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My Project Website for this course is here: Burke Project Website
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Introduction to a UAS Pilot and Aerospace Engineer
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...
Hello John-Paul,
ReplyDeleteYour story was so fun to read. This story has been one of the best stories that I have read because this story is just so funny and interesting. I loved the funny little chants and the name that you gave Dee-yem, that is just a fun name to say. You have a fun imagination. I wonder if Dee-yem didn't die if they would have escaped the deadly wrath of the goblins? I wonder why the woman only ate men? What if they ate all kinds of things even animals? Then maybe they could have put a curse and made the animals look like them? What if they all became goblins with them and then they could take over the world?You did an amazing job at creating your own story with your own imagination and retelling the story in a different light. I can't wait to read more from you.
Hey John-Paul,
ReplyDeleteThe story your created was incredibly fun to read! The way you recreated an already existing story into a completely new story was amazing. I do not play dungeons and dragons, therefore I did not get the references, but I imagine it would have made this read even more fun. I loved the image of the castle you included so as to better set the scene for the reader. Also changing the fairy to the knight at the end in order to keep the story line consistent was a nice touch. I wonder if the goblins are still there performing the same trick on others, or if they were all killed by the knight. I now realize the title is also a reference to dungeons and dragons. What if the title made it more obvious to those who do not play that the story was created on a dungeons and dragons basis, although I don't know how much of a difference that would make.
Thank you for the enjoyable read!
Hey there John-Paul. First off, I would like to say that your layout for your portfolio website looked really nice and was super easy to navigate! I liked how you used the image as the header for the first story. It gives the reader a little larger image to look at and can see it the whole time they are reading the story. I too like Zach said thought that this story was just a really fun story to read. I like that it was a kind of adventure story. I think stories to come that you will write could actually come from this story or add to this story as well! You did a great job of taking an already timeless story and recreating it into a great alteration. I think that you might try and do some alteration so that more people could understand references that are used in the story. Or maybe even better you could just elaborate more on what some of the dungeon and dragons lingo means. But great job all together!
ReplyDeleteHey John-Paul,
ReplyDeleteOverall, I think you made some really nice changes. As a D&D player myself, it is always fun to read stories set in scenario's such as this, and I can practically hear the dice rolls in the background, and the DM's exasperated sigh as he has to keep them all from dying. My main suggestion is work on word choice and repeated words. This is really only a problem in the first paragraph; you use path twice in the same sentence. This just interrupts the flow of the story a little, and can be smoothed out. The other critique I have is just sentence structure in the third to last paragraph where the party starts to argue. This sentence just feels a little choppy, and could use some smoothing out. As for actual content, I am really happy that you had the whole party leave the city. That part of the original story where the sailors had proof they were being deceived, but stayed anyways always kind of bugged me.
Hey Jean-Paul, I read The Dread Isle of Goblins. I really enjoyed this story and it reads really well as a fusion of Dungeons and Dragons fantasy mixed with the original Jataka style. I thought it was an interesting choice to have the paladin be the one to notice things were amiss, and it made me think that maybe the paladin has a natural intuition towards detecting evil. Personally I thought that the way the party (besides the paladin) rejected the praying to the god, only to get down and pray when they lost anyways, was pretty humorous. I only had moments of confusion when I read that the heavily armored knight commanded the party to get on his back before transforming, but that misunderstanding was fixed by reading the next sentence. Besides that, there's a space missing between 'eager' and 'for'. Overall I liked how this story was creative with the source material and made into something more interesting. I'm looking forward to reading your other portfolio stories!
ReplyDeleteHello John-Paul. I really like the pictures used in your website. I also liked the fantasy element of your story. I thought your characters names were really creative. I also liked how their names factored in to how they behaved later in the story. Like the Viking being eager for a fight and Uther being the wise and more cautious one. I really liked the foreboding that something was wrong leading up to the reveal that they were goblins. The writing style of your story was really good. It was easy to read, everything made sense, and your language was very colorful. I would have liked to see your story diverge farther than the original but it was still really good. I also thought the ending was a bit abrupt and would like to see it fleshed out more like the beginning. Overall great story and am looking forward to reading more from you.
