Metablog wk 15

I had completely forgotten about this last blog till a friend reminded me last night. And that would have been a serious kick in the teeth losing like 30% of marks. So here it is, my last blog, finally.

My first semester of university has been a pretty quick one. Began a double degree of international studies and media arts and production. In that had 2 different media classes, an international studies one and a japanese class. Did pretty good overall i reckon. Probably because after two years out of finishing college my brain just wanted to learn something.

So as i began this course of networked media i knew very little. The content we got taught has showed me how large the media world really is and how much technology has been advancing while i havent been paying attention. For starters i didnt even know what a blog was. I had heard of it and probably been on many but never really knew that so many people use these web logs to ramble on about stuff. Although now i know that through networking they can be really useful if you maintain one as you can subscribe to other blogs and sites through RRS (really simple syndication) to keep updated with things that interest you, possibly even make some coin by putting on advertising.

This course has definitely broadened my technical skills too. I made a website out of HTML and CSS. It was so stressful but in the end i look at what i learnt and just nod my head. Although id rather never do it again there is satisfaction from doing it.

SO the content in my blog...cant really remember everything but im pretty sure i talked about the lectures and classes of this unit. I expressed my own struggle in areas that were killing me and noted on things i found quite interesting. So basically it was like a small revision session for me so i would actually remember what i had been taught. Occasionally i talked about something not releveant to uni but considering i had to blog each week i didnt really feel like blogging more than that. After reading other peoples blogs and blogs Michael Honey recommended we should suss i found that everyone has some kind of writing style. I dont exactly know which is best but some peoples styles i think help with getting peoples attention. As i fresh blogger i think your writing style probably develops over time and maybe when you know people are interested in your work.

When starting my blog i didnt really think about a specific audience i wanted to write to. Just the fellow students in my class really if anyone. Otherwise i was still set on blogging because of the requirement. So my audience is pretty much anyone. Things could change though if i feel like continuing my blog.

When making our blogs we were told to link to other peoples blogroll. So i did and i have like 9 other people from my class on my own blogroll. The blogroll is very handy too letting me easily see my classmates blogs and what they are thinking about. There is also another part on the blog which states followers. I have a massive total of one follower..yay.. and its one of my friends from my class. I dont know how everyone else went with their followers but i didnt care too much and forgot about it until now. I know i didnt bother really connecting to others like this because i found it easier to just look at their post when on my blog roll it said a new post had been done. Besides everyone usually did their blogs on wednesday, thursday of friday when i did mine so i didnt really have any urge to check every day.

Now the topic of traffic that my blog got. Well...i told my sister and some friends about my blog and they had a look at it some times. Hopefully some people in class did too. And i ended up with 32 views. Exciting. Well actually im pretty sure lots of those were me logging on so really i probably got about 14. I know my sister liked it becasue she lives in America and doesnt get to talk to me too often so its a way in which she can see how im doing. But the friends i told, one lives down the street from me and we see each other enough so i can just talk to them. Or the others we just talk through facebook, which seems easier and is waaay more popular that blogs i feel. Especially for people around my age at uni. I honestly find facebook and my phone a better means for talking to people. I dont really have any content that was most popular due to my awesome view count. I had one comment on my first post from a guy in the class and that was it. I commented on someone elses blog once or twice giving them some advice on an assignment but that was really it. I cant say i payed much attention to other peoples blogs in the end. Being swamped with assignments and all i didnt really see it as a priority.

throughout the other posts i have done i scattered some links through them. As i dont have all the knowledge in the world its much easier to let a viewer branch off to another site if they are interested. I didnt really put in many pictures or videos in my blog posts. Michael said just text is sometimes better. However im more of a visual learner so i find pics and vids more interesting. Perhaps i should have just included some anyways. Maybe i could have got 6 more views. I linked my flickr profile to my blog in hope to get some views on them too as another one of my social media sites. Also in my assignments i linked my blog and/or flickr to them just because linking is probably the best way to get attention. Just waiting for someone to stumble across my blog.

