Who do you think you are?

This is a link to the transcript of the questions that I asked to my mom.
My mom told me about her side of the family. Her dad is German and her mom is Irish.A fun fact I learned is that my family lived in a town that was focused on clock manufacturing.

This is a link to the transcript of the questions that I asked to my dad.
My dad told me about his side of the family. Both of his parents were Irish and German mixed. A fun fact I learned is that one of my relatives was on an orphan train.

This is a link to the email that I sent to my grandpa asking for information regarding our family.
My grandpa was able to send me a lot of information regarding my old relatives. He had a lot of scans of newspaper clippings and photos.

This is a link to my family tree that I created on Family Echo.
I created this family tree off of basic knowledge of my family and some help from my parents.

Monday 11/14

Blog Post of the Day:

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Do you have any traditions? Go in to detail about your plans for the 5 day weekend.

For Thanksgiving I am going to Chicago for a hockey tournament. We played in this tournament last year and we did pretty well except for one game. It was against a team from Corpus Christi in Canada and it ended up being a pretty rough game. Playing in Chicago is fun because most of my family lives in Chicago so they can come and watch me play. For Thanksgiving day, we are going to my grandpa's house. He lives in Chicago and some of my other family will be there to eat dinner with us.We do not have many special traditions except for a desert called "white jello" that is made from whipped cream and gelatin and God knows what else but it is delicious.  

Wednesday 11/19

Blog Post of the Day:

Reflecting on the comments and grade of your stop-motion animation... what you would do differently if you had to do it all over again? Would you manage your time better? Find better lighting for your photos? Come up with a better idea? Explain what you would change about your video.

If I had to do this project again, there are a couple things I would change. First of all, I would have used a real camera, because my phone was not as consistent with lighting as a regular camera would have been. I also would have made sure that every picture was in landscape. I thought the music was fly, so I don't know why I lost points on that. I also wish I had wings so that I could have become a butterfly and not a human, but that would have required purchases. I was glad that my classmates thought that the video was good and funny, and I am not fazed by students who thought the video was confusing. It's just the circle of life.

Image Credit

Monday 11/17

Blog Post of the Day:

Tell me about your weekend.

This weekend I went to St. Louis for some hockey games. We were losing our first game 3-1 in the third period but managed to come back. We scored the goal to make it 3-3 with only .2 seconds left on the clock. We were all very excited because when you tie you get one point in the standings as opposed to 0 when you lose. We won our second game 2 to 1 and lost our third game 2 to 1. My team also went to the St. Louis Blues game. We got a suite for the whole team and it was a great time.

Friday 11/14

Blog Post of the Day:

Tell me about your experience with taking your stop-motion photos. What problems did you run in to? What did you find difficult about the process? What would you go back and change about HOW you took the photos? Explain yourself.

Taking the stop motion photos was fairly straight forward. However, when I gave the camera to someone else (Andrew), he followed me with every photo so I was in the same spot on the screen for like 100 photos. I retook the photos and had my girlfriend do it. Sometimes the colors changed in my photos because of the auto focus but what are you gonna do right?

Monday 11/10

Blog Post of the Day:

What is stop motion animation? If you don't know, look it up! Explain.

Stop motion is a video made up of a whole bunch of pictures. Sort of like a really fast slideshow or a movie shot with a terrible camera that shoots at about 8 frames per second. Stop motions are popular when working with subjects like clay figures. You snap a photo, move the clay figure, snap a photo, and repeat for 2 hours until your clay figure has moved about a foot across the table. The rewards are cool, but the work is hard and tedious.

Image Credit 

5 Frame Storyboard