Tag Archives: blogs

Please comment!

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So I’ve had a blog now for a few months, and it is still growing on me. I appreciate having a space where I can write down things I need to remember, discuss issues that interests me, and promote the things I care about and love.
“Sharing” is a word that has been some kind of explanation for what we are doing on a blog; sharing information, sharing thoughts, sharing our images, videos or research. But how can you share something if no one is reading your blog?

I guess it relates to the fact that it is there, even if people don’t read it. If someone need it, it is there to be found (you just have to get through the overwhelming amount of information first). However, it doesn’t feel like I’m sharing anything, and even less like I’m part of a blogging community or the so called Blogosphere.

In the beginning it was difficult to get started. I would stare at the screen, trying to figure out what to write, the same way I’ve been staring at an empty diary in an attemt to start keeping one. I wrote my entries, but with little enthusiasm. What’s the point?

And then I got my first comment. It was on a post where I thanked Rosa for helping me with the theme on my blog, and she left a comment on it.
I got an undescribable rush, this euforic feeling filled me up and gave me the urge to start writing a new post, immediately. Someone actually read what I was writing! I guess it must be similar to the feeling of having an article posted in the newspaper for the first time, exept it isn’t just about getting it published, it is the confirmation that someone actually read it and took time to leave a comment.

Since the first comment I have received a few more, not an overwhelming amount but enough to keep the rush. I noticed that reading and commenting on other peoples blogs made it more likely that they would also visit mine. Maybe this is what is meant by community?

I’m curious to see if my little cluster of blogs will grow as I finish this semester, and start blogging about more personal things. If you like it, please leave a comment! :)

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Hypertext examples.

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After reading the supporting evaluation of these works you will need to write a blog entry(s) that answer the following questions. Your responses will be discussed in the upcoming lab.

What is your favourite hypertext example?
Why is it your favourite?
What characteristics in this work would you adopt for your own hypertext essay?

(Please note in the discussion that follows I will use the word ‘page’ to refer to a web page and the word ‘essay’ to refer to a hypertext essay.)

So I looked through the four examples given. I think they are all good for different things, depending on what you’re after.

Stuart Moulthrop’s ‘New Literacy and the Great Age of Code’ is very informative and easy to read, but not very interlinked. It is structured in a way that differs from the hypertext essay that we are going to make, as it is linear and doesnt allow you to go anywhere but to the next page of the essay. At the end it goes back to the start, but in the middle of the essay you can only continue to the next page (unless you use the back and forward button on your browser of course).

The second example is also good, and resembles an essay in many ways. It is made out of mainly text, with the exeption of the image on the side that visually tells you where you are in the essay. It allows you to jump to any part of it that you’d like, which I found clever and very useful. However, it is very academic (which I am sure it is intended to be) and not really something that caught my attention.

The third one is a mix of text and image, and it almost bacame a bit to complicated to follow. “Webs are constituted by their links, not their linearity”
Adrian Miles explains in the introduction that “The web pages that make up this site use the HTML <meta> tag to provide a client side push where pages are loaded serially. You can attempt to intervene at any point by clicking on an image, a word, or a letter. In most cases where a link is available it will randomly place you back into the series, however in some cases the HYPERWEB ‘expels’ the reader.

If you simply let the pages cycle then the HYPERWEB will take about 6 or 7 minutes to return to its beginning, but if you intervene you can end up anywhere.”

Like he explains, you are lead through the hypertext essay without having to do anything yourself, it goes automatically to the next page (note: not a random page, they have numbers). However, you can press any link you wish, which will lead you to somewhere random in the essay. It then continues to go.

I liked this one because it is visual, unpredictable, and impressive. It is inspiring to see what can be done in a hypertext essay.

As for the fouth example, we are told that it is more a form of internet art than a hypertext essay, but i really don’t see why it doesn’t qualify completely. It contains just as much information and links as any of the other, and it includes images as one of the key elements. Maybe because it isn’t so much an essay, but more a collection of stories about the authors body?
However, I think I preferred this one to the others, probably because I have an interest for film and photography and are like many others cued by images just as much as text.

