Assessment 2

In Flickr I have uploaded more than 30 photos which included photos of my friends, images of my uni work that I have completed during first semester and screenshots of examples to show good aesthetics in websites. The website I found most aesthetically pleasing is a Melbourne based design studio called Gazel as text was easy to read, simple layout, theme continued when going to following pages and the graphic on the side was a nice finish with the sun rays slowly moving around. All images have been put into 3 sets which I think is a tidy way of organising things, it also makes it easier to find something in particular you may be looking for. All of my images have titles, descriptions and tags. Appropriate images have a MPI104-2007 tag which may be interesting to classmates, inappropriate images for this tag have been tagged with other names. I have pushed more than 6 people into the MPI104-2007 group, have more than 12 contacts and have joined at least 3 groups. I have nominated more than 6 favourites. I saved photographs and student work. I found this work to be very aesthetically pleasing.

Del.icio.us was harder to make more aesthetically pleasing than blogger and flickr. It has a simple, easy to read layout which I guess makes it aesthically pleasing. I think the thing that makes it most aestheticallly pleasing is having all labels in bundles instead of just having them in one long list which is what I have done. Theres also the option of minising the bundles so the tags are hidden if you want a more tidy look. My account has more than 3 pages of bookmarks which all have descriptions and tags. Bookmarks that may be interest to other classmates have been tagged MPI104-2007 and those that have no interest to MPI104-2007 students have been tagged appropriately. I have several other del.icio.us users in my network and have saved links for some of them using "for" tags.

In my blogger account I have more than the minimum posts which all have working links in them, I have experimented with templates, fonts and colours. I have changed my template since the last assessment. I find this one to be easy to read and use. I have left the back of posts white ensuring text is easy to read, my titles of posts are purple which makes them stand out a bit more and also match the header. My blog achieve, about me, links etc have been put down the right hand side making my blog easy to use and easy to find anything. I have added images that match my text into my posts to make my blog more aesthetically pleasing. A posts to show this is my magazine cover. My post on aesthetics includes a description and a site that I find aesthetically pleasing and the reasons why and one that I dont. I have included a RSS feed of my del.icio.us bookmarks and a "fave this blog" button on my blog. The MPI104 Metablog has been saved as one of my technorati favourites, as well as my classmates. My blog now has a sitemeter counter and includes a post about the vistors to my blog, as well as an updated post about my vistors.

Update on Sitemeter

This is a summary on the visits/views I have had since adding Sitemeter counter onto my blog on the 31st of May.

VISITS

Total 28
Average Per Day 1
Average Visit Length 0:00
Last Hour 1
Today 9
This Week 10

PAGE VIEWS

Total 67
Average Per Day 1
Average Per Visit 1.0
Last Hour 12
Today 41
This Week 10

Snow!

Today we booked a few nights to stay at the snow in the holidays. Were going to Mt Selwyn. Im very excited!!

GRP224

We just finished our second assignment for Rings of Saturn Publishing. Here is a link to a page with all of my work of it, including drafts and final work.

Tweaking Templates

Even though other colours, fonts and backgrounds can be brought into my blog I kept what was already available. I think my blog is easy to read as the font, colours and layout are simple. I had a look at other classmates blogs who have changed their background with images and graphics, I think some look good but some are a bit busy. Im happy with my clean simple layout.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3 - At Worlds End

I went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3 it was so long but I liked it. A few people ive talked to have said they didnt like it. I was a little bit lost at times, Im not sure it was cause I hadnt seen number one and two in ages or just cause I dont get things, doesnt matter, I got people with me to explain it to me.

After Elizabeth (Keira Knightly), Will (Orlando Bloom), and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) rescue Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from the the land of the dead, they must face their foes, Davey Jones (Bill Nighy) and Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander). Beckett, now with control of Jones' heart, forms a dark alliance with him in order to rule the seas and wipe out the last of the Pirates. Now, Jack, Barbossa, Will, Elizabeth, Tia Delma, and crew must call the Pirate Lords from the four corners of the globe, including the infamous Sao Feng (Chow-Yun Fat), to gathering. The Pirate Lords want to release the goddess Calypso, Davey Jones's damned lover, from the trap they sent her to out of fear, in which the Pirate Lords must combine the 9 pieces that bound her by ritual to undo it and release her in hopes that she will help them fight. With this, all pirates will stand together and will make their final stand for freedom against Beckett, Jones, Norrington, the Flying Dutchman, and the entire East India Trading Company



Pirates Of The Caribbean 1
Pirates Of The Caribbean 2

Sitemeter

Today I added a Sitemeter counter. This counter gives me a very detailed list of information on the vistors and views of my page. Before adding this counter I had another, I deleted it though as I liked this one more. I added it for assignment one. I had about 70 visits to my page. Im not sure how long those vistors stayed as this counter didnt include detailed information. I think my vistors were just from our class.

