Author: sevanchec3

“games lubricate the body and the mind”

I was the kid that never watched TV. Well, not never, but rarely, and my parents closely monitored what I watched.  When I went to the playground and played with friends, I remember them discussing shows like Rugrats and Spongebob, and I’d be the kid who’d never seen a single episode.  I’ve never played an Xbox or playstation, and I’ve played on a wii only a few times. I’ve never played WOW, or Call or Duty, or Mario. I don’t understand why people are so into video games and spend so much time playing them, so it was hard for me to relate to the TED talk about gaming.  I understand the idea that people “escape” into the games as a stress relief, but why can’t they go outside and go for a run or play a pick up game of some sport instead?  To try to understand why people become “gamers,” I decided to do the Get Your Game On activity on page 212.

I started by going to the first website listed, www.gamespot.com. I found it to be reviews of different games for your PC, Xbox, PSP (what is that?), 3DS (again, what is that?), and phone.  I didn’t find any actual games that you could play online, so I advanced to the next website, www.gametalk.com, which was not running with a message that read, “we will be back soon, better than ever.”  Onto the next website, www.gamezone.com.  This was very similar to the first website I visited, with lots of reviews of games for different gaming devices, but no actual games. This was all overwhelming for a rookie, like myself so I skipped to the last website listed, yahoo! games, games.yahoo.com.

Yahoo! Games has over 1400 games listed, and about 25% of them are for free online play (the others you have to download).  I scrolled through the list and found a game called All We Need is Brain, which I chose because I felt the title fit with our English class. The idea behind the game is that you want to kill zombies so you lure them out of their graves with a brain, but you strategically place the brain somewhere where the zombie with first walk over a pit of fire or water and fall in and die.  I played for about 5 minutes until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Each level increased in difficulty, but was the same task, so I was bored very quickly.

Overall, I would say the world of gaming is a lot more involved than I thought.  However, I don’t want to be a part of it.  Yes, everyday life can be stressful, but I would rather escape by going on a scenic run, or having a good time with friends.  I don’t need games to escape into a different world when I have this beautiful one to live in.

 

Photo cred: http://robotgeek.co.uk/2011/05/3029/the-doctors-opinion-the-term-gamer/


“every artist was first an amateur”

So we’re all underway with our invention mobs, and our group needs some help. We would love for all of you to send us a picture or multiple pictures of you doing something that displays your talents, or just something creative and funny! It will only take a few minutes of time, so if you could do that it would be really awesome!  It doesn’t matter how talented you are, we want all kinds of posts! Just post a comment on here with a picture (or email me at sevanchec3@gatech.edu) and it would help us a lot!

Thanks!

You might not be able to pull a mini-van with your eyelids like this guy, but we still want to see your talents!

This photo is from http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/802712-eye-van-the-terrible


“genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”

For this blog post the class was assigned to read a chapter in A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.  The chapter that I read consisted of many activities to complete, and one activity stuck out to me in particular because I’d already completed it.  The activity described in the text was making a board of inspiration.  This type of board is commonly used by fashion designers, and  my best friend is attending fashion school in New York City, so for her graduation present I made her an inspiration board. What surprised me about this gift was, while making HER an inspiration board, I also found inspiration to create an awesome board through her interests, our shared interests, and our friendship.

From here I decided to create a Daniel Pink version of an inspiration board.  To do so, I wanted to incorporate another activity from the text.  The activity I chose was  a game where one begins with one website, or googles an idea to find a website, and branches off of it to end at a completely new place.

For this activity, I chose the word INSPIRATION, to continue with the theme, and googled it.  Ironically, I did not find many ideas.  I mostly found quotes, which while inspirational, was not the direction I was trying to move in.  So I chose a new route by using a website my roommate showed me, www.stumbleupon.com, where one clicks through different pages of fun facts and randomness.  For instance, one of the pages I viewed was a diagram showing how much the average pet owner spends on their pet in the course of a lifetime.  (It’s 15,000 for a cat!!)  I also saw an interesting recipe for an oreo-filled chocolate chip cookie.

This kind of information is basically useless, but at the same time it is fascinating, and I think it is the kind of information that Pink believes could create a really good “symphony.”  Its one of the hundreds of useless ideas that actually ends up being world-changing.  It is that one percent of inspiration, from a random source, that will make sense of all the work that has been done.

The first photo is a photo of the inspiration board I made for my friend for her graduation before it was completed.

The second photo is an image I came across while using the website stumbleupon.com.  It is interesting that it is simply combining two different kinds of cookies, but not many people have done it before.


“ideas are like rabbits; you get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen”

Today our invention mob group had its first meeting to begin the process of developing an end product of some sort, a piece of art. We began with each presenting an idea, and by the end we had all contributed to the overall idea of what our project will be.  At first progress was slow, but once we started communicating the ideas began to flow.

We felt the need to think of a problem that our project could solve, so that we had a purpose for our creation.  We were inspired by the class itself, since it deals with the idea that tech students access mostly the left side of their brains. We decided that we would argue that tech students are actually creative and right-brained through developing a collage displaying the suprising talents of tech students.

The collage will be formatted like a mosaic and can be a combination of anything right-brained, done by students here at tech.  This way, we can represent ourselves through our whole student body, and visa-versa. I think the trouble will be finding what we’re looking for.

We believe that the right brainers are here, but where are they?  How are we going to make our argument, and what if we’re wrong? What if we are all left brainers, and what if Pink is wrong in thinking that the future lies in the hands of right brained people? I guess that’s what the risk we take while developing this creation, and hoping for a successful end result.