Weblog de The Suna

No, I am not going to ruin the plot for the 100th Rocky movie. But this assignment is kinda starting to feel like the Rocky movies. They never seem to end. Each one more complex than the last. (At least I hope that bit is true. I’ve never actually seen a Rocky movie *dies of shock*.

Anyways, this was my first solid day of working on the website. I can do that now since everything else is finally out of the way and I have nothing else left to distract me.

So far I have got done:

*An amazing KwikTxt Logo (Well, maybe not amazing … but I believe its memorable and actually relates to my product and thats all it needs to do!

* A splash page. Its really simple, just a giant KwikTxt logo with links down the bottom … in the logo style. But, yeah. The links go to the first two minisites and the blog as well as the third minisite. The reason I put the splash page there is because I do not want to add any development related links onto my actual 3rd minisite. I want it to keep its professionalism. Its there to sell not to promote my development so it would look silly. Apple doesn’t give you a development process of the iPhone … Just tells you that you can’t live without one and how to go about purchasing it. So thats how I want mine to be.

* The layout for the “Features” section … which took forever might I add … considering how easy it should have been! Damn things refused to align … but I got it now.

* A menu that looks like the itunes thing! and its inside the features page right now to serve as a navigation within the features section, however, I might use it for other sections as well … seeing how I go.

And that is all I believe …  I kind of have a love/hate relationship going with it at the moment.

I am trying to use a little more colour in this minisite since my last two were mostly white and shades of black. So far I am doing good. But its difficult but I dont want to over do it either. I want to stay loyal to apples “simplicity” yet give it “flavour” lol.

GRRRRRRRRR

And I just realised that my itunes-style menu doesnt work in IE. WHY DID I CHECK IT??  GRRRRR!

Okay back to the website! This is the hate part of our relationship kicking in.

So, today is the 30th of October.

Almost another end. So far we have seen … the end of classes; the end of 1005, the end of 1008 the only one to remain now is the end of 1200 … Only three days to go. I decided to take a break from my diligent studies and keep you updated on ly progress.

The best “End” so far would definately have to be the end of presentations for the year. I gave my final presentation for 1200 on Friday, and I couldn’t be happier.

I must say though, I think my presentation skills on the day were far more superior than of those that I displayed during the first presentations. I didn’t even giggle. Except for that moment when a fly flew in front of the projector and for a split second I thought that it was Emma’s mind power controlling my mouse …

O.O

Anyways, Since thats all over, I can’t wait to finally hand in this assignment. Then I get like 4 amazing months of freedom!

I will miss uni though lol.

So, I can’t wait for next year!

That is the final render of my 3D model for maya … somewhat happy with it. But if it were up to me I’d still be working on it.

And that is all for now. I’m going to go and do the website now!

Wish me luck

For the attention of Rob Saunders:

Pleeeeeaaaaaaaasssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeee can we get our marks and some feedback already? The final assignments are due next week! Next week!

This is insane I need to know what I have to do, but It’s a little hard when when we have nothing to go by. And somecriteria wouldn’t hurt either!

I am going insane! I do not know what to do with myself! In less than two weeks, all three of my major assignments are due and I am slowly losing my mind! I cannot wait ’till this semester is over. Then I can crawl in a hole and die.

Suna

Finally, After almost a week I had time to go over to my minisite one and fix those mistakes that I mentioned appeared out of nowhere in my last blog. It looks somewhat decent yet again.

 I just realised right now after comparing Minisites one and two that I liked the colours of the first one better. But whats done is done. I have bigger plans for minisite three! And Like Emma said in her blog, I need to revisit Justin’s notes to be able to pull some of them off. I should be right though. I quite enjoy the CSS and the XHTML and stuff that goes on in this course. It’s frustrating yet strangely addictive.

 Presentations start this week. Good luck to all those doing theirs on Thursday and Friday. I want to thank Rob and George for helping with my presentation thing lol. You guys are okay.

