I think my final project was the easiest of all the projects. I was going to finish my original twine game but after about 20 minutes of it I realized there will never be an end to it so I decided to just do a new twine game since it would be so much easier to come to an ending. I think I spent about 2 hours all together making the actual game part. It was a lot easier than all the past projects put together, this included when I had to get pictures and videos from the Waterfront, but that was so difficult since I was on crutches and walking around was horribly difficult. Had I been able to walk that would have been the easiest project to complete. Since my final project was so much shorter than my other twine game it was a lot easier to make it seem filled with sounds and pictures. It was a lot easier when I realized how to give numerous options the same ending, that saved me a lot I time that I was able to use to try and figure out how to add sounds and pictures. Surprise surprise I could not figure out how to put either of them into my game. I think I spent three hours trying to figure out how to add sound and pictures to my game. I think the sound was a lot easier to add to the game because it was kind of like building off of using audacity. Sadly with the pictures it was a lot more difficult than the sound. With the sound when I figured out how to do it the first time I was just able to copy and paste the coding in and just delete the specific sound and add in the one I wanted for that page. Sadly with the pictures I just had absolutely no idea how to add the pictures in the first, second, or third time I added in a picture. It reminded me of a test…as soon as I finish one question I forget it to never know the answer again. It frustrated me a lot since I just continued to get confused at the same thing. I was really happy that I stayed for the entirety of class and Kelsey was able to help me add the sounds and pictures. Without her help I probably would not have been able to figure out how to add sounds or pictures and it would have been a very boring twine game…kind of like my first one.

All the boxes can get very cluttered if you do not move them around and organize them.
1) the first thing you have to do is zoom in on the twine game so you can see it well. Or zoom out if you need a better look. The zoom in and zoom out are the plus and minus magnifying glasses.
2) The second thing you have to do it grab the box you want to move and click on it and hold.
3) The last thing you do it move the mouse wherever you want to move the box to. Make sure you are still clicking on the box though because if you click off it will not move.

For our group project my group was in charge of gentrification awareness and prevention. To create awareness we decided to make a website to highlight major places in Pittsburgh that have been destroyed and replaced with apartment buildings, malls, stores, etc. The problem with this is they are taking away the history Pittsburgh was built on, the history that adds character to this city. We chose three main places that were gentrified in the last 20 years. The first place was the Homestead Works Steel Mill that they turned into the Waterfront. The next was the Mellon Arena that was turned into a parking lot. The last was the Shenley High school which used to be a beautiful building in Oakland that is now being turned into apartment buildings. The biggest problem I found with this project was choosing which historical places to highlight since there are so many important ones in Pittsburgh including but not limited to The Heinz Ketchup Factory, Kaufmanns, and the Macy’s in downtown Pittsburgh. We chose the three we did because they represented 3 different kinds of gentrification. When we made our decision Siobhan and I had to go to the different locations to take pictures. This was very hard for me because I was on crutches the whole week so I had a hard time getting around to the different places. Besides that we were also supposed to take videos of the land marks we were as and after taking my first video I sent it to Anna. Somehow the video did not send to Anna and it was deleted from my phone. Then we decided it would just be better to take the videos off YouTube because they are more educational. It was extremely helpful to have Anna, a professional, on my team because we were able to do a lot more than others. Our project turned from a project to a reality. I think all and all our project turned out very well and it is something we are very interested in pursuing in the future.

