Indian Epics by Reid

Article 1:  Make Good Art: Neil Gaiman’s Advice on the Creative Life, Adapted by Design Legend Chip Kidd Going into this article, I had very high hopes. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors, so naturally hearing how he's handled making mistakes and improving his work peaked my interest. Some of the quotes remind me of his writing style. It's comical, but gets the point across. In the face of all adversity, he says we should "make art." Even if we're making mistakes, that's where we grow. By making mistakes we're trying new things, and by trying new things, we're expanding our horizons. The one thing he wants us to always keep in mind is that we should keep making mistakes. Don't try to live a mistake free life, and you'll learn and adapt better than ever. Article 2: Why rejection hurts so much — and what to do about it I chose this article as it's been pretty pertinent to my life in the past year. As I've been applying for j...

Topic 1: Ravana Ravana as portrayed in the game Smite Ravana has been an interest of mine since the beginning of this class. One of the games I play, Smite, features gods and characters of folk-lore from many different areas of the world. One of the playable characters is Ravana, so I've seen the name many times, but have never done any research about him. I'd like to know more about the traditional stories behind him, and why in the game he is portrayed as a boxer. One interesting source I've found talks about how one group doesn't see Ravana as evil. Topic 2: Weapons of the Gods Ancient weaponry has always been an interest of mine. Whether it was seeing them in history museums or watching medieval shows, the weaponry of older times is simply fascinating. Taking this to another level and seeing weaponry wielded by gods could be even more interesting. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what this could include other than the bows I saw on some of...

Once upon an update, a programmer released just a few new lines of code before going home for the day. This simple change was something very minor meant to speed up every process around the company. The next day, one application after another began to fail. As the failures spread, so did panic throughout the office. "Our system is down!" shouted an accountant. "So is ours!" shouted someone trying to transfer data. Unbeknownst to the programmer, his small change had accidentally cut all processes short, and since he had left, gone home, and slept since then, it didn't cross his mind. "Everything was working just fine yesterday!" was being echoed throughout the office. IT was scrambling trying to fix the issue, looking at everything that went through the system that morning. Maybe someone put in a bad file. What if there was a virus? Even the IT guys couldn't figure out who could've messed up this bad. It couldn't have been them...

The Foolish, Timid Rabbit  by Ellen C. Babbitt The first story quickly got me grinning and I just had to come back to it after reading through the others. The main reason it had me coming back was how well I can see this plot relating to the world today. All it ever takes is one person for others to follow along. From experience, even in the professional workplace, one person mentions something to another, and that chain quickly goes around the office. In the end, the one they all fear, in this case the lion, but in the real world this could be a manager or director, is the one to solve the problem. Goblin City by W. H. D. Rouse This story drew me in because of some very specific circumstances. I had just finished watching an episode of a show that involved cannibals, so this just mentally tied into that. The plot of this story is just calling to be tied into a twisted version of Wonder Woman's origin island. The secrecy of the island that takes on sailors from cras...

Hanuman Taking Sita's Ring For reading the Ramayana, I will be choosing Option Two, the public domain edition. Not only because there's an audio version, but because I am most interested to see the different author styles for each episode. That alone reminds me of some projects I've seen in the past where different directors or artists come in to put their own style on different episodes of one overarching story. I know I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but when it comes to comics? Of course I'm going to pick the ones that have the best covers! To me, the covers that caught my attention the quickest were Kumbhakarna: The Sleeping Giant  and Hanuman to the Rescue: Hanuman Brings the Sanjeevani . I did look further than just the covers, but with this many choices it was how I narrowed them down quickly. Kumbhakarna is a name I've heard a lot of times, but never gone into any research behind so I'm excited to learn his story. For the videos, t...

Time never stops, so manage it! Managing time was never my strong suit coming into college, but I have gotten better over the years. Out of the articles I read, my favorite was the one about the myth of "too busy."  Being "too busy" to do things was something I used to always tell myself until I worked my internship. In the work world, you weren't really allowed to be "too busy," so the article really resonated with me when it talked about cutting out the unnecessary time wasters out of your life. While working multiple projects, it quickly became clear that time management was a must. I was able to apply those skills to my classes last semester as I was taking both in-person and online classes. Finding the right balance was hard at first, but I ended up setting dedicated times for online classes as if I was taking them in-person. I'm hoping that can apply this semester as well since I'm once again split 50/50 with in-person and online clas...

Technology is the future! Coming from someone that's never blogged before, but is an avid reader of blogs, this class is an awesome introduction to the behind the scenes of the whole thing. Now where I'd normally stick to reading car and technology blogs, this will help me expand my horizons. With the skills learned from technology in this class, I'm sure I'll be able to transfer them to life outside of class. Who knows, I may even start my own blog! The biggest skill I want to be able to learn is making an attractive portfolio format. I'll learn this through all the formatting tricks we learn throughout the semester. The one tech tip that has helped me so far is that if you open the assignment in one window and your blog in another, pres your Windows key and the right arrow key at the same time. It'll split your screen perfectly in half with each window so you can have them both up!