In my Flickr account it shows how many views I have had which is 57 at the moment. It also tells me how many views I have had under each image. I am able to know who has viewed my images if they have left a comment or saved one as their favourite. I dont know much about views on my delicious account, I have a list of people on my network which Im guessing have a look.

Technorati

I became a member of Technorati at the start of May which was when I claimed my blog, but didn't add the "add this blog to my technorati favourites" button until now. I have also added the MPI104 Metablog and other class mates blog to my favourites.
Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs.

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. The best way to increase your Technorati Authority is to write things that are interesting to other bloggers so they'll link to you. Linking to source material when you blog is also a good way to help others find what you find interesting.

My Magazine

This is my vector magazine cover that I did for grp223. We had to do a 8 page magazine and a 5 page website. More pages from my magazine and website have been uploaded in my flickr.

Aesthetics

Aethetics relates to appearance of things and how we respond to it. It examines what makes something beautiful, disgusting, fun, silly, entertaining, boring, humerous or tragic. It is known as the philosophical study of beauty and art and is explores questions about “what is art?” or “what is beauty?” It is mainly subjective as the beauty of something can be determined differently by others. I might find blogs or websites aesthically pleasing while others might not as there idea of beauty is different to mine.

A website I find aesthetically pleasing is a Melbourne based graphic design and website deisng studio called Gazal.
I find this site aesthetically pleasing as
- all text is easy to read (browny coloured background with light yellow, orange, green and white text)
- they havent gone over the top by using too many different colours
- all links can be clearly seen as they up the top as the main links or underlined and coloured in text
- a small graphic has been added to the side and top of the page which does not interfere with any text
- the sun rays of the graphic spin slowly
- when going onto another page, theme says the same
It would be quiet disappointing if this site wasnt aesthetically pleasing as their job is web design.

I find a lot of accommodation websites to be unaesthically pleasing. One I found was The Australian Travel and Tourism Network.
I find this site unaesthetically pleasing as
- is has to much on one page so it makes it hard to read, too busy
- bright blue boxes with large white text on the side makes it hard to read
- elements on page are all cramped

Google Reader

I set up my RRS reader account with google reader instead of bloglines as I am already a member of google so it was easier to set up. Joe also recommened google reader.

RRS and XLM

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary" and is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts. RSS allows users to stay easily informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites they may be interested in. Here is a link to Wikipedia and What is RRS? definition.

XLM is a markup language for documents containing structured information. Its purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet. Here is a link to Wikipedias definition.

Grandma's Boy

I went to Video Ezy looking for something to watch.. couldnt really see anything so I got Grandmas Boy. It has the worst cover. I dont know why I picked it up. Anyway it was good entertainment to watch when I got home from work.

From Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions comes a raucously funny, "fish-out-of bongwater comedy" (Playboy) that'll have you rolling with laughter! Life is sweet for 35-year-old video game tester Alex (Allen Covert), until he's forced to move in with his overbearing grandmother Lilly (Doris Roberts) and her two roommates: oversexed Grace (Shirley Jones) and overmedicated Bea (Shirley Knight). To save face with his much younger co-workers and super-sexy new boss (Linda Cardellini), Alex brags about the "three hot babes" living with him, but soon that cat's out of the bag?and the real party at Grandma's house has just begun! If you love footie pajamas, techno-talk and karate-chopping chimps (and who doesn't?).

Assessment 1

This is my blog for our first assessment in MPI104. I became a member of Flickr, Blogger and del.icio.us and had no idea how to use any of them.. I'm starting to get the hang of it all now.

Flickr is a cool site to upload photos. I started of by uploading my photos that are being used for a GRP223 assignment, then gradually added more of my own photos which were mostly of my friends. I also added some roughs and final work for another subject, GRP224, which we had to do.. lucky I was enrolled in this subject and learnt how to use it. On my flickr I have three different sets named Friends, One Night Stand and Uni Work. My favourite set would be my Friends one as thats what I take most of my photos of and enjoy doing so. All of my uploads have titles, descriptions and tags. The set of photos I uploaded the first day in class are tagged as MPI104-2007, my other photos are tagged by there subject code or name of event. I joined the MPI104-2007 group which was really good to look at what other people in our class were uploading on their flickr. This allowed me to push some of my photos to the group and to add favourites and contacts to my flickr. Here is one of my favourite photos that I commented on I joined a couple of other groups and have a profile that tells everyone else a little bit about myself.

del.icio.us is a site to save bookmarks which I have gradually added over the last two months. I find this site fairly useful, instead of trying to remember web address's I can log onto del.icio.us whereever I may be. My bookmarks have descriptions and tags, my tags have been bundled into groups of Uni and Interests. On my network I have most people that are in my class which was good to look at what they had saved and could save onto my own if I was interested. The first bookmarks I saved were My Blog, the Metablog and Flickr. I didnt know what a link roll was but I played around and got it all figured out.

