Back That Thang Up

Earlier this week I had a scare with my computer. After five years, my MacBook is starting to get old and act up. On Wednesday, even after being on the charger all night (I know this isn’t good for my battery life! But hey, a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do) my computer still wouldn’t turn on. This has been one of the busiest weeks of the semester for me, so I instantly began to panic at the thought of losing all my precious work. Luckily for me, after a tense three hours, Wired was able to get my computer up and running again and I didn’t lose any of my work.

But this scare was too close for comfort—what if I had lost all my documents? Or what if this happens to me again next year with all my grad school stuff? In order to assuage my fears, I have decided to learn how to back up all my files, something that I should definitely know how to do by now. Turns out there are multiple options for backing up your files so I decided to start with the least complicated one: Drop Box.

Drop Box is a free service that lets you store your files online. You can also use Drop Box to share files with other people. I already had a Drop Box account set up from a class, so I just had to add my files to my account. If you don’t already have a Drop Box account, it’s super easy to do—just follow their instructions and voila you have an account! I’m currently in the process of uploading all my music to DropBox, the only downside is that it’s estimating that it will take four more hours. After my music its safe, I’m going to add another folder of my documents from this semester and my pictures from abroad.

I know that there’s definitely something better out there than Drop Box, but it’s great for peace of mind in a pinch. I’m looking into getting an external hard drive so that I can use Time Machine and on my next computer I’m definitely setting up iCloud. 

2Pac's Alive?!?

I only word I can use to describe the hologram of Tupac Shakur at Coachella is bizarre. It looks like Tupac has risen from the dead (if he's even dead in the first place- there are a lot of conspiracists out there who will tell you he isn't) to perform with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. MTV News reported that the hologram was Dr. Dre's vision.

I had no idea that holograms were capable of bringing being so life like, so I decided to do some more research on holograms. Through this, I learned that Dre and Snoop worked with the company AV Concepts to resurrect Tupac. According to their website, AV Concepts is "a national, full- service supplier of audio-visual, staging and technical support for meetings, conventions and trade shows. The company provides the latest in video, audio, and lighting services for corporate, convention, staging and 3D holographic events." I looked at their online portfolio and they have done some amazing things. Besides their work for Coachella, some of my other favorites include: Hard Rock Pinktober and Chris Brown's performance at the American Music Awards.

The hologram itself was created by the Hollywood special effects studio Digital Domain. This CGI company was behind the lifelike creations of Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Jeff Bridges in "TRON: Legacy," Kevin Bacon in "X-Men: First Class," and Rooney Mara in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

Snoop Dogg performing with 2Pac's hologram

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who saw this video and wondered, "How the eff did they do that?" because AV Concepts is closely guarding their technology. Nick Smith, the president of AV Concepts, told MTV News that he could not discuss the creative particulars behind the Tupac hologram, "including how the hologram was able to seemingly perform the set in sync with Snoop and whether all the vocals were 'Pac's."

I'm still not sure how I feel about this. I think that the technology behind this is fascinating, but also kind of creepy. Who will be hologrammed next? Will artists start hologramming concerts instead of actually performing live? I've always been leery of some technology and I think that this might be too much for me. 

For more about hologram 2Pac, check out his Twitter. Not only is 'Pac back but he's tweeting up a storm!

Pixlr and I meet again

After some disappointing results, I decided to give Pixlr another try. When I say disappointing results, I mean I'm disappointed with myself and my lack of skills as opposed to the program. I want to perfect the lasso tool, after all, I think that 99% of the fun of photo editing is in super imposing images. So, when I saw this picture of my friends, I knew I had found the perfect opportunity.

Who invited him?

Jess

This is a great picture of my friends who were there that night, except for Jess, whose spot is being filled by this gentleman. We all know how hard it can be to find a picture where everyone looks good but unfortunately this uninvited guest has ruined an otherwise great picture.

