Fin.

And so the end has arrived.
The curtain is drawing a close on what has been a very, very interesting and educational unit.
So the whole point of this final post is to reflect on my blog, which I feel isn’t really going to take up many words, at all, and I usually always have something to say!
Well firstly I will admit that I am not the greatest blogger ever, in fact I think that I lack the blogging humour, sure I’m witty in person, but I don’t think that it comes across well in a blog. To be honest my blog sucked at first, but as I learnt more about how a blog works and learnt all about networked media, my skills developed. Due to my shit start of my blog, I didn’t attract any people to begin with, and it’s a known fact that one has to attract people straight away to receive any attention, this is not only in reference with blogs, but a reference to life in general. My lack of grabbing anyone’s attention meant that I ended up with a grand total of two followers, AND, wait for it…..
ONE COMMENT!
Sure it is not a popularity contest, but it sure is hard to write about anything, when nothing has happened. But I will admit that I am fairly good at reflecting, so I know that my posts themselves are of good quality. Maybe everyone is jealous of this quality? Doubtful.
It did take me a while, but I think I have learnt the number one rule of blogging. GET OUT THERE! Make yourself seen, comment other people’s blogs, follow people; all in hope that they will return the favour. It appears that I did not learn this until about ten minuets ago; when it hit my like a ton of bricks, or perhaps it was a light bulb that finally switched on. But I do think that my blog could only really be interesting for fellow people in this unit, as well as the odd networked media fanatic, but I doubt that these people actually exist, or would bother with my little blog. I do believe that I have improved in my blogging skills, and that definitely shows with my more recent blogs, where I was able to find more information, and attach more to the blog, this of course was only possible when I had something good to talk about. And so this brings me to my three posts that I am supposed to nominate. These blogs are from three consecutive weeks, coincidence? I think not.
Three blog posts:
Week Ten – Web 2.0
Week Eleven – Multiplicity
Week Twelve – Data Visualisations

How was Blogger itself, you ask? Well I think that it was really easy to use, and perhaps if I had the confidence to experiment more with HTML, I could of created a cool looking blog, but I lack said confidence, but it was nice to know that this freedom was there. I only really had one hiccough with blogger, and I in fact blogged about it, appropriately titled ‘Blogger Sucks’

Overall I learnt a lot in this unit, and I don’t think that I will ever forget, due to the fact that this blog is so easily accessible. I can access it anytime if I so wish, to maybe remise about what was possibly my favourite class for semester one (I am still undecided). I especially enjoyed working on my geo-narrative as it was something that I had never done before, and when I showed others, they seemed really impressed that the story was located on Google Maps, of course I would have to admit that that was merely just apart of the assignment, but they seemed impressed either way. Actually all three assignments were something that I had never really explored before, which is great, as I came to Uni to learn new things, and this course definitely allowed this to happen.
Thank you for the journey into networked media!

Assignment Two Rational

For assignment two of Networked Media Production, I did a geo-narrative. This assignment was a very interesting look at networked media. I had a lot of fun writing my geo-narrative story, and although it may be perhaps a little too long, I do think that it is an enjoyable read. I hope? My original idea was to write a government conspiracy, which envolved into a ‘not too distant future’, where Swine Flu has mutated into a plague like virus, affecting many Australians. The main character is an ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Agency) agent, which is according to Wikipedia an agency similar to the USA’s CIA and UK’s MI6. All I did to find out this information was to simple google, ‘Australian Secret Service,’ and the first thing that popped up was the official site for ASIS. I tried to for all my information, research and gather correct information, like the train times in Sydney, and Jet Star flight plans from Sydney to Gold Coast.
Finding photos to work along my text was more of a challenge. I wanted my character to go to places where I had pictures of, so he travelled to my last year’s holiday destination in the Gold Coast. I only ended up using eleven photos, six from creative commons, four of my own, and one that I remixed. I used photos when I thought that it was a pivotal chapter, and one that also did not have long text. The chapters that did have long texts rarely had a photo attached to it, as I felt that the photo and the length of the text would only scare off readers. I contacted the people which I had used their in my assignment, and left my email. I am hoping for some responses, but I suppose the most important response I am looking forward to is from UC, containing my mark. Overall I think that Creative Commons is an awesome way to legally share photos, without which networked production may not be as rich as it is. I hope you enjoy/enjoyed reading my assignment, as much as I loved working on it.

