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Projects

EyeHart Toys

Video and story

Logan Richards is a local artist in Bloomington who decided to take his art to the next level. Inspired by his love of collecting toys, Richards decided to make his own toys which resulted in creating his own company, EyeHart Toys. Richards has participated in art and toy galleries across the country to show off his work. He also has his own website with products for purchase (https://www.eyeharttoys.com/) and updates his Facebook (@eyeharttoys) and Instagram (@eyehart2113) regularly. Here is an exclusive interview about how EyeHart Toys came to be.

 

EyeHart Toys

EyeHart Toys

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Logan was so enthusiastic about his work that he talked with me for over an hour about his passion. He loves to create art using any medium and on anything- stickers, paintings, toys. All of his designs and creations are of his own imagination that he brought into reality. As much as he enjoys making money from his art, he also gives away a lot of it for free. Take a look at this extended interview with Logan discussing what art dropping is and why he enjoys it. Also, hear his take on how it feels to create art that not only grabs the attention of adults, but children as well.

 

Art dropping is a popular art movement to make people feel more connected and allows artists’ work to be enjoyed. An artist simply places a piece of their art in public somewhere and hopes someone finds it. Some people will tell another person where they dropped it, or maybe give them clues making it a game. Others, like Logan, just hope for a connection. He often drops stickers protected in plastic sandwich bags that include his business card with his website, Facebook and Instagram information on it (links above).

Jake Parker, an illustrator, posted on his website instructions on how to do an art drop and declaring the first Tuesday in September World Art Drop Day (http://mrjakeparker.com/art-drop-day). Several Facebook pages can be found for cities to communicate about art dropping. Parker uses #artdropday while Richards uses #artdrop #freeart #freeartBloomington and of course, #eyeharttoys. All of these yield really beautiful results both because of the art and because artist and finder are equally excited. Art dropping is a beautiful and unique way of connecting people through art.

Cyber Security

Cyber Security

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DUO at IU

Video and story

It’s 2017 and you almost can’t live without access to the Internet. This means you also can’t live without putting personal information on the Internet, making yourself at risk of cyber attack.

We pay bills online, we apply for jobs and colleges online and some of us do a lot of shopping online. This requires you to put personal information online that you wouldn’t want people to know; like social security number and credit card or bank account number.

“Cyberspace and its underlying infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide range of risk stemming from both physical and cyber threats and hazards,” says the Department of Homeland Security website. “Sophisticated cyber actors and nation-states exploit vulnerabilities to steal information and money and are developing capabilities to disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services.”

An abundance of valuable information on a public forum has resulted in individuals’ information being stolen by cyber criminals. These breaches in information fill the headlines every few months, from Target, to Chase Bank, to Equifax. Millions have had private information stolen from them on the internet.

“What might happen if you were using that same password and username [for a hacked website] as you were for your IU password and username, then that cyber criminal could take that and try to log into IU resources as you,” said Dan Calarco, Chief of staff for Information Technology at IU Bloomington and also helped lead the Vice President Information Technology Safe IT Task Force that helped to establish Duo for all faculty, staff and students.

In 2014, “The names, social security numbers and addresses of 146,000 Indiana University students and recent graduates [were] compromised in a data breach,” reported Sara Wittmeyer for Indiana Public Media.

Although the University believed the data did not fall into the wrong hands, the possibility of it scared many people.

Personal information is not the only thing under attack at large institutions like Indiana University. Cyber criminals have even stolen library journal subscriptions and attempted to sell them on other websites.

“When that happens, the journal publisher will cut off the university from those [journals]. So everyone at the university could get cut off from access to important research resources as a result of even just a single individual turning over their username or password,” said Calarco.

With the threat of cyber hackers lurking at every corner, individuals and organizations are trying to better protect themselves with more secure log-in processes to systems holding important information.

“Duo is Indiana University’s system for two-step authentication. Two-step authentication is essentially something you know- like a username and password- and something you have- like your phone or tablet,” said Calarco. “Duo protects everything that is protected by a username and password.”

The added step for safety may seem like a great precaution, but it also poses a few issues for staff and students.

“Getting correct people access to shared group accounts has been a bit of a struggle,” said Kelsea Theis, office coordinator for the SPEA Career Development Office. “They each have an owner, but they may not be primarily used by that owner. Duo is making it so much harder for people to get in and have access.”

Let’s not forget how frequently people break or lose their phones, making them temporarily unable to access much of their daily lives including email and Canvas.

“I studied abroad all summer in Azerbaijan and my phone didn’t work,” said Zoë Snow, Political Science and Turkish Linguistics senior at IU. “I couldn’t access my email the whole time I was gone.”

Phones and tablets are not as trustworthy as one would need them to be for the two-step authentication to operate smoothly. But Duo has already considered this.

“I recently learned you can get a token from the library. It kind of looks like a mini pager and you can have Duo send a code to the token and you just enter the code. So, I could just leave that at my desk and know that’s always there even if I forget my phone at home,” said Theis.

Hoosiers are not alone in the struggle to better cyber security.

“Eighty-five percent of our peers in higher education are using Duo as their two factor authentication,” Calarco said. “Security is kind of a relative game. You don’t often need to be the most secure, you just need to be more secure than everyone else around you. If IU didn’t have Duo we would be a bigger target.”

As society turns to cyberspace for more of its processes and programs, the more society needs to be concerned with cyber security. The Department of Homeland Security sponsors National Cyber Security Awareness Month Each October to remind all Americans that cybersecurity and keeping the Internet safe for everyone is a shared responsibility. The steps to cyber security may take some getting used to, but are well worth the effort to protect personal information as well as larger organizations of academic information.

Annie & Sydney

Video
I made this video of my friend Sydney and her toy golden doodle puppy for a class project. Enjoy this cute video of Annie the toy golden doodle. 
Annie

Annie

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Baking Away

Baking Away

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Chef Hannah

Video

I made this video about my friend Hannah and her baking hobby for a class. I did everything including shooting the video, conducting the interviews, voiceover and editing. 

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