something new

This is the result of my successful powerpoint presentation. I sent my project to my teacher and then made sure he recieved it, with his help I was able to find it and see what it looked like. When I came home to my linux system I was unable to access it. But my teacher sent me an e-mail in response to my query about what to do. Seems  I had to enable pop-ups because my browser is not accepting things. So I learned how to do that today – probably should have learned it long ago but I have let my roomie be the tech and I need to be more involoved at least in  my own work. So, I am working on my comics and the layout of my newspaper. I have two contributors besides myself and I am harrassing the rest. I hope to have a mix of graphics and text. I was really impressed by my fellow students work in my other media studies class. I hope to learn to do some of the things that they demonstrated so well in their presentations. Like the use of graphics – clip art and pictures, and the use of colour and different fonts. It is an exciting medium for artists – computer graphics. Anyhow I should be working not talking.

powerpoint

Hey today I had the greatest time with technology that I have ever had. An exaggeration, maybe but I was so impressed with the ease of powerpoint that I cannot believe it. I am so used to the hassel between microsoft and linux that I had forgotten how easy the web has become to navigate if you are a microsoft user. Anyhow, here is what happened. I had to do a powerpoint presentation for my other media studies and I have never used that program before. So I was a novice today when I approached the problem. I arrived at 11 am after working a four hour shift at my new job, and I sat down and with minimal instruction from the reference librarian and began to enter my essay into the slides. I did not have to read any directions because the slides just showed up and all I had to do was fill them with my content. Anyhow, you probably all know this stuff but it was all new to me. The end of my story is that I finished my project at 2 minutes to 2 pm (due 2pm) and the only problem I had was importing my graphics from hotmail. I did not know how to rotate or stretch them and I did not find out until I spoke with my teacher that I could have used photo shop ( something else I have never used) but it is OK. The project was delivered and my instructor showed me how to modify my graphics to fit into the slide. And finally a successfully completed assignment on time!!!!And no new media anxiety!!

making comics

Today I started on my paste up for my newspaper/e-zine.  I am making a collage for my other Media Studies class and I am going to do my comics at the same time. I also have an idea what Ravengirl is going to look like, stay tuned!! I have not made any graphics lately as I have been working on the text I want to place on my pages. It is beginning to seem doable. I have a major collection of news items to prompt some ideas for my first edition. I want to have a theme at least at first. marginalization, gender bias,racism, economics – something topical and interesting. Or I might just let my contributors set the tone. That would really be interesting – some of my friends are pretty radical and politically active.

new media

I am frustrated beyond belief. Now my blog site is acting up!! Whenever I sign in it puts another web site address in the tittle space and the web site I came from (hotmail) in the text body, what is that about? I just lost a whole posting because it went back to MSN instead of posting to my blog. What is it?

So this is a repeat complaint – what else is new. I am finding it very hard bucking the mainstream with my rival OS. My roomie is obsessed with new tech and he keeps putting new browsers, and OSs in my computer. The last time he did it he added Mandriva and it took over control of my hard drive and would not recognize my openSuse/KDE desktop. So I could not get at any of my files. He had to remove it and let me have my original file system. Thank the gods!! Next he introduced me to the new OPERA web browser, which is way faster than Mozilla Firefox but otherwise not that different so far. So here I sit surrounded by new tech and frustrated by it all.

I am scanning the paste-up of my e-zine this weekend. I have invited friends and collegues to submit articles, poems, photos, drawings, rants, comics, or short stories to my page and then I will create it!!

getting submissions

Well frustration has set in permanently now. Every time I go home I have a new web browse or a new OS to deal with . I have used so many new aplications that they are beginning to dance in my head like Xmas sugarplums!!!

As for my term project, I am asking my friends and aquaintances to submit articles, photos, poem, or short stories for my e-zine. I am making a paste-up this weekend and scanning the format so I can see what it will all look like as a web page.

