Week 4 - Online Learning Material

What did I learn?

Uh... I learned that Vin Crosbie thinks that only three different types of media exist. I suppose that's kind of right if you look at it the way he did, but describing the internet and everything as "new media" is ... outdated. The internet is a mass medium with a twist that the audience are the users and also the producers and the distributors. It's a kind of mass medium that can be one to many, but can also be many to many, or many to one. It's a massive world. The internet, I believe, should be classed as its own medium that encompasses all other media. Because it just does. Vin Crosbie also forgot about video games. I'm not trying to say that I dislike Vin Crosbie, I'm just saying that he's not entirely correct. 

My response

Honestly? I got through it as quickly as possible, taking in only the stuff that I didn't know and felt was important. 

What did I like?

I liked the way the information was laid out in a clear and concise manner. I also liked how I could get through what was essentially an hour's worth of lecture in about ten minutes. 

What didn't I like?

I didn't like the lack of interactivity. There was an attempt in the first few slides to make the user think by posing questions to them, but without any way of selecting an answer, and because of the fact that the answer was already there at the bottom of the page in clear sight, it didn't really feel like it was trying hard enough. It was a token effort, to put it another way. 

Improvements?

Interactivity. If you want to ask a question to the user, make sure you give them check boxes and not reveal the answer until they've answered the question. Learning by reading is only effective if the user is engaged in the task.

Usefulness

I didn't find it all that useful but that's probably mainly because I've studied all of this extensively in the past (apart from the bit about Vin Crosbie) and therefore I ended up skimming the entire exercise. But it was a good way to kill half an hour in my lab session.

Pete out. 

How To: Write Your Name

How to Write Your Name

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Nokia and "Advertainment"

The term "advertainment" is a method of advertising a product through entertainment. This used to be as simple as product placement within movies and television programs, but now advertisers are creating their own short dramas and/or comedy flicks to help promote their product. For example, BMW created their own short series in which this secret agent guy drives around town in a Z4 and always manages to save the day. But that's fair enough though, because the Z4 and all other BMWs are just amazing cars. There's no two ways about that.

But anyway, I'm going to talk about Nokia's advertainment... adverts/programmes.

Do you know what I can do because this is a blog? I can show you the videos that Nokia made via YouTube. Isn't the internet cool?
[insert videos here]

How are corporate brands such as Nokia using online video to make films and create 'viral marketing'?
They uh... well you see it's like this... viral videos are like... um... I don't know really. I'll have to get back to you on that one. AKA [insert essay-style answer here]

What do you think is distinctive or valuable about this method of 'new media advertising'?
I suppose it makes a change to all the other crap we usually get for adverts. Again [insert essay-style answer here]

Pete out.

YouTube as a Social Network

Yes, sometimes I do actual work on here.

How is YouTube a social network? 
A social network can be described as any place people congregate and share things about themselves. For example, on Facebook people are constantly moaning about homework, the weather, being ill, their siblings, the weirdo down the street, veneral diseases and so on, because this is a very social thing to do on the internet. People think you're being unfriendly if you're not slagging off their best friend for being a total b****.

So as a social medium, YouTube works in very much the same way. In fact, I'd say it was more akin to blogging, but with videos. You can video your day and upload it to YouTube and anyone who is following you can instantly be updated on your life. They can then comment on your video, or post a video response, or even be as sociable as to click a little thumbs up or thumbs down button to express their opinions of your video. 

How is video 'social' on YouTube?
Video is literally one of two ways that you can communicate on YouTube, the other being the YouTube-based private messaging service that no one pays attention to. But in terms of these videos being used as social tools, I think they work very well.

I personally follow a "vlog", which is essentially a blog in video form, in order to be updated on this person's life. And these days, because of the integration of so many social networking sites, if I like or post a comment on a video, then a post appears on my Wall on Facebook showing the video I have liked or my comment. This way, all of my friends can see exactly what kind of videos I'm into, and can decide effectively if they want to continue being my friend based on what they see. How social is that?

Is YouTube important, significant, social or new? 
This is a stupid question. YouTube is all of those things. YouTube is probably the most important video streaming site on the net, because it is so widely viewed and is just far easier to use than any other streaming sites such as Blip. In fact, YouTube has become so vast and significant that people can enter "YouTube partnerships" in which YouTube pay them based on how many views their videos get. Wish I could do that.