Check out my assignment:

View One Flu Over Berkley’s Head in a larger map

Week Fourteen

This week was much the same as last, there was naturally no lecture, and all I had was the tutorial. The tutorial had a grand number of three people in it, possibly four? It was hard to tell, as there were other students in there, doing class work from their own courses. It was yet again a tutorial where we were able to work on our assignments. Over the weekend I did finally think of an idea for my geo-narrative. It all stated with a wanting to write about a government conspiracy. With a helpful idea from my mother, I started developing possible plot lies centred on the Swine flu. I decided to set it in a not to distant alternative future, where the swine flu has in fact mutated, and has spread across the whole of Australia. With this idea, I just stared piecing together a beginning, and I went from there. At this moment in time, I am about half way though the story and I have no idea how I am going to conclude it. But this is how I write my creative work, I let things pan out naturally, I don’t really like planning stories, I like to take a journey, and see were my words and characters take me. Along the way I naturally do a lot of research, and already I have looked at train times in Sydney, as well as Jet Star flight times from Sydney to Gold Coast. Gold Coast you ask? Well I decided to set my story at places where I have actually been. Firstly so I have knowledge of the appearance, and secondly I have photos of these places. Fingers crossed that it works.

Week Thirteen

There was no lecture this week, in fact there will be no more lectures at all for the semester. In the tutorial we worked on our assignment, and as I may have previously mentioned, I am planning on doing a geo-narrative for my assignment. This planning stage has turned into a definite yes, and now I will have to work out exactly how I want to present this information. Thankfully, Nathan showed us how to use Google maps, and it seemed incredibly easy. Google maps is such a great building block for many networked media production ideas, and this idea in particular promises to be very fun. For the remainder of the tutorial, I messed around with Google maps, unsure exactly on what I wanted to write in my geo-narrative. I think that it will most likely end up being a fiction story, and I guess I have to play the waiting game, until an idea pops into my head.

Data Visualisations

The lecture this week was all about Data, and more specifically data visualisations. Data visualisations is basically an abstract way in representing data, key points in creating this abstract effect include; scale, colour, shape, position, movement. With the new age of the Internet, data visualisations have grown in the capabilities in how they can function. With such things as API’s, people can create data visualisations that collect data from numerous sites; they can then process this data, and create an interesting way to look at the information. A great example of this is the website known as ‘We Feel Fine.’



‘We Feel Fine’ collects people's thoughts from twits, blogs and the like. This information is then collaborated in a very interesting way. There are six different views, all very different to each other. Each individual thought however has a certain colour, depending on what emotion the thought is conveying. The first and most identifiable view is the ‘madness’ view, which to me looks like a bunch of small balls, atoms perhaps, moving around the page, all on an individual path.


All you have to do in this view is click onto on of the moving balls, and the attached thought appears at the top of the page. The thought is linked to the original source, so if you wanted to see the person behind the thought, it is just one click away.



Round balls are just thoughts, while the less common square shapes are a photo with a relating thought.



The other views, all though very different, function in a similar way. The view is only a tool to present the important data, that of human emotions and thoughts. The data can be broken down, into ages, and sex, to see what emotion a certain age group or sex, is feeling around the world. This data visualisation is very cool, and I recommend you check it out.
An example of another data visualisation that I personally found really interesting is the site known as Word Count. It ranks 86, 800 words most commonly used in the English language. The words are set out on a timeline from most common to least commonly used. The more common the word is, the bigger it appears in size. There is also a search bar, enabling you to search certain words to check out what number they are ranked. Not surprising, the most commonly used word is ‘the.’ Interestingly enough the first verb to appear is ‘have,’ which was ranked number 21. It was fun to type in my name, and then my friends names to see where I ranked compared to them. Then the question rises whether one would want a common name, or an uncommon name. I wonder what would be the first name to appear on the timeline, Jesus perhaps?
Even just sitting here I am thinking of words that I would want to search…
Supercali Fredigliosudocis.
Disney.
Sex.
Tequila.
Tissue.
Mouse.
Chair.
Book.
Keyboard.
Lamp.
Yes I am now just naming things within eye distance…

Overall I think that data visualisations is an awesome way to present data, it allows the user to interact, to have fun, to explore, and to learn!

