Time and Passion

I wish media projects wouldn’t take so much time to complete! I am keen to make more short clips and interesting content in the future for my Church and other places, but the obstacle I always come up against is time! It’s like, ‘Oh I’ve got a great idea for my next project!’ And then as the excitement resides a little it’s then that I remember… ‘Dang, that’s gonna take ages to make.’

 

But, I think I’m finding that the more I do it, the better I become, and also the quicker that I get at producing, editing, and completing. I guess it’s similar to so much in life, practice makes you better. The more familiar you come to your equipment and editing techniques, the easier each project will become.

 

I reckon it all comes down to passion. Passion is where your project begins and ends. If you don’t have passion for what you are doing, it’s gonna be a chore. But if you do have passion, you will put in the work to get the result you are after. We need passion to persevere! Steve Jobs talks about passion in the realm of internet companies, and I think it relates to media production too:

 

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

 

Very true.

Housemate Heaven

I am about to embark on my first experience of living with people other than family. My siblings have moved out, and in comes one of my old mates from school. Now I’m looking forward to the opportunity, but also kinda wary that not all house sharing experiences turn out happy and healthy. But what if suddenly you did find the perfect housemate, what would it look like? I’d call it Housemate Heaven, and if it ever existed, I think it would look a bit like this…

 

1. Housemate does the dishes without me saying a word about them.

Dishes

 

2. Housemate always puts the seat down after toileting.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelehen/8453484381/

 

3. Housemate never eats my food, or uses up my last bit of milk in the fridge!

Milk and Cereal

 

4. Housemate shares the vacuuming and household cleaning so it doesn’t look like a pig sty.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/philips_newscenter/7849288160/

 

5. Housemate always pays their share of the bills on time.

Money

 

6. Housemate picks up after themselves, rather than leaving stuff lying right throughout the house.

Canon 7D Noise and Banding Example

 

7. Housemate offers to put out the bins, and he actually does it before the truck comes.

British rubbish truck doing the rounds of Melbourne's suburbs

 

8. Housemate keeps quiet after 10pm every weeknight.

Quiet

 

9. Housemate only watches what I watch on TV.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/imanifest/226955402/

 

10. Housemate can cook, and makes my lunch for me each day.

204/365: *Wink*  [Blue]

 

Okay, so not all these ideas are realistic! But some of them are reasonable, and it does beg the question, if they are things I would like in a housemate, well I better start doing them myself! I guess it’s not fair to expect them of others if I don’t put in a good effort and start the ball rolling.

There’s a challenge…

 

Oh and check out Mishell’s blog on her apirations in life!

 

Networks are all around us

In lieu of the Australia Day Monday classes, we watched a video at home about the power of the Six Degrees of Separation. It was pretty amazing to see how the discovery of network science is opening the way for further understanding of so many different problems and areas of life.

 

 

Everything appears to be connected in ways that were absolutely unpredictable just ten years ago, or even five years ago. Professor Marc Vidal

 

It’s going to completely change the way we think about the world. Duncan Watts

 

The World Wide Web would be an obvious way that we are connected these days, yet the Six Degrees networking idea is relevant to many examples in life. The video shares how a network is often made up of hubs and nodes of various types and sizes. When I think of hubs around the world, this could be cities, schools, the local supermarket, or even a waterhole that people flock to on a hot day. These are examples of places that are a hub for people, and therefore an area where networking is at play.

 

Last night I was at the Melbourne Airport, and I feel a place like that gives great insight into the world as a small network. As I wandered through the International  Terminal, I saw many flights on the departure board heading out to all areas of the globe. So many people were all gathered together at the airport from different countries, cultures, and social networks.

 

And it makes me wonder, if we gathered everyone inside the airport at one time and represented the portion of the world population that they are each connected to, imagine the number of people right across the world that would have connections with the small collection of travellers gathered here in Melbourne!

 

It is for this reason that the video mentions the danger of viruses breaking out in airports. If a virus is spreading at an airport, then travellers will be taking that virus over to their destinations, allowing the virus to spread across the world much quicker than if it was contained in one particular area.

 

Networking is an intriguing subject, and one that I’m sure will continue developing over the coming years. I will be more aware of networks around me from now on, and I’m sure I’ll be surprised at the amount of times that I notice networking at work.

 

For a in-depth look into the Six Degrees idea, read Esther’s post.

Writing has its place – week 3.1 readings

Is writing a waste of time?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinni/4048982287/

This is a thought I’ve encountered whilst working through my first year of Professional Communication studies. Jay Bolton understands my concern, and through his reading for this week I now more fully appreciate writing as a craft on its own.

 

Bolton explains that writing is a technology that is not as obviously productive at first as farming or carpentry, yet as time passes we can see that writing is the great preserver of culture, history, and other technologies. Indeed, writing is just as much a craft as other trades are, it is just using a completely different skill set.

 

Bolton continues by noting an important difference between writing and other crafts such as construction or architecture. In most fields, craftsmen can put down their tools and head home after their work is done. However for writers, detaching themselves from their work is not so easy. For some reason, writing seems to constantly play around in your mental thoughts. You might turn off your computer and finish writing that essay, but then throughout the day it’s like you are still writing in your head.

