An interesting point which Adrian brought up was on taxonomy. How definitions are pretty much redundant and that we should define things for what they do. I wasn’t really convinced by this argument at first, but during the tutorial Adrian brought up how we call things video and film yet they are neither of these. In a way i guess then Adrian was correct in saying having a taxonomy is pretty ridiculous. However i do believe definitions are still needed even so just for the sake of being guidelines.This all just reminds me of English class during vce where teachers always say oh the rules always have exceptions and you break them for artistic license and you are just left thinking what… Why have i been learning these rules which were kinda definitions just so i could break them. The funny thing was when we did break them the teachers never though our intention was artistic enough to warrant our inconsistency.

20140324 233425 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

20140324 233215 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

20140324 232439 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

20140310 224048 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

20140317 214915 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

20140317 130517 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

20140317 215032 from Tony Mai on Vimeo.

The videos i filmed are uploading atm so i’ll attach them to a separate blog post each later. I have no idea why it takes 20 minutes to upload 16mbs vids… I might as well talk about the tutorial last week. This is pretty much network media 2.0 from what i gather, but with a more hands on approach with more work production rather in addition to more theory. The class seems all good so far, everyone seems nice, tutor and lecturer is engaging so i can’t really ask for much more. hopefully the semester will be all good.

This video is exactly what i think the readings were talking about a few weeks back. Tech is now part of us. We cannot detach ourselves form it. A notable thing that they said was the relationship is always expanding. When we have new tech, we cant even leave it because in order to use this new tech we apply more to it, we give it power, privileges and more data.

I think the 80 20 law even though it was not the mian focus was kind of important. it can be applied to almost eveyrhitng in life when it comes to statistics and quantitative measueres. we can draw conclusions and see correlations. I guess it does not do too much for networked media other than stating that the popular stuff will only consist of maybe 20 % of the larger picture. If you think of spotify, Amazon etc… the popular products will be very small and will only be 20% of the large database, but the 80% of the databse will only be consumed by any portion of the 20% of the population.

We’re used to the idea of the internet being characterised as a democratic, open, non-hierarchical technology and space: is Galloway arguing something that fundamentally challenges this

I found that the internet is actually heirarchical though. At the top we have the big dogs; youtube, google etc… and that is all LOL. In a way it is non heirarchical due to the lack of competition. Evyerhitng is pretty much homogenised and monopolised by the big corporations. They take upon them everything you want every single % int eh 80/20.  But at least the internet has maintained its democratic feature. We have free ish speech and it is a bevy and forum for creative and innovative discussion. We have the hubs such as reddit and whatnot where it may not be the most intelligent of discussions, there is a wide range of opinion and discussions. Galloway mainly focusses on the importance of technology. Take internet, it is part of life, it is listed as one of the 13 basic neccessities in life now days. Its amazing how in my lifetime i kind of saw the rise and decline of heaps of technologies in these 20 years. Radio Casettes, video cassettes, then Laser Discs (I dont know if eveyrone knows this one, but asian parents+laser discs=karaoke every week at someones house) then VCD then Dvd etc…the list goes on and on. Its amazing how some kids don’t know what rewind is due to never experiencing tapes and in a way im glad i grew up in such an era where it was kind of the tipping point in technological immersion. Apple was no where near the powerhouse it is today. TV is no longer the king of leisure in loungerooms and at homes. Oh how times have changed.

When the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie~~~omg fully
I recently stumbled across a clip from Fat Pizza on youtube and then i was stuck within the grasp of the monster that is procrastination. I remmbered so vividly in primary school and early high school how every was talking about Fat Pizza, it was the age of puberty and adolescence and everyone went nuts over chicks and cars. It really was a funny show, i never understood the show much as a kid, but its much funnier when you get older. I’m not sure if this humour is just funny cause i’m Australian or if it actually is universally funny. it plays heavily on stereotypes which i find hilarious, makes me a tad racist if laughing at stereotypes is racist. I realised Toola or Tula? is actually Rebel Wilson from Pitch Perfect. I’m actually really glad that Rebel Wilson became famous, its almost an underdog or cinderalla story, overweight actress from Aus making it to the big times in Hollywood. She played to her strength of being funny and has paid off with her personality and successfulish career. She never has a leading role, but always has the memorable comedy roles and in a way is a different form of success. All those films with those memorable supporting comedy casts always make the movie what they are. What is Anchorman without Brick? What is Pineapple Express without Red? I always wondered if thoese people are filthy rich or not.

