Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapter 6

"You can't hope to change human nature...because nature is given." (Hitchens, 41)

I'm sure Hitchens means this in the most vague way possible, but with everything that is happening with Bruce Jenner - I can't help but form an opinion on gender equality. Most of the time I try not to involve myself with heated disputes on what is right and what is wrong. Of course I have taken a stance long before I realized the seriousness of the issue, and that is my belief on humans being born with their preferences, their feelings, what makes them happy. What makes one person better than another? Is it success, sexual preference, experience, what they choose to say and express? Hitchens is totally right, at least in terms of how I took his words. Nature is given, no one should try to change another person's nature.

Letters to a Young Contrarian: Chapter 5

"You can't achieve 100 percent control over humans, and if you could, you could not go on doing so. It is - fortunately - too much responsibility for any human to assume, not that this keeps the control freak from continuing to try." (Hitchens, 37)

I think I was just talking about this the other day with someone. I think it's great to motivate people to make a difference, but quite often they will use that as an excuse to act like a dictator. Most of the time, they will totally think this is okay. I find that you'll see this a lot in young girls, and I mean young girls. There's always that one girl who absolutely has to play the mom during recess when her and her friends are playing house. She is the one that wants to be in control, she is the one who proclaimed herself "leader" of the playground pack. If someone doesn't let this girl know that she's being a complete tyrant, she'll grow up to be the selfish bully that all know. There comes to a point where leadership its no longer in play and controlling behavior starts to take its place.

Project 4 (Final Blog Entry)

Here are some helpful nail art videos that anyone can do! Enjoy :)

Galaxy Nails

Neon Ombre Nails

Terms and Conditions May Apply

The fact that Google doesn't have it's original user agreement archived online does not really bother me all that much, even though I know it should. I'm sure the federal government could do more about how corporations are using and tracking our data, seeing as though they too have had their own issues with privacy settings. In a way, the advertising field has been a little shady with the way they reach out to customers and it creates a bad name for the big companies. For example, the whole Target scandal. When those products pop up on my Facebook timeline, it definitely freaks me out a little. How do you know I buy cat litter every other month, Facebook? Goods and services seem forced and very in-your-face these days, which is irritating. I think the federal government could do more, but ultimately it hasn't harmed me yet therefore I am not that concerned.

Project 4 (Week 2) + Challenges Faced

I only did two of the three nail designs (Neon Ombre and Galaxy) because each design took over two hours. I also spent at least 4 hours trying to find an appropriate iphone app that would allow me to combine and edit clips to create full videos. Most of the apps required me to pay extra money for certain features. Features that I was looking for included adding voiceovers, adding music, trimming and speeding up the clips, and being able to upload the videos at full length to youtube (3+ minutes). I finally found the perfect app and it was VivaVideo by QuVideo Inc. It was super easy to use and provided all of the necessities. The whole project took about 8 hours in total - that includes rallying my friends, finding inspiration, finding an app, filming and editing. I was able to complete the videos in two days. I think the hardest part of the project was not the nail art itself, but the whole editing process. Not only did it take me forever to find an appropriate app, but recording my own voice and applying it to a video was a new experience too!

Project 4 (Week 1)

For my instructional video, I am going to do a nail art video on neon ombre nails, galaxy nails, and spring rose nails. I've always been particularly good at doing nails, so I figured I would do a video on what I do best! I am no cosmetic professional, but that doesn't mean that I don't love seeing success in my work (and compliments are always nice too!). I have all of the necessary materials already, so all I need is some free time and preparation. These will both take about 2 hours each! I'll most likely use my friends as "hand models".

Here are some examples of what I have done on myself in the past!

Project 3

I used to make Vines in high school and even during my freshman year, so I was already familiar with the app. I wasn't very good at it, and realized that it was difficult to become noticed no matter how many irrelevent hashtags you put on the video. There's some kind of comedic touch that one has to have if they're going to be relatively close to being noticed. It's also pretty difficult for teenage girls to be noticed because lets face it - we're not all that funny.

