Burke Blog for Epics of India

Looking this week at a topic I would be interested in writing, I was particularly struck by my reading about Rama and his exploits.  I feel that his story would mesh well into a D&D type campaign narrative like I told in week 1, especially by emphasizing the magical weapons glanced over in the tales.  Many of the thoughts I had in the week 2 reading A and B assignment apply here, because while I went in a different direction for my storytelling from those initial notes, I feel that this project is the perfect place to bring those ideas back to the forefront.  The three stories I am currently thinking of using are all from Indian Myth and Legend , from Donald Mackenzie Source .  The three stories I did the most background research into were Rama battling the Rakshasas, going into Exile, and fighting Indrajit with an army of monkeys.  These just felt like legendary exploits that could be expounded on, especially highlighting both the forces that Rama have cont...

There once was a woman named Shurpanakha, that despite being the sister of a highly successful tech CEO, Ravana, could not find a man due to being horrendously ugly.  However, one day, out at a local coffee shop, she saw the most handsome man she had ever seen, and for her it was love at first site.  She waited for the barista to call out the man's name, and learned he was Rama.  Shurpanakha did not approach him, however, due to her own horrendous visage. Later that day, Ravana came across his sister crying, and asked her what was wrong.  She explained her encounter with Rama, and pleaded with her brother for anything in his tech company which might help her.  Ravana told her there was one product in the prototype stage, that took a person's ideal image of themselves and modified their face to what was desired, intended as a tool to assist plastic surgeons.  Shurpanakha begged her brother to let her be a test for this prototype, and he repeatedly told her...

For Part B of the reading, I once again focused on finding a narrative I would want to tell, leading me to the stories of Shurpanakha and Rama, and Lakshmana.  The few characters in these stories, along with the clearly defined relationships, provide a rigid framework, something to give solid bounds to my own story, while allowing me limitless personalization within this framework.  I think the clear motivations of each character particularly attracted me, due to being able to now write a story to provide more insight into what their motivations were, rather than trying to create my own motivation.  Rama spurns Shurpanakha, from  Wikimedia This image I found the most striking of the ones I have seen, just because the pure expression of rage on Shurpanakha's face could be a whole short story in and of itself.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and so I believe this picture is the best way to demonstrate what I am thinking for my story....

For me, the biggest takeaway from all my reading was the reconciliation of all the different authors of the different stories from the public domain Ramayana.  Looking at the slight changes in style and storytelling showed me the variety of ways I can treat my own storytelling assignment. The stories I spent the most time on this week because they held a similar antagonist to my week 2 story were Vishvamitra and Thataka.  The rakshasas as the antagonist will put me in familiar writing territory, as well as the descriptions of heroic and magical battles.  Another thing that drew my attention was the mention of celestial weapons, this I believe a small detail that I can expand upon in my own storytelling assignment this week. The fire weapon, particularly with Rama traditionally being seen as wielding a bow, led me to this sort of concept for what his weapon should be Angel with fire bow, from  QueenAnneBoleyn The ethereal, not quite completely physical natu...

For this week, my favorite video was the introduction to the Norse pantheon, due to the fact I have taken several mythology and literature classes about Norse mythology, and particularly love Wagner's Operas on the subject.  I thought the video offered a good introduction, especially for those with very little background of the subject material.  Thor and the Modgard Serpent, seen on  Blogspot This was my favorite image of the week, because it shows off the classic Nordic art style, as well as being the cover of one of the books I have read for my other class, Myths of the Pagan North: the Gods , by Christoper Abram.  I would suggest anyone interested in learning about the Norse gods to read it, it is an entertaining introduction to the gods of Norse Mythology.  

This week, the work I was most proud of was my story writing for this class.  When I started this class, I did not expect to be able to bring such informal writing experience as I have with a Dungeons and Dragons to this class, so that definitely was a surprise.  It was a major step up, however, converting the sparse note keeping and plot branches I am used to writing into a singular, cohesive story.  Instead of having to prepare for the vagaries of other humans, the characters in the usual campaign story, I was able to make them do exactly what I wanted in the story, making everything much simpler to handle and write about.  Outside of this class, the other main event of the week was completing more of my masters research project.  My team and I were able to complete the design and construction of a prototype of an arm extension mechanism.  The purpose of this mechanism is to allow two arms of a drone to extend and rotate, allowing flight in the "horizon...

