Summary lecture 5

During this lecture Jason Nelson mostly screwed around and showed us a lot of unique and interesting websites and tools. The first page he showed us was speedtest.net. The page gave us an interesting look how long it takes, if you wanna communicate with computers all over the world.
After that he explained to us the Dot Com boom and crash. First the people were so much into it and they spent a lot of money for .com stocks, but later the internet was not yet such a profitable tool and the people didn't investigate in it any more.
Then we got an overview about archive.com, really interesting page, which want to show the visual evolution of the internet pages. It takes screenshots of all kinds of major wbsites over the years and Jason showed us the beginnings of myspace, which was first a really boring page.
Jason went on and told us more about social networking sites and then we took a look at some crazy social networking sites like 'elftown' or 'Woofer'- the anti 'Twitter' page.
Later we got more information about Google Maps and how we can use it. That was the same with sketchcast, a funny tool, that converts you and your online drawing into a video. As an example we saw a video of a lady and a hotdog.

Summary, lecture 4

BIG SCREEN TO the small screen!

I----------------------------------------------I------------------------------------------------I
Timeline:

1895: Birth of Cinema
1906: First feature length narrative film (in Australia, by Australian) - few years later Europe, then USA
1927: First spoken film ('Talkies') -> 'The Yazz singer'
1929: First all colour movie
1933: First drive- in theatre (in New Jersey)
1937: Disney released 'Snow White', animated movie
1939: first TV, but only very little shows on TV
1939- 1952: hieps of movies were produced during these years
1952: 3 D
1955: Hollywood started to produce movies for television
1956: first videorecorder
1959: 'Percepto Vision' invented by a horror film producer (it gave little electro shoks), 'smell cinema'
1963: videorecorder for consumer, multiplex theatre- now blockbuster movies were shown
1967-69: Sony introduced VCR + Portapak
1970: Imax
1972: pay TV (in America)
1985: first blockbuster video store where you could rent movies
1986:Computer-Generated-Animation(Luxo Jr., Pixar)
1995: 'Toy Story'
1997: DVD, Video
2001: BMW 'The Driver', production of a short film for the Internet (with the brand new BMW in it)
Today: everybody can produce little films and put it on the Internet, for example 'YouTube' (TROOPS)
(pictures: google images)

Tutorial Week 4

The task for the tutorial today is to answer a lot of questions, but without using google and I'm not allowed to get all my answers from wikipedia. So, let's see what I can find...



1. What is the weight of the world's biggest pumpkin? How long did it take to grow?
-The world's biggest pumpkin was found on September 29, 2007. His weight is 1689 pound. It's really huge!! The world record holder is Joe Jutras. His pumpkin took 5 months to grow up to this size.
(www.yahoo.com)
http://www.bigpumpkins.com/ViewArticle.asp?id=162&gid=50




2. What is the best way (quickest, most reliable) to contact Lilly Allen?
-If you want to contact Lilly Allen just visit her website: http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/lily/
or use twitter...




3. What is the length of a giraffe's tongue?
-A giraffe’s tongue is 18-20 inches long, that's about 46-centimeter...Wow!!
A giraffe needs about 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of food per day. It' their main activity during the day. They prefer eating leaves from the acadia tree and at the zoo they also love to eat hay, carrots, and leaf eater biscuits.
(www.scroogle.org)
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-giraffe.html




4. How would you define the word 'glycomics'? In your own words, what does it really mean? What does the term 'seagull manager' refer to?
-Glycomics is the study of scientific processes including genetic, physiologic, pathologic, and other aspects. It's about the entire complement of sugars. Glycans is really important for the survival and healthy function of a cell. You can use it to get an answer to cancer, infectious diseases, diabetes, inflammation and immune disorders.
(www.scroogle.org)
http://www.griffith.edu.au/science/institute-glycomics
http://www.tower.com/handbook-glycomics-richard-d-cummings-hardcover/wapi/113383396

Seagull manager:
-A Seagull manager doesn't work at an office the whole time. He only has to come into the workplace if there is a problem or if he has to criticize or critique employees. The word was first used in an Marketing article by Michael Madison. It is a management style of interacting- the Seagull manager gives advices, but then he leaves and other people have to deal with it.
-Another funny definition:
'A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.'
http://www.employmentcrossroads.com/2009/02/humor-some-new-business-jargon/
(www.scroogle.org)
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/seagull_manager