Week Eleven

This week we had a really interesting lecture on multiplicity. The lecture was a basic introduction into this concept, that for personally was an eye opener to the things that we can be achieved with computers and the networked media. Multiplicity is the idea of “many-ness” with the collaboration of similar things that unite together. An environmental example is that of a flock of birds, where every single bird is their own individual being, but when they fly together, they unite and form intricate puzzle like shapes, allowing them to fly in harmony. A media example is of the 1K Project, where a man played a car racing game 1000 times on the same track, and collaborated all these games into the one video, with an amazing result. I don’t know whether to admire the video or the sheer fact that he had to play 1000 games.



Another amazing media example is the photo works of Peter Funch and his NYC street scenes. Peter Funch spent weeks taking photos on Manhattan street corners, to then edit similar themes together to create single photographs, with a result that is bound to amaze you.
I especially like this photo, a NYC street filled with children, something that could never possibly happen in reality. The photo really embodies innocence and youth, and makes me wish that I was still young, without a care in the world.

I also quite like this image, a close up of people with varying degrees of emotion. I think that I am drawn to this photo as it depicts raw emotion. All these people edited together in the one street scene creates an overwhelming amount of emotion.

I feel multiplicity is best understood with examples, and I think that these examples are relevant, and incredibly interesting through their explorations of unique concepts.

In the tutorial we discussed multiplicity some more, and Nathan showed us the above examples, which helped me get a better grasp on what multiplicity actually is. Nathan also went around discussing assignments with everyone, and after telling him of my desire to do assignment 2, the geo-narrative, he said that next week we would learn the technicalities of using google maps, which will help as this a component of what is required in the assignment. I finished off the lesson with reading ‘21 Steps,’ which is a story that uses google maps as a platform to narrate the story. This helped give me ideas for my own assignment, mainly not to have a shit and anticlimactic ending as ‘21 Steps’ did, so not to make the reader feel that they wasted their life away on reading a shit ending. However, the way that '21 Steps' was created was really interesting, and the story flowed well with the changing locations, but I feel that the ending was terrible, and after spending a fair amount of time reading it, it would have been at least an hour, I feel like it was a waste of time, as the ending was THAT shit.

Week Ten

Week Ten was all about the Internet and now, what is known as Web 2.0
The name, Web 2.0, basically means the second generation of the web. Of course this can not actually happen, as the Internet changes on a minute basis. Daily, new sites are created and new ways of presenting a site are formed, along with more technical things, that it is impossible to say that the Internet has reached and stays at a certain level. True it has reached a new generation, with more than one billion people in the world connected online. The Internet is becoming more user friendly, and there are popular sites forming created and maintained by the public. A great example of this is none other than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, that enables the world wide public to add, contribute and edit the content. This means that articles can have well rounded information, yet some articles are prone to the odd lie here and there. Something that really interests me is that facebook has been built by its 200 million users, and together the 200 million users have created an asset worth 3.7 billion dollars. Naturally this money goes to a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the 200 million users. So basically, facebook is only worth so much, due to the sheer amount of people on the site. This is quite overwhelming, that 200 million people can easily make something worth 3.7 billion dollars. It may even be something to appreciate being one of those 200 million users. Yet somehow I can’t help to feel saddened by my lack of current wealth. Basically the more people that use a service, the more useful it becomes. This is definitely true with Amazon, a website containing the worlds largest collaboration of books, films, and music. Through the sales of a certain product, Amazon has been able to create a database of recommendations that their users have. This comes in handy when a customer is looking at a certain novel and sees another novel recommended by fellow users, a novel that perhaps also interests them. This has in fact allowed books to come back into printing, which has actually led to books becoming bestsellers, even after years of already being published, this all is able to happen though the wonders of Web 2.0.
This is just a picture that I found on a blog and I think that it embodies what I feel Web 2.0 means.
(Source)
Web 2.0 is all about the people, the people created and now maintain Web 2.0. Without the people, the Internet would not have come as far as it has, and without the people, it will not reach its true potential. With more and more people connecting online, who knows what the future of the Internet holds?
Hello Web 3.0!

