Burke Blog for Epics of India

This is the last blog post for the semester, so I am going to wrap up my thoughts on the course and everything in it.  First off, I thoroughly enjoyed the reading, I was skeptical when I first heard about this course fomr my other AME friends, but I took it anyway because its always nice have others you know in a class, plus you have built in friends for comments.  Another benefit was getting to learn their writing styles, it is not something we ever experience of each other in our classes.  It also helped me see more of their interests outside of class, we talk and share things, but the things that were significant to us to come out in our writing is what I noticed, and there were many things I had not seen.  The other added benefit was that this class gave us things to talk about while working on projects or capstone, because there is a lot of time spent on those things, so it is very easy to run out of talking points.  As for the rest of my semester, I st...

I used my personal twitter account to follow the twitter tech tip for this week.  I like twitter as a way to follow the news/events that I actually care about in reverse chronological order, rather than relying on an algorithm to sort the news that "I" want.  The added bonus is that the 280(!) characters limits what people can say on a subject, so they have to either interest me enough to click on a link to explore further, or I do not care and just keep scrolling through the feed. 

In this story, Divine and Demonic Qualities, Krishna explains to Arjuna the good and bad features, actions, and behaviors of people, explaining what is divine and what is demonic.  As expected, honor, truthfulness, nobility, nonviolence, forgiveness are the attributes of a divine spirit or person, and pride, anger, ignorance, and hypocrisy are demonic qualities.  These are unsurprising qualities, but do give an insight into the author's religious beliefs.  Furthermore, the good are expected to be destined for nirvana, and the evil for servitude, and everyone is described to be either divine or demonic, destined for one or the other.  It is talked about how demonic people only understand the world as want, and act only for themselves, thereby causing the destruction of the world.  This was an interesting, enlightening chapter, and gave me deep insight into another worldview. Lord Krishna, from  pixabay Bibliography: The Bhagavad Vita, translated by P...

In this epic, the story that caught me for part A of the reading was Chapter 2, Transcendental Knowledge.  It was interesting to me to see Arjuna struggle with the thoughts of fighting and potentially killing Bheeshma and Drona.  He says this because he wants to avoid this sin of slaying his kin in battle, professing to rather be slain defenseless instead. To this, Krishna gives an extremely long speech to Arjuna, talking about Atma (consciousness/self), and fate, and tells him how all things are fated to be, and death and life hold very little meaning because all is just a part of Atma.  This is the Transcendental Knowledge the chapter was talking about, and a very interesting persepective into the beliefs of the writers of this epic.  Statue of Arjuna, from  wikimedia Bibliography: The Bhagavad Vita, translated by Prasad, Ramanand,  Source

Ush-Goth was tired.  Warring and raging and all sorts of barbarian things required rest.  That wizard guy was stupid for spending sleeping time reading, everyone knows that time is only for fighting, sleeping, and eating, Ush-Goth thought.  He found the shadiest tree he could find, threw his animal fur cloak over himself, made sure his trusty battle-ax was next to him, and fell asleep. Several good dreams of raiding, pillaging, and cracking skulls later, he was awoken by a great thumping noise and a massive pain in his skull.  This was the moment that Ush-Goth lived for, he sprang into action, in one smooth motion leaping to his feat, grabbing his battle-ax, and rushing off to warn his companions, who had given themselves some fancy name that he could not recall at the moment. Barbarian, from  pinterest The first person Ush-Goth encounetered was Adalard, the Rogue, who asked Ush-Goth why he was running.  Ush-Goth's only response when he ran past w...

This week, the story that really caught my attention was The End of the World.  Part of the reason I liked this story was I remembered it from earlier in the semester, and remember the good stories that several people got out of it.  I think this would be a chance to have some lighter humor in the D&D universe I have been writing in, and provide an opportunity to poke some fun at Ush-Goth the Barbarian.  Barbarians are not known for their intelligence, and so it is completely plausible that Ush-Goth would see some great phenomenon and think it was the end of the world.  It also would be funny to have the chain of blame go on throughout the party, especially to see how talkative characters like Adalard would try to talk their way out of it.  Overall, I see in my mind the story as it would shape up in writing, and now have to decide which of my reading stories I use this week. Kneeling Barbarian, from  wikimedia Bibliography: Twenty Jataka Tales,...

