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.