Let It Be (Meta Post)

The Let It Be album of blog posts. I started this blog in naming it after The Beatles, and I'll finish it by naming it after The Beatles.

Firstly, my top three entries:
Datavizual (Week 11)
The Literal Error (Week 6)
Multiplicity and Beyond (Week 10)

So, The Grey Album. As part of the NMP unit, it was supposed to be an example of networked media itself, along with the other criteria such as a place where we would have to individually reflect on readings and lectures and develop our various projects.

In terms of content, I see my blog as sticking to the criteria. I noticed myself adopting my "internet voice" when writing out my responses to each week in a blog post. When I was writing these responses I feel I was (subconsciously) keeping an eye on the fact that my fellow students would be those reading it the most. And, it being the internet, a place where I've travelled many times before, I felt more informal. This reflects themes we've encountered during our lectures, such as the death of print media and the openness of the internet, where anyone can post. If anyone can post, it's more informal and less prestigious.

Secondly, typing it directly into the little box affected me too, I think. If we were hand writing responses and handing them directly to our tutor - I can only assume I'd be more formal. In posting it on the internet I am submitting myself to the world at large, so a kind of lax attitude to the content was more obvious. I did, however, make sure I reflected on each week's lecture content effectively. In putting it into my own words I feel as though I've learnt a lot more.

The audience, I feel, was pretty limited. The blog itself is obviously much more relevant to students completing the course this year, and this semester. I did, however, end up having unusual visitors to my blog, such as a friend who was curious as to what I was doing at uni this year, and even my high school English teacher, who would frequently email me in response to my blog posts. This connectivity was a result of my own networking - via Facebook and real life social groups - and not so much a result of visibility on the internet.

I have attempted to research what my most popular content was and wasn't, or where I have gotten traffic from. But, after vigorous Google searches trying to investigate the manner, I discovered that with this blogging platform, Blogger, it is not so simple. To investigate page hits on single entries I would have to install a page counter on each one; something I did not consider when creating my blog in the first place, but something that probably would not have worked well at all. I could have put a page counter on my whole blog, but in doing so I would not be able to see which posts were popular and which weren't. I could have put a counter in every post as I posted it, using HTML coding, but this wouldn't have worked very well either. It would only have worked if people clicked the direct link to each individual post. So if you read the post via my blog's main page, this would not have affected the counter.

If I judge the popularity of my blog via the comments I received on entries, it would be like the nerdy kid at school. I have only been able to judge whether or not people have been reading it via references in their respective blog posts, or if they have told me face-to-face. The latter would be less likely and only happened with close friends.

As an example of networked media, I think my blog does have the potential. I am listed on other people's blog rolls, and in creating The Grey Album I checked the box which the blogging platform provides, asking if you wish to be a public blog viewable by other people on the same platform. Obviously I am not a blogger of much interest to recreational users, as my content is very specific and relevant to few. But I do have connections, at least.

To observe my blog's connectivity to the wider web, I did a google search. First, I googled 'networked media blog', only to find a bunch of links not even related to this unit at all. Narrowing it down a little, I added the phrase 'canberra university' to the end of the search, to have a link to Michael Honey's Icelab website at the top of the list, followed by a few more irrelevant links, and then some actual students blogs (namely, those who mentioned 'University of Canberra' in any posts). I tried adding my first name, to no avail, and then various tags I've used for posts. Nothing. It wasn't until I typed in the exact title of my blog that a link came up.

Obviously my blog is only a tiny, tiny part of the massive thing known as the internet; it is also only a tiny part of the millions of blogs that are part of Blogger.com. This is obviously where the tags assist in narrowing it down. Since blogging I've come to see how networked media-savvy they really are.

In the end, however, my blog is significant as a product of this unit and its fundamentals. From the learning outcomes:

I have come to understand the cultural and creative implications of digital communications networks for media production: my informal voice and ability to post whatever I like whenever I like on a public medium like my blog are an example of this.