In the end it was a pretty fun semester. Great class and tutor. Really helped me get into the groove of university happily. Seeing as my blog is made i may venture back onto it later. I found the layout on some blogger template downloading site to make it interesting enough for people to go '...cool'. and i like it. I wouldnt say its the end of my blogging. Now that its not a requirement i can now make it what i want and talk about things i want to talk about. I would most likely subscribe on RSS to some music sites and band sites as well as some anime update sites. I wouldnt say im much of a person to ramble on about world issues but i do love my music so maybe thats the direction my blog could take. Its only the beginning really. I can now build the audience i want. I knew i shouldnt expect much for one semester worth of blogging. Many things took a long time to become popular like twitter. As long as i fill my page with links to other interesting things and respond to topics people find interesting my traffic could increase significantly. Or i could just tag everyword in my blog so people stumble across it when they are bored on google and are on like the 94th page of searching 'metablog' or something else haha.

Anyways here are my three nominated blog posts:

How to meet ladies

Feelin Good

Back to Business

Now i must study for a huge Japanese exam and then onwards to semester 2! After a beautiful 11 week break. Snow here i come!

Project B Rationale

For project B i had two choices to choose from. Either a datavisualisation or a google maps geo-narrative. I chose the geo-narrative because i instantly had an idea which i thought i could pull off. My idea was to retell the popular story of The Lord of the Rings. I created a map which followed many of the characters through this tale and it showed their paths they took and major events they were involved in. I started off to draw the lines indicating the paths they took to each point and placed markers for important events. At first i thought that this was going to take no time at all but in the end it was a long process. On each marker I wrote part of the story to keep the flow of the story going and explain many things that were going on.
As a main twist of the story i decided to make my version a parody of the original Lord of the Rings. I chose to write the story using modern elements of our society and original elements of the fictional story to hopefully create some humour.
I decided I would use Canberra and the setting for Middle Earth and place the main areas in the story around suburbs and regions of Canberra to try and correspond with the real location in the original story. I also set Mordor as the area of Queanbeyan as another effort to create humour to some.
I decided to take all the images myself to keep consistency between them. I also used photoshop to change the appearance of the pictures to look more like it was out of a book or concept art of a movie.
For example this one:

I also did the same kind of this for the videos to make it look like sketches of a proposal video before it was created for real. The images do however look much better seen as a larger image so i decided to make a link in the description of the geo-narrative to my flickr where the images can be viewed separately. I also chose to include some videos in to make the feel more realistic and also make a parody of some of the scenes which i found amusing.

There were many problems that i encountered during the production of this project. As i needed lots of actors for the images and videos i needed to get them together all at once. This proved very difficult as many of them were either working or at uni or doing assignments. The only day i had to get as many pictures as I could was on a sunday which was also mothers day. So people would come round and others would leave and it was a very frustrating day. At first i wanted to go to each location to take the pictures to make them more realistic to the location but this proved impossible due to these problems. I was a bit skeptical about running around parks on mothers day with an axe, katana and a bow. I did however manage to go to the exact location of some of the pictures and the others i had to take the pictures in a way where you couldn't tell where it was taken. Most of the videos were rushed because of not enough time with the actors, low battery or the sun was going down.
If i had more time or did this assignment again i would definitely organise my time better with my actors. I would also start much earlier so i could get the pictures i wanted without any dilemmas. I would also write a script for the videos as some of the actors couldn't act very well and kept forgetting their lines. One of the videos however was shot at night and looked terrible with the effect on so i decided to leave it as normal so people could actually understand what was going on.
To promote networking through my story i decided to make links under some of the pictures under the title of Hobbit Hints. In this section i would create a link to something related in the picture or story whether it advertises Subway or new cars. I also linked my blog to the geo-narrative in hope to draw more traffic through it or if people were wondering why i created this story.

After using google maps for this assignment i found it to be a pretty good source of networked media. On it i learn how to upload images and videos. Many people would probably stumble upon my assignment while looking for things through Canberra. You can also make it so pictures other people have taken have appeared in Canberra. It was easy enough to use too but on a slow computer it was a bit tedious because of it lagging. The videos i used were embedded off youtube so that is also another piece of networking included in the story. However a problem i had and am still having was that uploading videos onto youtube took forever. Some of them may not even be ready before this is due which is very frustrating. I know one is currently working but its up to technology now whether it will be ready in time not me. I have spent a great deal of my week uploading things its ridiculous so technology isn't exactly on my side at the moment. The video i put on it just before decided to delete itself so im hoping it will work when it needs to. Even all the images for my flickr set will take a while because of this slow internet. However i will make sure it all gets up there eventually to complete the story. I think my geo-narrative might be a little different from others because i included videos (or they are still processing) and i chose to do a large amount of characters and follow each of their paths.

