Assessment #2

Through these 13 weeks of labouring on my 3 sites, i've come to appreciate the internet and how it works a little more. Also the balance between form and content does play a big role of creating a good website.

For my blog I have tried to make it both interesting and functional. One thing i changed from the first assessment was the template and colours. Originally my blog had a black background with alot of fluro fonts sort of like neon lights at night but it did look a little all over the place. I then changed it to what it is now, using the main colours blue, green,grey and whitewhich i think is a bit more aesthetically pleasing. I also think my posts have got a bit more interesting and longer than my first posts which didnt really say or do much like this one .

For my del.icio.us account i tried to add weird, quirky sites that alot of people may not have heard of but may enjoy. I also did and popular well known sites as well to balance out all the random ones. To help distinguish between them i used tags and bundled all the randome sites in to one bundle and the others into catergories like entertainment and educational. Heres a link to a random site and a popular site .

For my flickr account i put both personal photos and photos that i think are funny or cool. This is so people looking at my account would get and idea about who i am and what i look like. I also chose the layout the way it is so you could seeas many of my photos as you can per page and my sets. So the form of my account helps accentuate how interesting it is by being able to show more in the space allocated. I also, for the description, tried to tell the stroy behind the picture so people might understand why i took the photo. Here is an example of a story behind a photo .

So for the interestingness of the three sites i've tried to cater for everyones interests, especially my own, by having a wide range of different thing within them.

My Visitors

It would be useful to know how many visitors my blog has because then i could know how many people have seen my work and possibly liked my work. The one thing that i would like to know about my visitors is how they got to my site and why the went to it. I am currently using a sitemeter counter on my blog. I'm using a sitemeter counter because it was the first counter i came across and i now also know that it had alot of information about the visitors to my site. I have had 145 hit on my site but i've had more pave visits which is 230. The hits are coming from all over the world but mostly from the United States and Australia but also Canada, Brazil and Italy. My visitors get to my site mostly from google but also from my flickr site. On an average my visitors stay for half a minute which doesnt seem quite long but its long enought to flick through the site to see whats on it.On Flickr you can tell how many people have viewed your photos and with del.icio.us you can see how many other people have bookmarked the same websites as you. Heres a link to my sitemeter site.

Technorati

This post will be a little more detailed than my other post about technorati because i now know more about it. Technorati is just a search engine for blogs with some other features. You can favorite other peoples blogs and people can favourite your blogs. I have no technorati authority and my rank is over 3 million. I dont think these numbers will change much because my blog probably wouldnt interest other people.
Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.
Technorati Rank is calculated based on how far you are from the top. The blog with the hightest Technorati Authority is the #1 ranked blog. The smaller your Technorati Rank, the closer you are to the top.
To tell the truth im not really sure how it all works which is probably one of the reasons my blog is doing poorly but i really dont care. Here is a link to my technorati profile and the technorati article on wikipedia .

Aesthetics

My definition of aesthetics is pleasing to the senses mostly visual. its short and to the point. Now i'm going to talk about two websites, one that is aesthetically pleasing and on that isnt. In my opinion, most websites on the net are aesthectically pleasing because they employ web designers to make sure that they are aesthetically pleasing.

A website that i find aesthetically pleasing is wikipedia . Wikipedia is a very useful website and to me it is aesthetically pleasing. It set set out properly with picture placed down the left and right. Also, if it is a long page there are links at the top of the page to take you to other places on the page so you dont have to scroll down looking for a certin part. It has a nice white background with black writing and also blue writing which means links to other pages on wikipedia about the certin word or phrase in blue. At the bottom of the page there is also links to other pages, in blue as well, concerning the topic and sometimes a table with links to other pages in wikipedia. Boxes are used around some text to draw attention to it as well.

Now to talk about a website that is ot aesthetically pleasing. I couldnt think of a webite off the top of my head that isnt aesthetically pleasing so i looked up bad website in google and came up with the Worlds Worst Website . This website isnt aethetically pleasing but on purpose. The website shows mistakes that some web designers make when designing a website. The website is full of animations,a flashing background, many different coloured boxes and fonts and many other things that arent aesthetically pleasing. this website is a good example of a website that looks bad but has good information.