I understand and demonstrate fundamental processes of networked media production: the internet is a huge place, and is made by its connections. It was through Project A, as well, that this was fully established in my mind; live feeds made the web much more accessible and allowed you to interact with multiple sources of content in the one place.

I am able to navigate and analyse networked cultural and creative practice: in creating my blog I was directly part of the public medium that is the internet we constantly referred to in lectures, and was able to interact with other sources on this public medium, too.

And I am able to position my own work appropriately within the context of networked media practice. Both Projects A & B allowed me to reflect on networked media practices, both physically in actually creating a functioning exhibition, and conceptually, such as observing the implications of social networks in my geo-narrative.

But on the whole, I think the NMP unit has been one that was the most reflective and significant out of my other units for the Media Arts and Production degree. The way we share media is rapidly changing; without realising it I had contributed to this change just by watching Youtube videos. It was these kinds of experiences I knew best about, and could happily blog about all week.

From the team over here at The Grey Album (I have always wanted to say that), I'd like to thank the epic lecturer Michael, and the ever-cat-in-funny-costume obsessed Stephen for making the internet and world of networked media cooler than it already was.

Stylo

This week was concentrating on the technical process of how I'm going to do my final project. Last week I was talking about how I know how the dataviz is supposed to be, I just don't know how to. Well, I guess I've conceded defeat, because for the ideas I was hoping I found the dataviz option too difficult. I don't just want to make a boring graph. I'm interested in trying to discover a way to create my ideas, but in the space of two weeks that'll be unlikely.

So, I have been researching the geo-narrative. It seems more my thing, anyway, less mathematical. I've been coming up with ideas for a suitable story, and am determined to make something that has meaning deep down but seems a bunch of fun.

I'm thinking something topical about the internet, getting to the roots of this subject and consequences of networking and such, whether this be social or otherwise. I don't want it to be too corny, or saying 'Facebook is bad lol'. That's been overdone but I want my story to have a cultural landscape. Internetscape. Whatever the hell it is.

Today's tutorial was pretty much dedicated to me trying to work out how I attach images and such to a location. In typical form I over complicated it, got frustrated, and couldn't find out how. Until me and another student managed to find out via a previous student's blog post - the key in attaching images and such to Google maps was by creating an account and making a path. You can then put the images in via HTML, so the images require a link. This is convenient because I can upload images to Flickr and this shows a networking element. Connecting to other websites and such. Niftynifty.

Anyway, so now that I've conquered that battle, I just need to create a storyboard and such and get excited.

You just got week fived

I don't like the word reflection. Just saying. It's almost as bad as "journey".

I think by this stage I've gotten the basics of HTML and CSS downpat. That said, I'm still not very confident with it, and building pages from scratch is a bitch. So. While although I think I've got it, I also think I'm a massive beginner which depresses me. I think it's necessary to put a little more effort into learning it than I have, I guess. I know that semantic markup is the name given to the code that describes the information you're putting on your page in elements - so rather than having to put bold tags throughout your page to make headings bold, you can make it so all headings of a certain type are bold. It also makes readability more possible - think of the word "semantics"... different words have different meaning for you. You want tags that make more sense. For example is less logical than , with the em standing for emphasis. And and so on.

I've never been good at explaining things so this is hard. But I understand what it means. I guess I'll steal this website's example, which was very helpful when a few moments ago I tried to explain ~semantic ~markup.

Say you want all of your headings bold. You could go through and put all the necessary headings in b tags. However, as you update the site, you start adding more headings. More b tags. You screw one up here and there and the page looks ridiculous. You constantly have to comb through your code and find the offending tag.

The heading code is very useful for this. It requires CSS. There are a variety of header codes, ranging from h1 to h4 and so on... I think they're automatically bold. With CSS you can also edit the header tag so that the font size is how you like it.

For example
h1 { font-size: 50px; } will make all of your h1 headings 50 pixels in size. And then you can edit the colour and stuff.

Even though it's in the CSS code, you'll still have to put HTML tags in around your headers so the computer knows which text are headers. So if you've put the aforementioned CSS code in using the h1, put and (without the ! marks) around your headings.

