Twas the Night before Christmas

As read by Karmen and Matt

Interview with Runner

Interviewed a guy from my running class about how he liked the class so far. Enjoy!

Interview with Carmen: Music's newest star

Editing Pics

Cropped this photo try and get everyone in without leaving much space around the edges. Straightened and lightened it up as well.

Used auto levels on this photo, but feel it came out to bright. also the crop is a little close but there wasn't much photo space to use after I straightened the pic.

Need an Interpreter? Just pick up the phone

Check this out:

I trimmed off some of the added quotes at the end of this file, and tried to keep most of the commentators description of the new technology. i think it still does a good job of telling what this is all about without losing too much vital information.

TJ Jimmy: The Remix

I shortened up the Tajik Jimmy news piece from two minutes to one by removing most of the beginning and end commentators tag. I overlapped some of Jimmy's performance and the commentator in the middle using the fade out function on the performance, so it gradually moved into the speaker's voice.

I also cut some of the added commentary and merged the end together, using a fade out at the end.

Check this out: 

Thoughts on Glass

I found Ira Glass's tips on good storytelling quite helpful.



In the first video, Mr. Glass spoke on thinking outside the conventional methods of storytelling we are taught in high school. He said to get away from the idea that all stories start with a topic sentence and then branch out into supporting ideas. Rather, good stories in their "purest form" have one sequence of action leading to another.



Another point he got across to me was that failure is almost key in this area. You have to be able to try a lot of different things in order to see what works and what doesn't. Once you get into creating something for the first few times it probably isn't going to be great. Hopefully, your "taste" allows you to see that what you're doing could be better.


What I really found interesting where his thoughts on not just imitating what is already out there. In other words instead of trying to sound like someone on TV or the radio, inevitably you are going to sound more human if you just be yourself. As Mr. Glass pointed out, "the TV networks already have Ted Coppel. They don't want your impersonation of Ted Coppel."

-- Matt

Blogging

I've played around with blogging before and have been trying to institute some of the tips I read about recently into my posts.

The idea of writing short paragraphs that get to the point is also a tactic used in journalism, a field I am studying while in college.

The reality is that blogging in journalism is in its infancy with various newspapers and other news outlets experimenting with the medium.

There are two blogs I usually try to keep up with during the week, both related to sports. One is MSNBC's professional football blog, and the other is a blog by Dallas Cowboys.com writer Nick Eatman.

Both blogs try to use short but informative updates on the world of the NFL and Dallas Cowboys news.

Podcast I Like

This is one of the podcasts I like listening to on a regular basis. Bill Simmons from ESPN does about three of these each week. Pretty good stuff on sports, pop culture and other random rants.