I nearly forgot! During the tutorial we watched a video that I think I may possibly have fallen in love with. Love at first site, what can I say?
Titled – ‘We Didn’t Start the Flame War’ by College Humour, I think that it is pretty self explanatory…

Twilight Meets Hillywood.

Since it is the beginning of the mid semester break and all, I have been getting a higher dosage of YouTube videos. I came across one that a friend linked to me. The video firstly made me laugh due to the parody topic, followed closely by sheer appreciation for the amount of work that would have gone to produce the short film. I especially liked how they fused the Twilight film and Katy Perry’s Hot n Cold music video into the one. Amazing!

Rational – Assignment One

I chose to do option three for my assignment, my topic explores whaling, more specifically the origins of whaling, whaling today, and whaling in recent news. I decided my assignment will show both sides of the whaling epidemic but taking an overall stance against the issue. I decided to take a stance against the issue because I think that it is extremely cruel to slaughter whales, creatures that are endangered due to the overhunting that occurred in the past 50 years. I named my website ‘Against Whaling,’ to have a look click onto the previous link/the name of the website.
I decided to explore the background and origins of whaling to get a better grasp of the situation in relation to today. I took a close look at the Australian history of whaling, wanting a local perspective, but also trying to find reasons why we were once a whaling nation then quickly became a nation who is totally against whaling. I also took a close look into the Japanese history of whaling to help better understand the reasons why they continue to slaughter whales, reasons I believe are so they can continue their rich tradition of eating whale meat. I went onto explore whaling today, more specifically the scientific whaling that Japan is involved in, this was a necessity to be included on my website as it is something present today and often there are news articles about this issue. This naturally progressed into recent news about whaling; this of course involved Japan and the anti-whaling organisation known as Sea Shepherd. As you may remember these two groups were in the news early this year as tension heightened between the two, this tension almost exploding when a ship from each group collided with each other. I thought it wise at the time, the day before the due date, to explore anti whaling groups, this meant that more time would have to be spent on the project, but I thought that the bigger the variety of information on my site, the better mark I might possibly receive. I also decided to add another page the day the assignment was due, this might sound more dramatic then intended, because the page was a comment page, where people may express their opinions and thus was easy to construct.
In relation to the information on the pages, I wanted to get quotes from a wide variety of sources, some credible and some not so credible, so when it came time for my rational I had something to talk about. There was such rich information on the internet about whaling, it was a matter of sorting through the sites to find information that I wanted to include in my assignment. A good credible source that I used was an Australian government site, something that we can assume is correct as it is a government site, sure this may not always be the case, but most of the time the information would be factual. I found that a lot of sites had quotes from and links to the IWC (International Whaling Commission) site. This would have been a really good and credible source if it would actually let me access it without a login. Because I couldn’t access the site I had to instead find less credible sites and hope what they quoted from the IWC site was in fact correct and updated. When creating the IWC page, and listing the countries that are members of the commission, I had to reference Wikipedia, I assumed the information was correct as it would be hard to get this wrong, but I would be happy to be proven otherwise. Another problem I encountered was that when researching about Japanese whaling I continued to find sites that were in Japanese, and seeing that I only know one language there was no hope in me reading the information. So I had to see if there were English versions of the site, or hope that the information wasn’t to valuable. News sites were a great source to find information, whether it was about the Japanese’s reasons for scientific research, what is happening today in the Japanese whaling market or for finding information for the page dedicated to recent news.
It was good to read sites from all different opinions and perspectives, the Greenpeace site along with similar anti whaling sites were heavily biased against the reasons behind the Japanese scientific whaling, assuming quite harshly the reasons behind its existence and were liberally opposed to whaling of any sort. Meanwhile on the other spectrum, the Japanese sites that were dedicated about informing the world for their reasons for scientific whaling, were biased against anti whaling organisations labelling some groups as pirates and “eco-terrorists”. In my assignment I tried to get references from all types of sites to get a well rounded view on each group’s perspectives on whaling. I must admit that Wikipedia was a fairly good source because it presented all opinions about whaling which was written in an unbiased view, and it was only created as a resource and not to convince people of which side of the fence they should be living on. Wikipedia was also a good place to find images that were in the public domain and I could thus use on my website, most of the pictures on my site came from Wikipedia.
All in all the assignment was an eye opener to how bad whaling was and still is today. Of course I learnt many computer related things, I learnt how to work word press, got a better grasp on working with html and learnt how to find images that are not copy righted with the great site creative commons. But all these things that I learnt seem to be overshadowed by the huge problem of whaling, and I now feel a lot closer and protective over these great creatures.

Week Seven

Week Seven there was no lecture, which was really good as it meant I did not have to make the drive out to Uni on the Tuesday, and instead I could get a full day of working on my Whaling site. I feel that my whaling site is well underway, and I have made a solid plan in how to set out my page. The whaling idea, something that was very spontaneous, has now turned into a passion. I feel very protective over whales now, due to reading through the history, and learning about all the turmoil many whale species have undergone in the past hundreds of years. The Australian whaling history is especially interesting, and I have researched this quite a lot, and so far it seems that it will be the longest page. I won’t go into the information too much, as I don’t want to ruin any of the surprise of the final product. I also went to the tutorial this week, where I worked on my assignment, gathering final information to finish my assignment tomorrow. Tomorrow being Good Friday, I will not have to work, and will be able to make final adjustments to my assignment. I am really looking forward to finishing the site, as a lot of time has been spent on it, and it’s always nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Carving Up This Blog Post

The lecture this week was ‘Carving Up the World.’ It was almost a philosophical way at looking at how the internet works. The lecture was looking at the different structures of thinking, which developed onto the way we form patterns. Juss like there are set structures of how to publish a book (the title on the front cover, with the authors name, the logo of the publisher on the spine, a blurb on the back, etc.) there are now structured ways on how to present a website. These structures form a convention, for example when creating a website, a home page with navigational elements is a smart idea to use. Sometimes these conventions are good to follow, for instance driving on the left hand side of the road in this country is a convention that should be wisely followed, but other conventions are sometimes worth breaking. When working with the html and CSS, it is good to try to develop different ways to form and present a site. These new ways, help to expand the capability of the internet.
‘Carving Up the World,’ was really just a way to discuss the conventions of society in reference with the internet. The lecture basically discussed carving up the internet and dividing it up into chunks; this could dividing it up with the use of tags, a form of indexing, to allow the creation of new websites with the wonders of API’s. With the forever expanding internet, new ways to form this medium will be discovered, and with that new ways to carve the internet with be developed naturally along the way.

Whale of a time

This week there was no lecture, and thus we only had the tutorial. Max went around and discussed the topics that everyone had chosen for their assignments. My idea was still very much in the working stage, as I had basically just thought of my idea.
Long story short, I was on facebook, and someone had posted a video of whaling. On the facbook homepage all it had was the picture of a whale’s tail coming out of the water. This gave me the idea to explore the topic of whaling, as currently it is a very controversial topic, and over the past year has been documented in the news often. However I did not know that this particular whale video was in fact a snippet from a comedy show known as ’Onion News.’ The video wasn’t at all denouncing whales, but was using the topic of whales to bring fault to the relevance of the American’s discussions of education.
After having chosen my idea, Max gave me some thoughts on how to present it, and which blog I should use. Everyone apart from the three of us in the corner left the tutorial within an hour but we stayed longer to work on our assignments. I decided to use wordpress to present my topic on, and began to research whaling in general to get a good feel of the issue.

Blogger Sucks!

Today I tried to put a slide show of my flickr photo stream on this very blog. The slide show is a widget option when creating the look of the blog. I connected the widget with my username, yet the widget did not find MY username...
So, yes, I am blaming blogger, it definitely could not be flickr’s fault. Definitely not. (Sarcasm not intended) Hence my blog title, Blogger Sucks!

