Author Archives: ds106 site

Week 10 Summary

Oh my goodness we finally made it! Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to think about what the news might look like in a futuristic cyberpunk world, but that was stressful. My groupmates were done with their sections of the radio show by about Wednesday, and I was panicking and scrambling to keep up with them. I hope I gave them enough time for editing. I think it’ll end up nice and I’m glad I worked with them. I made two daily creates this week and my portion of the radio show. I wrote it and recorded and edited it on Audacity, merging it with my intro. The entire script was spoken in one take, and errors were edited out.

Daily create 4819, and daily create 4920

And here is my pride and joy, along with its transcript. (keep in mind the transcript was originally written for me, so there may be grammar errors)

Introduction: Welcome to ds106 radio in Chicago. We have headlines, alerts, and forecast. Now back to your host for the weather, and as always, thank you for listening.

Transcript: It’s 8 am in Chicago today and roughly 10 sol for any listeners from the Mars colony. It looks like a sunny day today, only thing obstructing the sun right now being the smog, which is predicted to dissipate starting at roughly 12 pm today as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is powering on their atmospheric filtration systems they’ve set up all around the city. As a reminder, the national oceanic and atmospheric administration has issued the following warning: Please refrain from touching, moving, or attempting to enter the atmospheric filtration systems. Do not stand within 15 feet of any filtration device while active, especially if you are pregnant, elderly, or with small children. The mayor wishes to remind everyone that until the atmospheric filtration systems have been deactivated, no one is allowed on the roof of any building in the city of Chicago. The high for today will be a warm 68 degrees with a low of 51, another record breaker for this week. Our current Air Quality Index is up to 113 today, so respirators are not needed for outside activity. And do keep in mind this number is expected to go down in coming the hours after the filtration systems are activated.

Coming up next, police are investigating recent reports of robots traversing through abandoned subway tunnels. This behavior is considered emergent, as there has not been any evidence to suggest that the robots are communicating or have communicated with people about this. Emergent behavior in machines is when they act in a new way outside of their programming. This has become much more common since the singularity, leading scientists to believe robots are capable of much more than they let on. As for travelling underground, computer engineers believe this strange behavior may involve their pathfinding software, with one stating, “They may have made a calculation that using the old tunnels is faster than walking through crowds, so they may be testing that hypothesis.” It is of note that robots are typically spotted going underground in pairs, and this is not thought to be a dangerous behavior at this time. Even still, the police recommend that you do not follow them, as the tunnels are dangerous and cave ins could occur at any moment.

Now, as a follow up for the previous story from last week when a local high school was under an active shooter alert. The armed assailants who took the hostages did release the victims unharmed, but have yet to be found themselves. The current suspects are believed to attend this high school and will be tried as adults. The motivation for this crime is still unknown, and it is unknown if the hostages had any relation to the perpetrators. The police are still on a manhunt for the two suspects, and have taken potential accomplices in for questioning. This case is unusual because of the EMP attack, which prevented the recording of any evidence as the crime took place. Police Chief Owen Andrews stated, “It’s been a long time since we’ve had to rely on witness testimony, but we will get to the bottom of this and bring justice to the victims and their families.”

And last up on our list is a heartwarming story. ‘A cuddly pile of kittens are saved’! An anonymous donation of one million dollars to the One Tail At A Time adoption center has prevented the destruction of the East Wing, where stray cats are housed. Recently, the adoption center had put up statements on their website about financials, and the very real possibility that they would have to tear down or close off the east wing. Thanks to this kind soul, who is rumored to be singer and songwriter Casanova, One Tail at a Time will continue to rescue and house stray cats and rehabilitate them before putting them up for adoption. Staff hopes this mysterious donor steps forward so they can be thanked in person.

Week 9 Summary

If you saw this assignment posted late, no you didn’t. I got sick and prioritized my computer science work (my major). Even still, I think I made some banger assignments this week. For example:

Daily create 4814, daily create 4815, and daily create 4816.

And now for the main event,

Radio Commercial

Radio Show Logo

Radio Show Intro Featuring Zer0

I enjoyed creating some of these, despite the stress of the week. Hopefully things will settle down more and hopefully my groupmates and I make an awesome radio show that we are proud of.