XML & RSS

What is XML and RSS you might ask, well im going to tell you. XML or eXtensible Markup Language is a general purpose markup language and is primarily used to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems. It is a simplified subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and is designed to be fairly human-legible. By adding semantic constraints, application languages can be implemented in XML. Also, XML is sometimes used as the specification language for such application languages. XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a fee-free open standard. The W3C recommendation specifies both the lexical grammar, and the requirements for parsing. For more information on XML click here .
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.
Users of RSS content use software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators". The user subscribes to a feed by entering a link of the feed into the reader program. The reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user. RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel". For more information on RSS click here .
You might also be asking why RSS is important, well, its important because it keeps you up to date with things that may interest you or may be important to you such as the news or sports scores. If that still isnt enough information for you then go to XML.com and/or whatisrss.com .
All this talking about XML and RSS has lead me to set up an RSS reader account. I have chosen to sign up with google reader instead of bloglines for a few reasons. The first is i didnt want to to search for any other RSS reader sites so it was a choice between google reader and bloglines. I first decided to check out both sites first before i made a decision. I looked at google reader first and found out because of my gmail account i already had a google reader account which became my second reason. I also had a look at bloglines to see if it was any different but it looked pretty much the same. Also, google reader is under my gmail account so i dont have to remember any new user names and passwords which is much more convenient to me. These are my reasons for choosing google reader as my RSS reader.

Assessment #1 Blog post

The amount of work ive done in MPI104 so far is fairly big. I usually dont use the internet much but with this course involving extensive use of the internet ive learned alot about different websites and how to use them. Now i have do tell you why i think my blogger, del.icio.us and flickr accounts are interesting or how or why i think they have "interestingness". Firstly, how i think they are interesting is that the dont follow most conventional websites, my blog consists of random fact about myself and Mr T, my delicious account consists of primarily random websites i thought sounded funny and my flickr account is just personal pictures of me and some of my friends. Why i think they're interesting is because it involves me in alot way. Most other people probably wouldnt find it interesting unless they themselves were in the sites. Ive put alot of work into these sites so that someone might view it and find it interesting and i think they are interesting in that way. Meaning my sites are interesting because someone else might find my sites to be interesting. They are interesting because they may interest you. Thats alot of interestings. I have been a bit slack in some areas but they all came together in the end. Ive been finding some cool pictures on flickr and some cool websites on delicious and ive had a good time writing new things on my blog. I had help by looking at other peoples blogger, delicious and flickr accounts to see what i can change in mine or something they hadnt thought of. Ive also posted on pariah productions because i went to school with they guy. Anyway, that is how and why i think my accounts have "interestingness".

Technorati

I like the idea of technorati. I like how i can claim my blog. Anyway, heres a link to my Technorati profile

My White Magna

This is a true story about my white 1988 mitsubishi magna sedan and all the trouble it put me through. Some people may say that its my fault but i say that the magna was cursed because nothing but bad luck came to me when i had it and ive had no trouble with my new car.

It all started when i bought my first car, a white magna for $1200 dollars. I was going to learn how to drive in it and use it till it died. My first year with it was fine, a few things wrong with the motor but you can expect that from an old car. It wasnt until i got my P's, thats when things went bad. My first bad experience with the magna was the week i was doing work placement at the commercial club, the second week after having got my P's. I had finished for the day and was going home. I was looking for a piece of paper that was on my passenger seat that had the address of Selby Watson. I needed to pay a bill there. I was coming up to the roundabout at gurwood street which is where selby and watson are. As i was coming up to the roundabout i still couldnt find the paper with the address. I remember looking up and seeing i had plenty of time to find it before the roundabout. The second time i looked up i saw a car on the right coming at me then bang, it hit me. My second week of driving and already in a crash. I took responsibility for it and the guy wasnt angry. We parked out front of the advertiser and got someone from the advertiser to call the police because both i and the other driver thought you had to call the cops to report the accident. When the cops arrived they were nice and said that we should just exchange detail because if we got them involved someone would get a fine for negligence and that would be me.So we exchanged details and went our separate ways. After the other drive had left I looked straight across the road and saw Selby and Watson. Just my luck. The damage to his car ended up costing me just over $2000 and I didn’t fix my car because there wasn’t much damage and it wasn’t worth it. I was lucky this time with the cops but I wasn’t so lucky the next time.

The easter long weekend. I was coming home from the Kooringal shopping mall and found that cops had set up a random breath test the way I go home. I thought it would be cool to be breath tested and I knew I hadn’t been drinking in the last 24 hours. As I drove by sure enough they pulled me over. I pulled behind a cop car. There was about 4 of them, two on each side of the road. As I took the breath test I looked ahead to see a smug looking cop leaning on the car. I could tell right away he was an asshole. After I passed my breath test the smug cop got off the car, walked up to my window and told me to press my accelerator. Not seeing the harm in it I did. He looked at my car funny and asked me to do it again. After doing it two more times he looked under the car and told me I had four holes in my muffler. So he then starts accusing me of modifying my crappy car by putting four holes in the muffler with an ice pick which would incur a $200 on the spot fine. Luckily he left it to the cop who gave me the breath test to decide what to do. I had no idea the holes were there and have no idea how to modify a car in any way. So the cop gave me a defect notice so I had to get my muffler fixed in two weeks or I couldn’t drive my car. After I got home I had a look for myself. I saw what looked like hole in the muffler so I got a stick and checked they were holes. They weren’t. I took my car to the mechanic and he said they were just welding dents. So I had to pay the mechanic and go to the RTA to get rid of my defect notice. In the end it only cot me $17 but it was just annoying and was nothing compared to my next encounter with the police.

