Burgerons – Page 2 – Proving Myself Wrong

June 27, 2014

Floating–a 5 Card Flickr story

Mama Boo here again, with another assignment from week 1 of our computer classes.

One thing that was suggested on the assignments for this week was to try telling a story in pictures. I have never tried the “five card flickr” site that our friend CogDog made. You get five sets of randomly chosen flickr photos and you pick one from each set, until you end up with five photos. I chose to do the variation where you just use photos tagged “dailycreate,” so you’re getting images that people have uploaded to flickr as part of the ds106 Daily Create.

This was harder than it seems. When you get five seemingly random pictures and try to tell a story by picking one at a time and putting them in sequence, you really have to think on multiple levels about how they might fit together into a story as you’re picking the next ones. Or you could just pick images you like and come up with a story afterwards.

Here is the story I made from the images I chose. Maybe it makes sense coming from a ghost. But I don’t think it’s a ghost story.

Five Card Story: Floating

a The Daily Create story created by Mama Boo

flickr photo by Bookhenge

flickr photo by joanne2012Jan

As the wires hummed and shuddered with activity, M– took a break from her work, thankful that the electricity was still on. It wasn’t clear what was happening outside (What was up with that red sky? And why had the television and the radio suddenly gone silent?), but there was no way she was going to be able to continue with those forms tonight. Something didn’t feel right.

flickr photo by wwnorm

M– ventured outside, where all seemed strangely distorted. “Must be all that staring at small print and computer screens,” she thought, as her eyes slowly adjusted and she was able to see a bit more clearly. Something about the warm, summer night and the soothing sounds of the insects kept her out for hours, just sitting in the old tire swing and wondering quietly about the sense of calm that had come over her (while trying not to ruin it by thinking about it too much).

flickr photo by mdvfunes

flickr photo by chickadeeacres

Next thing she knew, the sun was rising and there they were–inexplicable, improbable, iridescent. As she watched them float she felt a gentle tug upwards, and the blue filled her eyes and her mind even as part of her rested securely on the ground, feeling the warmth of the grass.

M– knew those forms would wait there forever. And, stretched between earth and sky, she no longer needed them.

June 25, 2014

The spine of ghosts

Mama Boo at the beach in 2014

Mama Boo here, working on my first assignment for the family computer classes.

Here we are in the first week of computer class, and we’re talking about storytelling. One of the things I liked best about this week’s computer class is the “story spine,” which you can use to build all kinds of stories. Basically, you set up the story with a narrative of what usually goes on, setting the stage with the normal, as it were, and then you have a “then one day” section that introduces the event. What’s the event? Whatever you want it to be! Then the characters have to react to that (“and because of that…” “and because of that…” etc.), until the climax portion of the story (“until finally …”). Then it ends with some kind of resolution or change and there’s a new normal (“and ever since then…”).

So here’s the Boos’ story using the story spine.

Once upon a time there was a mother and son, who lived happily in Bovine County, milking the cows and feeding the pigs and raising hay and such. The boy had just started school and he was very excited about learning, especially about animals and bugs, and soon he didn’t want to milk the cows any more but just read books. Etc.

Then one day... [well, this is the part I’m not going to tell; this is the mystery part and you can try to figure how how and why] … they became ghosts.

And because of that, the family got real scared and tried to get rid of them, thinking the ghosts were something that needed to be purged, something frightening. But the mother and son just tried to show them that they were just as friendly as before, no need to try to exorcise them or burn down the house or move the whole farm. It took quite a bit of convincing, and the kids were the ones to first take a shine to the ghosts. Well, especially Little Boo, whom they had missed so terribly and were excited to play with again. Eventually nearly everyone decided that the Boo’s (as they now came to be affectionately known) were a welcome re-addition to the Burgeron family. Those that didn’t like it, well, they just had to hold their peace because the Boo’s were here to stay.

And because of that, Mama Boo and Little Boo continued to participate in the daily life of the Burgeron family through the generations, each child growing up thinking that ghosts were just a normal part of life. They felt bad when they discovered at school that other kids weren’t so lucky as to have ghosts living at their house. Some of the neighbour kids told their parents, who told the sheriff, who told the state police, who said “ah heck, Marty, we know the Boo’s from way back. Lighten up a little. It’s the 20th century, and it’s time to welcome ghosts into our communities.” Sheriff Marty wasn’t really convinced, but he knew enough to keep his head down and go along with it.

Until finally … the county commissioners got involved. Someone in Bovine had read an obscure article in an even more obscure medical journal from across the globe suggesting that a community with ghosts living in the open, visiting different buildings with impunity, had seen a jump in the death rate from unexplained causes since the ghosts came out of hiding. And boy if that didn’t cause a ruckus at a public meeting called precisely to discuss the issue. The Burgerons and their friends defended the ghosts, but the tide seemed to be going against them. It looked like the ghosts may be run out of town. The county even called in the Texas Daredevils, the motorcycle dispatch.

But before the final vote, the flood came. No, not the big one of ’57, but one bad enough to take everyone’s mind off the ghosts for a bit. And wouldn’t you know it, Mama and Little Boo became heroes. At least for a time. They were able to warn a family who was sleeping through the flood that the water was rising quickly under their beds and they’d better get to the top of the house, quick. Which they did. And after the flood, no one much felt like bringing back the no-ghosts-in-our-backyard issue.

And ever since then, the Boo’s have lived quietly with the Burgerons, occasionally venturing out into the wider world, but mostly happy to stay at home. The people of Bovine County know the value of a bit of spirit activity here and there.