After several frustrating drafts, I realized the key to using the lasso tool is to create your own image. For the Katniss and Prim picture, I superimposed my friends faces onto the picture of Katniss and Prim that already existed. For this picture, I used the Marquee tool (on the top left of the tool bar, below crop) to copy and paste the original picture of my friends into a new image. This gave me more control over the layers, as I realized the key would be putting the image of Jess on a layer behind that of my friends, so it looked like she was behind them. In order to do that I went to the layer tool bar and dragged layer 1 (my friends) over the background (Jess).

I also played with the eraser tool a lot more in this picture so that I could fix the mistakes I made with the lasso tool and also make Jess fit better in between Molly and Vanessa. I think that besides the different in color (the picture of my friends was taken on an iPhone where as Jess' was from a camera) this looks pretty good! Definitely an improvement over my first attempt. Voila here are the results:

Pixlr: like Photoshop, except FREE

So I really want to learn how to use Photoshop, but as I previously mentioned, I have a very old Macbook with an equally old operating system. I am afraid that putting Photoshop on my computer would send it into a panic and cause it to crash or even worse... be any slower.

But once again, with a little help from my friends, I was able to find an alternative photo editing option called Pixlr. Pixlr is a free online photo editing service that has all of the same basic features as Photoshop.  I had a lot of fun playing around with Pixlr and I am sure that my projects barely scratched the surface of all that Pixlr is capable of, so for this post I decided to focus on using Pixlr's lasso tool to make some funny pictures using my friends as models. My friends Chloe and Taara are obsessed with the Hunger Games, so I made pictures of them as Hunger Games characters.

The step-by-step instructions: 

1. Choose your images (If you're like me and wanted to make something funny involving your friends, I suggest perusing Facebook)

2. Select "Create New Image"

3. Open your image in Pixlr (File --> Open Image)

- You can also use a picture from online by doing File --> Open Image URL. This doesn't work for Facebook pictures, which you need to save on your computer

The Original Photos 

- For my picture of my friends as Katniss and Prim, I saved pictures of my friends from Facebook on my computer and then used the URL of the original picture of Prim and Katniss 

4. Use the lasso tool to select the part of the image that you would like to cut out and move to another image 

- For my picture, I used the lasso tool to select my friends' faces 

- Be careful when using the lasso tool because it will select anything you draw around

The lasso tool is the second tool in the right column. 

5. Using the select tool (right above the lasso) drag selected area from one image to the other 

6. Control T to resize it 

7. After I sized the pictures, I played around with the different tools to see if I could do a better job of blending my friends faces into Katniss and Prim's and as you will see, I was only moderately successful. 

- If you hover the mouse over each tool, Pixlr will tell you what it does

- I recommend the spot heal tool (looks like a band aid) and the sponge tool-- both helped blend things together.

8. When I tried to save my image through Pixlr, my old lady computer couldn't handle it and it froze. I had to start over from scratch, so this time I took a screen shot of my final edited image before saving it again, in case it crashed, which it did. So lesson is, screen shot your masterpiece, just in case! 

NOTE: Like Photoshop, Pixlr puts your edited images in layers. So the original picture of Prim and Katniss is the layer 1, then my friends faces are layers 2 & 3. In order to edit their faces, I had to make sure I selected the right layer. The layer tool box is on the right side of the screen. 

This keeps track of the actions you have taken in each layer. 

The finished product: 

Thank you Chloe and Taara! 

Tell Me Your Stories

With the help of my tech savvy friends, I discovered Storify. Storify is a website that allows you to create "social stories." Their website explains it better than I ever could: "Storify lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into a coherent narrative. We are building the story layer above social networks, to amplify the voices that matter and create a new media format that is interactive, dynamic and social."

So what does this mean for us? Storify is a great way to use different forms of social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr) to see what people are talking about along with any images they have of that topic. After you choose which comments, tweets, images, etc. you would like to include in your story, Storify lets you add text to connect everything. You can use Storify to learn more about anything from politics to music. On the Storify homepage they have featured topics, which are things people are talking about, and today's featured topics are: Santorum Quits, Facebook buys Instagram, Weather and Baseball. As you can see, Storify really can be used for a wide range of topics! 

