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The below pictures detail my families Easter morning. For background if you can’t tell already, my sister Kristen at the age of 13 has been battling anorexia since she was 12 and a half, as we’re around the one year mark this war began. Every day is some form of battle in that war, with one if not multiple meals being questioned by her for various reasons. Due to her restrictions, she can’t repeat the foods she eats too often because to the rehab center she then doesn’t fully outgrow or beat the disease. These pictures are a visual representation of another one of those battles, and how we got past it. My sister afterwards told me in private (and it wasn’t the first time she said this) that “Mom and Dad are overreacting and get so mad at me for no reason.” She feels this way because my mom is very hard on her, and my dad tries a softer approach but it gets more and more difficult the more she fights.

  • This was taken as I walked downstairs Easter morning. My sister is at the table about to eat her allotted serving for breakfast
  • This shows my dad trying to “persuade” my sister into drinking her orange juice. She wanted to substitute milk for the OJ but my dad refused and said she needed this instead.
  • My sister got so frustrated she left the room to go to the bathroom. I didn’t mean to have my brother on his phone also in the picture but its fitting. Him and I have almost become numb to these daily struggles.
  • After this debacle, my mom told us to all go lay down and close our eyes as she placed all the eggs around the room for us to find.
  • This is after the egg hunt. My sister never drank the OJ so my mom now has to find something for her to have to satisfy her dietary requirements.
  • This one doesn’t have my sister in it, but I wanted to capture the room here. My dad started playing the new Tiger King episode to try and distract us. Clearly doesn’t initially work, he’s just trying to relax as my mom takes the next battle.
  • I was also a part of this conversation but I took a step back again. My sisters battle with anorexia is one that my entire family has essentially listed in to fight so we all try and help her out with her refusal of certain things to eat/drink.
  • As usual, there was a blowup and fight because she didn’t consume what she was supposed to. As you can see though, the family is calming down and making amends and simply just trying to move on.
  • My sister just wrapped up a take of tiktok here.
  • Now she wanders over to the family room for Tiger King
  • She’s bored now! Going back to what entertains her and takes her mind off things, TikTok.

Podcast on Potential MLB Season

Big crowds like this are something we may not see for a very long time under the current proposal (Leio McLaren, Unsplash)

My Podcast was about MLB’s proposal for a potential 2020 season despite the obvious obstacles the country has in front of them. As mentioned, the season would have many conditions to it and it will be completely different from what we saw in 2019 and all years prior. There would be an 82 game regional schedule, meaning more interleague play and no more Dodgers vs. Mets games in the regular season. Additionally, and this got approved just minutes before I’m writing this, there will be a universal DH in the league. Prior, only the AL had a DH and they had to adjust to NL rules where the pitchers hit when going to one of their ballparks. Furthermore, and in the meeting yesterday economics weren’t discussed, but the owners have agreed to a 50/50 revenue split with the players, but not prorated salaries like they agreed to in March because owners realized with half the games and no fans, they’ll lose money if they pay prorated salaries. However, this could be something that not only prevents the 2020 season from happening, but any season at all after 2021 as thats when the current CBA (collective bargaining agreement. The players have made it clear that if the owners try and take away more of their salary, they have no fear in going on strike. This is what makes these negotiations all the more crucial.

I could put an endless amount of tweets in this blog post, but about everyone knows there are mixed feelings to the return of any sport let alone the country’s national past-time, but the guys upstairs know that the longer they wait to resume play, the harder it will be to have a normal game when it finally is safe to go 100% back to regular society. The MLB is hoping that they can capitalize on the current dry spell that is live sports while also keeping the league in tact so we hopefully don’t have a huge labor dispute in 2021. Is that possible? It’s hard to tell, but it is clear that there will have to be a sacrifice on both ends if we want a season and certainly if we want to see an MLB past 2021.

University Event with Lance Ulanoff, Hofstra Class of ’86

The speaker at my event was Lance Ulanoff, Lawrence Herbert School of Communication class of 1986. He’s a tech and social media commentator, acting as the current Editor-In-Chief at Lifewire now. 

One of the most interesting things I took away from Ulanoff’s speech was how he illustrated proper use of data in articles. As we know in the current state of journalism, many things are taken out of context so it’s important to use data properly and effectively. His exact quote about the way a site like FiveThirtyEight who focus heavily on data reporting is “It’s an incredibly useful way of delivering information.” 

He added that although data does the best job at informing people, that doesn’t mean that your narrative for a certain article has to be obsolete. In fact you should keep the words you used to construct your point, but use data to back up your points as “good points bare repeating.” 