It was the Queens birthday long weekend. I was driving some friends around to parties. It was raining. I made the mistake of letting someone I don’t like in my car which over loaded it, four in the back and one in the front. There’s a loophole in the law saying two people can use a seatbelt so I thought the people in the back were wearing seatbelts. I was wrong. I was just driving back to a party when I saw a cop turn into the street and follow me. I was nervous because of the people in the back so I pulled over before the cops signalled me over. I always said to myself if I was pulled over with people in the car I would check if they had seatbelts on but when it actually happens it slips your mind. The cop came over and breathalysed me and then noticed the people in the back not wearing seatbelts. I thought they took them off when we pulled over but one of my friends admitted to not wearing one. Another luckily argued out of it while the other two including the person I now hat didn’t really say anything. The funny thing was that the people in the back were drinking and they were under aged but the cops didn’t care. They got id’s from me and three of the people in the back, sat in the their car for a while then came back with infringement notices for us. $225 fines for the people in the back and a $725 fine for me, 12 points off my licence because of double demerits and loss of licence for 3 months (I still currently have no points on my licence so I have to be very careful when driving). The people in the back agreed to even the fines by giving me $100 each but only one gave it to me, the guy who admitted to not wearing his belt. the most annoying part was the loss of licence. I would have paid triple the fines as long as I didn’t lose my licence. That was the last straw. Since I didn’t loose my licence straight away I bought a new car and my friend said he’d buy my magna. Heres the kicker, since he’s bought it hes been pulled over at kapooka for speeding and just last week he got pulled over for speeding again. $700 fine and 3 points off his licence not to mention all the things hes been hitting but that may just be his bad driving. The curse lives on…..
Go to http://www.aussiemagna.com/ for more magnas.

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

I love looking at optical illusions. Here are a few of my favourites

This is the snake rotation optical illusion. The circles look like they're rotating but they are actually not.


This is called a Hermann-Grid. Try to count the black dots. You cant because there are no black dots, it justs looks like there is.


Click on the picture above if you cant read it properly.
Hope you like these as much as i do. Click here for more illusions.

Guitar Hero VS Frets on Fire

Which is better, guitar hero or frets on fire. I myself have a very one sided view because i have only really played guitar hero but what is your opinion? Both games have pretty much the same gameplay as shown in these pictures.


Guitar hero on the left obviously has better graphics but there are things that frets on fire has tha guitar hero doesnt. Firstly, frets on fire can be downloaded while you hae to pay for guitar hero. Also, with guitar hero you have a set track list and once you've unlocked them all thats all the songs you have. While with frets on fire you can download songs people have made or even make your own. Thats probably the best thing about frets on fire the amount of different song but it does lack a little in gameplay. In guitar hero there is an applause meter. If you start missing alot of notes or play the wrong notes then the applause meter goes down. Once it goes too low you fail the song. Frets on fire doesnt have that ability so you always finish the song which makes it a little less challenging. Guitar hero also has star meter which once activated doubles the points you're getting. Frets on fire also doesnt have that ability. There are similarities between the games too. They both have the feature if you dont miss consecutive notes for a while your points double then tripple then quadruple but once you miss a note it goes back to normal. You can use the guitar hero guitar for both but you need to be able to connect it to your computer for frets on fire but most people use their keyboard. They both also have four levels of difficulty. In my opinion they're both good games and i think everyone should own copies of both games. Click here for more.

Frets on Fire

This post is to tell inform people who like guitar hero about frets on fire. Frets on fire is basically guitar hero for the computer. It has the same basic gameplay as guitar hero. I myself have not played it although i have been meaning to download it. I have seen it being playedand it seems pretty good.
Click here to look at or download frets on fire.

Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II

This post is about guitar hero and guitar hero II. I just want to express how awesome it is by writing a little bit about it. When i first heard about it i thought it was a stupid idea and i thought i would never buy it. That was until i played it at a friends house and saw how sweet it was. I myself can play guitar but i am self taught so i know most of the basics. I also had to learn on an old acoustic guitar my sister bought and only played a few times which made it a bit harder. Playing guitar hero was pretty realistic. Its a game where coordination is essential and it gives you a chance to play songs you normally wouldnt be able to play. There are different difficulties and a pretty good track list consisting of different genres from different times. In conclusion, this game is pretty sweet.
Click here for the guitar hero site.
Click here for the guitar hero II site.

