American Transportation - What if?

Learn more about American Transportation

Reflection: I greatly enjoyed this project. I found the ability to deeply study one piece of history and change one aspect to create a new one quite intriguing. While fulfilling, it was challenging to find the tiny details that would change the outcome of history. The most interesting thing that I researched was the individual impacts of Senator Pell and the founder of the NARPA on the magnitude of future outcomes. Specifically, their efforts in advocating for the bill were the sole reasons that Amtrak and rail transportation exists today. They are only one example of individuals having such an impact on the historical record. Systemic changes also affect the historical record in many ways. For example, if Amtrak was never founded, the 9/11 Shanksville, PA crash. In addition, these all revolved around the one decision as to whether or not Amtrak should be created. In the future, I would like to see a possible adaptation wherein students could work in a pair with two separate changes and create an alternate history based upon two separate PODs. Also, if I were to repeat the process, I would create more primary sources for each event and expand my list of events even further.
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Screen shot 2011-06-07 at 2.19.45 PM

Blog #1

I will be playing bass in my musical group. In order to play base one must fist get a guitar, then set us the frets appropriately to fit the sound of the song. Usually, the bass carries the deepest tone, and its always constant. Its actually the backbone of the song, and must be held by plucking the frets throughout the song. Unlike the rest of the instruments, it doesn't change at all past its consistent four count. In order to change a note you have put a finger on a different fret and continue strumming. This particular guitar is shaped like a rounded rectangle with a squeeze towards the middle, but the shape actually doesn't matter, so long as it has a hole directly under the strings for the sound to escape.

When you pluck the strings, the sound waves head into the hole directly beneath them, and resonate inside, bounding off the walls to enhance the sound and give it longevity. In addition to that, you can see the strings vibrating after you pluck them.

Globalization Benchmark

​https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1cO5gCdJk-ocE_sSPBOGmu9C5O-yHGjct7Sa1AgUfzQA

This benchmark was actually really fun to work on. I got to go around the city and take pictures of different things, some of which I don't know much about, and others that have a lot if meaning to me. I got to connect these things back to Philadelphia. The only issue i had with this benchmark was my camera getting stolen, and losing all my pictures. Other than that i feel that this was a great experience.

Yadi Angeles Q4



​For this quarter, we took 200 pictures, made sculptures, copied a piece of art by a famous artist, drew a bike, and drew from observation. From all the work that I went through with the other classes, I couldn't quite focus on this one, so I didn't always put my all into every assignment. This was definitely my worse quarter, but I was able to get most of the assignments done.
In all the stress of my other classes, I was unable to do a picture from outside.

These are the unedited pictures from the 200 pictures I took:
Pre-edited flower gets thirsty

Pre-edited Gigi

And these are my final product:

Gigi

Flower got thirsty

Flower takes the elevator

Drums!

Laptop


These are the sculptures I made:

Flowers (sculpture)


This is the art I copied by a famous artist:
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This is the finished piece:


Art Calvin

I was unable to upload my bike pictures.

Q4 ArtWork

​In the 4th quarter we had a list of things to do in a certain amount of time. 
-Take 200 photos, then edit 3 of them.
-Draw a bike three times;line negative and shading.
-Copy a famous piece of art.
-Create a sculpture
In this quarter i got off to a rough start i did not feel like doing anything. That made me get caught behind. The day i decided to do everything had me over whelmed. I started to work on everything then I realized that time was running out. This was not one of my best quarters. My favorite project was the sculpture and the photo editing. I had fun doing everything else as well but the most appealing to me was those two. 
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Screen shot 2011-06-06 at 8.32.57 AM
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Blog #2


Thumb piano produced sound by the vibrations of the metal when it’s being pressed. The sound than travels through the box and produce  a sound. When pressing down on the metal piece, the longer the piece vibrate the sound will travel for a longer period of time. The piano can be tune by changing the length of the metal piece. By undoing the bar that holds the metal, the metal pieces can be move around and changes it tune. I will be using different sized of woods and make a wooden box with a circle whole in the middle. I will then add about a dozen of metal piece that can be found in a rake or something close to it for the piano’s keys. Also a wooden bar to hold the metal together and a screws that can be move around for tuning.

