Luis Miguel Gomez
/English Portfolio
Social Media Reflections
As a class project we needed to write an essay about anything related to social media. After we wrote the essay we needed to make either a video, podcast, or webpage. I decided to do a podcast, but... Were will those podcast go? To the teacher? NO! for it to be more "professional" I decided to make a webpage to get all of the podcasts into one place and that anyone could hear them. My main theme for both the podcasts and the essay was about the advantages about social media and why people shouldn't argue against it. The construction of both of these methods had its difficulties, differences, and pleasures.
Both the brainstorm and startup ideas from the essay and the podcast were very similar. Other thing that is very similar between both projects is the sections. in the podcast each topic is based around a section or paragraph of the essay since the essay has different ideas to represent a point. Basically the similarities in this two pieces of the process is the same in all of the content only that it is in a different format.
The difference between the two pieces of the project is that they are structured in a very different way... one is a webpage that leads to several podcasts that talk about a topic. the other one is an essay that has multiple paragraphs that talk about several relative topics. One is a written document, the other one is a webpage with a playlist of audio files (podcasts).
Each piece of the project had a difficulty and a pleasure. The essay had the difficulties of a regular essay: how should I start? what articles will I use?... this type of difficulties were present in the creation of the essay as well a a search for uniqueness... For the podcast some difficulties was to resume and edit into a more fluid and undersatandable lyric to read in the podcast, better said: take a paragraph from the essayand adapt it to a more specific them and more of a podcast style of content. Also getting the notification sound effects that were on some of the pod casts. I think that the pleasures of both were that it was a thematic that I like and I know a lot about so it was easier for me to gather information...
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Blues Blog Entry
The Blues has been a very important music genre in the history. This genre is first came from African American were the author of the piece of music tries to express the audience a feeling, not regular feelings, the blues expresses: Lament, Injustice, unhappyness. Otherwise, they expressed how to get a better life, money...
Is Blues a hard genre to understand?
The rythm of the blues songs are very progressive and sometimes the rythm can be "hard to get" because since it´s a progressive melody, sounds go in and sounds go out. The most important thing of the song is ofcourse the VOCALS.
Now, theres two ways to analyse the VOCALS. A blues vocal can be very strange to people that are not used to it, sometimes it´s OUT OF BEAT! Still the tone of the VOCAL can lead us to the second way of analysing it. Let´s get to the LYRIC, understanding the lyrics of a blues song can be tricky. NOW REMEMBER OF THE BLUES CHARACTERISTIC MENTIONED ABOVE. Blues is a very hard to understand genre. As you "train" your ears to hear it it will be one of the best music genres you can think.
Below I´ll list 3 "level" blues songs in terms of rythm and lyrics for you to understand their difficulty in levels:
Level 1
Rythm & Blues
This song by the legend Ray Charles is one of the most popular Blues songs out there. It´s a pretty sticky melody.
Level 2
Sad and Rythm
Muddy Waters and Pinetop Perkins are very direct in this lyrics, SADNESS
Robert Johnson´s Crossroad is a very hard song because it contains "arrythmic" rythm and hard to understand voice
Level 3
HARD
Progresive & arrythmic
John Proctor a TRAGIC HERO
"The tragic hero is a [great] man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake." - Aristotle
A brief sum of what Aristotle said in that quote, a TRAGIC HERO is when a very important man has a very big downfall based on his mistake. I will break up this Blog in five more sentences in another paragraph: two of them are going to be of why was he a very "important" person, the other one will talk about the beginning of his downfall or rather his downfall, the last two will be about his mistake and result.
John Proctor was a very important farmer in Salem, his behaviour and way of being made him very important and respected in town. To Proctor, Reputation was very important for which he always tried to do the right things, protect and help others and so on... Since Proctor was a very "loyal" husband with Elizabeth his main worry was that people discover he had an affair with Abigail Williams, once when Elizabeth was ill and Proctor was looking for shelter and warmth he stayed with Abigail Williams and resulted into an affair. The big downfall happened and Proctor is being accused and sent to a trial were he is not only accused of having an affair and his wife neither lover confessing the truth but also from having some contact with supernatural things. All of this decreased his REPUTATION and also led him to his death, all caused by a downfall, a TRAGIC HERO.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” vs. The Simpson’s “Whacking Day” Analysis Blog Entry
"The Whacking Day" is a chapter from the series of the simpsons. It all consists in a tradition in which they follow their ancestors actions by killing snakes with sticks. In this chapter Lisa Simpson is trying to obey and stop this bloody tradition.
"The Lottery" is a story very similar to "The Whacking Day", it is based on a tradition that its purpose is that the person that gets elected in the lottery (such as Hunger Games) gets killed by the entire town by rocks and all of that. The problem in both is that that tradition had been held for a very long time that people doesn´t even care or remember any significance for it. People are doing atrosities by just following tradition. The similarities between these to things is that both have a tradition that is causing violence. The difference is the way and type of tradition or ritual.
An author can develop an idea by just making it based out of something. The author of the simpsons took the idea of a tradition that hasn´t a reason and tryed to base his episode with that type of theme.