 

“Walter Ong and Jacques Derrida have insisted that writing exercises this constant influence upon our mental life.” Bolton reading

 

It is for this reason that I don’t think I could ever be a journalist. I don’t think I would be able to switch off from ‘work mode’ because I would forever be thinking about, and listening out for potential new stories. Obviously some people would thrive on it, but I’m feeling exhausted just thinking about it!

 

I feel that one reason why blogging has grown so popular recently may be because it is a great way of getting thoughts down on paper as soon as you think of it. You don’t have to work to a deadline like journalism. Instead, when bloggers get an idea, they can simply go straight to their computer and write it down.

 

Also, people often feel more comfortable sharing their private lives on a blog than through face to face means. Janet Murray shares about this in the Landow reading:

 

“Some people put things on their home page . . . that they have not told their closest friends. The enchantment of the computer creates for us a public space that also feels very private and intimate.”

 

George Landow goes on to describe how bloggers can use hypertext to then link individual blog posts to each other. By doing this, the writers are…

 

“allowing readers to put events in context and get the whole story without the diarist to have to explain again.”

 

And then also through hypertext, the blog reader becomes a more active reader, one that can add text or link to another site at any time. They are empowered to become a creative, more interactive reader.

 

Thanks for reading. You should check out Esther’s informative post about navigating hypertext.

Gadgets to drive us into the future

future

 

I was reading the Herald Sun this week when I came across an interesting article about futuristic inventions that could change the way we use our cars. These were just some of the thousands of products on show at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas last week.

 

What are we talking here…how about when we are stuck in a traffic jam (think Hoddle Street at 5pm), we have a car that can switch into autopilot whilst you sit back and relax? Or, a car that could park itself, by itself, while you are already in the supermarket buying your groceries?

 

 

Not bad, huh? I must say I do enjoy hearing about new and exciting devices with radical abilities, and these new products were no exception! Take the Traffic Jam autopilot for example. All you need to do is make sure the car is pointing the right direction, and it then it will choose the optimal speed and start and stop without you lifting a finger. And in the last year, this technology has shrunk from taking up all the boot space, to fitting inside the glove box!

 

The self-parking technology is equally impressive . Not only does it park the car park itself, but when you are finished shopping, you open an app and tell the car to come and get you!

 

This is just one example of how our smartphones will become more and more connected with our cars as time rolls on. In fact the article points to research that has found that by the year 2020, many of our cars, appliances, and houses will all be connected to our phones.

 

Just imagine the possibilities this could afford us! It’s a little scary, actually.

 

———————————————————————————————-

You can read the Herald Sun article here.

Ponderings on Week 2.1 Workshop

Well another Monday has come and gone, along with another Networked Media workshop. This time we were focusing on Design Fiction, and we can think of fictional situations to envisage a possible future.

 

The three students on the symposium panel along with our lecturer Elliot, all did well at further explaining the readings. We learned that design theory provokes and inspires our thinking, and helps us imagine future realities. We test with the goal of proving or finding something.

 

In the symposium, I remember someone mentioning how throughout the last hundred years many of technological advances were based upon the older technologies they were replacing. I feel we could put it this way: we need the old to guide us towards ideas that might become the new.

 

A great example of new technologies coming about based on older technologies would have to be video editing software. As some might not have thought about before, video editing software is actually designed to replicate the manual practice of editing film… you know, actually cutting and trimming film in your fingers.

 

The old way…

film

 

 

The new way…

video editing

 

You may notice that many of the terms used in video editing software directly relate back to the manual editing practice. For instance, Final Cut Pro has bins to keep the clips in, just like how old-school editors had physical bins that held the film. Or you can trim clips down to a desired length, just like you would trim the film back in the day.

 

There are lots of other terms such as sequences, razor tool, jump cuts, rough cuts, filters, storyboard, timeline… and the list goes on. All of these software functions relate back to the old way of editing actual, physical tape. Amazing huh?

 

Thanks for reading, also make sure you check out Kim Lai’s thoughts on double-loop learning here.

 

Learning for Life

I have learned so much over the years through school, and now at uni. But how much can I really remember from my school days? Or even from last semester for that matter. My mind struggles to think of too many specifics.

At times I would confront a trivia question that related to something I remember learning years earlier, and it is a struggle to remember the answer.

At times like this I would ponder to myself. Is it strange that I struggle to recall so many things that I learned at school? Does it happen to other people too or is it just me?

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”

Albert Einstein

I came across this quote recently, and it settled some of these questions in my mind. Just because I may not be able to remember specific answers to some questions doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn anything at school.

Our time at school gives us a grounding in life, and I feel that we should never underestimate the education that we have received. In Australia we have the opportunity to gain a broad education, and delve into many subject areas and learn diverse and flexible skills.

I know that I may not have the greatest memory of all time, but I am realising that my education isn’t wasted if I forget some specifics. Education is an important platform on which to build from. It is a stepping stone that allows us to move onto more complex and important things. We should never take it for granted, because you never know what you wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for our education.