Monthly Archives: August 2013

so, all my essays have been wrong?

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now, those first assigned readings are pretty lengthy and heavy. and i’m so tired that my eyes are turning each letter into some strange hieroglyph that probably wouldn’t even make sense to Cleopatra. so i decided to leave those nice long essays for another time and move onto to something a little nicer on the brain. and i’m glad i did. the age of the essay, by paul graham, was really interesting and has really changed my whole view on essays. unfortunately however, i think if i actually took any of this advice and wrote a proper “essay” for an assignment, i would prob fail. but, it’s interesting stuff either way.

it was interesting the way Paul explained how the way we write essays is similar to hows lawyers present an argument. even though i’ve never really watched law an order, i’ve seen enough law shows on tv to see how that makes sense. an opening statement, presenting the argument with evidence and witnesses and then delivering a closing statement. pretty much an essay word for word. also, i absolutely hate the conclusion of an essay. kinda like how Paul described, it’s pretty much just summing up the previous points but no new ones?? then whats the point of the rest of the essay? like he said, it’s just finding a way to smartly re-word the intro, and it’s often really hard to do, especially when you’ve already spent so much time smartly wording the intro itself.

my favourite part of the article was when paul tells us what a real essay is. essay literally means try. now, as i mentioned before, i wish essay we write at uni could be like this. when i was reading the stuff he was describing about a real essay, like, not starting with a thesis or definitive point to argue but rather going in with a thought or question and just exploring where it could take you, to me that kinda felt like my blog. i start to write something as a blog post and as i write i’ll realise something new or one thought will take me on a completely unintended path or thought stream. thats why half my blog posts end up so long! my mind likes to make weird connections that i don’t even realise until i’m half way through a paragraph that i had not intended in an way.  for a couple of my previous blog posts i actually had to go back and change the title or the first paragraph because the rest of the post didn’t follow it at all! but i could just be crazy. similarly, in high school i could never plan an essay, even in english, like for the final exam. like, i would write practice essays to prepare but i would never get to an essay and write out  plan and dot points on what i would say. because for me, each sentence would form the next sentence and these would often lead to new ideas that you just can’t think about in the pressure of giving yourself 5 minutes to plan an essay at the start. so when beginning an essay i was never entirely sure where it would end and often had to go back and change the introduction accordingly.

like paul said, a real essay is thinking out loud. and to me that’s pretty much what blogging is! it’s a search search for truth but is supposed to meander, not get straight to point. the random tangents we take are where the exciting stuff happens. the surprises. and these are our most valuable experiences. not only are surprises made from what we don’t know but often they contradict what we thought we knew. and that’s where we lead to new discoveries and ideas. they can’t just come from no-where. they come from the unknown or the strange and are built upon to create something great.

it was pretty good advice, that stuff towards the end. an interesting way to look at life. allow yourself to be wrong because what made you wrong could be interesting or surprising. don’t simply accept everything you have been told by society. search for the truth in what is usually a given fact but seems wrong or “off”. and then you can write an essay.

and now i know some interesting facts about vikings in the 900’s too. gotta love them vikings.

Who is slade?

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so, i’ve been watching a lot of teen titans recently (great show btw, if you haven’t seen it, check it out. if you like cartoons though. and awesomeness!!!!). anyway, the basic premise is 5 teenage superheroes who fight crime, their leader is robin (like, batman and robin, yeah, that robin). and in the show there are a lot of references to other DC stuff, like gotham city or metropolis and there’s even a fight scene on top of a Wayne Enterprises building. but what i didn’t realise until recently is there a quite a lot of connections to the green arrow.

for those who don’t know who the green arrow is, he is another DC superhero (who’s real name is Oliver Queen) and is an archer (hence the arrow in the name). i first saw him in the series smallville (tom welling anyone??? such a good clark kent) and now the CW has an awesome new series called arrow which is, you guessed it, about Oliver queen and his adventures as the green arrow, or, as they call him in the show, “the hood guy”.

so, i hear you ask, where am i going with this? well… teen titans features various random baddies (with some very odd superpowers might i add. like a guy who just shines light at people, or a piece of tofu from outer space that kidnaps cows) but the big bad of the first two seasons was this super evil dude called “Slade” who was robin’s arch nemesis and was hell bent on controlling the city and destroying the teen titans. you know, your average evil guy stuff. and he’s a brilliant fighter. like, he’s the first guy you see in the show able to take down robin. so anyways, not really sure what brought it up but i was just in my random, obsessive show phase of looking up everything and anything about a show i watch and i came across the wikipedia for slade where it said that in the comics he was originally called “deathstroke” but they changed it for the cartoon coz it was too dark. and that name sparked some little flicker of recognition. where had i heard deathstroke before?? (i’m sure you see where this is going).

