Posts tagged “university”

You mean things happen before 5pm? — Jan 21, 2007
If you’ve ever worked with students or you’ve ever had a few good nights in a row there’s a rule everyone lives by. That rule is that nothing shall be done before 5am, whether it’s consuming a good meal, putting on clothing other than pyjamas or other. It’s a time when everyone rests. Especially on a sunday. I was out by 930 today because I had to travel across London for a shoot with some students for the rag week. I don’t know much about the thing but it seems typical of pre 1970’s universities where they are bound by an extended legacy. My uni seems to lack this unfortunatly. I don’t often shoot and edit a piece on the same day. I usually take my time and eventually get round to it. At least today was different. It’s been a good weekend....
Without Instilling Fear Fire Alarms Are deafening But No More. — May 12, 2007
I’m suffering from complete apathy for fire alarms. I really hate them. I’ve been hearing idiots make noise till 3 am but thought that I could attempt sleeping. Wrong at 0340 AM there was noise, then for at least 20 minutes at four am. Now it’s 5:52 and I’m awake but this time due to the ineffective fire alarm. I might go so far as to say pointless and potentially dangerous fire alarm. A fire alarm that makes you clasp your ears to dull the pain of how loud they are is going to prevent you from getting out of bed and to safety. A fire alarm is designed to instill fear, not pain. Fear makes you rush. This fire alarm just angers me and wonder which moron set it off this time. Rather than fire alarms, an outdated warning system should have flashing lights or a twitter-like system. It could say something like “Fire in block L”, or “smoke detected in Block P” but unconfirmed as of yet. It could say “device fault”. It could also say “Fire in Kitchen” which did occur two days ago. A few months ago it was a candle in a room burning through onto a towel and potentially turning a small problem into a life-threatening situation. None of these matters. If I hear an alarm my first thought is “Who’s the idiot that set it off”, not “ah, maybe I should evacuate”....
Why You Should Use Twitter — Mar 17, 2007
Twitter is a short message that are only 140 characters long. It can be used in three ways. The first is by instant messenger, the second is by text messaging to your mobile phone and the third is via the web interface. It’s referred to as microblogging, although not by me. I see it as being something more powerful. The BBC, Google, and other companies have already used it for showing people what the latest news is. Of course, with such a medium you have to be careful not to send too many messages or people will give up. Where it would come into its element is traffic info, radio schedules, or even event notifications. Imagine that you knew about this before rag week and that many of your friends were members. You could tell them “just finished ragging, on my way back to uni” or “only 20 tickets left for an event”. In other words, you can let people know what an organisation is doing quite easily. Another way to enhance this is when you’ve got quite a lot of friends and they’re all members. “Hey, just handed in my assignment, going to sit in the grass outside halls, welcome to join” and many people who might have been bored now know where to find you. Of course, you’re paying the price of SMS (text messaging) if you’re away from the computer but it’s at a local tariff to the best of my understanding. It’s an interesting development, similar to the status bar in many of the current messengers and on Facebook....
Why the bookshop survives whilst the record shop disappears — Jan 26, 2007
Whilst reading an article about the music and book industry I was surprised by what was written. They say that the music industry and the record shops were expected to survive the digital revolution whilst the bookshop was expected to die with the advent of sites like amazon. There is one possible reason for this. The nature of the medium. A song is a work that takes five minutes to listen to in it’s entirety and can use other supports to be consumed on. The book on the other hand is a medium that requires for people to sit down and thumb through various pages to assess the writing style before deciding on whether to purchase it. As a result they’re far more likely to go into a library and check that product than a cd shop. At the same time myspace, among other websites is the new music shop. Go there, browse the categories and find various obscure acts, discover them and purchase what you enjoy. It’s not quite that easy with books. I’ve bought quite a few books and dvd in the past few months but no music in physical form....
Why It's Great To Be A Student — Mar 18, 2007
One of the best things about being a student is that you can work on projects without having to feel bad about not making any money. In particular, I’m thinking of the dissertation. It’s a point where you’ve got ten thousand words to write about subjects you love. As you’ve got to do so much research you’ve got a reason to buy tens of books and DVDs and watch them, enjoying every minute and taking the occasional note. As you progress and you start writing you’re there, being your own boss. You develop your structure and you see what you’ve achieved. You think about what is already said and what else must be written. You write it down, re-write it. You find there’s some information missing so you’ve got an excuse to get sidetrack to look for some in-depth material about that. You come back to the original text and you’ve just added 200 words. paf. Done, great. My project has progressed ;). Of course, the more time you give yourself the more fun the project will be. If you give yourself ten weeks then you’ve got lots of time so it’ll be lots of fun because you can sidetrack all the time. if you’ve got 6 weeks you’re under pressure but not quite in the same way. If you’ve got four weeks you may have to be very disciplined. If you’ve got two weeks then forget about sleep, about friends, about sunshine and everything else. You’ve got to plod along and distractions will destroy your chances. Anyway, I want to get the writing part done by the beginning of April so that I have four weeks to edit. Editing can be quite amusing when you’ve got time. Enough procrastinating, time to go back for five minutes before the next distraction comes along...
We are living through the media's golden age. — Mar 18, 2007
When I started using comptuers they were nothing more than ega displays with the large floppy disks and games were text based. As I grew older so the games grew to be more complex, from 2d to 3d and then the quality improved. The television of my youth was limited to five channels and by the 90’s had expanded to twenty plus channels. By 2000 the number had exploded to several hundred channels and that’s just counting the English ones. The media have progressed. I am in constant contact with everyone by mobile phone for over a decade. I have had minidisk players, i’ve had phones and I’ve had a television in my room. Now the mobile phone I have replaces all these devices if I so wish. The ipod replaces the radio and the television, the phone replaces the laptop, the minitel and the fax machine. I have access to the world’s media within two clicks of a mouse, which is no more than a trackpad on an ibook. Video editing is far simpler. When I wanted to learn to edit I remember that you’d need to get two player/recorders and a third device to control the two machines. We bought Adobe Premiere and the Miro dc30+ and there it was. I spent a weekend learning to edit with pictures of the Mer des Glaces, a glacier in the French Alpes. Since then I upgraded through the years and my laptop can do all this seamlessly. We discussed video on demand years ago and that idea was novel, was something which would be hard to implement. Today video on demand is so easy it’s syndicated via RSS feeds. I get my televisual experience via downloaded streams on a daily basis. Radio on demand is certainly here and doing well. In this week in media one of the presenters said that in the near future media content would become more valuable than oil. It’s an interesting idea. Are media studies a mickey mouse course when you’ve got free newspapers, you can watch television whilst commuting to and from work? When you share your pictures with friends around the world and computing is no longer the realm of the computer geek I think we’re in the Golden age of media studies and that it may have been one of the most interesting topics to study with the exponential growth of media outlets....
Waking up to heavy metal — Feb 13, 2007
There is nothing more aggressive or stressful than being woken up by heavy metal. There is nothing but some idiot yelling into a microphone and other idiots calling it music. It’s not music so much as noise to me. I’d prefer to be woken to the sound of seagulls or the waves than music created by the disenfranchised youth of a bygone era. In halls causes for being pulled from your sleep are numerous. On many occasions it’s people yelling from outside to windows, cleaning staff talking loud to each other, girls talking about subjects that would later embarrass them (hilarious though), and the clanking sound of kitchen utensils. There’s the sound of cupboards being opened and closed, of fire alarms, demolition, grating barriers and more. I can’t think of anymore but those are a great method by which to make me appreciate the countryside all that much more. Nothing but the sweet sound of birds and wind in the branches, storm clouds, and more. Any noise that is not the result of some selfish person I do not mind....
Wait in Terminal — Feb 5, 2007
Wait in terminal And so the weekend came to an end. It began on Thursday with a trip around Malmo and dropping into two or three bars and a night club. Discussions were had and dancing took place. The first day was about getting back up to speed with the friend and keeping to the promise that I’d made about coming to Sweden would come to fruition. I was in the city of Malmo, across the Oresund from Copenhague, Denmark’s capital. It’s on the southern tip of Sweden. It’s a city of around 500,000 people. We went to two bars before dropping into l’étage. A nightclub that wasn’t that busy. We met a few people of which a fashion student. I was interested in what she had to say but this was cut short by the boyfriend interrupting to speak about football. The night ended early and I was exhausted. The second day was more relaxed consisting of a meal at a restaurant I had been to previously where the food was good. On the third day, we visited the city of Copenhagen. I had already been to the airport but it’s nice to visit the town and notice some of the atmosphere and the architecture. There’s a circular ice rink where people can come and ice skate in a square. It’s some grass in the middle so it’s circular. Some people were enjoying the ice. Back in Malmo we had some dinner before passing by a night club where we stayed till closing. It felt relaxed, consisting of a corridor and three rooms. One part was the restaurant, another the dancefloor and the other a room with table tennis. It lasted till three am and can’t think of any conversations I flew the next day and I was writing this entry on my phone it seemed that we were chasing the sunset back to London. Those sunsets are always enjoyable and colourful....
Unreasonably low - a rant against a certain ISP — Mar 12, 2007
Dear Victim, Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions. This type of activity could have a detrimental effect on our network and therefore we cannot allow this to continue. Should you continue to exceed the daily download limit we will, unfortunately, be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days. If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account. For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following: Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly. Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your users could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed. Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services Regards Appallingly crappy ISP ---------------------------- I’m a third-year media student who has spent the past decade online practically every day. I know where to find content. I understand the nature of the medium. I’m not your garden variety fifty-five-second user. I’m the type of user that would wake up every morning and download a gigabyte or more a day when at home. I go to the uni network and I’ve downloaded 600 megs within about ten minutes and my daily allowance is a pathetic 500 megs. Five hundred megs is not even one full copy of Linux. Some video podcasts are over a hundred megs each. Podcasts can be up to 100 megabytes in size. I hate their false advertising and promises. I have no choice though, I’m not the one selecting the ISP. afterthought Where did Yahoo go wrong with their implementation of advertising along the same lines as google? They took two years longer than they should have to implement what belonged to them. I hope they go bankrupt....
University politics are amusing — Mar 13, 2007
There is a rumour that the person that is running should not be doing so and as a result, there are bits of information coming out about this. It’s interesting because I did not want the person to become SU president due to her canceling an interview for a live Multicam I was producing in my second year. There is information that leads us to conclude that she should not be running for her position and I find this is amusing. It’s student politics at their best. I spent at least six hours last night chatting to many friends, both on campus and within the SU bar and it’s been a really good afternoon-Evening-Night-Morning. If only all days were like that, full of conversations....
Two weeks of editing — Dec 3, 2006
Two weeks of editing await me. Both projects have been logged for the most part although now it’s a matter of finding out how to unite all the raw footage, something which may take a few hours. It should be a matter of going through the material and choosing all the most relevant bits, seeing whether they go well together, and then finalising that. Tomorrow I have to work on the documentary. We’ve got a lot of interviews although I’m worried about the shots that can be used for illustrative purposes. I don’t think there are that many location shots, just interview after interview. Tomorrow we’ll see how well they go together....
Two Fires At My Old University — Jul 2, 2007
On Saturday morning at around 2am part of the university was affected by fires, apparently from gas cannisters. I haven’t visited the location since hearing the news. There have been two fires. One early on Saturday and the second on Sunday. Both these fires were affecting the J block, journalism block. The cause is not revealed yet but there is this message on the uni website: The areas affected at the Campus are the undergraduate and school offices, art and design studios, video edit and photo facilities, photo science labs, ceramics studios and workshops, the fashion area, the newsroom, animation, graphic information design, music and informatics and illustration. I’m hoping that the damage is not too bad. I hope that no final year student work yet to be assessed has been damaged and that none of the equipment has been damaged. [more](Finished studying at this uni a little over a month ago and twice hit by fire. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6259814.stm) info...
Two days of production later — Dec 1, 2006
It’s the final day of production today, we have three acts to film and two links as well. We’ll have someone going through a guillotine and another act of which I am not sure yet. it should start from 0900 until 1700 this evening. Yesterday was fine but it felt that a lot of time was wasted for a variety of reasons, leaving me a little dissatisfied....
Tuesday is not the most productive of days — Mar 20, 2007
One of the best nights to go out on at the moment is Monday night because that’s the night when most friends are out in the same place. Last night I was at the student yet again and I took 73 pictures of which one I’m afraid I’d prefer never to look at. Some of those pictures are really amusing and the expressions are great. I’m going to keep those private, simply for my friends to view. They’re on my phone, Facebook, and my iPod. They’re a collection of memories for when university is finished and that what remains are memories. What made last night interesting as: 1) lollipops, two girls I know had a lollipop fight, a sticky affair 2)Many photographs of friends 3) Many conversations 4) the cold Of course, the night had started differently. It started when I went to watch some friends act in the show Howard Katz. A friend was in the play from the first to last scene, that’s 110 pages. There were some great moments and the principal actor has great stage presence and projects his voice well. I enjoyed the play because I allowed myself to be transported into the moment. It’s a shame that it’s the last play I go to, produced by this university....
Too Much Academia Has Disconnected Me From World News — May 6, 2007
Too much academic research and concentrating on dissertations has cut me off from world news to such an extent that apart from tech goings on I had no clue. I hardly followed the French elections, hardly noticed the death of Yeltsin, hardly noticed the regional elections. There are three reasons for this. England is a hard news vacuum with it’s slightly islandish mentality (don’t yell at me for this view, I’ve been here a fifth of my life), online news resources, (finding the news I want) and thirdly researching and writing my dissertation. It’s been a break from the world and it’s coming to an end and I need to resynchronise with the Hard News world once more. It’s going to take a few days of reading news once the disso and work experience folders are handed but I’ll do it. I also need to decide what to do, whether I stay in London, whether I go travelling and scuba diving to become an underwater cameraman or whether I go back to the beautiful landscapes of Switzerland where my social life is lived through a computer because I am so tired of the motorway to and from Geneva these days. Another option is getting a motorbike license, getting the scooter and driving as far as I feel like on a daily basis and seeing place after place. Time will decide of course....
