intended. That is until I actually listened to some protestors and learned they were protesting the things Trump stood for and that those values are not ones they agreed with, and I understood. For me this election doesn’t effect me or matter to me enough to make me want to protest, I think we can pull together as a country and get through whatever our new president has in store. But clearly some people believe this is the beginning of the end.

                Peaceful protest is a foundation of our society. It is important for people to be able to express themselves to the government and the rest of the country. Some of the protests have seemed silly to me, such as the students that walked out of school with signs saying “Education not deportation” … if you want education don’t walk out of school. Overall the protesting have been positive messages of peaceful protest. What detracts from the protests the most I believe is when people use them as way to riot and loot rather than get their peaceful message across. The rioters and looters destroy the message the rest of the protestors are trying to get across. There are several stories across the nation of supposedly peaceful people attacking Trump supporters, one story in particular that comes to mind is a group of Black Lives Matter protestors who beat up and 74 year old Trump supporter and stole their truck. That type of “protesting” only creates more divides in our country and has no place in this world. It is not getting a message across it is simply being a criminal.

                If the nation is going to come together and heal then peace and understanding need to be the resounding messages, not hate and violence. Those who spread hate and violence are simply turning people against whatever message they stand for hurting their cause and the cause of those around them. 

Entry 4: Quizzically Questioning

Blog 4

                Every week my friends and I get together and play trivia at a bar. It amazes me the number of people who do not know the activity exists and are surprised to learn about it. The way the game works is everyone at your table is your team. You create a team name and the organizer uses that name to keep track of your team’s points. The organizer will go around and hand your team a score sheet to keep track of your own points on and a pad of paper to write your team’s answers down on it. The game is organized into 6 rounds of 3 questions with a mid-game and end game special question. During each round the organizer will tell everyone the topics of the three questions in the round: History, politics, and religion for example. For the first 3 rounds each team will assign each of the questions in the round either 5, 3, or 1 point, using each value only once in a round. The assignment is chosen when the team answers a question and the questions are answered on at a time. Teams can use the topics of future rounds to gauge how easily they will be able to answer future questions to strategize which point values to assign. Should the team get the question right then they will receive however many points that they assigned to the question. The mid round question is usually a question that will have multiple correct answers and teams get 2 points for each correct answer they submit. An example of a midround question was “what are all of the elements that end in -on that are not noble gases”. The second 3 rounds continue like the first except the assigned point values are 6-4-2 rather than 5-3-1 making the second round even more important to answer correctly than the first. The final question is a hard question that will have a variable amount of answers but the question is always difficult. Each team will wager from 0-15 points on their answer. Should the team get the question correct then they get that many points, and if they get it wrong they lose that many points. The top 3 teams get a gift card reward at the end.

                Team Trivia is a fun activity that many more people should know about. My team has only gotten into the top 3 once yet we enjoy going all the same. A strong knowledge of presidents and 80’s pop culture as well as sports history would be the most successful subjects to study to insure success. 

Entry #3: Straightening a Slant

Blog 3:

                Slanted reporting always a problem but gets so much worse during this time of year- election time. When looking for an example of slanted reporting it wasn’t an issue of finding one but narrowing done which article I wanted to write about. So many people get their news from their friends through Facebook so that was where I wanted to get my article from-one my friends linked to on Facebook. After reading several I decided on one that several friends linked to from Occupy Democrats, Trump Said He’d “Get Rid” Of Lobbyists. He Just Hired Dozens For Top Roles” found at: http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/11/11/trump-said-hed-get-rid-lobbyists-just-hired-dozens-top-roles/ . Right away noticing from the source this article clearly is not going to be unbiased, it comes from a very liberal source referencing the Occupy Wall Street movement and is not shy about it. The website’s “About Us” Sections claims that the website is a “political organization and information website” yet those two things cannot truly exist together in harmony, political organizations have an agenda they are pushing while information websites attempt to present information with the least bias possible.

                Jumping into the article it is clear from the beginning that the author, Colin Taylor, would not be trying to present each side reasonably or to give a full picture of the issue. Taylor calls Trump’s voters “naïve” immediately insulting the intelligence oh around half the population of the country, the people who put Trump in power. I am sure there are naïve voters on both sides of the issue not all on one side. Taylor shows his own ignorance by claiming that “Drain the swamp!” was the “rallying cry” for Trump’s campaign. If anything “Make America Great Again” is by far the more popular and well known rallying. Clearly using mis-leading facts destroys an author’s authority and creates doubt in the reader’s eyes.

Taylor does use some concrete evidence by listing who Trump is considering using for his cabinet as well as their credentials. The ones listed are indeed lobbyists who Trump claimed would be kicked out of the Washington. These people however do have relevant experience to the position they are being assigned to. Taylor does not include a discussion of WHY these people were chosen or discuss what they could offer to the position, defaulting to assuming that there would be some corruption at work.

Another point Taylor uses to decry Trump is the fact that ““the president-elect’s spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, declined a request for comment, as did nearly a dozen corporate executives, consultants and lobbyists serving on his transition team” from the New York Times claiming that this would be a “Common theme in the Trump Administration”. It is highly probable that the Trump Administration is incredibly busy getting ready for the upcoming presidency and cannot possibly respond to all requests for comment. The Trump administration has already staged several press conferences and I am sure will continue to do more trying to keep the public informed on his policies.

Occupy Democrats does not feel like it needs to be an unbiased source of news. It’s audience is already people who by and large already agree with the liberal views expressed by the website and so will agree with the slanted view they present. The problem with this is that it creates world where people can exist in an echo chamber, only hearing their own opinions echoed back to them. 

