My Finale

So... It has come to an end. It is pretty crazy how quickly this semester has gone. As for Networked Media Production, it has been a really interesting course and I can honestly say I do now think differently about the way I use the Internet and Networked Media. My Blog has also been a real learning experience, as I have learnt and experimented with new online technologies. I believe I have benefited a lot from learning from Tutors/Lecturers who have recent real world experience working because of their work with IceLab. At times I didn't quite always understand some of the ideas behind Networked Media but as I have gone through the course I have learnt a lot.

I wasn't sure which 3 blog posts to choose but I have chosen basically my last 3 running up to my assignment because it is interesting to see the work process...

- My Music

- My Entertainment Media

- My New Favourite Website

At first when I started my blog I thought I was going to include a lot more video and images but I found that just me writing every week was nice and personal. I tried to do that with these blogs and this shows by the way I have called it "My Blog" this was just a temporary idea but I liked it because it is literally "My Blog" and I have intended to write about "Me" and Networked Media. I also called every blog post "My ..." just mainly to keep it interesting and also it enabled to keep it personal. 

Overall I have enjoyed this Unit and it has honestly taught me a lot and I think differently because of it. Who knows... I might even continue with my Blog...

My Rationale ll

Ok I have now completed my Data Visualisation. I am really proud of it. I have learnt a lot. After finally deciding on doing a Data Visualisation I started to collect data over a two week period. I gathered information about how much music I listen to, how much television I watch, radio, internet amongst other daily activities. Once this data was all collected I struggled with how to represent the data in a easy, effective and interesting way while being able to incorporate the Networked Media aspect, because that is really important to me. After looking at many possibilities, Michael then showed me 'Google Docs' and it saved me! It is really great. It is exactly what I wanted to use for presenting my assignment. It is easily set out and it makes it a good way to view the data. When looking at ways to make my graphs aesthetic and presentable. When using Google Docs I did some research into Data Visualisation and the work of Edward Tufte. Due to the restrictions of Google Docs I don't have a lot of choice as to how I  can set up the graphs but after reading about Tufte's opinions I am still happy with what Google Docs offers. I experimented with different styles of graphs to display different information and then chose styles that suited the data. I preferred using graphs that showed change in the visual aspect of the data as the data changed. I saw this was important for a Data Visualisation. I found that I tended to use bar charts due to the fact that it shows change in the data in the way the bars/columns are set up. I thought the pie chart was also effective and I found that one of Google Docs advantages was the use of interactive charts, which I found was suitable for Networked Media Production due to the fact that data can be retrieved easier via interactive visualisations rather than static 2D hard representations.

I really hope I do well in this assignment because of the work I have put in however, even if I don't do well I will still be happy because this assignment has taught me a lot about my daily life and activities and even how Data Visualisation is useful and how we can construct Networked Media. As I said in one of my other blogs I have actually done similar things in the past to discover how my week is constructed so this isn't actually the first time I have done something like this. However, from this assignment I have learnt a lot more about the ways to construct a visualisation.

My New Favourite Website (Google Docs)

Google Docs is totally awesome. I have been struggling a lot recently with how to present my assignment. Originally I intended to just set up my data on Photoshop and then just post that somehow on the net to incorporate the "Networked Media" aspect. Then Michael showed me Google Docs and it is so good. It is exactly how I wanted to present my assignment. It enables me to have my data accessible in a excel document and still have great looking interactive graphs. That Feltron website was the inspiration for this assignment and so to have had a similar idea on mine is really good. Google Docs has helped me to create something kind of similar so I am really pleased about that. I am still working on it so hopefully it will be pretty good by the end.

My Entertainment Media

So I have been collecting my 'data' for my assignment. I was originally just collecting information about my songs but found that to be pretty average so now I am collecting information about a lot of the other entertainment media that surrounds my life. I am retrieving data on the amount of television I watch and the amount of radio I listen to as well as how much Internet I use. This will be an interesting study to see how many hours of the day is taken up by entertainment media. I have actually been finding this really interesting. I have actually done similar things in the past, in my own time (sad I know), for my own interest to find out how the day is divided into different things and activities that make my day what it is. I have also gathered information about how much time I spend on the bus because I when I am not driving to Uni I bus which can take quite a bit of time. I will usually listen to music on the bus so I am going to do a comparison of how much time I am listening to music is taken up while traveling on the bus. It should be pretty interesting. I hope to learn a lot from this assignment.

My Music

One of my ideas for my project is to collect the information about the music I listen to over a period of time (probably about a week to two weeks) and then put it together into a visualisation. I have already started to record some data and write down how many songs I am listening to in a day etc. however I don't know what to do from there. I will talk to Nathan in my next tute about how to display my data on the web. I also got the marks back for the last assignment and to tell the truth I wasn't completely happy. I want to make sure though that with this next assignment I can get some more feedback so I can do better in this project.

I thought that this video we saw in our tutorial was appropriate.

