The word itself sounds quite crazy, some form of Street Fighter final move, The Hypertext dun dun dun. The tutorial today explored some key points relating to story telling/narrative and hypertext. I have never read a hypertext narrative, but it seems like it could work. The main flaws presented by the class was the detachment and the sudden change of scene from the actual text, whether it be through the break in story or the break in sequeital cause and effect. Elliot raised a point that games cannot really be classified into hypertext, maybe aspects of it can, but games utilises different aspects of hypertexting. The notion of cause and effect in games is large now days where this simple action will lead to this ultimate consequence. I feel like my understanidn go hypertext relies solely on this notion since why would you hypertext or hyperlink something if the following or connected information is not the effect of what you just said.

Hypertext as i said in previous post seems to work really well in non fiction rather than narrative, i read a piece Kevin Li’s blog about the likeness of hypertext to youtube annotations. The narrative structure which hypertext bring can be seen when two videos are related in that they are a split story, an unfinished story. The annotations really do help when they mention a previous reference or skit that is related to the topic at hand. This example really allowed me to see how hypertext has positivel affected my life even though not academic at all.

edit:this was posted a long time ago, but it was in drafts>_>

I recently picked up a card game after going to pax a few months back and seeing it plsyed on twitch.tv. I loved card games as long a si remmber, pokemon cards, then yugioh, i was a pretty big yugioh fan and played the game religiously for a while. At first i thoguht Magic would be simple or approachable at first, boy was i wrong. This game has so many in built mechanics which is quite daunting for a beginner. The combat system is intricate as well, it is fairly similar yo duel masters or hearthstone , they are both simplified versions of magic. The amount of intricacies make the game both appealing yet unwanted as well.

This reading was pretty interesting from a business commerce view. I understand the graph now after reading wiki pages, the left side of the tail or the beginning of the tail (it looks like the back of a dinosaur) will normally encompass 50% where as the right side will make the the remaining 50 It is interesting to note the idea that instea dof selling all mainstream items, you focus on the niche markets in order to sell a wide variety of minor products, but these combined niches will equal out to the main product. I find this works because, even though stuff is mainstream, there is a large majority of people who will not conform or like the content provided from the mainstream. In turn the wide variety of niche products will have less inventory spaces, but those 1 or 2 inventory will sell if available. I dont use netflix, but i know how it works and i think the digital age has really helped move it along. Why vcare about inventory space, when you can store anything and everything digitally for such a minor amount of space.
On a side note,  i cannot believe that article mentions kazaa. I have not heard that name in 10 years or so, back before limewire became the top dog in piracy peer to peer sharing :D. What ever happend to limewire and kazaa i still don’t know.

This reading was quite strange. Itstalks about the  distribution of data in real life situations which fit into this 80/20 structure. In a way it is true due to the bell curvedistribution which we have grown all too familiar with in high school. The majority of people will fit into the middle where the bell curve peaks, where as the rest or the 20 will fit into the outliers whether it is too low or too high. I normlaly don’t see this statistic in many other situations, but thats probabnly cause i don’t pay attention, but in games which have a ranking system or mmr you can see that 80% of the population fit into the average skill bracket or even low, where as the remaining 20% are in the high skilled bracket. Another important point of 80 20 which i thought was ironic was the thought of equally distributed links among nodes or anythting. Every webpage or node will have a similar amount of links going in or out of page and will uniformly have the same trait. This also reflects the 80 20 rule, i dont know the exact stats but the sites which deviate will prbably be around 10-15 as well if this theory is correct. In a way this theory is just a reflection of the population as whole. 80% of the world or population will be in average jobs , lead average or noaml lives. The 20 or mayube not 20 maybe 10? will do something extraordinary or live in a world of comfort and wealth more so than the 80. It seems very similar to the 1%, we are the 99% campaign. Well that number is completely off target from the 80 20, but you get the picture.

