12. Dude, where’s my marks?

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

11. Ressurection

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

8. The Others

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

7. Speed

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!)

6. The Missing

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.

5. The Notebook

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

4. The Neverending Story

So, it’s approximately 4pm on friday. I did my presentation … roughly an hour and a half ago (thats 1.5 OC Episodes, for those of us playing at home)

 I learnt a few things today.

 1. The wall in Lab313 is dead set on killing someone.

2. I am terrible at public speaking (suprise!)

3. Deco people are full of ideas!

4. I made an ass of myself.

 Okay, So … My idea changed a lot yesterday and (If I can still do it) is likely to change again … soon. I had a little bit of trouble expressing myself, which might come as a suprise since normally, I don’t prectice the art of ’silence’ too often.

My new idea was, rather than having the TV on the iPhone (I dropped that ’cause Kaz didn’t like it too much) it was like having a kind of network of film/music reviews.

The idea is that you can download music/movies/TV shows onto your iPhone (as mentioned in a previous blog) and watch it. But your iPhone will let people around you, your friends, family, stupid people riding the train … anyone, know what it is your watching or listening to by displaying like a feed thing that says ‘Suna is watching The Swan Princess’ (Which I will be doing later!)

And people can see that, and they can also browse your library of other things that you have in there, and you can write reviews or give ratings to things that you’ve already seen. So people looking for new material to watch or listen to can then in turn go to their iTunes store (or other alternative [LEGAL] download source) and check out music/video that they have discovered through others.

So, it’s really just a way to share music and movies and stuff using your phone. The target audience would be pretty much everyone whos into the whole TV or music phenomenon and wants to increase their knowledge and collection and also share their new stuff they found. This would be good for bands who want to promote themselves as well.

 But, yeah. It’s really not a complicated idea.

It came from the whole having TV on your phone thing, which I still think is brilliant … but not ‘interactive’ so its not really a web 2.0 thing.

 And class time is almost over, so I better prepare to head off and spend the night like old people do … being old.

And hopefully, by next week I’ll be a genius at Maya and would have got a fair bit of this stuff done as well.

 Now I’m going to talk about totally unrelated crap just because I need to vent. So you can stop paying attention now (Told you I’d do that Rob)

Anyways, I got Justin Timberlake tickets today! I almost dies cause stupid tiketek had busy servers from like 9 to 10 and I was just about to give up and go to Rob’s lecture when it finally let me in! So yeah, I got my tickets! I really really seriously dislike speaking to large groups of people.

Like, hypothetically speaking if I had to choose between public speaking and facing a hungry shark … I would pick the shark. Everytime!

I think that maybe by next presentation we can come in the labs and go in a chatroom lol and I’ll type out what I wanna say and everone can just read it, theyd also have the option of ignoring it which would work way better for me.

On the other bright side (besides my justin news) my phone and I have finally been reunited after 5 days! I had no idea how dependant I was on it until then. It kinda made thinking of things for the stupid iPhone thing a lot harder because my way of thinking was ‘What more do I want my phone to do?’ But with the phone missing my only response was ‘keep me in touch’ … which it kinda already does right now.

To do for the weekend:

Maya, CSS, iPhone thing and then Suna time! Yay! Well, not in that order, but hopefully I’ll get it all done!

And thats the end of presentations and the end of my jail sentence (kidding it wasnt all that bad)

Keep on keepin’ on

I’ll see you peeps next week

Suna

xxx