This week I am starting the Happiness Jar Challenge in the Learning by Heart challenge list.  For this assignment,  I created a "Happiness Jar" assistant for my phone and laptop, so I can just add the happiest moment of a day into it as it happens, and keep a constantly updating list as to what was my happiest moment of that day.  Next week I will report on the results and give a few examples of the happiness moments in my life Happiness Jar from user MartaZ on  Flickr

For this week's tech tip I decided to talk about my experience for Canvas Notifications.  Personally, I use the notifications 2 days out from assignments, as well as grade notifications, in order to help keep track of my classwork.  The 2 day out notifications help me stay on top of any classwork I might have missed, and give me adequate time to make up for something potentially forgotten.  The grade notifications are to help keep my stress down, I tend to stress when I do not know my grade on an assignment, and being able to see the moment my grade is released takes weight off my chest.  In conclusion, the notifications are a useful feature, and the ability to customize content and frequency allows each user to tailor their experience to their personal needs. 

The first post I read for this week was the article  Using Harsh Feedback to fuel your Career  by William Treseder.  As the title suggests, he provides advice for how to properly take harsh criticism of us and our work in order to improve.  One of the key points is that people tend to take these criticisms as something negative on who they are, and not just the behavior or expression being criticized. This is a natural response, but one that is counter productive, because it precludes and honest look at ourselves because we go on the defensive.  Furthermore, he talks about how demonizing the one critiquing your work is another common flaw, just because it hurts us to see something we have worked hard on be shown to have flaws.  The takeaway from this is that we need to understand that most criticism comes from a person genuinely trying to help and is not meant to be a personal attack, just an observation for improvement.  The other article I read thi...

The first topic I was thinking of was some stories of  Lakshmi , due to it being the name of the house of my roommate's family.  I do not have any previous experience with Lakshmi, however, I am most interested in retelling her stories of spreading good fortune, mostly in a style familiar with a high fantasy setting.  Most likely the stories will be told in the form of a 3rd person narrative, however, I am not ruling out first person storytelling depending on specific stories.  The second topic was Jataka  tales, due it being a topic I enjoyed reading about and writing a story for this week.  I have no experience beyond the stories we read in class, but I am interested in being able to read more and expand my knowledge into this story tradition.  As with the previous entry, I most likely will be writing in a fantasy setting.  Deciding what stories I want to tell will come after reading more of these stories. Another topic choice is writing abo...

This story can be found with the author's portfolio project  here There was a band of adventurers known as the Quintet of Capriciousness, due to their rogue-like and generally chaotic foibles.  They had been sailing around the world on a plethora of adventures, acquiring much treasure and glory on their heads, but not all were pleased with their deeds.  See, they had upset the most powerful god in the pantheon, Dee-yem, who could manipulate any force or time.  Due to their wandering from the path Dee-yem had set for them, he contrived a massive storm being set in their path, leaving them shipwrecked on a island that did not appear on any map the adventurers owned.  They pressed onward, eager to face this new challenge and reap the rewards, when they were met with a most curious site. Castle on a Hill, from Bernard Gagnon on  Wikipedia Looking out over the hill they saw a castle in the distance, showing signs of damage but still sound.  Furthe...

In reading the Jakata Stories for this week, my first impression was the similarity to Aesop's fables, morality tales imparting wisdom in an easily digestible manner.  Their brevity and clarity, combined with the fact they are simple enough to be told to children with themes important for adults as well make them a great vehicle to teach valuable lessons.  In writing my own storybook, my takeaway it to ensure to carefully write, in order to not over complicate the message I am trying to tell.  Instead, the writing needs to be short, simple, and straightforward, avoiding complexity in favor of approach-ability. The story in particular that caught my attention was Goblin City, due to the theme inside being something that transcends fables.  The unsolvable situation requiring deus ex machina  and a leap of faith to solve, this story provides multiple lessons of wariness and belief at the same time.  The reason this story struck so close to home was all the c...

Looking through the reading options for the course, the Mahahbarata really caught my eye as something I was extremely interested to dive into the readings.  The theme of an inter-familial feud, with the divine influence on both sides of combatants, is a thrilling narrative that I find familiar, due to my interest in Teutonic mythology.  It was mainly in this story I did my deepest research into reading options, due to my interest, as well as doing research into the sources themselves.  While I did look over the Ramayana readings as well, the three selections shown here were my three picks for most intriguing.  Balabhadra fighting Jarashanda, from  Wikimedia Commons First, the public domain edition of the  Mahabharata  drew my attention, mainly due to its use of more antiquated language, giving it a feel of originality.  Furthermore, the fact that there are different authors of each work I feel will give me a better overall picture of this ...

For this assignment, the first article read was  The Myth of "Too Busy"  by Tim Grahl.  He talks about the importance of scheduling time, instead of just referring to one's self as too busy.  He believes this should be called prioritizing our time instead, and it is important to lay these priorities out and formalize them in our lives.  I find that I tend to soft schedule in this matter, I find a pattern of work that allows me to maximize my use of time and tend to stick to it.  However, the rigidity of Grahl's suggestions seem a little out of place in my life, there are just too many unforeseen circumstances in engineering and the fact that an error related to your work can occur at any time means that I need a softer form of scheduling to allow time for emergencies in research or capstone work.  The second article I read was  The Important Habit of Just Starting  by Jory Mackay.  This article references how work goes much more smooth...

