Walter's Midterm Exam: Practical Activity ds106, Marines, and wine haiku xD

Welcome back to my blog. As I've been sick this last week I've been MIA (missing in action), UA (Unauthorized Absence - of duty in the USMC), and AWL (Absent Without Leave), all at once. I've also been lost in the sauce on what's new in my Computers in Society class since I was absent for a very important lesson/lecture on something new. This "ds 106" concept/entity. It sounds like an AWESOME internet society, from what I've heard, but I have to admit I'm not too sure what it is. All I know is that I'm far behind my class and I need to catch the heck up. Fortunately I have Otto Paertz's blog for encouragement! For now I'm rejoicing being back on line, in my blog space, doing what I love to do and I'm good at--writing.

With that, I have to reveal the reason why I'm writing a new blog now: It's part of my midterm exam. That's right. yeah. But most definitely love writing, specially my blog. Before I roll the red carpet on writing with prejudice and undiscerning pros, I'm using this paragraph to write down an epiphany. As I've always been an over-achiever, I'm now realized I'm overambitious...in a bad way. I'm taking 5 courses this semester, not much, but all my other legitimate free time I'm basically working. There's a great market for charismatic gaigin in Tokyo, and I've been exploiting that. Now, however, the wheel is turning the other way. Midterms have come crashing down on me this week, that has nearly made me loose all consciousness of time and events, and that near loss of consciousness has been completed by other pertaining life things. Bills, due dates, and of course, money matters.

I feel lost in the most crowded place and all I can grasp is the most obvious thing.
It was easier when I used to work hard and get paid really good before college, about a year ago. I just have to throw it on in here since linking to blogs is part of my assignment: Steven Moyer blogged about my unit while we where busy kicking ass in the city of Hit, Iraq. I think that is so awesome that he kept that record of us, while we didn't get much glory since we were stuck in the middle of nowhere and not Falluja.  I miss all those guys, and working hard and getting paid. College is is cool, too, though.

Umbrella Woman by Extra Medium through CC Licensing

But! This is not a whiny complain! This is an epiphany! A positive realization! I desperately want to spend my time on my studies. With that, I will enter "sd 106" and the purpose of this blog. ds 106 (I keep on purposely spelling sans capitalization) seems to be a society started in academia by college students and their brilliant professors, but now has widen to the cyberspace society. (Very Ghost in the Shell sounding.) They're essential life source, from my belated, limited understanding, is this "Digital Story Telling assignments. That's right, communicating digitally through a specified assignment. Very college-like. These are nothing but awesomeness, bound by positivity, only paralleled by the imagination of those undertaking this assignments.

Listen to this while you read :)


I am choosing to write about the assignments of writing, for writing is the noblest form of human communication of ideas, art, and transcending cultures. As a matter of fact, I should add how much I despise imagery. Though beautiful and ingenious, imagery in our contemporary electronic society has led to nothing but emptiness and zombies running around. Kind of harsh, but if you think deeply about it, you will agree. People are too easily attracted to imagery, with out first critically thinking or analyzing anything. Take Hollywood movies, for example. They love the explosions with out appreciating a story line. Anyways, Back to not pissing people off, ds 106 has many visual assignments, these are extremely creative and appealing, and I like them, they're way more elaborate in content; however, still simple. I chose to write about their writing assignments for digital story telling.

The writing assignments from ds106 are quite inspiring. Have a look. Although the one about "taking down google" is pretty biased, naive, and extremist; in my unprofessional opinion, we all know numerous companies are evil, but in this day in age, you have to cyberspace privacy, and if they're making money through people's stupidity, then that's what America is all about then. But of course I'm biased my self, and I haven't read into it to see if they're serious or just comical...Oh! Also the one about haiku, because after living in Japan I've found it extremely difficult to write a haiku in English, since it's originally written in Kaji and all :-/ but of course it fun and creative! Here's ncghost a blogger with a good perspective, on his wine haiku.

Anyways, if a picture is worth a thousand words, I'd much rather write the thousand words, so come back after my midterms to see the story I choose! :D