lunes, 30 de noviembre de 2009

About Myself

My name is Jorge, my classmates call me Jorge... I was born in Puerto Vallarta on December 2, 1994. Since Kindergarten, I have been in the American School, though I got out from fifth to eighth grade. I do not like going out of my house a lot, I like staying and playing videogames from the moment I finish my homework till it is really late at night. I do not have many friends, and I really don't care if I have any. I live in "Marina Vallarta", which is about 3 minutes from the school. I like exercising but I do not like watching sports a lot, only practicing them. I have lived all of my life on Puerto Vallarta, I have occasionally left to the States for vacationing ,but, besides that I really haven't changed homes.

I do like music, though I am not interested in playing any instrument. I believe the only reason we go to school is to work, so I dedicate my recess time to do my homework. I am not interested in talking a lot, since I think is lame and doesn't help you at all. I enjoy videogames, I have had my gaming consoles, I have sold most of them, by the moment I have a PS3 and a PSP. My favorite videogame genre is First Person Shooters. I really like spending a lot of time perfectioning my gaming skills. I like to read mature-themed books since I can handle the theme, no matter how brutal it is.

I dont like living in a hot place, I hate the beach,so, I basically don't enjoy living in Puerto Vallarta. I hate pictures and I don't drink nor smoke, nor plan to. I really enjoy learning interesting stuff. I have used technology since I was like 3 years old. I can definitely say that Puerto Vallarta is a boring place. I used to like cartoons,but, for the moment I just watch the History Channel and all those interesting channels. I really enjoy everything technology related. In conclusion, yes, I am a boring person.

martes, 24 de noviembre de 2009

Audacity Project 2 Overview

Once again, we worked with something audacity-related, it was amazingly weird what you would hear. I first have to discuss my project, the effects I used the most were drum based, and the rest were really very random sounds. The other people used mainly downloaded sounds, I really couldn't see any really "homemade" material, although there were exceptions. Most of the effects they used were really weird sounds, though the mix itself for the most part was pretty original...something you wouldn't really here anywhere else. What I really didn't have chance to include in my mix was some really sick guitar solo, I really regret that I did not use it.

Today, I had a chance to see by myself that my mix wasn't the creappiest of all. I listened to about seven mixes today, it was a rough ride. On the first mix, I witnessed the lazyness at all of its power, it really did not have any effor invested into it. On the second mix, I listened to a well balanced mix, although it lacked volume. On the third mix, I witnessed the fear, as I encountered a scary mix with incredible amounts of rip-offs from other songs. On the fourth mix, I really brome my barriers of un-originality, as I listened a song composed solely of downloaded sounds. The fifth mix was actually good as far as the word goes, it was all "homemade" but it just looped the same sound over and over. The sixth sound was awfully funny and incredibly good, it contained a lot of sounds made by the guy(Rodrigo), and it had a rather Zappa-like influence in some of it. The seventh and last mix was actually pretty normal, the photos creaped me out, although it really had a wide variety of sounds. This project was pretty good...for the most part.

sábado, 21 de noviembre de 2009

Audacity Project 2 Discussion

This past week we have been working once again with the Audacity program. It was once again pretty easy. This time the goal was to create our own sounds and loop them in order to create a song at least 90 sec. long. We also had the option to download sounds, although there was a condition, the sound couldn't last longer than 15 seconds. I chose the path of making sounds, so I practically made like 14 sounds by myself and I downloaded only 2 sounds. The difficult part of the project was the fact of dealing with a classroom, it was obviously loud. I really did enjoy this project because I once again discovered how fun is to make lame songs and how cool is it without singing. I would recommend to give a little more time if they're going to have the same project with the future 8th-graders. The only thing I disliked about the project was the shortened time we had to do it. This is the last Audacity project we are doing and I can say that the knowledge gained from this classes are definitely going to help me further on with computer-related stuff.

Audacity Project 2


lunes, 9 de noviembre de 2009

Mashups

The whole last week, we've been working on a mashup project on a easy-to use program called Audacity. Today, Mr. Picketts asigned us a group so we could listen to it and get a thought of what their work was and how good it was. The first project I listened to was Fernanda Corzo's one, my first impressions were that it was obviously an electronic mix. The volume for the project was kind of low, but I could hear that she actually worked on it, I couldn't really listen to the effects as it was playes as a song on Itunes; though it sounded like it was worked on. The second project I heard was Paola's one, it was basically a layer over layer of tracks, but it seemed a pretty average product. The next project I was supposed to listen to was Pedro's, but, he didn't have it.... so I did not hear it at all. The next and last project I heard was Taku's one, it was a Halloween mix song, but this project as a counterpart to Paola's, it was more elaborate, although it kept the same track over track concept. So, In conclusion It was a average project with an expected result.

On the Audacity project I did I used: one (full) song, 2 sound effects, and a piece of a Windows audio tutorial. The song was already mixed and very lengthy , so, what I did was to cut a big chunk of the song. After that, I inserted the sound effects, which themselves were only a single sound, but I worked with them so I could multiply them. I used some effects on the song, such as speed acceleration and bass boost on certain points, it gave it a nice touch. As minimum as it sounds, I did work with the song-altering pencil tool, although I do not see the big change.In conclusion, I really think I ended up with a nice product, that followed the needs and in the end was somehow fun to do.