I've talked about the social aspects of YouTube to death, so let's move on. Since YouTube is only a few years old, and certainly didn't really kick off properly until about 2006, it is one of the newest things in the world. Or you know, it isn't. But every single second there is a new video, in fact, I'd wager that there is akin to about 100 videos going up every minute, and so it is entirely impossible to track every video that goes up. So how you can describe YouTube as not new is absolutely beyond me. It is literally the newest thing in existance. Why? It just got updated. With 25, no 37, no wait sorry it's 1,145 new videos. And that's only right now. By the time you finish reading this sentence there'll be more new videos on the web than there is stars you can count in the sky. Of course, by the time you've finished counting all of the stars in the sky (at night, doing it in the day doesn't count because there's just one) there will be more videos than there are stars in the universe.

I think I've made my point.

Pete out.

Street Photography Now Project

Instruction #53 - "Capture instants. Spontaneity, freshness"

That's my upload for that quote that you can see in bold up there ^

I think it fits the brief quite well. I did indeed capture an instant, namely the instant in which that guy was throwing his fire stick around. I'd say it was spontaneous too, because it's not everyday you see someone playing around with fire in the dark so that I can take amazing photographs of them. Freshness? I don't know really. It's not really fresh because it's at night, unless you count the stillness of night as fresh, in which case it is fresh. Except it's got fire in it.

Let's just say I covered 2 of the 3 criteria.

I don't like how it's off-centre though. Or at least that guy should be on the exact opposite side of the frame so it fits properly with the rule of thirds. I also don't like how I accidentally caught lights in the background, but it wouldn't have been spontaneous if I had edited it, so bleugh. I could easily edit it to make how I want it to look though, so... yeah.

I was originally going to have a shot of three guys playing with fire, but I think this one works better because of how much of the frame the fire takes up.

All in all I like this photo, and I'd definitely have to give myself a thumbs up on this one.

Tuesday's Photoshop Lab

When you complete a two hour lecture in forty minutes, you know that this lab wasn't exactly designed for the advanced Photoshop users. But that's okay, because it means that I have about an hour to kill and Photoshop to play with.

Take a look at this 96dpi image:

Now take a look at this 12dpi image:

Now take a look at this 12dpi image in 96dpi:

Ahhh!

I think that may be one of the scariest things I've ever seen.

Okay so that took... about 5 minutes to do and get into this blog. I'm pretty sure that part of the lab session was supposed to take about half an hour.

Pete out.

Sir Robert Elmar Whiting Nightowl the Third

For one of our tutorial sessions, we had to write what we would include in our practice websites. We had to come up with an imaginary friend. Me being me, I couldn't resist the opportunity to do something hilarious.

- About me -
Name: Sir Robert Elmar George Whiting Nightowl the Third
Age: Incalculable
Address: (TBC) 532326 Sesame Street, Ogdenville, State of Mississippi, United States of America, Earth, Milky Way, Local Galaxy Cluster, The Known Universe
Family: One of seventeen brothers and three sisters.
Home info: The entire family of 325 live under one roof. And that's it. They didn't bother with walls.
Schooling: Studied at every major university in the United Kingdom over the course of just 17 years, and even dabbled in a bit of Harvard Law School.
Friends: With so many brothers and sisters, it was easy for Sir Robert Elmar George Whiting Nightowl the Third to make friends, and is now sporting up to and over 10 friends on Facebook.
Favourite Colour: Terracotta.
Music: A mix of Beethoven and Tinchy Stryder.
TV: Sir Robert Elmar George Whiting Nightowl the Third does not have time for television, such as other puny mortals do.
Special Skills: He has the ability to vaporise his enemies with laser beams that shoot out of his eyes. Afterwards he leaves his calling card. A single moth set in granite.

- My Interests -
Aside from the typical sports such as stamp collecting, playing the piano and reading the newspaper, Sir Robert likes to play croquet with the lads down in the gardens of his local pub.
He also likes to take part in student riots, fixing up old cars, setting fire to OAPs, flash mobbing, line dancing, website design and he is also a hardcore gamer. He's a level 60 warlock, don't you know?

