Fri
Oct
31
The three blogs I have chosen for the assessment are 4, 5 and 15. I feel that the content of these blogs are mainly based on the work we have done in tutorials and work in lectures. I signed up for delicious, flickr and wordpress to help with the process of the blogs. My networked media skills have grown considerably since the start of this course as I have learnt more about html, RSS, and basic internet and computer skills/knowledge.
For Production Project B, I chose to do the photographic tour as I am very interested in photography and thought it would be appropriate and wise to chose this topic. At first my initial idea was to simply talk about my travels around Europe as I was there for a period of 12 months last year. After narrowing down about 40 photos from roughly 1000, I then narrowed it down again to 10. I uploaded these photos on flickr and tried to geotag them to the appropriate countries although the proxy server would not let me. During a tutorial, I came to realise I could not really write a story that would connect all the photos together as they basically are ‘happy snaps’ and this was not the aim of the assessment. I later then searched taxis on flickr and started to gather a story with them and other photos. I then changed from flickr to google maps as a way to show the photos and create a tour as it was better suited for the requirements of the assessment and generally looked better. Actually inserting the image was one of the hardest parts as first I think you could simply copy the url and paste in then later found out I had to copy the image location. I also added the html link underneath the photo for people to see where I retrieved the image from. All the images used are from flickr and are licensed appropriately so I could re-use them. I would have liked to take my own photos and write a story with it instead of using flickr photos but time restricted me from doing this.
http://maps.google.com.au/maps/mm?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=-47.989922,23.90625&spn=169.265132,360&z=1&msa=0&msid=103988773210658940628.000459dff45f3469743d9
Fri
Oct
24
Browsing through flickr this week on some ideas, came across a few ideas I could use my my photo tour. For example I looked up people all over the world doing the Asian Peace sign, looked up different types of taxis, people talking on the phone, that kind of stuff that happens and all over the world. Then I liked the photos taken with all the different types of taxis and thought I could do some kind of mission around the world and talk about all the taxis I went in while I was in certain countries. I though flickr was the site I would use to show the photos but google maps is more exciting and shows the story better on the map. After signing up to google, we did a test run with a photo and had to do this quite difficult process of using html img tags to upload a photo. After writing it all down on paper, I was set. Now i just had to write a story to go with the photos and choose and select which ones i actually want to use.
Here’s the first photo that has already been geotagged.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/longzheng/74355229/
Sat
Oct
18
I selected my final photos that I plan to use for my photographic tour and put them all up on flickr. I then tried to tag them to the relevant countries and places but it would not let me. Michael said it could be due to the Uni of Canberra’s proxy server not allowing flickr to geotag photos. Michael also said a lot more than this. I have collected some, what I think are good and quality pictures from my travels overseas but I even know there is no definite story line to them all. He said there should be a narrative and a story structure. Like a road trip or following something or all the pubs with the same name, something like that. So after ditching my photos, I am still stumped. I’d love to use my photos that I have taken myself but I think for this, it might be best to use other people’s from flickr that are licensed appropriately and that I am able to use. I think a road trip could be good, or some kind of mission to get something and the troubles and dramas along the way.
Fri
Oct
10
This week we looked at API’s. We looked at some such as Wolfenflickr and Retrievr that were really interesting. They pulled up photos from flickr that were relevant to either what you typed in or what colours you drew on the palette. And seeing as though I am heavily thinking about doing the photographic tour for my next assessment, I was very intrigued by this. Especially ‘We tell stories-The 21 steps’ which I took particular fancy to. This is a kind of a photographic tour but of a map. It places points where the person went and what happened. In this story a person gives his a memory card and he runs all over the city and we follow his adventure from a aerial point of view of the city and a bubble of information pops up each time he stops.
Seeing this made me think about my assessment and what story I will lead mine with. I have narrowed my photos down to about 20 but I can’t seem to make it follow in a story structure, although I must admit I haven’t tried that hard yet. We have the next 3 weeks to work on it and what I need to do is finalise my photos, get a story and make it good!
Sat
Oct
4
This week we talked about data visualisation which as Michael said to be a representation of abstract, non-physical information, (versus the depiction of physical artifacts). I knew this was the first topic of our next assessment and I was very interested before I found out how incredibly intense it all looks. We looked at data vis’s that expressed people’s lifestyles over one year and what that did by where they put all the data in to pie charts and graphs and numbers. I think the hardest part about the process would be putting the data all together into to some typ e of visaulisation. With going into more detail about the 3 options for the assessment in the tute, I became more interested and intrigued with the photographic tour. Seeing as though I’m doing photography as part of my course, thought it’d be good to explore this further. Seeing as though i have travelled around Europe and taken many a photos, i though this could be a good start.
Fri
Sep
26
After completing the assessment and having a two week break, I feel that I’m ready to take on more. However the tute proved me wrong. We learnt how to write HTML and not that it was hard to do, but just so confusing and difficult. Difficult in the sense that if you were to write one little code wrong, the entire HTML wouldn’t work and so particular attention had to be paid! After copying the codes from Nathan, and the webpage actually looking good, I myself felt like I had accomplished something. It was really interesting how it all was fitted together. I always think to myself how someone actually discovered this and out it together. I think if we had to do it all over again by ourselves, I would absolutely die. With more practice, it might seem possible but I’m sure my future career, at this stage, will not be making HTML’s!
Fri
Sep
5
Site - http://egriff.wordpress.com/
The target market intended for this site were really those who are being affected by the Australian drought or those who simply take an interest or want to know more. These people are able to view current water restrictions, maps of rainfall intake over Australia, general information and also photos of the drought.
Problems that occurred whilst making this site mainly lie in the uploading of photos onto the front page. Attaching the photo from another site made it more difficult to display and post. Another problem was with font style and size. Adding entries from different computers made it difficult as all font size and style was different, although a quick fix on one steady computer resolved that minor problem.
I chose wordpress.com to publish my information online as it was easily accessible and the layout style with blog posts and pages quite suitable. It handled information well and did not look overcrowded on the page.
The ABC-Drought Coverage site would be good for gathering information about Australia’s drought as it is a reliable source although the layout on the site is structured in a most confusing way making it difficult for the reader to pin-point exact information. There is an overload of links down the left hand side of the page which could have been put together and displayed in a more resourceful/easier way. Seeing this site, I realised I did not want columns of links down the sides and so have put tabs up the top linking off to other pages to avoid confusion for those viewing.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/drought2002/
Fri
Aug
29
Dramatic changes this week. Have completely changed which topic in the assessment I am going to do. Looking and getting more involved in number 2, the online exhibition, I realised that I just wasn’t keen to follow through with it. Trying to figure out if all the content was licensed appropriately was too difficult to figure out. I did the stubborn thing and didn’t ask for help and immediately changed which topic I was going to do. Now I am completely set on doing number 3- the reference page or site. It seems more appropriate and more straight forward then the online exhibition. Looking around the internet for some common current affairs issues, I came across an article on the drought and thought it was would be a good topic to pick as it has a lot of information on it and is still going on as we speak. Now just to get all the information out and put in into a format.
The lecture this week was on multiplicity. While I was there, I was thinking to my self how could this be related to networked media production with all the digits and terms of mathematical like issues. Then reading over the notes I had written, I realised all the terms strongly related to the internet and the web as multiplicity and clutter is a big problem and often causes combinatorial explosion resulting in overload.
