My Reflection On This Class~

During my time spent in my media literature class, I think I've learned a few useful skills such as the knowledge of how to use wikispaces to create a wiki page. I doubt I'll use that skill for anything other than my own project though. But I at least now know how to make my own wiki page. I know I'll need it. Another thing I've learned is how to write a properly formulated and organized blog post.

Now I know I'm forgetting a bunch of things I've learned here but, rest assured, Mr. Hainstock's teaching was not in vain. I'm sure I'll remember it five minutes once I'm out the classroom door... It always happens.

However I did learn a few things I'll probably never use in real life. For instance I know how to pick advertisements apart and find the techniques of persuasion they use. I can't see me ever using this though. I can also kinda write paragraphs in that ridiculous mechanical format we learned. That's part of the reason why I got an initial 60 out of 100 in this class.

But overall, I enjoyed this class. The iPads were nice and a large part of why this class was so colorful to me but they weren't the only factor. One of the other factors in play involved the fact that Mr. Hainstock is a teacher who actually doesn't speak with a barely concealed montotonic tone half the time. Next time I see him and I happen to be carrying my lunch, I'll throw apples at him because he seems to like them so much. ;)

So, long story short, I really enjoyed this class and I feel I learned a few worthwhile things that I simply can't friggin' remember at this moment. I wish this semester wasn't almost done. I'm gonna miss my classes.

Guten tag und lebewohl, media lit. I'll miss you.

Rules of Nettiquette, eh?

In the story Mr. Hainstock wrote on his medialit blog, I noticed several of the rules of nettiquette were either broken or even mangled during the telling of it. I'd like to address some of them.    

In the beginning of the story, Kim refrained from telling Jordan it was over and instead changed her status on Myface. I feel that this action broke rule #1—Remember the human. While it is understandable that Kim wouldn't have wanted to tell Jordan that it was over in person, it's far more painful to be told over the Internet than it is to be told in real life.

In the second paragraph of the story, Jordan seems to go "crazy" and begins texting, emailing and calling Kim repeatedly despite it being obvious that she was ignoring him. This is a rather blatant infraction of rule #4—Respect each others' time and bandwidth. Jordan wasn't respecting Kim's time at all. He just keep emailing her, and when that didn't work he started calling her. It must have been pretty annoying to be stalked by a guy who knows it's over but won't calm down. Jordan even went as far as to hack into Kim's Myface account and screw with her statuses and friends' walls. He even went and read Kim's inbox messages. This broke rule #2—Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life and rule #8—Respect each other's privacy. Jordan was literally going wild and wreaking havoc on Kim's online social life. After he'd finished with Kim's Myface account, he went psycho on Lucas' car.
Really mature.

In retaliation to Jordan's rampage, Kim went along and besmirched his name by starting an "attack" group on Myface, thus breaking rule #7—Help keep flame wars under control. If the principal hadn't stepped in, their conflict might have escalated until someone got seriously hurt or worse. 

Both Kim and Jordan were in the wrong and both broke many of the rules on nettiquette. Lucas was just stuck in the middle. Poor Lucas. I hope I've addressed all the rules broken in this story, I feel I have.  

On a related note:  
The story Mr. Hainstock wrote was an excellent example to use for today's class' "lesson". The biggest chance for improvement I could see for it would be to study some other authors' writing styles and find a proper editor. ;P *poke prod*



PS. I think I'm terrible at conclusions.
PPS. I'm getting pretty good at editing. *hint hint*
Guten tag~

Are Our Technological Advancements Making The World A Better Place?

Are technological advancements improving our lives here on earth? Is technology in general making the world a better place?

Well, I think the advance of technology is helping us in some ways but harming us in others. For example, people are using technology so often and exclusively now that they're hardly able to get out into fresh air anymore. Some studies have even shown how some pieces of technology actually emit light traces of cancer causing radio waves or radiation (Top 20 cellphones that emit the most radiation). In addition to radio wave emission and some lack of proper exercise, technology advancements are also birthing some interesting malicious uses such as stealth technology for war machines, missile guidance systems, next generation weapons and attachments, even bioweapons are occasionally in use (Bioterrorism).