After all this i found this assignment rather amusing and enjoyable to do. Being able to take pictures and make a parody about something with your friends and laughing half the time beats essays on politics or the environment. If i had more time i probably would have made this story longer and more in depth with other parts of the movie that i wanted to make my own version of. Even myself and my friends want to do a serious remake which goes for over half an hour.

The link to my geo-narrative is here - The Lord of the Rings Parody

Just a little bit more....

Today i sat at uni in the same chair for exactly five hours. How horribly depressing. This was my story. I had to export a presentation onto a dvd but it kept turning out blurry. change settings, render (20 mins) export (30 mins),test it, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until finally Sharon figured it out and saved my life. A massive thanks to you Sharon. And with that one media assignment was finished. So happy afterwards until i realised tonights another late night trying to complete my google maps assignment! Im photo shopping my images to make them look like drawings or concept art as some would like to call it. Makes it more appropriate i think for a fictional story. Got 3 or 4 videos i want to put on there too but i gotta do that dreaded rendering tomorrow morning. I seriously hope there are available computers at 8am because the last day media rush for the mac computers is so bad its a sight to behold if you are happily finished all your work.
Final product of the Lord of the Rings parody geo narrative shall be ready tomorrow.

If it rains on Sunday....

Still dabbling in all the preparations for my geo-narrative. Coming along pretty nicely so far, although all im doing is everything on google maps so all i have to do is upload the pictures and im done. I have finally got a day when i can get all the actors together on one day. Sunday. If it rains on sunday...well im gonna cry because its due next week. Also sunday is mothers day, real convienient...not.
Its probably going to look very suss with a few people running about with an axe, sword and bow around Canberra but whatever, it would not be wise for someone to pick a fight with us.
So almost finished this semester and i gotta say its gone quick. I need to do some serious japanese study though for a 3 hour exam later....3...hours....just why?
And to make it worse i started watching a show called The Unit which is so damn good. I need to prioritize.

Lord of The Rings Geonarrative

As of today, uni until the end of the term is going to be a breeze. This week i handed in a Japanese assignment and a horrible international studies essay that made me realise again how little i know. Only needed to be 2000 words but I sat there stuck on 1200 words checking the word count every 2 minutes expecting it to miraculously go up. Didnt. Either way finally got it done and handed it in today. Now i only have 2 more assignments left and they are both in media! Which is fun! and suspiciously easy.

For the Networked media assignment i COULD make a datavisualisation.....but this geonarrative seems like way more fun and im very excited at how it could turn out.
So my decision is im doing the Lord of the Rings story as a parody in modern times but with many elements from the actual story. Its going to be set around Canberra and each major location in the story will be substituted by a suburb or area in Canberra. However im still going through and trying to remember if there are any places in canberra that could be good for certain locations in the Lord of The Rings. The geonarrative is going to follow the travels of each of the characters over all three books and the problems and events they encounter. I already have some people who are keen to help act out my pictures.
Im also going to include small videos of re-enactments of certain parts if its possible. Im not too sure though that say if i use some Lord of The Rings music for part of a re-enactment it is counted as copyright. Or alternatively if i played the music myself on a guitar? Because the scene that im thinking is going to be absolutely pricless if i can use the music.
Im very excited to make this. If everything goes smoothly and people act good, it could be the best thing ive ever created.

Datavisualisation

NINJAS! I changed my template. This is what im all about haha.
Anyway we had our last lecture this week. I'm glad Michael made it probably the most interesting one we have had too. He talked about datavisualisations, which i have no idea why i didnt know about these things before. These things are just amazing. Informative and interesting. We looked at heaps in the lecture and some in our tutorial. We Feel Fine was a very cool looking one that was shown in our class. The one i found was about what people are doing in Japan at the moment. Kinda useless right now, unless for some reason i have the urge to find out how many people in Tokyo are playing a sport at 6:00pm. Otherwise all the datavis' were really cool.
We have an option for an upcoming assignment to either do a datavisualisation or a geomappy thingo story on google maps using photos. I have decided to do on google maps The Lord of the Rings story based around canberra and its suburbs. Ha! Its gonna be fun times getting the photos.

