If you like yarn, you’ve come to the right place.
I learned some CSS!! I finally changed the accessibility thing that was bothering me on my home page! The text is now black instead of grey, and I also changed the font of my body text so that it’s a little easier to read.
There are so many possibilities!! I love it!! I’m not afraid anymore!!
I saw that Angela posted about the workshop, so I’m hopping on the bandwagon.
I taught a workshop on creating a site icon with Canva. This is what I made during the presentation:
I love the graphics that you can access through Canva. This little guy captured my heart.
It was great to see the wide variety of icons that everyone came up with! You all are so talented and creative.
Overall, really great! It was crazy to me that it just opens on the browser, it feels like a tool that could be a whole separate application. I used the introduction courses to get familiar with all the controls, and I found that helpful, but I still feel like there are features I don’t know about. That said, I was able to fulfill my creative vision with just a few shapes. Who knew a cylinder could be so versatile?
Figuring out how to add in stops to my print at the right layers was a little tricky, but Trinatee was super helpful during my appointment! We got it figured out and I was able to use four different colors. After the print was done, I realized that the font I chose wasn’t as clear as it looked in Tinkercad, especially the pronouns and job title, probably because they’re so small. There are also some wisps of filament that I’m struggling to remove. I may alter the letters and try again in the future.
Although it was about a month ago now, Saint Patrick’s Day really had me thinking about my ancestry and cultural heritage. Thinking about the Irish got me thinking about Ireland, which got me thinking about Scotland, which got me thinking about the Loch Ness Monster, naturally. I actually have no idea if I’m Scottish, but Nessie captivates me. I believe she’s out there, and I wanted my nametag to reflect this. I also thought she would fit the general dino theme we have going at the DKC.
My nametag, submitted for approval by Edmund and Shannon.
One unexpected issue that arose was the disappearance of my video. After we showed our rough cuts and got feedback, I went back into Open Shot to make some changes, but my video file was nowhere to be found. After a moment of frantic closing and opening the app over and over and trying the exact same thing yielded no results, I remade my video from scratch. Thankfully I hadn’t deleted any of my footage or assets, and knowing how I put things together the first time sped up the process.
My fellow consultants suggested I add some background music to the beginning of the video, which I did, and I think it sounds much more cohesive now. I also added a somber church bell to the ending message, which I think helps my video wrap up on a stronger note. I shortened the black transition in the beginning of my video, which allowed me more time to linger on the visual jokes. I switched around a couple of DKC B-roll shots to make things less confusing, and I made the footage black and white, although there’s a weird color fade that I wasn’t able to get rid of.
There were some suggestions I didn’t end up incorporating. I wasn’t able to add a zoom to the filtered shot of Lee due to some limitations in Open Shot. I didn’t put any spooky sound effects behind the DKC B-roll because I already had the creepy music and Lee’s dialogue, so I thought it sounded too noisy and overwhelming.
Thanks to the unknown creators on MixKit for the “Cinematic whoosh deep impact”, “Haunted slow orchestra”, and “Blow breaking air” sound effects. Also, thank you to Eugenio Mininni on MixKit for the “Sicilian Cafe” music which I used in the background.
Storyboarding is really helpful! I had a vision, and then I lost my original storyboard. But it was okay, because then I had a better vision! I think getting my thoughts out onto paper really helped me to visualize what I wanted and think more practically about how to achieve it. Since starting the project, I have also played around with the camera, tripod, and audio kit, and I love how easy it is to use them together! I was intimidated at first, but now it’s not so scary.
It’s very poorly drawn, and a few things have changed since I drew it, but it’s been a very helpful guide! Filming was super fun. A special shoutout to Angela and Lee for helping me out! You’ll see them in my video later on. Overall the project is going really well! I’m thinking of using OpenShot Video Editor to edit my shots, because I’ve never used anything outside of Canva before. It seems beginner friendly and simple. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Visit my new website, Gingers Against Humanity (opens in a new tab), where you can learn all about this mysterious organization!