I’m presenting on the last friday, so by then hopefully most people would have lost interest and stopped showing up to uni … the smaller my audience the better. Although Rob did have a very valid point. I will meet people in life who are a lot scarier than my friends … I just really dislike public speaking!

 In other news, I missed my Maya Tut today … I accidently stayed up till 5 am chatting to my mother and watching Ugly Betty (Which I am now addicted to) and then my alarm didn’t go off … so I didn’t wake up till 10am.

The great news though is that I came in and saw Steven and turns out I have been misinformed and that nothing is due on friday! Thankgod! Because in between 1200 and 1005 as well as a 4 day staying-home-and-throwing-up duties, I’ve been neglecting Maya.

I will pick up the slack on it soon though … preferably tonight.

Anyways, this blog is not about Maya so I’ll shut up. I also looked into classes to choose for next semester. So far I have 3 at 6 units each … and two of them are compulsary lol. So I need to keep thinking. I suck at deciding things like this. Makes me think of my HSC class choices all over again!

Okay, I’ll stop blubbering. Interactive design!

Rob said he hopes to get the marks for the first two minisites out today, I am now nervous as all hell. I really wonder how I went. Hopefully good. Only time will tell I suppose. Well, time and the marks.

I guess there really is nothing left for me to say. I want to wait till I get those marks back before I make definate commitments to my minisite 3. So I will blog again after that. Right now I will just focus on my presentation I guess.

 I shall see you all tomorrow,

‘DON’T PANIC’

Suna

Ps- okay this is wierd some maya class just started while I was sitting here and their model IS due on friday! Shall I stay and pay attention since I missed mine or leave?

hahaha

So, This is the day that the second Minisite is due! There are only about 8 hours left until its due. Not to worry though. I am almost finished, my layout and stuff is all okay now all I have to do is input my data and I’m done.

I just had to take a break though. I grow to hate Internet explorer more and more everyday! It had a little trouble understanding what I was telling it to do. But thats okay now. Me being the genius that I am fixed the problem and now my site is looking radical in both IE and Firefox. I do not even want to try it with any other browser at the moment.

But Something stupid happened. My first minisite is really stuffed up! I have no idea why. It looked okay a couple of days ago but now the header pic is gone and the ‘current’ link’s name in my horizontal menu kinda dropped down a bit. I dunno what to do! Hopefully, it has already been marked when it looked good!  At any rate, I will get around to fixing that up as soon as I finish the second minisite.

Also, I can be Googled now! Its awesome! My Uni Home page comes up!

This is aweosme but makes me feel a little slack that I havent filled in the info yet and everything is still ‘Lorem Ipsum’. So yeah, I’ll be fixing that up soon too!

Anyways, I’ve had enough of random website talking. I should get back to doing it again.

Rob and Kaz both ended up showing up yesterday, and Rob told us the things he wanted in the website … So I’ve stopped stressing now. Although I still would have liked feedback from the first Minisite before submitting the second one. I guess you can’t win them all though.

There are some steps that I have found are essential to take when you want to release some anger without making a stupid move. The main one consistes of a lot of imagination. That is, imagine the thing or person you are angry at is destroyed or killed. Works wonders! However, when you have to be constantly be faced with the enemy (ie the computer) it can be almost impossible to mentally destroy it since it is sitting right in front of you. Teasing you with a smirk grin … waiting for you to give it another chance to go astray.

In this case you need an ultraforce of strength … to stop yourself from physically destroying it! And what happens when the reason for your frustration is because something has gone missing? You can’t get rid of something thats not there in the first place.

 So here I sit, a day before the second minisite is due. The computer is right here mocking me … and my lecturers are not. Truth be told, the computer is an innoceent victom. It is me who is to blame. I really am the one who has no idea what to do or what is expected. I mean, sure it says that we must expand on our idea, put up the new prototype and evaluation things. But how?

 How when er have not recieved any feedback from out lecturer on the first minisites that we have done? How are we to know what to improve on? What to shift our focus on? how to do the layout? Should it be consistent with the first or completely different.

