Author Archives: destiny

To Interview Everyone – Video Project

I have been thinking about what I was going to do allllllll week long, saving this for the last minute because I haven’t been sure on what I want to do. I imagined I would be doing something with Sol, but after rereading through the assignment, I realized I don’t even have to include them.

I love Sol, but I can’t imagine using someone else’s face to be them, and I have zero time to work on animating (I have 2 papers to work on this week, too!), which was my original plan.

I spent some time going through the list of plans people have already have for inspiration, and I felt sad because I couldn’t think of anything yet. Everyone had good plans, but I was lost and frustated . . .

So, while doing my best at brainstorming (word vomitting in a Google Doc until something makes sense), I followed Sarah’s tutorial that she sent in our discord group chat and posted and decided to try again at LipSyncing Dr. Oblivion, which I tried for hours weeks ago and could not get it to work at all . . . and low and behold . . . I did it!

There’s nothing to it because I was just testing, but BAM! I DID IT!!! Thank you thank you thnak you my anxiety lowered so much.

So, the game plan? Let’s discuss:

An interview. Of course, what else would it be? However, a real interview, with real people, and Dr. Oblivion, in which I will be asking them about their thoughts on AI. Here is the cast:

  • Dr Oblivion – AI
  • Dad – dad
  • Rory – germanna
  • Kyra – umw
  • Aidan – longwood
  • Bryce – brother

These are some of my friends from high school, who have all gone different ways, and family members. The list is subject to change, because I want to interview so many people, but I can’t because I’ll go crazy . . .

So, I put up a script, or an outline, at least, because I can’t write the answers that the people will answer already:

Script

(opens to me in my room, at my desk)

ME: Hello everybody! I am Destiny, I am a sophomore here at UMW and one of your fellow students in ds106. I’m sure we all have differing views of Artificial Intelligence, so I am here to interview some of my friends and family, as well as a very special guest about AI. Without further ado, let’s get into the interview:

(cut to first interviews)

ME: If you could quickly introduce yourself, that would be great. Name, age, little blurb about you, whatever seems great for you!

(Rory answer; in Rory’s house, only her on screen)

(Dad answer; in his office, only him)

(Aidan answer; phone call, wherever he is)

(Bryce answer; probably home, different room)

(Kyra answer; her dorm)

(Dr. Oblivion answer; lipsync)

ME: If you could describe Artificial Intelligence or AI in a quick sentence or two, how would you describe it?

(Rory answer)

(Dad answer)

(Aidan answer)

(Bryce answer)

(Kyra answer)

(Dr. Oblivion answer)

ME: What would you say are some pros of AI?

(Rory answer)

(Dad answer)

(Aidan answer)

(Bryce answer)

(Kyra answer)

(Dr. Oblivion answer)

ME: What about some cons?

(Rory answer)

(Dad answer)

(Aidan answer)

(Bryce answer)

(Kyra answer)

(Dr. Oblivion answer)

ME: How do you imagine a future with AI?

(Rory answer)

(Dad answer)

(Aidan answer)

(Bryce answer)

(Kyra answer)

(Dr. Oblivion answer)

ME: Have you interacted with AI in any way before? What was your experience like?

(Rory answer)

(Dad answer)

(Aidan answer)

(Bryce answer)

(Kyra answer)

(Dr. Oblivion answer)

ME: Any final thoughts on AI that you would like to mention?

(Rory answer)

(Dad answer)

(Aidan answer)

(Bryce answer)

(Kyra answer)

(Dr. Oblivion answer)

ME: Thank you so much for joining me.

(cut to me back in my room)

ME: As you can see, there were a lot of different thoughts on AI. (add more to ending after interviewing everyone so I know what to add to them)

Things are subject to change as I interview people. I plan to set up an interview schedule, but I’m waiting for my guests to tell me their availability.

Thank you for reading!! Hoping this goes well . . . and that I can manage it with my papers this week, too . . . I’m nervous

Powerful and Moving – Radio Shows Listening

On Monday, I listened to two of the Radio Shows with some of the class: Logic Pod, and Ravioli Radio (me and my group’s!)

We first listened to Logic Pod. One of the things that stuck out to me was the use of real voices. It’s been a couple of days and I don’t really remember exactly what had happened, but I remember being astonished that the real voices actually sounded great! They sounded crisp (good), the mics were good, the sound quality fit each other, even with the few voices that were generative! And also, the people behind the voices did really well acting out their scripts. It was very believable!