Tomorrow the multicam starts — Nov 28, 2006
Today’s been a long day, beginning at 9 with lectures and finishing at 1800 with tape logging and transcribing. It passed through some studio work, laying the floor, and such. Tomorrow we start at 9am and continue till night in order to get all our shots finished with. We’ll get a lunch break so have to factor that into any planning. I should have an early night but it’s halls and there’s alcohol around so others are drinking the night away and forgetting to adjust their volume control. Vivement Samedi...
Tomorrow I'm back in London — Sep 13, 2006
Yesterday I made a phone call after writing an e-mail to see about getting cheaper accomodation through one method and it went well. I’m going to be back in London tomorrow, once I’ve finished packing all my stuff into a suitcase. It’s the usual good and bad. It’s good because although I’m leaving my skills are still in demand so there’s a chance I’ll be in demand when I get back. it’s It’s good because I’m looking forward to being back in England and getting this final year out of the way. It’s bad because I would prefer to do another year of uni rather than being a student. I met some interesting people and it’s a shame I’m leaving. Tomorrow is the moment when I put Geneva on hold and take my London life out of standby....
To First Year Students — Mar 17, 2007
I urgently recommend that you challenge the election results in relation to Salima. She won by only 25 votes and there are a few people saying that they would have voted differently had they known what the fliers contained before they voted. The fact that someone failed their first year, only to become SU president six years later is utterly unnaceptable. You’re students and you’re working hard in order to build up knowledge and prestige for the course you are studying. If yor SU president failed their first year then what right do they have to represent “students” ? I’ve worked hard, Martin has worked hard, Phil has worked hard. They’re good people on the campus with the most activities, the student radio and more If Martin missed out by 25 votes then this, in my eyes, is too close and a recount and re-vote should be requested. It is not healthy that within certain circles there are allegations of corruption whilst the SU president never bothered to comment. The SU president is an elected offical and as such is responsible to the student body. The fact that she never bothered to answer WNOL, Smoke or Sarah Lefley, a collegue, in relation to this topic is utterly unacceptable and an investigation should be carried out. I can’t accept that a failue should be elected two years in a row to the highest rank of our SU by only 25 voices in such mitigated circumstances....
To all facebook users please take this survey — Apr 12, 2007
For the purpose of the last assignment in my last module please take this survey on how you use facebook. Click here to take the Online Survey Thanks for your time and see you soon...
Time For The Dissertation Re-write — Apr 19, 2007
Now that I’ve achieved my goal of getting most of my dissertation written I’m going to take a day’s break and work on another of my assignments to clear my head and also to make sure I complete all assignments by the required date. It’s been a long effort but last night I spent several hours working on my dissertation, getting it up to 8800 words. The word limit is from 10-12000 words and having almost 8.8K means I’m 1200 words away. With re-writing and clarification of certain points I should easily get up to the word limit that was set out initially. I’m happy about the state of affairs. Over two weeks for editing and cleaning up of the text. There’s another assignment that I will work on the 22nd of this month and another which I will start working on later today. With the way things are going, I should quite easily be able to meet all the deadlines and have time to be human by the same opportunity. It’s a great feeling. Finally, the glacier that was pressing down on me is starting to melt and I’ll begin to rise up as the pressure is released, much as England is doing since the last glacial age hundreds of thousands of years ago....
Three Thousand To Go — Apr 16, 2007
In three thousand words my first dissertation draft will be ready. This evening I may be able to get up to ten thousand words and from that point on it will be about the re-writing of one section after another until I am happy that I have fit in as much relevant information as possible into the dissertation. It’s been great weather in London over the past two days especially. Far fewer planes were flying yesterday, therefore, there were far fewer contrails than usual. It’s another beautiful day today and everyone’s going to take advantage of this. It’s too nice to sit indoors in front of the dissertation when the sun is out. Summer is teasing us too effectively....
Third Day of Editing And More Relaxed — Dec 6, 2006
It’s the third day of editing and the pressure has been relieved. I’ve captured the footage and edited most of the multicamera show. It wasn’t as bad as I thought therefore there were only a few small things to change. As I’m under time pressure I’m glad there’s less to do although with more footage I may have tried to be more creative. With the myspace documentary, things are going well. We’re up to about ten minutes and need another 2-5 therefore that’s relaxed as well. With that edit it’s a matter of getting the framework finished, finding a few more illustrative shots before finally working on the fine-cut for projection on Thursday or Friday. For the globalisation project, I haven’t had time to speak to that many people so the progression has stalled. 45 credits vs. 15… Both are important but one requires a team to work at all times. The other, only two or three people. That’s it for today....
The week is coming to an end — Nov 23, 2006
The proposal is handed in, I’ve done some camera work for a multicamera production and now I’m waiting to walk through the halls. It’s been a productive day and the workload should increase over the next week when the multicamera for my group takes place....
The Thirty Book Rule — Jan 25, 2019
Marie Kondo’s rule that you should only keep thirty books, that you should only keep those that you personally want to read or enjoy is a silly rule because it encourages people to limit their scope and perspective on the world....
The Ten Thousand Word Project — Apr 14, 2007
Yesterday I woke up and within half an hour started working on my dissertation. For a few minutes, I added one or two more paragraphs of text before going on a search for interviews. I looked up Cousteau and arrived at the INA page. The INA is the french video archive online. It’s there that I found a quote from Jacques Yves Cousteau during the 1956 Cannes Film festival where he was talking about his documentaries. There are three elements that are perfect for the purpose of my dissertation therefore I am happy to have found that resource. It’s made me feel more relaxed. Add to this the fact that I’m up to 5800 words and you’ll understand that this current state of affairs is quite pleasant. I need to write almost four thousand more words by Sunday to be on track with my own project. We’ll see whether I achieve this goal. I have heard from a friend that some idiots are getting so stressed about the dissertation that they going to doctors to get medication to calm them down and this goes against all logic. If your dissertation is stressing you then there’s one key element that will calm you down: Do your work!! Why are the doctors giving people drugs to calm them down when it’s a psychological problem because they’re too idiotic to relax in a logical way. The doctors are stupid for giving the medication and those taking drugs are idiots for taking them. Rather than give people drugs why not give them time management lessons instead. That’s the real issue. Anyway, my dissertation is going well and if I reach my target of 10,000 words by Sunday evening then I will have three weeks of revision to go through. I will see whether I can meet my module leader for one last time as soon as the April Holidays are finished to make sure that the content is correct. I want to do well so I might as well put in as much time as I can to get it finished on time and to the highest standard possible. That’s why I’m procrastinating through the process of blogging ;)...
The Post Dissertation Was Great Fun But Now It's Time To Get Out — May 11, 2007
I’m really happy to be done with university after three years where I was forced to be in one country rather than another but it’s time to get out of Harrow. On Wednesday night we were all at the SU bar celebrating the end of the course from 2pm till two or three am and it was great. I hadn’t seen so many people from my grade in one place for months and months. Really refreshing to see. It’s been a good three years and there are many good memories. It’s time to move on and I think the first step is to get out of halls as soon as Saturday and going back to Switzerland for some rest and recuperation before coming back to the big city for employment and such. I can look for work from anywhere and flights are relatively cheap in contrast. I’m going to have to re-think the title of this blog now...
The Modern phonebook — Aug 19, 2007
Recently I have been trying to categorise websites and how they are used into single words. To this end I have recently started to view facebook as a self actualising phonebook. There are a number of factors which help to contribute to this feeling. One of these is the ability for me to add all “real life” friends without adding any “virtual friends” - friends I do not know in person. In so doing it limits the number of people in my contact list to those I have talked to in person at least once, but occasionally spanning two decades or more. What is great about facebook is that those you have not seen in a decade are once more part of your daily life. I look at what people are posting and I know they’re in a number of countries. I can see which are their favourite films, whether they have recently travelled, whether relationships have crashed and burned or more. I can also see what they’re up to. Twice in the last week I have noticed events put on by friends. One event was by friends whom are part of my University of Westminster days whilst others are from when i was a Bournemouth University student (albeit in Weymouh an hour away). When I went to the Westminster event I recognised quite a few faces since they are part of my recent history. It allowed me to meet new people and one comment was interesting. The girl who organised the event commented that most of these people did not know any others. She was the degree of seperation between all of us. As the night progressed so the links would strengthen and people who had been strangers just a few hours before would become familiar once again. The next day saw me going to another facebook event but this time with people I had not seen for half a decade. By taking a look at the newsfeed in facebook I could catch up with these people. I saw that one friend was having their birthday that night and that another friend from the same time period was also going to be there. Looking through the photo stream I could see what the latest adventure had been. If people think that it’s important to mention something then it’s easy for you to notice and aknowledge this once you meet them next time. When you think of a phonebook you usually associate a limted amount of details like phone number, address, business and address. Facebook gives these details but it also gives us so much more. It’s a great tool for those of us who are mobile and willing to travel. There are three contributing factors which help make facebook popular; the first of these is mobility, the second is international travel and the last is broadband. The first two factors are related. I am thinking about the distance and time it takes to get from where you live to where the friend lives. If you’re in North London and your friend is in North London then it’s easier to keep in touch via the facebook newsfeed than to commute over an hour to see that individual. At the same time as more of us have international groups of friends so the cost of phone calls and ability to see how friends regularly declines. We need technology that allows us to keep up to date with friends and that’s why we need the enhanced phonebook. Broadband is the enabling technology. There is a lot of information. Imagine taking two hundred pictures of an event where twenty of your friends are. If you have to mail each of these to each friend then this is going to take a lot of time and effort. Facebook allows you to do this without hinking about it, hence keeping friends you may not see frequently current to the life you are currently leading. In effect the more open your network of friends are the easier it is to remain up to date with current developments. At this moment in time Facebook is one of the best adapted to these needs...
The hardest I've ever worked — Dec 14, 2006
That’s the hardest I’ve ever worked. starting the day at ten and continuing on till 2 am on an early night and four am last night. I spent 17 hours working on projects and now I’m exhausted. in the morning I had to finish the documentary, then have a meeting about multicam before once again working on the multicam. After those two pieces of work, there was the DVD authoring for both projects, the log files and finally the analysis. It’s so much work but as a thank you I could walk around and enjoy that other people were still under pressure. I’m so happy I finished the work early in the day. It’s current madness in the library and I need to sleep for a while. My Finale Year Project is Finished....
The future of the media — Jul 27, 2006
Over the next two weeks, I am working in part of what will become part of the new media landscape. I receive footage via satellite and edit short summaries to become video clips on the official site of the organisation. At the moment it’s not visible to the normal public but it is an interesting activity. As part of my dissertation, I have to understand where the documentary has come from and where it’s going. It’s an interesting way to spend time and I’m learning about new things all the time. We’ll see what the landscape will be like once I’m working full time in the media again. Paleo was really good fun. An average day consists of five hours of work, followed by at least two or three concerts, a multitude of conversations before ending with three or four hours of sleep. The conversations have ranged from the passion that certain friends have for Nutella to driving Segway around one particular stand. With one friend we went through to the moshpit of one concert and there was a good ambiance. With another friend everything was far calmer, more relaxed, taking time to unwind and relax. I have learned about long hours in the sun drinking ice tea whilst at work and enjoyed it greatly. It’s good fun because there’s a breeze, people come and go, and as they do your greeting varies. The variation in greeting is part of what makes the work so enjoyable. When people pass they do so without wanting to take time to chat sometimes but as they have a badge you can read their name. In doing so you can greet them more personally. I read so many name badges over a number of hours that it was quite a challenge to remember everyone’s name. In fact, I could probably remember none. Faces… that’s what I remember all the time, not names. On that note, I’ll stop rambling....
The foam party — Apr 6, 2007
Last night I went to the SU foam party but I was so tired that I only stayed till 2 am. It lasted till three am but the energy levels felt wrong. For all those people who are in the same year, this marks our final week of studies. we have nothing left but deadlines before we become graduates of our chosen fields of study. The real world awaits us with many interesting events Video is a discipline that requires a lot of work and a big team therefore the more people you can involve the better it goes. For two years I went to almost every single event to film and I got hours of footage which would be edited later for the SU tv. This year everything went downhill, from having a student magazine to a student newspaper, from having a cameraman to having a photographer....
The FIBA 2006 is over — Sep 5, 2006
The FIBA 2006 is over and yesterday was the day where I recuperated by sitting in the sun in the morning and editing a short video clip in the afternoon. Both were nice occupations to unwind from the past three weeks. it’s been fun and all that remains from this work is a highlights tape filled with cheerleaders. Next time I hope to be at the event in person rather than on the sidelines....
The drive home - My 400th post — Mar 5, 2008
Last night’s drive was amazing. It’s just the type of drive you want to have. It starts in the middle of the afternoon as a friend helps you load the car and you set off for a 900 kilometer drive. At the beginning you have to deal with London traffic/congestion. After this you’ve got part of the m20 that’s closed so you need to take a slip road. As I got into France I was welcomed by a lot of snow coming straight at me, like the windows screensaver from a decade ago. That meant I couldn’t really drive as fast as I wanted. Still made good time. For most of the journey the road was fine.The part I really loved is when I got off the motorway to go via the Jura. At this point it wasn’t snowing too much but as I progressed up the slopes and let the Garmin Nuvi 250 guide me along the path so I saw a little snow, and it started to stick. As I drove I had to stay awake and battle with the ever present threat of loss of adherence. That was the fun part of the drive. The road was covered in a thin layer of snow and people were driving more slowly. At moments I was chasing a snowplow across the mountains as it was salting the roads.At other moments there was no snow plow and I lost traction two or three times but kept the car in control. I occasionaly thought that I wouldn’t make it up the hills but I did, and I loved the view. The trees were covered in snow and they were lit by the grand phare. It’s memories from childhood. I’m glad I’ve spent so much time playing in car parks covered in snow to learn how the car behaved.At five in the morning the last thing you want to learn is how to drive in snow. Luckily I do.It made a nice transition from the student life I’ve been living over the past three years and the job seeking following that. I wanted the drive to be a transition from one phase in my life to the next. Now I’m an employed graduate who’s working in Switzerland as of next Monday. This next chapter of my life should be fun....