and then i remembered!!! in Arrow, about a third of each episode is spent in flashbacks showing Oliver’s time that he spent stranded on a supposedly deserted island. but, as we, and oliver, soon learn, the island is in fact some kind of crazy prison/war camp or something (i’m still not quite sure yet) but all we know is there are some very ruthless baddies

on this island who posses incredible fighting skills and brutal strength. and of course, oliver manages to get himself tortured by the worst one of them all. and what was his name? you guessed it…Deathstroke!!! omg i felt so proud of myself for picking up on this connection.heres a pick of death stroke, you can see the similarities between the two characters.

but oh no, my curious brain didn’t stop there!! because then i remembered another character (and if you don’t want arrow spoilers, stop here) who oliver meets on the island. he was deathstroke’s partner in the army before they reached the island and deathstroke became a baddie. and what was his name??? right again…Slade!!. and they have matching creepy masks. (i’ve put a picture of slade below too, holding his mask, just incase any of you were interested. and he’s aussie too! well, the character is, i’m assuming the actor is too).

 

so there you have it!! crazy teen titans references in a current US tv show. although i guess really they’re all just from the DC world, not necessarily teen titans. but just a weird coincidence that i’m watching both at the same time i guess. oh, and another one i never picked up on when i first watch the titans series as a kid, but there are often episodes where the titans work with other heroes and one of them who appears a few times is this kid, very similar to robin. his name is “Speedy” and, yup, he’s an archer. turns out he is the green arrows side kick and they already cast someone to play speedy in the upcoming season of arrow!! ah, so much intertwiningness (that should deff be a word). anyway, hope you enjoyed that, although i’m probably like the only person in the world who really cares, i still think its cool. my one piece of advice, if you’re not watching arrow, you should be!!!

 

 

charles cabbage and other class activities

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ok, maybe calling Charles Babbage, “Charles Cabbage”, is a bit disrespectful. but it’s not my fault that his last name sounds like cabbage. it just flows better.

in this weeks class, after some pretty light discussions about how most people enjoyed this weeks unlecture, we were thrown headfirst into research for our niki pages. who is niki do you ask?? niki is the networked media wiki. but niki sounds better than nmwiki so lets stick with niki. as i’m sure you’ve guessed by now, i was lucky enough to pull charles babbage out of the hat, along with 4 other class members. and while others in the class were sitting happily with stuff like written “youtube” on their little slips of paper, my table just had the dumbfounded faces. “who the hell is charles babbage??”

well now, i’ll tell you who charles babbage is. mr. babbage pretty much invented the calculator. now, i’m not talking about the pocket calculator, coz you would need pretty big pockets to fit this 2 story, 50 tonne beauty into your pocket. but back in the late 1800’s, babbage didn’t like the inaccuracy of calculations and so devised a machine to eliminate human error in arithmetic.


try fitting this in your pocket

so, after each of us spent 15 minutes googling (crazy that googling is a legitimate verb nowadays!) our mysterious subject, we were tasked with coming up with some ways of creating our niki page so that it would reflect his voice. you know, like an interview. except that he’s been dead for like 100 (almost wrote 1000!) years. and here we struggled. not because it was such a hard thing to think about, because i’m sure if we set our minds to it we would come up with something constructive (and if you by chance want to see what we came up with, and it’s not much i’ll just warn you know, you can check it out here) but our problem was that our attention span is just too short. everytime one of us came up with an idea, or the start of an idea, or even brought up another fact about the interesting life of mr babbage, we would all sidestep onto some completely random topic that would go on for another 10 or so minutes. so, by the end of class, our best idea was to ressurect charles as a zombie and try to talk to him before he tried to eat our brains. as you can see, a very productive class. but at least we’re getting somewhere….kinda.

um….. what?

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so, as i was casually browsing the Top Ten things to come in cans, i came across this VERY stange canned item.

i hope none of my ear juice is in there!!! also strange that is the only thing written in english on that can. maybe a bad translation? but apparently a jew’s ear is  type of mushroom. now, i love mushrooms. they are by far my favourite vegetable. but not even i would drink a can of mushroom juice. especially not one labelled as “jew ear juice”!!!!

the brilliance of john oliver

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edit: so, the video has been removed from youtube which is why the link isn’t working. sorry everyone. hope you got the chance to see it and laugh while it was still up there. but even if not, check out his other stuff on the daily show coz it’s great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=channel%3A51ca3e81-0-2353-9021-bcaec54d4d4e&feature=iv&src_vid=xx9eH3qOJXw&v=40kWhLejdRQ

don’t know if any of you guys are familiar with john oliver (he plays professor duncan on community. well, we haven’t seen him on community in a while but i’m assuming he still plays it) but he is hilarious. if you havent already, definitely check out some of his stuff from when he hosted the daily show while john stewart was like away or something. heres a particularly good one. or if you’re into the current election, check out this more recent one

nothing better than Nigel thornberry

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honestly, i don’t think you can get funnier gifs than the ones with nigel thornberry (or nigel strawberry, as he was loving called by the rugrats). here are a few of my favourites. (loving the combination of avatar and nigel thornberry btw. it’s amazing how much avatar love there is online)

i miss back when community was funny. maybe they should put nigel in more of the episodes


even avatar korra cant escape the thornberry!

