Random Blog

I cannot believe I am up this early, lol, honestly!!!. I am so dead tired today, and probably wont make it into the lecture or tut as I have to go to the Nathan campus today for a meeting with student services. Im soughting out some subjects and things for next year which will be good. Hopefully I can get everything on track. OMG I am not a morning person, my whole body is drained and I wanna go back to bed lol. I think my dog theo feels the same, he is flopped next to me on my bed. Here are some pics of theo. He is a little brown poodle. He's an awsome dog, hes so funny and silly.


Anyways, mum is going nuts at the moment because the house is a mess and we have an open house inspection today. We are trying to sell our house because we have just bought a new one, (the new house is 4 houses down the same street lol). Its pretty exciting, the new house is on a beachfront. :):). But yeah, its time like this (when she is histerically grabbing everything out of my bathroom and flinging it down the hallway) that I kind of wish I can move it. I would really love to move out now, if not soon, but I know it would be so hard on my own, like not having as much money, and I guess it would be the little things that I miss. Oh well.

I cant believe christmas is in something like 27 days. :):O:):O:):O OMG!!! i love christmas. I love the christmas lights everywhere and how all the department stores put up decorations. I love bying presents, I love getting presetns. Yet this year feels kind of different (I dont know maybe because I am getting older) but I havnt seen as many chrissie lights up as last year, and I dont even feel in the Christmas mood yet. we'll see.

Ive been looking on other peoples blogs lately. They look really good, and some of what people have been saying sounds great. Its really good to see how people can interpret things the same or different from you, and really puts a whole new perspective on things. I was so surprised the other day when I asked my boyfriends parents and all of their friends (they range from about 40's to 50's) if they knew what webblogging was. I would say about 80 percent knew. I was so shocked. This course has really been eye opening for me, and what Trent was saying yesterday in the lecture is that all the things we are learning right now in the present, will be old information 2 years from now. This is a subject that people can never stop studying. The history of the internet and computers we have learnt in week one will be ancient by the time our children hear about it, and when they learn about the history of the internet, they will probably be learning what we are doing now, webblogging etc. People, Children 10 years from now are going to be so much smarter and learned in this area, and it kind of makes me feel so over shadowed. But I guess thats evolution.

Anyways I think I am going to go now. I keep trying to get a hold of student services at the Nathan Campus but I dont think the office is open yet. So hey, I might end up coming to the coast today

See Ya Laters!!! oxox

1501ART - Tutorial Task Six

Photoshop and mobile telephone cameras (part 2)

Today for the tutorial task we are to complete Part 2 of the Photoshop Task from last week. We will take a number of photos with our mobile phone camera like last week. The first part of this task is to take some basic photos and modify them in Photoshop in some way, to enhance or improve the photographs so that they communicate the particular idea of theme. I dont have photoshop on my computer but I do have Paint Shop Pro 7.


The themes for today's task are:

• Friends
• High-tech
• News
• Summer
• Games
• Successful
• Celebrity

After we have taken each photo we must add them to our weblog and then write a short summary for each photo explaining why we believe the picture represents or communicates that particular theme or idea. We then have to explain why we modified the photo in the manner that we did, including the source of the photo, such as the model of phone/camera we used to take the picture with as a reference for the kind of quality of the pictures.


Friends: Me and my boyfriend Matt
This photo was taken on my phone, and was altered by inverting colours on paint shop pro. I am using this photo under friends because me and Matt are best friends as well as boyfriend and girlfriend.

High Tech: Insides of a computer
I cheated this photo and googled it :S. It was hard to find something else hightech. This photo was of the inside of a computer, wires and crazy stuff, but I altered it using a tool called "fur" . Its pretty self explanitory. It makes the image look furry. Kind of cute hey?

News: Uni Noticeboard

Again I used a previous photo for news. I am using the photo I took of the uni noticboard. The noticeboards are put in place to inform people about current news within the uni and outside aswell. I used the effect Buttonise to alter this image.

Summer: Flowers and Umbrella

This is same photo I used for the first part of this task. It was taken here at uni, and portrays summer because of the brightness of the sun hitting the plants and umbrella. I altered it by adding a left hand side border of another picture I took. It is a close up of the flowers on the bush. The top image of the flower has been enhanced a few times. I just wanted to fiddle with the settings abit

Games: Playstation Game Control

As we were talking about Virtual reality and video games, I decided to take a picture of a Playstation Game controller. The picture quality was pretty bad, but with the altering of the image, it looks fine. I used the Geometric Effect called Curly O's.