5. What was David Cronenberg's first feature film? Which of his films had 'Blondie' in it?
- His first feature film was 'Transfer' (1966). The story is only about two people and their relationships. It is a very short film, only about seven minutes, it is written, shot, edited and directed by Cronenberg.
-'Videodrom' is the film, in which 'Blondie' Debbie Harry is an actor in it.
(www.scroogle.org)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000343/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/




6. When was the original 'Hacker's Manifesto' written?
- Written January 8, 1986, by 'The Mentor'
(www.yahoo.com)
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/manifesto.html




7. Why do phone numbers in Hollywood films start with '555' ?
- Many years ago it was popular in the USA to use exchange names as part of the telephone number. The first 3 letters of the exchange name were dialled followed by numbers. The number 5 on the dial corresponded with the letters JKL, but you can't make all English place names using these three letters, so the solution was the 555 code. And the reason why Hollywood used the 555 code was, cause it was a fictional number and they didn't want to use real numbers. They wanted to prevent real subscribers being harassed by members of the public trying out the numbers quoted on the screen. And another reason is: Hollywood is fake so the phonenumber definitly has to be a fake, too...
(www.scroogle.org)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number).....sorry :)




8. What is the cheapest form of travel from the Gold Coast to Sydney?
- I think the cheapest way would be to walk from the Gold Coast to Sydney :)
But probably it's not the most comfortable way.
So if you want to travel by plan you have to pay between 50 and 100 Dollar, depends on the date you want to fly. Or you can take the Greyhound, then you have to pay around 100 Dollar.
Or rent a car.
http://www.greyhound.com.au
http://www.webjet.com.au




9. What song was top of the Australian Pop Charts this week in 1965?
- In week 34 top of the Australian Pop Charts was the song 'I want you back', Jackson 5.
(reference: my neighbour :), i'm sorry, but i couldn't find it...)




10. Which Brisbane band includes Stephen Stockwell on keyboards and vocals?
- It's the Brisbane punk band, the 'Black Assassins'.
(www.yahoo.com)
http://live-wirez.gu.edu.au/Staff/Stephen/default.html

Summary, lecture 3

Cine- Speak
Learning the Language of the Cinema

There are a lot of different Shot Types:
VLS/ WS: Very LS/ Wide Shot
LS: Long Shot
MLS: Medium LS
MS: Mid Shot
MCU: Medium Close Up
CU: Close Up
BCU: Big CU
ECU: Extreme CU

First there is the Shot, then the scene and finally the film...
Shots are like words. They can help you to answer the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?
Who? is most important and has to be answered first, cause without the who the story can't exist.


1. Who?
- Shot Type: Close Up
It answers the question of 'who' by showing the character in detail.

2. What? -What is the character doing?
- Shot Type: Mid Shot
It answers by showing the subject performing an action. Important: It shows the character.

3. Where? - relationships between people and places
- Shot Type: Long Shot
The Long Shot gives the answer to the 'where' question at the beginning of a scene, it is also known as the Establishing Shot. It is important for the audience to know where the action takes place.

4. When?
- Shot Type: Wide Shot and Close Up
Both types can help to answer the 'when' question. Time can be a difficult thing to capture on the screen. You have to know in which time the film is playing and all the people, places and things have to fit in these time. The passing of the time is really important.

5. Why?
- Shot Type: Big Close Up
It can helps to answer the 'why', by revealing more about a character and their actions.
But the 'why' questions must not be explain to early, otherwise there is no reason to watch the film to the end.

6. How?
- Shot Types: Medium Close Up or series of Close Ups
They can explain an event and answer the 'how' question.


"RULES"
Head Room:
-not to much or to little head room

Talking Room:
- not to much or to little talking room

Rules of Thirds:
- you need a raster over the picture
- it's all about positioning
- subject of interest must not be in the middle of the picture

180 Degree Rule:
- it's the line between two people having a conversation
- it has to be 180 degree to take a photo where you can see the faces of both people


IMPORTANT:
Every Shot has to be arranged.
Every Shot needs a reason why it is in the film.
Every Shot has to be new.
Every Shot must have a purpose.


TASK:
Watch a movie and answer the Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? questions.

- I decided to watch the movie 'Blood Diamond', cause I think it's a really good and interesting film with a lot of different shot types. And by chance I watched the preview of the serial 'Dexter' and was really surprised about the inconvenient shot types.
In the preview they show normal things like baking an egg, or preparing meat for baking or crushing coffee, but because of the really 'Extreme Close Up' all these things are looking really disgusting and unnormal and fitting perfect into the preview for 'Dexter'.

