This is one of my favorite paper plane designs and I used to have a lot of them when I was a child. To make this paper throw more unique, the plane had an asymmetry design with smaller right wing and a hole in the middle, which makes the plane turn right after I release it. The angle to throw and speed was crucial and it took me a couple of trials before understand how this plane behaves. This assignment distracts me a bit from boring social-distancing and brings back my paper plane skills I used to have.
For the first hometask, I chose to kick a crumbled up piece of paper into my garbage bin. One of the hardest things to do in American football is punt a football down the field because of the ball’s rotation and unique shape. A crumbled up piece of paper has no clear shape and is rough around the edges, so I figured I would try and test my skills at punting a piece of paper. I stood at the top of my stairs, dropped the piece of paper, and hit it against the wall and into my garbage bin. This throw / kick was spectacular because I had to drop the paper on a certain part of my foot to ensure it would go in the correct direction. I also had to put just enough power into the kick to make sure it ended up in the bin. This task turned out to be much more challenging than I imagined, but I did not mind it because I don’t have much else to do these days.
Let’s stick with TaskMaster for our Side Quest 9/second #hometasking task, even though our due date is a little later:
Feel free to check out some of the examples on Twitter: #hometasking 2
Also, I’ll have a poll posted where you can vote on the most spectacular examples of throwing a paper into a bin before this task is due. Make sure you vote over the weekend!
Edited to add: Don’t just drop a link to the video. Embed it!
Tomorrow we’ll discuss Gris when we meet via Zoom (same link we used on Tuesday should remain consistent the rest of the semester). You should expect it to take a little more than three hours to complete the game. If you don’t finish it completely before class tomorrow that’s okay, but please make sure you’ve played for a couple hours so you have a pretty good sense of how the game functions.
The game itself has a pretty simple set of mechanics. It’s classified as a “platform game,” so it derives ultimately from such games as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Brothers, and Sonic the Hedgehog. However, Gris takes the basic mechanical structure of the platformer and turns it into a comment on not only surviving but healing. The protagonist is a heartbroken woman who has literally lost her voice and wanders through a desolate world. As such there is no dialog. As you move through the game, you more or less explicitly move through the stages of grief and slowly bring more and more color into the world around you.
Here are some basic question that I’d like you to think a bit about before we meet:
Some reviewers have complained that the virtuosic visuals and soundtrack become a problem of “form over function” because it causes the platformer structure to become confusing or difficult to navigate. Did you find this to be true? In a game about trauma and healing, why might the game developers have included elements that make is such that the world is “confusing to move through and the way forward isn’t always clear”?
How do you feel as you play this game? Especially now, when we are all in the midst of a global trauma, what does it feel like to play this game?
Is it important that the protagonist is a woman? How does it impact your experience to play through this world as a female protagonist?
Note that you should be thinking about your side quest 8/#hometasking no. 1 where you will throw a paper into a bin … spectacularly. You should post those videos to your sites by Friday and then we’ll vote on a class winner over the weekend. Please comment on each others’ posts and as you do think about not just what this activity means as your own solo work but what it means to be part of a community engaging in this ridiculous activity together, while also apart. I’m going to ask you to write about that question some time soon.
Now that we’re all social distancing and trapped in our homes, we’ve decided that as a community we’re going to follow along with the Taskmaster #hometasking tasks as side quests.
Your task for this sidequest is to throw a piece of paper into a bin. Most spectacular throw wins.
Post a video or gif to your website, no longer than 1 minute. Write a brief paragraph about why your throw is spectacular. Please make a special point to comment on your peers’ throws as well. On Saturday, I’ll publish a poll to vote on which was the most spectacular throw.
Earlier this semester, in my household we started watching the British tv show Taskmaster (via YouTube). It's a silly show where each season a group of comedians performs a series of ridiculous tasks in the pursuit of pointless prizes, overseen by the Task Master Greg Davies and his assistant Alex Horne.
Film Something That Will Look Impressive in Reverse
This video clip of one of the most popular tasks from the series gives you a pretty good sense of how the show works: the five contestants receive their tasks, have a bit of time to plan and execute the tasks, then the Task Master awards points based on whatever esoteric and quirky principles he decides to apply.
On Sunday, Alex Horne took to Twitter to announce that they'd be starting an at-home version of Taskmaster for people to play during these times of quarantine and social distancing called #hometasking:
#hometasking begins - in your homes - at 9am tomorrow.
Throw a piece of paper into a bin. Most spectacular throw wins. The deadline for completing this first task ends about the time we'll be finishing up class today.
Check out some of the submissions from people all over the place to this seemingly very simple task by going through the #hometasking hashtag on Twitter.
3/25/2020 Edited to add:
Watch the video below to see a compilation of some of the best responses, with the top ten winners at the end.
When creating “Risky Business: A Deep Dive Into The Game of Risk,” my group first met with Professor Morgen to brainstorm potential angles to explore, and then we “deep dove” into those topics. We researched game strategy, the history of the game, different scenarios that a player could encounter, and the game’s real-world applications to the Cold War and beyond. We researched by reading articles, instruction manuals, history accounts, timelines, and discussing our own knowledge of the game. As co-Assistant Producers, Giovanni and I focused more on the research aspect and Will, the Producer, focused on developing our research into a flowing, cohesive, and entertaining script. I organized a space to record and gathered the recording materials, and Giovanni edited the audio after recording. We derived inspiration from podcasts that came before ours by listening to them and extracting some aspects we liked. Some of these tactics included having short conversations with each other throughout various moments of the podcast as well as talking through some specific scenarios during game-play.