Fat Pizza was really one of the defining nostalgic shows for my generation. I’m not sure if it was just because i lived in the Northern/Western subujrbs that Fat Pizza became such a huge phenomenon, but i would rank Fat Pizza just under those children anime of the early 2000s such as DBz, Beyblades, Yugioh etc… I never understood the craze for Pokemon, yeah it was good, games and show, but why was it so popular. Maybe i was a generation too late since i grew up with the Johto era instead of the original 150.

in the meantime Take it easy yuleh

The technology reading was quite wierd. It did raise some interesting points such as splitting the notion of technology into a dynamic and ever changing field such as the technique and what such. It is quite ironic that we use a techniques to create the technology at hand in order to simplify our lives in one way or another, but by doing so we also have to learn and adapt the population to this technique. I came upon this realisation while i was wathicng The Gods must be Crazy, a really old film which i remember watching with my dad, we create stuff to make our life easier, but these stuff need extra attention so it makes our life hard once again. It is the circle of life, the status quo, we always end up at the same predicament. If having a hard life is status quo, our life must really suck LOL. We create cars to get around faster, oh no we now need fuel, need to learn how to drive, need to maintain the car etc… A common question in the gaming community is “Is it worth”, a really funny question and phrase if you ask me, i love saying it for no apparent reason and context, but i found this fits perfectly into this technology dilemma. Was the decreasing amount of time or effort worth the extra time and complications we have created for ourselves? In the case of the car, yes i would say it was worth.

Technology has become so interwined with our life that as the reading says it has become one with our culture. We remember different eras and generations from what they wore, what they used etc… If we apply technology to a broader sense and make it technology in a specific field such as new techniques, everything in the world is related to technology. In fighting games the finding of a new method is even referred to as “new tech”. Technology is a neccessity in life, whether it is good or bad i would’t know. If i were to give an answer, it would be good, but that’s probably cause im biased and unimaginative and wouldn’t know what to do without tech.

The important notion which Adrian brought up was the idea that narratives do not have any real connection to games unless the narrative is the focal point of the game. This similar notion of competition driving the focal point of games is one which i disagree with at first. As i kept on thinking i kind of developed my own sense of narrative within this storyless or plotless games. Even though games is a broad term, the most competitive of games at the moment do not actually yield any form of narrative in the traditional sense of a storyline. However, i can see the direction of a more abstract version of a narrative. In a way the actions which occur in a replayable game with no ends such as Street Fighter, Starcraft and Dota etc… have no story. But the competitiveness kind of becomes a narrative in itself.

In games i would call it snowballing out of control or sometimes even mind games, in real life sports as an analogy it would be called strategy or a gameplan. By doing this sort of action, this consequence will occur. If a player tends to continue to block over and over or seems to tend to be aggressive and forget aspects of the fundamentals such as over committing etc… This becomes the starting point, the narrative will continue in that I will hopefully punish them for doing a mistake or adapt to their playstyle. These reactive style games have a narrative in the strategy of these games rather then a story based narrative.

These competitive games which i would like to differ from narrative based games do indeed have a narrative, but not in a plot or protagonist form. These mindgames or human reaction become a style of narrative. I just thought that this is quite interesting as these terms such as narrative, story and plot are all so broad. In a sense these reactions are also links and each action or event that elicit an aciton is a node. im starting to see the broader grand scheme of things when related to networks and it is fairly interesting.