This is College Life 1

Next door to my public speaking class, John Cleese, we think.  A ringer in any case.  Awesome.

Overlooked a girl's shoulder, watched her text a friend who texted her that he had elephantitis of the dick.  Her response: "Ewww, so its all wrinkly and gray. lol"

Professor pops the top of her soda.  Its is on now, class.  It is ON.

Troy is a city of western influence....one crappy movie.....harshin' my buzz like so many awkward teens on so many Rosdowers.

A girl with a tattoo like a magic seal.  Her shoulder is a save point.

Heroic Code: I put my life on the line for Timé and Kleos; for the Benjamins and the Nookie and the fame.

HEAVENS TO BETSY, ANOTHER SITE??

Random Lunacy is open to the public.  A friend and I are writing articles.

Yes, you should be afraid.  Very very afraid.

Just a Lil Dirty DIRTY Lingualisming

Getting back in the saddle and deciding what to do w/ the place (I don't yet, lol wut a surprise 8D), I found an interesting blog article on the nature of the LOLCATS:
im in ur programs, codin in ur dialect

Its a real interesting read about the internet phenomenon of the dialect, so I won't go too in depth since the article is a pretty easy read, but for the initiated, lolcats can be found by clickin the image:

Yes.  Yes, it DOES have to be that huge. 8D

In the coming months, we'll see how this blog is gonna go but for now, I have some pokemon to get back to.  TOODLES. 8D

Google Wave Update: 3rd Party Reviews

After the initial review, I went back to Google Wave with 2 other people to augment my own views of the tool's usability.

First off, my boyfriend, whom you'll remember was part of my first Google Wave experiment, worked on a few projects on GW, primarily a tabletop story-telling game called Point-Man (as seen in screenshots of the first GW post), as well as fleshed out ideas for a series project entitled Dark King's Reign.  We used GW to post a main thread on character points, such as vital stats, and then launched a few excerpts of prose for the story, which can be found here.

His comments on GW are as follows:
Regarding Google Wave, I felt that the program worked well as a platform for collaborative project work online. The system is fairly intuitive and easy to use, but it's currently a bit buggy. Connection problems are still an issue for the system. Data loss is still somewhat common and needs to be addressed. A major problem for google wave is also it's biggest strength; it's upgradability. The majority of it's more advanced functionality is dependent on attaching gadgets to your waves. While this allows for a modular functionality that makes the system adapt to your needs, it does make it somewhat unclear exactly what you can do with the system. Theoretically, as long as there are gadgets to allow for the functionality, one can do nearly anything with it. Areas for Google Wave's improvement lie with the further development of gadgets and more advanced capabilities for the platform.  


In short, Pros:
--Very useful for collaborative work online
--Easy to use and intuitive
--Upgrades in the future and "modular" gadget-driven add-ons (to be implemented as time goes on)


Cons:
--Data loss
--Connection problems
--Add-ons are sometimes unclear 


My friend Jacob and I used GW as we use MSN, and attempted an Role Play story-telling type project involving a few characters from two of our original series.  The basic format of the RP is that one person types in dialogue and then waits for a response, often juggling more than one character at a time if the scene calls for it.  A partial transcript of this RP can be found here.


Jacob's thoughts on GW:

Well, I think it's a very nifty lil' thing, actually.  The [main message box] that we spoke with was brilliant, allowing for edits on misspellings, which is something I direly wish other IM's had.

My only issue with it is that the little button that you clicked when you're done editing didn't appear to send any sort of auditory alert when you clicked it, letting the other participant know you were done.  

In spite of that, it was easy to use, once you knew what you were doing, and figuring out how to work GW was just as easy to pick up. Overall, it gets my seal of approval,

And I must make it a habit to use it more then just that one time.  XD

In summary his Pros:

--Real-time editing

--Easy to use

And Cons:

--No auditory alert for when other collaborators are using it

Overall, for both participants, Google Wave was a very positive experience, with few problems.  I'm happy to report that the positive ranking for Google Wave remains a nice and high score.

Finals (are) Weak

Merely administrative, this is the site for my ePortfolio.

My Drugs are Digital

Fanning the Flames

Well, with some work (and continuing work, of course), Amanda's and my site is live:

FAN-atical
We're presenting the site as a rough today, so if you have lingering questions or suggestions (or if you're not in our Engl 105), please drop them here!

By Fans, For Fans, and Hopefully Not as Expensive as Fanime

Now that I've made my decision to blaze-a-blaze (galang-alang-alang-lan) ahead on the research paper topic for the associative argument website, and have joined up with the illustrious forces of Amanda, I suppose the next idea would be to start brainstorming ideas of layout, and content.

