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.