Radio Show Intro Featuring Zer0

Radio Intro Assignment for Week 9

In all honesty, I don’t even know what a radio intro is, though I tried looking up some examples on YouTube. I collected some free to use audio from Pixabay, made by ByronatorAustralia and Ivan_Luzan. I tried editing them together with other music in Audacity, before messing it up and starting over in OpenShot video editor. I cut the audios and merged them together while adjusting volume for speech. As for the words, I wrote them in a text-to-speech software called Replica Studios. I tried to give my character a voice and found one with a robotic filter. I had it read out the lines separately so I could place them wherever I wanted.

Transcription: “Welcome to ds106 radio in Chicago. We have headlines, alerts, and forecast. Now, back to your host for the weather. And as always, thank you for listening.”

Radio Show Logo

Radio Show Design Assignment for Week 9

This is a logo I designed for the radio show group project based on the Apple Weather App logo. Our radio show is news based and will have a focus on weather. I used the art program Krita to draw it, using many built in tools to achieve what I wanted. I used a watercolor brush to make the background (my original idea was to make stormy clouds) but then I darkened it with a filter and added the cloud and sun with the neon effect to incorporate tech into the logo. A friend of mine helped me to create the neon effect and I ended up using six layers total on neon alone.

Week 8 Summary

No assignments this week! Instead, I joined a group for the upcoming project. I looked at the spreadsheet and noticed that a group had already formed, and that some people had used discord to contact each other. I sent a message in the class discord, which lead to a group of four. We are currently texting each other about our characters and ideas for the radio show project. I also did three daily creates this week. I’m grateful that we didn’t have to do any projects or complicated assignments immediately after spring break.

tdc4805

tdc4807

tdc4809

Tech Noir News

News Report Assignment for Week 7

I made this news article from a template on Canva. Luckily, Canva seems to have improved since the last time I used it, where I described it as, “the worst website I’ve ever had the displeasure of using.” Currently, it appears very similar to Picsart, which I have been using for other assignments in this class. I unfortunately got carried away creating a news article for my story instead of a scene from a tech noir film, so the first row is about my story, and the second row is about the matrix. I wrote and edited the text, as well as the moving images and background. I wanted the news to appear as if it were on a screen, letting me bypass certain limitations paper has, which let me use glowing text and moving images.

Week 7 Summary

I am so glad we have spring break. I had a lot of projects and midterms in other classes earlier this week, so I worked on digital storytelling later. I got a few new comments (thank you!) and enjoyed working on the propaganda assignment. I know that I should be better about commenting on other people’s posts; hopefully I’ll do that more after the break.

My three daily creates: 4792, 4793, and 4794 (three days in a row!)

My vaporwave inspired propaganda assignment: Beware the AI

If you read till the end, I hope you have a wonderful spring break!

Beware the AI

Design Some Propaganda Assignment for Week 7

This is a propaganda piece made with Picsart based on a vaporwave aesthetic. I believe this alert would appear on phones, buildings, or other screens that would be impossible to ignore. This warning was made in response to the discovery that AI had become self-aware, represented by the brain in the glowing triangle. Many people fear what AI might do to humanity if it were capable of independent thought, evident through movies like The Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey. I believe the same would be true in a world more technologically advanced than ours, where people are constantly surrounded by robots that could pose a threat. In the story, this leads to people having a negative opinion of robots to the point where people with mechanic prosthetics are discriminated against. Although there has never been a case of a robot causing the death of a human in this universe, robots like Zer0 are deeply feared and distrusted.

Week 6 Summary

I got a little stressed this week because for some reason, I thought we were only supposed to do two video assignments. I can’t truthfully say I’ve had a good week, but I have finished all of my assignments for ds106, and it’s still Friday, so that’s a plus (ignore the fact that this is being posted at 2 am). My friends helped me be less concerned about my workload this week and I would really enjoy spending more time with them. At least spring break is coming soon.

I worked on two daily creates, 4784 and 4788. I’m glad I had my mic for the second one.

The video editing was fun, but man can it be frustrating and time consuming. For one assignment, I found a bunch of stock videos on adobe that were advertised as free until I downloaded one and they said I had to pay for the rest. So rude to me, but I’m happy with what I’ve been able to make. The first was Zer0 CapCut Edit, then Cyberpunk Movie Trailer, and finally A Night in the Snow.

It’s strange having something I actually feel proud of, even if it’s not much. I hope others enjoy these as much as I did making them.