Mischief Managed Mug

So I may be behind in this neat little invention but I saw it on Facebook and had to share it.


When I was younger my mom had this cool cup that if you poured a hot liquid into it, the cup changed. It originally would say "I love you" around the top, but with a warm liquid the cup would then show the image of the phrase in Sign Language.


Well, this idea has been transformed by Harry Potter fans. A Mischief Managed Heat Transformation Mug has come on the market! Take a look here!

If you would like to buy this mug follow this Link.

I thought this was really neat because it brings to life the magical world of Harry Potter. While it may not actually be magic, I know that it feels like magic when you're a kid. My mom's "I love you" mug was my favorite whenever we had hot chocolate because it made it feel magical. To not only incorporate the words but also the magical theme of the series into this mug brings a whole new level of awesome to this product!

Lit Genius.... Woah!!!

In my Short Stories class a few weeks ago, we were discussing a few short stories and my professor introduced us to this really cool website called LitGenius. Originally, the site was created to share song lyrics written by well anyone, but it has become a place where people create annotation about stories that they know and love.

How it works:
You create a profile, and you search for your favorite story or for a story where you discovered something really cool within the text of that story. If you find it you go to a section where you discovered that really cool think and you comment on it. In the comment you can add pictures and links to help explain your point. This comment is then considered an annotation.

You can also vote annotations up or down depending on if you thought the comment was helpful. You comment on the annotation to tell why you agree or disagree with it, or you can suggest to the author to edit the original annotation so that it explains what they were trying to say more efficiently. 

If you can't find the story you searched for it's really easy to add it so you can share your discovery with others and so others can share discoveries they've made while reading the piece.

Why this is so cool!:
This site is really neat because it allows people of all walks of life to share and discuss their favorite stories. It creates the opportunity for people to look more critically at a piece and to share their discoveries.

This new media site also allows easy access for people to discover new stories that have been written and they can see what other people have said about the story while they experience the story themselves. I think this is important, especially for stories that can be hard to understand, because it allows us to give specific details about what the author meant and how the words can have different meanings today that can help create different readings of the story.

Some Examples:
Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
This is honestly my favorite Shakespeare sonnet, and to find an annotated version is interesting because it allows me the opportunity to see what others have said about it.

Joseph Conrad's "Youth"
This was the first piece that we, as a class, worked on together. We each had to create an annotation within the piece.

Carolyn Kizer's "Bitch"
I studied this piece in my Intro to Literature class and found there were two meanings to the word "mistress" and knowing there were two definitions to the term "bitch", made this a really interesting piece in my eyes and I wanted to see what others have said about it!

Blog Stats

Chitter Chatter Stats as of February 27, 2015

In class today, we were asked to look at our stats page on our blogs. I looked at it from when I first started it to it's current status. I find it really interesting, but there's nothing too exciting to note.

I feel like my page views are really high, but I've noticed that even my own visits are counted in that number, so a lot of those views are my own. I check the blog to make sure the links work right and that everything aligns right and such.

February 2015 page views.

This picture shows my page views specifically for the month of February of this year. This is very different from the all time page view status because it shows that there was a bit of activity in February, but the picture looks like there wasn't much activity. As you can see here the most used day was sometime around the 19th and at that time I had 15 views. Whether these are all my views or from others, I'm not quite sure. But it's really neat to see.

Back to the first screenshot of all of my stats, it's cool to notice how many people have viewed the individual posts, while I know that at least one of those is from me, it's neat to know that four others have looked at my post on 2nd Street Diner. I hope that my post about Wine-ing in SD gets more attention because it has a link to my pinterest page that offers information and links of the different wineries around South Dakota! I think this is such a neat subject because while wine is a world-wide product, SD wines are made to show the best of South Dakota! They use fruits and grapes that grow naturally in the state. I feel like this is a subject of interest and that people may like that post if they were to see it.

The audience was interesting because it's just in the US. But a blog allows access for other countries around the world. My current audience, I assume, is mostly just my classmates but searching the internet allows opportunity to find my blog and posts.