It is an awkward position to be in and I am slowly losing my mind! I will get about to doing the website soon. I mean, it should be easy now that I am an expert in the creating of websites, I just don’t know what to include in it and who to ask for help. And since it is now 11am … I am going to get started and hope for the best.

 Oh … and I have had no car since moday night It blew up or something on the m5. Crappy Crappy Crappy. I miss my wheels. A lot.

The end … oh … and despite everything going crappy … I have a little light in my life still … barely

 I’ll see you, my adoring fans, at a later date.

Suna

Well, The minisite is all well and done! It is now 12:47am on the morining of Saturday the 15th September.

 Today (Pretend it’s the 14th) - And I will rant a litle about myself now. Sorry.

Anyways, Today was my 20th Birthday. I know, I look so youthful for someone so old! And I spent the morning in bed, wrapped in my blanket (it was cold) feeling sorry for myself. Then I realised that I should get the hell of my bum and go to uni to hand in the website (’cause I’m slow and still don’t know how to do it from home. I’m gonna figure it out on Monday though I think, cause I need to fix up my home page still … that is get rid of the placeholding text and add the real text.)

 So anyways, I travelled in true nerd style. USB around the neck, Laptop slinged by my side, and I left. I worked on some of my content on the way to uni and then fixed up my site. I believe (and I may be a little biased here) that my website is uber awesome.

 But, I’ll get back to this. So anyways, I get to uni (and almost regretted it straight away - I think we all know why! Holy Crap) and then my cousin rings … and comes to visit. Nothing eventful happened while I was at uni. I actually worked and left everyone alone.

I did have two mini heart attacks. One when none of my content wasn showing up on my minisite … I was convinced my new coding was right but nothing would show! Thank gos drew saved the day when he pointed out I was previewing from my Z drive … but editing in the G drive lol. That was embarrasing … but at least it works now.

 The second heart attack came when I forgot I renamed my minisites link, and forgot to change it from the homepage, so that it still went to the old minisite and i was convinced for a minute that I had deleted everything and that my life is over. But its all good. I fixed that too!

 Like I said, I’m a genius! But all jokes aside, as much as I like my minisite and website I think there is one gigantic mistake that I made (that I will not point out here) that I just cannot get over. Its going to be haunting me until we get the marks back.

Btw, can we please get some criteria for the next thing? I cant work like this! There was nothing clear about what to put on it, or how much everything was worth so that we know what to focus on etc.

So please, for the next one let us know EXACTLY how much its worth and how those marks are divided between whats expected.

 So anyways, I left uni at around … quater to 5? And accidently caught the bankstown train lol so I had to swap at ashfield … That was a first. I was saying to christine just yesterday that we never swap at Ashfield lol

Then I came home … maked up … dressed up and headed out. We went Brighton Australia (contrary to popular belief) and had dinner that was awesome cause there was this one waitress chick who was like super speedy and all over the place lol … until we realised they were twins haha and it explained a lot. Then I picked a fave twin and was bragging about her and putting the other one down (secretly) like I knew what the hell I was talking about.

And then we had ice-cream! I had cookies and cream! Yumm waffle cone! and yeah, walked along the beach a bit and headed back home. It was an okay night. Brighton is full of try hards, not my favourite place to be. But it was okay.

For dinner I had Chicken Pesto Penne incase you were wondering, yes it was quite nice.

Then I got home … at around 20 to twelve and I began stalking everyones minisites (thats where the movie title finally comes in! haha)

Some were really good. Some were boring. Some were cringe worthy! While others … were non existant!

I seriously could not find a few people’s minisites, either they were terribly set out and i just didnt manage to find the link, or else it didnt exist. And I noticed one persons link didnt work, which I thjought was atotal bummer.

But over all, I think everyone did quite well. I just hope that our marks reflect that.

 Oh, and while I’m at it … can I just mention how much I love CSS? Like seriously! I am not kidding at all! When I first heard we were learning CSS I was like “you’ve got to be kidding me. It just complicates things and wastes time” But i now see that I was wrong. It actually does the exact opposite! It tells my website to obey me and keeps it in order!