Successful: Trophies
I took this photo of trophies to portray success. Having many trophies means that you have suceeded in many things. To alter this image I used the effects called Pencil Colour and Page Turn.






Celebrity: Nikki and Paris Hilton
Im not sure what these two girls actually do. I dont know what makes them famous celebrities, but they are, and I like them so I am using them as my celebrities. I used a 3d effect called butonnize to create this altered image. It gives the image a classy and rustic look.

1501ART - Tutorial Task Six Summary

Photoshop: How it distorts perceptions of beauty.

I have a seriuos case of Mondayitis today. So tired, so unmotivated. Oh well. Today the lecture was on Current Emerging Technologies and photoshop (yet not much was mentioned on photoshop). At the start of the lecture, Adam showed us a clip about how photoshop can be used to create and distort an image. It was actually really facinating watching the image of an ordinary looking girl be altered into something people see as "beautiful". Not only does the clip show that makeup and a hairstyle can make someone look beautiful, but the complete altering of the image can do the same thing. The clip proved to me that the so-called beautiful images we see in magazines and billboards are not that perfect, and are most likely digitally enhanced. If you are interested, the clip is at this site: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT4dpFpiTgk.

"No wonder our perception of beauty is so distorted"

The lecture went on to the topic of:

What are some current applications that will impact our lives?

• MSN and ICQ - instant messengers
• Portable Audio and Podcasting
• Peer to peer and filesharing
• Voice over IP (VoIP) and Voice Chat

Addiction to Technology

Also in the lecture today the topic of addiction to technology was brought up. The question, what makes the addiction was asked. This question was answered with the fact that humans are so connected with the internet, and it allows them to be connected to easily with other people like them. Technology is so accessable, and many people these days would rather be online than watch TV. People can get news and information much easier online and faster than waiting 6pm for the nightly news. People are able to download T.V shows, instead of watching it.

1501ART - Tutorial Task Five Summary

Today was interesting . . .

During the lecture today we had a guest speaker, Jason Nelson. Jason creates Net Art, and Net Publishing. This was an awsome lecture. Jason was hilarious and involved everyone (whether they liked it or not) into the lecture. He also called me "chick in the white top", and then further insulted me by saying I had no friends, and that I should go back onto "MySpace" so I feel as though I do have friends. lol... ummmm yeah.... anyways ..... here is some of the things he talked about.

I.P Address:
The I.P address is the address of a users P.C. The address is used to represent when a user is on a certain site. Jason showed us today that by simply going to the website www.dusstuff.com and type in a users I.P address, we can find the location of the P.C that has accessed his site. Following up on this Jason claims that we could even find the particular house where the P.C is located.

Peegaurdian:
Peer Gaurdian blocks a users I.P address therefore allowing other users not able to see where this certain user has been on the internet. It allows more privacy and security for a user.

Music Downloading:
Jason had a bit to say about music downloading. He said that to stop people stealing music, industries are soon enough going to set up a package where you can download a limited amount of files instead of pay as you go. Or to stop people downloading music, cd song files will be huge. He also told us about one attemp record companies tried in order to stop people downloading music, and that what to put junk data on the cd. To which a 15 year old boy found a way to outsmart them by drawing over the data with a nikko pen.

Net Art/Net Publishing:
Net Art gives people who probably don’t go to an art gallery a chance to see art online. Like painting, sculptures etc, Net Art creates a language and allows people to interpret this art in their own way. During the lecture Jason stated that “Technology gives those without talent the ability to create artwork.” He says that he is no good at drawing, sketching, painting, molding, running, etc, therefore creating digital artworks and presenting them online allows him to create something he thinks and what other people think is different, interesting and beautiful. I think his artworks are extremely creative and unique. Some are shocking and scaring, yet are captivating. Technology gives these kinds of people the ability to create something interesting and beautiful.

What Jason said he loves to do most is modify things and play around with things. He is inspired by things online - such as an abandoned high school online on ebay. He uses the images in his artworks. He uses photos of these abandoned buildings, and intergrates them into his work. As an artist, this is where he finds his inspiration. Jason said that he has had over 3 million hits on his website this year, and thats all because he website had gone viral. This meant people told people who sent people who told people about his website etc.