If I had to describe the difference between these two, I would say that Sites@UMW is a slightly more restricted version of Domain of One’s Own. While you can still customize part of a URL, and make some choices about how you want your site to look, you don’t have as much freedom as you do with DoOO. There aren’t as many themes or plugins to choose from, and you are limited to one application (WordPress). However, that means there are fewer potential issues and challenges, since everything is pretty controlled and regularly updated for you, and you can still create as many subsites as you want, and make them look however you want.
“Welcome to Walking Thoughts with Katy.” *chime sound effect*
*the sound of wooden construction*
“Who put these benches here? Why are there so many? Did Mary Washington like benches? Is that why they’re here?”
*the sounds of keyboards typing*
“It’s the HCC! I Work There!”
*the sound of birds chirping*
“What a funny little guy. He’s got no head, and a big belly.”
“Big tree.”
This has been Walking Thoughts with Katy. Keep wandering. *chime sound effect*
I got all my sound effects, including the “magic wand sparkle”, “birds chirping near the river”, “chatting with a laptop”, and “cutting trees with chainsaw ambiance and axe hits” from unknown creators on MixKit.
The background music is a track called “Valley Sunset” by Alejandro Magaña on MixKit.
I like Canva because of its simplicity. It’s easy to learn and has quite a few resources, like animations, graphics, and fun templates. However, it is frustrating to see all of the premium elements that I, a lowly freeloader, don’t have access to, and sometimes I feel limited in how much editing I can do.
For this project, I went to the HCC front desk to check out some audio equipment. I’ve had a little experience with the audio recorder before and I think the nice sound makes the video feel a little higher quality. I just filmed my video with my phone’s camera. I also used SoundTrap to edit my audio.
I started by planning out my transcript, and the shots I wanted to get. I like to write things out so I can make sure that I have a nice variety and so that I can film as efficiently as possible. Then I went outside and filmed as I walked around. I got shy though, so I changed a couple of shots so I could hide and film away from judging eyes and potential sneak attacks. After I got my shots, I uploaded them to Canva and began editing. Then I added in my audios from SoundTrap. I made two separate tracks: one for the voiceover, and one for the music and sound effects.
Wow, that accessibility page was a wild ride! There were lots of weird things going on, but I think it looks better now. I added the page to my top menu for future reference. I learned that it’s good practice to make a note if a link will take the user to a new tab, and that typography is important! Something that I like about this theme is the font, because I think it’s simple and easy to read.
I decided to install the Accessibility Checker plugin by Equalize Digital. I love being able to see the details about what needs to be changed to make my posts and pages more accessible. It’s really helpful in pointing out things that I wouldn’t have normally spotted! Another thing I learned is that the heading structure order is important. I used to use smaller headers just because I liked how they looked better, but the plugin I installed flagged my headings, so I changed them.
Being able to use the Accessibility Checker to look through my website is certainly helpful, but I feel like the defaults of this theme often need to be changed. For example, the default “black” text is actually a dark grey, and the accessibility summary keeps telling me that the color contrast isn’t high enough. There’s something that keeps popping up saying “ARIA hidden”. I’m not sure what that means. Something else that bothers me is that WordPress tells me that the blue highlighted link text is too low contrast, but I can’t figure out how to change it!
My theme doesn’t really have sidebars aside from the menu at the top of the screen. I customized that with my about, contact, blog, events, and welcome pages. I also added a button that takes you from my about page to my contact page.
I chose to install a few different plugins. I added Akismet and Jetpack, because I’ve seen a lot of consultants here using those (and they seem to know what they’re doing), and because they help with the security of the site. You can’t see them from the front end, but they’ve already come in use by showing me how to make my site more secure. I also added a plugin called The Events Calendar, which is pretty much what it sounds like. You can post upcoming events and related information, and visitors to the site can browse past and upcoming events. This feature can be found on my events page!
I think in general, I am most excited to train people on spaces, especially the 3D print lab and video production studio! I went through my first year at Mary Wash without any idea what cool resources I had access to, and I want to spread the word about all the things we have the ability to create through these spaces.
“Yarn technology is old; evidence of twisted fibers has been found at many prehistoric sites, including one from 40,000 years ago.”
Michael Schirber, How Cotton Fibers Become Yarn, Physics 15,27
