Epilogue 12-13-10

The purpose of this blog entry is to explain to future students what I think the class named Seeing Sideways is all about.

I think that Seeing Sideways is a class intended to teach students to explore and create new things, free of whether it's "right" or "wrong". Basically, anything goes as far as assignments go...as long as the assignments are not pornographic in nature and as long as they obey school rules. I guess this class is preparation for future projects within the workforce.

Assignments include doing whatever you want with an egg, doing something that involves your identity, creating something that inspires you, and analyzing your beliefs, be they in God, in another deity, or lack of belief, and creating something from those beliefs.

You also have to make blog entries presenting such projects, and justify said projects(how it works, why they created it, etc.).

That's pretty much it from me.

Speaking of Pickles...12-10-10

This is the idea I have for the final project, aka "Pickles". And speaking of pickles, pickles are usually toppings for a hamburger or sandwich, right? And what do we associate hamburgers with most of the time?

Fast Food!

Funny thing about that...when I heard that this project had to be about the word "hidden", I had to rethink what idea should be created or sketched for my project. Then I remembered one day in Comic Book class, when Mat Powers told us to look up "12-year-old McDonalds burger". A McDonalds burger sat on a counter for 12 years and did not grow old or moldy. It might be because of all the preservatives they put inside their food.

I guess that's why certain people are scared to eat fast food: They fear eating hidden chemicals that could adversely affect their internal chemistry.

Another reason: It's fattening as heck.

Sometimes, I eat at Hardees or Five Guys when it comes to burgers. Unfortunately, some of the burgers Hardees serves go upwards of 800 calories(not counting fries or drink) and the Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger(without toppings) is over 1,000.

Not only that, but they have lots of sodium and cholesterol.

So what to do? Create a possible invention that can fight back.

The Fast Food Filtrator

The Fast Food Filtrator is designed after a fine dining plate and cloche cover. Inside the "cloche cover" there are scanners and filters. The scanners scan for "impurities" such as preservatives, hormones, excess sodium and excess grease and the filters suck those impurities out of the food. The lights in front of the cover shine red and scroll horizontally back and forth while it scans the food and they shine green when it is done with the filtration process. You activate the machine by pushing the button in front.

The top of the cloche cover is actually a filter that keeps the grease and impurities. It can be removed and cleaned for reuse.

Behind the cover is the rechargeable battery for the device. The battery has a max time of four hours without being plugged up. The machine automatically turns off when idle for a long-enough time.

The machine can also be used for eggs, lunchmeat, turkey, and other "household foods".

The Fast Food Filtrator would cost you an estimated $150.00 plus tax.

Inspiration Round Robin 11-21-10(Edit)

Since I was given an extra week, due to Mrs. Lykins' illness, I was able to actually think of something over the weekend.

Over the Internet, I watched two of Tex Avery's "Of Tomorrow"cartoons.

Car of Tomorrow(edited[I watched the unedited version])

TV of Tomorrow

So, since then, I was able to make a "Video Game Console of Tomorrow". Video Game Consoles already use USB ports and are compatible with CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray. But what if we went out there and make a video game console that tries to capture that "Of Tomorrow" feeling?

Introducing the Robertronics MPC, or the MultiPurpose console.

The MultiPurpose Console has a CD/DVD/Gamecube/Wii/Blu-Ray slot, Wii Sensor Bar, four front USB ports for PS3 controllers/keyboard/mouse/etc., three top slots for the NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis cartridges, an alarm clock, and a laserdisc player. Under the Alarm clock, there is an SD slot, UMD slot, Gameboy/Gameboy Advance slot, and Game Gear slot.

In the back, there are two speakers, Audio ports including one for a Microphone. There are four more USB ports, a Firewire 400 port, two Firewire 800 ports, an antenna screw-on, 9-pin AV plug, AC Adaptor port for the main console, and AC adaptor for the laserdisc player.

And to boot, the console would also have a 4 TB hard drive.

The launch price point would be...to be generous...$3,000 at its launch date.

My "You Call It" blog 10-21-10

For this particular blog, I've used a combination of what I've used in the fear experiment and of the technology in the Virtual Reality Cave in the Advanced Visualization Lab to create a Virtual Reality Haunted House tour.

The haunted house would contain the following:

+3D glasses for the tour
+Virtual Reality Cave technology
+4-D technology(wind effects, water effects, etc)
+Random Monster/Ghost Appearances
+Randomly Generated Maps
+Treadmill

The reason I use random generation for this project is to play on people's fears of the unexpected and unknown, just like in Kyle's project and in my Bugaboo chair project.

