Posts by Ryan

From 1.24.11 

A little background: I am reading assorted stories by Edgar Alan Poe, and the prompt was do describe something about the text that is different than your previous experience.

Edgar Alan Poe is a famous poet, and horror writer. Most know about "The Raven", "Anabelle Lee", "The Tell Tale Heart" and things along those lines. I was the same way until my recent purchase of the complete Poe; all of his shorts and all of his poems all wrapped up in one package. Since then, I have not been able to put it down. 

Poe is substantially different than anyone I have read, or remember reading, in his diction. His writing career took place in the early 1800's and this was a transitional phase for writing. Poe has many stories that are in the gothic style, that are sad and dark and gloomy, but he also has many that are quite the opposite. The story that I have most recently been reading is, "The Unparalleled  Adventure of One Hans Pfaal". This story is about a man who gives up his life (which at the time was a mess anyway) to travel to the moon by way of balloon. 

In our english class, we have ben looking into the  A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. I chose to carry around a design notebook and re-design things that annoy me, or that I run into on a daily basis.

This, to my suprise, turned out to be rather difficult...  When I started my week, I was actively thinking about things that I wanted to redisign, naturally I couldn't think of any. Eventually I gave up on that idea, and started forgetting about the assignment. As this happened, I began thinking subconsciously about more and more things that really annoy me, or that I think could be designed in a much better fashion.

among my redesigns are:

- the cover of Daniel Pink's Book ( thought that was ironic); it has a cut out and is just asking to be torn and defaced ( that's a pun)

-  the spine of a three ring binder; if you make the spine out of metal, crushed rings would be a thing of the past