There was a point at the end of the show that stuck out the most. It was a speech by I thinkkkk Robin’s character (although I don’t remember their name), a powerful one that I’ve been thinking about for days. I don’t remember what the message was, but I just remember that a mixture of the acting, the script, and tension in the audio made me feel really moved.

I also remember reading Robin’s posts, but also listening to when they came on air to answer questions, and Robin talked about how long it took to put together. It seemed very stressful, especially doing it all themself, but I think it came together really well and really connected. I was impressed!!

Finally, we listened to Ravioli Radio, and I was geeking behind my computer screen seeing what people were saying about the radio I worked on. It was so nice, everyone was so nice!! I think a lot of people liked it! Me and Summers went on air to answer questions after, and it was really fun to actually use my voice and talk about it instead of just typing it out. I was very happy with my results.

Overall, I just had a really good time 🙂

Week 11 Daily Creates

This week!!! I almost forgot about these entirely and ended up doing them really late.

On Wednesday, 4/3, the prompt was:

“Tell and show What made you smile today? Give us a story to smile. Make our dark lives a little bit shiny with your smile.“

Already, reading that prompt made me sadly smile. I was in the dumps already from my own personal stuff, so I shared what made me happy that day:

“I had a rough day yesterday, and am kind of in the dumps, but my dad gave me a big hug today and squeezed me tight, so it made me feel good. I think hugs are a secret weapon against sadness”

So if you have someone to give you a hug when you’re down, I recommend it. It’s not a cure, but a little bandaid, at least 🙂

On Thursday, 4/4, the prompt was:

“What is the funniest thing you see if you web or GenAI search ‘ds106’? Bonus points if you use a non-Google browser and share the name of that.“

I actually did this one in the comfort of my bed (still in the dumps so I was rotting when I had free time instead of doing more work). So, after doing a deep dive by scrolling really fast through “ds106” on Google Imaged, here was my response!

“I used Google and went to the images to find this, and just scrolled really fast and stopped and saw this and it made me laugh. I need to know if there’s a full version and how much money this is“

It was actually kind of a jumpscare, because a lot of the images I saw while scrolling were faceless, so to be scrolling and suddenly see your professors face made me jump (with respect).

Also, I got an answer, it’s a 10!

On Friday, 3/5, the prompt was:

“The fabulous @bryanmathers has created a remix site with a game of Top Trumps. Let’s use this to create our own #ds106 set.“

So, I put together one for my cat!

“behold . . . cat the cat (with 15 cat points)“

I’ll walk you through it.

She’s loaf 2000 , because she is such a loaf and loafs all the time. She is actually bread, my little bread <3

Cutie 100, of course. Nothing to explain there. She’s just a cutie!!

Sleepy 75, because she is very good at sleeping, except for when it is inconvenient to me and she decides she wants to run in circles and chase her tail or beat up (playing) the other cats. This usually happens when its my sleep-time . . . so she loses points for that because she makes me lose sleep (and also I can’t sleep without her at my chest).

And Cat 15, because there’s a running joke between me and my friend that she is not a cat despite being named Cat and being a cat. She just behaves not entirely like a cat sometimes, and it’s just very funny for a cat named Cat to not behave like a cat.

That’s all!!

Radio’s Complete!! – Week 10 Summary – 3/22-3/29

What a week! I’m so happy for how far we’ve all come!

This wasn’t a super heavy week, post-wise, at least, but here’s a brief summary of my week.

Oh, wait, here’s my song of the week, too!

It should be criminal how short this song is……

Daily Creates

Week 10 Daily Creates

These were fun and easy peasy! I love the ones where I get to open art programs and put stuff together and fiddle with things. It’s so fun to me, really revives the creative kid inside that was brutally murdered to focus on school. They’re back!!

Radio Update 2

Almost Done – Radio Update 2

Making these updates is always so fun to me, so this was nice to make. It makes me realize how far we’ve come and just how the process has been. It’s very comforting, actually!! It also makes me know how much work we put into it, so that we should be proud of it, and I am proud of the radio and of my group 🙂

Radio

Ravioli Radio

The radio itself! Done!! Complete!!!!

I love this so much, I actually don’t remember the last time I had so much fun in a group project. Group projects are supposed to be miserable, that’s how they always have been, but this was FUN?? I think I was blessed with the most fun and creative group members, and I really could not have done it all without them!

Communication was amazing. Everyone contributed, everyone worked hard, and I just feel very warm to have done all of this with them. So, huge thank you to my group for creating this with me. I’m very happy to have done all of this with you guys!! We created something great!!

