TOUCHDOWN! Choice #1: Check

*Cue the sound of fans cheering and me doing a victory cry*

I got my first choice: PearlTrees! Now a name like that is very ambiguous so let me delve a little deeper. PearlTrees is a site that lets you share your interests with your online community. From a visual standpoint, it looks very similar in set-up to Pinterest; however, PearlTrees allows you to organize your categories however you wish.

When setting up your Homepage, you’re given the option to add: A Collection (of images – similar to a gallery), A Webpage, A Note, A Photo, A File, or a miscellaneous. Once you have items uploaded you can organize them and categorize them however you choose.

I chose this app for a rather selfish reason. Yes, we have a grade on this project and I’m exploring the site in order to present the resource to my classmates, but I chose PearlTrees because I really need help organize all the *crap* I’m involved with on Virginia Tech’s campus – so why not kill two birds with one stone? It’s one thing to write a list of what you’re involved with and the things you’ve accomplished for those respective organizations, but I think it’s really cool to be able to SEE everything placed together! I’m really excited to get started with this project!

That’s Not My Name *clap clap*

One of the applications that gives me the most trouble (and the biggest headache) is Facebook and its picture tagging capabilities.  Since high school I’ve been nicknamed – much to my displeasure – “The Tourist,” so naturally, I take a lot of pictures.  I upload photos of my friends and family to Facebook frequently and have recently run into the issue of Facebook thinking it’s super smart and trying to tag my friends in the pictures for me.  I personally find it creepy that technology has gotten to the point where it can recognize my face but that’s a whole other issue in itself.  While this capability is sometimes very nice and saves me tagging time, it has also caused a lot of very awkward situations.  I have tried to turn the capability off however, Facebook usually tags people wether I like it or not.  My best friend was once tagged as my arch nemesis from high school, my current boyfriend was tagged as my ex-boyfriend…needless to say, “awksauce.”  While I do upload an exorbitant amount of photos and I appreciate that Facebook is trying to save me time with tagging, I would use an extra 10 minutes of my life to avoid those awkward situations.

Another slightly comical issue that has effected me personally through this is every time a friend uploads a photo of me, Facebook always tags it as my mother.  I’ve been told for years we look like twins but having my mother tagged in my “weekend college adventure” pictures and therefore alerted to their existence is less than ideal.

[Insert Witty Title About Website Updates Here]

WHAT I DID

Today my site had a wee makeover. Well, part of it did. I realized that if I expected people to take my site seriously I needed to have a good About Me section that was more than just a picture of me cheesin’ and a few of my interests. I put the basic information – school, major, minor – in a small paragraph which allowed me to talk to the reader and get my personality across as opposed to the more typical Year: XXXX, Major: XXXX format. Simply put, I wanted to get my quirkiness out there early. I’m aware that I write very similarly to the way I talk – sarcastic and with dull wit only I and a few select others probably enjoy – so it’s important to tell the reader more about me.

I also updated a few small issues such as the ghastly cream color background Megan had previously pointed out, as well as adding an Archives and Contact widget.

 

WHY I DID IT

I did what I did to enhance the overall experience a reader will have with my website. I don’t want to be dull. I don’t want to be lack-luster. Let’s be honest, there are already enough blogs and websites out there that do that so I’d rather not contribute to the mayhem.

Megan’s Words of Wisdom on a Snowy Day

WHAT I HEARD IN PEER REVIEW

My peer review session with the lovely and insightful Ms. Megan Burpo went splendidly. She looked over my site and made some very helpful suggestions regarding overall layout and content.

She showed my that my About Me section did not appear how I had intended it to. Seeing my site through an unbiased parties’ eyes allowed me to see its flaws. I had not noticed a lot of things – especially in the About Me section – that Megan did.

Megan pointed out – to my surprise – that I did not have an widgets. Because I am new to WordPress I thought I had successful added them; however, I sadly had not. The addition of widgets would add depth to my site and allow me to link readers to my social media accounts as well as other websites and projects.

I was also unaware that we needed to have a Site Information page explaining why we were using this site in the first place. I think explaining to my potential readers that this WordPress is for academic purposes will help clear up and confusion about the site’s intents and purposes.

WHAT I NEED TO DO

• Change the background color on the body of the screens to white and not cream.
• Fix the About Me section so that the information is presented in a concise, clean paragraph as opposed to having a lot of awkward line breaks.
• Add some widgets to enhance the overall blog.
• Add a site information page.

Multimodal Dig: What The Heck Do I Carry With Me?