Pimp My City

We saw some real interesting stuff in our lecture on tuesday. Our topic was multiplicity and using collective intelligence. We were shown this thing called The 1K Project and i thought it was pretty cool. Sooo much time would have gone into this though. Its shows 1000 cars travelling this race track on a game but taking different paths and looks amazing. We were also shown this really interesting clip from ted.com which displays some new technology in relation to photos and it is really worth checking out.

Today in class we had to come up with ideas website that harnessed collective intelligence to create some kind of cool. Our group came up with a thing we called Digicity. A site where people submit thier designs of buildings or constructs found in a city onto a database. Once submitted the computer would then render the image to a 3D model. People can then filter through many different and original models or structures to build their own city (Pimp My City). So thats the basic gist of it. Anyone can submit a design, so it isnt limited to architects with degrees. It gives those creative folk a chance to show their style. People can also comment on which designs look best. The idea was made in about 10 mins so not a huge amount of detail yet. However this idea could also be a good scouting place for people who are looking for ideas and architects. There is so much left to put together on how this site would work and all the technical stuff to it but at the moment my brain is probably on lvl 4 and this requires a lvl 20.
So if i ever was gonna and try and make a mad money making site..unlikely but you never know. We shall copyright this idea...Ha! Id sell it to those willing though. I also thought when everyone was presenting thier ideas that university teachers could be the biggest idea snakes ever. Although they would probably get into some kind of trouble.

Back to business

So a lecture in the arvo, after a couple of classes earlier in the day (one at 8:30am), first day back after a little holiday felt as good as it sounds. About a 1.
The highlight of the lecture for me was when Michael went to a site called Twistori as an example of some of the stuff he was teaching us. I wouldnt have minded if we all just sat there watching peoples posts come up waiting for some funny ones.

In the lecture we learnt about WEB 2.0...why 2.0? The 2.0 is associated with the change of a new era and things becoming more stylish and appealing. With the way everything has been going why not name it iWeb 2.0. HA! iSnack 2.0 Vegemite. What a fail. Had to be renamed into Cheesybite because everyone thought it was crap. Bet that was a massive kick to the balls of whoever made the first name.
Anyway web 2.0 reflects the design patterns and models for the next generation of software. Michael summed it up pretty well. Cute shiny slidy stuff. So everything is really getting smaller. My camera is about the same size as my phone. And with new technology and designs i forsee the next generation being full of the laziest kids. In years i may be telling a story to my grandkids about playing halo 1 on the xbox with friends and seeing the confusion on their faces when i try to teach them what a cord is and how they used to plug into the xbox. And that your friends would be sitting next to you, not at thier house using the internet to play so they didnt have to ride over and breathe the outside air. But they would probably laugh at me and call me crazy, making up such things as cords, so id go weep in a rocking chair thinking about my youth till i fell asleep.
So we also learnt about the Network Effect aka Metcalfes law.
Cost:N
Value:N squared
The more people that use a service, the more valuable it becomes. (The creators of google nod while fending off muggers with a pure gold katana).
And as things become more popular, ways are created to make things more efficient. For example from the use and times a page has been searched, google filters which pages are most important and informative and makes them easier available by putting the earlier on the list. This is called Page Rank.

Another thing we learn in the lecture was about the LONG TAIL.
Visit google trends and look something up. Pretty clever thing actually. So in relation to a book. The example in the lecture was Touching the Void which is about some mountaineers climbing big snowy mountains. I actually saw this documantary/drama in college or highschool. Anyway the long tail relates to the long part of a graph after the first massive surge of popularity and during the constant or gradually declining line somehow some more popularity is sparked. Touching the Void was revived by the release of 'Into Thin Air' and appeared on Amazons other related genres list which made people want it again. Just goes to show that stuff can make a comeback after its been long forgotten...just like the 'One Ring' in Lord of the Rings. Once that was found again all bloody Middle Earth went beserk...hahaha im done. And yes i did watch it in my break.

Relief

The feeling of joy once i handed in my final assignments on friday was a beautiful thing. Then even better, got Ninja Assassin off ebay and watched it with pizza. And it was GOOOOD! I understand why it didnt get released in the movies now. So brutal. Limbs everywhere haha. So now i have a weeks break. Ill probably get bored in 2 days but gotta make some coin by working so i can buy a mac.