Here is a "quick and dirty" mockup of what the front of the house would look like:



And this is what the inside of the house would look like:

I used "quick and dirty" sketches for the mock-ups of my creation, because I might go to Kings Island this Saturday and might spend the night at Ohio.

Response to today's class 10-4-10

Today in class, we had two animals come to class today. Beth Lykins brought a pet cat named Puff to class, and John Weiss brought a Ball Python named King to class. At first I didn't know whose snake it was, because it just randomly appeared. I got to hold the snake and pet the cat.

Also, we discuss our fear experiments, and some of the people who didn't give their presentations last week made up for it this week. A couple of the highlights were:

• Travis Hollins' experiment with blindfolded volunteers putting their hands in food
• Blair's "mystery object experiment" and him asking people if they would eat it. They were worried that it would be a disgusting object. It smelled like chocolate to me, and I was right. It was a brownie. I ate half of it.

The class then became a discussion of different people's belief systems and gave way to a preview of the next assignment for which we discuss our beliefs and create something based on those same beliefs, and the next class, in which the students will watch the documentary "Expelled" by Ben Stein. It might not be that bad. It might be inaccurate, but it might be harmless. Hopefully, no religious debates arise from the movie. At least I have the choice the leave early if need be.

Conclusion to Fear Experiment 9-30-10

EDIT: I added a link to my hypothesis blog below.

The project I had done for Monday's class was called the Bugaboo chair.

On my hypothesis blog, I predicted that people would be squeamish.

61.111% of the class had a reaction somewhat related to squeamishness, which according to http://thesaurus.com/browse/squeamish, is similar to unsettlement, upset, sickliness, and disgust.

33.333% of the class responded with positive acclaim and praises of ingenuity.

Finally, 1 person had the response "Slip and Slide"...though I couldn't tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

According to the results, I believe that the experiment was mostly successful. I believe it was because I had prepared visual aids for the audience and performed an impromptu demonstration using a volunteer. However, if I were to make it better, I could have done the following if I was given much more time:

+Prepared my speech far in advance
+Actually brought more props for physical demonstration purposes.
+Created higher-quality(i.e. color) mockups of the project in question.

I had plenty of other fears to choose from, such as pain, heights, or criticism, but the fear of insects was the only one I could think of that could manifest itself in a physical form.

Not that many people were able to present this week, but out of all the projects that were presented and those that probably scared me the most, it was probably Kyle's psychological experiment in which he told us all to plug our ears and keep our eyes closed. It affected me strongly, because I was scared that Kyle or someone else was gonna touch me randomly. That would have startled me and made me scream. Kyle's was almost the same as my project, except my project didn't involve cutting off hearing with sound blockage of any kind, because sound was an integral part of my project, especially with the buzzing rod speakers. It was the element of surprise and fear of the unknown that could psychologically affect anyone.

Response to today's class 9-27-10

Today we presented our fear-based projects in class, as part of our scientific method midterm blog.
There were so many projects that I couldn't really list them all. So I'll just give out my top five.

5. Kara Yerke-her project was ABC(already been chewed) gum/gum found unwrapped on the ground. I wouldn't eat that gum, because I found it disgusting.
4. Thomas Fraley-he brought a live mouse to class. Her name was Jezebel. She was kinda cute, but it made me fear for my life because she was so small.
3. Julia Lipps-she popped some balloons. The time at which she popped each one was random and unexpected, so it startled me.
2. Kathryn Thacker-we had a lot of fun with this one. She hid someone in a cardboard box, and saw how long he would last until he freaked out. He stayed in there for...ten minutes, I believe.
1. William Wallace-he lit his hand on fire using antibacterial hand sanitizer and a lighter. A LIGHTER. I'm surprised that it didn't get him in trouble with administrators. It did look cool, though.

There were some people who held their projects off until next week, so they told stories instead. Sean told the raunchiest one, while Travis told a painful one.

Squeamish 9-25-10

With my invention built around the fear I've chosen, I predict that some of the class would be squeamish if they imagined using my invention, because I feel that my fear is somewhat widespread, more so than my other ones.

I can't give too much information away, but hopefully you understand what I'm getting at.

Response to class 9-20-10

Today was kinda special.

One of the students(Jack, I believe?) brought in a ferret named Gizmo. He was kinda cute actually.

Anyway, the main bulk of the class was about discussing our sense blogs and talking about fears in general. The question that Beth asked us was whether there was a difference between fear and discomfort. To me, there isn't; they're mainly one and the same. You can be fearful AND uncomfortable.

Take me for instance: I have fears of rollercoasters, heights, criticism and many more. Those make me feel uncomfortable and I fear them.