First off, there will be some included content on both our research papers, the gamut running from fanfiction value as a creative tool and teaching tool in the classroom, to the professional value and validity of derivative fan work (fan art, fan fiction, remix/mash-ups).


Love this like its your own child.

Also included will be some fan work, specifically fan fiction from both of us and hopefully other collaborators I know, so maybe starting an "example" gallery of fan work (I know for a fact I'm recruiting my buddy J-MACHine into this hullabaloo.  He doesn't know yet as of posting >D).

I'm also considering the idea of having comments available for discussions.  If not in each section, then maybe in a main discussion page.  My main goal was to incite some talking about fan work.

What technie things I DO want to know how to do (seeing as I've NEVER built a website):
--How to embed a comment box or like code to allow for feedback/discussion/etc

--How to embed music links, both for listening purposes and perhaps downloading (in the case of non-commercial artists).  At the very least, I want a way for people to click on hyperlinks for music and not need to navigate too far from the main page (cutting out the possibility of getting lost on the way to last.fm, for example).

--Making sure I can embed youtube links, like you can in a blog.  I'm fairly certain they shouldn't be a problem.  But I'm covering my bases.

Hopefully, it'll be fun, interactive, and good enough for a good grade. :3

Cosmic, Man, Cosmic

The next assignment for English 105 is an associative argument assignment.  What?  Forget the breaking down of the assignment into totally translatable explanations, I'll just start the free write of what I plan to do right now.

Schmow-wow.

The idea is to generally make a webpage based off of a previous assignment, of which follows for me:

--The Technical Bibilography, wherein we find lil ol' me and ascertain when she got her addiction to the internet, games, and generally messing around and calling myself a writer/artist.  To your left you'll see a Gameboy with Tetris and to your right, you'll find chat rooms and Google Wave.  Thank you for not smoking.

--The aforementioned tech review of Google Wave, with its shiny bells, whistles and intuitive interface.

--And finally, the much stressed over Research Paper, Everything Old is New Again: Sampling and Fan Work, otherwise known as "The Case for Fan Work and a Silly Excuse to Use Pop Culture as Real Culture" (and who's to say that it can't be?).  

An example or two on parataxical "texts"/work:

Not (Necessarily) a Cosmic Convergence

.....I don't know what I'm supposed to call this, but, here it is

(the latter link is all sorts of shades of 99 Rooms and Dionaea House.  Also, don't say I never warned you, but make sure to attempt Dionaea House w/ the lights on.  I'm not responsible for the creeps it may induce 8D)

The easiest transition, after thinking on it (which is to say, not at all, because I'm impulsive like that), to a shiny and nifty, hyperlinked page is the Research Paper.

The case for this:

--SELF-PIMPING 8D.  Because the idea of being able to use my own work paints me 7 ways of giddy. I'm not narssisstic.  HONEST. 8D

--A more dynamic way to present my evidence and examples, like hyperlinking Double K, and There Will Be Brawl, in addition to musical artists' pages.  Its good to give love in the form of pageviews to artists, you know.

--I can easily generate new text I wasn't able to include in the paper.

--In this way, then, I can request more dialogue than a static paper, and present new questions and really get these ideas out there, where more people will talk.

Ideas!

--Perhaps then, in addition to posting hyperlinks, maybe having a comment board and/or image board for people to post points I haven't considered or work that supports or detracts from my research paper's argument.  

--In thinking along these lines, a submittable gallery that runs along the points of interest in my essay would be more approachable for those not of scholarly blood (like meself), and help illustrate the points of evolving fan community and the work they produce.

.....Yeah.  I'm getting far to excited about this, aren't I?

I'm Not Dead Yet

A research paper required of me three things: time, effort and stability.  I had only 1 of the 3, and I'll give you a hint: its effort.  BUT.  That's not my real point.  My real point is the nature of the research process.  My topic for class was on the subject of fan work, mostly because I'm the most familiar with the practices and its something I enjoy doing (if my now neglected DA account is of any indication, though a glut of it is original work).  As an amateur artist with dreams of everything big, shiny, and hopefully merchandisable, I see fan art as being a good outlet that has practical, if not artistic, merit.

Therefore I centered my paper on the nature of fan work, starting from the traditional fan fiction and fan art, all the way up to the professional level of sampling in music, notably DJs (including but not limited to Pogo, Fatboy Slim, and Daft Punk).  I still do have some filling in to do, but overall, I think I got a good foundation for the case for fan work as legitimate work.