Rationale Production Project A

This assignment was a very interesting one in the end. So running through it again I chose to make a site which presented different bands. I only chose four bands being Protest the Hero, Avenged Sevenfold, Maximum the Hormone and Bullet for my Valentine as I didn’t want there to be an excess of bands which made everything get really repetitive. I chose these bands because they are my favourite and i have general knowledge on them. My aim was to give the viewer a taste of the band using relevant material without having to navigate their way through many different links. At first I was going to make an image gallery but I thought that only tells so much about a band. So then I decided to add a biography and try to include videos.
I chose to produce this exhibition through the means of HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) and CSS) Cascading Style Sheet. This was done through many different tags e.g. < h1 >, < body >, < div="class" > and combined with the appropriate structure of a linked style sheet, they worked together to structure, position and colour my pages to my desire. I saw it as being more flexible to handle once I figured out how to do it. I understood how CSS was a big part in styling fonts colours and other effects and that div tags are extremely useful to single out certain parts on a page and if it’s repeated on others use the same tag to shorten the amount of work that needs to be done.
I chose this process because it was relevant with most of the lecture content at the time. So I thought I should try and put what I learnt to use. I also wanted to challenge myself because I could only come up with ideas that would look good if I used the HTML process. After finishing the task I achieved my self satisfaction and am happy with my result.

While beginning to create my exhibition I browsed the internet for sites that had done similar to what I was planning. The best site I found was www.lastfm.com, which is a massive music related website. It has got bands, biographies, albums, songs, events, galleries etc... Basically a goldmine for information on musicians. It has news on music events all around the world and caters many genres and styles of music. It also has a huge list of bands that shows what bands they are similar to and if they are currently on tour or not. It also takes the music you have been listening to on your computer or iPod and uses that information to find other things and bands your may be interested in. Quite an impressive sight in my opinion.

After analysing lastfm I thought about what conventions I should follow or should I create something that would be more appropriate with the amount of information I am sharing. I only chose to present four bands, not all the bands of the world. In the instructions on our task it said 'consider how your subject can be made best available to the viewer'. I took this statement mostly to heart and decided to make my site as appealing to the eye as I could make it whilst being straightforward and very easy to navigate. As my exhibition was only small in the grand scheme of what official websites have created, I decided lay out the page with all the content on it instead of creating more links in a sidebar such as photo gallery, videos, events, tracks, news, groups etc.

For the layout of the pages I planned them in a certain way. The main page has four titles of each band as the main links to their respected pages and surrounded on the edges images of the bands. I decided the title was to be ‘Metal Zone’ because each of the bands can be classified in the metal genre. I linked a wallpaper as my background that looked the most metal and still let the text be readable.
In each of the band pages I gave a band picture like most sites and lastfm does at the top and beside I stated the band members. Then I wrote a brief biography next to the main image and under that a few more images. I chose this approach instead of a full page as a gallery to make it more to the point and to keep the viewer interested. Under the pictures I listed the bands achievements and albums. Also to finish the page I added two music videos. In putting all this in one page I balanced it all so there was not too much of one medium. There was not too much writing or too many pictures or too many videos. So it was what I wanted. A taste of the band in text, image and video format. At the very bottom I made links linking back to the main page or alternatively directly to the other band pages.

As I was thinking about networking between sites I decided to add on each band page a link to their actual official band page as well as MySpace page. This is in case people become interested and want to search the band more thoroughly. Doing this now gives the viewer access to find out all the things I couldn’t put up on my site like news and upcoming gigs. I also added my own blog as a link as it is another thing created by me and is relevant as it discusses my progress in making the exhibition.

I see my exhibition as different to others because I wanted to keep a uncomplicated and attractive approach. I thought about what was necessary and what was not. If my page was much larger and I had lots of contents and more bands I would change many things to make it more accessible to that by side bars but for this it was not needed. If I created separate pages for only a few pictures it would have looked incomplete and bland. Mine is different because it has a more personal feel and approach but in no way claiming superiority over other bands.

Feelin' good

HTML assignment = defeated. Quite possible that was the most time consuming assignment ive ever done. I have like a miniscule amount to polish off otherwise im done. After careful consideration i have decided im NOT going into the web design field of work, not that it was my intention anyways. I like being sane to a certain degree. Basically i chose 4 bands. Protest the Hero, Bullet for my Valentine, Avenged Sevenfold and Maximum The Hormone and made a biography/exhibition on each one. Im quite pleased with my result. Probably not as happy as this kid, but almost haha.
Ah what to do now though now im finished....hmm... oh maybe the other 3 assignments that the university kindly made due all next week that i havent started because this one took a millenium. Should be ok though if i stick to it.

