Maybe101's Weblog

Semester 2 Summary

maybe101 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:08:25 +0000

I think the semester has been good, I have learnt about stuff that I’ve never really even thought about much. In particular I enjoyed the lecture and assignment on data visualisation. I have been researching some sites and found some really interesting information and visualisations, i have provided some links to these sites in my blogroll. I don’t think I’ll maintain this blog once the semester the over, but I’m glad I have a much better understanding of the technologies that allow us to use them.

Nominating 3 Posts:

One post to rule them all, This is my overall assesment of what I have learnt from the lectures and tutorials over the semester.

apples and some fruit you’ve never heard of. This was the post where I think about assignment one.

Smurfing the net: As I have never written or accessed blogs before this was my first experience of doing so. It was interesting to see what is out there, which I suppose is pretty much anything and everything.

One post to rule them all!

maybe101 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:16:01 +0000

Ahhh well I just made a rather disturbing discovery going through the unit guide and that is that despite that I have been writing up posts for the duration of the semester I have not been actually posting about what we were supposed to. That’ll teach me for not reading the unit guide properly, anyway I decided rather than going through and editing every single post I’ve done I’ll now attempt to write a summary of the semester; what I’ve learn’t, what I think about it all, and what I’ll take from this course.

Firstly I must admit I was a bit bemused with this course at the start of the semester, starting this blog was wierd for me. I’m not really one to be interested in putting my opinions on the internet, whilst I’m not shy at expressing my opinions I prefer to do it face to face as I enjoy the banter that happens between actual people. The other thing I found rather horrifying was discovering that when you tag things with your name for assignments and the like you then end up coming up in search engines when people type in your name, so it took me a while to overcome the sheer horror at the thought of having to do this. Now that we are at the end of the semester I’m still not that keen on the whole blog thing, although I have found it interesting to learn more about them and see what people write about. One interesting page of blogs I found was http://domain.nationalforum.com.au/ It has some really interesting blogs regarding Australian Politics which is something I and I’m sure many others are interested in. This website was particularly relevant to what we’ve been learning over the semester http://blog.sherifmansour.com/?p=245 It talks about how the candidates in the U.S presidential election are using programs such as twitter, and how Australian politics doesn’t seem to have quite caught on to this as an effective new form of communication.

Lecture 1: What is Networked Media?

Some of the stuff we covered in this lecture was a recap of information we learnt in Internet Media, which was good as it helps to refresh what I’d already learnt. Stuff like the history of the internet, TCP/IP etc. These days especially in Australia the internet plays a vital role in day to day lives. As the amount of users and contributers has grown it has become a credible source of research and information, this isn’t to say that there isn’t a hell of a lot of crap out there as well, but as it continues to grow sources such as Google Scholar mean that as a student you are able to find academic and credible sources in a much easier way. I have used this search engine several times since starting my degree and have found it very useful. I also regularly use email to keep in touch with friends and family all around the world, and have found that facebook has been a great way to find people that I’ve lost touch with and vice-versa.

Lecture 2:

I pretty much covered blogs earlier.

Lecture 3: Carving up the world

This would seem a fairly straight forward context, dividing up the world so it makes sense. What is interesting is how much web designs have advanced and changed over the last ten years. As I really love films one of the websites I use the most is www.imdb.com this site is great for finding out pretty much anything you want to know about any film. It is divided up into different categories to provide info on different topics such as upcoming films, it also has message boards in which people can post messages and comments, and allows people to rate films so you can get an idea of what people think of a particular film. It has links, suggestions, trivia and much more and if I want to know anything about a film, I pretty much go there first.

Lecture 4: Web 2.0

This lecture I found really interesting as I have definitely always just expected things on the internet to work and have no real understanding of the background behind it all. I’d never heard of RSS, CSS, XML which allow us to use things such as blogs without having knowledge of these things. I’d have to say I am defiantly someone who likes a nice user friendly page where I can just click or type and I get to where I’m going. Although sites such as wikipedia which are user generated data, are not always guaranteed to be totally accurate its also great for getting some basic info and then getting more reliable sources to back it up.

Lecture 5: HTML and how to do it

We covered some basic info in Internet Media last semester, what was cool about this topic was actually using it to create a page in the tutorial. I know actually understand what it does.

Lecture 6: Data Visualisation

Data Visualisation is a really interesting concept. Basically making data which can be pretty boring to look at and turning into a visual concept. The Radio Head film clip we watched was just insane, they are a great band for doing new and interesting things. I chose to do a data visualisation for my assignment. My original concept was to look at indigenous health stats compared to the rest of the country, however I found it really difficult to find stats that would be suitable for it, unfortunately I lost a lot of time trying to research this, and with only two weeks to go I had to change my concept. It didn’t leave me a lot of time to collect data. What I decided was to collect data over a week of what my husband and I spend out time doing. I was then going to graph it using excel however I experimented with this and was not happy with the results. When I was thinking about how busy and complicated life is, even when I only had 5 headings and tried to visualise it reminded me of a hectic train map or tube map so I researched tube maps from around the world and found that the London underground system suited it perfectly. I spent a lot of time ensuring that the data appeared to look like the London Tube map. I think it worked well with the data I’d collected.