Blood Diamond:

Who?
In the beginning of the movie there are a lot of Close Ups of the leading actors Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) so the viewer knows who the character is.

What?
To answer the 'What?' question the audience can see some Mid Shots where the producer shows what happend and what the story is about. You can see that Danny is an diamond smuggler and make deals about it. Or you can see Solomon and his family and in the next sequence the viewer can see, that his family were attacked and broked away.

Where? When?
The story takes places during the Sierra Leone Civil War in 1999 and you see some Long Shots and Wide Shots for example of the landscape or the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Directly at the beginning of the scene the viewer gets to know where the story is set.

Why? How?
Through the different Close Ups the audience get to know more about the characters and what they are doing, why and how. You can see the faces and the feelings of the people. Danny always wants to be a tough guy, but he also has a lot of problems and fear. And in the face of Solomon you can see also fear, but there is still hope and he has a really strong will.
(picture: google images)

Wide Shot (WS)

This is a wide shot. It means that the subject takes up the full frame. The wide shot often works as an establishing shot.You can see the whole setting and get your own impression of it. A problem of the wide shot is, that it means different things to different people. For some people it is much wider than my example, they would call it a very wide shot or an extreme wide shot.
(picture:flickr.com)
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/wide-shot.html
http://www.tongaturismo.info/pictures/Fa%20Fa%20Island%20wide%20shot.jpg

Medium shot (MS)

A medium shot (MS) is usually used between a long shot and a close- up shot. It is a camera shot from a medium distance. The picture is mostly from the knees up or the waist up. The medium shot tends to narrow the center of interest for the audience and it shows what you have to see in the picture.
(picture: google images)
http://www.releasing.net/filmmaker/long_medium_close-up_shots.html
http://www.releasing.net/books/33-medium.html
http://arts.endow.gov/about/40th/images/lincoln.jpg

Shot description 'ECU'

ECU stands for Extreme Close UP. It's an shot type of the camera work. There are a lot of different types of shots like wide shot (WS), medium shot (MS), medium close- up (MCU), close- up (CU) and variations of these frame sizes. The ECU gets right in and shows extreme details. In film, photography and television you work with it, cause the Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium shots and long shots. In the Extreme Close Up the shot is so tight that only a fraction of the focus of attention can be seen. A good example for this is the picture above.
(picture: flickr.com)
http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/extreme-closeup.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-up

Third Week Tutorial

Theme of the tutorial this week:
Language of the Screen

Effective Online Research – It's more than just Google and Wikipedia!

We have to find the explanation of:
ECU
WS
MS

Summary, Lecture 2

Summary, Lecture 2- A Short History of Computing and the Internet

The most important people in the early history of Computing:
- Charles Babbage:
Charles Babbage, born in 1791, is the inventor of the first digital computer. His idea was to create a machine that can calculate and print mathematical tables. Later he conceived a massive, brass, steam- powered, general- purpose, mechanical computer.
- Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace:
Ada Byron, born in 1815, translated an Italian article about Babbage, ‘Sketch of the Analytical Engine’ and thought about a machine which would be able to compose and play music, produce graphics and be of everyday use. And she created the first computer program.
- Alan Turing:
Alan Turing , born in 1912, did the serious work required for the development of the computer. During the Second World War, he worked with a program to break secret German 'Enigma' codes. Later he investigated programming, neural nets, and the prospects for artificial intelligence.

The first Computer:
The first commercially produced computer (Altair) was in the 1950s by IBM. They were really big, unwieldy and expensive. These machines were created for the military, government and corporate work.
In the early 70s, a concept was invented that made the personal computers of today possible and approachable by the general user.
Because the first PC had no language and no set of terms by which the user could communicate with their computer, Bill Gates started to create a language for it and began to work with his own little garage company called ‘Microsoft’.

Apple:
- first home-made PC by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
- Apple I sold for $USA666.60
- two years after the Altair they launched the Apple II and Apple grew really big
- the PC turned from a toy into a business tool

IBM and Microsoft:
- first IBM produced mainframes for big companies
- by 1980 they decided to get into the PC market
- after a few years, IBM gained more and more of the market share - largely through its association with the software giant Microsoft

Another Operating System:
- GNU/Linux, by Linus Torvalds
- it was his own version of Unix
- it spread quickly across the world as a completely free operating system (alternative to the expensive systems like Windows, MacOS and Unix).