The coolest piece of art on Jasons site was the pokie death machine thingo. It spins and randomly tells you how you will die. Sounds pretty scary, but its great for a laugh

Jasons site can be found at www.secretechnology.com

1501ART - Tutorial Task Five

Camera Phones!!

Our exercise for today will be to take a number of photos with our mobile phone camera... To bad my camera phone sucks !!!! I brought my digi camera to take photos, but thats not the idea of the task hey. So according the the intructions left by Adam, we will completing part 1 of this task today and will be completing part 2 next week. The first part is to take some basic photos that are not modified in Photoshop at all which represent or communicate the following ideas:


-friends
-high tech
-news
-summer
-unconventional
-university life


After we have taken these photos, we are to post each photo on our weblog, and then write a short summary for each photo explaining why we believe the picture represents the theme we have chosen. My phone is a Nokia 6230i, with a 1.3 megapixel camera

So here goes . . .


Ok back now. . i took some photos (of shocking quality) and I am bluetoothing them to my laptop using my mobile phone (isnt technology grand)

Friends:
I kinda cheated with the pic, because it was already on my phone hehe. This is a photo of me and my bestest most awsome girlfriend Shannon. We are on otur way to the races. I really could have chosen any photo on my camera of me and shannon (there are heaps) because I feel every photo shows just how close friends we are. We always make each other laugh and smile, and love love love photos together lol.











High Tech:
I'm going to be honest is saying I didnt really know what to take a photo of when the word high tech comes to mind. I figured everyone would be taking photos of a computer, so I decided to take a photo of one of the photo copyers in the library. A high tech piece of machinery that everyone seems to take for granted. Its kind of sad to say that I have great trouble some time using of of these things, and to me, they are more high tech than a computer








News:
What better picture to take for news is a newboard. So much information can be posted up on a uni noticeboard. Information about current headline, roomates wanted, job applications, and most importantly PARTIES!!!. News can be posted up by anyone of the news boards, I guess you could say they are kind of like a blog, yet no so personal.












Summer:
I took 2 photos of these summer flowers because I thought they were pretty!!. I also liked to include the big umbrellas, because umbrellas always remind me of the beach and summer. I really like the photos because they are bright and luminous (despite my uber shit phone lol), and the surrounding look hot like summer.


Unconventional:
I cheated a little on this photo to. I could not find anything around the campus that looked unconventional to me. I was hoping maybe someone had parked in a disable zone, litter on the ground etc, but nothing. So, I found a caution when wet sign (I actually spotted it this morning, and yesterday aswell. Infact I dont think it has moved for the past week lol) sitting outside the male and female bathrooms. I thought to myself, how unconvientional would it be if someone really needed to go to the bathroom, yet was blocked by this rude yellow sign not letting them past. Therefore I placed the sign in the entrance the the female bathrooms and took a photos. Here is the result lol.







How Unconventional!

University Life:


University is very expensive to attend, and not all people can afford to come to uni. To pay for tuition fees, people have to miss out on the luxury of life sometimes, and that might be, owning their own car. I took this photo because it shows that some university students dont have cars, and find other means of transport to get to uni, ie BIKE. The bikes are right outs the learning centre which suggest that the students are in there learning.

1501ART Tutorial Task 4

I use MSN messenger probably everyday of my life. Sad, I know, but msn is a quick a easy way to communicate with others. It is cheap and instant, and depending who is online when I am, msn can be fun to use. I have never been in a 3D chat environment before so I guess I can really tell you the qualitative differences between it and regular msn messenger. Therefore I am going to do some prior research on 3D chat environments (mainly ActiveWorlds).

ActiveWorlds:
Before this tutorial, I wasn't aware that there are such things as 3D online chat environments. From the sounds of it, ActiveWorld looks pretty cool. Users can create their own personal worlds or even virtual reality game. I guess chatting in this environment would be pleasent and on a more personal level then a regular IM messenger. In ActiveWorlds, users can create their own worlds to chat in, quickly and easily, meaning that users dont have to be computer nerds to use and enjoy the program. ActiveWorlds really gives the sence that their is a whole nother virtual world online, where people can meet and greet, interact and play online games, and even invite people into their own personal worlds to chat. ActiveWorlds allows users to create their own personal identity, being able to choose from a vast range of avatar identities. Users can make new friends and chat with people all over the globe, explore over 1000 unique virtual worlds, interact and participate in 2D and 3D games online, build their own virtual home on the internet, and even shop online in ActiveWorlds own 3D virtual reality mall and chat with store clerks. Pretty Amazing.

