Tuesday, November 23, 2010

News Piece: Bucket Game

I chose to save my news piece for last because I wanted to do it on something I could think about and put some time into. I chose to do the Old Oaken Bucket Game/weekend activities. The reality was that I didn't get a chance to spend as much time on it as I would have liked but I love the way it turned out. I interviewed someone who is coming back for the weekend, someone who is not coming back, and a football player. All three are my friends but they all had different approaches to answering my questions which I thought was neat. The shots of the stadium were not what I wanted but I couldn't get a good shot of the practice fields during practice. I had a few other shots fall through for various reasons which kinda bummed me out but I really like the way it turned out and I hope you do to.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Nature Montage




This project was relatively painless for me. I went to a few places around the area and shot video. Then I went to Happy Hallow park to get my sound bit on my iPhone. For the sound I climbed down into a dry creek bed and just sat with my phone on my knee. The sounds were amazing that I heard though tragically not all of them came through. I still think that I got some good sound clips.

Thursday, November 11, 2010



On November 8th entertainer Wiz Kahlifa was arrested for marijuana posession backstage at his show at Eastern Carolina University. This happened just a week after he posted this video of him smoking with his entourage on his tour bus. Anyway one student at the University took it upon himself to, similar to Jamal Albarghouti at Virginia Tech, take video of the rapper being put in the cop car. The crowd can be heard yelling "F**k the Police" and "Smoke weed everyday!" Wiz is a strong supporter of the legalization of marijuana and posted the $300,000 bond after only one night in jail. He tweeted in the morning after the indecent, "Jail sux."

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Photo Gallery

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Import Alliance is an annual event held in Nashville Tennessee that showcases import cars and the life associated to it.

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The ride to Nashville was mostly spent with a caravan of upwards of 100 cars.

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Lots of people decorate their windows, some their paint, for the trip to keep others entertained.

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Since the show is on Saturday and Sunday, Friday night is a crazy party in the parking lots of all the hotels in the area so the 7:00am wake up call leaves everyone out dragging knuckles for a bit.

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Since the event is held at Nashville Super Speedway the line naturally stretches around the outside of the track and went on for what seemed like miles.

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Attendees came from all across the country to be with their rare breed of enthusiasts. Some even made the long trip from Canada to show us what Americas hat is doing in the scene.

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Day two brings a new pep in everyone's step with some even out at the crack of dawn for one last wax job in the hotel parking lot before embarking for the track.

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New this year was the Formula Drift series, the crowd around the driver they call "A" was there for good reason because he and his sponsor Kindai-Neo Motorsports came away with the victory that day.

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Some think that Sunday brings less of a crowd, this year that tradition did not hold true with a packed house in the sponsor tent and all around the infield of the track. People could not get enough of all the tasty import action happening.

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The ride home is always a more lonely one but after a great turnout one cannot help but be satisfied.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Proposition 19

Proposition 19 is an effort to legalize cannabis, aka marijuana, in the state of California. The legalization would make the substance regulated and taxed and could potentially bring in $14 billion in a single year. This makes cannabis the largest cash crop in the US ahead of corn and cotton. The rally for the support of the law reformation is centered upon social media to gain support and get the information out.

An article on the Huffington Post website talks about the top ten reasons to support the legalization. Reasons include the tax benefits to the end of the Mexican black market for the substance. Instead of writing a straight long winded article, I like how they made a list and filled in a small amount of information for each point. This appeals to today's younger crowd because most readers, like myself, will be browsing the internet and stumble on this list and be able to read it quickly, get the idea, and move on.

Jeffrey A. Miron, the director of undergraduate studies of Harvard's economics department, said on all247news.com that since the proposition failed yesterday advocates should take a different approach next time around. I found these articles via "Stumble Upon". Stumble is a toolbar added to your browser that allows you to input your interests jump from website to website that fall into your interests. It is essentially like putting the internet on shuffle. This form of new media is quite amazing allowing you to send interesting things to your friends that will show up on their toolbar. I changed my interests to drugs to see how many hits I got about Proposition 19. The result was about 2 out of every 5 "stumbles" ended up being about the marijuana debate.