- One Interest -
The sport of setting fire to OAPs may sound dangerous, but with all of the safey regulations that Sir Robert helped form himself, the sport is now considered quite safe.
Essentially you run along the street with any kind of rudamentary flamethrower, be it a can of deodorant and a lighter or something a bit more lethal, and then find and old person.
Once the old person has been sighted, you should quickly throw a fireproof sheet over them and then set them alight. Then the chase begins.
Laying in wait in nearby bushes are "seekers" who will chase down the old person, who is now on fire, and attempt to tackle them.
No firefighting equipment must be used, and the first person to successfully take down the OAP and extinguish the fire.

The following safety precautions must be taken before attempting this sport:
-Make sure to wear the appropriate safety gear. Leather is a very good flame-resistant material. Wearing all black leather makes you nearly invisible to the OAPs.
-OAPs are usually dangerous and manipulative. Wear earmuffs at all times. If you hear the words "Those damned kids!" then immediately run or set the OAP on fire as quickly as possible.
-Be sensible; only extremely combustible substances should be used for maximum effect.

I can't wait to make this website.

New Routine: Accomplished

Cliché Life Stuff: New Routine: Accomplished: Yes! I have a timetable again! You know what that means, blog fans.

Unfortunately, it's not the timetable you're used to. In fact, there's no point in doing the old fashioned "my day" blogs that I did back in Brooke. You know what? I'm going to make it my task to do that one more time. In fact, I could do it every Friday if I wanted to, because it's actually a full day, but shhh. It's just not the same.

So, because there's not really much to talk about throughout these lectures, let's just do the week's summary: 

Monday

Today we had our first Lectures. They weren't exciting. I basically learned that at some point in the "Studies in Media Technology" module I get to build a radio, which sounds awesome. Or I misheard. I'll go through the PowerPoint on blackboard soon to check that. Otherwise the only thing they really said was "WE HAVE TWITTER. USE TWITTER. DO IT NOW. TWEET US. HASHTAGS." And then every fifteen minutes or so the lecturer would say, "so has anyone tweeted the hashtag yet? Nope... oh well..." and he sounded genuinely disappointed. So that was fun. Tomorrow's going to be interesting, though.

Tuesday
Today has been interesting. On my way out of my flat I met up with Rachel without an a since she's on the same course and had the same timetabled lectures as I did today. So we walked to the Queens building and got into the computer lab where we had our first lab session, which was all about learning how to use Photoshop. Boy, have I got a cracker for you today. Since I'm proficient in the ways of Photoshop and can manage to log onto a computer without having to get my password changed by the admins I got through the tutorials in about ten minutes and so had an hour and a half to waste. I had photoshop and a load of pictures in front of me. What else was I going to do?

I know! One of the tutorials was about reducing red eye, and so I reduced it. And then I gave the dogs laser beams. I know! It's really cool, right? For a one and a half hour job, I don't think it's too bad. Trying to find good fire and smoke effect tutorials is a nightmare though. Anyway, after that we had another lecture about... stuff. We watched loads of videos and trailers and stuff made by students. It wasn't bad. Some of it was really poor. So yeah, that wraps that up. Uhh, then we had a flat meeting which was boring, and then I went to the Demon Media welcome event, where I learned about all the stuff they do. I'm going to be joining Demon TV and maybe dabble in a bit of Demon FM too. But seriously, it's all really cool. I get to make TV! I paid my £21 admission fee so I should now be receiving my application form via email, or I'll not be best pleased.

Wednesday
Today should really be a day off, but it isn't, so it still gets a mention. After meeting up with Katie with an ie and Rachel without an a this morning at 11ish we went to the Queens building and had a session in which we made blogs! I know! So now, I have a new blog called Cliché University Stuff where I guess I'll be putting all of my university stuff. Does that mean that I should put this post in there? Does this count as life stuff or uni stuff? Hmm... I could do it for both, I suppose. Give me a comment in the comments box with your thoughts.