The drive home - My 400th post — Mar 5, 2008
mousewords - Mar 1, 2008...
The Digital Lifestyle — Jul 24, 2007
A journalism student at the University of Westminster worked on an item about addiction to technology and this is quite an old item. In 1998 (if I remember correctly) I was speaking to a security guard in Martinique about the internet and he talked about it as if it was a disease as if it was bad. Back in my high school days would argue with my teachers trying to get permission to draw the graphs by computer rather than doing them by hand. This happened both in geography and chemistry. One teacher commented: “What about when you’re on the field?” going on to explain that technology would not always be at my reach. Since then things have changed and technology has progressed to such an extent that I could now create that graph on my XDA Mini S and e-mail it to whomever I’m working for. Of course, the batteries might die but the potential is there and innovation is changing society as a whole. In my bedroom, I have a MacBook pro, an iBook, one Nokia, one Sony Erricson, one xda, one 500 gig drive, one terabyte drive, and one 200 gig drive. I’ve got a lot of technology but my work is based around this technology. One phone is a spare, another is for Switzerland and the third is for England. This is so that I don’t need to pay international fees when making phone calls in countries I visit often. As I’m writing this post I’m listening to music from someone’s playlist on last.fm and that’s American music streamed from a London based company bought by CBS fairly recently. The blogging software I’m using is open source and the image in the banner was taken in Les Diablerets Switzerland. Topically last night there was a power cut in the street where I live and it took them several hours to fix. As a result of this, the wired life I am used to was put on hold for a number of hours. I didn’t go to sleep any earlier. I watched one of the blue planet documentaries instead, as you do. As a side note, I did once believe in internet and technological addiction. I went to Tanzania for 21 days to help build schools and for a 7-day safari. During this time I decided that I would not touch a computer, I would have nothing to do with technology aside from the camera. I walked down the muddy roads from one school to another. I saw a much simpler way of life. I saw a different way of life which I appreciated far more. In fact, I wanted to stay there so I’d avoid coming home to the stress of the IB. It’s during this trip that I saw that the addiction some people talk about does not exist. Either you get with the times or you’re left behind. I’m comfortable with technology so use it constantly. Finally, I’d like to address a comment at the end of the item about texting. Twitter and Jaiku should have been mentioned as extreme examples of technological addiction....
The Blogosphere Is Finished with University. Here's Proof. — May 11, 2007
Here is some evidence to demonstrate that I am not the only one to have finished university and there are a lot of really happy people around. I’ve been so lazy for the past two days because I can. Nothing is hanging over me anymore so I’m taking advantage of this fact. When Monday comes I’ll start being productive again but it’s time for a well-deserved break. Been listening through half of the top 200 songs of 1990 to 2000 already. What others are saying...
The aftermath of a night's activities — Feb 13, 2007
In continental Europe there are a lot of people who go out and enjoy a glass or two over dinner and have a long conversation about a great variety of topics which they enjoy. In other parts of the world, for example, England you’ll find that the volume of night clubs has deafened the night revelers to go home speaking far louder than would otherwise be socially acceptable. England is an extremely generous country in terms of educational subsidisation. Whereas the English only pay £1200 pounds per year for their tuition fees in America it’s up to 30,000 dollars a year. What this means is that the English student is rich. If I work one month in Switzerland and save that money I could pay the tuition fee. If I work for three or four I could live for half a year in rented accommodation. This would lead you to believe that going out for a meal and living in relative luxury would be an integral part of student life in England but this is not so. A lot of time and energy is spent on encouraging people to spend money and time on drinking. If you’re a student in England how many times have you been invited out to dinner. How many times have people suggested social activities other than drinking to you? Tomorrow you’ll find that a large portion of those living in halls will be hungover from the amount they spent at the bar. I’ve heard a rumour that in some uni bars they can make up several grand in one night. If that’s true then it’s really depressing. It’s depressing because if that’s what they make in one night then what money is left for more enjoyable pursuits are left for the rest of the week? Will some people go to the cinema or go out to dinner? How many of these students spend a week a month broke with hardly anything left for food because of their single night of excessive drinking? It’s a serious problem in the whole of England and it should be addressed. Doing it once every few weeks is fine, and for special occasions. Doing it every week is counterproductive. Are universities not pushing students enough and that’s why they’re so willing to drink to excess? What if they had to wake at 6 am and be in lectures by 8 am and out by 6 pm to do some research till 10 pm and sleep 6hrs? In summary, I don’t care what people do in their free time as long as they don’t keep me up in their inebriated state....
The advantage of being 25 — Mar 30, 2007
The advantage of being a 25-year-old student is the following. You’ve been insulted, you’ve been threatened, you’ve been in trouble, you’ve shown that you’re an honourable person and more. Tonight there was a party in my flat and I asked for the mess to be cleaned up and it has been. For such a request I’ve been labeled a fucking prick. If only it were true. That’s part of life. You make demands and get abuse for the demands. I’ve had my door banged on at least twice in the past half hour to an hour but frankly, I don’t care. I’m not going to lodge a complaint. I just want responsibility for parties to sink through. Anyway, goodnight, and see you tomorrow....
Technological determinism — Jan 22, 2007
We had to listen to three hours of this subject today and discuss it. It’s amusing how the discussion focused on the iPhone, iPods, and what apple, in general, was doing. Several years ago I was downloading music and copying it to minidisc in the days before the mp3 player and iTunes. It was a time when bandwidth constraints were greater therefore patient people would get the content they desired. Over the years bandwidth increased and BitTorrent and other software came which made the experience much faster. I-tunes came along and gave one of the legal alternatives to access music. They also sold the player. Did they create a revolution or simply see that there was a market and take this as an opportunity to specialise in that? Now members of the older generations would say that Steve Jobs had a wonderful idea of providing this service and that he was innovative. Others, such as myself, are more skeptical. I believe that the mp3 format made the sharing of music without too much loss in quality much easier and smoother than it had been before. As people had more and more music in this form they began to see the need for adapted players like the minidisc and earlier mp3 players. More efficient ways were found but it was the realm of early adopters, power users. Those for whom technology is as easy to use as the pen to calligraphy. Apple did nothing more than realise there was a market and offer what people had been demanding. In the US apple TV is a great product because you’ve got the content to purchase and view. In Europe, the market is still too far behind on this particular issue therefore the device is not interesting. How soon will it be before Europeans can legally buy the most recent American shows? in two months or two years? With today’s media infrastructure we see everything that’s going on everywhere therefore the old way of dividing the world into media zones has to be rethought. By the way, I’ve finally understood McLuhan after my lecture today. It took a while and since no one had explained it to me so clearly I had been under the wrong impression....
Sunday afternoon — Nov 12, 2006
Soon I may have internet access in my halls again and at that point the writing will begin again. it’s hard to be inspired in a library. On the positive side I’ve watched up to three new documentaries since last night so I’m wondering whether to look at the origins of french and English cinema. I had some inspiration whilst attempting to watch Nightmail by Grierson. Tonight I shall be watching Philibert’s L’empire des Sourd, documentary I recently read about. I went to see Borat and it’s really amusing, a good excuse to laugh for more than an hour....
Some impressive timelapses — Dec 17, 2006
I’m back in Switzerland now and I’ve been around for a little over a day now. I can’t be bothered going out so I’m watching one of the discovery earth documentaries and there’s a really interesting series of plant time-lapses that have been included. They’re used to illustrate what happens when a tree falls down and how the plants struggle with speed to take advantage of the increase in light....
snow fight at 3am — Jan 24, 2007
Snow began to fall this morning at 3 am and a group of those living in halls went out to enjoy the fresh snow. it was falling for several hours and everyone was enjoying it. There were snowball fights between the premiums and the standards. That’s Premium block and standard blocks. Some people were continuously pelted with snow whilst others simply enjoyed being out in the snow. A remote-controlled car was there driving around but struggling. The tires were skidding. When will these people learn that you accelerate slowly in snow and gradually build up speed? I’ve got a video of this morning but I still have to capture it....
snow fight at 3am — Jan 24, 2007
julia - Jan 4, 2007...
Smokescreen — Aug 14, 2006
When mentioning smokescreen I always have the impression that it’s there to hide something but that’s the name of the student tv channel at uni. We’ve already been working on a number of things. We’ve been finding volunteers, preparing the logo and such. Last night I was working on the content management system which would be used to get the website online. For the moment it’s devoid of content but that should change within the next few days and weeks. To get a taste Smokescreen...
Skype through a mobile phone — Jan 12, 2007
I just ran a test and skype with my mobile phone works fine. It means that when in range of open wifi hotspots without restrictions I can take advantage of free phone calls....
Rag week is fun — Feb 10, 2007
I was at the Roxy bar a few days ago in central London and people were cheering. They had just seen the proper version of the Rag week trailer and they loved it. I had been asked to shoot some material and edit other material for Thursday evening when the rag review took place. I went to two or three of the events. I went to the school disco night and it was great fun, between people dancing, others being hit by the death squad and others just being really friendly it was a really good night. I met a lot of friendly people and there’s such a contrast to my own university. When media students see a camera they’re going to be so angry at you for filming, being to used to being behind they don’t appreciate it as much. I must admit that I feel the same way. One individual that marked me is a girl that was on crutches who wanted to dance for the camera. there wasn’t quite enough light so we don’t see as much as would make the video great fun but it’s still entertaining. I was on a platform and three girls came to join. Sandstorm was playing so I had to dance, in memoriam of when I was a fresher back in the South West of England. A girl took the camera from me and I danced for her so I’m going to have to include that footage in the edit as a good laugh. Moonragger had a different feel to it, partly because I was tired from the previous night. Some people needed to look futuristic and whilst some took aluminum foil and wrapped it around others took cling film. One person was in a spacesuit but I didn’t manage to get that on tape. Lot’s of people danced, lot’s of people enjoyed the night. One attractive girl told me to “f*** off with the camera” so I moved away and filmed more people. She came back and told me to f*** of again. It’s to be expected but what people haven’t understood is that I film movement, I film when something interesting is in front of the camera. Turn your back to the camera or stop dancing and I’ll understand you’re self-conscious therefore the camera will stop rolling. There’s no point in filming people standing around. I went to sit down and had some nice moments with people I had only briefly seen in the past. As a guest to the university, I really liked the way people were friendly and open. They want to chat, they want to be filmed, they enjoy the camera and appreciate my company. It’s so refreshing. I’m going to add the video within the next few days for people to enjoy....
Project progression — Nov 8, 2006
I’m only a few words away from the completion of the dissertation but over the past two nights I haven’t had as much sleep as I would like to have had, thanks one night to myself and thanks the next night, to the people I’m living with. It’s a problem when you’re kept awake till 4 am and sometimes I wonder whether I shouldn’t take a hotel room and sleep there every few nights, just to catch up on the lack of sleep. of course it’s a waste of money so I would prefer not to....
Progression of satellite broadcasting — Dec 18, 2006
Satellite broadcasting has progressed since I was last able to watch a lot of television. The spacing of channels and the programs have progressed. I’ve watched France 24, Al Jazeera English and a few more channels. As time is progressing so the channels are re-indexing themselves within the sky digital world. They are no longer organised by the discovery channel. Instead, we find that some of the documentary programs are included within specific interests. In particular, I’m thinking of travel documentaries. They are now cataloged within the travel section of the life and culture channels. It’s good because the travelogue documentaries are organised together. It allows for those dreaming of travel to visit these pages. I watched Al Jazeera English and one thing that’s marked me is how many short features they have on a number of subjects. They have the everywoman program, the witness, and others. It’s a different take than that by BBC World. It’s interesting. I want to travel. I don’t want to be stuck in uni anymore. I want to go to various locations and do some of these travel documentaries, see different parts of the world. Maybe I will get to Australia in May....
Podcasts and Bandwidth — Apr 20, 2007
There have been a lot of discussions between podcasters and the amount of bandwidth that is needed to serve these files. Successful podcasters shift several gigabytes of data with each episode of their podcast and since everything is automated everyone requests and receives the file at this time. This means there’s a massive peak. I’m interested in the reception side though. I’m on a university network and I’ve used it when you would get a throughput of at least 400 kilobytes a second. That’s quite fast and pleasant. It’s changed since then. Digital village, part of Catalyst has throttled our bandwidth, offering 8 gigs a month paid for by the university but limiting to 500 megabytes a day. What this means is simple. Anytime I leave iTunes unattended up to a gigabyte of podcasts may be downloaded at once. No problem, when you’re at home with 2 megabits per second or within uni but a big problem. I’m constantly watching over the files and their size in order to stay below the bandwidth limit. It’s frustrating. Last night I went to have a little fun since I was having a denial of service from Digital Village as they were refreshing the database at the end of the “service month” as I will refer to it. For 8hrs they cut off my service. In the meantime, I’m only 5 minutes’ walk from the uni library and it’s open 24hrs a day. This university has good download speeds. Using the wifi connection I downloaded 2 gigabytes worth of podcasts and videos within about one hour. The connection speed for university fiber is fast. It’s at least 600KB/s sustained. That’s a 40 meg file within 4-6 minutes when you’re downloading three at once. It’s a great feeling. In halls, it’s disappointing and frustrating. I don’t like Catalyst. They’re behind the times. They provide a sub-standard service and I feel that people should know about it. I’ve spent at least 11 years online now. I know what to expect from an ISP. Digital village doesn’t provide it....
