Author: Tim Ochsner

We need YOUR help!

Although we made great progress with our project today, other people didn’t help so much. Our sentence game on chatterbox failed, and although it received 50 views, there was only one reply. Unfortunately, that one reply was by another team member.

On another site we posted on, we also got only one reply. This one; however, was not a team member! But the comment made it equally depressing.

Eric was strolling through the forest one day when he stumbled upon a magic gourd. Suddenly, a pair of doves flew over and stole his necklace and wallet!

The end

Well that doesn’t help…

Although I must say it was creative, and it may  be used in our project in some way or another.

On another not, we decided to create a google document, where people can go in and add a sentence so we can advertise the same link all over the internet! Click here to get to it and feel free to add a sentence!

Or you can watch our video advertisement!

Thanks guys, have a good one!

-Tim Ochsner


Invention Mob takes a Turn

Hey Guys!

I know it’s been a while since I blogged, but let’s pretend it’s to build supsense! And plus, now I have a super awesome update on our invention mob to write about.

We’ve gotten all of our papers back, and I feel like we had a pretty solid idea of our project. But when we presented to the class, we got some interesting feedback. My personal favorite…

Kwon, Da Hyoue (Sep 16, 2011 12:19 PM EDT) maybe people can contribute a sentence or two to the main story?

I’ve spent a great deal of time browsing the web and was even involved in some discussion forums. A few of these forums that I knew had forums called “Fun and Games”. It doesn’t contribute to post count, but people post and post and post as much as they want about anything, no consequences and for the most part no rules. One of the popular games is called a One Word Story. And that’s about it. Every post someone makes, they copy the previous post and add another word to the story. Eventually, the story evolves into something collaborative, random, yet creative.

I’m looking to incorporate the same idea into our story. It’s going to be much more difficult to create one story with lines from separate stories. Although everyone is being creative, they’re being creative seperately.

So we created the sentence game. (UPDATE: THIS IS NOW A GOOGLE DOC, ANYONE WITH THE LINK CAN CONTRIBUTE! FEEL FREE TO CLICK AND HELP US OUT, for the original forum post click here) It’s only been posted on one forum, but I spent some time meandering the web and found a few forums. The first two I registered for were flunks. I went to one site that is a huge dictionary of a lot of web forums, as shown below.One required a one-week registration process and the other cost $10. If it works, we’ll be looking to repost on some more discussion forums! Are you a member of a forum and think this would fit in? Just comment and let me know!

For the first trial, we began the story with a line from one of the stories we already got. ANYONE CAN C

“Eric was strolling through the forest one day when he stumbled upon a magic gourd.”

Rules of the Game!

  • Copy the Poster Before you’s paragraph
  • Add another line to the story
  • Post!
  • The story ends when it’s incorporated a Gourd, a pair of doves, a necklace, and a wallet

It’ll be interesting to see where this game takes us! If this site doesn’t work out, we may post on a few others, although we may do that anyways! Feel free to register and post, it only takes a second!

Until next time -

-Tim Ochsner


The most Versatile Joke on Earth

“Two guys are walking down the street when a mugger approaches them and demands their money. They both grudgingly pull out their wallets and begin taking out their cash. Just then one guy turns to the other and hands him a bill. “Here’s that $20 I owe you,” he says.”

I’d never heard this joke before. In fact, I consider myself anything but a joke connoisseur. Although I love to laugh, I never remember good jokes. I’ve been using the same one joke for years, which is great for a quick impression, but once you’ve used it it’s done, and that’s just unfortunate. Rightly so, I decided I’d search for a new joke.

Although I do consider humor fantastic, some of the “Top 100 jokes of all time” are not funny at all. They’re ironic, and they evoke emotion, but they don’t make you laugh. If they do, it’s a short “ha”, not the heartfelt “hahaha” you’d want and expect.

This joke was the closest I could find to genuine laughter. This joke follows the basics idea of irony. Obviously, one feels bad for both of the two guys. The humor in this joke is because of the slick comment. If looked at with the left side (literal side) of the brain, you see the two events separately. But what makes this joke funny is that one man loses $20 less and the other loses $20 more. His comment is amusing because it is slick. It’s ironic because although he’d lose all his money anyways, and his very sneaky.

But it’s only funny as a spur of the moment thing. Even then, this joke doesn’t encourage as much laughter as I’d experienced before.As soon as you think about it a bit, it loses interest. You read or tell the joke, enjoy it, and then move on. You can’t go overkill on a joke. It’s tough to be creative about it, and creativity (the right side of the brain), is important.