ReplyDeleteHey John-Paul! I really like how you are adapting the stories from the class to fit into the setting of a D&D party. This is a really niche idea, and I feel like you will be able to apply this style to a large amount of what we read in this class. I am assuming that Uther was the parties go to for passing perception checks, and it was very helpful that he knew something fishy was going on. In addition, I enjoyed how each character filled their role properly, e.g. Ush-Goth rushing into combat because he is a barbarian. It will be very important to keep the characters within their stereotypes if you keep this theme for the remainder of the project. However, I felt that in the context of D&D the God Dee-yem was very lenient and helpful in this story, which from the stories I have heard is really out of character. I would try to avoid using Dee-yem as a deus ex machina.
ReplyDeleteHello John-Paul! What a cool portfolio this i on track to become! I like how you are going to have a theme for your portfolio rather than collecting mostly random stories. This is the perfect example of why I love author's notes because I would have never known that this was based off of Dungeons and Dragons! It's also interesting how one of your concerns in writing this story was making it inaccessible to those readers who do not play Dungeons and Dragons. However, I didn't even find anything over my head, I just enjoyed the story! The picture you used for the story is very beautiful and perfectly goes with your story's surroundings. I would like to read more about the God's origins in future stories from your portfolio, to understand his ways better. And a story like that could be really fun to write about. I look forward to reading more!
ReplyDeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteYour title is what drew me in. I read "DM" and immediately thought to myself, "Dungeon Master?" I've only recently started getting into D&D, so I was excited that your stories revolve around it. I really enjoy how you write your stories! It feels like I'm reading a fantasy novel. In the second story, Riddles By The Water, I particularly enjoyed how you intentionally left some of the riddles unanswered for the readers. It makes it more fun to read, and also really brings me into the story because I feel like I need to answer the riddles before continuing reading! I also really like that you are keeping the same characters throughout your portfolio. Personally, it makes me connect more with the characters. I only saw a few grammatical errors in Riddles By The Water, so my suggestion would be to read aloud to make sure it sounds correct. Keep up the good work and I look forward to reading more!
Hi John-Paul! I really liked your story about the Dread Isle of Goblins. Your joke about the deity being called Dee-Yem completely flew over my head until you explained it. I feel ashamed as I play Dungeons and Dragons as well and I should have seen it. I really liked your other references as well such as the paladin being sick and him casting Detect Magic. I have to say when you made the knight crash in and save the party it seemed like a cop-out from a lazy Dee-Yem who didn’t want his party to die. It seemed like an ex machina when they simply prayed to Dee-Yem and then they were saved. However when I read your author’s note it all made sense as your were trying to keep your story close to the original. I really liked both of your stories and I cannot wait to read more from you.
ReplyDeleteHello John-Paul! I absolutely loved your stories in your portfolio. Making stories based on D&D and Indian epics is such an awesome idea, and I wish I could have thought of it. You do a great job of adapting these classic Indian tales so that they are uniquely your own stories, but they also feature enough elements of the original tales to reflect their source material. Additionally, you manage to keep the D&D in-jokes subtle enough that someone who is not familiar with the game or the genre wouldn't be out of the loop, but someone who is familiar has a blast reading it, as I did. One thing that kind of stuck out to me was the formatting you used on Riddles by the Water, it looks like every paragraph has an extra line between them, which looks really weird when you have a bunch of one-line paragraphs where the dialogue is. Other than that, I thought your portfolio was perfect!
ReplyDeleteHey John-Paul!
ReplyDeleteI like the theme of using Dungeons and Dragons as the theme for all of your stories (as you might expect).
In "Riddles of Water", the story starts by mentioning: "During their exile with the Pandava brothers..." This seems like a reference to the original story, but feels slightly unnecessary to the story itself. They only ever come up at the very beginning and end of the story, and have no focus on them.
As for the change to the riddles, I like the subtleties in how all of the different adventurers react. Almost all of them either ignore the Sphinx or try to fight it, while only the one who is willing to play the Sphinx's game can win against it. It could work to add that in as a 'lesson' to the story, whether for the audience or as something Dro'vahkin says to the rest of his party!
Hey John-Paul!