 Well, it may sound geeky, but I love CSS and I now cannot see why you would do a website without it! It makes everything so much easier! After you get the hang of it of course!

 Anyways, I’m off! I was gonna write some more, but im too tired. too tired even to stalk people’s blogs! I will do that tomorrow. Right now I need to rush … the sleep express is about to leave!

 Keep on keepin on my fantabulous fans!

Suna

xx

Holy ****!

 It’s Thurdays the 13th of September. Approximately 9.54am and where am I? 313 … working on my website (which totally rocks btw!) I finally (after restarting twice) have a website that works. CSS and all! I really amaze myself sometimes. But, Most of it at the moment is place keeping text since I started again last night!

 But, it’s considered finished for the moment as it does everything I need it to to get us around (and to the minisite) So, I havent actually started doing the minisite, But I’m about to right now.

 I know I haven’t blogged in a while (and please forgive me) but I have recently had a change of heart about my iPhone application. Really recent, like 4 days ago!

 It all started when I thought it was wise to speng $10 on a frickin’ mobile phone magazine! What a rip off! But thats not the point ’cause it actually helped.

 But more on that later.

 Since my iPhone minisite is due in roughly 38 hours, I think I should get to work on that first. I just needed a small moment of venting before I continued! I owas up ’till the wee hours of the morning and I really would rather be sitting somewhere with a friend sipping on a latte!

 But enough about my fantasies … I gotta get back to work and I will let you know how it went as soon as I finish.

 No doubt I’ll be in the mood to complain a bit more.

 Keep on keepin’ on my tiny little fans

Suna

(Still young! for now! lol!)

So, another Thursday …. Come and gone. Made some progress today, website wise. By Monday, I shall have a totally awesome website and you will all eat dust (haha … I’m all talk) but seriously, I am getting somewhere, I actually understand the whole CSS thing now, I just have to sort some things out.

The first mini-site is due next week (hopefuly on the friday) but I have no idea what content to put on it. We haven’t really been told anything. I have no idea how they expect us to do it. Must we use XTML or XHTML? Is a CSS neccessary? Can we use Dreamweaver (or equivalent)? Does it matter the method we choose to go about doing it? And what information do we need to display? Our idea? The results of our survey stuff? Drawings? Maps? Figures? (Okay, yes I know the last three are dependant on what it is they want us to present … but you get the idea.)

I have been … advised (”A word!” For those of us playing at home!) to E-mail Rob and ask him. But tomorrow is friday, So I might just ask him then, and if I get no answer? Then I’ll create a webpage on something that truly matters. Me. (Yes, I am kidding!)

I was kinda looking at everyone’s pages today and reading thier sources (research) and I must admit that I am quite impressed. I really am amazed by the amount of creative energy that flows within the 1200 students (and at how so much of it goes wasted a lot of the time.)

Anyways, I’ll shut up. This thing is meant to be more for IDEA development, not WEBPAGE development. So, idea? I got nothing! To be perfectly honest, I have no interest in the iPhone or any of its applications. I think its stupid, and it was outdated before it was even released. I still would have liked to have used my Ariel TV idea … but thats not “interactive.” That’s the whole point of TV. Its not supposed to be interactive. You’re supposed to be able to turn it on to inform or entertain you and keep you away from the real world where people are constantly demanding things from you. So yes, the one idea I actually liked went down the drain.

And although it may not appear to some, I have put a lot of thought into this assignment. The one question that’s on my mind? What application can I develop  that will make me (and others) want to purchase an iPhone. ‘Cause come on, if I am in a position to design applications for the iPhone, I either work for Apple, or I’m in DECO1200. I don’t think Apple is going to pay people to come up with applications that no one has a use for. So, (and this is just my opinion) if any of the presenters of last week (especially myself) were working for Apple … they’d be out of a job. It’s all useless and no one in their right mind will purchase a phone for those applications. Actually, I liked 2 whole ideas that were presented last week, that I thought were practical and could eventually become an ‘essential’ part of our lives. It was originaly 3, but one of the people that presented left a gaping huge flaw in their idea which made me dislike it. The flaw was pointed out in a question addressed to the presenter (whoever they may be) at the end of their presentation. If they can find a practical way to solve that problem, then I think that that idea has the potential to do well.

