Celine C.

Both of these blog features are to help link two websites. I’m still pretty confused on which meant which. One of it notifies the person who’s being linked and commented on the author’s own blog. I think it’s trackback? More information on Trackbacks and Pingbacks here.

I’m currently doing my research on blogs and links and have been reading Jill Walker’s Blogging:Digital Media and Society Series

In Chapter one, she gives readers a brief idea of what Blogging is. Below are some notes:
• Blogs are defined as entries that are regularly updated
• Personal home pages are forerunners to weblogs
• Unlike blogs, web pages are published even before the creator has completed building it.
• Justin Hall is the first diarist (the next closest thing to a blogger in 1994). One of Justin’s 1996 diary entry
• Some of Justin’s diary pages are organized chronologically. Some by categories.
• Justin hand coded his diary entries and only started using blogging softwares in 2003.
• in the early 1990s, weblog had a different definition. It was used by web administrators to refer to the number of visitors.
• Jorn Barger named his web site Robot Wisdom: A weblog by Jorn Barger. It was the first time the word ‘weblog’ is used in this sense.
• Blogs in the past did not contain much text. Only links with little or no commentary. Look at Jorn Barger’s older 2000 entry

I’m in love with the Bruno Mars’ original version Just the Way You Are .

But Matt Beilis’s cover version equally amazes me.

YouTube, Bruno Mars – Just The Way You Are acoustic cover by Matt Beilis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsL1eKJv7Qo&feature=related

I’ve purposely chose to include an image so I can practice manually coding and inserting an image into this post
It seems that WordPress automatically embeds a video into the post when you drop the url of the video. Because I only wanted to attribute Matt’s video I had to insert the link is such a way:

<a href=”url” mce_href=”url”>url</a>

Morguefile, CN0004-160.jpg
http://morguefile.com/license/morguefile

When going through the reading by Mortensen and Walker, it has occurred to me that I hardly include links to other weblogs or websites in my blog posts. I did not know that weblogs were initially used for collecting links and have certainly not thought of it as a journal for jotting down ideas on the go. Talking through experience, my friends and I mostly write about the recent events that are occurring in our lives in respective countries (many of us are scattered all over the world for further studies). We post up photos, write about a recent trip to the mountains or even about love interests to give the sense of each of us still ‘being there’, but hardly post up links as the topics were about personal stories.

But as I continue reading Mortensen and Walker, I have realized that the ‘links’ that they’ve been discussing may not necessary refer to links that take blog users/readers to outside the blog. This links can also be taking bloggers to older blog posts in order to remind about a past event or to digress on that particular topic. But links does not stop right there. Links are also used when readers move between older and more recent posts with just a click of the mouse.

Referring to Mortensen and Walker’s statement: “A paragraph is enough and there is no more needed”, I have to totally agree on this. This is one of my friend’s personal blog.
In this post, he only posts one sentences. And on top of that, that one sentence is a continuation of the given title. With just one sentence, my friend has already received one comment, which made the blog post title, blog post content and the comment looking like a dialogue between two people. In another post, he types no more than two sentences but the blog still tells no less than what he types in a longer post, lyrics of a song to express his interest or emotion at that point of time.

This reading has definitely made me realize things that I’m subconscious of when blogging.

That’s it, I’m sick of the in-between cake/bread textured healthier cakes that I’ve been baking!
I want a real cake!

something like this..

or this..

rather than this..

that contains these..

but no butter. making muffins not muffins.

healthier cake/bread aren’t going to take me anywhere in a good eating diet if I’m going to end up munching on other things when I omit butter in cakes.

Next time, I’m baking a cake with real butter. brownies sounds good?

The media is putting pressure in girls to be skinny. But I’ve always been told that it’s always good to still indulge from time to time rather than deprive myself and go crazy when I do get to eat those treats. life is short, enjoy!

I’m just so amazed with the variety of fruits in Australia. There’s the Mediterranean fruits, and also the tropical ones.
The papaya (or pawpaw) above may seem like an ordinary papaya to those living in Australia. (I’m just going to stick to using ‘papaya’ so it’ll be less confusing) but it’s very different to the papaya that I’ve know and grown up with in Malaysia. Thinking that it was just another papaya, I purchased only one piece from the supermarket.
Upon having it for the first time, I just fell in love with it! The flavour is just mind-blowing (or at least in my case). What’s the difference from the Malaysian papaya, you may ask. The colour of the Australian fruit’s flesh is lighter in colour. The shape of the fruit is also rounder and shorter. The flavour’s sweetness is refreshing, tastes almost as if there was a little bit of menthol in it. I just couldn’t stop at 1/4 of the papaya. Next thing I knew, I’ve consumed the whole fruit in that day.
In Malaysia, I usually consume the fruit with lime juice to further enhance the sweetness of the fruit. But the flavour of the Australian papaya was already so wonderful, I did not need to add anything.
The papaya cost $1.80/kg when I purchased it last Sunday but only ate it on Wednesday. I rushed back to the supermarket to look for more after realizing how good it was, planning to buy at least 2 pieces home. But the sale was already over and it cost about $2.60/kg. Nevertheless, I bought one piece home.

Ok, so you know how I was previously talking about food journalism and blogging on separate posts? From my observation today, it has just occurred to me that these two media are linked.

Ok, so my aunty has plans to visit Taiwan soon and using the “I’m Gourmet Queen” book that I mentioned previously, she identifies the eatery places that she must visit during her short holiday in Taipei city. As the book only provides a one person’s perspective of the food she reviews, my aunty decides to Google the name of the restaurant to find out more about that particular eatery place.

And guess what sort of reviews were most informative? it was those personal accounts of those who visited the particular place, whom posted them on their personal blogs. Their blog don’t only include a personal recall of their first hand experience but also additional info like price, maps and photos.

And with such positive remarks coming from more than one source, my aunt can be quite confident that the information are substantially accurate.

Listening to Jess McGuire during her lecture in Week 3, she reminds me of my personal blog (which I have no updated for awhile now) in which I frequently account of my discoveries of good food. A friend once and repeatedly told me that I should just solely make a food blog out of my personal blog and pursue food journalism (if there is such a specific field in journalism studies) and one day become a famous food journalist! (how I wish!)

But I think being a food journalist isn’t impossible. I came across this book titled “I’m Gourmet Queen”. It’s an introduction to good food all over Taiwan by this woman. Her face appears in every page as she takes a photo with her ‘discovery’ and the creators of her ‘discovery’. And I have to say that this book is pretty informative and entertaining. Below is the cover of the book:

We had a guest lecturer yesterday. Her name is Jess McGuire, a blogger for Defamer Australia. She talked about how she got the job and that she can’t believe that she being paid to do what she loves: writing.

She emphasize that we should write in a style that we are comfortable with when blogging. She told us about her difficulties in previously following the writing style of the Defamer US as it is just not “her style”. This difficulty even went to a point that she isn’t anymore inspired to write for that publisher. This shows that every journalist has his or her own writing style that allows ideas and suggestions to flow smoothly.