 I have been frustrated by the disconnect between Microsoft and linux – what else is new. I am almost ready to admit defeat and return skulking to the mainstream camp being unable to stand the tension  and the travelling between the college and my house. Right now I am looking for a Frontage web site tutorial and before next week I will have to learn how to do power point for a presentation on-line. Whew!! Is digital life ever busy. I long for the quiet of the lake and the sounds of the birds (Instead of the constant clik-clak of the keyboard!).

web page blues

Hey I am back after another bout with that flu that seems to be stalking the campus. I have not been able to work and I am spending a lot of time reading. I think that I am going to try to make a web page on each of microsoft and linux and see which is easiest. I am going to draw and scan a picture of my page this weekend and then invite some of my friends to contribute poems,pictures, editorials, whatever that adress the issues of borderlands and marginality. I have decided to make a page that resembles a newspaper and that way I can chunk the information and pictures to make an interesting mosaic of text and visuals. Hopefully! Otherwise I am learninb how to do power point for my other media studies.

Oh yeah, a cool thing happened this weekend. My roomie was downloading openSUSE on his kids computer and it kept refusing to load so he goes into the bios to check for the error and it says error on line 17. So he says to me google error on line 17 and you would not believe what happened. Without hesitation google produced the information!! Imagine, what esoteric information can be accessed if only you know what to ask for. By the way, he was unable to correct the error, the computer was an old compaq, and he could not correct the problem and ended up downloading another program, Mandriva instead. I was absolutely amazed at the versatility of the search engine!! So that is my new digital media story for this week.

chandler

I have been reading magazines and articles trying to define and identify affects of determinism on our ideas of culture and I came upon an interview in Discover – September 2007- with Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist. He is described as a linguistic explorer, hunting around the sentences and syntax of human language for clues to the inner world of the human brain (48). He is interested to what extent language is biologically programmed and he suggests that language is instinctual, partly hardwired in to our brains and partly learned. The interesting point in this interview is how words and language are used – for example – the difference in nuance and meaning between the statements invading Iraq as opposed to liberating Iraq. What Pinker suggests is that the meaning of the statement depends on how the population felt about the former regime in Iraq and whether or not they welcome a new regime. Neither of these linguistics frames is more true or better than the other . Pinker says – it is important to understand the great power of language but one should not overestimate it….we do not live in a fantasy world of our own linguistic creations (52).

Pinker also addresses the idea of education as being a kind of indoctrination of our societys conventional ideas. He says – we must figure out how things work, to know the truth, and to not allow ourselves to be fooled or misled (71). He says that the whole point of politics, ethics, science is to get to the truth to discover and reveal how the world really is. Science and history and journalism are presented as truth-seeking institutions , and these are sometimes in direct opposition to the parts of our minds that want to be walled off from reality. Pinker shows the powerful affect of language on the way we think about truth and lies. This is a scientific determinism stance.

This article and the present state of interest in language and how we perceive the world is very important to our understanding of how media and institutions of the mainstream society define truth. Science and education speak to us through words and concepts – but we must be discriminating with what we do with the information. Excellent article.

chandler readings

Just finished posting to the forum and I wanted to say that I felt these readings were excellent. I struggle with technology and its influence in my life and I wonder sometimes if I can just get by without it. I can surely get by without MSN and Facebook, but I am rather attached to my cellphone and email. And I absolutely love the revolutionary idea of open source technologies, it appeals to my counterculture sensibilities. I find myself somewhat isolated by my choices ( for example, of my linux OS, of my KDE and Gnome desktops) although my room mate says that I am not a user but only a follower. I feel that he is just proving that he believes that technology defines a persons status by judging me in that way. I do not feel like that. I feel that we should be able to live without technology. It is dangerous to depend on things we cannot ultimately control, that we cannot fix, and we cannot make. The sheer weight of knowledge needed to support and continue our technological world is mind boggling. Who can possibly understand and utilize all of this capacity for change

facebook

Today I read a very interesting article about Facebook. The article addresses the benefits of this social network. What interested me was the way in which the users of this site created a social community. They used Facebook as a social register, as a way to stay in contact with friends from high school,and they used it to create a loose network of new friends. The article also suggests that Facebook use adds to the psychological well-being of the users.

