Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Oaks,_California

I do not have a camera so I cannot take a "snap shot" of the change I made..

Thousand Oaks, California is my hometown so I knew if I looked up the article that is written about a place I am extremely familiar with, I would have to find something that I could change or add. I was looking under the "Points of Interest" section and I realized it was missing a huge point of interest that has come about just in the past few years. So I decided to add another place that I know is a point of interest for everyone, the Muvico Theater there. It is among the only Muvico theater in the entire nation. I believe there is only one more in Florida. These theaters are going to start to pop up everywhere because they have been so popular.

There is a restaurant and full blown bar on the upper level of the theater. There are about 3-4 theaters on this level that anyone over 21 can purchase alcohol and drink it in the theater as they please.
The other great aspect of this theater is the fact that they have a few theaters where you can choose where you want to sit in the theater. It is all reserved seating, so that makes it easier for people who might be able to go earlier in the day and purchase their tickets and then be able to arrive at the movie right when it starts and not stress about trying to find a decent seat.

These theaters also seem a lot more up scale then most theaters that everyone is used to. So I definitely believe that this is a huge point of interest in Thousand Oaks. Everyone I know back in Thousand Oaks or the surrounding areas will always choose Muvico as the theater where they watch movies at. I know that when I go home, Muvico is definitely the only place I will go anymore to watch a movie. The theater is absolutely amazing!

Oral Presentation

Hybrid Art

I am a total nerd for Harry Potter and I cannot even contain my excitement for the next movie to come out so I was browsing through Harry Potter images and I found this one. I believe this can be seen as "hybrid art" because there is a substantial quote, which is the text, from Albus Dumbledore, one of the most important characters from the movie and then an image of the three main characters, Harry, Hermione, and Ron. This has to be an image that someone made themselves, but I think it is art in its own way. For a Harry Potter fan, this quote from Dumbledore is one of the most important ones he says from the entire book series. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione are best friends in the novel so that is why they all have their arms around each other. It is interesting that the artist did not put faces on these characters. This could have been because they did not know how to draw faces, but from the rest of the bodies it seems like they really could have drawn the faces well. It seems like the artist wanted the image to be almost mysterious if they left out the faces. If someone were not a Harry Potter fan, they might not be able to name the characters, but any Harry Potter fan knows exactly who these characters are. The character in the middle has glasses, so of course that one is Harry himself. 

In the background of the image, seems like it could be representing Hogwarts, the school which the characters attend in the novels. Hogwarts is a very intricate image to try and draw, so the artist might have just had a hard time trying to draw it, or they could have known how to draw it, but thought it was better left a mystery for people to try and figure out what the image was. 

The colors in the image are also rather important. Most of the Harry Potter novels are rather dark. If there were bright colors in this image, one would probably be confused and it would seem rather strange. For the artist to use darker colors it adds more of the Harry Potter feeling to the image. If there was more use of the color black, this could have been a lot more darker of an image, but to use brown and tan colors, it lightens the mood of the image a bit. Harry Potter is dark, but there is always "hope" in the novels that slightly lighter colors fit quite perfectly with this image.

Lastly, for the text to be hand written, this also adds to the image being less formal. It could have been typed and put on the image, but for it to be hand written, it almost makes someone believe that Albus Dumbledore could have written this himself.. dun dun dun dunnnnnn!

I hope this image was okay for a piece of "hybrid" art and I enjoyed expressing my geeky Harry Potter nerd side =]

homework 10/15

I used the same site but I found a few games that I really liked.. they are kind of silly but I liked them! I could not figure out how to attach the PDF article so I guess i will do that in class..

Game sites:
Topsy turvy:

http://www.addictinggames.com/topsy-turvy-game.html

Super Mafia Land
http://www.addictinggames.com/supermafialand.html

ninja
http://www.addictinggames.com/ninjahunter.html

Assignment #2

I created my avatar not essentially to look exactly like me, but more to reflect on my passions. I put my hair and eye color, and then I dressed my avatar up in a dress that Princess Belle wears in Beauty and the Beast. I did that to reflect on my passion for all things Disney, and Disneyland itself. I grew up in California and have been going to Disneyland throughout my life and became quite passionate about it. I gave my avatar books as well which is reflecting on my passion for literature. I am an English major so literature is a rather important part of my life. The background is a mountain and you can see a ski lift on it. I wanted to make that my background because of my love for Colorado, the mountains, and snowboarding. It has been a rather important part of my life even before I moved out to Colorado. Every winter ever since I can remember I would come out to Colorado to ski or snowboard with my family. It is a huge aspect of my life that I am passionate about. So I rather enjoyed making this avatar and incorporating all those aspects of my life. At first I was just going to make an avatar that looked exactly like myself, but I decided it would be more meaningful to create an avatar that was somewhat silly but with more depth and thought.

I analyzed my friend Carolyn’s avatar which is at her blog website, http://engl3116carolynhdz.blogspot.com/. Carolyn’s avatar seems to be rather plain in comparison to mine. This could mean that she did not want to be as crazy about her avatar as I was, or maybe she just preferred for it to be simple. I have known Carolyn for a few years now and this avatar might look slightly like herself since it has brown hair and she has brown hair, but the clothing and everything else does not quite compare with how she looks in real life. It is kind of interesting that before I chose to go kind of crazy with my avatar, I was debating using the same shirt for my avatar that Carolyn used. Great minds think alike right? =]

In David Bell’s reading of “Identities in Cyberculture” he talks a lot about how people can express themselves through the internet. He says, “The self can be defined by the homepage. They encourage a reflexive presentation and narrativization of the self. The homepage creates a chance for authors to reveal things about themselves that they might not have before.” Many people use the internet as a way to open up more then they would in the real world. In the internet, no one really does know who you are in real life. People can change how they act, talk, etc. People changing in these ways can be good, but can also be bad. Some people might just live by the person they are on the internet and forget the actual person they are in real life. On the other side, someone might be a very shy person in real life, but on the internet might open up about themselves in ways that they never thought possible. In another quote from the reading Bell states that, “Online life is text- based and this means that participants do have choice in terms of their self-presentations. Who we are is defined by who we are not.” This is another great example to strengthen my point on how people can act in a different way on the interent then in real life. There is the choice to be able to act in this manner that makes it rather appealing to many people.  In the case of my avatar, I revealed some aspects of my life that some people might not know. I might open up about these passions with friends, but it was rather easy to make this avatar knowing that people either on the internet, or just in our class were viewing it. I was not thinking about how maybe my best friend might see it, or maybe this person I do not particularly like might see it. This aided in my decision to make the avatar the way I did. 

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