My Data

Unfortunately I missed the lecture for this week because I only flew in late from Brisbane the night before and I couldn't see myself getting up to catch the 8 o'clock bus to go to Uni the next morning. So that also means that I missed out on learning about Data Visualization. I really hate missing lectures (that does make me sound kinda like a weirdo) but I seriously feel like I miss out on important information when I do. It then meant that going into the tutorial that afternoon I had no idea what Data Visualisation was. Thankfully it didn't take me long to understand what it was. When I first looked at the assignment options for this production project I saw the first one and pretty much crossed it out because I didn't understand what it was. Now that I have an understand I might even do it for my assignment. I found it really interesting collecting that information. I particularly liked the data collected by the "Feltron" guy. I thought that was really cool and I would love to do something like that but I don't think I have the time to do something like that... :P I also really love Google Trends and I find it really interesting...

My Break

Well... I haven't written a blog post in a couple of weeks because I have been on mid-semester break so I have been busy writing assignments and what have you. So... I really need to write a new post. It is nice to have that last assignment done as well because I am pretty proud of how it turned out. As for the rest of my two weeks off I haven't exactly done a lot. I wrote two essays and that is about it. Now that I am back from my the break though I have been back into the normal routine. Today in Networked Media Production we wrote some basic HTML which I really enjoyed. I have never done anything like it before and thought it was pretty clever. The closest I have got to do with HTML before was back in High School when we had to create our own web pages and we would copy and paste HTML into our own webpages :P So this was a nice new experience... Can I just say that Ice-Cream Sandwiches look pretty gross... I don't know what else to say about it other than I really enjoyed doing it but feel like I am not competent enough to do it on my own for the next major assignment.  

My Rationale

The Olympic Effect is a blog that looks at how the Olympics will effect China now that the Games are over. It took me awhile to decide on a current issue for the assignment. The obvious choice was the Olympics because of the mass media exposure it was getting but I wanted to do something different. After some thinking I decided that I would do the Olympics but because it is such a large topic I could focus on just a certain part of it. The country of China is just such an interesting place and because everyone has learnt so much about it lately I thought that it would be interesting to see how the Games have affected it. The next step was to come up with what I wanted on my blog. I really wanted a site that would have writing, photos and videos plus external links to other sites. Being a reference page I thought that the most important thing was external links. I found a good quote that I put towards the top of the page and then found a YouTube video that is a Chinese advertisement for the Olympics. I found some great photos from Flickr and then wrote a few articles about the information I had gathered. There are quite a few links to out side sites and articles. I added a poll to find out what people who visit the site liked about the Olympics. I also created a Photoshop title which I thought gave the site an interesting and striking title.

There were a few things I had problems with. Firstly I wanted to rearrange the order of the blog posts which I discovered from Nathan could only be done by changing the date that they were posted on. To avoid confusion I then removed the dates from each blog post so that they were not seen as 'daily' posts but they compliment each other by being all together. The other problem was I couldn't link the photos in the posts back to their originally site. I did the right thing by saying who they were by but couldn't manage to have the photos as links themselves. After a lot of experimenting the only thing I could do was to put the captions that are underneath the photos as links back to the Flickr page.

I have actually been quite pleased with how the page has turned out and because this is still a relevant issue I feel that more could be added to it all the time.

My Other Blog

So I have been working pretty hard on my assignment blog. I have officially decided on what I am going to do and have already done quite a bit to it. I am doing the option 3 which is about a current issue and therefore I am doing it about Beijing post-Olympics, or as some people (including me) are calling it, "The Olympic Effect". It is coming along really quite well and I am really pleased with the design/layout I have done. It is pretty plain and simple because originally I created it all bright and colourful to attract attention but after awhile I thought it looked kind of tacky. The new look is all black with creamy coloured writing which I think gives it an interesting look which grabs the readers attention just as much as a colourful page would. I also created a nice title design on Photoshop which makes it a bit different and keeps it different from the basic template. The only other thing which I am trying to work out is how to post the posts backwards so the first post remains at the top... so far not much luck...

My Olympics

Coming up with a current issue for my 'Production Project A' has been a kinda difficult. I haven't been sure how big or major the current issue needs to be or also how current it needs to be. The obvious one would be the Olympics because it has just been so exposed by the media however, it has just finished so it isn't exactly "current". I had one thought though. Even though the Olympics are over there still seems to be a definite aftermath type feeling in the air. People are still talking about it and the buzz of the event seems to be still very fresh. I am sure that there would be a lot to talk about even now that the competition is over. China has been preparing for this event for almost 8 years so I can't see the feeling their to just close down a few days after it ends. If I do something about this "effect" I intend to have some images and definitely some for of video probably from YouTube. Due to the massive scale of an event like this there is just so much information out there that can be useful. I don't want to do something basic like a report style reference page that feeds the audience basic information about the 2008 Olympics. I want it to be something different but still something people will still be interested in because it has just been such a major defining moment in the last time period.