Alan Cooper
Motion graphic designer with an interest in writing, astronomy and self-improvement. Successful in varying degrees at all of the above…
Location Ruislip
Activity
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Barack Obama, Carl Sagan, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King; all eloquently spoke with passion. They connected and engaged with their audience.
-
Hoping that I can make it through the course to the end. However, considering how much you charge for full access to FutureLearn the least you could do is buy a decent microphone and learn that good audio is more important than good video. The sound recording and quality is dreadful. Thankfully the transcript and auto caption option is available
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Loved gaming all my life; both of the video and board varieties. I like the idea of using gaming as a tool for awareness of global and societal challenges
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I'd like to start a side hustle so I'm taking a few relevant courses to expand my knowledge and skill set
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
XX by Rian Hughes is a 1000 page epic science fiction novel which employs meticulously crafted typography as well as a multilayered approach to the story. There is an accompanying soundtrack and the level of detail throughout is immense but not overwhelming. I breezed through it in less than a week which, for me, was fast. The story is interspersed with...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I was pleasantly surprised by the constructive feedback presented. It is definitely helpful to see how another individual may interpret what I have tried to get out of my head and onto the page.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Definitely prefer 3rd person narrative to 1st. I liked the last example most where different aspects of the character are almost drip fed to the reader; just as we discover people gradually in real life.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I'm not sure about writing up to 15 pages on every aspect of every character. I doubt I'd ever get to write anything and it can be hard at times anyway. I prefer to start writing with a basic idea in my head which develops as I write. Sometimes the characters start to get fleshed out as I get them down on paper. If I need to rewrite parts as those characters...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I researched three separate ideas.
1. A short history of the 7th Armoured Division 'The Desert Rats'. My great-uncle served with them.
2. Induced comas; how patients are placed into them, cared for and brought out of them.
3. Suicidal depression -
Alan Cooper made a comment
Hilary looked up at the heavy winter sky. The rush hour crowds milled around her oblivious to the impending rain and the loaded gun concealed in her voluminous coat.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I jumped straight into the middle of an interview – the idea inspired the amount of us who have lost their income thanks to Covid.
I tried to describe the interviewer from the interviewees viewpoint. In the second paragraph I described the interviewee from her reaction to one question being asked. I deliberated over the writing and did actually edit and... -
Alan Cooper made a comment
The food stain on his plain grey tie distracted Emma as she tried to concentrate on the questions. He wore a dark grey pin-striped suit which he had clearly outgrown at some point during his middle-age. His pallid skin was without colour except for the signs of a half-healed razor-cut where his chin overflowed from his sweat-stained shirt collar. His hair was...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I've found both of the exercises very helpful. They definitely help to avert the fear of the blank page and to get me started.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
(Emma said that) there was no food left in the fridge. What hurt him most was that she was completely unapologetic about it.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
She glanced in his direction and his heart took flight and sang.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
There was a life about the place that he loved. The baristas’ ritual theatre of coffee making and the familiarity of strangers about him brought him solace. The large cream china cup of nearly drained cappuccino had been pushed to one side as he wrote in frantic bursts of blue ink on white paper. Moments of clarity flowed from the pen fragmented by extended...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Paul stood alone in the lift taking him down to the 5 o'clock rush home on the streets far below. At the 7th floor it shuddered to a halt and, after what felt like an age, the doors opened to reveal the girl he hoped would be there. The slim, smart young women who often shared the lift ride down at the end of the day. Today she wore a navy blue dress he'd not...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
He’d made a habit of sleeping on his sofa with the TV playing quietly – bathing the room with the soft comfort of human voices. His young son now slept in his bedroom upstairs. No longer did he crave the soft embrace of the double bed anymore. It only emphasised that she had left.
My great aunt was born in 1898. She was just 5 years old when the Wright...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Knowing their history helps define them as more than just somebody with dementia.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I bought a bungalow for my mother 2 minutes' walk from where I live with my family so that she wouldn't be alone miles away at 88 years old. before the move she was fiercely independent and helped me select the new home. I believed that her ongoing independence was a good thing for her.
However, she has gone downhill after the move and continually talks about... -
Alan Cooper made a comment
"…a research centre which was set up to help employers manage ageing
workforces and to look for ways to encourage their older workers to stay and work a little bit longer"?!
Really? Encourage older workers to stay? I don't know a single business that doesn't look for the 1st opportunity to dump their older workers for younger ones that they can pay less... -
Alan Cooper made a comment
I scored 27. As well as looking after my mum I am a single parent and also trying to find work. The one consistent thing in each of my life problems is me - so I guess that's why I'm struggling to be more pragmatic in my approach to life.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I scored 31. It's not been the best month!
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I'm really struggling with the dreadfully poor quality of audio which somebody somewhere has approved as suitable for broadcast. Abertay University is doing itself no favours at all with this which sounds as if it was recorded on a phone in a bathroom.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
The 2 game examples given do make sense, however, I see PacMan and the early games of that era more as puzzle/survival type games rather than full blown interactive video games. It feels odd that there was even a debate revolving around whether games should be rule or narrative led; for me it is about getting the balance right.
Sadly I felt that this was... -
Alan Cooper made a comment
I've been interested in video games since playing Galaxy Game in an arcade in 1971. Yes, 1971! My first encounter with characters in video games was on the Sinclair Spectrum 48k with Alien8, Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner; all pretty shallow characters but characters none-the-less. More recently game characters have been treated more like characters from novels...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Ben from Full Throttle, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, Nathan Drake from Uncharted or NPC Patricia Tannis (slowly losing her mind) in Borderlands.
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
Biomedical: 19
Psychosocial: 31 -
Alan Cooper made a comment
In my 50s and currently unemployed. I have struggled with depression for a while now due to various events in my life. Have found the courses on FutureLearn cathartic and have started to look more into the subjects and areas that have affected and defined my life of late. Not necessarily looking for or expecting answers to my life(!) but more of an...
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I like the fact that you clarify that Charon is named after the mythological ferryman. Is there anybody here who thought he was anything but mythological?
-
Alan Cooper made a comment
I understood everything up to the mentioning of 'isotopic composition' right at the end. No idea what that meant so had to consult Google.
I also noticed that there was no mention in the clip of the Moon being made entirely of cheese. So I'm guessing that's one theory we can safely discount now. -
Thank you all for joining in. You learned lot are indeed correct.
Quicker is the comparative of quick, which is an adjective.
More quickly is the comparative of quickly, which is an adverb.
However, 'more quickly' is used nearly all the time now through common usage in all contexts.
So whenever I hear it my skin crawls. I know. I need to get out... -
Alan Cooper made a comment
On a complete aside; the use of the term 'more quickly' is driving me nuts. It's 'quicker'. We don't say 'more hotly', 'more coldly', 'more smally', 'more bigly' etc.
Irrelevant? Well, probably. However, the content of this course is both enlightening and fascinating making this 'common usage' term all the more irritating. Rant over. Thank you.
Actually, a... -
Alan Cooper replied to Alan Cooper
Well, thats helped quite a bit, thank you! I guess I should've paid more attention at school!
It just struck me as odd that light years, Kelvin and other terms are being explained at enormous length and then suddenly these radian lads just sneaked up on me like that :)
Thanks once again for your clear explanations and help. -
Alan Cooper made a comment
OK, think I missed something - which is of great concern as not even half way through this yet! The text talks about arcmin and arcsec which I completely understand. However, the video talks about radians which appear to have been plucked from the ether! What is a radian and why is it 57 degrees?
I know I can reach for Google but that's not the point of me...
