My favorite substitute pulled up behind me right after I parked so we
walked in together. We got about halfway when we ran into two
parents that the substitute knew. This is not surprising because she
is very social and I'm pretty sure she knows everyone. There is
apparently a painting of the father (it was a mother and father) that
the substitute wants so they talked about that, and then about a
flower arrangement that she wanted to buy from the coffee shop but
they wouldn't let her and the mother said she could probably get it
for her. Then she gave the father a doughnut and we parted ways.
I was worried that I wouldn't have anything to do today, and there
were times where I was verging on nothing to do, but I managed to
fill my day. Starting with making the class slides and coming up
with a list of things I would need to do to finish the slideshow when
I got home. That took most of the morning.
This afternoon I listened to music because I was pretty sure I would
need another song for the slideshow. I ended up going with Brave
by Sara Bareilles because it was upbeat and seemed somewhat
inspirational and graduation-flavored. There were a lot of catchy
songs in the last year but not a lot that made sense lyrically for a
sixth grade graduation slideshow.
There were a couple classes in the lab this afternoon but when I
wasn't helping kids, I was printing MAP reports. I gave up on
waiting for the three remaining kids who still have tests that need
to be deleted, and went ahead and printed reports for the remaining
teachers. I actually did that this morning and handed them out but
this afternoon I printed copies of all the reports for the office.
It is surprising how hot paper can get going through the printer.
Especially after a whole bunch of pages have gone through.
After school I had a haircut. It ended up being a very thorough
haircut, and I like it, but when I got home I noticed for the first
time that light can now reflect off the back of my head. That is
kind of sad. I miss having a bunch of hair. I never took full
advantage of having hair, like growing it long or getting strange
haircuts. That boat has definitely sailed.
Before dinner and then for the rest of the night, I worked on the
slideshow. I added in the class slides I made today and then started
on the end credits. I had a screen for the teachers, then a
scrolling screen listing all the students, and ending with a screen
for the songs. It took me a little while to figure out the scrolling
thing for the student names but I eventually got it working. I ended
up putting two names on each line to make it go a bit faster,
separating the names with a diamond. I quickly learned that the font
I chose didn't have equal spacing for all the letters and it was
impossible to get the diamonds to line up. To get over this, I made
the diamonds zig-zag along and I think it looks pretty cool. All the
end screens ended up taking longer than they should because my
software crashed a few times but thankfully I have gotten in the
habit of saving frequently and didn't lose anything.
When I had the slides added and got the music added I imported it
into the DVD software so I could figure out a menu. That took me a
bit to get into but I eventually got it figured out. It was
definitely one of those inspiration moments where I'm just kind of
staring at the computer but not really looking at anything, not
getting anything done. I tried going with a school-themed background
but it was too busy and the menu title didn't show up well. I got my
mom's opinion and she agreed about the text being hard to read but
didn't have much of an opinion on a different background. She did
mention adding a teddy bear, a thought I had earlier, so I decided to
look into it.
After several Google searches, and one attempt that didn't do much
for me, I found a clip art bear that I opened up in GIMP. It was a
cute brown bear but I didn't want that so I made it black and white
and then put a mosaic effect on it. And it looked really cool. My
mom also suggested glasses, also a thought I had earlier so I did
another search and almost immediately found a picture that would work
with a little tweaking. After getting the bear sorted out I looked
for a black and white menu theme in my software and there was really
only one. It was mostly black and gray and had a few old film
canisters on it. It worked perfectly with the bear I made. I also
have a font that kind of looks like something that would have been
used way back in the day so I used that for the title and I really
like the look of it. I added in the music I wanted to loop and then
burned it to a disc. I'm thinking of maybe messing around with the
menu a bit more, adding a sub-menu and including the songs, or maybe
a hidden button that will play the Happy remix that I used for
the menu song. But for now, the slideshow is done. With plenty of
time for tweaks.
I got to bed late last night and tonight is no different.
Twelve-thirty in the morning on a school night kind of sucks. But I
accomplished my main goal for the day so I am okay with my decision
to stick with it. I may feel differently in the morning. I'm going
to go to bed now so I can fast forward several hours and see how
things turn out.
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