My blog has 9 posts. I created a new blog for GRP224 which has another 3 posts. My posts were mostly about myself, what I'd been up to and links to new things I had joined such as del.icio.us, flickr and technorati. I experimented with fonts, colours and templates and decided on a simple layout with bright colours for posts and easy font to read. I liked my post on my Easter Holidays the best as I blogged what I did during the time I had a photo to go with what was being said. I included a photo in about half of my posts. My blog has a description, links on the side, a list, a counter and a profile. I commented on other peoples posts, I think this was the one I was most excited about The Real Footy.

Christina Aguilera

This morning we got tickets to see Christina Aguilera on 23rd July in Sydney.. very exciting
This is what Ticketek had to say about her show
"After months of speculation The Frontier Touring Company are delighted to confirm that the incomparable Ms Christina Aguilera will tour Australia this July with her “Back To Basics” 2007 Tour.
The tour will feature a unique stage design that will allow Christina’s fans unprecedented access to the stage with unbelievable sight lines, three distinct stage scenes, illuminated by more than 600 moving lights and a state-of-the-art hydraulic system.
Christina Aguilera has sold more than 25 million albums worldwide, scored four #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and has won four Grammy Awards and a Latin Grammy Award. Her third critically acclaimed album, Back to Basics, debuted at #1 on four of Billboard’s music charts in the United States and also hit #1 in 15 countries worldwide"

Christina Aguilera Website

Technorati

I just became a member of Technorati

Easter Holidays

I thought I might tell you about my three week holiday over Easter..
Well first I went home, it was my mums birthday Good Friday.. nothing exciting happened she had a bbq with her friends. On Saturday night I went out which was good, heaps of people were home and everyone was very happy and excited so it was good to catch up with them.



For the next couple of days I was home I just spent time with my friends. I came back to Wagga on Tuesday because Shel had to have her wisdom teeth out and we travelled home together.
The second weekend I went to Tumut for a 21st.. it was good.. I think I over did it though and that wasnt good because I had to come back here and work Sunday night.



The third weekend I went home again.. just for the night to go to One Night Stand.. I had a good time.. I was in the front row.. afterwards we went to the pub and caught up with people so that was good too.



And in between all that time I worked and looked after Teagan and Jacob and watched tv and thats about it and now we start uni again on Monday!!

Our House

Shel and I just moved into our house. We love it. We had to come over to Wagga in January and go around with the real estate and put in our preferences then the next day we got a call from them saying we got our first preference so that was very exciting! We moved over a couple weeks later but didn't really have anything to do because uni hadn't started yet and we didn't have jobs yet. We had most the stuff we needed between us which was handy.
One of the first nights the girls from next door came over and introduced themselves and Shel knew one of them from uni so that good.. we see alot of them.. we visit each other and go out together. Sometimes friends come over before we go out.. its really good because then we can just walk to the street as we live so close so its handy for getting home as well.. no more taxi's out to the uni! We have lots of vistors.. mostly Doug. Friends from home came over for the weekend to visit couple of weekends ago.. I dont think they'd been to Wagga before. We like it better than living on campus but still glad we lived on for first year. Now we don't have to walk outside in the cold at night to go to the toliet and we can cook what we like.. we hated uni food.

GRP224

I've just made a new blog for GRP224 which includes my reflections on the readings we had to do for our first assignment - Berrima International Airport - and my learning journal for our second assignment - Rings of Saturn Publishers

MySpace

As well as being new to all this blogger/flickr/del.icio.us stuff im also new to myspace. Everyone kept going on about it so I thought I'd better have one as well. Mandy was my first friend... I think she was sitting next to me in class at this time. Now I've made it prettiful with stars and have added pictures to make a slide show.. Even though its not hard to do I am very proud of myself.

Flickr

This is the link to my flickr account. This is a cool site where you can upload your pictures and have a look at everyone elses.

Joel Harrison
Originally uploaded by manda_m29.

del.icio.us

Hello
This is my new del.icio.us account

Very First Post

Hi, this is my very first post.
I've never used blogger before.
I'm in class sitting next to kerrie and next to her is mandy.
Last night I couldnt sleep so I was really tired today so in between class I had a sleep.
Well I really dont have anything else to say so Im gonna go
Byebyes xox