He further conveyed great resources to make your own content from home, such as a site like kapwing.com to make your own “distracted boyfriend” meme or google charts and statista.com for making data charts. 

When talking about creating “thumbstoppers” or media within your article to make the person stop reading and start watching, Ulanoff goes through the process of putting photos together in something like Photoshop, but emphasized how attention grabbing videos are. His one area of caution was with GIF’s, and how if you use GIF’s you need to be careful of who exactly your audience is, because there’s a good chance if you’re using GIF’s you’re grabbing them from GIPHY. However, Ulanoff warns that this is a dangerous path to go down because “what you’ll end up noticing is GIF’s from GIPHY are used in lots of other places.” He then showed us how to make GIF’s with something like ScreenTool. 

He shows us how powerful thumbstoppers are for content. His quote “If you want real visceral content that people will react to, an image or other media will do it for you” and adds to his further credibility by saying “this is what I do day in and day out”

Second Video Project

My video follows Zane Dovel, a student at nearby Independence High School here in Ashburn, VA as he works on his math homework, a subject he’s been struggling in as of late. A roller coaster ride to say the least, but there is a happy ending!

https://vimeo.com/user113965884/review/415371231/e541750b01

As you saw the results of his assignment weren’t so great, he still tries to maintain an upbeat attitude towards the whole “distance learning” ordeal that the public school system has forced on him. He’s holding up okay, but JUNE (crazy to say as a college student) can’t come fast enough for this young man.

Link to Video on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/user113965884/review/412185738/a1efb8e2c9

I created a video chronicling a pickup basketball game in my driveway between my brother Zane (15) and sister Kristen (13). The game was to 3 with a win by 2 condition. They did a do or die shot at the beginning to determine who got the ball. The game was tied at 2 so at minimum the winner was going to 4 which my brother ended up doing. Final Score Zane 4 Kristen 2

My Slideshow of Various Types of Pictures

  • This is my creative shot. I was playing around with my iPhone and saw you could wide out even further than the default setting so I did and did so to capture the entire scene. The child on the bench looking at the taped up playground, the path that has no other pedestrians on it, the trees in the background to show how this is usually such a beautiful scene with children playing and people walking.
  • I decided to use this image as my wide shot because I wanted to capture the empty roads that usually always have cars flying by but also the married couple off in the distance who’s enjoying the quarantine the same way anyone else would, by walking outside.
  • This was used as my medium shot. I was hoping to portray the empty roads in a neighborhood as usual lined with cars and also use the context of a house that is now in the process of being sold. Even though the house was most likely put up for sale more than 2 or 3 weeks ago, it paints a picture in the interpreters mind of how much this virus is affecting everyone.
  • This is the image I used as my closeup. It seems to be a common picture in the house with a girl doing crafts. Its a nice image in this time of quarantine. In actuality, that’s my sister who’s cutting up her required diet given to her by her rehab center. It’s the adjustment all businesses have had to make no matter how invasive it SHOULD be.

JuxtaposeJS Blog

Today I learned how to use JuxtaposeJS which helps you use juxtaposition in your blog posts by taking two pictures on a sliding screen. You can see the difference best when the picture is taken in the same place at two different times. I decided to find pictures of the Superdome in New Orleans both before and after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Here was my Juxtapose It is meant to show how much damage the structure hit during the Category 5 storm.

Bill Carey Event @ Hofstra

Twitter Profile Picture (@billcarey2)

On Monday, Bill Carey came to speak at our Lawrence Herbert School of Communication here at Hofstra. Carey has many years of experience in news and he’s even starting up a company called “ThinkTV” where they try and make news as honest and as sound as possible. As young college students, we were obviously intrigued by what he had to say. He told us something I had been told a little bit for awhile now, and that is to master writing. In his own words, “If you master writing, you’ll have a leg up in the world.” He then tried to get our opinions on the logo for ThinkTV but said that if you have an opinion, just tell me the reasoning behind it. He applies the same logic to writing ideas, saying “If it sucks, tell them why it sucks and how to fix it.” He also showed us the opening to an episode of “The West Wing”, an old show about the President on NBC. It shows the intricacies of writing and how adverbs or adjectives can not spice up writing. The NASA head of PR in the show gives a bad script to the President and when the Pres hands it to his own PR guy, he uses new strong verbs to give the address to the people more life. In Carey’s own words, this is the way to spice up rhetoric, your audience won’t feel it with adjectives. “Good writing comes from strong verbs, not adverbs or adjectives.” Carey then shared his contact information with all of us if we had any questions about the industry or if we needed any advice which I personally thought was a big move on his part, and made the event feel more personal, like he was actually there to help us.

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