 

1. Water Bottle (Spatial, Gestural)
2. Thumb Drive (Linguistic)
3. “Communication and Sport” Textbook (Linguistic)
4. Chapstick (Visual, Linguistic)
5. Crab-Claw Ring (Visual, Spatial)
6. Wallet (Linguistic, Visual)
7. Recreational Sports Injury Report Form (Linguistic)
8. Pi Beta Phi Sorority Lettered Sweatshirt (Visual, Linguistic)
9. Milano Cookies (Linguistic, Visual, Spatial)
10. “When Life Gives You Lemons” Painted Canvas (Visual, Spatial)

I had a vary large array of various items. None of them met all five of the modes of communication; however, the Milano Cookies received a 3/5. I had no item what was Aural (sound) but almost all of the 10 items were Linguistic. Because of the item variety there were not a lot of patterns in the multimodal codes. I did notice that almost every one that was Linguistic was also Visual. These two seem to go hand-in-hand because to have an intriguing, effective linguistic message, the visuals must be well thought out.

The items that were the most different from one another were the crab-claw ring and the thumb drive. They had nothing in common except for their relative size. The most similar items were the injury report form and the sports textbook because they were set up visually the same because they are both textually based documents.

Editing, Formatting, and more Editing

WHAT I DID AND WHY

Today in class I tried to take my WordPress site to the next level. Whether or not I was successful is still up for interpretation. I decided to add a Portfolio menu with dropdown pages to exhibit all of my previous, and future class projects. I think this organizational tactic will help clean up my site and make it more professional as well as easier to navigate. I added a professional picture of myself into the About page as well as information about my education, experience, and Virginia Tech involvement. I tried to keep the About page professional while also giving the reader a glimpse into my personality as a writer and digital contributor.

The Resume section is proving to be the most difficult Page currently. I am in the process of adding a scroll-through, interactive Resume and have run into some complications. Next class I plan on trying Scribd.

Second Time’s The Charm, Right?

WHAT I DID

This weekend I gave WordPress another try. It is very safe to say we are not even close to friends yet, however, we’re slowly but surely working our way there. I don’t understand his (yes, I’ve decided to consciously start referring to my class blog as an individual; no judgement please) setup, and why in the world he refuses to let me see what a Page looks like after I’ve altered it. He’s slow in loading, changes his background to a sickeningly bright purple without my permission, and seems to purposefully make my life difficult. Now I know this relationship is not just one sided. He probably hates how I lose my temped and yell at him and slam on the keys to try and make him cooperate, but hey, sometimes it just happens.

Anyway, we’re making some progress. I decided to change my Theme to Hemingway. This theme enabled me to use a photo that expressed a lot of who I am and where I come from – an image of the flag-clad avenue leading to the Maryland State House. Since I took the photo I also believe it stuck true to the “Authentically Kat” theme.

I decided to expand the boundaries of my site and add a Resume and Contact menu option. While the pages are still very simple, I thought they were important to include and would be good to build up in the future. The Resume Page has a downloadable version of my Resume and, hopefully soon, will include a scroll through version as well. The Contact Page has areas in which another user can insert their information and request to contact me. Once I have further developed what I already have I hope to add a Portfolio Page – for my future projects – and include the Digital Identity Project I created earlier on in class.

WHY I DID IT

Everything I did I did with “Authentically Kat” in mind. I wanted this website to stick true to me, my quirks, and what makes my digital identity mine. The aesthetic choices I made I simply made because in my eyes, they are what worked well together and what combined in a way that I wanted to represent myself to my fellow classmates and the public.

Setting This ‘Ish Up

WHAT I DID

Today I decided to give WordPress a whirl.  I chose my tagline – “the thoughts of a 20-something trying to get through college one day at a time” –  to exemplifly who I am in my life and academic pursuits right now.  To be honest I’m not quite sure what exactly I did because I’m still figuring out where in the world I am on this blog. It’s like Pan’s Labyrinth to me; I’m very lost. Regardless, I chose the title Authentically Kat because that’s what I intend this site to be; my stone-cold thoughts and truths about what I’m doing and experiencing in my English 3844 class. I enjoy assignments like this because, while I consider myself a good writer and capable of lavish, vocabulary-impressive writing, I prefer to spit my thoughts out on paper and see what happens. When I write (and no one is monitoring me or giving me structure), I write how I talk. I ramble; and usually some pretty entertaining – or stupid, sorry in advance – things come out.

Besides a title and tagline I haven’t gotten very far. I (think I) chose the “Motif” theme because I like the powerful message a single image can portray. I don’t like clutter and I thought Motif allowed me to minimize that clutter with its simplistic setup whilst allowing a statement image to be seen.

WHY I DID IT

WordPress is hard.  Well, not hard per-say, but just not what I’m used to. I’m a Weebly girl through and through and WordPress is something that is going to take a little while to get through my head.  I did the things I did because, honestly, they’re the only buttons I was able to find on this dang blog setup. Once I get the chance to explore it a little more I think this could be a pretty interesting blog! Fingers crossed.