However, I believe the scale of most advantages for humanity from technology far surpass the disadvantages. The biggest example in this statement is medicine. For example, the article here talks about seven interesting budding medicinal advancements. The one out of these seven I find the most intriguing however is the robotic surgeon. With an entity capable of performing surgery, human error could possibly be taken out of the question with risky surgeries. The artificial womb could be introduced to the odd woman unable to have children due to her body being unable to support another life. Heck, they've even invented an ultrasound that works on your phone!
In fact, we now know enough about the terrible disease known as cancer to classify it as uncurable.

(A short article on the current treatment of cancer
"Coming out of a century that declared war on the disease, a century that felt the only reasonable response to a tumor was to annihilate it, this may be hard to imagine. But turning cancer into a controllable condition is not so different from treating high blood pressure or diabetes. "I don't think curing cancer is the goal," says Ellen Stovall, executive director of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. Instead, she says, "it should be helping people live as long and as well as they can."

No, we probably won't cure all forms of cancer in the 21st century. But we may very well learn to live with them.").

So in short form, with each passing day our technological advancements are providing us with more and more information about humanity's greatest problems and how to solve them.

I think that technology is making the world a better place. Despite the misuse of some of it, technology has helped extend the human lifespan, made death less painful, prevented death, enhanced life in some ways, and even given others' an alternative to living without an extremity. Technology also provided the room you're sitting in with a light source. :)

Quick Review of Lifehacker dot com

This time I'm reviewing lifehacker.com, a very reputable blog that even has its own magazine.
photo © 2007 Manu Contreras | more info (via: Wylio)


The blog is very well organized and gets you reading right from the first page with interesting and well written captions fitted with curious eye-catching titles such as, "imitate an accent to understand it better" and "How to speed up your old sluggish Android device". The front page contains a very large list of previous posts, neatly stacked. Really, the blog has something for everyone. It is very rare you'd ever find a horrendous typo or misspelled word as I'm pretty sure the site either has an English whiz writing the posts or an editor checking every post over before it goes out.

The blog looks professional and eye-catching, but not so much that it's distracting. It's easy to navigate and difficult to get lost. Bright colors in out of the way places help spice up the otherwise simple layout.

It is a very good site and I think I'll be visiting it often from now on.

Evaluating A Website

SO FOR MEDIALIT I HAVE TO EVALUATE A BLOG.
So I chose to do http://www.notch.tumblr.com because it is my current favorite blog (because I'm a nerdface).

It's really just a whole bunch of rants, opinions, news, and update logs for a java game he is developing called Minecraft (amazing piece of work, actually). Each of his posts are usually light hearted and get straight to the point while still sounding/reading friendly. You'd be surprised how many people have actually bought his game (me included) and follow his blog/Twitter.

It's nearly impossible to get lost in his posts. They're all well formulated and constructed sentences stacked into neat paragraphs and nailed together into an entry.

Notch (the owner of the blog) is Swedish and I'm not sure which language he speaks most often. I think it's English. But even then, there is the occasional spelling mistake. But this doesn't take away from any of his posts nor instill too much confusion. This man could probably write essays no problem with little more than a misplaced ' or a duplicated word.

The biggest thing however is how plain his blog is.
His blog is just a plain white template, thus drawing attention to his words. And really, his words are just plain interesting (mainly to geeknerds).
It's so plain, it fits perfectly for it's purpose. It doesn't distract, it doesn't let your eyes stray from his news, and it doesn't overload on color.
It's a simple white template with a few small graphics thrown in.
Perfect.

Thank you for reading this wall of text (if you even did).


TL;DR
You lazy TL;DR person, go back and read the post.
Notch's blog is perfect for it's purpose.

Apparently I've Been To A Lot Of Blogs

I can remember about sixteen of them but they are all terribly laid out and unusable for this MediaLit assignment thing. :/

Curse you people of the Internet.

New blog!

Now that this blog exists, I wonder what I should do with my google.sites blog.
I guess I could abandon it. The only thing on it is all my stupid fan fiction which I have on my iPod already.