We had no lecture for any of our classes last week. So good. AND no lecture for Network media for the next 2 week! Woot!!!
This weeks lec was probably the easiest one up to date to understand. We learnt some things about the world and the web.
Apparantly humans are good at at recognising patterns. Like clothing, structure and music to name a few (wish my drummer could recognise the pattern in his own drum beats so they would at least maintain some sort of flow and musical sense....bahahaha jokes jokes). Perhaps he is not human....but im sure a computer is programmed to have precise timing...hmmm...dilemma. What is he? or it? am i safe?...probably not if he reads this. MOVING ON!
ummm..patterns! Patterns emerge over time. (perhaps my drummer has a chance then hahaha more jokes, but usually the song is over by then so thats just no help).
Anyways we leant that the interesting differences of how internet and the physical world have their limitations and not. Like a computer can hold a massive amount of information, such as novels, ad send it with ease across the globe. Where a human can only lift a certain amount of books before some sort of injury. although the internet cant pass a book across a room. That would be teleportation, and that would be cool. But not yet. GET ONTO THAT SCIENTISTS!!!! But a human can throw the book across the room (at a pace we desire). How convienient we humans are.
So Michael told us how the 'book' was cutting edge technology back in the day. And peope back during scroll and stone tablet days would probably have sold their camels and children for this spine bound artefact....well thats what i imagined anyway.

Erm, apart from patterns we learn about conventions. So basically ways people have done things. Like build buildings, write books, write drum beats......hahaha i should stop. So some conventions are worth following to keep things working. However if you are confident your new way will work and is better, go for it.
So we learnt about Ontology - the study of what there is eg; time, space, what is concievable.......thrilling. For those who are willing to study that...you and me are probably not on the same page. Taxonomy - process of working things out and how things relate to each other. And we talked about Heirarchy and Categories about how over time processes to making things change. Using tags to make things easier for users to find stuff on the web. The Yahoo directory is a good example of categorised tags to make life easier. We learnt about MACHINE TAGS which organises things in a certain order. namespace:predicate=value. The example Michael gave was Lastfm:event=613510, which i found coincidental because i searched lastfm HEAPS for my assignment. Omg i seem to have writen an absolute wad of info. Im stopping.
So i cant really wait for next week to be done and all my assignments handed in. I have been wanting to rewatch The Lord of the Rings again haha but just had no time.

SUCCESS!!!

Ah victory is a wonderful thing. After my 6 hour stuggle against the formidable opponent HTML teamed up with CSS, I finally won. It was the last time i was going to click 'save' and 'refresh' before giving up for another day and going to bed. I clicked refresh and colour appeared on my online exhibition assignment!!!! i almost ran around my block even though it was about after midnight and i had to contain my excitement/relief because everyone else was sleeping.
Whilst listening to Protest the Hero (these guys are freakin amazing) for a good while my band exhibition is powering along. I can see me finishing this task much earlier than i once thought!

Please HTML. Go easy on me

Another week at uni and another lecture.

This one seemed like Michael powered through it with a massive amount of information that was really hard to take all of it in.

We did a bit more on CSS and looked at a 'div' tag.
Div tags are used to identify a certain amount of content that your want to change later. We also looked at div #ID's and div .Classes which work the same way however the ID's are unique but the classes can be used for many parts in the HTML.
Another thing we learn is about Javascript. This feature can be kinda cool as it allows you to incorporate things like popout menus and things that move!! Im still a bit hazy on everythingg about it but it would be kinda cool to have stuff like that in my online exhibition assignment.

We also learnt in the lecture a bit about API which stands for Application Processing Interface. Basically its used by programs to initiate a sharing funtion. This allows other programs to use information that is being shared of another program like pictures from Flickr.
Michael gave us an example of this...
WOLFENFLICKR 3D!!!!
It takes photos from your flickr account and scatters them through the game as the paintings on the walls.