This week, my favorite reading this week was The Tortoise and the Geese, due to the lesson about the value of silence.  I think it would work perfect for my D&D story because it could keep the same message on the value of silence while being made into a humorous tale.  My thoughts are that it will be a lesson to the rogue, because rogues are famous for talking themselves into and out of trouble.  As far as consequences, letting go of a stick seems out of the ordinary, but there definitely will be other fantasy situations which are appropriate for the setting.  Overall I am very excited for writing this story, because it will provide a different sort of story then I have been doing. Rogue Assassin, from  Flickr Bibliography The Tortoise and the Geese , Twenty Jataka Tales, Noor Inayat

"Arjuna! Arjuna! Arjuna!" the chants from the crowd resounding throughout the arena.  Arjuna smiled slightly, then loosed another flurry of arrows, dropping all the targets released.  During each shot, the only thing he remembered was his trainer Drona's advice, "See only the head, not the body."  Eager to show even greater prowess, he hopped on his horse and galloped throughout the arena, hitting target after target without fail, prompting even more cheers from the crowd.  Finally, the time came for the greatest exhibition, and an iron boar was loosed into the arena.  To any witness, the next five arrows that Arjuna released were faster than the wind itself, and all hit the boar straight in the mouth, as if they were but a single arrow.  The boar dropped dead, and the arena rang with the mightiest cheers anyone present had ever heard. Arena, from  pinterest As Arjuna reveled in his glory, not all were pleased for the great prince.  Duryodh...

For the second part of the reading, my favorite story was Granny's Blackie.  I thought that as a story for children it was excellent, with the main lesson being that at some point in our lives we must grow up and take responsibility.  Blackie, the elephant, seeing Granny is getting exhausted from all her work to support them, takes it upon himself to earn the money for Granny and get a job.  The secondary message in this story comes when Blackie completes the job and is offered less pay then promised, and he holds firm until the man pays him his just wages.  He also resists all the temptations of fun he used to give into and stays steadfast in his resolve to be responsible, and as the story states, continues on doing the same in the future.  This story, while probably not what I will write a story about this week, nevertheless was my favorite story out of all the part B jatakas.  Black Elephant, from  pexels Bibliography: Granny's Blackie , Ja...

This week the story that caught my attention most of all the ones we read was How the Turtle Saved His Own Life .  This story was fascinating to me because it reminded me of the Brer Rabbit stories I read as a child, which were some of my favorites.  The Turtle using reverse psychology in order to trick his captors into giving him the best available "death" which in fact freed him always made me laugh, and I want to be able to modernize this laugh in my own writing this week.  To do so, the first thing would be to expand on this dialogue, make it longer, and make the turtle more sarcastic and humorous, like Brer Rabbit.  This will allow me to put some more modern commentary in the story.  Another potential twist I could add would be to put the story in a tech world, something to do with robots or the like, to give it a new setting I don't believe the story has been done in yet.  This could be done for most of the other stories this week, but because of the ...

The last week before spring break was very stressful, because all of my exams were that week for my grad classes, making for a lot of stressed studying.  Optimization and Optimal Control was an especially hard exam to study for, due to the theoretical nature of the course, with very few examples, but luckily the exam was identical to the study guide, so the exam went very well, and is worth 40% of my grade, so now I am feeling better about the course as a whole.  The Control Theory exam also went fairly well, I do not have my grade back yet but I believe my performance was strong and the professor is a fairly easy grader so all should be fine.  The extra week in this class for spring break was perfect, because it allowed me to push back most of the assignments until this week to give me time to focus on studying.  It also allowed me to give the best performance in all my classes by giving the best performance on both the exams and on my writing in here.  The ext...

I have loved the addition of the Calendar feature to Canvas, it has helped my time management in all my courses.  I have actually created a macro allowing the canvas calendar to be exported to my desktop calendar, so every time I log into Canvas it updates the desktop, allowing me to keep on top of all courses, and make sure that my calendar is always up to date.  So in conclusion, the Canvas Calendar has been a good thing for my overall time-keeping and schedule management. 

For this week's learning challenge, I used the read out loud option, and here are my thoughts on the subjects, as per the notes I took  Personally, I think it slows me down too much in my reading, and actually lowers my comprehension of the text, because I tended to not remember previous information because too much time passed between when I first read it and when I recalled it It also lead to me being distracted more easily, because I needed to keep my train of thought as well as speech working together, so instead of becoming immersed in my head, I ended up staying too much in the real world, meaning that events in the real world threw off my focus.   It did enable me to look at form more easily, and think of how I would write stuff in order to make it more enjoyable for a reader.   For final thoughts, I think I much prefer reading silently, it allows me to be fully immersed in the story rather than be constantly distracted.  Reading, from...