Lecture 7: Remix, API, Mashups

Another side of digital media I really knew nothing about. From what I understand It enables you to source information from existing sites and build into a new one. Although I don’t think I would use a site such as twitter, it is a really interesting concept.

Coffee and T.V

maybe101 — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 20:58:21 +0000

AHHHH……Only 1 week and a half of classes left….. ahhhhhh……

The end is nigh…

maybe101 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:52:14 +0000

So starting to have to think pretty seriously about this assignment now. I think for my topic it may be difficult to find the exact stats that i need, and i may have to refine my idea but it will be interesting to see what I can come up with, as this is an area that really interests me. Its pretty scary that it almost the end of the year… doesn’t seem so long ago that we handed in the last assigment, ahhh so many things due….. then exams ahhhhh

Some films are worth seeing twice

maybe101 — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:41:57 +0000

I went and saw Son of a lion on Saturday and I loved it. It’s a simple story set in the north west frontier of Pakistan, where the main character Niaz, an 11 year old boy, dreams of going to school, instead of making guns like his father. No actors were used in this film, it was all just everyday people. The humour is fantastic, and the story is really an ethographic insight. The landscape is beautiful and definatly needs to be seen on the full screen.

I have also been thinking about this next assignment, I think it would be interesting to look at Indigenous health statistics compared with the rest of australia over a certain period of time, say the last 20 years. I have worked and lived in remote aboriginal communities and I am very interested in this area. I have started looking for statistics and hope that I can find the relevant data without to much difficulty.

R.I.P Paul Newman

maybe101 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:01:43 +0000

I have never really been a huge fan of Paul Newman, however I reckon he was a different kind of star/celebrity than what we have today. Most of todays celebrities are so trashy and revolting, case and point Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears. It’s pretty sad seeing these peoples lives completely fall apart as they get to much, to young, to fast. It also made me think about the football culture in Australia, I mean seriously when are these meat heads going to learn, how many apologies, that no doubt are written by someone else anyway are we going to be subjected to before it just becomes unacceptable. These people have a certain responsibility benig that they are high profile and it would nice to see a few more do it with some dignity.

Back to the grindstone!

maybe101 — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:44:37 +0000

Well after an awesome 2 weeks off, well only a bit for relaxing the rest for writing essays. Started my holidays by going down to Melb, and out past Geelong for a friends wedding, weddings are great! They are such joyous occasions, I’ve heard their are some miserable ones sometimes, but I have never been to a bad one. The ceremony was beautiful, down on the beach and then the reception back at the property. Got to love the reception, drinks all round! its just awesome when you get to see two of your mates make a commitment to each other and throw one hell of a party to do so. I have also put my applications into uni’s in Melbourne, so hopefully one of them will want me. Can’t wait to get the hell out of canberra, only a few months now, yipee!

and now we play the waiting game

maybe101 — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:13:30 +0000

I have just posted my assignment it must be the first time ever that I’ve handed something in early. There is reason for this though and that is that I am currently in Melbourne and about to head out bush where I will be far away from the w.w.w. Got to love the bush. I am hoping that it has posted correctly, anyway no time to type now as we are being picked up in about 10 mins so I shall write more upon my return with my lungs full of beautiful victorian fresh air……ahhh bliss.

Round-a-bouts and Magpies

maybe101 — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:30:21 +0000

So time is managing to fly by yet again, how did we suddenly get to week 6??? I suppose at least its nearly the end of the year and means nearly time to leave Canberra for good! Can’t wait! Canberra is such a wierd place I reckon you either love it or you hate it, and I am definatly the latter and although spring is the most beautiful time of year here it also brings with it the fear of walking anywhere and seeing that shadow out of the corner of your eye and then ducking in sheer panic as a magpie swoops the living crap out of you. Considering the buses are useless in Canberra With a sense or irony a bus load of people seem to be going past you every time. Oh well no more time to chit chat, got to focus on the assigments now…..argh!

apples and some fruit that you’ve never heard of….

maybe101 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:15:52 +0000

Although I spent some of the weekend thinking about this assignment and how to put it all together I must admit that I got distracted and headed to the video shop where finally there was a copy of Juno which I have been wanting to see for ages. I loved it, it was so great to see a film that was dealing with some fairly deep issues but in such a different, humouress and enjoyable way. I am a big fan of the series Arrested Developement so it was nice to see Micheal Cera and Jason Bateman doing something else, although Micheal Cera’s character was very similar to his Character George Micheal. Why aren’t there more films like this instead of the insane amount of multi-million dollar crap that is out there? Well I suppose the simple answer to that is that not everyone has the same taste in films as me, but it was really refreshing to see Juno.

What I did manage to come up with for the assingment is I definately think I’ll go with a compilation of photo’s as I love photography so will enjoy searching for the photo’s and choosing the best and most suitable ones, I’ll put it together on a blog format as I think this will work best. www.Flickr.com is a great resource for this assignment as it user friendly, has photo’s licenced under creative commons and I am comfortable using it as we used it last semester for digital photomedia. I am going to focus on Mushrooms for the assignment as I love all the different types, colours, shapes etc.