The research part was a might difficult, since I was on the prowl for topics that included a fair and wide amount of information on fan fiction (there was little that i could find on fan art as of this week) and a few articles on the subject of sampling for music.  Both searches were a bit frustrating, since it was difficult to locate both credible sources of papers on the subjects (though I did find a few written by a very well read and statistic armed writer whom was lucky enough to discuss her work with the scholar Henry Jenkins, a leading voice on the nature of fan fiction), and to find complete articles.  I did use ILL, but the downside is the fact that one might have to order their materials from another library, which will add time to your researching (time one like me didn't have in luxury).

However, the articles I was able to locate were both interesting (FINALLY, some articles that weren't Sahara dry in content and prose) and extremely helpful in my case.  It also help lead me to other sources of reading for side subjects I didn't get to fully touch on in my essay (namely the divisive nature of fan fiction regarding romance/shipping, the gender divide, etc).  This paper also gave me plenty of privalage in pimping artists like Captainosaka, or Nathan Maurer, and Pogo, and pimping work such as Maurer's Double K, and the show There Will Be Brawl.  Only because I'm a mega-nerd like that. :)

Overall, the research was fruitful, but only through sheer perserverance, which is akin to just straight up effort.  Yay for that.  I just want to polish the paper a bit better so maybe I can use it elsewhere.  I think it'd be a nice article to write somewhere.

Your Regular, Decorated Emergency

"Can't take the kid from the fight/Take the fight from the kid./Sit back, relax/Sit back, relapse again"
I would leave a link to the song, Camisado, by Panic at the Disco (as of this moment, I forget if this is when it has the ! in the bandname or not), but any version on youtube isn't the album version I love and is actually pretty subpar.  Instead, I linked you up to a piece of art that I did for it.

It feels more accurate to the lyric.

Google Wave: No, Its Not a Prom Night Hair-Do

In past reviews (which have occasionally shown up on my old blog and my DA journal), usually I limit myself to movies, occasionally books, and rarely video games.  I find that such things are much easier (if spoiler-rific) to review since they are narratives that can be broken down to details like sound or character developments, and I can additionally sum it up to how much money I spent, and how much the experience was worth what I spent.

That said, I have never really taken the time to do a "tech" review, wherein the item in question is a tangible item that does not have a narrative to it that I can dissect.  One may assume that a tech review should be easier, since I can go point by point on the quality of the item, and there is less subjectivity.

Perhaps that is why I don't usually do a tech review since I'm more familiar with the protocols that a form of entertainment can be rated on versus a tool review.  However, I will try my best in giving a sufficient review of Google Wave, of which I've been experiencing over the course of the week.

I could say it like: "First I was all:"

"Then I was all:"

Buuuuut, I think my grade miiiiight suffer without more of a meaty review.

--Writing Space vs Writing Tool


That said, I can start with the whole notion of Google Wave as a writing tool or as a writing space.  Short answer?  Both.  Longer answer?  As a tool, Google Wave allows one to write a document and allow for other users to collaborate on and add to.  Think of a white board that people can all jump onto and write on together in real time.  At this point, it becomes a tool for those who wish to write on, say, a story pitch, refining it as its created like throwing ceramic pots (albeit without a ghostly Patrick Swayze and "Unchained Melodies").

As a writing space, its a bit different than, say, a blog or a forum (in fact, it shares similar qualities to a forum and a blog in that one can post a document or text and readers can comment on it).  Obviously right now, only a limited number of people will see the product, since Google Wave is still in beta.  But nonetheless, your work can be publicly seen by others.  As a writing space, I think Google Wave will have appeal to those who use it.

--Interface

The interface, as mentioned in the previous post, is relatively clean and neat.  Your options are in plain sight.  Clicking on a wave in the list opens it in the right side of the screen.  Above that are further options.  If you wish to reply to a post, click reply, and it drops down a new box to type your reply.

If you wish to edit a box already typed in, you click edit.  You can edit all the texts, including replies and threads.

Clicking playback will reveal, step-by-step ("day by daaaayyyy") all the edits and replies in the order they were entered.  This way you can track what changes were made and by whom.  Nifty!

--Collaborative Use

There are other features in Google Wave I'm leaving out, but there are a few things I found limiting about it.  When mentioning it to a friend, she said she tried it out but ultimately abandoned it.  Her reasoning: "If you want to collaborate on documents, we used Google Docs.  If we wanted to Instant Message, we used an IM service."  To her, she felt that the real-time collaboration was sufficiently handled by Google Docs.  There are a few drawbacks to this service too.  Data security, file corruption, computer lagging, and features that Microsoft Office has but Google Docs does not.

