Last Minute Problems

It was too easy the last couple of weeks, everything seemed to be going fine, our group page was going good, everyone was working as a group, my blog was going ok a little on the simple side, but I liked it. Then came Monday, the wheather was horrible, the teacher was not present, arguments with students that shouldn't be there, the work that I had written took forever to fit on the wiki page, then my blog went crazy as i tried to had photographs to an earlier piece that I had written. After around 2 hours of trying to fiddle around with the blog, the pictures had to be slimmed down, but I got to somewhat degree what I wanted to represent on the piece regarding Raquel Stewart Who ?. I have also been have ludacris attempts to try and set a web link to a youtube stream that was about the post that I had written on virtual couples. To be honest with you I have already linked websites before on a previous blog, and could not understand and still cannot understand for the life of me why it won't work this time. Maybe just maybe if I keep trying then I will get it to work.

Upon Refllection the end is not near its here.

This project has finally reached the end of the road, I can say that ive come to sort of enjoy doing a blog, not always BUT, I do think that I will conitnue doing a blog from now on. I guess when this whole thing started I thought i was farirly confident using a computer, but what I came to realise was that although I was confident using a computer my confidence only came from me looking at websites, downloading music, movies etc on my terms, not on anyone elses, or a group telling you, you need to look at this. As for the group project I had never worked with any of the ladies before, so that was quite interesting to get to know people on a different level to what I was use to seeing them. We were slow starters to say the least, getting and Idea together, meeting up, everyone being in, all seemed to be weighing up down for production, but over the last few weeks, I believe that we have all come together suprisingly well. Suprising only because I didnt think that everyone would be on the same page so easily. When I look back the amount of work we had say 3 weeks ago to the work that we had today, I realise how far we have come as a group, and taking our group picture was the final culminations of group that were near the end of their time together.

The group wiki page has turned out better than I can ever manage, Papiya was the worker bee behind that got all our information, placed it on the page and took hours putting the colours together. Although we had already as a group decided on the layout, Papiya just got on with and in fact has been tremendous with helping us put the website together very well. She even helped me with figuring out work for my blog so big thank you to her. Jess might have missed a few lessons in the classroom, but she kept in touch and has worked hard at research and has given a great amount of information that is to be placed in outr project. Urvi was great a getting the case studies together, she was very much the one who wanted to get a move on, get it all together and I truly believe that we worked a bit quicker and harder so that we could all be up to scratch. Finally Kris was wonderful in the way that she just got on with it, although being a tad brain damaged at one stage, she lead the group and was able to set up a more clear structure of where we needed to get to for the final end result.

Reflecting back to day one and how much I did not want to stay in Uni until 4pm on a Monday afternoon suck on a computer, to being in the last week staying until 6.30 trying to fix pictures that was going on my blog, is one of the reasons that I honestly believe that you should not go into something so negative, you might just trun around and find your self always wanting to be doing that something that you thought you would never like.

I would like to just say that thank you to my group members, thnaks Nigel it was nice knowing you.

I'll BE SEEING YOU!.

Almost there, but not quite.

The project is almost most over, everything has almost been completed only the conclusion left to be written, our group photo left to be taken and thats it for the rest the project to be complete. This week has been quite a task as everyone has other work due in, the foucus was for the project to be at the late stages by the end of the week. I believe that the group has truly accomplished this. The site has been layed out as imagine last week Monday, the context maybe somewhat not as loaded as what we intially had researched, but as Nigel mentioned over the course of this assignment, use the medium for what it is there for; so on that note the pictures are able to complement what the focus of what our assignement is. One last lesson on Monday to complete our group project and hand it in, hopefully all last minute plans will work out as we took so long to get started, but in the final stages have worked well to get the information together and looking like a project that we can be happy with.

Progression.

As I had talked of last week, we are coming along slowly but surely. We have been given our specific jobs, as we are carrying that out the main problems that are facing the group is getting a layout that suits the needs. Our main colours that we have decided on were black and green as that gives the great technological effect. Has I am aware Papiya has been struggling with getting the colour schemes to take to what we had firstly thought we could accomplish. For the next week we have to be more productive in trying to get our layout together complete all the write up so we can go into the final week confident with what Is going to be our final product.

WTF 2

A few weeks ago, I watched a great show that changed my idea of what a Second Lifer was, I didn’t expect to see inside the chatroom so clearly, I didn’t expect people to fall in love, I didn’t expect people to get married on line, to be honest from my lack of expectation I should not have been really surprised at anything I saw, however I was; I was extremely disgusted at one particular woman who had gone as far as leaving her children and husband to see the man she had fallen in love with in Second Life.To me the whole idea that she wasn’t the only one, was an even more bizarre idea to me, I started to judge those people. But who am I to judge, as that was one of my new years resolutions not to be so judgemental, I instantly failed with the wonderland documentary as the situation that I was watching was so far removed from my day to day existence.

The wonderland documentary, does brings in the question what the social norms are in relations to using the internet, its ok to be on Facebook and Myspace and have hundreds of friends that you never meet, or never even talk to, moreover when you meet someone and fall in love on an internet dating site that that's normal as that's the site's main function. The more I sat and watched the programmes, and now weeks later in someway I can understand the lonely housewife, who found escapism by using a website like Second Life, and that’s probably the main people who use the site people who want to remove themselves from their day to day existence, to the point where love can be formed, friendship can be formed, money can be made. I honestly cannot say that I am in full acceptance of the behaviour of all the subjects in the programmes esp. the housewife, but on some level I have come to some understanding of why someone like her would find her self transfixed and falling in love on an Internet site.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQwdK2T0Bzs

Progress

I have now completed 6 weeks of this course, and have known all along that the aim was to complete your own blog, and complete a group project to pass this course, what I didn’t think was that time would fly so fast, and that outside factors form other courses would actually let my focus from this course slip. My initial excitement for bloging was somewhat lackluster, but as week three came I was gradually getting into the swing of writing a weekly blog, although its been mentioned that I should not have talked about Heath Ledger, I still believe that at that time it was ok, as the focus of the course was not ingrained in me and at that time, I honestly thought that you could write whatever you wanted, on any topic that you were interested in. Heath's blog post, also had the mention of TMZ.COM, as I touched upon however consume news today, especially people within my age group who would much rather look at the news on the internet, rather than watch BBC news at 6.

The group project is coming along, slowly with the ever present deadline looming, the realisation that we have to complete everything as soon as possible had dawned on me last week, as a group we have discussed on job roles, but none had truly been carried out apart from those doing the researching, there have been absents that have left the whole group togetherness a slight hindrance, as everyone does not seem to be on the page as to where we need to be going. As of last lesson I finally feel that we are heading in the right direction, and will be able to start putting pieces together, before we can go ahead and get the website looking wonderful.

I have every faith that we are going to complete this group project at a great level, that will be impressive to us as well as 'Nigel', I hope for the next few weeks we can pull our socks up, and get the group dynamic up to par that we can work together in our best interest.

Raquel Stewart Who?