People love photographs — Mar 12, 2007
Video is one of those mediums that is great because it captures several moments and amalgamates them into a sequence. Those moments are with the voices and sounds, the excitement, and more. It’s too much information for most and that’s why video is a hard medium to use at parties. The more impersonal a video the better it works, within the realms of you being at the event with your friends. In contrast, photography is far better accepted. People have been using for photographs since before they comprehended what that box with a big piece of glass actually does. As a result, they were desensitized to being photographed. There are no objections and by the time they realize you’ve taken their picture objection is futile. With video, you point the camera and watch from a distance. It’s not because you’re a stalker or a voyeur but rather because that is the nature of cinéma verité - Kino Glaz. How can someone be comfortable when they know that what you’re doing is getting a precise recording of both their conversation and expressions. It makes them uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. That’s why the camera points up as soon as people realise they are being filmed. it’s my signal that I know that they don’t want to be filmed anymore and I move on. Over time people are desensitised to this “invasion” of privacy and there are occasional video lovers. Theatrical people are one example. During the last two years of High school every night, I would go down and shoot their theatre performances and they’d buy the tape from me. of course, I almost got in trouble with their lecturer but I was not breaching copyright. I was providing them with a visual record of their activities. Performers also enjoy having copies of their work. Ingyama a few years ago, Anarachic hand and of course last year’s first-year music students. It’s a way for them to show the world what they have produced. Sometimes it’s not good so they prefer to forget about it but when it’s good they’re happy and post it on their websites, whether myspace or specific domain names. The World Wide Web and the network of networks are not ready for the proper sharing of video at the moment. It’s fine for three or four-minute segments but any longer and you’ll find your audience disappearing. That’s because internet service providers aren’t always giving their customers enough bandwidth. In other cases, it’s just that it’s boring. The Silent Disco was really well received within a small community in part because it’s anonymous but also because it’s made up of good memories for them. it’s good memories for me too by the way. My collection of undercroft pictures ended in October and I want it to continue. we’re in March now....
Over 400 views of the Sandstorm video — Feb 15, 2007
I’ve just checked the number of hits on the Silent disco hits and it’s now up to over four hundred views. That’s a nice amount. I’m quite happy with this number because it’s from my website rather than another source. I’ve been posting videos on the web for many years and I’ve seen many projects start and fail and others expand. It used to be that websites would have just 5 megabytes and websites would be html based. We’re in web 2.0 now and it’s normal for me to download over a gig of data per day when I’m at home. Some people say that video on the web is going to cause problems, that there are bottle necks and that’s it’s not built for live video. That’s because they’re new to the web and think they’re gurus after just two years of daily use. I remember when it was the 56k modems and use was paid per minute. I remember when short text pages would take a while to load. I remember when chatrooms did not require you to create a profile which everyone could see. Where everything was fleeting, as bars are. You’d see hundreds of people but you had to converse with them. ASL used to be a popular question Today there’s no need. Just click on the username and you find out everything about them that they want you to know, age, sex location, websites, groups they like and more. For the past few weeks I’ve become really familiar with facebook and how powerfull a tool it is. I love it. It’s great because when you’re out meeting people you often get to meet up to 20 people in one night sometimes and there’s no way you’re going to remember them. Ragweek is an example of them. Too many faces. Not enough personal detail for the name to stick in my mind. Facebook means that I go online and I can review the night, see pictures of new friends and learn a little more about them. When I was at the silent disco there are a few people I notice in quite a few shots and by posting pictures online they’ve presented their identity. They are no longer nameless faces that shall remain irrelevant to my life. They seek each other out and tag themselves in video frames I’ve posted. In so doing their friends can see them. They enjoy it. It’s not a stalker medium. it’s about the McLuhanist global village. It’s about the extension and enhancment of social interaction. I was doing some research for an essay about technological determinism yesterday which explains the use of such terms. When McLuhan talked about the medium as the message he talked about the media as a thing which acts as an extension. Imagine you go out and meet someone and you get their name and phone number. The phone number is great because you can talk to them live with no difficulty. A facebook account is greater because it allows you to understand their personality, their likes and dislikes and more. It’s a way for people to embelish on spontaneous meetings. It’s the global village that McLuhanits have examined and studied. Since everyone knows everyone else facebook is the village taverna. It’s where you speak to your friends about other friends and a community forms. If you interact with enough groups then that village, that medium (facebook) becomes a family. There is nothing sinister about it for the simple reason that you do not remain anonymous. Everyone whose interest you have summoned will be able to feed their curiosity and the next time they go to an event they will invite you. I love it. When I was living in a small village in Switzerland I was afraid that technology was a great isolationist tool but that view has changed. What is isolationist about going online and sharing your interests with others. i created one group and 56 people became members. Those members are all fans of the Paleo Festival. Events are shared and talked about. I may not spend every day around those at King’s but this does not mean that I have not been invited to their events. I was invited in person to the clavicle challenge but did not participate. I’ve been invited to parties via sms, bulletins on myspace and event notifications on Facebook. People invite other friends and you’ll see how many people are planning on going and next time you meet them you’ll be able to discuss that. In other cases, as with the silent disco I was able to see an event and participate. Once the event was over I was able to share the content with many people. They come, they participate. They take pictures and upload them. I upload some as well. The event was only an hour long but the bond formed through the event is enhanced and perpetuated through Facebook. There is a night at the SU bar tonight involving tequilla shots. Many people will meet but how many friendships will last beyond a night. There’s one girl who I chatted to at the beginning of the year but now she doesn’t recognise me. Similar things happen every year and it’s tiring. Facebook has become the new social hub. I see how everyone is doing and they see how I’m doing. They post pictures and I’m reminded of how much fun was had at those events. It’s perpetual, a cycle of positive feedback. Does technology determin how people interact? Yes because it helps them get to where they want to get and affects the comfort level but no because human nature is human. In other words the fundamental principles remain the same although the means by which certain things are done affects the interaction. Why study the media? Because by studying the media you are studying communication between individuals, whether it’s the type of chair they’re sitting on or the type of alcohol they’re drinking. It encompasses our daily lives to such an extent that it’s considered a mickey mouse course. Why spend 30hrs in a library reading books that were written thirty years ago when the media changes at the speed of thought. I’ve seen the media landscape change so much within the past 10 years that every day I form new opinions and philosophies about communication. Media studies are within every book about film, every photograph, every song, every bag. We’re saturated by the media around us therefore we discredit those who study the media. I don’t me we as in I but rather the metaphorical We of society as a whole....
Open minded — Jan 17, 2007
Today I got an e-mail which, if I agreed to would open a door to a number of events. I went for a fourty minute walk to think about things and my interior monologue brought me to the conclusion that by being stubborn I would gain nothing but regret whilst by agreeing to a small thing I would win back a freedom. I enjoyed the student life and for a moment by freedom was not as great threfore I found other occupations. Today I was at a comedy night and it was really amusing. I really enjoyed the evening. It’s great to watch comedians bring out the funny things in life for us to laugh at....
One edit finished and several more matches to follow — Aug 22, 2006
It’s the fourth day of the FIBA championship so it’s the fourth day where I wake before 0400 european time. I wouldn’t mind staying in bed a bit longer. I’m starting to understand the game better and I’ve seen that certain teams are far more entertaining to watch than others. On friday it’s a day of rest. My dissertation research is currently stagnating as I’m so exhausted by the time I get home. The Lebanon edit is finished for the moment so I should be less tired, at last. On the sixth there’s a projection of the full program so far. I’ve just thought back to my Tanzania edit and how I used to have a mentality whereby making longer documentaries was better than short ones. It’s a mentality I lost when in England whilst doing my HND. I was brought up to concentrate on using screentime as efficiently as possible, forgetting that occasionaly it’s important to let things breath. In December the same documentary will be around 50 minutes long....
On the Re-Write — May 3, 2007
I’ve been talking to a lot of people and there is hardly anyone that seems to take the re-write seriously. Most people see the writing phase as the end of the work. There’s a secret I’ve been hiding for some time now. Re-writing gave me a twenty percent boost in grades. That’s the difference between merit and distinction. That’s the difference between a 2:1 and a distinction for the dissertation. Now take into consideration that the dissertation is worth 45 credits out of 120 for the year. That’s a large enough portion that if you create a good piece of work your grade will increase and your degree may be worth more. I’ve been talking to people, taking an interest in their work practices and this is what I’ve found. Most people are around the 5-6 thousand word mark whilst four or five are completed. One person is up 23,000 and must cut down on what’s written. Most of these people aim to write from 1-3 thousand words a day and rarely go to see their supervisor. As a result, they’re relying on luck more than other factors. Luck’s great but when you’re at home and your parents ask, “so how did you do?” the answer won’t be “stop asking me”. Instead, it’ll be. You’ve seen my work, you’ve seen the time and effort I’ve put into it, now let’s just wait and see whether it’s paid off or not. Of course, pleasing your parents is always rewarding but there’s another motivation. The better the dissertation the more useful it may turn out for when you’re looking for work. Twice I’ve found work thanks to my website… don’t do much for that. Last year I listened to a journalist and he told the students taking one course to focus their dissertation on a topic that would help them gain employment by demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of a topic, for example on conflict within one region. It’s 0130am and I pushed myself today. I didn’t feel like writing, I forced myself. I wasted quite a bit of time but whilst I review my results section I can write the key points and write my conclusion according to that section. Remember, people don’t want to keep flitting back and forth to understand what you mean. goodnight....
On studying what you love — Mar 27, 2007
I love technology, especially in the form of online communities. I’ve been part of so many online communities I have some degree of expertise. I’ve seen the birth of the chatroom and it’s evolution, the popularisation of instant messaging and through flipside and nochicktrix I’ve seen the forming of virtual communities. More recently I’ve seen the increase from virtual communities to real communities. Over the past two years, almost everyone I know has created a myspace account and for a while, this was the best place for people to be. More recently though people have moved to Facebook. Having more than 140 friends, of which only three I do not know, is a sign of how times have changed. It’s actually fashionable to be part of an online/offline community. All the parties I’ve recently been to have been advertised on Facebook among other places and it’s become the social networking site of choice. If you’re not there you don’t know what’s going on anymore. It’s a great shift. It’s also replacing e-mail. Why e-mail people when all your friends are on Facebook. Why not take advantage of unlimited photo uploads to Facebook to add all those past nights for everyone to enjoy. I love the way technology is going. It’s sociable....
On studying what you love — Mar 27, 2007
Claire - Apr 1, 2007...
On social determinism and the media — Jan 30, 2007
My week started at 10 this morning and was over by 1300 this afternoon. It was a lecture and a seminar about Brian Winston and social determinism in relation to the media. It’s a theory which is exploring whether social factors affect the technology that we use. I was taking notes during that lecture but not with pen and paper and without a laptop. Instead I was using the O2 XDA minis. It’s a really nice device and I’ve had it for over two months now. What I love about it is it’s size, being about the size of my palm it’s large for a fun but tiny for a laptop. It’s got a big display and a sign out keyboard. It’s also got a good scribling interface which makes handwriting notes just as easy as typing. It’s a friend that played with this feature and I’m quite impressed. The reason I love it is that it’s got all the features you’d expect from the i-phone but in the windows operating system and for a European market. The fact it’s got a keyboard makes it ideal for fast typing of sms. I often find myself writing over 200 characters because it’s so simple. Checking e-mail is a doddle. Simply download the gmail interface and connect to the web. The download of messages is easy and intuitive. It’s a shame that data transfer over gprs is still expensive otherwise it’d be perfect. I’ve made a skype call with it and it’s worked well. I was able to make a phone call to a mobile phone and talk and hear myself at the same time. Being alone that’s complicated but I know it works. I bought a program and that makes the synchronisation extremely straight forward. I have contacts, pictures and some word documents synced on the ibook and the mobile phone this way. It’s perfect for students and I really enjoy using the device. I’m speaking as someone who’s owned at least 5-10 mobile phones over the past few years....
On Smoke Filled Kitchens — Feb 14, 2007
Last night I was sitting in my room surfing the web and thinking about a variety of things when I could smell burned so i checked the heater. Cold. Visual inspection of my room, nothing apparently a problem. I decide to go outside my bedroom towards the kitchen and open the door. Oh fuck, the room was filled with a dense smoke and a pot was on the hob. I rushed to the window and opened it to disperse the smoke. I then moved the pan from the hot hob to a cool one, turned off the power to the unit and opened the second window. once that was done I opened the kitchen door and the flat door to create a draft that would take the smoke out of the kitchen. It worked. I checked the pan and poured water into it. Some idiot had left two chicken legs to cook without keeping an eye on. If I haden’t gone to investigate the fire alarm might have gone off and flames may have made this more serious than it was. I really want to say that I believe at least one of my flat mates to be an absolute idiot for doing something so stupid but I’m afraid that individual will read what I wrote. Apparently it’s not unusual for kitchens to be found extremely warm because students had left the hobs on overnight. Most probable cause, after reading certain threads on facebook would be drunk students. They think they’re sober enough to cook something so they heat the hobs and start to cook, decide to nap for ten minutes and fall asleep. At least the only damage is to the pan and two chicken legs. No one was harmed, no going off of the fire alarm and no material damage to university property. Happy Valentine’s...
On it being cold but sunny — Dec 20, 2006
It’s winter, I can tell. There are icicles hanging from the metal parts and the wooden covers are on fountains to prevent them from freezing entirely. Add to this my birthday yesterday and the winter tires today and there’s no mistaking this time of year. I worked on my dissertation yesterday, seeing how familiar I am with certain elements of the documentary genre. I watched a few open university documentaries about the university and there’s one that makes me want to go back to Sienna to see the building in more detail. I’ll wait till the summer....
