Lecture 8.0: Political Possibilities

Yup, as the title suggest in the 8th lecture we had Stephen Stockwell speak about the Political Possibilities of the net.

Democracy is... basically free speech.

Stockwell explained the two very different forms of internet politics: eDemocracy -the contribution of the internet to real world politics - and CyberPolitics - the polictics of the net.

There was also mention of the gaps in mass media, and the internet being a very suitable, if not the only, medium in which the gaps can be filled. Power to the people? :)

My Venture Into Freeware Apps

Kay, so I'd never used a freeware app before, as far as I know... which isn't very far when it comes to computers and stuff. Since I'm useless. Almost as useless as I am at being a lesbian. AHA. Which is kinda funny considering what Danielle said about me [here] :) Looks like I fail at anything that's not sitting on the fence. Ahahahahahah.

So I downloaded OpenOffice. Do you know how horrible doing that was? It slowed my net down to a snail pace for like 4 and a half hours cos my net's been a #%#$ for the last week or so, and I thought to myself "Oh OpenOffice, you'd better be worth this!"



Anywho, OpenOffice, as it turns out, is basically a free, yes free, version of Microsoft Office. It does almost all the stuff that Word etc does and it does it for... yep, my favourite word... FREE :) As in, I didn't have to pay for it. I'm so glad I put off buying Microsoft Office for like a year until I went to this lecture and heard about OpenOffice. Defs using it from now on. Huzzzzzah!

Lecture 7.0

Jason Nelson once again was entertaining enough not to put me to sleep. It was quite nice to stay awake for an entire lecture for... oh, this would have to be the 2nd time this year. Pretty amazing, right? He's a funny, funny man... and I still haven't figured out who he reminds me of.

Anyway, today's lecture was about open source software. Open-source software is apparently "transparent" which I think means you can have a look at the source yourself, and if you see any errors or whatever you can fix them up yourself. However, if you're like me and lazy as well as completely computer illiterate, its not so good cos open-source stuff doesn't get updated all too often.
But yeah, you know the stuff I'm talking about here, yeah? Visit download.com and you'll get the picture. Speaking of pictures, there's an open-source rip-off of Photoshop out there (surprising I know) called... Gimp. And an animation program or something called Blender, that apparently is pretty good considering it's free and all. There's also Open Office, which gives Microsoft Word a bit of a run for it's money and which I'm also downloading as we speak - 3%... C'mon, HURRY UP! Jeez - since Microsoft and Dell were too stingy to include Micro Office on my computer and I would've had to fork over like $150 or some shit for it... Money better spent on food and booze. The 2 best friends of... well, me. But, uhmmm, yeahhhh, Open Source = Good (if you're not a lazy tool like me!)

xoxo Gossip Gir - I mean, "Maryanne"

Technology Wars: Attack of the Phones

I was thinking about BSG and how the Cylons took over and wondered... what would happen if toasters and mobile phones actually did attack us... we came up with this and posted it on iReport, as was outlined in the task:



Filming (badly done): Me & my uber sexxii phone ;)
Concept: THAT WAS ALL ME BITCHES, ALL ME.. and BSG... lol and maybe the others helped too lmao
Editing: Angie & Me using her confusing Mac :/
Starring: Angie & Allen

To see Part 2, in which I actually star please go to Catherine's blog.

Fun on the Net Pt 2

http://www.polyvore.com/
Using this useless site, I created this, its meant to scream "tranny" kay? So like my taste aint that bad... but don't you think anything is an improvement on Callum's flanno?
So yeeeeah, you can create your own outfits with it. Still useless but. To me anyway.

http://turbulence.org/
This is a site for... um... artists? I don't know what you're supposed to do on it. Although, I did try, very hard, to figure it out. All I managed to get out of it was that it "commissions and supports net art." Probably not completely useless.

http://rhizome.org/

http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php

Lecture 6.0

I'm finding it harder and harder every week to muster up some enthusiasm for this... at least I'm here though, writing this and whatnot.

The lecture was about... consumption and production. We consume media, like the big screen mediums of cinema, television and PC's and the small screen mediums of mobile phones/smartphones and personal media players (eg. iPods) As for producing, there's stuff like The Trailer Mash (a webby totally devoted to re-cut trailers and trailer mash ups) and FanFilms (a site devoted to... can you guess? fan films!) which just helps the cycle of consuming and producing along which gets the amateur film maker more exposure and even though it doesn't make you any dosh, it might get you some recognition and some money later! And last but not least, mobile phone production is pretty useless unless its for catching random stuff that happens that you aren't all that prepared for. If you capture something good though, you can upload it to iReport or something like that. Niffffffty.

Fun on The Net... and no I don't mean porn :)

First we went to http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html and as it turns out... There's nothing on the net about me. There is, however, a lot on Emily Pugin...

Thennnnn, I made my own map on google maps :)


View Maryman's list of places to go in a larger map

I can draw okay. With a pencil. Not a mouse. But its still recognizable as a badly drawn Dragonball Z-ish character. XD

Short Films, yeyeah!

Black Button - Basically, I liked the concept. And the fact they just whited out the background. I found that amusing most of all. Oh and this:
Guy who pressed the button: Who did I kill?
Guy who gave him the option: I will be seeing him next.
Hahahah no one before him picked the key so it's like just a chain he's a part of and that he's continuing. Pleasantly morbid, right?



Twist of Fate - Ahahaha, it was so awesomely bad I just had to put it up. It was cliched, the acting was awful and the filming seemed a bit dodge to me. I'm not in a position to judge on filming though. I mean, have you seen the iReport I filmed? Haha good times, good times.



Lovefield -Filming, like the effects etc, were brilliant, I was really impressed since all the other short films I could find on Youtube sucked ass in that respect. Nowww, as for the story... Was it just me or was the ending like totally unexpected??? I honestly thought it was just another dice and slice serial killer thing. But it turned out sweet! I was actually kind of happy it did. Weird, huh? Maryanne has warm and fuzzy feelings.

(: