Thursday, June 11, 2009

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!

Thursday, June 4, 2009

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:

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