Entry #1: A Blog About Blogs

Honestly I never have been a fan of blogs. I have always seen them as something lonely housewives do to try and reach out to the world and interact with it in ways they haven't been able to achieve in their day to day life.

Well that was my opinion anyways until I started looking into what blogging was really all about. Blogging is as varied as people are, while there is the boring blog that is only relevant those who personally know the author there is also a vast expanse of general interest and special interest blogs that would appeal to a wide variety of people, myself included.

One blog that I have visited for years without even realizing was actually a blog was Post Secret. This is a blog where people send in post cards with secrets written on them which are then published on the blog. This blog is interesting as you get insight into people's personal thoughts and experience. There is often reoccurring themes such as a drive towards suicide or trouble within marriage that helps those struggling with those issues see that they aren't the only one in that situation and feel like maybe there is hope for them if others were able to overcome those obstacles in their life.  This blog connects people in ways not possible in daily life. The aspect of anonymity let's users openly share their darkest secrets without ever being revealed, sometimes the internet is the only place these secrets ever get told. Psychology shows it is healthy to let go of things rather than keeping them bottled in and Post Secret gives users a place to do just that.

The layout of Post Secret is very simple, letting the images speak for themselves with little to no interpretative text. When there is interpretive text then it is usually a translation of a language other than English or a single sentence that gives greater context to the entry. The black background makes the website seem serious, somber and highlights the secret nature of the website. The black pairs well with the often dark content of the post cards, yet the white text emphasizes the message of hope the blog tries to convey; the light shining through the darkness.

Another blog with a similar style to Post Secret is The Sartorialist. The Sartorialist appears to be a fashion blog. Now high fashion is not something I have any knowledge of and the website is presented in such a way that I believe requires existing knowledge of high fashion to enjoy. As with Post Secret a simple mono-chromatic background is chosen, this time white. There are pictures of people wearing fashionable clothing with the only text being when and where the picture was taken. The blog claims to create a "two-way conversation on fashion" a claim which it fails to reach. There is no conversation going on as far as I am aware, merely pictures being presented saying "this is fashion" with no expounding on what that means or why the pictures are fashionable.

While the above blogs are very serious in their presentation there are also blogs which are much more light-hearted in nature, such as the blog Dog Shaming. Dog Shaming is a blog where people post pictures of their dog with a written message about something they did wrong, publicly "shaming" the dog for their wrongful behavior. The background for this website is a wooden floor with dog prints on it, creating a playful image as one imagines little dogs scampering across the floor, making those prints.

After doing research and actually opening my mind to the possibility that their may be more to blogging than I first thought I have come to appreciate them more. The blogs that I can form a connection with such as Post Secret and Dog Shaming add value to my life, allowing an online community to form and interact with the content provided while those I do not connect with such as Sartorialist hold no interest for me as I don't feel like I can interact with them in any meaningful way.

Entry #2: The Importance of Food

                So, I am a huge gamer, it’s always been a passion of mine from the moment my hands first came across my neighbor’s Playstation controller to today. The types of games I play vary and I enjoy all types. The game I am currently playing is one called “Don’t Starve”. It is a survival game where your object is, as the title implies, not to starve. The game goes so much further than that though, it’s about planning ahead, being creative and using resources wisely. It has a cute, Tim Burton-esque horror theme to it that helps to draw the game together. Player’s start the game off with their chosen character being dropped off into a world they know practically nothing about with a tall man in a suit standing over their character telling them “you better find something to eat before night falls”. With that he disappears and the player must figure out how to get that done with a hint that something ominous happens in the night time.

                The player might start off noticing that there is a bunch of objects that they are able to pick off the ground, and a menu for building things on the left side of the screen. Some of the items are obvious what their use if for, such as berries, while others are not apparent what they do, such as flowers. Collecting twigs and flint the player can start to make tools to help them gather more valuable resources, such as wood and stone. The player needs to make sure they build a fire or some other source of light by the time the first night comes as the ominous hint given in the beginning is very true and there is a monster named Charlie hiding in the darkness. At night Charlie will come out and attack any player not in the light, killing them rather quickly. Whenever the player dies that save is deleted and logged into the morgue, a running list of all the different times the player has died. In other words, once the player dies they must start the game over.

                Once players have begun to gather resources they should start looking for a relatively rare resource called gold. Gold can be found in certain nodes of rock. Gold allows the player to start creating structures that unlock more advanced things to build. Having built these structures (science machine and alchemy machine) a player should start looking at the food tab and building farms and other things out of it to help them survive.

                The true danger of Don’t Starve is usually not the food part but rather the means that players go about acquiring this food. Hunting is a very efficient way to acquire food and other useful items however the creatures of the land do not die easily and will attack the player when the player attacks them. Furthermore, there are hounds that will periodically spawn and hunt down the player until either the player is slain or the hounds are. Finally unbeknownst to the new player, there are seasons in the game and winter offers unique challenges in having to keep warm and a general lack of food during the season.

                There is generally thought of a way to “win” the game, though really the object is to survive as long as possible. There is a portal somewhere in the world that takes the player out of “survival mode” and puts them into a separate realm of “adventure mode”. Adventure mode provides unique challenges for the player where they attempt to assemble 5 items in the new realm they spawn in and assemble them into a new portal to move onto the next level of adventure mode. There are 5 levels in total in adventure mode and players who complete all 5 are usually thought of as having beat the game.

                Overall Don’t Starve is a great puzzle game that I have put way too many hours into. The game is challenging and offers a new challenge every time it is played. With the harsh “restart the game” consequence of dying it makes it a real challenge to try and survive and thrive in the world of Don’t Starve.