Swearing was such a big giant boo boo as a kid, everything even minor was regarded as a profanity; damn, oh my god and even crap. Being in this transition generation between lack of technology and the rise of the internet, i was able to see myself as an individual as well as younger generation develop a higher tendency to swear. I saw a funny image recently of how Australian’s call their mates c__ts and their enemies mates. Growing up as a teenager, this is ironically so true. Maybe not the older generation, but this generation and evenyounger is quite crass. I do believe there are some situations where swearing is not a neccessity, but it does feel good to say it. When you jam your finger or do something unwanted that sudden burst of “f__k’ or ‘s__t” is more than necessary, what other word or words would be appropriate for that situation. Nothing. I’m no angel myself when i speak or type casually, you might even say or label me as crude or uncultured at times, but i do believe swearing is a necessary part of social communications. The type of swearing i can’t stand is using f or s (lets just abbreviate them to 1 letter for a more sensible discussion) as adjectives for no reason in their speak e.g let me check my fing phone. Just a minor rant.

Week 7’s lecture focussed on the difficulty and the inability of the authors intent. Everything you ever make and create is up for interpretation and scrutinity from the entire world. You have no control over what they interpret, but you can ehlp them by making things clear. I do believe that even though eveyrthing is subjective, that’s why we have opinions, but what we interpret is not always random. Even though we can all present differing views, there is always a central undertone which everyone understands. This central idea is what we all should interpret and understand if the creator has presented his/her work well. It is much like Year 12 English, did the author or cartoonist actually put in that much thought right down to most minute detail, oh that flower is blue because it is a sad day etc… If it was me i would say probably not. But, the main idea or general contention is always the same no matter which student you ask, they might word it differently, but the contention or creative idea is always streamlined.

Genre was also a key idea discussed which i thought is interesting. To me genre is the general outline in which we can categorise styles or themes or anything. A genre is much like a tag on twitter etc… This film is _____, in turn that _____ will attract a certain type of audience. When i think of genres i think of pokemon, each genre is a type. Pikachu is part of the electric genre, charmander is fire genre etc… I don’t know how this is relevant to our lecture, but pokemon 😀

living in such a technological age, it is interesting to see the change in the definition of a certain word or ideal. The word book, in the reading it talks about the slow extinction of print books and the idea of a never ending book. I read other people’s blogs to see their opinion on it as well as read Adrian’s own post on how this book was written before the invention of tablets etc… I think Douglas’s theory that books will not die is very true, even with the rise of tablets and what not according to Adrian i believe it will not die. Why? When a book is in the form of an ebook, to the current generation it is still a book. The pdf that the reading it is on, it is still a book. Maybe according to the definition of the dictionary a book is a “printed” press, then maybe the almighty book will die out. It is a funny way of thinking, everytime you read the newspaper online or read a pdf essentially you are supporting the extinction of the very rare and soon to be extinct “book”.

Hypertext is an example of those create your own adventure books as a kid. Pretty annoying to read, but in a way those style of books can be seen as the start of hypertexting, the physical version of hypertexting. Oh tom is met with a split path leading into a jungle or a river; Turn to page 15 for the jungle, page 89 for the river. I had the worst luck as a kid , my character always died so in a way the never ending books ended for me… In a way wikipedia is the ultimate hypertext which i can see in my time. It not only has hyperlinks everywhere, but it also sorts of never ends. It is sort of a never ending non fiction hypertext.

When i was first given the topic of Henry Jenkins, i was bored more than anything. During my weekend as i was watching some Comic-Con documentary by Morgan Spurlock i was met with a brief probably 10 seocnd interview with Henry Jenkins himself. This sparked my interest as i began my research into this man’s accomplishments.

His blog… what can i say? It pretty much details his life’s work and his everyday thoughts. He is a very interesting man, reseraching and studying fields of interest which i can really relate to or feel intrigued by. Comic books, films, internet fads you name it, he has written something on. Its intriguing to see that a fairly elderly man is so in with the times and even more so condones the usage of such technology and entertainment. When was the last time you heard someone older than 40 say “Video games are a separate art form”.

