Abbottmister’s Weblog

Second entry of the year!

Its that time where I have done the work for the year and need to reflect upon the year, however more importantly looking to the near future. Today im looking at my dissertation proposal…and im still looking at the piece of paper. To find one question that’s suitable to be good enough to achieve my degree is  hmm hard would be an understatement. Off the top of my head I know I am interested in language and the research around the subject of ludology. Also identity really interested me. However I feel im not ready to make a decision and focus on one subject, im gonna have a quick read over the subjects I have covered in the last 2 years! Hopefully that will give me more of an idea of what I what to do exactly. Scary times! Dissertation proposal, work placement and final year of uni! Oh and PDP essay ofcourse! Ha.

This year has gone far quickly than i expected, and so im going to try and put everything into one post. This year has most definitely been a learning curve to remember.  So far i have created a website  for my Authorship project, involving php and mysql, which i found fascinating to be honest, it is the way forward! However my design work needs to be improved, which was one of my comments in my feedback. The next task ahead was HHHUUUGEE! project in making a game, with a website some how connecting to the game. After a slow start, and thinking at the time our group is not going to get anything done, we managed to prceed and get past our problems and create a very amusing game about escaping prison. If your easily offended then…well hell to it i dont care. Although we worked in flash, as3, the game looks fairly good. I believe we hit our target audience and had fun in the process of making it. So yes the project did have a happy ending, and u can play the game at; http://impserver.bournemouth.ac.uk/~brain/

I was proud of the progress i had made since start of my course, i manage to create all the cut-scenes and characters and one of the mini-games. After this project i had a boost of confidence and did some freelance work…well technically did, i create a site for a group on another course needing a web site made for them, and yes they were very pleased. Tho i just got a thankyou and some choc, its  astep up the right ladder.

Now its pretty much the end of my second year at uni, i have a confirmed placement at ‘Substance Media’ in Farringdon London, which i am very excited about. I walked in for my interview a month ago and as soon as i alked in there were people all around a whiteboard talking about ideas for new films out in the cinema like ‘Yes man’ and future projects like’Wolerine’, Ha! awesome. It was there i knew i wanted to do this for my career. I start my placement on July 13th, and up till then i will be studying hard so i dont feel like a complete idiot, i know im there to learn, but i want to make a good impression.

…and so thats pretty much it, second year has been hard hitting, and has flew by as you can tell from more fairly short post for the year! On a final awesome note, my company, f-promotions is taking off well, currently running friday nights at Fruit bar after  finishing our events at DNA. I am dead excited for the company as we (me and my company partner)  have big plans for Bournemouth…were taking over….(evil laugh)

Peace, T

Flash project has been handed in finally!! jeeeesssus! that project was getting annoying, don’t get me wrong i loved the flash work …kinda..only the damn actionscript was sooo pissing me off its unreal, cannot believe i managed to finish even when i had lost most of my flash project the week before the hand in deadline! due to the file being corrupt all of a sudden. So yea learnt a hell of alot in a short space of time with the project. First of all REMEMBER to keep back up copies of ur work everyday!, i learnt the hard way, but other than that i am really proud of myself for basically learning flash and actionscript for myself. I was not getting much info from lectures and workshops so i taught myself using web tutorials and books on actionscript. I must say it is probably the most work i have done at uni so far! Anyway project handed in and overall happy with what i did considering all the problems i encountered. I look forward to seeing other peeps work, the work i have seen already is blooming amazing!, even though mine was no where near as good as others im happy becuase of what i have learnt from it i must say, the actionscript in part of my animation is pretty impressive, where i get an object to follow the mouse and the user has to click on a moving button, also on my website which took an age by the way, had actionscript for a moving menu bar, amazing affect. Time now to relax after many sleepless nights from doing work all night!, but all over and off to Turkey for a ‘OLIDAY! ‘,:) P.s not blogged in a while, totally forgot! 

This week i’ve been learning how to use flash, this is what i have been waiting for since i got here, the much awaited flash.  This week was just the basics but it still left me impressed and wanting more, this project is gonna be gooooooood! is it just me or is the theory really interesting too?? i don’t believe i’m about to say this but…i love theory! aha!