What is epic about it is that you can make different headings. h1 could be red and big and h4 on the otherhand could be more like a subheading and blue and small. But either way you're transforming entire elements. Which is nice.

As a result, non semantic markup would do the thing will all the bold codes and have to specify the font size and colour for every heading. Which would be a pain in the ass.

I guess I kind of made that website's example my own, but oh well. I need to credit them anyway. The website also goes into presentational markup, which I now understand, but I won't bother going into it.

I can't really explain what the 'cascading' in Cascading Style Sheet really means. So I'll get the internets to help me.

This website is legendary.

Style Sheets allow style information to be specified from many locations. Multiple (partial) external style sheets can be referenced to reduce redundancy, and both authors as well as readers can specify style preferences. In addition, three main methods can be employed by an author to add style information to HTML documents, and multiple approaches for style control are available in each of these methods. In the end, style can be specified for a single element using any, or all, of these methods. What style is to be used when there is a direct conflict between style specifications for an element?

Cascading comes to the rescue. A document can have styles specified using all of these methods, but all the information will be reduced to a single, cohesive "virtual" Style Sheet. Conflict resolution is based on each style rule having an assigned weight according to its importance in the scheme of things. A rule with a higher overall importance will carry a higher weight. This will be used in place of a competing style rule with a lower weight/importance. A hierarchy of competing styles is thus formed creating a "cascade" of styles according to their assigned weights.

So basically, cascading means the ordering of code based on importance so that stronger code overrides less strong code in order to style something. This is important because there is often conflicting codes when styling elements.

I think. Chances are I got that completely wrong.

Censorship. This is something I feel strongly about. The government's plans to filter the internet are stupid. I first became aware of the topic on a website message board I frequently visit.

I think it's a poor move by the Labour Government for several reasons. The first - it is a typical, vote-grabbing stunt designed to attract parents with the 'somebody think of the children' mantra. The government thinks there is a need for something where there isn't. Yes, there is a lot of inappropriate content on the internet, and yes, children can access it. But it is the parents' responsibility to filter this for their kids. This is where the problem is. It is not the government's responsibility to do so, and it is also nearly impossible for them to do this on a national scale. It is too difficult technically, financially, and morally, when you think about other people's civil liberties, particularly for members of the population that are over 18.

The cost. According to the Australians Against Internet Censorship group on Facebook, initial setup costs are estimated to be around $44 million, with an additional $33 million for every year it runs. The Labour Government has already cost us enough, what with a several billion dollar deficit currently reported, and this is just another useless program designed to attract votes and cost way too much money.

It will slow down the internet. When various filters were tested, internet speeds dropped from 21 to 86%. My internet's slow enough already, thank you very much.

Civil liberties. We pride ourselves on being a free country, where we have freedom of speech and all that stuff that some citizens of the world don't get. In an earlier lecture I remember Michael putting up a list of other countries whose internet is already censored in the same way that our government proposes to. From memory, most were Communist or run by dictators. We are a democratic country and yet our government is impeding on our rights.

How can you define what is appropriate or inappropriate? There are so many boundaries. What age level is the country internet's content appropriate for? How are the lists of illegal content compiled? Who compiles them? Who will maintain the list?

It's a shit idea. Basically Kevin Rudd is a n00b. And Stephen Conroy. And whatever dimwit thought it was a good idea.

The age of the understatement

Blog in process, looks pretty homemade at the moment. CSS editing skills a bit rusty.

I don't like this blog voice I'm adopting. It seems a bit smarmy, and I'm sure if it was embodied in a person I'd punch it in the face. Or just mutter under my breath about how I'd like to. I don't know how to avoid it, though.

Do all bloggers adopt a voice? Is the fact that the internet has allowed every single one of them to voice an opinion the fact that they sound so smug? Are they naturally smug and as a result "proper" publishing mediums can filter them out?

I'm gonna continue with my theses on how other people should shut up but I have the right to my opinion. Smarmy or not.