But that's besides the point! It was kind of fun being back on vine again with Kyle, especially since they've made some changes to the way you can record videos. Although we were able to go back and edit clips in one vine (that's funny that we call it a "vine" instead of a short video or video clip), we still found it particularly difficult to record everything all in 6 seconds. For example, our instructional video. It was really hard to make all of the instructions fit in order to make sense. As I mentioned in my Project 3 statement, "The instructions were 'make a beat, make a rhythm, and add a melody'. Each step had a different clip, but this was a little hard to do since beats and rhythms need more than a couple seconds to establish what they are, especially if the beat or rhythm is slow". We had to do a few takes before we figured out what sounded best. 

Overall, I didn't feel very rewarded because I knew how to make vines before this assignment. But, I can appreciate vine artists who make extremely successful vines while staying within the time limit. It's challenging!

Kai on Ellen

"Brevity, laughter, surprise, irony, and a short title, youth, talent, music, and minority presence". Those are the coding units to a successful viral video. My favorite viral video is actually a series of videos by Ellen Degeneres where she brought a young boy named Kai who's probably around 5 onto her show. He sings along with Bruno Mars songs and not only is he cute, but he's actually really talented! Laughter, youth, talent and music are all included when this cutie named Kai sings his heart out.

What do you do?

This is a hard question. If I was shrunk to the size of a nickel and was tossed in a blender where the blade starts moving in 60 seconds, I would first panic because who wouldn't panic if they were about to be made into a smoothie? I would then utilize everything in the blender to make a giant mountain of fruits. It's a blender, we're making a smoothie right? I'm hoping it's fruit that I could easily climb on, something that I wouldn't slip on. I would then climb for dear life. But if I were a nickel, wouldn't I jam the blender? Or am I still a human, because if you can put beef through a food processor you can certainly process Darla.

Collaboration

Although I didn't need The Internship to help me realize this, willingness to accept is important when trying to understand one another in a group project. It's easy to look someone in a collaboration and assume that we can analyze their weaknesses, but we also have to give them a chance to show off their strengths. For the young interns in the movie, it was difficult for them to accept the older generation of men as they did not have the same knowledge in technology as the kids did. At Google, this kind of knowledge seems especially important. I've always wanted to work for BuzzFeed, so I followed the path of media studies in communications. My sister always told me to set myself apart from everyone else. If there is no spice to what I have to offer, what makes me any different from all of the other candidates? Same goes for Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's characters. They may have lacked the knowledge in modern day technology, but they excelled in face-to-face communication and sales. If "Team Lyle" didn't give them a chance, they never would have gotten a chance to see what they could bring to the table. 

I thought the film depicted Google's core values very well. Under Google's #5 "Don't take success for granted", the core values suggest that one constantly thinks like an underdog. I always appreciate someone who is well-rounded and humble about their success. People who brag about how awesome they are are probably the most annoying people on the planet - just like that British guy in the film. They depicted the challenging but energetic work environment very well, and I hope the Google offices actually have giant slides and napping pods. The goals in the core values are all very ambitious. "Think big and take risks" is a great quote to live by if one expects to go any where in life. To support one another in the work environment as well as with personal goals is also one of the best aspects that Google has as well, and this is also heavily influenced in the movie. 

Depiction of The Internship

I love how The Internship depicts Google's corporate culture. At first, I thought the only fun and innovative company was Apple until we watched this in class. I always knew Google was modern, in fact it is a corporate king. But I also always thought that Google was a try-hard and a little overwhelming. With Google+, taking over Youtube, creating their own email servers, it's a lot to take in. I remember when I went to a weekend conference in high school and representatives were speaking on Google's behalf, trying to have an influence on my fresh young mind. I just thought they were kind of nerdy and were trying too hard to seem him with us fifteen-year-olds. This movie shed a new bright light on my perspective. Yes, Google is pretty nerdy. The giant floor-to-floor slides and nap pods were still the coolest things I've ever seen in a business environment. By creating a childish environment, it really lessens the stress that circulates in the office. They're totally okay with being nerdy and the lifestyle that they provide for their employees seems like a place where I would want to retire.

The fact that Google bases their operations on data, even human resources, is fantastic. I do not think they're dehumanizing their employees. Google is totally with the times and they are really pushing our advancement in technology for future generations. Google is already such a big influence on our generation that they don't really have to try too much harder for us to adapt to their benefits. I already have a gmail account with them that I use to access Youtube, and Google Docs is the coolest thing that has been introduced in a while (in my opinion). The Internship just pushed me a little closer to supporting their corporation.