Manly Sea Eagles

I am writing this post because so far this season Manly has not lost a game. I am a Manly supporter and have been a Manly supporter since I was a kid. My reasons for supporting is because my dad supports Manly. Over the years since i was a kid i liked watching their games but as i got older my interest faded. It is only recently ive started watching more games. Could it be because they are cuuently undefeated, probably but i just felt like posting about them. Click here for their homepage.

The Life of Mr T

Some people may think when they see Mr T that hes just a man that spits out stupid catch phrases and doesnt really do much more than that. To them I say you are sort of right. But to me i see a man who shaped a generation with his insightful coined phrases, a man who has been mimiced but never duplicated and has motivated and inspired the youth of the world through his motivational speeches. Mr T was born Laurence Tureaud in Chicago, Illinois. He is the first born in a family of twelve, four sisters and seven brothers. Through his childhood he enjoyed wrestling, playing football and studying martial arts. After finishing school and a breif stint in college, Mr T worked as a bodyguard for some famous people such as Muhammad Ali, Steve McQueen, Michael Jackson, Bruce Lee, Joe Frazier, and Diana Ross.

In 1970 he changed his anme to Mr T and got the idea for his trademark hairstyle from a picture of a an African Mandinka warrior and also started wearing a mass amount of chains. In 1982 he was spotted by Sylvester Stallone in the worlds toughest bouncer contest and was eventually cast in Rocky III as Clubber Lang, Rockys opponent. It was in this movie that he spoke those four words that would change his career, "I pity the fool". This led to his role of B.A. Baracus in the A Team. It was in 1983 when he started his motivational speaking to kids with his cartoon entitled Mr T. In the show he owned a gym and helped out young gymnasts with their training while also solving mysteries and fighting crime. Mr T also released motivational videos and cds with messages such as treat your mother right and telling kids to stay in school and stay away from drugs. Since then he has been referenced hundreds of times on tv and movies. If you like Mr T then you should love this site .

Flickr

I think flickr is a pretty cool site. People can show off their own photos and other photos found on the net, Anyway, heres a link to my Flickr account

MEMENTO

This is possibly the greatest movie ever made. The movie has all the things a gay daytime soap would have, some sort of amnesia, women with abusive boyfriend and a mystery to be solve. But this movie is about a trillin times better. Christopher Nolan is a genius writing and directing this excellent movie. I usually dont like Guy Pearce but in this movie hes is awesome. Theres not much else i fell like saying except if you havent seen it then go see it right now. Click here for more info.

Stanley Kubrick

This post will not be a long post because there is not much to say about the man except he is probably the greatest director to have lived. His films covered most genres such as drama, comedy, science fiction, war heist and horror. Not only did he cover most genres, he defined them with films like 2001: a space oddysey, the shining, Dr strangelove and others. Although in his long career he didnt direct many movies and he was a perfections known for having hundreds of takes for one scene, his films were quality instead of quantity. Click here for more.

del.icio.us

This is my delicious website.
It consists of websites i like and other random ones>

Charlie Kaufman

I thought i might write a post about one of my favourite writers Charlie Kaufman. Some of the scripts he writes are strangely good and i always seem to enjoy them. The scripts he has wirtten are as follows in order of my favourite to least favourite.
Being John Malkovich
Adaptation
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Human Nature
Not only does he write cool, original scripts, he gets excellent diectors to direct them. Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry are two of my favourite directors and both have collaborated with Kaufman twice. I liked Confessions of a Dangerous Mind but with George Clooney directing it didnt have the same feel to it. Anyway, click here for more info.

Nothing

This is a post about nothing. If you keep reading this post all you will read is nothing but a bunch of words clustered together in nice paragraphs but not actually saying something or going anywhere. If you are still reading this you have read too much of this post about nothing. I'm sure you've stopped reading by now but if you haven't you should because there is going to be nothing else. Or is that what i want you to think. I could start writing about something. Something interesting to you but then i would be lying to you because this post is about nothing. Its always been about nothing and will always be about nothing. If you have read to this point i want you to do something for me. Pick up your keyboard and smack yourself in the face really hard because you have wasted your precious time reading about nothing. If you haven't read this far then kudos to you. But then again if you haven't read this far then you wont be able to accept my kudos because you dont know about them. Well thats there fault for not reading on about my nothing post that is filled with nothingness. Click here now!

knightly and the knight

Many of you would be familiar with the British actress Keira Knightley. She has recently gone from film to film working of acclaimed titles such as "Pirates of the Caribean" and her humble beginings in "Bend It Like Becham". My question is, will Keira take a break from the silver screen and start a family. This blog may seem entirely random and irrelevent to her career, yet I have to write something for MPI104.

Check these out:
www.imdb.com
www.keiraknightly.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.keira-knightley.org

SWAD