My lecture today with claudia was pretty interesting, even though it was a lecture meant for our last project!, but never the less it was useful looking at the mapping and the different interfaces for the World Wide Web. wat really caught my eye was the Seadragon software from microsoft, absolutely amazing (you will find it at www.ted.com)  It was then discussion arose about breaking the rules we conform to in. We have conventions in our culture that are foundations of our language and how we do things, like for example reading from left to right when we read a book or any text. So websites generally conform to these rules but to argue it is for our benefit. It may seem technology has not progressed however it is all for our benefit, we are constantly making ways of understanding things. Some websites have created an interface where the interent is shown though a virtual city, where the bigger buildings are the most important and poopular of websites. However this intereface is not a good representation of the World Wide Web, as there is infinite space, and to try and create or map a world where anywhere and anything is accessed in an instant is …well…impossible as i know of anyway. Maybe one day someone will create and very intelligent way of navigating the World Wide Web better than the very plain 2d version we use. However this is what i cannot get my head around, yes we understand things better through using what we already know, so like technology personified, or interpreted through nature or everyday for us to understand. There are metaphors everywhere in technology, bookmarks, ’surfing the web’, ‘browsing’. Even the virtual world we have created conforms to the rules of our reality. Why do we not accept the virtual world as something new, learn it as we do a new language? i dunno what to really think about this because i could argue both sides of this argument, as this virtual world is i guess a reflection of this world, is it not? hmmmmm

It’s weird!, when you think your project is going shite! and give up trying to give meaning, it all comes your way! i was watcing T.V and suddenly on the news a break through in brain scanning technology, closer than ever before blah blah blah, they call it a ‘Brainbow’, i was like nice i could use that in my images. Then after reading some books i find perfect meaning to my images that relates to theory have been discussing in lectures! whoop! so it seems as if everything has come together at the last moment, I just hope i have spoke about theory for too long in my essay!, Its soooo hard sticking to 1500 words, and don’t get me started on sourcing everything! that did my head in! I feel i could have done better on myimages, but thats only becuase im still getting used to Photoshop!, my ideas are excellent, love em!…but putting it together on paper in an image im not so good at! But its finally over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ENJOY!

Here is the images that didn’t make it to the final 5!

O K its less than a week t go before the deadline, and yes i have all 5 images and nearly done my essay and website….so why do i not sound pleased i hear you ask!…. well today i decided i didn’t like two of my images becuase they do not quite fit my theme, so i have some ideas but my lord why do i have to always leave it to the last second….anyway i should be pleased i have done soooo much research and have found my theme and related theory to put in my essay! woohoo! actually pretty kewl stuff, i spent most of last night reading Berger’s ‘Ways of seeing’, good book people suggest you read it, this book i found fascinating and was sooo useful to my project. So my aim of my images is to explain to the viewer that nature and technology are one, the same, you probs think i sound insane but give me a moment to explain!, technology is natural, it has been here before you and i were born, it was here at the beggining of time….got your attention!….well the first forms of technology were in fact the alphabet, language is a tool for communication, you could even go as far back as saying cave men used sticks as tools same way monkeys do, so technology is in our nature and culture. Technology and nature go hand in hand, i found this out through my visual diary! jees its everywhere in adverts, magazine, games, but when it came down to research and actually thinking about this relationship between technology and nature i found that they have been together far longer than people think, most people think technology is some modern!!! NOPE! i got news for you its not!, technology does not mean just computers, over the years the definition of technology has changed, keeping up with todays world, its like people were trying to separate the two, when actually its quite clear that the two are indistinguishable, they are entwined. IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE CHECK MY WEBSITE OUT , COMING SOON TO A COMPUTER NEAR YOU! X

OK then its like a few weeks till i have to finish this assignment…….i have nothing…..so I’m gonna try and sum up now what the hell im on about so that i can go whack out 5 images at home! I think i have found that nature and technology go hand in hand, and actually both are destined to entwine, technology to me seems like a reflection of nature, which is quite clear and true when you think about it, and quite clear looking through my visual diary! so this is where it gets confusing, as technology is as real as us, a reflection in ways of us, i think to better understand nature itself. If you think about it our confusion of who we are? where we come from? are understanding of how the world works is so farfetched and to be honest we don’t really know, that’s why we turned to religion (something i’m my view been created to give reasoning to what we don’t understand. Then we used technology, a reflection of nature to better understand it, then when we do we progress, its like technology propels our understanding of nature and then vice versa, an on going teamwork. Examples are medicine, we create better medicines over the years and we have entended life and know more about disease and bacteria. we create space shuttles and satelites to travel the universe in search of answers, we now know more about our planet and how it works so we minipulate it, of forecast weather. So technology shouldnt really be seen as a separate thing, because actually it is as real as us and maybe someday be undistiguishable like forms of media, that we learnt in our lectures, (film becoming like games, t.v like websites etc). Wow thats good to get of my mind so i guess thats my theme here, explaining thats nature and technology go together like 2 peas in a pod, technology is in our nature, and nature is our technology, it can be argued that there are the same, after all thats what a reflection is, right! a reflection of the real!