June 19, 2014October 26, 2014

What happened to the Boos?

This is in answer to the daily create for June 15, 2014: “The Burgeron family in Bovine County is well known. Of course stories about the family are heard, rumors. Tell a story that is whispered in Bovine County. Make it ART.”

It’s all part of the Burgeron summer of ds106, happening here: http://thebergerons.wordpress.com/

A cropped version of a photo on Flickr, here.

Many of you who are familiar with the Burgeron family know of the family ghosts, Mama Boo and Little Boo. See here for a post about Mama Boo that has a link to another about Little Boo.

In that post, Mama Boo says she’s not gonna tell us what happened to them or how they became ghosts because she says all that matters is that they’re still around and hanging out with the family and having fun and singing and such, so why dwell on how they got there? But really, how can she think we’re going to just rest with that? There have been rumours ever since she and Little Boo showed up, so many years ago that few can now remember when it was. It was all so hush hush at the time that no one seems to have written down what happened, and now those who can remember aren’t around anymore.

Some say the Boos drowned in the floods of ’57, but that makes no sense because we know they were around before that. At least, that’s what I heard from someone who said she heard it from one of the family members, who heard it from his grandpa, who said he distinctly remembered them being around during the war to end all wars.

Some say they succumbed to that god-awful flu that wiped out so many people during that god-awful war, but so did several members of the family, and why were the Boos the only ones to hang on as ghosts? Others say they died in an accident involving the family still, and the strength of that backwoods brew kept them going as ghosts for the foreseeable future. Well maybe, but then why aren’t the rest of the Burgerons who took some mighty big draughts of that stuff while alive also ghosts after they passed on?

I got no answers here, only rumours and unasnwered questions. Somehow we gotta get that Mama Boo talking.

June 7, 2014October 26, 2014

Mama and Boo Ghost at the aurora

I decided to combine the ds106 daily create for June 6, 2014: “Make a picture of yourself in a place you’ve always wanted to go but haven’t been yet” with my participation in the summer ds106 experience over at https://thebergerons.wordpress.com/

So here is the Boo Ghost and me as Mama Ghost at an aurora. I’ve always wanted to see an aurora borealis in person, but never have.

The background image of the aurora is by Omar Smith, and licensed CC-BY.

The process

In GIMP, I opened up both the aurora image linked above and an image of me and my son in Australia from September 2012. To cut us out of the original image I used the process described here, which involves using the “paths” tool–something I’ve never done before. In case that page disappears, here are the steps.

1. Click on the “paths” tool and go around the parts of the image you want to “cut out.” When you reach the first path marker, be sure to hold down the “control” button when you click that first marker to close the loop (although if I remember correctly, on my Mac the control button didn’t work and I think I had to use the “command” button, but my memory is fuzzy on this).

— Then you can move the anchor points around with the mouse to adjust where they are and adjust what is being outlined, which is nice.

2. In the window that has the layers in GIMP (see screenshot below), click on the little white button that looks like it has two sliders. You should be able to there choose “selection from path” (you can’t see it in the screenshot because I’ve already done it and I can’t recreate it…this is just to show the white “slider” button). This creates a selection from the path.

3. Create an alpha channel–this means to give the image transparency, so when you cut out part of it you don’t get white space but a transparent space so the image underneath it will show through. Go to “layer” on the top menu and choose “transparency,” then “add alpha channel.”

— This step is really important for the part where I had to erase something (see step 5).

4. Now you need to cut out the background from what you’ve selected, so you need to invert the selection and cut out that part. Go to “select” on the top menu, then choose “invert.” Then you can just use control-x or command-x (for the Mac) to cut out the background. You should just have the piece you created a path around on a background that looks like a checkerboard (see top layer in screen shot above).

5. For mine, I still had part of the original image between myself and my son, between my left arm and his right arm. I needed to get rid of that, so I just used the “eraser” tool and erased it. What was underneath was just transparency, so the aurora image showed through. If I hadn’t added the alpha channel, when I erased part of the image I’d get a white space there.

— I also needed to erase around some of me and my son because there was a bit of the original image around the edges, which looked strange

6. I had to scale the layer (top menu: layer->scale layer) to make it a bit smaller, and then move it where I wanted.

7. Then the fun began with playing with the colours of the layer with me and my son. I just messed around with Colors->Curves until I got something that looked kind of ghosty. Then I reduced the opacity of that layer (with the slider on the top of the screenshot above) so we were kind of transparent. Finally, I used the “blur” tool to go around the outlines of me and my son so we didn’t have such sharp outlines. It made us blend into the background image a bit more.

8. I didn’t collapse the two layers into one (which you could do by right-clicking on the top layer (or control-clicking, on a Mac) and choosing “merge down), but left them separate in case I wanted to adjust the layer with me and my son more. Having it separate means you can adjust colours, etc. on that layer alone.

9. I then exported as a jpg and voila…

June 1, 2014June 27, 2014

Summer in the Trailer

Trailer Sweet Trailer, Flickr photo shared by Greg Westfall, licensed CC-BY.

A few people are getting together to do a ds106 project for fun this summer–creating a fictional family that is getting together for a family reunion in August. We’re also going to go through the ds106 open syllabus and make gifs, images, audio, video, etc.

We’re doing all our stuff on one site: http://thebergerons.wordpress.com

I just created my character in the family: Mama Boo, mom to Little Boo (and yes, Little Boo’s picture is a picture of my real son)–we’re both family ghosts.

I’m going to syndicate any future posts I write for that site here; we’ll see how it goes.