ActiveWorld does look like a pretty cool way to communication with other users online. ActiveWorlds have been having a growing demand from educators and has launched The Active Worlds Educational Universe (AWEDU). This has become an educational community that makes the Active Worlds technology available to educational institutions, teachers, students, and individual programs in a focused setting. It can link students up to other students in the university.

The only downside I can see to ActiveWorld is that, the program really creates the feeling that users live online. When people can create their dream life online, and can interact with their online friends doing the same thing, they might not have to drive to create such a life in reality. Their views on what is reality and what is not might become blurred, and they might prefer to live their life in this virtual world. Another downside might also be that ActiveWorld cost money to run, while other Instant Messengers dont.

MSN INSTANT MESSENGER:
Msn is the worlds most popular IM network. In a network of millions, msn allows users to share files online, send files and photos, and has the same option of being able to personalise your own account. MSN allows users to express themselves through custom emoticons, display pictures and backgrounds, and even download a theme pack. MSN also has this cool function where users can create their own little characters called Meegos, and add them to their convo box. The little meegos move and allow communication on a more virtual level. They make the user feel like they are talking to a character rather than a computer. With msn, users can engage in interactive voice conversation, and webcam aswell. Both can be used at the same time if desired. Users can personalise their own font, and even interactive phrases and words with animated font. MSN has the option where users can choose to contact other users on their list by a mobile device aswell, weather it be a text message or a pager. MSN gives users their own address book, and the ability to view other users personal profiles, spaces and blogs. Users can personalise their own spaces whenever they wish, adding photos, blogs etc.

MSN can be used on the computer while the user is doing seriuos work, while I think that ActiveWorlds somewhat takes over the computer. ActiveWorlds is a much more interactive way to communicate on a very virtual level. I see ActiveWorlds as more of a game or passtime, while MSN (while being fun) is a quick cheap and convienient way to contact friends and family. Users are still encouraged to communicate with other users on a personal level, but not as personal as ActiveWorlds.

1501 ART Tutorial Task 4 Summary

We had a guest speaker for out lecture today. His name was Steve and he came to talk to us about Virtual Philosophy. I found this topic a little over whelming and farfetch for my knowlegde, yet here is what I seemed to gain from the lecture.

William Gibson:
William Gibson was an American born Canadian science fiction novelist who brought about the notion of the "cyber punk". In a time where punk music evolved (The Sex Pistols) in rejection to the new forms of "glam rock" (David Bowe), so to did science fiction evolve in rejection to the computing world. Gibson was at the head of this evolution in the late 70's and early 80's. His writings were generally futuristic stories about the influences of cyberspace and virtual reality.

Mnemonic:
The ability to remember data, such a numbers, speaches, music, through a series of practices.

Jonny Mnemonic:
During the lecture today, we viewed parts of the movie "Jonny Mnemonic" which was a tale based on one of the short stories written by Gibson. Johnny Mnemonic is an antihero who has lost all of his childhood memories in order to become a data courier. He has no recollection of his past because in order for him to be a courier he has undergone surgery to have a data storage system implanted in his head. The system allows him to store digital data too sensitive to risk transmission on computer networks. Jonny becomes at risk by the data that he carries in his head, none of which he has ever seen before. In the movie Jonny trys to find who put the data in his head through delving into virtual reality on the internet. Jonny hacks into the internet and more or less pulls it apart using goggles and remote hands. While made in the 80's this movie has a strong notion of how people saw virtual reality in the 80's a revolutionary idea for the new millenium.

Virtual Reality:
Virtual Reality is interactive sumulation of reality. It is a system that enables one or more users to move and react in a computer-simulated environment. Devices such as masked and gloves that link to a computer can allow users to delve into a parallel world of a digital 3rd dimension. These devices allow users to sense and manipulate virtual objects much as they would real objects. This natural style of interaction gives participants the feeling of being immersed in the simulated world. Mathematical models and computer programs create these digital 3d worlds.

Precursors to Virtual Reality:
- Telegraph
- Telephone
- Phonograph
- Radio
- Cinema
- Television

"Image-making, no matter how manipulative, doesn't replace reality;it becomes part of it."

Sidney Blumenthal The Permanent Campaign