If I were describing my blogging experience, I’d say “It’s so hard!”

Well…

That's what she said!

It’s the most versatile joke on earth. It requires sexual immaturity, but it’s funny because you think of the comment differently than how it’s literally meant. It requires creativity, on-the-spot reaction, and imagination to come up with, and the speaker’s thoughts or attitude get flipped form serious to humorous in a split second.

That’s where the humor in this comes from, and that’s the way I think humor should be. Although humor can be set up and preplanned, the best kind of humor is when you’re least expecting it.

So try catching some people of guard and getting them when they least expect it. Maybe it’s a good way to break the ice with someone new!

Until next time,

-Tim Ochsner


Over-thinking Gaming

I just now watched the latest TEDTalk assignment: “Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world“. Why is she over-thinking it so much? If you haven’t watched it, click the link and do, maybe your mind will react to it as strongly as mine. She argues that online games bring out the best in people. But what does it matter if it does, fact of the matter is that they’re doing it ONLINE. They’re not in real life, no cooperating in real life, not setting goals and doing anything in real life. There’s no reward for it. Sure, it’s one way that people can cooperate with each other but that does nothing to benefit our world. She even discussed ancient games saving populations from famine. It wasn’t the games, it was the distraction. A way to waste time and get their minds off of hunger – just like people turn to online games to waste time, not find solutions to real life problems. The only valid arguement she makes is that certain games can help make a better world; however, this games are not what you’d call popular. She made one oil game where amazing ideas were thought of and solutions were made by people playing, and they even had application in the real world. But no one plays those games. People play games like World of Warcraft, where there’s no form of benefit in real life. People only waste important time that they could be spending in real life playing WoW. If she thinks that the gaming industry is going to transform from games like that to games that help the world, she’s crazy. There are much better ways to change the world. If you calculate the time spent between making the games, thousands of people playing the games, people paying for the games and where that money comes from, and then argue that that can really make an impact you’re crazy. The world will change based on the actions of people in real life, not in a virtual world. It’s the people that get out there and do something that will have an impact, not those hiding behind a screen. I don’t mean to sound blunt, but the video got me thinking! All the best!

-Tim Ochsner


Applying the ideas of Symphony

Reading Daniel Pink’s Chapter on Symphony was interesting. How’s that for an awesome intro? What I thought was so interesting is that he spent a good deal of time talking about his self portrait. He went into how we see things, not how things actually are. We create images in our heads of what something should look like, but we don’t look at what it actually is. Being a somewhat decent art student, these are things I’d heard before and I agree with. I’ve actually done portraits upside down and spent a good deal of time in the studio; however, what I thought contradicted that was his idea of a 5-line portrait. Immediately, I felt inspired to try it. If he’s talking about the detail, why would he suggest a 5-line portrait? I think it’s because a 5-line portrait has to incorporate shapes, but it also forces you to identify what parts are important in making the picture. Spending less time thinking about how it SHOULD but instead focusing on how a very simple drawing can look like you. You focus on manipulating the shapes to come up with new ideas. Using very long lines to represent hair (as I did in my second attempt). I’d say my three attempts are somewhat pathetic, but it’s the attempt that counts. One thing I did enjoy was the idea of combining two parts of your face that you’d want to identify as important into one line. I combined the ears with the shape of the face, and in the second I sort of combined my nose with one of my eyes, however awful it may look. I enjoyed the exercise and the thought that goes into it and I’m excited to continue with these same right-brained ideas. There’s little I can say to argue that the right brain isn’t more important already – creativity is key – and it will be even more so in the future.

-Tim Ochsner


Inventive Process

In class we began our collaboration with all of our homemade items. These included a pair of doves, a necklace, a duck tape wallet, and a gourd. After some discussion (most of mine was through email and Facebook), we decided to let others’ ideas support ours. We each approached two people and asked them to write a short story about the items. It was interesting how some were exasperated at the idea because they didn’t want to do the work, yet at the same time nearly every one was willing to do it. Finding two willing people was interesting, and we believe that using their stories we’ll be able to collaborate and come up with some fantastic ideas. We’re also trying to draw from ZeFrank’s songs (including Chillout) for motivation. Although our project still requires some hardcore brainstorming we’re hoping that using other’s creativity will help solidify ours! I’m sure we’ll know more next week!

-Tim Ochsner