Blog #1


When talking about music and instrument, I have the biggest heart for piano. Since piano is one of the instrument that I’ve learned to play I have always want to get better at it. My wish was being able to create my own piano that I can bring along with me and play songs. I did some research and found an interesting instrument call a Thumb piano that can be easily build right at home. The instrument included a box that can be build in many different sizes along with different sized metal pieces that are being held down by a stick. The instrument will produce sound when pressing down on the metal pieces then releasing it. Since the metal is being pressed down in able to produce sound, the metal piece is causing a sharp sound. Also the box is to is to so the metal please can bounce back and make the sound travel. The sound can be tune by how long our short the metal piece might be and how hard a piece of wood is pressing against it.

THUMBWARS by KAE

The title speaks for itself. Basically, it's me (Ashley) and Evett having a thumbwar. The music makes it more dramatic and I like to think it's a little funnier that way. As the viewer, you can guess who wins the thumbwar. So is it me or Evett? Watch the video and find out, enjoy! 

P.S If you watch SNL notice how we stole the intro to our skit from "SNL's digital shorts." I couldn't help it, I a huge fan! 

Emyftaraj Musical instrument blog #2

I said in the last blog that I was making a guitar however I decided to change my instrument since. Instead I will be making a xylophone. Reading up and researching the xylophone I found that like other instruments you have to be careful building for it is simple mistakes that can ruin the melody. I found that in building a xylophone all of the keys are different sizes and each one plays a different note, this is somethingI thought to be very helpful for someone that doesn't play an instrument. I also found that it can be built from various materials, including wood, plastic bottles with different amounts of water and metal, this also made it easier to get the supplies. I also found that this instrument can play majority of the major notes needed to perform our song. 



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Screen shot 2011-06-05 at 3.20.57 PM

German Resistance to the Nazi Regime during WWII

My center of study for my "Everything has a History" project was three anti-Nazi resistance groups that were actually created and operated by German civilians and military personnel. I decided to present this information through the medium of an iWeb, which you can download via the link below. 

Hope you enjoy!

Knocked Out

I am glad I'm not the ONLY one still writing stories after the last day of classes. But I had to come back and do my last one. This one is an excuse for not doing yesterday. Simply I was tired. I completed Mr. Best's benchmark and helped Eddie out with his capstone by performing in the talent show. So when I came home around 7:30 I simply sat on my couch and fell asleep until 11:30 and then I got up and moved to my bed. Anywho, this daily story task has been fun. I gotta say I've been doing a lot better job of it this quarter. 

P.S - Probably not my last post. I kinda like doing this. 

Photo's

These are the pictures that I chose to show you. None of them are edited, because I felt comfortable and I thought they were already pretty good without having to be edited. The one of the hat, is probably my favorite, because it was an accident. I was at a concert in the middle of a mosh pit and my arm got hit mid shot and that's what I ended up capturing. So I thought that was pretty cool. Three of the  pictures, are from when I was in New York City. Its my favorite place, so I thought I'd share the pictures that I could get off my camera. I'll probably end up doing some before and after pictures, maybe play with the lighting some...but for now I just wanted to put some of them up.
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Times Square
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Drawing By A Famous Artist:

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This is the drawing that I did, I tried to re-do a drawing by Alex Pardee. This is the heart off The Used album In Love And Death. It's one of my favorite albums by them, and I absolutely love the album cover. The problem that I have, is I don't give myself enough space when I draw. I'll draw to close to the edge of the paper, or I'll just draw to big to where I'll have to cut parts out of my drawings. This sadly happened when I was trying to do the album cover.
http://www.whokilledbambi.co.uk/public/2008/02/loveanddeath.jpg
As you can see by looking at their album cover, the heart is ha nging by a old tree, I wasn't able to include that in my drawing because I didn't give myself enough room to work. I was going to start over , but I thought that this turned out really well...for not being exactly what I wanted. Alex Pardee is one of my favorite artist. I love his style so much, and I only wish that one day I can be as good as him. So I've been practicing a lot lately draw ing in his style.

Bike Drawings:
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This is my line drawing of the bike that you gave us to draw in the art room. It's not finished, and  left out some details like the little light that was on the front wheel and what i think might of been a bike lock on the body of the bike. I found this both easy and challenging at the same time. I'm not very good with drawing lines, because they never come out looking straight...but the actual bike wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be.

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This was my attempt at a negative space bike. I'm not sure if I even did it right, because I never did one before. If I did, then I think it's kind of similar to line drawings. just you're drawing the spaces around the bike.