Ball State iMedia 2008-2009

I'm glad we've decided to work on some evergreen stories. It will definitely save us after Spring Break when we're on a deadline and are having trouble finding content.

I'm working on the Salvation Army story with Cameron. Our work got pushed back a little bit because we had difficulty scheduling an interview with the person in charge. By Friday we plan to have all of our content loaded onto the server and ready for use.

The graphic will be a fever chart focuses on the decreased donations and increased need for donated items. I think it's going to be interesting to see the significance of the economic struggle that our country and Indiana are dealing with.

Up next week: Graphic showing how to shoot a three-pointer!

Working on my most intricate animation to date. Hoping it turns out as well as I've imagined it.

This week I've been working on taking a graphic I did for the Daily News and animating it into a narrative graphic in Flash. The graphic is to go along with a swimming and diving story we have on a girl on the team who has a disease called Myasthenia Gravis which is a neuromuscular disease which weakens her muscles. The graphic explains the disease through comparing how a normal nerve works to how a nerve affected by Myasthenia Gravis works.
In addition to this I am researching Urban Blight with Kyle. We're going to try and make some type of map of Muncie showing where homes are that are being blighted.
That's really all that I'm working on right now. I'm also really excited about the logos Shelby created!!

This week started out with helping the computer science members of the class with some technical content issues. It wasn't anything big, just editing sound so it would play correctly on the interactive television for testing.

I've also been working with Jeff Kew to get in touch with the owner of the old Roberts Hotel. We've tried a few calls but we just found his e-mail address so that's a last resort if we don't hear back soon. I'm sure it won't be a problem to get the information we need once we get in contact. The only thing I'm worried about is the complexity of the blueprints or plans for the illustrations I'm planning on doing. They'll either be much too simple or very complex. Hopefully there's a middle ground so the illustrations and graphics work out well.

I'm excited to see the logos and content we have for today, I already got a preview with Shelby's post. Class starts soon, signing off for now.

This week for imedia class it was my job to put a former Sports Link package up on our server to be used for the future, but I also found out there's a twist to the story. It turns out Kosh Jasmin, a swimmer who has myoscineasgravis, will be diving at the MAC championships this week. So I'm hoping if there's time in the future, we can possibly even add on to the piece...

Also I'm helping out Cameron and Stephanie when they go to the Salvation Army today. It should be fun, I'm glad I'm able to help out my fellow Imedia peers.

I have worked on the logo for iMedia to look like the design that we have already.
I have a lot of different logos for iMedia that I think could work or inspire something new. Other than that I have been working on getting well.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just getting through all of this one day at a time. Like now, for example. Which is why I have to change the way I think in the iMedia class. In the other classes I'm taking right now, I think, "Ok, what do I NEED to do for tomorrow?" But in iMedia, we have to focus weeks into the future. That can make it hard to balance my responsibilities for this class with my other obligations, which often feel much more urgent.

On Monday, I headed to downtown Muncie to film the package on the medieval fighting group. It was fun-- they really take what they're doing seriously. I like the video footage I shot, and I think I got some decent interviews. I'm a little worried about the pictures for the slideshow, though. My camera isn't the greatest, and I'm definitely not a skilled photographer. Poor Tasha... we'll see what she can do with what I have. The package will be good, though, I promise.

For the past week I've been working on a design for the Weather portion of the iPhone application. Here is what I've been able to come up with.

This is a little rough, and is definitely subject to change. I'm not sure how the map will work, so I just put in a filler map for now.

I've checked out how we can feed the weather conditions to the application, and it looks like it's possible. I've found different RSS feeds on the NOAA website that we can use, and hopefully those won't be hard to use.