His work on New Media Literacies draw many relations to this subject, Networked media. Instead of learning practical and hands on studies, he focuses on the social thinking and skills needed to interact and work with any form of technology. He lists a series of long steps, but the one thing that i noticed was that all of his steps were intuitive. It was more of a fancy way to categorise and label the actions that we as humans perform in order to learn and interact with new media. I love it when learning something is very straight forward and practical as you end up finding ways to apply it and can see first hand its effects. As they say “Seeing is believing”.

I’m mainly writing this based on my experiences with the year 12 vce system. Growing up I was terrible at English and probably still am, but according to the education system I was fairly decent at the time of my assessment, earning myself a solid 40. 40 to some is a very average score at best, but to me it is a satisfying accomplishment. I was never that amazing at being creative, but to receive an A from my teacher on my creative piece was really overwhelming for myself. Like any other skill that you don’t practice, it slowly digresses into this terrible and grammar filled mess which i hopefully can be able to call English.

This was an interesting read as it dives upon the true nature and purpose of the essay. An essay is the exploration of one’s thoughts, but as the writer states it is a polished and concise verseion of your original thoughts. This coincides with the with the definition we have grown to believe and understand in high school, we always start with an intro to provide an outline of our thesis and explain our 3 points. We then continue on to provide an elaborate detailing of our 3 contentions and finally we conclude it. The one thing that strikes me as interesting is the writers focus on how essays are not meant to be persuasive, maybe persuasive essays are (duh!??) but then why have we been conditioned into striving to make it so. The historical information of being lawyers, essays being for law school etc… it makes sense and in a way i like that in our modern day interpretation of the essay we have both expository and persuasive.

one thing i remember clearly from my English tutor was that she said ” Everyone has an opinion on everything, and if you say you don’t you’re an idiot” I think her quote sums up the extent to why we have been conditioned to be persuasive. We all have opinions, fair enough, but why did you come to this conclusion? Its one thing to believe in your own ideals, but to be able to convince the masses to see your point of view is a skill. I respected my english teacher, i always thought she was the smartest person i know.

Get this man a mic, he seriously provides some of the most entertaining educational commentary I have ever listened to. I would pay to listen to this man do stand up comedy, the amount of laughs in the video is phenomenal for a talk. He has the feel of Michael Caine if he was an educator.

Is school killing creativity? Yes it is, what Sir Robinson says is completely true. The world focuses primarily on the subjects which will most likely be applicable to finding a job. The mathematics, the sciences, the languages etc… Are these jobs the highest paying in the world? Probably not, but it will provide a decent income. Are they easy to find? Yes. Well when these subjects lead to fields of studies such as science and commerce, there is no wonder that jobs are easier to find. How broad is the term commerce? I recall a conversation with my cousin in year 8, I asked him what he wanted to do? He said “Probably commerce” and I asked him for what job and he promptly replied “I don’t know whatever it leads me to”. Globally, students are being funneled into this mindset that doing art or pursuing anything besides a mathematic or science base career is in the words of my parent’s “Shit”.

“Intelligence is diverse”

This quote is the definitive answer to Ken’s rants. There are differing versions of intelligence, you may be great at maths, the best doctor in the world, but can you play this video game competitively as well as this 16 year old? You, might say yeah I could if I dedicated my time to that goal. Perhaps, most likely than not though you won’t. If you’re great at maths and science, sure by all means pursue that path. Art is the main underdog subject when it comes to determining “intelligence”. VCE scales down Art subjects by 4-6, why? Is it not difficult to also draw a masterful picture or perform a beautiful musical piece? Is it not 1 in a million to become a famous actor? This notion that these subjects somehow are ranked on an intelligence scale is simply flawed.

“She thinks by moving”