That was the process of thought when I was coming up with ideas. And the reason for their lack of. Kaz asked me before the presentations what would make people want to buy the iPhone if it had my TV idea in it. I believe I answered that “because it will provide you with information (news) and entertainment for free” and (and this was the main point for me) give people who spend a lot of time travelling to and from work (sleek suit men and ladies working in the city that travel on trains etc) something to kill time with rather than staring awkwarly around trying to avoid gazes. Also you could catch ur fave shows and things on the go … Like on Thursday morning I have a show that I like to watch at 9am … but I spend that time travelling to uni (getting to deco1200) I would love to still watch it while being dragged around in an uncomfortable, oversized sardine can. But then it was questioned ‘Why not just get a seperate portable TV?’ And I rally had no answer for that other than ‘Its inconvinient to carry a lot of things.’ Which sounded stupid, even by my standards. So I changed my presentation pretty last minute. Hoping to get something that made more sense … but alas, it was not meant to be. However, after watching everyone else’s presentations, I became aware that almost all of the ideas presented can be purchased as separate pieces of technology. Why were they not questioned about what would be the purpose of having it on a phone? But I see it as irrelavant anyways, the iPhone is more of a PDA than it is a phone. My fear of public speaking sprung through quite well too.

(Is there a way to stop this thing from auto-saving? It’s throwing off my thinking.)

So I did the paper thing that I mentioned in my last blog. I carried the pad of paper all day and tho thoughts I collected were as follows:

- I should download (legally, of course) Lennon’s ‘Stand By Me’ … It was on the radio

- I wish I had a dream interpreter … I remembered a strange dream I had while riding the bus (not watching anything) actually I might look up what that means now!

- I need to sort out my priorities and stop promising people I’d do stuff and then forget and then make other plans

- I wish I still kept a diary like I did back in year 9

- I want to be super good at Maya

- How funny is theatresports?

- I need to look up the history of the exclaimation point (Justin’s Lec)

- I need to play lotto … it might increase my chances slightly (It’ll be higher than 0)

- I miss my family, I wish they were here.

- I wish Emma’s telepathy thing worked hahaha

And that’s about it. My random thoughts, needs, wishes, desires etc during the day (Well, some of). Didn’t really inspire me with anything,  except I now wish I could teleport myself overseas … and turn back time. But I think I’m still a little way off from such technology. So tomorrow morning, I’m trying a new approach. A method I like to call mix and match. I’m pretty sure it has an actual name though, Rob was talking about it one day. During the coming up with ideas lecture.

And that’s all I have to say right now. I am tired and wish to be in bed … asleep. And I am off to do that now. I will leave you with a random thought.

I was reading the paper earlier and I came across an advert for a Casey Donnavan concert, and the maths I came up with is; you can either go see Casey SEVEN times, or see Justin Timberlake ONCE for the same money. I think I made the better choice.

Okay this blog isn’t really about any sort of iPhone thing. Just a rant really. First off …

I have a genius hammer! Yes, Maya and I are getting along these days. Sure its not great compared to everyone else’s masterpieces that I have seen, but it resembles a hammer … So I’m pretty happy.

Secondly, my thinking about the iPhone is getting me nowhere … and I’m on an express train! So, tomorro I’m going to carry around notes like a nerd and note down everything I feel like doing. Then, I’m going to try and work that into what I’m gonna do … Sure it sounds stupid, but stupids all I got at the moment. And like Mr. F Gump always says “Stupid is as stupid does.”

So, it’s thursday tomorrow. Deco1200 time again. Thankfully, our scare that the website is due tomorro was a little premature and I still have a while before the realisation that it is due the following day dawns on me.

Anyways, I’m missing out on much beloved sleep! I’ll see you peeps tomorrow!

Suna