OK, now I have to say that Facebook does not give me a sense of well-being. In fact whenever I go there I begin to feel guilty that I am not rersponding in the same way as some of my contacts. When they send me gifts and nudges and write on my wall I just feel weird and I feel worse if I have to use the ignore button. I feel as if this social utility is telling me how to relate to my friends. And even more, that I would not be even in this type of relationship willingly. I have friends on that site who have revealed the most astoundingly intimate stuff; and I have somebody who invited me to become a vampire the other day. I know its meant to be in fun, and maybe I am being too straight here, but please.

I am reasonably happy with my relationships and friendships – I admit that my life is not perfect but I seem to get sufficient stimulus and support from my real time, real life community. That makes me feel weird too. Because according to this article most college students depend heavily on Facebook to keep and make friends. The joining of virtual groups is good, but what if you do not want to join groups, does that make you an interloper on the site. Obviously, I am a reluctant user. I have friends who are non-users for reasons having to do with privacy and time. Apparently most of the users studied in this report used Facebook for at least 20 minutes every day!! If I was using Facebook that often, as well as using my hotmail, and messenger, and doing my on-line homework and research – when would I have time to say read a book, go for a walk, talk to my room mate, you know – life. Anyway, good article and very eye-opening – look for it.

Ellison, Nicole B., Steinfield, Charles, Lampe, Cliff. The Benefits of Facebook Friends: Social Capital and College Students Use of Online Social Network Sites. Department of Telecommunications, Information Studies, and Media. Michigan State University. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (2007). 1143-1168. International Communication Association.

interactive museum

I was writing a poem about President J.F.Kennedys assassination in November 22, 1963 and I found this book in our Curriculuum lab. The book titled PRESIDENT KENNEDY HAS BEEN SHOT was created by NEWSEUM the worlds first interactive museum of news. The book has an audio CD that lets you hear events as they happened! This audio CD is made up of analogue recordings that have been transferred to digital media and then included in this interactive book project. The book refers to the CD as a running commentary of the events of that awful day unfold. The book is full of rarely seen photos and the commentaries and memories of the people who were there.

Newseum takes visitors behind the scenes to see how and why news is made.The Newseum is funded by the Freedom Forum, a non-profit, non-partisan foundation. See their site -  www.newseum.org. This book was co-authored by Cathy Trost and Susan Bennett, both award winning journalists. The audio was narrated by Dan Rather, an anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News since 1981. In 1963 he was one of the first journalists to confirm the death of the president.

What intrigued me about this book/CD combination wa the use of digital technology to produce the artifact – the book and the CD; the idea that news can be interactive in this sense – that we can stop and start the information at our own speed. We can make the news comfortable in a sense. Digital technology can do wonders to transfer information. And it can do wonders to educate and inform those who have no access to news in real time. As a person who was touched deeply by the events of that day in November I found myself remembering how I felt. It was a very powerful news story at the time it happened and this digital reproduction allows the reader/listener to experience this pivotal event in the manner in which it unfolded at the time. On radio and through the media of TV and newspaper journalism.

Astoundingly, the idea of a virtual museum seems to be very slow in catching on. I believe that digital reproduction of news, artifacts, and information  is a perfect way to preservce rare items and to present information and education to people who may never have the chance to travel to see museums and other cultural collections. The idea of a museum to make the news more personal is a very post-modern concept. Information available to all – sounds positively democratic!! Anyhow, this book is not the first of its kind (I have a book with an CD and a DVD about H.G. Wells story, WAR OF THE WORLDS, along with an accompanying broadcast of Orson Welles news-making radio broadcast of the same story. Digital reproduction of analogue recordings is an excellent way of preserving and presenting historical events.