Of all the projects this was my favorite because I understood for the most part what I was supposed to be doing. I liked this project because I was able to show my awkward, mildly creative, imaginative side which I have not really been able to do with the other projects in the past. I enjoyed this project because it was really easy to learn how to use the program. The only big problem was learning how to code which was a big part of the project but I think I probably did alright with it. I think once I figured out how to do the coding it was very easy to do because all I had to do was copy and paste the coding to the pages I wanted coded (which was most of them). Since I only needed certain pages coded I think the coding would have been a lot more difficult for me had I not been able to just put it at the bottom of each page.  Something I was very excited about was learning how to move the slides around. This made the production so much easier since everything was not just all cluttered up and making it difficult to see what was where. I think of all the projects we have done this year this one was my favorite. Unlike the other ones I did not need very much direction to compete this project and it was much easier to understand how to create the project. The whole software system, I believe, was easier to use than any of the adobe software we used. This was also a lot less frustrating. I think the worst part of the whole project (besides the coding) would probably have to be… if I wanted to make a new thread to an already existing thread I did not know how to make the new thread. Going along with that I had a lot of difficulty if I, say, made three slides off one another and wanted to take them back to the original one they came off of, I did not know how to get them back to the original without going through all of the threads. (I think this is understandable but I apologize if it is not. I am not up to date on my computer terms.) At times this was very frustrating because I would have to try and fit the link word somewhere into my thread and sometimes they were very difficult words to fit into the sentence. Besides the coding (which I recently found out I failed at miserably) I think I did pretty well on this project, especially compared to the other projects we have done. I think of all the projects this was definitely my favorite. Oh yes and before I forget, this is fairly important, I did not finish my project and by that I mean I did not give my project any kind of end point because I am going to finish it for my final project. It will have actual colors, and maybe pictures and mostly everyone will die at the end or maybe go off to school…whatever, I’m still thinking of how to end it. It will be cool though. I will also try to put sound in it. I think the coding I did use made my project a lot less confusing as long as I explained to people what the colorful background was there for. At least I hope it did because that it what I was going for with it.

So for my twine game I decided that I will try to change the color of the pages that I narrate on. Since Most of my story is supposed to be serious for the most part I figure It will make it much more understandable to know when I awkwardly intervene into the story trying to keep it as light as I can without taking away from all the seriousness of the story. Besides that we all know that I don’t know how to properly use computers so I figure doing the easiest thing possible will be good for me since there will be less of a chance of me messing it up. Even though we all know I will mess it up anyways because well It’s pretty much inevitable that I will mess up something on this project and since I have not needed very much assistance so far it will have to be the actual coding I fail at. But I think that having a little bit of color will also lighten the story up since it is such a dark heavy story to read. I think that no matter what adding a few pages with some kind of color will be a good to do for this story. The only problem is I have to refigure out how to add the coding to my story. Besides that my story is actually going to well, believe it or not… That is until I try to add the background coding part to it and somehow manage to delete my entire project because Why not. For me to do this though I did learn that I need to add the coding to every page individually. I did it by putting the coding at the bottom of the page so it would not change all of my pages just the ones I wanted people to know I was narrating on.

So I was only able to come up with one idea so far for the Pittsburgh project. My group is in charge of making something for all the gentrification that is going on in Pittsburgh. I was thinking about what would be the best thing to stop the gentrification in cities like Pittsburgh. Since I do not know too much about gentrification all I know is wealthy companies go through and destroy old historical types of places the kind that may be possibly falling apart and they destroy them for corporate buildings, malls, sometimes apartment buildings (if people are lucky). The reason they are able to do this is because they want these prime locations that everyone is going to want to be a part of it some way or another. The Corporate big wigs are also going up against people who are extremely poor. I am proposing an app that helps these people who lose their towns to big business. It is an app that gives a bunch of other locations the big businesses could choose that are not going to make people up root their lives and they will also be good enough locations that will still turn a nice profit. I was thinking it could have a description as to where it is (by a highway exit, in a town, the middle of nowhere) and give a number at to how many people live around their in a 20 mile radius. This app will also have an option for a petition people can sign to save their towns. Then nobody has to go around making every sign a petition and waste their time doing so. I know this may not be the most realistic idea, but I think it could have possibilities of working and it would be a way for people to use the internet to their advantage as well.