Thursday
Christ! You've heard the get up and go morning routine with Rachel without an a and Katie with an ie. But this morning, you'll never guess what. On my timetable it said "optional seminar" so I thought, "hmm... might be important. And it's not like I'm going on my lonesome so I'll go and check it out." We walked in, sat down, and then the session leader said, "So if you've got a grade B or higher in GCSE Maths, you probably don't need to be here. But you might want to stay because you haven't done it in a while." I have a grade B at GCSE Maths, and I haven't done any Maths since Year 11, so I thought, "I'm done here," and then I left. Time to reset my alarm to an hour later. Feels good. Anyway, I then met up with a few other of my coursemates who were discussing our photography assignment, so I decided to gather information with them. The topics are really vague like... blue and Leicester and leaves, but I'm going to have a good stab at it. Finally I'll have a chance to get my tripod out. Anyway, then we had a lecture about Maths. I wanted to die. Do you remember GCSE Maths? Yeah? Well go back a bit. Yeah, Year 9 Maths? I could've taught it better than he could. Mainly because you know who you should be teaching year 9 maths to? Yeah, year 9s. My only respite was the fact that the guys I was sitting next to were hilarious. A little while later on and we got a tour of the TV studios! Whoo! They're awesome. I have to go and live in the Queens building now. It's my new home. I can't fricking wait to use them. Even the tripods look amazing. They make my equipment look like amateur stuff. Okay, it is amateur stuff, but that's beside the point.

Friday has a 9:00 start and carries on until 17:00 with only a 1 hour break for lunch. I shouldn't really be complaining, but it's still a nuisance.

Friday
Eugh. Early. First lab session at 9. Sleep. This lab session was quite fun actually, because I learned something! I learned that I'm going to have to learn HTML coding! Fuck yes! I hate designing and making websites, purely because I just know that I'm not very good at it. I didn't do a half bad job of Zombie Plan's website, but that's because I just created pretty pictures and Westie coded it. Pretty sure I can't get away with that now. Anyway, one of the tasks in this lab session was to make up an imaginary friend who would then in turn have their own website which details them. Did I take it seriously? Of course I took it seriously. Sir Robert Elmar George Whiting Nightowl the Third will have a glorious website detailing him and his hobby of setting fire to OAPs. I love free reign. Anyway, I'm on my break right now and so I haven't finished the entire day yet. Still a while to go. Oh my god the rest of the day was boring. Like, beyond boring. We had a one and a half hour lecture about fucking XHTML, the one thing I couldn't care less about. I'm here to make videos, not code shit. Dukey and Westie code shit. That's what they're paid to do. I'm paying the university to teach me how to become the best damn director that this world ever did see. Eugh. Why I need lectures on it I do not know. Anyway, we got a brief respite because no one can harp on about XHTML and CSS and the module outline for more than an hour, so then I was outside talking with Rachel without an a and a couple of my other coursemates whose names I can't remember, but they are some of my favourites. Funny that. Anyway, Rachel was worried because she'd swallowed a bit of gum, and bless her she's a bit thick so she thought she was going to die or something. At least we made her think that before we told her the truth. Haha, fun. Anyway, I then did two hours of maths. I've never done so many maths problems in one stint before. It wasn't even difficult. Eugh, I can see Fridays dragging on a bit.

Anyway, that was my first week. I don't know if I'm going to continue this trend of updating every week. Perhaps from now on I'll just blog the interesting things that happen in labs and lectures. Yeah!

(It's a reblog. How cool is this? Click on the link to go to the original post.)

WHOA! A New Blog!

If you have no idea why I'd shout out like that and you're not my usual audience, then you must have no idea what I'm talking about. Check out clichelifestuff.blogspot.com for more details. I say more details, it's actually just my first blog with thousands upon thousands upon thousands of words in hundreds of posts.

So, let's just copy and past what I wrote on the TECH1002 blog that I've done. Yeah, I set up a blog on another website and it's going to be exactly the same as this one. In fact, I predict that this one will be written on and that one not. So yeah, go Blogspot.

Goooood Mornin' DMU!
Okay, let's get this over with.

I'm exhausted. Try not to judge me.

Hi I'm Barry White and I'm a famous soul artist. Okay, that's a lie. My name is Peter and I'm not famous at all. Maybe a little bit. Anyone who has their name and face on the internet is a little bit famous, right?

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to tell you all about who I am. A few years ago I started taking pictures on my camera phone and decided that it was a pile of... profanities, so I got a relatively expensive camera with an awesome lens and then my goal of becoming an amateur photographer was finally complete. I then made a movie trailer for my Media coursework, and now I'm in charge of running multiple webseries on YouTube. They're not very good, mind, but they're a start.

So now I'm here, with eventual access to awesome media equipment that will hopefully further my goal to maybe one day being a film producer/director. It sounds a tad bit ambitious, but without ambition, how could life at university be in the least bit cliché?

I'm also a raving lunatic.

Bless your face. If you sneezed during this blog post, bless you.

Peace off.

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