API – What I like to call: Appreciation, Practise, Interest

Sure I know that API actually means; Application Programming Interface but I wanted to be a bit witty, and show how I became to appreciate API’s, through practise resulting in an interest.
In the lecture we discussed API’s, going into slight depth in how they worked and the purpose of them. At first I didn’t really understand the point of it and how the hell it would be useful. It did finally hit me that it can be used for good, when Max was showing us all the different examples of how people use API's to create a site. It became clear, through these examples that API’s really do allow for the combination of different services, a mash-up of data so one can create a whole new site.
The most useful site would have been the combination of Google maps and the location of the Victorian bushfires. The site allowed a clear location where the fires were situated and whether they were still life threatening to residential areas, or whether they were under control. There were other examples, although created for a bit more fun, like combining Twitter updates with Google maps, to watch as people update their Twitters from all around the world, showing the person's location.
To further appreciate the use of API’s; practise is vital. In our tutorial we used a program called Yahoo Pipes. At first it seemed that we were just creating an RSS feed but soon we were shown how to add more options and create different things with the use of API’s, like a search engine, looking up a subject from both flickr and Twitter.
With the use of Yahoo Pipes it was easier to understand how API’s could work but more importantly how they could benefit us right now, because I sure am not creating a site using API’s anytime soon, but Yahoo Pipes is a great source to help us presently in our own personal exploration in API’s and the internet.
With this practise comes appreciation for API’s, then finally an interest in further developing my skills and use of such a cool invention.

Practising HTML

In the second tutorial, we had a really good introduction in writing HTML and the importance of CSS.
It didn't take that long to get the hang of interpreting the HTML codes, although we were working with the more simple HTML terms. It was really cool, writing the HTML, then refreshing FireFox, and watching as the site came together.
During the previous lecture discussing HTML and CSS, I didn't completely understand the use of CSS. But with the example it was easy to tell how CSS worked, with the labeling/grouping of the of the HTML terms, to match with the rules outlined in the CSS. Sure that sounds completely crazy, but hopefully anyone that has somewhat dabbled with HTML and CSS will understand my previous sentence.
Without adding CSS to the HTML the website is extremely basic and resembles more of a word document then an actual website of today's standard. But when adding CSS to the HTML, the website changed completely to resemble something that would actually be located on the net. It was fun to change the colours and font on CSS, and watch as my own designed website came to life. I now more clearly understand the importance of CSS in creating the appearance of the site, instead of doing this all in HTML. Without CSS, all the features like font size, colour etc would have to be written in HTML, making it more complicated to read and harder to change.

wasted time, wasted time not...

The highlight of today’s lecture would have been the fact that I drove all the way out to Bruce for a lecture that only went for half an hour. Without feeling like I have wasted petrol and thus contributing to global warming, I get comfort in the fact that I learnt HTML and CSS. My last experience would have been a very, very, very basic introduction back in year nine IT class, being four years ago I remember absolutely nothing. I would be lying if I said I didn’t learn anything because I did, although if I were to ask to build a website using HTML and CSS, my head would likely explode. So I’m hoping that in tutes we will further develop or learning of these two things that seem pivotal in passing the course.

cool song

http://www.myspace.com/needfornewmoon
If you want you may ignore the fact that it is Twilight related but it is a fairly good song, similar sound to Evanescence. Song title 'Need'

blog no. 1

The time is 1.53 and I am sitting at a computer in room 9B22.
My blog title would be in fact telling the truth when stating that it is my first blog. Having not much interest in blogging before, this week (whether I wanted to or not) I was thrown into the world of blogs. As part of my assessment for this particular course at UC, I have the option of creating a blog and posting on it at least once a week. The other option would be to fail the course, so after a hard debate I thought it best to create a blog. As well as learning about blogs I also have been taught how to use the great invention of RSS (no sarcasm intended for the use of the word 'great', seriously it is really cool. After being introduced to the world of blogs, I was able to search the blogosphere and find sites that i was interested in. The most important piece of news I found was that some studio has made the decision to create Ghostbusters Three, naturally another sequel to a 80's film would be better than creating an unique one. (Now sarcasm was definitly inteneded on the last half of the previous sentence.)
http://screenrant.com/bill-murray-ghostbusters-3-niall-3818/