Well im finally going to start my assignment. After a long time in the tutorial looking at the screen going "..........hmm.....ah!....no.......hmmm......sigh" i had a talk to Sharon our teacher about why my HTML was not working until we sorted it out and how I could create my exhibition. I've decided that I'm going to make somewhat of a music exhibition of some of the bands I like and stuff about them. I can see exactly what I want it to look like but doing the HTML for it is seeming quite overwhelming right now and could take soooo damn long. Doesn't matter. Lets work hard.

I just want to see it!

Ninja Assassin...all that does is sound good right? I had already determined it as a candidate for my favourite action/martial arts movie up there with Jet Li in 'Fearless' and Tony Jaa in 'The Protector' (what a brutal movie!!!).
In November I saw that Ninja Assassin had been planned to be released and this thrilled me to bits.
Hoyts punked me. It came out overseas. They left a poster in the passage where you go into each cinema, taunting me. So after a while I looked it up to see when they would release it here. The Hoyts website had it in the coming soon section to be released on the 4th of March....which is today....PUNKED AGAIN! And its not even mentioned anymore! Hoyts. You are a bastard. I dont like you.

How to meet ladies

This week we learnt about HTML. I now think that HTML just very well might be the death of me....

The lecture was exceptionally painful. I found myself clinging to the very fabric of life itself due to a sore throat and a pulsing headache (bad combo). It may have appeared to some that I was completely engrossed in every word Michael was saying, but that's not the case. I was in a world of struggle.
I had to review the lecture notes afterwards to understand what we were taught. So the lecture was about HTML. This stands for How To Meet Ladies....ah the beauty of acronyms:

-How To Miss Lectures
-How Trevor Met Liz
-Henry Trips Massive Llama
-Holding Two Mouldy Lemons

HTML actually stands for Hyper-Text Markup Language. Basically it is a means to create a web document and holds the description of the structure of a web document. This is done through a series of TAGS which state each part of the document and what it will look like. Tags look something like this: < title > (but there are no spaces. When i wrote it properly on here the computer assumed I was actually trying to write some HTML)

All these tags must be placed in an appropriate fashion and all tags MUST BE CLOSED!!! If a tag is not closed, your page will have mistakes. Eg:

< head >
'Insert content that you want to be heading'
< /head >

Easy enough yes. Now try right clicking somewhere on the screen right now and selecting 'view source'.....vomit everywhere. THANKFULLY computers are smart and automatically write the HTML without you having to the tedious work.

Anyways we also started to learn about other things such as XML which stands for: Extensible Markup Language (why is it not EML??? Probably because an X looks cooler), and CSS which stands for Cuban Sandle Stylists...it really does not. Cascading Style Sheet, which basically is a set of instructions for what to do with the HTML encoding to make your site pretty. It also saves a mass of time. So you can make colours on your site and change fonts and many many more things.

In our tutorial we started to try all this for ourself. What we had to do was make a proposal for one of our assessment pieces using HTML and CSS.
What a nightmare.
I got the basics down ok. However trying to add colour and all the CSS stuff was killing me. All this HTML stuff really has to be precise. After about 30 mins of thinking WHY WONT IT WORK?!?!?!?!? Scanning through all the coding I have copied the teacher EXACTLY and it wont work!!! RAAHHH!! My friend looks at my coding and in 10 seconds sees that I saved my Cascading style sheet as 'mystylesheet.ccs' where the teacher had done 'mystylesheet.css'......i felt like turning the lights off and lying under the desk and possibly listening to Enya or the Lion King soundtrack.
Ahhhh what a pain. Im gonna go eat some Special K and watch a movie...

It begins...

So now I enter the world of blogging due to a task for university. I'm currently studying Networked Media Production at the University of Canberra. Course is looking to be pretty interesting with lots of practical work which I like. Our lecturer thankfully has a sense of humour so thats a big help to me staying attentive.
In our first lectures we have been learning about blogs (obviously) and how they are somewhat of a journal...and people have succesfully made cash off these journals...lucky people. I also learnt that you must apply for 'trademark', 'patents' or 'design' where 'copyright', you do not have to. And with that I am a little more enlightened.
SO....this is my first ever blog so please bear with me as I embark on a blogging rampage!
I chose Blogger because it seemed easy enough to use and I could customize it a bit. No dilemmas so far so I think it was the right choice for me. For now I must say "SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION" as I am learning how to make my display a bit cooler to the eye so please be patient, I am learning...