On dissapointment — Jan 15, 2007
Student unions are one of the best places to meet people and make new contacts. It’s a place where drinks are cheap and normal rules no longer apply. At least that’s what they’d have you believe. The undercroft is one of the worst student bars in the United Kingdom for a number of reasons, firstly the prices, highest in the UK, secondly the location, a basement with rats scurrying about. thirdly poor management, the reason for which many of the staff quit the job. For over two months now I’ve been unable to go due to the management, not the staff, taking a dislike to me. I went in today, not planning to get anything to drink because a friend wanted to drop down. The manager took a minute or two before he asked me to leave. I had not had the time to do anything of any sort. I’m disappointed because tonight is the first night that everyone is back from holiday and I can’t go to be with those I’ve studied and had fun with for two years. I enjoyed the convenience of that bar being so close. After tonight the bar is so empty there is no reason to go anyway but tonight could have been different. On the positive side, I’ve just started my six-day weekend and one friend in the same year is wondering what to do to occupy all our free time. Shall we find work, shall we live at home and commute only for the lessons? Shall we spend three or four days a week on dissertation work? I think so. I need to find work. I need to carry out phase two of the research, interviews, and discussion groups before starting phase three, the first draft, and subsequent copies. Last night I watched the Nile DVD and it’s interesting to see how different it is. It’s an anthropological documentary, taking time to speak first about the geography of the place, secondly about the people and thirdly about how they’re affecting the environment. It’s an interesting documentary that lasts about 100 minutes, 50 minutes per part. Already I’ve written notes about it and I’m getting closer to seeing how it’ll fit in as one of the case examples for what I’m talking about. I still need to read through the two dissertations I have. It’s going to be interesting to have so much time to work on one project. A documentary about the differences and similarities between the two documentary genre. Hours of fun as long as I organise my time so well as not to feel any pressure....
On being directed — Dec 2, 2006
Being directed is often a good thing. It helps you achieve the tasks you are meant to achieve within a certain amount of time. Other times it helps you learn something useful. In occasional cases, though direction is one of the most frustrating things in the world. I have spent many hours standing over the past three days being directed by someone who had not taken enough time with multicamera directing theory books or taken the time to familiarise himself with the theoretical aspect. You’d expect most people who direct to watch others carry out such tasks, as I have with video editors for example. You’d also expect individuals to take the time to understand what shots can be achieved with which cameras. Over the past few days though I have seen an individual with the lack of skill to direct a team of people for a multicamera event. Among the flaws were: lack of clarity, both in ideas and direction, lack of direction - for onscreen talent, too slow resulting in people being bored, etc. One flaw I have seen from a number of directors is that they concentrate too much on the shots they would like to have without actually looking at what’s going on through the three cameras already in place, often missing one shot. Don’t stop a take just because your vision mixed the wrong camera at the wrong time. Keep it going and see whether any more of the production can be salvaged. I’m glad that the task is completed. Now it’s up to me to make it work in post-production....
On being an Resident assistant — Sep 27, 2006
Being a resident assistant is a great job at the same time as it’s a lot of responsibility. It means that we have access to every room in halls for a few hours a week although in reality we’re only allowed to go from one room to another. We have to go around making sure that everyone is ok. We check that all kitchens are in a good state and that people are not unhappy. What becomes a challenge is asserting authority without getting everyone to hate you. On the one hand, you’re a third year, which means you’ve had a lot of parties already and you’ve been weathered into uni life and on the other, you’re still in need of social interactions. I went to my first lecture and I remembered how much I hate being in a classroom surrounded by so many people. It was a documentary module and this should be fun. We’ve got a week to think of a topic to research and carry on. In a few days, I’ll be going to America and I’m looking forward to it more and more. I’m excited about traveling to the Big Apple, seeing all those tall buildings, and more....
On Al Gore winning the Oscar for best documentary — Feb 27, 2007
I am greartly pained and sadened to see that Al Gore won the oscar for best documentary for “An Inconvenient truth”. I find that this is absolute lunacy and there is reasoning behind this statement. In the United Kingdom you’ve got the British Broadcasting Corporation working on some beautiful documentary. Just look at Deep Blue, The Blue Planet and more recently the Planet Earth Series. Those are beautiful documentaries showing the world in such a good light. Those documentaries were produced over a period of three years or more using the world as a backdrop. The cinematography is amazing and they had 6 million people watching when they were first aired. They are beautiful peices of work. Al Gore’s documentary is awful in comparison. For the voice over and script they did nothing more than film him giving a speech whilst throwing in the occasional related shot. I tried watching that piece of crap and got bored. Why are so many people making such a fuss about something that’s been mentioned in hundreds of documentaries before this one. If you turn on any of the discovery channels there’s a good chance that you’ll find some beautifully produced documentary with higher production values exploring the subject in a far more esthetic and effective manner. Is it getting an oscar simply because it’s by Al Gore? If that’s the case then all the negative comments that people have made about the oscars are justified. That’s not a documentary. It’s someone giving a speech which have a few shots inserted to give the illusion of the documentary tradition. Where are the interviews? Where are the experts? If the Oscar’s judges consider that oscar worthy then I will think twice about watching oscar awarded documentaries mockumentaries. Previous Best Documentary award winner so I suppose it’s not that bad overall...
On a night at Swankey's — Mar 27, 2007
Having the dissertation hanging over me is unpleasant. I often spend a few hours a day doing research which is divided between books and documentary films. Over time I organised all these ideas and I’m ready to start writing. I want to finish the first draft by Saturday. i.e. the day before april fool’s On Saturday I went out to four parties. The first party was a nice mauritian buffet to celebrate a friend turning 25 and joining the generation old club. I was there for two or three hours before moving on. The second party was a small affair although the participants were not university students therefore I left for the next venue. It was the SU bar, busy on a Saturday night, something which is not that normal. It’s usually deserted but due to a person having their birthday there it was better. The fourth party was the best part. Everyone from the bar got into 7-10 taxies and headed down to a house party. The house is in the middle of the suburbs, has two living rooms although one of these is half kitchen/half living room. Maybe it’d be called a dining room. Many friends were there and there was a live dj to add to the ambiance. At the beginning there was no sound because they were lacking a cable or two to plug the speakers in. The issue was quickly resolved and sound began. The party would involve the taking of 100 pictures, chatting to many people about many things. One of these people was glad to practice her french. Others shared drinks and such. Saturday started around 7pm and ended 12hrs later with me walking a road I had walked many many times in the past. It was a really good night and I hope to have more like it. Last night was tame in contrast...
Noise and Liveable Flats — May 13, 2007
It’s only 130am therefore it’s not that late but I want to sleep and there is something that has been hindering this effort particularly strongly for the past three nights. Drunken people with no pitch or tone control when singing using their lungs and voice projection to full pelt. It’s not that I’m against partying but I do believe in making noise during the day or away from habitations during the day. I would love to see the same thing happen in London as in Switzerland. Laws that forbid noise after 10pm. On a second note here are ways future halls and student accomodation may be improved to make a full night of sleep possible. 1. Cupboards that don’t slam. When you’re living by a kitchen one of the most annoying sounds is hearing others close cupboards 2. Solid doors that don’t bang. The main door to the complex is loud. Every time it closes you hear it. The doors to the flat make noise when you open them. 3. Silent locks. The sound of a key pulling the latch is loud when background sounds are inexistent 4. Soundproofed walls. being able to hear what’s going on next door is not always pleasant. 5. Proper windows. When you’ve got idiots outside yelling at other idiots you’ll hear the entire conversation. That’s not what you want. 6. A system of fines rather than bans. People get far more annoyed and take far more seriously a financial loss than a ban. With a ban you may end up in a nice house or flat where you live in better conditions. 7. Smart fire alarms. You’ve got security so if a fire is activated check the area with a heat camera. If there’s nothing out of the ordinary just go and clear the alarm after a visual check 8. Free high quality headphones. Rather than have loud music blearing from every room why not provide students with nice headphones which they can use to hear their music in dolby digital surround sound… 9. A noise fuse. The idea behind this device is simple. If you exceed a certain noise level all power is cut to the area where the noise levels are too high. In so doing disturbances would be far more limited. 10. Quiet furniture. When you’ve got a concrete floor with no padding and chairs with no padding any shift of the furniture results in a lot of noise. Provide a quiet surface and life may be livable. I’m tired of other people’s noise. I’d love for them to become reasonable and start being quiet. Once every two weeks is fine, but not every single day. Not all of us enjoy drinking at night and doing nothing during the day. Not all of us appreciate bad singing either. Anyway worst case scenario I have another two weeks without sleep. Best case scenario. New flat within a few days....
Nick Broomfield — Oct 30, 2006
Yesterday I bought a series of six of Broomfield’s documentaries and I watched one of them today. Chicken Ranch is interesting because Broomfield lets the camera appear in shot, through mirrors and more. He also allows himself to appear, although only fleetingly, at least in this documentary. He makes observational documentaries and allows the viewer to come to his own conclusions. This is a style of documentary where the action happens in front of the camera, with no use of voice over. Intertitles are enough, similarly to people like Vertov. They are interesting documentaries because you can see that they have not been scripted. they document life, becoming more biographical and reflective of reality. They do not strive to tell you what to think but rather encourage you to see and intuit from them. How many documentaries do you watch that breath, that do not tell you what to think? Most attempt to say “he believes that” whilst “they believe that”. This is a more mature form of documentary making, one where the characters are the story. I still have another five documentaries to watch and we’ll see what else I learn through watching them. I found another documentary book today. It’s got many interviews with a variety of directors and I really hope that they help me understand the question that I want to ask and research without it being too broad....
My Dissertation Is Finished, Handed In. — May 8, 2007
My dissertation had been finished and ready to print since yesterday afternoon but it’s today that i finally printed out the entire document for handing in to the university for assesment. it’s 10,800 words for some of the most highly produced work I have ever done. It feels good to have handed it in and never to have to worry about it. Many of the others have handed in the work and it’s going to be celebrated tomorrow although the prospect of spending my first real day of freedom hung over does not appeal to me therefore I’m planning on not drinking. Now what to do with all this time I’ve got. Find a place to live, find a place to work and more. Everything is there, absolute freedom to do anything at any time i want now....
My Dislike Of Cleaners — Apr 18, 2007
Several times I have had to clean the exterior of Airbus 320 and similiarly sized aircraft. You get some really long brushes and firehoses and you spray the plane before you clean it. it’s hard physical work and it’s done between midnight and five am. It’s not a pleasant job. Now that you know the type of cleaning I’ve done I want to express my deep dislike of cleaners and why. Every single day they pass in the halls and bang around, speaking at the top of their voices when students are in need of sleep. We’re also in need of a feeling of privacy in the form of silence. Every time some idiot walks by talking loud it’s annoying. Then you’ve got the blocked doors and rooms. They’ve been polishing every floor over the past week so that when everyone who’s had the luxury of going home over the holiday comes home to a clean building. I have to put up with the chemical smells and the blocked paths. Imagine going to a door and waiting for three or four people to finish their work. Others polish the floor and you have to go another way. Today I’m angry because of the cleaners. They decided to polish the floor whilst I’m doing my laundry. The clothes have finished being washed and they’re currently waiting to go into the dryer but that can’t happen until the floor dries, in two hours. Why can’t they carry a warning, why can’t they do it at the time when the laundry room is closed. It annoys me that everything has too be done during the day when it’s most inconvenient rather than at night when out of service. I hate the 9 to 5 mentality whereby convenience is destroyed for the everyday user. Why today, why now? Tired of communal life....
Multicamera sound — Dec 12, 2006
Yesterday sound was added to the multicamera in order to add more depth and it’s almost ready. there’s a little fine-tuning left before it’s ready for release. I’m not sure about the documentary because I took a break from it last night. Two days till the deadline....
Multicam work — Nov 8, 2006
There’s a studio, three cameras, four female dancers, one male. It’s a cabaret show yet no one is in costume. That’s because it’s a practice session for those who will be using the studio in two weeks. I don’t like having a prompter on the front of the camera because it makes smooth movements harder to achieve. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get it right for the proper costumed event....
Much clearer — Jan 23, 2007
I went for a meeting today and the documentary idea is far clearer now than before. Thanks to the help of the tutor I’ve got a far more focused way of looking at the question I wanted to ask. I still need to write a third draft of the proposal and get it approved. In the meantime I can already start writing the introduction to the dissertation explaining the context and setting the scene for the remainder of the document. Going to be fun from now on....
McLuhan's Thoughts And How They May Relate To Twitter — Aug 15, 2007
“The simultaneity of electric communication, also characteristic of our nervous system, makes each of us present and accessible to every other person in the world. To a large degree, our co-presence everywhere at once in the electric age is a fact of passive, rather than active, experience. Actively we are more likely to have this awareness when reading the newspaper or watching a tv show.”...
Looking forward to Sweden — Jan 31, 2007
In about 23 hours I’m going to be ready both physically and mentally for a trip to the city of Malmo in Sweden. There I expect to find a city I have already been to twice in the past. It is there that I may find a cold wind, blankets in the piccolina Piazza… Lilla Torg and enjoy pear cider. I take the tube towards central London and the bus from there to Stansted. I board a plane that will fly for around 1hr and 20 minutes, land in Copenhague, get to the train station, catch the Oresund train across to the city of Malmo and look at the big waves in the sea below the tracks. It’s a short enough trip. I haven’t spent more than five weeks at a time in the same place since the beginning of the academic year. I love traveling and seeing other countries and their cultures. It may be the last time I drop by for cheap since the friend will be moving from Sweden within a short amount of time. Three nights in Sverige It may be time for me to learn some Swedish other than “what are you doing” or “you are cute” and learn more relevant sentences. Thursday will make these decisions for me....
List of books on documentary — Aug 16, 2006
Theorizing Documentary (Afi Film Reader) A New History of Documentary Film Television and the Public Interest: Vulnerable Values in Western European Broadcasting Documentary in the Digital Age A few of the books I need to get through over the next few days....