AND THE WINNER IS:

My Body: A Wunderkammer, by Shelley Jackson.

Like I said, I prefer this because it is so visual. It is also an easier read; because it is personal and written in a casual tone, it is more entertaining than the others. It might also have something to do with the fact that I’m female, and can compare my own experiences with hers regarding the body. I think the way she leads you through the essay, or you might say her body, is unpredictable as the links doesn’t always tell you exactly where you will end up.

She might have chosen to make it so unstructured and unpredictable for entertaining purposes, but I think all the links leading to different pages are a way of showing the body as an interlinked unity. Everything is linked on the internet, and the same applies to the body.

The characteristics from this work that I want to adopt to my hypertextessay is the interlinking, the images, and the writing style. So far we have been writing in a very casual tone, trying to make it interesting/informative and enjoyable at the same time. We depend a lot on images; our “front page” is mainly made out of different images, and just a little text. The other pages consist of both.
We are in the process of linking everything, and we want links that makes sense and links that don’t. Shelley Jackson only links to other pages in her essay, while we are linking to pages outside the essay as well.

There is much left to do! Writing, coding, linking.

 

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Blogging thoughts

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I have been working on the content for the hypertext essay, and I’m noticing that I’m actually becoming a defender of blogs. Who would have thought that? In the start of the semester I was ranting on about how awful I thought it was that we had to keep a blog and how useless it was for my future career.

Then I wrote my first blogpost. This was a day or two after the attack in Norway happened, and the motivation for writing was a combination of the fear of falling behind at school and a need to express my feelings without having to face anyone.
It felt amazing. I have never kept a diary, and it made me relise how useful writing down your thoughts can be to clear your head.
Seth mentioned this benefit in one of the earlier lectures; that blogging is a way of organising your head. When to much is going on in there it is hard to acheive anything, it all just spins around in a big mess. After writing some of my thoughts down they didn’t disappear, but I could look at it more clearly and distance myself from it a bit.

After some time the blog became a platform for school, my personal thoughts, fun, and interests. The interesting part is that I’m pretty sure that I will continue blogging after this course is finished.

But what do I actually know about blogging?
Quite alot I would say, after reading “Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online tool” religiously and searching the web for more info.

In class today we were discussing which changes there have been concerning blogs since Torill Mortensen and Jill Walker wrote the article. While some students argued that we are so used to all the different “blogging options” I found that I know very little of what many of the different tools offer. The first online platform I used that resembled a blog was something called Blink.no

In many ways it was similar to facebook, exept that it was mainly for Norwegians.

I edited one of my Annotated Bibliography entries (the one about strenghts and limitations in the text), not because I think it will affect my grade (as we get the result tomorrow), but because I found it very useful.

Flickr is something I am vaguely familiar with, as I have a few friends that post their images on there. It’s a good concept that allows people to share their photo’s with the world, and it might lead to useful networking. On flickr the use and benefit of tags really come to use; every photo has a number of tags, and when people search for something the photo’s with that given tag come up.

As I’m no great photographer I haven’t joined yet, but I’m keeping it as a possibility for the future. Tumblr on the other hand seems like something I can cope with, as it is more about reblogging than posting your own creations.

I’ve decided to join and let you lucky people follow my journey towards my first post on tumbler. Aren’t you lucky? And if that goes well (and fast) I’ll try to access the microblogging tool Twitter as well.

Alright, here we go.. www.tumblr.com.
Ah there we go, I’m already confused. Where’s the “sign in” button??
Hm. turns out the whole startpage was dedicated to signing up.. and they are asking me to put in my email, a password and an url.
????????????