I talked about the process before in the post and the process post, so I’ll save you that story again. Just know that I’m very happy with our hard work.

I have no idea what we’ll be up to next week, after doing all of this, so I am kind of nervous! But I guess I’ll see where this all goes.

Ravioli Radio

She is complete!!! We did it!!!

Thank you so much to my group for all of this. We all did amazing, and I’m very happy with our final project. So thank you to Summers, Greta, Marisol, and Sarah for working with me on this 🙂

We put this together using Audacity (editing), Freesound (sound effects), Elevenlabs (voices), and some other programs!!

I’m providing a blurb of all of the sound effects that we put into the show. I can’t find the ones everyone put in their own commericals and bumpers, but this is what was likely used in the entire interview portion:

Overall, this was really fun, and I’m so happy to have done it, but I’m also so happy to be finished with it.

Thank you for listening 🙂

Week 10 Daily Creates

Only two TDCs this week!

On Thursday, 3/28, the prompt was:

“Change a Letter, Ruin a Book – some ideas here“

So, I opened FireAlpaca (my digital art program!) to patch together The Great Batbsy, a Batman adaptation of The Great Gatsby

This was fun to make!! I had to fiddle a little but I mostly just copied the B in Gatbsy and replaced the G with it, and then fixed the background. I allowed it to be a little messy, because I didn’t want to take a while on it, but it was fun. I also added little bat wings to the sides!

This was fun!! I liked it a lot. I have no idea what a Batman adaptation of The Great Gatsby would look like, and honestly, I’m afraid to see that.

On Friday, 3/29, the prompt was,

“What is your least favourite household chore? What is a game you do, or might, pair with the chore to survive the daily grind? E.g. my least favourite chore is washing cutlery (yes, I might get a dishwasher someday), I pair this with a game of pickup sticks.“

So, I thought for a while, because I couldn’t really think of anything. Usually, I just suffer through the chores and deal with it, but I did think of something! In my post, I said,

“Folding clothes is sometimes the most miserable thing to do ever . . . so sometimes I decide to see how small I can fold them!! which, I guess makes it take longer, but it makes it a little less miserable”

Which is true!! I do do this!! There’s not a lot to say about it, just that I fold them as teeny tiny as I can. And then unfold them because making them tiny doesn’t help me at all. And then refold them like a normal person.

And double my time doing it all, but at least I had a little fun

That’s it! Not much else to say!

Almost Done – Radio Update 2

The end is in sight. We have just about everything done!

This week consisted of us turning in our voice lines to each other through our Discord and shared Google Doc. We had a harsh deadline of getting these in by Tuesday so that we could patch everything together by the end of the week and have time to fix anything, if necessary! But the end is in sight, and we’re gonna get it finished.

For our voice lines, the majority of us used AI speech to text. A couple of us used ElevenLabs, but I’m not entirely sure what everyone used. Sarah ended up using her own voice, which is really cool! I considered, but decided not to because I don’t feel like I have the Sol vibe. I wanted Sol to be more monotone or just slow, but I am not good at talking monotone or slow. I’m actually happy with the voice I chose! It’s different from one I used in the past, but this one feels a lot more like them than the last one I used.

After putting in our voice lines, we split up to work on patching the audios together in parts. The parts were: introduction to the radio, introductions, interview Part A, commercial break 1, interview Part B, commercial break 2, interview Part C, and the ending. The intro and ending also include commercials and bumpers. We did these individual, and tomorrow, Sarah offered to patch all of them together for the final radio, and we’ll be done!

I’ve put together a couple, and we only have one left before putting everything together. It was easy putting it together! We put everything in SoundCloud and turned our downloads on, and I used Audacity and fiddled with the volume of some of the audios to make them sound easy. We also used our good friend Freesound for sound effects like clapping, cheering, booing, etc.

Overall, I’m so excited to see this completed tomorrow. And I’m very happy to have had the group that I have. I’ve had a really good time throughout this all!

Ravioli Radio is Real – Week 9 Summary – 3/15-3/22

I wanna start this off by saying that I just did a round of commenting on a bunch of posts and seeing other groups’s progress and it made me so happy I could cry. Everyone seems to be having a good time and working well and smoothly, and so is my group, and it’s just so nice!! Group projects are usually miserable, but this one isn’t!

But, enough about that, let’s talk about my week.

My anthem for this week was Electric Blue by Easha, which I wanted to add, mostly because I listened to this on repeat all week long while doing my work (stats.fm says I’ve listened to it 38 times this week (also also, this is a fun thing to add that I want to start adding to my weekly summaries because I listen to most of my music when I’m working for this class).