Like An Airport — Jun 1, 2007
Most of the rooms are empty and cars are parked everywhere. That’s because today is the penultimate day of halls and everyone is leaving. Tomorrow at 10am all rooms should have been evacuated for the cleaning services to come and prepare the rooms for the summer groups. It feels like me like waiting for a plane, everything is packed and there’s not much to do until tonight’s party. The bedroom is cleaned and stuff is packed. It’s pretty quiet, many people leaving, everything is finished now. I’m looking forward to living in a more diverse part of London which will serve as a base for my job seeking. It’s going to be nice when, tomorrow, I have moved in to my new flat properly....
Life on earth - as told by David Attenborough — Apr 11, 2007
Natural history is an interesting topic to study although whatching the documentaries can be quite challenging. Today I decided to buy a piece of documentary result and as a result I have struggled to stay awake for over two hours. It is not that I do not like these documentaries and it is not that I have not slept enough but simply that by their very nature early documentaries make staying awake a challenge. We’re all familiar with that feeling. As children we would be trapped listening to people for up to 8hrs a day five days a week for weeks on end. It meant that we would have to find any method possible to stay awake. That is not what I have learned from watching these two life on earth documentaries. What I have learned and what I have thought about is the nature of the documentary genre and how it has evolved over the past three decades. When Cousteau and David Attenborough were making their documentaries they were exploring a new world in a new age of discovery. Technological innovation had made the move from exploration of land into the exploration of the sea. Cousteau spent hundreds of hours underwater learning about the marine world and David Attenborough created his documentaries over a decade later. Cousteau spent hours and hours telling us about how his team were working and exploring the new frontier, showing how exciting it was. David Attenborough came along fifteen years later and spoke of a 24 year old Darwin who came to the Galapagos Islands to begin his studies which would lead to his theory of evolution many years later. Documentary production, like all art forms has a natural progression with cross pollination between disciplines and nations. The dissertation I’m working on will explore this much further....
Last Three Steps Before Handing In My Dissertation — May 2, 2007
Being at the stage I’m at, and having discussed the work with the tutor there are three things I must make sure to do before handing in the work. The first task is uniformity. I need to go through two or three sections and make sure that I tie them into the overall structure of the dissertation work. It’s meant to flow from one section to another. That’s something I’ve got to work on. The second thing I’ve got to work on one or two paragraphs, make sure that the information that I wrote down is comprehensive and there’s no so what question left in the air. The final task is to make sure that I have a clear dissertation title and write the dissertation conclusion according to this. Once that’s done I’m pretty much done with this most major of assignments and it’s been a great learning curve. I think it’s been the best learning experience overall that I’ve had in University....
La Grande Illusion des Quatre Cents Coups — Nov 24, 2006
C’est deux films que je vient de regarder. I’m watching a lot of DVDs at the moment. I have neither television nor a fast connection, therefore, I take advantage to study the cinema. It’s a good way of spending time, of being transported into other timezones, towards other cities I constantly find more information as the days’ progress Only a few more days till my group’s multicamera and I’ll be busy every day until the end of the week. On the positive side, I haven’t been to the student bar to socialise. I have busied myself with work instead and my productivity has gone up. I no longer see the appeal of going to a bar or nightclub where there are three or four people checking for trouble makers. Where alcohol is served to intellectuals great conversations ensue, where it is served to the less enlightened there is nothing but “ruine de l’ame.” Last night I dropped by the library and explored the index pages, looking for information on documents. I found something about Arte and the films it selects. I found a few articles about Chinese cinemas and tributes to Jean Rouch. I photocopied them and have yet to read through them and digest the information that they provide. I am getting closer and closer to the point at which I feel I can begin interviewing the relevant people as part of my research. That should be the best part of the work I’m doing at the moment. I want to try making an observational documentary again, exploring new ideas, and getting an insider’s understanding of what I’ve been studying....
I've lost my shoe — Jan 20, 2007
Last night I went to central London to get some information about a possible shoot and edit for students at another university. If we get a camera then we can do something for tomorrow. 1p coins in student unions are dangerous. If one happens to fall in you’re going to have to drink it. Touch the cup is another game I saw yesterday. It’s a strange game because of it’s aim, at least with last night’s drink. Before going to sleep two students were outside the halls yelling and trying to get into the building. one of them kept yelling “where’s my shoe”, “I’ve lost my shoe”. Sometimes you hear strange things...
It's Like A Night Out In The Savannah — May 17, 2007
Nights in halls are like nights out in the Savannah. Since the drunk party sound coming through walls is a given that’s the sound of crickets and frogs. It’s constantly there and theoretically you should eventually learn to sleep through it over time. Of course it’s not quite constant enough. Then you’ve got the sound of banging and shuffling from the kitchen. Now that sound is the thunder storms and rain that will come over and wake you, soak you and make you wish you had a friendly cave to crawl into for shelter. The third one are lions and hyenas, high up on the food chain and the most nefarious to your health should you not be careful. That’s the argumentative drunks often found before day break. With these there’s nothing you can do but make sure you’ve found somewhere safe to hide away, grin and bear it. Overall what these three elements mean is one thing, that a proper night of sleep is less likely than snow on the beaches of the South Coast of England....
It's All Over - Mission Accomplished — Jun 2, 2007
Checking through my pockets this morning I found that £30 are still there in cash. That’s quite surprising when you take into account that last night’s mission was to drink the bar dry. Obviously I did not contribute to this as greatly as was initially anticipated. It was another night of relative madness. It was a night that involved getting to the bar around four or five in the afternoon and chatting to many people and listening to many others. It was a night where people trickled in until it closed at 3 am. During this time sambuca shots were drunk, people partied and others argued. The fire was the final part of the night. At this point, I was in bed for the second time that morning sleeping my way into today. They got the police to come to the fire and one person was even taken by car around the building and released. This was simply to scare everyone into behaving themselves. It was probably amusing to see all the conspiratorial drunks spreading rumours and insults at this point. The wake-up call was quite original today, a fire alarm. The last halls fire alarm I will ever hear and I can honestly say it’s not going to be missed in any way shape or form. To all those whom I partied with over the past three years, it’s been both a pleasure and an honour. See you around....
It feels really great — Apr 26, 2007
For the past hour or more, I’ve been listening to music and working on my dissertation and I’ve just hit 9500 words on my dissertation (disso as it’s affectionately referred to) and it feels great. I’m so happy that I have two weeks in which to proofread, re-write, and improve what I’ve written. It’s the first time in my life that I finish the writing part of my assignment two weeks earlier than the deadline. I’m not crying victory yet (french expression: mieux vaut ne pas crier victoire), after all, I’d expect myself to do at least another ten to fifteen hours of re-writing. I still have to format the references properly and look for video captures that can help illustrate my points so that the layout earns extra points. Reading this post you’d be led to believe that I take this work seriously, and the truth is I do. I started it last summer when I came back to London looking for work. I applied to at least twenty jobs without luck and as I was growing demoralised I dropped by the library when no one else was there and borrowed as many books as I thought I could carry without a surtax on the plane. Over the summer I worked through over twenty chapters about film theory and created a documentary over 50 pages long and 25,000 words in depth. I also watched hundreds of hours of documentaries. Aside from the website, it’s the biggest project I’ve ever taken on. I hope I do well....
I'm Almost Done With Uni — May 2, 2007
I’m almost done with uni but it’s so hard. I’ve been working on and off on three projects now for at least three weeks and I’ve spent so much time on these projects that today I finally met my saturation point so I left the computer behind and dropped down to the bar for a drink or two and for company. There were only a few people watching a football match and no media students from my year. They don’t have the luxury I have, of being able to leave everything for an hour or two before coming back to it and I do. I took one of the booths and sat there thinking of nothing and doing nothing. It was nice to do nothing but rest, the only sound was football and then some music. When I went outside a very amusing conversation was to be listened to and I laughed, feeling the pressure decline at last and being more sedate once more. It’s so great to think that in a week I’m done, that I have complete freedom. I can’t wait and I could get it within three or four days if I work really hard. I’m no longer worried about the calendar, no longer worried about the deadline, no longer unable to say dissertation without feeling a sudden excess of stress. Instead, I’m calm, relaxed and it’s really nice. I just can’t get to writing anymore. I’m going to have to re-write my conclusion taking the main points from my analysis and making sure that it’s clear and concise, a paragraph per point, and a summary for the conclusion. That’s the results and conclusion that I’m talking about. Long live the end, the end of my academic workload, and the beginning of adulthood once more. Three years in the making....
I'm A Martial Artist Typist. — May 9, 2007
Sometimes you hear about writers and how they fall in love with their machines. I think I’ve begun to love my laptop. I’ve just spent an extraordinary amount of time writing so many words over such a period that the laptop has use marks. If you look at the trackpad you see that the right side is smoother. If you look at the keys they’re also smooth with use. The space bar has smoothed out where I always press with my thumb. There’s a dark mark where I rest both my hands when I’m typing. The monitor shows signs of degradation. The repetitive motion of the fingers has developed muscle reflexes that mean that as I sit in one place from which I see people walk by I can observe people and continue writing at the same time. In effect I’ve been touch typing for a year and every computer develops a certain amount of time for the reflex to be perfect. I’m a martial artist at the art of typing ;) Laptops are great because they become such a big part of your life. You use them every day, from the bad times to the good times, from nice locations to some of the worst. They’re there whatever the weather. They’ve got all your music, all your photographs, possibly some of your video projects and more. They’ve also got all the software you need from day to day work practices. They’re reflective of the person that uses them....
Oversimplification — Feb 10, 2007
The more time you spend online the more headlines and articles you read, the more you see mass idiocy. Every time a phone comes out that’s slightly similar to the iPhone they rant about how similar to the iPhone it is. It’s not. There are several models of phones preceding it. My phone is very similar in design to the Samsung f700 but I’ve had it since October/November of the year. It’s got a touch screen and the slide-out keyboard and it’s got all the synchronization features. Why has Apple become the standard for a product they’re not even releasing to the market for another half a year. What a lot of excitement for a device that’s more of a gimmick than anything else. The iPhone is for the myspace generation. Those who are looking for entertainment value in electronic devices rather than usefulness. How are you going to write notes in lectures with the i-phone? One of the things I hate most about web 2.0 is that it’s all about hype, what’s popular, what’s not. What does the mass want, what doesn’t it want? Why is everything over-simplified to such an extent? At the moment you can’t open a paper without the aftermath of the CBB article being rammed down your media-saturated throat yet intelligent articles like “Identity and Migration” by Francis Fukuyama published in Prospect for February 2007 goes unnoticed. It’s a well-written article that looks in-depth at the issues that are relevant to the future of the international community as a whole. The disjuncture between one’s inner and outer selves comes not merely out of the realm of ideas, but from the social reality of modern market democracies. After the American and French revolutions, the ideal of la carrière ouverte aux talents was increasingly put into practice as traditional barriers to social mobility were removed. One’s social status was now achieved rather than ascribed; it was the product of one’s talents, work, and effort rather than an accident of birth. One’s life story was the search for fulfilment of an inner plan, rather than conformity to the expectations of one’s parents, kin, village or priest. One of the strongest arguments within the article is this one: The first prong of the solution is to recognise that the old multicultural model has not been a big success in countries such as the Netherlands and Britain, and that it needs to be replaced by more energetic efforts to integrate non-western populations into a common liberal culture. The old multicultural model was based on group recognition and group rights. Out of a misplaced sense of respect for cultural differences"”and in some cases out of imperial guilt"”it ceded too much authority to cultural communities to define rules of behaviour for their own members. Liberalism cannot ultimately be based on group rights, because not all groups uphold liberal values. The civilisation of the European Enlightenment, of which contemporary liberal democracy is the heir, cannot be culturally neutral, since liberal societies have their own values regarding the equal worth and dignity of individuals. Cultures that do not accept these premises do not deserve equal protection in a liberal democracy. Members of immigrant communities and their offspring deserve to be treated equally as individuals, not as members of cultural communities. There is no reason for a Muslim girl to be treated differently under the law from a Christian or Jewish one, whatever the feelings of her relatives. There are some valid and interesting points within the article. Take a few minutes to read it....
I Haven't Had a Proper Night's Sleep in 85 Days — May 17, 2007
Since I left Switzerland after doing some work on the 21st of February I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep for 85 days. That’s a long time. I wish there was a soundproof chamber into which I could go. What if I designed and built a soundproof bed? Wouldn’t be that complicated....
I Graduated — Jul 14, 2007
My university life is officially over now that I got the piece of paper saying that I graduated with an Upper Second class degree. It came in the mail yesterday morning but I read it in the evening....
How is the word dissertation progressing through the blogopshere — Apr 26, 2007
Here’s the result when looking up three terms for dissertation on blogpulse[](/content/images/2007/04/disso.png "disso.png)...
Hat Parties and the Events Therein — Mar 10, 2007
Last night I went to a hat party and I enjoyed it. I found it amusing to look at all the hats, from pink cowboy to chimney sweep, snowboarding and even motorcycle helmets. The more excentric the hat the more amusing the person. House parties are interesting because it’s a familiar event. We already know everyone that’s there so there’s no time wasted in trying to meet everyone for the first time. A simple hello will suffice in some cases and in others great conversations will fly off like water drops descending from Angel falls into a fine spray. That spray is the culmination of a hundred conversation. As it hits the plunge pool all of them merge into the pile of consumed conversations. Some wash up on a stone and will come back into our conscience but most will vanish. Photographs of parties are great. If you’re in a bad mood, feel tired or are down then it shows and you’re dissapointed. When you’re smiling, relaxed and enjoying yourself though they’re great. Some of these are “stolen”, taken by a photographer who prefers spontaneity to the posed image. Occasionaly posed images are good too. Two weekends, two very different events, one in a London nightclub, the other a few minutes walk from home. Both will leave enjoyable memories. Tonight I shall rest, content with the way Friday night progressed....
Happy New Year — Jan 1, 2007
yet another year, the final one of university with luck. The one where I find work. It was a calm celebration, nothing more than watching television whilst watching television....
