Reading Class Journal #5 Unit 7

Summary and Reflection

This week in class we read about painted faces. The second topic 'Movie Makeup: From DIY to Digital Effects' interested me the most. This article talked about the makeup we usually take for granted in movies and how it has completely changed in today's movies. It starts off with Lon Chaney who was an actor who had a talent in acting out as monsters. He often applied his own makeup, his famous movies are The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. However, movie makeup today is being applied by computers. They use special digital effects to change the actor's looks. Monsters today are often digital animated, just like in the film Jurrasic Park where dinosaurs are able to run next to actors.

As makeup is an important part of any movie, it wasn't until the first Honorary Academy Award for makeup was given in 1964. In 1968 the Academy Award for Makeup was awarded to Planet of the Apes where people were transformed into apes. This movie used alot of prosthese, a flexible rubber or plastic pieces fixed onto actor's faces. Despite recognition for makeup in the Oscars, it wasn't until 1981 it became a regular award.

In 1981 the award whent to Rick Baker for his job in An American Werewolf in London. Baker started experimenting with movie makeup at an age of ten. Following 1981 Baker did more work on movies such as King Kong and in the music video Thriller by Michael Jackson.

To the later Academy Award in the 90's, horror and science fiction are movie genres that attracted much awards. In 1991 to Terminator 2, 1992 to Bram Stoker's Dracular and in 1997 to Men in Black. Two recent movies The Lord of the Rings trilogy won the prize in 2001 and 2003.

To me, a movie without good movie makeup would be a dead boring movie. A good movie with great makeup would attract alot of audiences. Even if the story seems impossible, but you are attracted at the realism of the movie. Last year when I saw the movie Frida Kahlo, I was amazed with the protagonist, as the actress Salma Hayek look exactly the same as the real Frida. This was all due to the movie makeup.

Outside Reading

http://www.themakeupgallery.info/horror/index.htm

This web site features the work of movie makeup artists in Hollywood. These characters are all using prosthetic makeup from hundres of movies and TVshows. The transformations from actress into character are all illustrated. There is also a listing of past winners and nominations of movie or television awards for best makeup. These awards include the oscars, Emmys and even the Hong Kong Film Awards. Its a one stop website for anyone interested in makeup in movies.

Reading Class Journal #4 Unit 6

Summary and Reflection

This week in class we studies on the topic of pirates. Irronically, the new smash hit movie, The Pirates of the Caribbean has just been in the theatres. In this famous Hollywood movie the pirates are often males, having sword fights and showing the views their brave and cool styles. In lesson one, 'Women Pirates' , it talks about three famous female pirates. As all of us have know male pirates especially the one in the story 'Peter Pan', Hook was a famous pirate. However, female pirates are often overlooked and Hollywood has never made a movie about female pirates. The first female pirate introduced was Alwilda who lived in the fifth century. She escaped to be a pirate because her marriage was pre arranged. She dressed in men's clothes and sailed the seas. It like the Chinese story, The legend of Mu Lan. She was also female and was able to lead a group of soliders to war and as always it ends a happy story. The female marries the prince.

Next was Anne Bonny, she came from a wealthy family but at a young age she had a bad temper and was often in trouble. She too escaped from home to the Caribbean where show stole a boat and covered her self with turtle's blood. However, at the end she was captured and no records of her execution has been detailed. Some say she ran away, others said that she died in prison.

Finally, the last pirate introduced was Cheng I Sao. She was the leader of the Red Flag Fleet, they traveled along the Chinese coast. Her gang of pirates were under the control of her and her husband, Chang Pao. They were so famous because they had harsh sentences for crews that were not discipline enough.

Outside Reading

http://www.thedollpalace.com/dollnews/Female-Pirates-aid3916.html

This website gives a brief introduction to pirates and talks about the main female pirates in history. I found this web site interesting because at the bottom of the page you are able to design your own pirate outfit. You can add the kind of appearance the dress and all sorts of fun things. They body and the pants even to the boots.

Reading Class Journal #3 Unit 5

Summary and Reflection

In this week's lecture we learnt about secret codes. Lesson One The First Secret Codes?' interested me the most. In this lesson we learned about some examples of different kinds of secret codes and how Mary, Qeen of Scots, tricked others by using her own secret code. Dating back to the 1900BC the first secret code was used in Egypt. However secret codes in history, mentioned in the lesson included transposition ciphers, block ciphers, substitution ciphers and, book ciphers. Out of these secret codes I think transposition ciphers was the easiest to be broken, because the alphabet was moved along by a certain number. As the alphabet has only 26 letters, and there could only be a number of possibilities before you crack the code.