Even though the proposition failed by a vote of 54% no and 46% yes, the way advocates got the word out and gained support was good because most people who would support such a proposition are younger and use the internet extensively.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Halloween VJ Piece



This is a short, and INFORMATIVE, video outlining some of the things that happen at Purdue during Halloween time. Instead of taking the comedic approach like last time, this time I decided to make somewhat of a news piece.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Best Photo Story Ever

This is a thread that follows the full ground up rebuild of a Honda Civic. The build is the most comprehensive build of a car I personally have ever witnessed. There are thousands of pictures and it takes place over a couple years. Throughout the album are comments from other car enthusiasts giving him support and encouragement to finish. Its amazing.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Chevrolet Paying It All Back




Chevrolet, as a part of General Motors, as everyone knows, took a government loan a couple of summers ago to try to get the American auto industry back on its feet, mainly GM. They say that they are working hard to pay the taxpayers back but I'm not sure if they are. After working at a Chevy dealership during the whole filing bankruptcy thing I think it didn't help anything. We had terrible sales before and only slightly better sales after. (I worked at one of the number one grossing Chevy dealers in the Midwest, Kenny Kent Chevrolet.) One of the only reasons sales went up at all after the bailout was because of crazy incentives that sold new cars under invoice making little to no money for Chevy. But they are working hard to pay back taxpayers that bailed them out of bankruptcy?? How does that work? Anyway, they need to do more in terms of paying back society. I think that they are on the right track with the release of the Volt and I know that since I left Kenny Kent sales have been slowly but steadily improving. Good luck Chevy/GM, we're waiting on what was promised.

To Comment or Not to Comment?

Comment sections on websites are full of people just looking to bring others down and feel better about themselves. Every site that I frequent it seems as though the first post is always someone who simply wants the personal satisfaction of being the first to comment on a particular happening. Most do so by simply commenting "FIRST", giving no real insight on the subject and essentially setting the comment section up for failure. After the "FIRST" guy everyone is usually arguing over something that isn't important or relevant to the topic at hand. The fact of the matter is that no one ever admits defeat in an online battle of whits because you don't have to. Chances are that you will never meet the guy or girl you're arguing with so why back down, insult them until your little heart is content. It's quite ridiculous. Sure some people have good things to contribute but overall comment boxes are used by dumb asses trying to one up each other. That's just my two cents though.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Everyone is a Journalist??

On dictionary.com a journalist is defined as any person whose occupation is journalism. Hang on a second! Your profession has to be journalism to be considered a journalist? That's crazy. So according to that crude definition, the staff of the Exponent are not considered journalist. If I were to define journalist I would simply say anyone who reports the news, ANYONE! Dan Gillmor seems to agree in his column. He says that people who create media and distribute it could be considered a journalist. I don't take that to mean that he considers anyone a professional journalist, meaning not a journalist by occupation. But I definitely see where he's going with it. I did some photo coverage, see post below, of a car event over the summer and before taking this class I wouldn't have considered myself a journalist but now I see the term is a general one. So individuals like Jamal Albarghouti and myself are definitely amateur journalists.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Screw the economy I'm buying an Import car

I enjoy everything about import cars...Everything! I own a 1995 Acura Integra that I like to "tinker" with. My car started out like this about a year and a half ago and now I have transformed it, with some help, into this (scroll though to see the progress.) It's not the coolest fastest thing out there but its fun to drive and I like making it more and more "mine" everyday. I have big plans for it for the future but only time and money will tell how it turns out.

Anyway this is a video I put together from photos that I took at Import Alliance, a car show in Nashville Tennessee, over the summer. It is my second time to this show and surely not my last. The video got severely downgraded in quality when I put it on youtube but it started as High Def in iMovie. Enough rambling here's the video.

You can find me in St. Louie....

The STL Today website is set up in a fairly simple manner with tabs for different areas of interests. However it has TONS of ads. They are everywhere and come of them take over the screen when you roll your mouse over them. Also there is a lot to look at on the homepage alone. I feel as though I could stay there and find out everything I need to know. So that raises the question, "What is the point of the tab?" My advise to you St. Louis Today, keep it simple, take advantage of your features (tabs in particular), and easy on the interactive ads (no one likes them.) It's not as bad as I make it sound but somewhat busy. Slow your roll and go and make the eyes flow down the page.

Thursday, September 2, 2010




I chose this piece about the some of the technologies being implemented in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up. I try to follow the updates on the spill mainly because my family goes to the gulf almost every summer for family vacation and with the oil spill my dad decided this year that it wasn't the place to be. The spill really hit home for me even though I live so far away from the gulf, I still feel that it was right in my backyard. I hate seeing all of the wildlife being destroyed because someone wanted cheaper oil. I agree that we need to find some way of lessening our involvement in foreign oil but there has to be some boundaries. Causing the greatest natural disaster in United States history is far outside what I would consider reasonable boundaries. As my old basketball coach used to say, "Find a way to win, and win fair." Killing wildlife isn't fair. So BP just find a way to win and do it right.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

First

This is my first post. Excited to get to work in this class.