From One Culture To Another Through Podcasting — Apr 22, 2007
At the moment I’m listening to a lot of podcasts. Probably 5-10 a day on average. I go through one collection of podcasts and once that one is finished I move onto another. As a result of this, the culture of those I am listening to is sinking through. Yesterday I listened to four or five of NBC’s meet the press and I found them interesting. I wasn’t always paying attention to what they were saying but it did make a change. I recently listened to the whole of the Net@night series and the previous series on the RSS feed as well. As a result, I’ve learned quite a bit about new technology. It’s been fun. It’s about web 2.0 and how everything is “innovative” although ten years ago people were doing the same it was called differently. It’s all O’reilly’s(sp?) fault. Today I listened to something quite interesting. It’s the Mac break weekly recorded in Dolby headphone surround or some similar tech. It’s interesting because it does paint an auditory landscape. Leo Laporte was in front whilst the girls on that podcast, Justine and Kendra were to the right, and the guests, whilst two others were to the left. Walking to the shops with that sound was a little disorienting at first but I grew used to it and it’s more fun. I want to hear more podcasts recorded with that technology. I am going through a phase of cultural assimilation. I watch and listen to all these podcasts that are coming from the US and as a result, I’m starting to absorb the culture. I’m telling myself that I should move to SFO where municipal wifi is a reality rather than a dream. We’ll see what I do once university is finished and I have the rest of my life in front of me. We may find that the work experience module teaches me to think more creatively about getting a job. If it does then it’s truly worth writing up tomorrow when I get up. I’m rambling so I’ll leave you to wait for the next post. Ciao ciao...
Friends and Those Who Fool Me — Mar 16, 2007
Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from some post grad students asking whether I could go and film the football game they were covering. It was between westminster uni city FC and another club whose name I don’t think I heard. It’s the first football game I cover so it was an experience. It was in a smallish club an the crowd was quite small. I set up in the home and away section of the stands and filmed people running from one end to the other many times over. It’s a shame I didn’t have one of the better cameras to use because the video footage would have been better. Still it was an experience. This summer had meant that I saw a lot of football matches. It meant I knew what shots to frame up. What actions to look for. The award ceremony was the more interesting bit to film because it saw me on the field with the teams making sure to get the shot of people receiving their awards. Too bad our team was not the victorious one....
Fresher's week is over — Sep 23, 2006
Fresher’s week is over and lessons start this week. It means being serious a little more of the time than over the past week. I’ve been patrolling the flats already, going from room to room and seeing lots of people, lots of new faces. This is an easy and a hard job. It’s easy because it involves little more than walking and chatting with people. It’s hard because occasionally you’re patrolling until the sun rises. you need to go to kitchens and halls to make sure that people are not too loud. Occasionally they’re open to this idea. Tuesday I have my first lessons and that’s going to be interesting, seeing how much extra work there will be from this time onwards....
Fox Film distribution and the European market in relation to Night at the Museum — Feb 2, 2007
Fox and UK cinemas fighting I have just read that a few cinema chains in the United Kingdom are pulling Night at the museum from the cinemas. They became angry after Fox distributors decided to release the film just three months after the cinema release. From a media student’s point of view, this is an interesting development. What early adopters have found is that they can get content as soon as the film has been out for a few hours/days. For those with the technological know-how, this means that they can ignore film releases and watch the film as soon as they hear about it’s release. As a counter to this problem new measures are being taken, for example, the simultaneous release of certain films in cinemas around the world on the same day in order to encourage people to go to the cinema rather than download the content for free online. For the film industry, this is bad news because it means that they have to find new ways of preventing the illegal distribution of the content they have produced. Whilst I think that the release of the DVD of Night at the museum is a good idea I fail to understand the logic in releasing the DVD whilst the film is still in the cinemas. They’re undercutting the European cinema industry. It’s not surprising that Europe is angry. The distribution of films is expensive. They have to take the film reels and ship them around the world. From a logistical point of view, it’s a nightmare both in terms of cost and time. Digital distribution is a good possibility but an investment for the cinema chains is high and the training of the staff would take time. What does this mean, Will it encourage the cinema chains to invest in new technology which would make having the most recent films available within a shorter amount of time, or will they lobby for the proper distribution times to respect?...
First time directing a multicam — Nov 17, 2006
Directing a Multicam is easy, after being a cameraman at many conferences. it’s a matter of knowing which shots you would like to have had with just one camera but couldn’t get. It’s easy, switching from one source to another and making sure the pacing is right and that there are not too many screw-ups. Overall it went well and I enjoyed it. It was different today as I was a simple camera operator. I had to concentrate on getting the right shot and fight away the desire to sit down or do something else. On both days the last speaker was the more entertaining of the day....
First thoughts — Apr 9, 2007
You know you’re a final year student when the last thing you think about before going to sleep is your dissertation. It’s also the first thing you wake up thinking of and to make matters worse you notice that a friend has joined a group called "my dissertation is driving me crazy, just to make you feel that much better. It’s not that I’m doing particularly badly, after all, I’ve done all the research I wanted to do in relation to the topic I’m writing about and I am progressing. I just wish it wasn’t so important in relation to all the other work I’ve done. It’s over in a month. That’s when I can finally relax and enjoy the real world again. How many university students a year write dissertations? At least thirty to fourty thousand I’d guess. How many enjoy it, probably quite a few. I enjoy it but it would be nicer if the purpose was to create more content for a website than to be assessed by a lecturer. I’m going to work on adding at least another 2000 words today, get it to five thousand words today. That’d mean I’m halfway to completion and it will be a really nice feeling. Now it’s time to stop procrastinating and do something more productive. No holidays for anyone so close to the dissertation deadline....
Finding a new flat — May 19, 2007
There are a lot of people currently in need of a new identity due to their university lives coming to an end and I am one of them. Today I went flat hunting and there are a few things I found out about myself. The first of these is that I really don’t want to live in a box room. I went into a room today and it was so small I would soon hate living there. Another truth is that I have lived with one wall to a kitchen in the place where I am living for the past three years. What this means is that when the last person is chatting in the corridor is chatting in the corridor I will hear it. When the first person wakes up and goes to the kitchen and moves things I will hear it. The net effect is napping, as would wildlife in order to survive. I don’t want the landlord living in the same house. There is something wrong with a landlord living in the house, mainly they have authority and ownership. If you throw a party they will come but charge you later for the damage. If they leave all the lights on you will foot the power bill. If they get sky you will also pay the bill. If you enjoy going out then you will not take as much advantage of these things. I want to be further from the living room. The living room is the worst place to live next too. Of course I love being sociable. Had I not been banned from the local bar I would have gone there every day for three years, almost, due to my friends being there. Recently I’ve been out two or three times in two weeks. Some level of passion died in me when my ban occurred. I want to be where it all happens. I want to be closer to the centre of town where I can walk to where things are going on. I want to be free to go out without having the consideration of “can I handle a 45 minute ride on a London nightbus”. There are a number of things I would like from a flat. One of these is having space. I want to have enough space to store my possessions and keep the floor as tidy as possible. I want a clean kitchen and I want some space in the fridge if possible. I want to make friends with those I move in and see that they are living interesting and diverse lives. I do not want unimaginative idiots who think only of getting drunk (to be distinguished from going out every night to be sociable. They’re two different things). I want to be close to a few shops so that I may go shopping and actually want the food that is on offer. I want to look forward to dropping by and finding a diversity of meals I can prepare. I want to be able to lock my door, I want good plumbing, none of that bath dripping down into the kitchen as I’ve experienced. I don’t want a tile floor on wooden floor boards. Wood moves and tiles don’t bend that way. Overall I want to find a flat that would feel like home. I want somewhere where I have a few friends, where I can be social if I want to but when I want isolation and if I need sleep for an early morning job I can. I’m looking forward to finding a new house and the life it will bring with it....
Finding a new flat — May 19, 2007
tomk - Jul 1, 2007...
Finalising the dissertation — Apr 27, 2007
At the moment I’m re-reading the dissertation and going through every paragraph individually to make sure that the content is good. It’s currently floating at about 9900 words and I’m feeling fairly confident with the content. there is still work to be done but within the next three or four days I hope to be done with this piece of work. Once more I went walking around the library and I met almost only girls from my course quite amusingly. They’re at various levels of stress as you’d guess. Some are quite confident, feeling that they’re well on their way whilst others prefer not to talk about the subject. through the status messages that one guy put on Facebook I thought that he had progressed really well but a message today led me to the opposite conclusion. It would be inferred from what he has written that he has not done as much work as I had thought initially. In other news, I tried working on the work experience module but I found that I simply ended up angry so I gave it up as a bad job. It’s curious how that happened. I’ll work on it in a day or two when I’m feeling more open to it....
Facebook And Technological Determinism - A Case Study — Apr 23, 2007
What’s the worst thing about being a student. The stress never disappears. What’s the best thing about being a media student? As long as you can find the theoretical background that goes with an activity you love you can justify doing a case study on the topic. I’m fresh back from the library where I went through looking for some books about the internet and society, the virtual community, reading digital culture, The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory, and finally the social shaping of Technology. I’m not going to read every single page but rather going to explore the notion of community and how it affects contemporary life. I know that the World Wide Web has progressed from such a point that being online is no longer the domain of geeks but rather the empire of all those with interesting lives. Look at musicians and sites like Myspace for example. Look at the FIBA website during the FIBA 2006 world Championship. Look at everyone posting pictures of cats on various websites. It’s part of the digital lifestyle. The premise of my case study is simple. Whereas five years ago being online was seen as something that only the least socially apt of people would do the opposite is now true, as demonstrated by the popularity of Myspace for a while, Facebook at the moment and then Virb for the near future. Those who saw the death of society because of how technology is getting people to stay at home without conversing with anyone in their physical world is a thing of the past. Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook (the mobile version) MSN messenger - the mobile version all ensure that we’re wired whether we’re sitting in a bedroom on a beautiful sunny day or standing outside under the torrential rain. Of course, there’s no rain but the point remains the same. A world where people can only be online from behind a computer is gone hence greater sociability. Let’s see how I manage to integrate that notion into my case study ;)...
Enjoy the stairs — Jan 27, 2007
Myspace was used to advertise a pyjama house party and I went for a number of hours. It’s amusing when you’re at a party in your pyjamas. It makes a change from all those fancy dress and I began wondering about the walk of shame and whether wearing pyjamas on the way home constitutes the walk of shame. The party was good although it did not really begin till later on when everyone arrived. There were lots of people I’ve known for two to three years by now. The stories were good and the conversations too. Some were interesting whilst were some left you a little confused. I went to central London with one friend and we stayed in a night club till the first tube in the morning. The club was quite full of people because the top musical act of the week had played there an hour or two before we arrived. I don’t know the group so I’m left indifferent. This part of the night continued till the early hours of the morning. We caught the first tube home. I gathered my stuff from the friend’s place. Two people were sitting in the stairwell chatting, saying that they had not gone to sleep but that everyone else was trying to sleep. I encouraged them to enjoy their stairwell before continuing on my way. Back to halls where I encountered some french-speaking friends. Conversations and random activities continued until around 7 in the morning. It had been an 11hr night/party for me and I’m surprised at how quiet everything is today. It must be the calm after the chaos of a good night out....
Dziga Vertov, the Kino Glaz and Web 2.0 — Apr 2, 2007
How many of you have a digital photo camera and how many of you have uploaded pictures you’ve taken to the web? How many of you have browsed through thousand of stranger’s photographs? I was in a lecture a few days ago and we were discussing jennycam and how it was something new, something that would lead to BigBrother. Apparently she was creating something new, something that had never thought of before. That is only partially true and here’s the reason why. Dziga Vertov lived in Russia at the beginning of the last century and at the time he worked in radio. His name, Dziga Vertov translated means spinning top. He began his work as a revolutionary when Lenin was still around. He was known for the programs he created. Within a short of time, he progressed onto the Agit trains and into film. The Agit trains were developed to carry information around the Soviet Union, in order to make sure that people all around this vast country would have a sense of belonging. He developed a theory which was based around the Kino Glaz, the all-seeing eye, Kino is cinema, glaz, is glass. In other words the cinema glass. The idea which he developed, the vision he had was to get the video cameras everywhere and capture life unawares as he called them. In other words, he wanted to film ordinary people going about their ordinary lives without them acting for the camera. This was a revolutionary concept that got him labeled by Sergei Eisenstein as a"film hooligan". Keep in time Eisenstein’s famous sequences. Massive shadows on walls, vast skies, and highly staged video sequences. He created the theorie du montage(theory of construction - my translation) after all. In other words, he believed everything was staged. If you’ve heard of “The Man With the Movie Camera” then you have seen “an experiment in six reels”. What Dziga Vertov did pre 1929 was do what Jean Rouch would do with André Coutant’s handheld cameras almost half a decade later. What Dziga Vertov did first showed the theatre room, the seats animated to go down, the arc light to be set to produce a bright spark, and for the film to begin. He then proceeded to show the city waking up and continued from there. He juxtaposed the shots of the eyelids fluttering and the shutters, he got a person waking up from a bench and the city to start it’ daily activities. He was in effect not using narration in any strict sense of the term. It was nothing more than a collection of shots. Aside from the shots, he showed his wife editing frame. It begins with nothing more than one frame, then a strip, then a person looking at one shot, another and we see it being assembled into a sequence. We see the camera move into a glass, move of its own accord, and more. He was playing and he was setting the stage for something that would become increasingly important over time. Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will uses hundreds of cameras given to the audience to document the events (and spent three years editing the material) whilst the European Broadcasting Union had the first International broadcast in 1956. It was a moment in life seen from various capital cities in Europe. Each national audience could see that of many other countries. Vertov’s vision has just expanded. As the technology evolved so people began to film everyday life, 16mm, VHS, Hi8, DV, and digital. They’re all mediums that allow for the capturing of life unawares. It’s the all-seeing eye. In the past five years, there’s been an explosion. Everyone has a digital camera, whether a crappy phone camera or a 12megapixel single-lens reflex. People are uploading these images to Flickr, to Zoomr, to Facebook. Everywhere. As a result of The kino glaz, all-seeing eye Vertov talked about is now mature. The most recent event though has to be justin.tv, a San Franciscan who has decided to document his everyday life with a camera strapped to his head. No longer is the apartment enough. Now the world is seeing the daily life of a San Franciscan. Remember timecode? It’s like that but one person and live. There is no editing, no staging. I must admit there are some pranksters. I listened to an interview he did for television where he spoke of people calling in a bust on his apartment, ordering pizza for him, and more. Quite amusing, far better than big brother. To conclude I think that we’ve come to the All-seeing eye that Dziga Vertov was talking about almost a century ago and I find that it’s great. I love the idea that every aspect of life is being documented extensively....