ASSIGNMENTS THOUGH!

Radio Show Update

Ravioli Radio’s Debut Coming Soon – Radio Update

I updated about my group’s radio here, and wrote a whole ton because I was so happy. I still am! I’m really happy to have my group, they’re all very passionate about what we’re doing and coming up with something good. They’re also all willing to hear feedback and come up with ideas together. We have a great team dynamic!

I anticipate we might finish early, to be honest, but I’m still really excited to see our final product.

Radio Show Design

Ravioli Radio – Logo

I came up with a very simple, ironically bubbly logo in Canva for our radio. The team really liked it, so I feel bubbly myself.

I also saw the other poster designs my group made for the radio and it’s so fun seeing all of our ideas come together and have a physical design. I love this team <3

Audio Assignments

Where Creativity Never Sleeps – Radio Bumper

The first Audio Assignment I did was a Radio Bumper for our show, where I convinced Dr. Oblivion to sound enthusiastic for the first time in his AI life. This was easy peasy, just patched some stuff together using free sound and Dr. Oblivion and Audacity.

Interestingly enough, when I sent it to our Discord, one of my group members asked (for their own bumper) if we were supposed to say ds106radio or Ravioli Radio and my heart fell out of my chest. I thought I misread an assignment AGAIN but it turns out, you can do either, so that’s great!

Terms and Conditions Apply – Radio Commercial

The next Audio Assignment I did was a Radio Commercial for sketchy, free mopeds from an unknown source. We already have enough commercials, so this one may not be used, but my groupmates said that there was no limit, so it might actually be thrown in! This was fun, I used an AI voice and Audacity and more free sound. Pretty simple again, but I love the voice, it’s so funny to me.

Daily Creates

Week 9 Daily Creates

The Daily Creates this week might have been my favorite of the ones we’ve had in previous weeks. These ones really made me think and also allowed me to write, which is something I love to do. Reading about endangered languages was also so interesting and sad to me, but it was very inspiring finding the poem I did in the endangered language I found. Regardless, really fun! My brain was opened!

This week was great, I felt really, really happy. I’m so excited to see more radio progress next week, this is just so so fun. Thanks for a good week, team!! 🙂

Ravioli Radio’s Debut Coming Soon – Radio Update

I’m having the time of my life with my radio group.

We are all really dividing the work pretty evenly, which is great because I was terrified of having to do everything in a group. There’s 5 of us, so sometimes I feel like I’m not doing enough, but we are all setting deadlines for each other and working together really well!

As for progress, we met up on Thursday through Zoom and spent around an hour brainstorming and working on the script through a shared Google Doc. It’s roughly done, we just need to organize it a bit and add some details. It probably won’t be too much of a hassle.

We are mostly all using text to speech voices, or AI voices, and we’ve written out what we want our characters saying. We plan to have all of our audios put in the doc by Tuesday-ish. Essentially, the plot is that all of our characters are being interviewed in a group interview by Dr. Ravioli with a live audience, so we get to interact with one another and the radio host (Rav) and the audience! Super fun!!

We also plan to divide the actual putting together of the radio show up. The show is split into parts, so someone will patch together all of that part, another the next, and then someone will be pasting all of the parts together! And we’re all willing to tweak or help each other out wherever needed.

We have also all completed the radio bumpers and commercials needed, as well as finding background music and the intro/outro and things like that. We’ve put a lot of work into it in such little time, I’m impressed!

I’m really happy to be working with these guys, they’re all really nice and meeting through Zoom was really nice to put faces to names (although they couldn’t see my face because my computer doesn’t have a camera . . . so I’m just a name to them still . . . my bad). I’m super excited to see the final result and share it with everyone!!

Ravioli Radio – Logo

I almost missed this assignment completely, but here we are!

I put together a logo for Ravioli Radio, the radio I’m working on with my group, making sure to include the two most important features of it: a cat and a moped.

I put this together in Canva and used a built-in template only to change it up completely and not use any of the original features it had, but it gave me inspiration! The moped and the cat are just two little free designs you can use through Canva!

This was fun!! I like the cute and bubbly design of it, even though I think it contrasts Dr. Ravioli. Dr. Ravioli’s very monotone, definitely not bubbly, but I love the irony behind having a cutesy logo only for a very monotone radio.

I’m not sure what else to add, but I showed the group and they all really liked it, so I’m happy!! They talked about printing it out and it made me feel warm and good 🙂