Our primary goals in our podcast were to examine Risk’s history, it’s association with the Cold War, and how the game’s medium and rules provide understanding about Cold War-era thinking. To achieve these goals, we described the premise of game-play and the historical context of when it was created and initially played. We executed this goal by creating an interactive dialogue that kept the reader engaged and interested. We knew it would be easy to slip into the dangerous waters of making a podcast that mimicked a Cold War history lesson. Thus, we worked hard to incorporate comedic breaks and conversations between players. We also carefully chose background music that fit with the game’s theme: serious to an extent but also mysterious and creative. Some areas I wish we had time to further explore are the moral implication of Risk on the modern player. We examined the Cold War-era implications but I feel there were more connections we could have made for how Risk encourages a higher moral standard and strategic way of thinking through daily tasks.
My work on the podcast episode helped me achieve the learning outcomes for the semester by composing texts in multiple genres using the written and aural modes. I am accustomed to writing just for a reader’s eye, but for the podcast, we had to think about writing for a speaker. This was a more crafty type of writing that required oral experimentation to see how the tone felt and if our words made sense when spoken out loud. I also practiced writing as a process, recursively implementing strategies of research, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection. When creating the podcast, we composed many drafts of our script, re-recorded countless segments, and rethought the structure multiple times after we’d already finished recording. Creating this podcast taught me the importance of fine-tuning and revising to create a successful end product.
Through creating this podcast, I have learned that my strengths include compiling information, organizing a group, and being receptive to others’ ideas. Some areas I could improve upon are mastering the technological aspects, such as editing sound and recording audio. I can apply the skills I used in crafting this podcast episode to future writing projects by carefully revising all of my work and taking input from my peers into consideration.
I chose to print out a 20-sided die because I really like dice since they are related to mathematics and also I could use as an interior decoration. I was particular about the number of faces of the die to print because an icosahedron has the most number of faces out of the five possible polyhedrons. I was really impressed by the quality of the 3-D printer and was fascinated by how the printer calculated before it started printing. Also, I wondered what this die is made of: it has a plastic-like touch feeling, but sides are powdery.
I did not face any problems when I was trying to find the stl file of my product or when I try to print my product. I did not find any challenge to find the file because the file is in demand; it is convenient to use a 3-D printer to obtain this type of dice. I also did not face any challenge to print my product because there was a person who adjusted the scale of my object when I printed out.
Due to time-restrictions and technological difficulties, our podcast production process was very cooperative. After a group brainstorming session, we decided that Risk would provide more potential discussion over the other games we were considering. As Risk is such a dynamic game, we could analyze individual situations and decision making processes. After deciding on Risk, we all completed individual research about Risk with specific foci ranging from Risk’s history to rule changes. After consolidating our research onto one document, as the Producer for this episode, I wrote a script. The other collaborators helped edit and build the script to be more compelling, such as “game-excepts” and comedic breaks. Next, we spent about six hours over two days recording the podcast, then passed the editing responsibilities onto Giovanni. Considering his extensive background in musical production, he is very familiar with audio editing and expedited the finalized version rapidly.
For our podcast, we tried our best to avoid being a hard-listen. More specifically, Podcasts, if not completed correctly, can be very dry and difficult to listen and pay attention to. Consequentially, we tried to be as entertaining as possible; we attempted to achieve this through comedic breaks, an active script that tries to engage the listener, and upbeat music with breaks from monologues. Smaller details included constant and intermittent switching of speakers to avoid monotony. Challenges included creative differences and script organization; for example, background music was a point of contention through the group. Besides more idealogical distinctions, we worked extremely well as a group. From finding time where we can all work on the podcast to our strengths coming together, our group collaborated competently.
By definition, creating a podcast episode forced our group to compose a text in a new medium. Adapting to a different type of writing with different intentions was a unique provocation. With an essay, a given format is expected and deviations are unexpected; in contrast, the podcast should be as unpredictable as possible to maintain listener enjoyment and attention. Rather than constructing an argument in a linear logic based fashion, our podcast tries to jump from our narrative to examples from a hypothetical game. This form of writing resembles a formal literary essay where the typical format includes a topic sentence supported with direct evidence from the source. Personally, I am most proud of how our group collaborated and utilized each of our individual capacities for different elements of the podcast.
This is a 3D model of Batman Tumbler. This piece is special for me since I have been a great fan for the batman trilogy, and the scene of this tumbler jumping off rooftops and destroying anything in the way left a great impression for me about this special vehicle. I always love cars and having a car on my desk has been a tradition for me. Since I have not had the chance to bring my own model cars here to emory, this is a great chance for me to refill my car collection and have something I like on my table.
I found this model on thingiverse and I was very impressed with the level of details this car has. The only challenge I has was the size of the model was way larger than the printer’s capacity and we have to rescale it to around 0.1% of its original size to print this out. And also, cutting out the supporting pieces was hard to accomplish. I was so scared to cur pieces out that are necessary for this model. I really like this project.