The technology required for use in this class is nothing too daunting, due to personal familiarity with most of the tools used.  As previously mentioned, I have experience with content management and user interface design for websites, working with both Wordpress (website and blog functionality) and Weebly based sites.  This is just my first time writing on them rather than ensuring other peoples content is where they want it to be and presented how they want it to be shown.  There is not much in the way of overarching technology related goals for this class, mostly just ensuring I present my previous experience well by maintaining a clean blog and preventing any crashes or other issues within my control.  Bandwidth Error meme from user Tomomi on  Flickr Let us hope we avoid this error, it is a killer for blog and website reputation, although honestly it is something out of our hands and completely in the hands of blogger and google if we crash this w...

For this class, the assignments available are nothing too intimidating, as all the assignments are similar to things performed in other classes.  The most intriguing assignment is definitely the storytelling, due to the high level of creativity that it involves and the wide range of options available.  There is just so much personality to be infused into the exercise it most likely will be one of the most thought provoking every week.  For extra credit, I am most intrigued by the tech tips, due to my background as a web technician.  That is what inspired the following image for this post When your website goes wrong from  Soft9000.com Which is symbolic of one of the many dreaded yellow screens one can see when managing content for a website or blog, and hopefully something that through properly applying the tech tips we all can avoid needing to spend time finding a fix for on our own blogs in this course.  

When I first heard the term "Growth Mindset", I had not had any prior experience with the term, but it felt fairly self-explanatory as to the idea behind the phrase.  It encompasses an idea prevalent in many fields of taking failure and learning from it and making it your success, using the lessons and experience gained to further one's learning and later achievements.  It removes the fear of failure by giving students challenges in order to push them beyond what they think they can do, and if failure comes as a consequence, helping them move on from it.  I definitely appreciate her idea of making learning challenging, because the difficult lessons are the ones that are usually best remembered.  In my own school career, this has definitely been the experience I have had, control theory has been one of the most difficult subjects, but now it is the main thing I study for my graduate work.  This was due to the challenge of it made it an exceptionally rewarding ex...

Hello all, I am John-Paul Burke, a Aerospace Engineering Graduate student at the University of Oklahoma and Research Assistant for Dr. Andrea L'Afflitto at the University of Oklahoma's Advanced Dynamics Laboratory.  My hobbies and work overlap, with most of my current projects being the design, testing, coding, and flying of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) also known as drones.  Personally, I own 3 different UAS models, and enjoy flying them whenever possible.  As an FAA licensed UAS pilot, the ability to fly and allow others to experience the joy of piloting is amazing, because seeing the excitement on others faces when they fly (and crash) a UAS for the first time is infectious.  Below are several of my videos taken of or by my drones, with an apology in advance for the quality of the one taken by the drone, due to the UAS being a restoration project and so the camera is not quite up to full quality yet.  Restored Parrot Drone First Flight Test, personal v...

For this assignment, the goal was to browse through previous years past project, in order to get a grasp on the goals for these projects as well as see examples of what would be expected.  These storybooks provided snippets of information on specific aspects of Indian life, literature, and culture, as well as insight as to what previous students took away from the course.  Furthermore, it also provided a picture as to what to be watching for and noticing throughout the course, in order to form ideas for a successful storybook project for myself later in the semester. The first storybook that caught my attention was Journey of Festivals .  The storybook provided tales explaining 3 festivals of India, Rama Navami, Onam, and Gudi Padwa.  The reason this storybook caught my eye is that due to my roommate, I have had the unique experience of being able to witness the practice and learn some of the history of these festivals.  While lacking an in depth knowledge of ...

As someone descended from a proud German family, I have always felt a strong connection to the Vaterland (Fatherland), in particular to the city my family is from, Munich.  Below are two of my favorite places in Munich, destinations that are must sees on any trip to the capital of Bavaria. Allianz Arena: My favorite place in Munich is the Allianz Arena, home of FC Bayern Munich, German superpower soccer club and 5 time European Champions Allianz Arena at Night Image from Richard Bartz on  Wikimedia commons In addition to hosting FC Bayern matches, the arena hosts the German national soccer team, Der Mannschaft.  My goal is to someday travel to Munich in order to watch a Champions League knockout tie at the arena.   Marienplatz (Mary's Square): This is the central square of Munich, and the host to one of the most famous Christmas Markets in the world.  The central square is famous for the old and new town halls walling it in, creating a stri...

This is a Test post for John-Paul Burke for MLLL-4993-995 as per course requirements.