Outside Reading

http://www.powerbooksearch.com/booksearch0385729138.html

This is a book review of the Code Book: How to Make It, Break It, Hack It, or Crack It. It seems like a interesting book to read. This book includes how codes were broken in history especially about the codes about Julius Caesar to the 10th-century Arabs; from Mary Queen of Scots to "Alice and Bob"; from the Germans' Enigma machine to the Navajo code talkers in World War II. The books explains how each person used the codes to transfer messages and how the codes were broken. Maybe if you bought this book you might be able to write secret codes to your girlfriend or even write secret codes to cheat in tests. Hahaha

Reading Class Journal #2

Summary and Reflection

The second week of lectures included, " The Rise of the WWW" and second article was "Don't Believe Everything You Read." I thought the second article was much more interesting than the first, as we are faced with all sorts of scams in our life. The messages we recieve on our cell phones, the pamplets we get, or even stickers of beautiful half naked girls, found on our car windows or even stuck onto our motorcycles with a cell phone number included, are all too common in our lifestyle. This article concentrated mainly on the scams that exist on the internet. As the title suggests that we can't believe everything we read on the web, as things are often exaggerated. One of the main scams that I believe every Net surfer has always recieved in his or her email is a letter saying "Congrtulations You won..." or the most common scam I have been recieving this month is an email subjected "Gain inches - Guaranteed!", and, "Lose 50 kilos - Guaranteed". It sounded so funny as how would the sender of these scams know that you need to gain inches or you need to lose 50 kilos?

One of the most common scams that is mentioned in this article involves a person who wants to give money away. It often states your full name and contain information that is quite accurate. However, once you fall into the trap you might be asked to give your bank account or to wire an amount of money first than you get the big prize. This reminded me of my grand mother, as she recieved a call on her phone saying that someone in the family was kidnapped and in order to free him she would have to wire NT$20, 000. So, as she was innocent and old she rushed to the nearest ATM to wire the money. The only problem was that she didn't recongnize the numbers on the ATM and asked her neighbor to wire the money for her. What a nice neighbor! As more and more people are getting used to this type of scams new scams are being invented everyday.

The end of the article stated that internet scams are difficult to trace with various problems. It's difficult to regulate crime on the WWW because crimminls live in many different coutries. You might recieve a scam from India to Alaska. So that is why its so difficult to catch these crimminals. Moreover, it would be too expensive to fight fraud. Finally, if you just ignore these messages and press the "Junk Mail" key on your email, it might just cut down your chances of being caught up on these scams.

Outside Reading

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/12/24/internet.hoaxes.idg/index.html

This is an article on the the 10 worst Internet hoaxes. It's an article that contains the worst 10 scams on the internet. Most of them included forwarding the scam to another user, so these scams keeps on circulating. The scams I found funny were no. 8 Bill Gates Reaches Out to You. Yeah Right! Impossible, why would Bill Gates want to reach to a second year English Major in Stut? To give me some money? Ha! Some scary scams included Dialing 809 for trouble and I am amazed at the number of people who fell to this scam. A lot of people did dial this number and at the end they were charged $25 a minute. So we can't really believe everything we see on the internet.

Reading Class Journal #1

Summary and Reaction

In this week's lecture we read about two articles. The first one was "Getting Along" and the other was "Body Language". Out of the two articles, "Getting Along" was my favorite. This article touched on the different personality traits of the human being. These personality traits included bossy, competitive, cooperative, enthusiastic, helpful, innovative, romantic, thoughtful and skeptical. There wasn't any distincitve element that decides which personality trait you belonged to, but the only trait that is supposedly different for young girls and boys were competitive and cooperation. We learned that there weren't any ideal personality traits because you can have a makeup of a number of traits. However, we also learned the golden rule when interacting with others: to treat others the way you want to be treated.

There is an old saying that it's not the outside appearance that matters , it's actually what the personality is like. After reading this article about different personality traits it has helped me alot to understand better about different traits. I think the perfect girlfriend personality would be enthusiastic + helpful +innovative + romantic + cooperation + a little bit of bossy. Enthusiastic because she might give me good advice and share her ideas with me. Being helpful is great because she can help me with my English homework or even clean my bedroom. Innovative is important too, due to she can be creative and think about which interesting places we should go. Having a romantic girlfriend is what every boy's dream, so that speaks for itself. Having a cooperative girlfriend is important too because she would enjoy my company or even laugh at my boring jokes. Being cooperative means working together and solving problems easier. As for the last element i chose a little bit of bossy. This is solely on my laziness, bossy people tend to be leaders, she would able to lead me in my life and tell me what I should do. However, a perfect personality girlfriend is all too hard to find.

Outside Reading

This is an outside reading I found interesting. It's an online test to find out your personlaity. At the end you will get results about your own personality profile and I found the questions in the test interesting and I can say the results are very accurate. The results I scored told me that i was a down to earth guy who is uncreative. I also do things accidently and disorganized.

http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/

My Results:

• You are somewhat conventional. (Your percentile: 20)
  (High scorers tend to be original, creative, curious, complex; Low scorers tend to be conventional, down to earth, narrow interests, uncreative.
• You tend to do things somewhat haphazardly. (Your percentile: 35)
  High scorers tend to be reliable, well-organized, self-disciplined, careful; Low scorers tend to be disorganized, undependable, negligent.
• You tend to shy away from social situations. (Your percentile: 31)
  High scorers tend to be sociable, friendly, fun loving, talkative; Low scorers tend to be introverted, reserved, inhibited, quiet.
• You are neither extremely forgiving nor irritable. (Your percentile: 44)
  High scorers tend to be good natured, sympathetic, forgiving, courteous; Low scorers tend to be critical, rude, harsh, callous.
• You aren't particularly nervous, nor calm. (Your percentile: 55)
• High scorers tend to be nervous, high-strung, insecure, worrying; Low scorers tend to be calm, relaxed, secure, hardy.