Google Wave does indeed suffer from a bit of the same drawbacks as Google Docs.  However, while Google Docs provides a writing tool and space that is similar to Google Wave (real-time document editing), I found that Google Wave was more suited to my style of writing, specifically creative writing, story pitching to peers, and the ability to collaborate in real-time with other collaborators (which was something my friend did not use either service for).

What I found in Google Wave was the ability to freely create work and text that could be instantly edited and added to with a fellow collaborator in a more seamless and efficient interface.  To those ends, I feel I was very satisfied.

According to Google, Wave was "designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking.  Its has a strong collaborative and real time focus."  Already, the standards for the system were set.  It takes Google Docs, which was a service that seemed angled towards businesses (and how much more businessy can spreadsheets get??), while Google Wave seemed angled towards more of a creative angle for people wanting to work on more "fun" projects.

--Data Storage


However:

...one thing I did find limiting, and actually rather dismaying, was the fact that your wave, and indeed all your hard work, is store online.  While this may seem like a boon to those who are continually on the run and require a place to store their work besides their own laptops or computers, I felt it very limiting.  With the internet connection at SJSU as it is, which is, to put it bluntly, SUCKTASTIC, this can prevent one from checking or working on something while on campus.  A sloppy internet connection will prevent you from accessing a project you may have already done, even if you don't intend to work on it at that moment.  Additionally, your projects and data are at the mercy of the online data storage, which can make it susceptable to loss should something happen to the server.  A scary thought for those who do a lot of online storage (or for those like me, who prefer to have their projects on hand at all times even without an internet connection).  The inability to download your work to perhaps work on in a different program is horribly limiting and present a very real drawback to Google Wave.

Yes, Simon.  I see the problem you are seeing.  Without the ability to download your projects to look at later when one may not have an internet connection, or to edit in another program such as Microsoft Word, the collaboration aspect seems very limited.  At this point, Google Wave becomes a writing tool, but one that isn't as self-sufficient as something as simple as Textedit.  The best one can do is copy and past the text written into one of the aforementioned programs and then paste anything new back into the wave via edit.  Painstaking and potentially dangerous (though the option to playback is available in case something truly disasterous happens).

But overall, I found Google Wave not only extremely slick and fun to use, but valuable for collaborative work.  If one loves instant feedback and real-time editing for things like story pitches or even dialogue exchanges, then Google Wave has the comforts of Microsoft Word and MSN/AIM all rolled into a pretty blue and white package.  Admittedly, Google Wave would be more suited to those who are in the creative writing vein, and prefer to work with others who have a similar writing setting as your own.  If you happen to get an invite to Google Wave, I heartily recommend a try.  You might be pleasantly surprised.  I give Google Wave a solid 85% out of 100%, which is about a B for those keeping score.

Drawn artwork provided by myself and the artist Jamesprower, AKA J-MACHine.

One Hand in my Pocket, and the Other is Google Waving

With my brand new invite to the new Google Wave in my in box, I tackle this new-fangled writing space with the gusto of a shark on chum.  

Google Wave boasts a lot of new features to the world of writing.  What with everyone and their mother jumping aboard the Google wagons (and it becoming a beloved search engine with plenty of odd offshoots like Mystery Google, which has like its name, mysteriously vanished from the internet), attaching various online services together with a single Google ID, the obvious next step was to allow for these connections to be used to collaborate in real-time, better, faster, and presumably stronger than before  most IM services.

This new tech was announced late May of 2009 at the Google I/O conference, with a September release to users, into November.  I myself had no clue as to what it was, only that my loving boyfriend sent the invite to try it (in fact, he had sent me my invite to gmail, so I can easily blame him for the addiction, should I get one).

Looky above.  My first venture into the cool blue world of Google Wave was crisp, clean, and...."like WHOA".  Part IM service, part document engine, I'm stunned by the efficient looking interface.  Its actually pretty cute looking.  Of course, this stark plain of blues and whites was a bit daunting.  So, running MSN in the background, I recruited my boyfriend into helping me take my first dip.

By way of grabbing me by the waist and throwing me into its cold depths.  He says he loves me.

Note on the left, you'll see my current writing crutch, MSN.  To the right is the interface, with his new wave ready and raring to go.  You click the wave and dive right in.  Note its using your google ID, etc, etc.  Yes.  The fact I could see him, in real time, type in the name of the wave and begin to write, seems like WITCHCRAFT.

At right, you'll see how the wave starts working.  Not unlike a forum post, you can reply to posts and the such, but as a bonus, you can also edit within the thread as its being written, in real time.  Not unlike an IM or text, you can communicate freely, yet edit your own replies, unlike being stuck with an uneditable message for all to see.