The Nintendo game was the most boring thing I think I have done all week long. I mean that was not too surprising since this week was spring break and there was a lot of interesting and fun stuff to do. When I first started to play this game I was not too impressed because it just looked so boring since it did not have too much color to the game at the very beginning, or at all for that matter. Anytime I see a game that is only red, black, white and gray I judge it hard because it just does not look like it will be entertaining at all. When I started to play the game I realized I did not have very much control over anything that happened in it. Every part of the story only had one or two links to another page. The only page that had more than three links was a page that would send me to another page and no matter what option I chose that page would eventually send me back to the page with six links. This page made me very frustrated because I just could not figure out how to get away from this page. I was not amused with this part of the “game”. All and all I was not entertained by this game. The only thing to do through the whole game is choose a link that you like and find out if it sends you to another page that you have not been to before. I would not consider this a game at all, if anything I would call this a waste of my time. I found no entertainment value though this game what so ever. The judgement I made about this game at the very beginning about the lack of color was correct because this game was as boring as it was colorless.

The beginning of me audio video project is my morning alarm waking me up. then me angrily getting out of bed and falling on the way out, kind of like my normal daily routine.  Then I go bother my roommate’s bunny and go get ready for my day. Then as I am walking upstairs I fall because I have a tendency to do that. Then I make myself my morning tea and leave my apartment. That’s all I have so far but it will get better because I have incorporated squirrels into my project and they will be my downfall. Hopefully that does not happen to me in real life, but honestly I would not be surprised… So far I have run into a decent amount of problems. To start out I kept getting a pop up every time I tried to add a sound to audacity. It told me my file was not compatible with the software. To fix that I had to change the file format using a file converting program. After I was able to remedy that as my biggest problem I immediately had a second problem show up. I did not know how to move files around. Sadly for me I still do not know how to move files around but I am avoiding that question by just copying and pasting everything in the spots I want it to be in. So far through this project I have not had any major problems I have needed to rip my hair out because I could not figure out the answer of how to fix them. Sadly I am not done yet so there is still plenty of room for error by the time I finish this project. So far it is interesting though.

The sound of the mailbox

The scene I chose was the mailbox shutting. The sound was decently loud as the mailbox would close more. The scene I imagine going along with this sound is the sound of two neighbors awkwardly talking to one another since this is the only time they see one another. At this point in the conversation one neighbor is asking the other how her family is doing. Then the other neighbor responds. By this point their conversation is almost over because they saw each other when they originally went out to the mailbox.

Depending on if this is an apartment building or outside of 2 houses depends on what is heard as the background noise. In the case of the two houses I hear a light wind and birds chirping. But I think the first thing I thought was it was an apartment building and there is music in the background. Since it is an apartment building I think the radio would be playing so it would probably be a hot new single. What I am hearing is “Perfect” by One Direction. Since I love it so much I can hear the whole song playing all the way though. But since this would only be a short encounter the main part I hear when the mailbox is closing is the chorus playing in the background.

The last things I here is the sound of both of them starting to walk away in their separate directions back to their apartments. But right before that I hear the sound of the person who is closing their mailbox looking though their mail, the sound of papers being shuffled. Then the scene ends.

So you want to learn how to do stuff on premiere…good luck

So you have come here for me to help you add an audio transition. Your video will be so much cooler that way!

Well lets get started.

• First you are going to want to open premiere because well why are you watching this if you don’t need to know how to do it on premiere.
• Now that you have opened the software, hopefully you have your videos already in the edit a video screen
• Click in the middle of your 2 videos you want to add an audio transition to. It should bring up a red line in the middle of 2 videos.
• Now go up to the right hand corner and you will see a bar with the word effects.
• Click on the word effects.
• Under effects you will see different options.
• Click on audio transition. Make sure you click on the triangle bullet next to the words audio transition.
• Now choose the audio transition you want to use.
• Take the mouse and click and drag your transition to the red line I told you about before.
• Now you should have an audio transition in your video!