This week, I created the acronym L.E.A.R.N.S., for Living and Experiencing Achieves Remarkable New Success.  I created this acronym in order to document how by just being open to our experiences in our everyday life, we can move forwards and learn through paying attention and having takeaways.  I thought of this through the lessons of the Lockheed Martin Skunk works, who created the single greatest aircraft in history, the SR-71 Blackbird, just by taking the lessons the whole team had learned throughout their career in order to create this masterpiece, pictured below SR-71 Blackbird, from  Wikipedia

This week, I decided to prepare to write a story about The Martial Exhibition Chapter of Krishna Dharma's Mahabharata.  This chapter, with its medieval-like descriptions of the training and combat games, reminded me a lot of some of the gladiators of old, with less lethal consequences.  This led me to research the background of gladiator type games in ancient India, from  Wikipedia , and it turns out that it did briefly become a thing around the last century B.C-first Century A.D.  This led down a trail exploring historical time periods of the Mahabharata and its significance.  However, this Roman influence is too late to be in the original Mahabharata but is definitely something that could influence later renditions and retellings of the chapter, and definitely a theme I can write into my own story.   One final note of this research path is that I didn't realize different parts of the Mahabharata were written in different era's, which actually co...

for this reading, I focused on the story of the Pandava's being sent away, because it would be a break from the previous stories of battle or feasting I have written, and focus on another important portion of D&D lore, the intrigue.  It would give me an opportunity to create a villain like Dhuryodhana who does not act openly for combat, but instead behind the scenes to eliminate our hero.  It also would allow me to highlight typical D&D skills like insight, perception, languages, etc, in order to get the heroes out of the predicament they will find themselves in.  Burning City from  pinterest Bibliography: Krishna Dharma, Mahabharata,  The Pandava's sent away

This week, I focused on  the story about The Martial Exhibition.  I was drawn to this story because of the descriptions of the training, especially Arjuna, because his exploits and skill are definitely the foundation of a story.  The story itsef and the granting of the divine weapon fit in this semester's D&D theme, and the brothers themselves can become the actual adventuring party.  Arjuna will translate well to Luna the Ranger, because bow prowess is the stereotypical ranger expertise.  The jealousy itself can be expanded on, and the final duel could become a blow by blow fantasy narrative, hopefully sometihng done as skilfully as Nate's project story from last week. Ranger, from  pinterest Bibliography: Krishna Dharma,  The Martial Exhibition

Overall, I am happy with the progress I have made in this course.  I am ahead of schedule despite the concussion, so even though I got knocked off the pace I was on, I am still on schedule to finish early, so I am satisfied.  The comments are my favorite weekly assigment, because I like getting to check in on people's blogs that I have been fascinated by and seeing what their latest work is. Moving forward, I want to try to return to the pace I was on for classwork, but that will require some extra work for one or two weeks, luckily with spring break coming up it is the perfect opportunity to make this push. Graduation Cap and Diploma, from  sweetclipart This is my motivation, graduation.  I want to finish up both of my degrees, and reminding myself that ending this semester will finish one of them is the greatest motivation I could have.

Overall, for the feedback I am recieving, I am finding it useful in moving forward in my writing.  the most useful feeback I recieve is that which points out specific instances of both good and bad examples of my writing.  These specific examples allow me to see exactly what the reviewer is referencing and allow me to search for other instances of the same flaw/feature.  As far as feedback out, I try to follow the same sort of expectations I want in my feedback in.  Trying to find examples to reference as to my overall thoughts towards their writing in order to show them exactly what the strengths/weaknesses in their writing is.  As for blog comments, I feel that reading a particular persons blog each week really does give me an insight into them and their writing, especially those that I respond to weekly, due to being able to follow along with their semester.  Overall, I am happy with my own blog in this aspect as well, because I feel my blog really d...

Overall, I am enjoying the reading work in this course.  I was skeptical when I started this course, due to how different it was from many of the other mythologies and epics I have read previously.  But once I got invested in the stories, I see that there are many interesting and new themes, and I never thought that they would turn into something that I could write a D&D campaign about.  This process all starts with the blog notes, something each DM in D&D learns is how to borrow elements from everywhere to inject in the game, and that is why my reading notes are all designed to remind me of the key things, the characters I can use, locations, and weapons.  The action itself I tend to try to let write itself each week, keeping the original story in mind but taking license with it to tell the story I want to.  This has made me very satisfied with my class project, because I enjoy doing the writing for it and I get to make all the characters behave the way...