of course, i do have to include at least one with pokemon

ok, last one. they just don’t stop getting funny!!

an abundance of beanies

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so, i don’t know if any of you saw my post last week with my pokemon beanie but even if you didn’t i’m sure you can all tell by now that i’m a bit (okay, may more than a bit) of a nerd. and what better way to show off your nerd obsessions than with hats!! alongside my pikachu beanie (and in case you were wondering, my head isn’t that pointy, the beanie is on my knee), i also have an NCIS hat, two different types of fringe hats, a cat in the hat hat, a yoda beanie (with full on ears!) and a sydney swans beanie. oh! and a 3-eyed alien onesie! (you know, the little alien guys from toy story? “you have saved our lives. we are eternally grateful).

so, for any of you out there with a love of geeky beanies, this site is perfect for you! http://www.etsy.com/au/shop/GeekinOut?page=1#. i love that they even have avatar beanies!!! how cute is this momo beanie?!?! and they have aang and even Appa too!

the minion one is great too. (as you know i can’t resist the minions)

 

edited to add: i may have also just bought a pikachu onesie off ebay. omg i’m such a nerd. and so excited!!!

wicked problems and future speculation, a successful “unlecture”

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so, yesterday marked the first unlecture that i thought really felt like an unlecture. we had prewritten questions that were all very relevant to what this course is about (rather than “Why do we have to come to this?”), many good points and contributions from the symposium team and also people asking and having their questions answered within the lecture itself. my main point, it was a very enjoyable and informative 50 minutes.

my favourite idea from the discussion was adrian’s explanation of the “wicked problem – a problem with no simple or single solution. where any response may cause other problems” and that design fiction is important in this area because it is not limited to straight, singular answers but can think broadly and more adaptbly (not a word but let’s roll with it). this idea linked in again with the ideas of the speculative thinking of design fiction and why we are studying this course in this method. the world is changing. as adrian said “print changed the world” and now the internet is doing it again and we are all getting pulled along for the ride. we need to think about what the future will be and look like. what we will be doing and how and where and when and what. what will our jobs look like in 5, 10 or 15 years? everything could and probably will be different.

another interesting point was that “content is not king”. people pay for the experience and a platform that can provide the content that people want will make the money, not the content itself. because the content can be replicated but the outlet to access that content is what is unique. we live in an ever changing society and if we want to succeed we need to find that edge up on the millions of people who can just create content with the technology readily available to them. we need to utilise the possibilities of design fiction and speculation in order to be prepared for the future of our industry. and then we’ll have to do it all again5 years later.

(trying to get my blog posts shorter. getting there but not quite just yet. as you’ve probably noticed, i tend to go on and on a lot. there is just so much you could write about. but i want to try and keep theses short, or they have the possibility of never ending. here i go ranting again. ok. imma stop now)

maps, maps and more maps

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adrian posted this article in the subject blog and i really enjoyed it so wanted to share it with you all (that is, if “you all” is actually anyone at all). link is here.

some really interesting maps on this one. i found that australia and russia seem to be on almost opposite ends of the spectrum in nearly every case. in a lot of these maps, australia is well up there in the, lets say awesome, section of the spectrum, such as our high economic equality, we’re pretty welcoming to foreigners (although you wouldn’t think that now with all those awful “Stop the boat people” ads going around), we’re one of the the best places to be born and apparantly we are one of the top countries to be a mother in 😀 although we are pretty emotional (although not as emotional as america.) but i guess that contributes to why we all feel very loved (yes, one of the maps showed that we feel the most loved compared to many other countries. here’s a virtual hug to everyone in the blue/sad countries on the love map)

a funny one was the russian guy who speculated that the US would break up into 4 separate countries run by canada, mexico, russia and europe. and who knew there were so many atheists in china?? but that time lapse map of the earth from space was really cool. i’d love to visit one of those icy countries. yeah, it would be cold, but it would also be pretty cool (see what i did there?) and i’ve always wanted to build a proper snowman.

the one that’s really scary is just how far some of hamas’s rockets can reach out into israel. i’ve stood on the border of israel and gaza and it’s not a happy place. the towns along the edges of the border have a bomb shelter every 3 houses in each street. what a terrifying way to live. (wow, that just got pretty political, didn’t mean to go there. the map did it! blame the map!)

what i did find really interesting (and here’s me getting slightly political again, sorry!!) was how we had one of the highest percentage of tolerance towards homosexuality (even higher than america) but we still have yet to legalise gay marriage!!! there was a pretty high number of countries who have already (we can worry about the ones who’ve ruled it punishable by death another time) but isn’t it about time that we legalise it too?? IMO we need to take a leaf out of New Zealand’s book and make it legal. but that’s enough political stuff from me. i feel pretty strongly about this but you don’t need to suffer through my rantings. but i was happy to see that we weren’t in the highest percentage of smoking per person so at least aussies (well, some at least) are getting something right.

lets lighten the mood up a bit before signing off, how crazy is this map!!!!