 To play around with Storify, I made a story about Friday the 13th. Storify is super easy to use-- when you go to www.storify.com one of the first options is to take a guided tour of the website, which is what I did. After you decide what you would like to write your story about, Storify brings you to the story pad, which allows you to use social media to search your topic. 

I wrote my story about Friday the 13th, which was a good way to learn how to use the site, but probably not the best use of Storify. I mostly found tweets and Facebook posts from people I didn't know lamenting about having either bad or good luck today or the fact that today is also National Kiss Day-- nothing too exciting. My advice would be to create a story about something directly relevant in your life, for example one of my friends made a Storify after Lehigh beat Duke that was full of great tweets and pictures posted by Lehigh students, or about a controversial topic (such as politics) so you can get a wide range of views. Storify is a great, easy to use tool that I highly recommend to curious people like myself. 

Here's how I made my Storify: 

1. Go to www.storify.com 

2. Select "Create Story" which will give you a guided tour of the site if it's your first time using it 

3. Choose a topic and title for your story 

4. Use the story pad to search your topic in different forms of social media 

Here I am searching Twitter for tweets about Friday the 13th

5. Drag the tweets, comments, images, videos, etc that you would like to use in your story into your story (Drag from the right side of the screen to the left) 

6. Add text to connect everything 

7. Publish your story! You can choose to tweet or Facebook your story if you would like. After you publish your story you can still go back and edit it. 

Check out my Storify about Friday the 13th! Did you know that there are three Friday the 13ths in 2012 and they are all 13 weeks apart? SPOOKY! 

So, tell me your stories! 

The Clip Reel pt. 1

Today at my internship I was asked to start putting together a clip reel for a Lehigh professor of all his media appearances. While I am really excited to be working on this project because it will be a great way for me to become better at using Final Cut Pro X, I am also semi-terrified of the massive learning curve I am about to face.

The first part of this project was getting the DVDs of his media appearances into Final Cut Pro X so they can be edited. I was naive enough to think that I would be able to drag and drop the DVDs from Quicktime Player directly into Final Cut Pro X. I was sorely mistaken-- the format that the DVDs is incompatible with Final Cut Pro X. After spending an hour unsuccessfully searching through online tutorials, YouTube videos and playing around with iMovie, another intern heard my cries and introduced me to HandBrake.

Handbrake is a great tool for converting DVDs into a format that can be used in iMovie and Final Cut Pro X for editing. It is free to download and relatively easy to use.

After downloading Handbrake for free and inserting the DVD, here's how to use it:
1. Click on Source and choose the DVD file you would like to edit
2. Wait about 10 seconds for the source to load
3. Click Add to Que
4. Look to the bottom of the screen to see if there is an encode pending (In my picture, there is not)
5. Once the encode is done pending (It will say "no encode pending"-- see my screen shot) choose start
6. After choosing start, the file will convert into a format that you can edit. This takes about a minute (You can see how much is loaded by looking at the bar on the bottom of the screen. In my screen shot it is about a quarter of the way done)
7. 7. After the file is done converting, it will appear on your desk top and you can drag and drop it into Final Cut Pro X or iMovie

Maps on Maps on Maps

My friend Jess Fromm showed me this really cool feature on Google Maps that allows you to create an interactive Google Map! In the ever changing world of journalism, interactive multimedia is the future, so what better skill for a Techno JAP to have than interactive multimedia experience?

Traveling is one of my passions, so I made a Google Map where we can all share our favorite places, near and far. I pinned Florence, Italy, where I spent a fantastic summer studying abroad and Driftwood Cabana Club, located in Sea Bright, NJ, where I spent many wonderful summers with my family. Pin your favorite places on my map, called Our Favorite Places, and tell me why you love them!

Here’s how:

1.     Search your location in the map’s search bar

2.     Click on the pin

3.     Save to map (Our Favorite Places)

4.     Click view map

5.     Edit (to add your description)

6.     Save map ("Done") 

View Our Favorite Places in a larger map