Author: pbeltra

Project proposal

The topic I want to deep dive into is the culture and history of the loop. If you don’t know what this place is, it is more middle and a bit north in St. Louis. This strip of the city is very unique in culture, music, art, and food. The atmosphere is inviting and a great place to hangout with family and friends. There is art on the sides of buildings or as sculptures along the street. The food there is diverse, with Fitz, a soda and food restaurant, and just nearby is a Japanese cuisine restaurant. There are different music halls that also align with the loop. Whether it is a comedy show, to smooth jazz, or even heavy metal. There is no one left out for their preferred music genre. If you want to bring some music home, there is a record store called Vintage Vinyl where they sell a plethora of different albums and artists that you can take home and listen to on a playing device. I enjoy many of these aspects in my normal daily life, so this is why I chose the subject of the Loop and its many interesting aspects of this, but what is its history, and how did it come to be developed? Here’s how I’m going to figure out this problem: through a timeline. I’m going to go through the history of The Loop and talk about key points of history it was involved in, and how it came to be. Here is my primary source for my project: https://www.scribbr.com/citation/generator/folders/3lmAk5lf42qkEymTjnzBxy/lists/7yaREtpLTLEgLMlRSJyVUt/sources/36FT9xU7o5i7ITYcOazysQ/

This is the main website for the loop, and it touches bases for the history of the loop and what it includes there.

Anderson, Caleb. “The Delmar Loop: St. Louis’s Vibrant Avenue of Culture and Entertainment.” Powell Law Firm, 19 Sept. 2024, www.plfirm.com/post/the-delmar-loop-st-louis-s-vibrant-avenue-of-culture-and-entertainment.

This is a secondary source for my project. It is a blog post from an outside point of view explaining the culture and history of The Loop. This is what I will use to help explain the history and culture of The Loop in St. Louis.

The Lay of the Land

I used the SIUE interactive map. There are two errors that appear which is an empty button an empty link. Besides that, there are several alerts. This page is probably most used by new students coming to SIUE to find where to park or how to navigate the campus. The people who would be most impacted would be the blind or people who can’t interact with the map. The ways it can be improved would be a text-to-speech whenever you hover over an icon or make the map top down. The top down would help me a bit more when I first started my time here. Also a better guide on rooms and helping you figure out where your classes are would be helpful as well.

The Fountain

In the middle of the city I live in, there lies a fountain. It is in a roundabout called a square, ironic, but what is it doing there? What is its history? This is something I have not known about, even after living here for most of my life in Belleville, IL. Most of the time, it usually stays off, but once in a while, it will turn on, and even at night, it will light up with a colorful glow. It was always exciting seeing the fountain run, but as I mentioned, it was a rare sight to see. The History of this fountain was to be a veteran memorial built in 1937, but the original base of the fountain was later removed and replaced by what it is currently. The original base, though, was not destroyed; it was moved over to a park in Swansea. This is where it still resides today. The fountain was always something that interested me in the area I lived in, and this is why I pondered upon what its real purpose was.

Pondering upon the Future

When looking over the syllabus for what we are going through this semester, I found some things of interest. Firstly, the history of computing. This subject seems interesting, and I wonder how deep we will go into a subject like this. Are we going into coding, or are we starting with the earliest computer developed by man? Secondly, AI imaginaries. I have gone through school knowing how AI is bad and shouldn’t be used, so I’m curious to see what we do in this section. Third, The Dredd Scott decision. I wonder how this period in history combines with Digital Humanities. This is a history subject, and that is what I find odd. Finally. Digital Storytelling. I am curious about what this means. Is this on how writers use technology to write stories, or is it on how game designers make up a story in a game to explain to the player? These are some of the things that stuck out to me on the syllabus that I found interesting in this class.

Me, Myself, and I

Hello, my name is Preston Beltran. I am majoring in computer science here at SIUE. Besides that, I enjoy playing video games and collecting vinyl records. Record collecting has become a hobby of mine last summer since I got a turntable setup and bought my first record. Ever since, I have bought maybe a little too many, but there are too many great albums to just say no to. Otherwise, I love gaming with my friends on my PS5. My family also likes to travel and my favorite place we traveled to was Puerto Rico. It was a great experience and had great views and food.