I tried adding the URL of my blog, but it wouldnt allow me. “32 characters or less” it said.
As we know I am quite a genious, so I figured out that they wanted me to creat MY url. And voila! I have my own url! It is http://playingstupid.tumblr.com (I think)

So now I only have to figure out this:

Jesus Christ, there are endless themes to choose from.. One of my biggest struggles these days is that we have way to many options on every aspect of life (Geee, sound any more like a douchebag Sunni.. #firsteworldproblem )
Like education! I trip out nearly everyday thinking that I might have chosen the wrong course, maybe I’ll benefit more from being a fisherman. And cereal! Oh my God, CEREAL! Have you SEEEEN the shelfs in the supermarket?

From: http://www.asmnewsroom.com/2010/08/price-war-threatens-cereal-makers-profits/

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways. The first themes I was introduced to cost money.. not quite there yet.
You can create your own theme using HTML, which I intend on doing soon but not now as I’m about to go to a friends leaving-work-party and I’m not quite dolled up yet..
So I chose this one

Then I went back to the page with all the options and I’m uploading a random photo at the moment.
The thing with tumblr that interest me the most is that it’s so much about reblogging, How does that work in terms of copyright? Most of the images on the pages I’ve seen are not taken by the people owning the blog, they are mostly reblogged.Hopefully I’ll figure this out shortly!

So now I’ve been playing around for a bit, and I have posten an image, a post and a quote. I have even reblogged an image from Ian Ngo’s page!
It’s the easiest thing in the world. You just press “reblog”. And then it’s done..

Here it is!

I don’t have time right now to get started on twitter, but if i get home early I might..
See you on tumblr! xx

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1, 2, 3, GO

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As mentioned in the previous post, I might struggle more in this subject than in any of the others, but this is the goals I’ve set for this semester.

2. Set a minimum of 6 criteria to manage and assess participation. The criteria to be created in a blog entry. Set up a Participation category for all participation posts.

1.     Attend 80 – 90% of all lectures and tutorials *

2.     If by any chance I miss a lecture, I’ll look at the notes online

3.     Do all the essential readings, and not just read through it, but also understand the content.

4.     Do 80% of the extra readings (with the same objective as nr.2)

5.     Minimum four blog entries every week

6.     Understand and be able to write and publish HTML

7.     Seek information outside school, on other people’s blogs and pages relevant to the course.

8.     Work towards meeting the required learning objectives in the course guide

*I’ve already been away from one tutorial because of events in Norway

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participation, schmarticipation

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1 – What is participation all about? In this blog entry you wil be expected to provide your own summary on what you think the participation task is all about. Why it used in this course and more broadly in the media program?

Participation has always been an important part of my life, as I expect it is to everyone on some level. You participate at home, at school, or at your sport team. The level of participation on the other hand is very variable. I’ve always been an eager student and put a lot of effort in my homework. I played the flute and spent hours every week practicing, so I could keep up with the others and take part in concerts and different events related to it. I played handball (the European kind for those of you who confuse it with the game you play in premier school), and took on the role as a youth representative where I put a high focus on my participation so I could help develop better solutions/offers for my team. A change occurred when I started High School. My participation on all these levels fell for some mysterious reason. My thoughts were now revolved around which clothes I wore, the music and movies that were considered popular, party and alcohol, and the possibility that I might get to make out with a cute boy in the hallway. The result of my lacking participation is today this; I no longer play the flute. It is still at home, the mouthpiece in silver, the whole flute covered in dust. I don’t play handball anymore, neither do I participate in any other sport. My grades went down, but thankfully not too much.

Today I still find it hard to put enough effort into studies, as I’m surrounded by distractions; what clothes I wear, what music and movies to watch, partying and alcohol, and the possibility that my boyfriend comes by so I get to make out with a cute boy in the hallways every now and again.

This is probably the subject I’ll struggle the most with, so I know that participation is going to be the first challenge, and the only way to get the most out of this course. All the information is provided in the readings, the lectures, not to mention on the net, but there is no one who is going to do the work for me. I have to meet up for the lectures, the tutorials, and I have to read over the readings x amount of times so I actually get what it is about.

Wish me luck

Klem fra Sunniva

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