The Internet, The Web and Cyberspace:
The Internet is often called an ‘internetwork’ and that really describes it. It is a network of networks, which includes servers, mainframes and personal computers and many other devices that use CMC technology.
- interconnected by the telephone system or broad- band cable and satellite services
- people all over the world are linked to each other in an information-sharing system
- the first idea came from RAND corporation in the 1960s
- they created a scheme for a communication, command and control network
- first it was developed for the government and the military, but later also for all people

World Wide Web (WWW, or Web):
- founded in the 1990s when people began to see the potential for computers to communicate with each other as a matter of course
- HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) is the name of the language in which web pages are written
- Important: internet is not the same thing as the web!! -> the web is only a part of the internet, the internet is more complex and it includes many other things as well as the Web

Cyberspace:
- really difficult to define
- it is an interconnection of reality and imagination

Early Internet Applications:
- Email (Electronic mail)
- FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
- IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
- MUDs, MOOs, MUSHes
- IM (Instant Messaging)
- Facebook/ MySpace
- Twitter

Summary, Lecture 1

Summary, Lecture 1- Introduction to New Communication Technologies

What is communication?
Communication transfers information to other people.

For a long time the basic model said, that “The speaker produces a message that is heard by the listener.” (Aristotle)
Because communication is more than that- it’s a bigger complex, we have a new model today.
“The speaker produces an effect on the transmitter which sends a message (which is degraded by the noise of the transmission process) that is intercepted by the receiver which converts it into an effect that is heard by the listener.” (Shannon & Weaver)

What is Technology?
The application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives and to the world.
- Analog
- Digital
- Convergence

Old Communication Technologies:
- Oral
- Graphic
- Written (mail)
- Radio
- Telephone (Landline)
- Television

New Communication Technologies:
- Computer -> email (slowly going away), message boards/ discussion lists
- Mobile Phone (now including Telephone+ Computer), (SMS/MMS)
- Internet
- Instant message (IM) -> full word writing is going away!)
- Twitter
- Weblogs
- YouTube
- Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace)
- Smartphones

Resume of the second tutorial

It was so much fun... I really enjoyed this tutorial. Last week I was definitely lost. It was my first week at Griffith, the second week in Australia, the first time I worked with a Mac and the first time I used blogging. I didn't really know what to do and how to use it.
But today it worked really well, I completed my blog with images and YouTube videos, saw funny and interesting things and I could made me more familiar with the blogging. But of course I don't know if I did it right, but I hope so and otherwise it was a good exercise and an interesting and funny lesson!
...and that's it :)

Different views of the future computer!!

I think, this is really interesting. The man shows his view how the home computer could look like in the year 2004... And above you can see how the people at the moment think about the future computer...
(pictures: google images)

Brand new mobile phone

This is a good example of the convergence of communication.
You can use this mobile phone of course only for calling, but you can also enjoy the big entertainment functions. With the keyboard you can write very fast and easy, on the inside you can enjoy your favourite entertainment like music, games, etc. and work efficiently on the move with the Windows Mobile. You can use your mobile phone like your home computer. It's possible to have instant e-mail on your phone and for a fast internet connection this phone has Wi-Fi support.
(picture: google images)

Woman vs. Technology

It's so funny..I AM A WOMAN, but that is really great..haha. I love it!!

Funny Commercial

At YouTube I found this really funny commercial about the newest way to enjoy watching TV...

Oh my god..

I don't know what to say... Which crazy guy created this thing?? :)


And the question is:

(pictures: google images)
http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/archives/category/topic/art-editing

There are so many crazy technologies...

Wow, what is it?? I found this really crazy bathtub. I think it's really an unusual way of taking a bath..People are often looking for enhancements for their daily cleansing and adding a touch of technology and some personal prerequisites have made people to come up with crazy but lucrative designs for the home today including your normal bathroom requirements. But do you really need an integrated TV or cellphone? Probably crazy things should belong to crazy people :)
(picture: google images)

Tutorial week 2

Sooo, hopefully today i have more ideas what to write and to do. Last week, i only wrote boring stuff. Before this course i wasn't really good at 'tecknolegy', but i think this tutorial is a good way to improve my knowledges and become a really computer nerd :)
(picture: flickr.com)

Task for today:
Find 4 pictures depicting convergent technology...