ReplyDeleteusing Dungeons and Dragons as the theme for your stories is super creative. It makes me wish I had thought of something along those lines. I feel like writing in this style allows for a great deal of creativity as there are seemingly limitless possibilities with the game itself. I wonder what the story would be like if the DM were influenced to manipulate the outcomes, maybe he was cheating at the game. That would be an interesting twist that could flip any story on its head quite literally. I got a good laugh out of reading your stories, and I hope you finish them up as strong as you began them.
Hello again John-Paul,
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see that there are two more stories for me to read in this wonderful storybook! I love how you adapted the Riddles by the Lake story into your world. I noticed the Hobbit inspiration immediately and it was very welcome! The battle between the sphinx and Dro’vahkin was very intense. I also enjoyed that you left out the answers to several of the riddles because it actually made me think about them. I got a couple but I definitely would have been eaten by the Sphinx. In ‘Into the Arena’, the extra details that you added did wonders in bringing this story to life. It was slightly dull for a fight in the original story, so this was a worthy change. Naming the magical weapons was smart and gave them a symbolism. It was a bit sad that no winner could be declared however; maybe it was just simply impossible for there to be one.
Coming back to this project is nice, because the idea of turning myths and legends into something that could be found in a D&D game is still a really cool idea and I'm happy to see more of it.
ReplyDeleteThe changes to "Into the Arena" may not be major, but you still tell it well. The magical weapons are an interesting touch, and give a slight insight into how each of the two fight. Arjuna has a magical sword and a magic bow, while Karna has a magical sword and a magical shield. Given Arjuna's introduction with shooting, it makes sense for his archery to be an important aspect of his fighting, and Karna seems to be slightly more defensive of a fighter since he just blocks or deflects all of Arjuna's arrows until his opponent runs out.
One thing that I had to figure out by context was the word "edified." It's not a word I've come across before, and I only figured out what it meant by what was going on before and after its use.
Hey John-Paul,
ReplyDeleteReally liked the D&D theme you gave these stories. I selected your story as my free story this week becasue of the title and I recognized the "DM" as D&D and knew I had to read it. I really enjoyed the dialogue in your stories and I thought that the images fit well. While you did use an image of the Colosseum in the last one which is in Rome, it being an Arena made it an excellent image to use in the last story. I thought the layout of your portfolio was easy to navigate. If you play D&D often, hope your party is a fun one!!
Hey JP! I love the theme of your project! As I am sure you already know from my comments on your stories, Dungeons and Dragons is something that I enjoy quite a bit. You’ve done a great job at capturing the essence of Dungeons and Dragons in your stories. Every single one of your stories feel like they take place in some sort of awesome homebrew fusion of 5e and the Indian Epics. I am happy that you decided to keep the characters consistent throughout all of your stories. It makes them feel so much more like snapshots into some epic campaign that has spanned years between a few close friends. The characters are consistent, yet it still feels like they evolve through your stories. The names are ever appropriate for the characters; not only reflecting the characters themselves, but also the classes they are. You’ve managed to create something incredibly awesome here!
ReplyDeleteHey again John-Paul!
ReplyDeleteI just read your last story, and I really liked it. Although I was a little disappointed that it didn't continue the stories of the Quintet of Capriciousness, I still thought it was an excellent re-telling of a classic tale from the Mahabharata. I thought you did a great job of giving the various weapons and equipment that the two warriors used cool names. They were able to evoke interesting visuals that would be hard to put into words as a description. I might steal a couple for a D&D campaign in the future haha. The way you described the combat between the two fighters was excellent. It can be really hard to get the cadence of writing combat down (I personally don't think I have it down very well) but you seem to have nailed it with this story. I really enjoyed reading your stories and I hope you had just as much fun writing them!
Hi, John-Paul! First of all, I love the layout of your website. It is very easy to navigate and gives us a good amount of information about your project. In your story “The Dread Isle of Goblins,” I love the names you have chosen for the band of adventurers and for your characters. They are all so creative and interesting to read. You have a great choice pictures that allows us to visualize your story. I really enjoy your writing and I wish that it could somehow be longer. But, I know how hard this can be when the stories that you are working with are already so short. Something I think would benefit your story is a little bit of dialogue so that we are able to see first hand what the interaction between the characters looks like. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. I wish you the bet of luck on the remainder of the semester!
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