So far, I'm liking this writing space/tool.  A lot of my personal work is collaborative, or at the very least, always open for suggestion as I write.  Now, I'll have the option of being able to write something, then get instant feedback, or even edits as I go with a co-collaborator.  I'm fairly interested and raring to go now that I have my sea-legs google-legs.  *insert goofy surfing lingo pun here*

Your Confidence is Showing

Yesterday's English 105 class had a few good ideas swirling around, things like what a blog vs an academic blog sounds like, what the blog for class is being used for, even privacy issues (in a world where Facebook is a private detective and Big Brother all wrapped up in a candy coating).

One of the main issues I did hear was how to properly "sound" like an academic blog, even when you're lacking in the vocabulary or indeed the skill needed to make a scholarly argument on a writing space that seems like anything but.  Most of the students in class are new to the blogosphere and don't quite grasp the full nature of a blog and its applications, not unlike the professors and teachers in the articles discussed yesterday .

Allowing for my ego to take a blow in, I would assume this fear and uncertainty comes down to a confidence issue; confidence in both your own argument and the tools you have at your disposal to make it (be it scholarly journals or a blog, for example).  Is there a difference in talking/discussion/having a discourse in class and making an argument in a scholarly essay?  Yes, of course.  There are certain protocols to be followed (essay formats like MLA, margin spaces, even cover pages and how the essay paragraphs are constructed).  Do any of us argue the same way, with the same vocabulary and precision, in a regular conversation?  Probably not.

Yet I don't think that one should have a lack of furvor or even proof/evidence of your argument no matter the situation, be it an academic essay or a blog or even a friendly informal debate.  What really makes an argument is having the confidence to use the tools and evidence you have, more than the way its worded.

Anyhow, that's how I feel about it.  I don't see myself as having much of a confidence issue, but again, that's my ego showing through.  XD  My problem lies on the other side of the problem, which is sounding far too informal.  But, its all a part of my learning process.

Dr. Blogspot, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love to Blog

One of the articles about blogging I read for my Eng. 105 class was Dr. Clark's "I Don't Really Want to Go into Personal Things in This Blog": Risking Connection through Blogging.  The thin line between using a blog as a diary and using the blog as a place to invite conversation is one that many professors who want to utilize it as a tool struggle with.  One of my favorite blogs when I started blogging was one written by a London call girl, definitely not for the faint of heart nor prude of nature.  However, despite her subject matter and wild stories of men (and sometimes women), she still had interesting anecdotes about the human condition, even love advice.  She opened up her world to invite discussion, and though it sometimes drew irked feminists or queasy PTA soccer moms/dads, it enabled the reader to take a glimpse into the world and see that we're not so different and even a call girl has important things to say.

Dr. Clark's fears, or rather, intimidation, of the blogging world becoming too personal were well justified.  Yet, once he opened himself up to his students (and not even with anything completely intimate), he was able to make a connection that was two-way.  There is no need to become completely intimate with your readers, but there is additionally no need to completely seal yourself up from them.  A dialogue is just that: a two-way connection, required for an exchange of ideas.

Another article I read was Amy Earhart's entry Knit Blogging: Considering an Online Community.  Earhart's hobby of knitting took her to the world of blogging through the lack of a knitting community near her.  She found this community of like-minded hobbyists through blogs and Internet searches.  I don't argue this; in fact, before my major (and certainly not the only) hiatus from my old blog, I had used it as a tool of finding a community and using it to communicate with other like-minded bloggers.  I had links to friends' blogs in my side bar and often played comment tag with them.  While I've moved most of my activity to my DA account (and even less to my oft-abandoned Facebook and Twitter [I am not proud of the latter XD]), they still function the same as my blog.  I used the online community to find myself a community with which to fit in.

Not unlike Earhart's point of the nature of knit bloggers.  Knitting, or rather any hobby I suppose, crosses all genres, sexes, sexual preferences, race, and age, even distance.  A blog is able to move beyond a personal statement, even going as far to allow for an emphasis on how people can be the same.  A blog functions as a representation of a person, or at the very least different facets of a person, and a respresentation of how one belongs in a community.  This fluid sense of belonging, and yet retaining one's individuality is something that blogs can provide in a way that Facebook/Myspace, or even DA.

Look, Ma! No Hands!

I had another blog, and I'm not sending the funeral invitations, but that doesn't mean I won't be posting.  At least this time, it won't be about the random drivel I hear on a daily basis or movie reviews interspaced with pictures of my dog.  I know, you're real disappointed. 8D
For those who remember this.
Also, I tend to post a LOT more here.