Monthly Archives: August 2013

Kane’s mansion building the future of technology

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so, this week’s readings were a bit heavy, mainly because to me, they were so old and, lets say “outdated” technologically, that sometimes i found myself getting lost in all that talk of hypertext. i mean, i’m just assuming hypertext is a hyperlink coz i know what a hyperlink is (well,not really but kinda)

but i know its not. and then it just started talking about the Xanadu program and all i could think of was that huge Xanadu mansion from Citizen Kane because we were forced to watch that movie over 50 times in VCE for media. reading through the document and all the talk of introducing hypertext and saving files online, i was just thinking, “how old is this?”. then i passed the sentence saying that a new product called “CD’s” were coming out and i realised just how old it was, it’s really crazy just how much technology has changed in the last 30 years.

what was interesting was just the innovations and ideas that people were created based off this very, dare i say primitive, system. that already the ideas were being created of storing multiple files on a computer or online rather than on floppy disks, this forward thinking is what got us where we are in technology today. the predictions about the fate of print were interesting too, because although print is not completely dead, it looks to be heading that way with the advancement of our technology.

i think the main ideas to take away from the reading is not necessarily the technological stuff (because lets, face it, we’re way past CD’s now) but more the ideas behind it. how to improve and expand on what we have and make it better and more accessible and simple (yes bad grammar, but that’s the beauty of the blog). coming back to design fiction, its not what we can do with our technology, but what we could do that takes us into the future.

and who said october couldn’t be awesome?

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the release of Panic! at the Disco’s new single today, This is gospel, from their new album coming out in october got me thinking just how awesome that month is gonna be.

well, to start off, 2nd of october marks exactly 5 months until my birthday (always a plus). then we have Panic!’s new album, “Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!”, coming out on october 8th.



next is the super awesome, highly anticipated, new pokemon games. X and Y on the 3DS. a whole new style, platform and generation of pokemon and gameplay including riding on top of pokemon, mega evolutions and the introduction of the brand new “fairy” type!

 

 

 

 

for the end of the month, what could be better than not only seeing fall out boy for the second time in one year but to also be seeing yellowcard 3 days later!!! omg i love concerts and these are both gonna be insane.

and to top off an entire month of awesomeness, just incase the days between these incredible events get a bit too unexciting, pretty much every show i watch returns sometime in october so be prepared for many posts on the new episodes of supernatural, arrow, vampire diaries and anything else i may be watching.

oh, and uni finishes in october too. i think god likes october.

Quantum levitation and warp speeds

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so, in class this week, among other things, we got into some interesting discussions about the potentials of design fiction and current scientific innovation. the main idea i took away from design fiction is the speculation. it’s not about what we can do but what we could do. discussing the reading about design fiction, jake brought up his blog post about design fiction in sci-fi which included some interesting tuff about NASA being at the concept stage of developing the ability to travel at warp speed!! just the possibility of that being feasible is so awesome. who doesn’t hear that and picture themselves sitting in a fancy captain’s chair (like Kirk’s) and telling someone to “jump to light speed”? so cool.

another new scientific development was brought up in class after i continuously rambled on about how cool it would be to have hover boards (see my previous post about hover boards) and this was quantum levitation. here’s a video so you can see just how cool (and i mean that literally, check out the video and you will get it) this new science stuff is.

now, i don’t really do physics (which is prob why i’m doing a media course. well, i also like media) so the actual “how” of quantum levitation makes no sense to me whatsoever. and i think the stuff has to be like really cold for it to work. but, just the fact this is a possibility is what is so awesome, and the possibilities of where it could lead to is what’s really exciting.

if you want more info on the actual science and stuff behind the quantum levitation, check out this video here which has  dr Boaz Almog explaining the whole thing. more awesome science advancement stuff coming out of israel, love it

Blogging success!

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since we started doing these blogs, i’ve been keeping up to date with adrian’s posts on the subject blog and my one aim was to get a mention in one of his posts. after a week and a half of random rants, success! i have made it in. granted, my mention was just about me liking the course but not the recent lecture so much, rather than me actually having something useful or intelligent to contribute in regards to like, the subject or readings or anything (my blog posts tend to be more along the lines of random and unintelligible rantings, most of which involve pokemon) , but a mention is a mention!

how to embed a photo

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so what’s the difference between posting a photo and embedding a photo?

posting a photo is just putting a photo in from your computer. click the upload/insert button just above the text box when making a new blog post and upload the photo from your computer. like this one

 

to embed a photo, get the link of the website where you’ve gotten the image from and in this little line of code in place of “URL”: <img src=”URL”> like below.

<img src=http://imgs.tuts.dragoart.com/how-to-draw-pikachu-gangnam-style_1_000000013943_5.png>

if it doesn’t work (like it didn’t for me the first time i tried) go to the HTML tab (not the visual one) and make sure that the start of your link is a < not &lt; and the end is a >  not a &gt; and you should be good to go :D.

and there you have it.

and now you also have pikachu doing gangnam style

unlecture or lecture?

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so, according to our most recent “unlecture”, a lot of people have not been enjoying this subject. i don’t know why, i think it’s great. the only thing that i haven’t enjoyed so far was the lecture this week. not only was it going backwards on the notion of having “unlectures”, but it literally felt like adrian was giving us a lecture on our dissatisfaction with the way this subject is structured. all stemming from that question people have been asking: “why should i go to the lectures if they are unnecessary?”. but the lectures are necessary. they are our way of communicating with the subject and the tutors. our way of having our questions answered.  but it’s also a way of learning for us. if we only ever do things that are necessary, we will never get anywhere. to progress in life and in media especially, we need to do the things that are unnecessary in order to excel in whatever it is that we want to do. the point’s of uni is to understand not just yes or no but “why”  but we will never see why if we don’t try (that sounded so corny but still).

the other things that adrian discussed was how the problem people are having with this subject is that they are simply too used to the teaching and learning methods of VCE and most other uni courses (i assume, this is the only uni course i’ve ever done, but i assume stuff like med or engineering is nothing like this). rather than an inherent structure of the course, we obtain structure through practice. we grow our skills and our knowledge by participating and contributing and asking questions. as adrian said, “the scaffolding of VCE is gone” and some people’s strength is in structure and order. it doesn’t mean they are dumb or that the subject is wrong, it just means that this method doesn’t necessarily suit them. but there’s nothing wrong with that, we are all different. if we were all the same, there would be no network. and if there was no network, there would be no subject.

my one criticism is not being able to use laptops during the lectures. i’ve found the stuff that we’ve been told in these three lectures to be the most important stuff that we have been learning so far this year. this is life lesson kind of stuff, not knowledge you’ll use in a one-off scenario kind of stuff. and i like to write down important stuff like that. because i am a better learner when i’m reading than when i’m listening. so if i’m taking down notes, then i’ll be taking in the info. and when i’m trying to write in a little notebook, my notes become illegible. but that’s not a problem with the subject or it’s structure. i’m really enjoying networked media.

bring on summer!

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so, i found this awesome site just through my general boredom of trying (and failing) to get some uni work done and i think it’s just a great blog to keep a track of: http://theverybesttop10.com.

this specific post about makeshift swimming pools i really loved, (although this one on top 10 BBQ’s is brilliant too). even if it’s not summer, this rain that’s pouring down right now would be perfect for filling up a makeshift tarp pool like some of those images. my favourite is the heineken pool – swimming and a beer, so much summer fun, i can’t wait for holidays.

reading this post reminded me of a makeshift pool i swam in last year that was made from a tarp in a hole in the ground in the middle of the hot israeli desert. anyhow, i would seriously recommend checking out the very best top 10 site, its got some great posts.