Dziga Vertov, the Kino Glaz and Web 2.0 — Apr 2, 2007
richard - Apr 5, 2007...
Dissertations, documentaries and such — Nov 19, 2006
I’ve been reading about documentary makers and it’s interesting. Today I read about several of them, took notes, and explored the ideas that they demonstrate. The one that has confused me is Kossanovksy and his ideas of Dogma. I’m wondering how you do a documentary without having interviews or cutaways. Does he mean that we should not use them gratuitously or in some other manner? I need to do more search on this particular aspect. Once more I’ve watched Control Room, the documentary about al Jazeera. I found it interesting....
Dissertations Are Demanding — Apr 29, 2007
Spending almost all of the time when you’re awake to complete your dissertation is hard, especially when you slept no more than six hours after a good night out. I’ve spent almost all the time I’ve been awake working on my dissertation and it’s progressing well but there is still work to be done and although sometimes I feel good at other moments I feel like it’s never going to be completed. That’s a good sign. By this I mean that I’m going through all this pain and stress, wanting for it to be finished but as it’s written it’s a matter or re-organizing and elaborating on certain points rather than typing the whole document. I’ve got the time and resources to add graphics, tables, write the bibliography, and more by the deadline. I’ve still got more than a week but I’m pushing myself to get as much done now rather than later. When discussing the dissertation with a number of people they seemed to find the topic interesting therefore I hope that when it is finished and people get an opportunity to read if they enjoy the process. Long live the handing in of the dissertation when I shall burst into laughter from the relief I will feel....
Dissertation writing — Mar 29, 2007
I have had a few big writing projects. The first of these was creating the website on the Romans. I had set myself the task of writing down everything that I knew down into a word document. That word document was transformed and cut up into a number of HTML pages and turned into a website. That project started ten years ago. After that project, I wrote an essay about information technology in a global society and that was really interesting. I finished that essay within a few months. I never stopped studying that subject and it’s coming in very handy at the moment but that’s another story. A dissertation is a lot like creating a specialised website. You gather hundreds of bits of information and amalgamate them into a collection of articles. Each article adds an aspect to the conversation that you are having with your reader. As they gather this information their knowledge can be used to explain whether what you have noticed is due to social effects, whether it’s regulatory or other. It’s not that hard but it’s scary to write dissertations because you have to be careful to stay on topic, you have to make sure that it meets with the requirements of the dissertation examiner. I love writing but I’m slowed down by having to source everything that I write. I’d prefer to write for pleasure but that will have to wait till I finish university. Just over a month to go till I regain my freedom....
Dissertation writing — Mar 29, 2007
richard - Apr 5, 2007...
Dissertation Results — Jun 28, 2007
Today is a great day for a number of reasons. The first of these is that I woke up early, which means I slept enough. The second of these is that I dropped into university and was sad to see all those empty bedrooms, which shows there are some good memories from halls. The key to today was getting my dissertation grade. That’s the reason I dropped by the uni. Tired of the anxiety and worry of grade results I heard from a friend that the results were there. I went and checked my grade and in the process saw quite a few others. One friend I traveled with got a 70 so I’m really happy for him, this being the top grade out of those I looked at. I found that I was in agreement with the feedback I got, mainly that I should have concentrated more on the socio-economic side. Part of the reason I didn’t was that it was hard to find data on this topic. If I did the exercise again I would work harder on doing better. Another good piece of news is the following. My MacBook Pro and the software I ordered have been shipped and they should arrive around the 11th of June. I’m really happy and looking forward to this. It means I have a new toy professional tool to play study with. I dropped by the apple store and took advantage of the wifi at the apple store for a few instants and did the geek thing, watching a mediocre presentation of Imovie. I think I’ll try to get to one or two more advanced shows, see what secrets I can pick up in the process....
Dissertation feedback — Apr 3, 2007
Yesterday I went for some dissertation feedback and heard that some people have not yet been to see their dissertation and if these people have seen no one then I am quite surprised. The reason for which I am surprised about this is that it’s a new form of writing which involves getting a good knowledge of certain rules. One of these rules was never written “Should”. Your dissertation is meant to be based on fact, on what has been documented. Anything within the speculative realm is worthless. You might as well take those sentences and write an article about them for pleasure. The second rule is simplicity. If you’re writing a dissertation you’re writing for people who have never heard about the subject before. What this means is that if you use a technical term you must make sure to explain what it means and why it’s relevant. Assume your audience is off the street rather than some well-informed individual. In some ways getting someone to read your dissertation who knows nothing about the topic is great because they’ll point to you the error of your ways in assuming that everyone knows something. I’m going to have to elaborate on those points. Language is an essential part of the writing process. Did you mean channels or outlets? Are you speaking about perceptions or opinions and do you know the difference. Remember that words are the only method by which to get your point across. If you use a word make sure that it is used in the right context. If you don’t you may confuse your reader but more importantly, you may set out that you are going to do one thing but due to an error in language you’re doing something which does not link directly to this. Overall dissertation writing should be a pleasure to write and to read. It’s about taking a subject that you’re really interested in and sharing it with your audience. Over time it comes naturally but if you’re like me it’s a question of experience....
Digital television in the UK — Mar 18, 2007
1.1 The three months to the end of December 2006 (Q4) saw over 1,000,000 net household conversions to digital television (DTV) in the UK, following on from 800,000 additions in the previous Q3. Growth was driven by another strong quarter for digital terrestrial television (DTT), with total sales of DTT equipment reaching 2.4 million. 1.2 The digital cable and satellite platforms also added over 300,000 households between them during the quarter. This means that 77.2% of households now receive digital television services on their primary set, up 3.9 percentage points from the previous quarter. 1.3 With a further 1.4% of households subscribing to analogue cable, the total number of homes receiving multi-channel television at the end of Q4 2006 stood at 78.6%. Source What this means is that narrowcasting is no longer within the grasp of early adopters but slowly getting into the hands of the everyday public. As more people have more choice so their viewing habits and choices will be different. At the same time television is getting a lot of competition from online resources, especially for programs that are aired in territory months earlier than in others....
Delegation and working to deadlines — Feb 24, 2007
I love working on my own projects, where I rely on no one but myself but occasionally I’m lucky enough to have no choice but to work with other people. It’s at these moments that I learn more. I learn about team scheduling and teamwork. I also learn about delegation. I’m not that good at it yet but I’m learning. Anyone working as a producer or director needs to learn that job and some are better than others. The recent myspace and Magician audition projects I worked on saw some good producers in charge. As a result, the project was good. Recently I’ve had to be a co-producer with someone else and I was asked what jobs still had to be done and I had to think about it before I could delegate the responsibility. I finally found some methods of delegating responsibility, therefore, I’ll have more material to choose from when it comes to editing. The project has to be finished by Monday because Tuesday I’ll be back in London with a three thousand word essay on technological determinism to hand in. On the Monday following that I have a presentation on digital content. I’ve been thinking about that concept and I think I’ll be able to produce a good product....
Deep blue — Jan 18, 2007
It’s fun to watch documentaries when you know that they spent at least two to three years in the making. I like the documentary because it’s an opera rather than a documentary. There is a minimum of comment and a maximum of shots. There are some sequences where you see things happening in front of the camera and it switches to a second camera. That’s because for sequences like the penguins jumping out of the water they filmed it with one film camera and one pole. Doesn’t that make you wish you were studying a media BA. where part of your studies is television. Every field of studies has it’s advantages. One person I know is studying James Bond films, another is doing Disney cartoons. I’m doing underwater documentaries between France and England. Another is doing something related to social elements and zombies. One is doing special effects It’s a broad range and that should make it more interesting to those that have to read through all this content....
De-rushing — Aug 23, 2006
As I arrived home today, after a slightly more relaxed day I found that two tapes had arrived in the post. It’s the ones from the final fling. I still need to go through them and find usable footage. I’m going to be editing that over the next two or three days, depending on what the work load is for the other documentary. I’m feeling inspired, thinking of the logistics of the first weeks back at uni. First I need to find a home, and once that’s done work on creating an action plan firstly for the year ahead academicaly but also for the smokescreen project. I need to make sure the project is far clearer in people’s minds and check that I have one or two crews that are ready to do the work professionaly, making sure to get a variety of shots for dynamic video productions....
Day two of editing — Dec 6, 2006
And there we have it. Day two of editing is over and we’re up to five minutes with a script that’s ready to be fleshed out by a variety of interviews. I love editing and whilst writing this I’m beginning to look forward to tomorrow’s editing. The problem is that I was getting a little tired of being in the same room for so many hours in a day. That’ll change tomorrow as new things occur. We’ve added the sequences to the timeline and it would seem that things are progressing nicely. I have captured the making-of footage for the multicamera project and that should be fun to edit. It will wait until later in the week when the Documentary edit is closer to completion....
Day One of Editing Done — Dec 5, 2006
Day one of editing has finished and I’ve spent the last two hours resting and relaxing. The editing is quite interesting. We’ve got an interview with someone who was considered as hottest single in the world two or three weeks ago. The documentary is about myspace and it’s effect on the music industry. It’s interesting because we have at least ten interviews, that’s ten points of view, some musical, others more ITish and yet more from the ordinary public. Three segments have been assembled and we have a few more to work on. The duration is only five minutes so far but will progress tomorrow. The rough cut needs to be done by thursday to give an additional week for gathering extra shots and cleaning everything up. I need to make time for the editing of the multicamera project....
Day four of post production — Dec 7, 2006
And so it came to be known that on the fourth day of post-production a number of people watched the rough edit of the multicamera project. They appreciated it and of course, there are some tweaks. Most of it has to do with sound being added and CG. On the docu front, progress has been slow although feedback has been received. Both projects are going along nicely....
Complaints On Sub Urban-Living — May 5, 2007
I would love to go back to the countryside where I can sleep whenever I choose and wake up when I can. I love being around people, going out and partying but I also love being able to sleep and waking up to the sound of silence. It’s been hard these past few weeks with all the work I’ve been doing in the academic sphere. I would go to sleep between 10pm and midnight were it not for the drunks making noise till 3am and the cleaners and others making noise from 9am onwards. Six hours to sleep is plenty of sleep… theoretically. When you’re woken by the sound of others though and prevented from sleeping by the sound of some then the countryside’s pull is really strong. I’m day dreaming of getting out of the suburbs. They’re the worst of bost world. They’re crap because everyone commutes into town for work yet they’re not deep enough in the countryside to allow for the freedom to walk for hours without interruptions. I want silence. I’m exhausted at the moment, longing for nothing more than a full week of sleep cycles where nothing but my mind wake me up. The villager in me is stronger than the urbanite and that’s clearly visible....
Before waking up — Mar 15, 2007
Before waking up I found myself catching a plane to an airport before catching a small private plane to somewhere in the mountains where I went skiing. I was going home but for some reason I was late. I was telling myself that I had to get back to one place to get my luggage before going home before realising that I didn’t. I decided to rush for the plane, dropped by my room, and threw a cursive look before running back to the small private plane, asking whether I was on the first flight before the plane took off. For some reason, it had to taxi along some mountain roads and almost hit some bowling balls on the tarmac. Quite a confusing dream to have had. I usually have strange dreams as summer starts trying to get in through the curtains. It’ss the fourth or fifth day of sunshine in sunny London. Another day of sitting in the sun whilst waiting for night to fall to continue working on the dissertation. Last night I spent at least an hour going through some of my notes. Highlighting relevant bits and thinking about how to structure the introduction. Now it’s another 15 days of such effort or more. The deadline is still over a month away but it’s better to do as much as possible now to relax afterward… or at least not panic....
Barbeque Sunrise - A Student excentricity. — Apr 15, 2007
There are many things I have done in the past but having a barbeque at five am whilst the birds are tweeting and the sun is rising is not within my normal realm of experiences. It was nice, felt more like the end of a festival night than anything else. The party took place at a friend’s place along the Metropolitan line. We arrived at about 7 pm and that moment everything about the party was normal, all the usual features, barbeques, people, drinks and more. Not that many people ate much at the beginning of the night, preferring to socialise instead. At the end of the night when most people were responsibly going to bed we decided to have a barbeque. It was a mission at first. We had to find out how to open the garden door. It had been locked therefore we could not go out through one door and had to get another one. After this, we had to struggle to find the fire lighting blocks. Finally, we lit the blocks and now it was time to wait for the fire to be warm enough. By this point, the birds were tweeting more and more excitedly as the sun was rising. As the blue of the sky started to appear our fire was warm enough for the steaks. It took a little time to cook with improvised tools. The food was finally ready and those steaks were good. It doesn’t end there A popular phrase was “there’s plenty of meat left in the fridge”, resulting in some turkey being fetched and cooked. The pieces were thicker so aluminium helped speed up the cooking process Once we had eaten this it was time for bed for my friends whilst I decided to go home on the tube. There was just one problem, the tube station was closed and there was no indication of when it’d open. You can imagine my joy at the thought of waiting for them to open. It didn’t matter though, I walked back. It was actually a nice walk. No one in the streets except the occasional post worker. The air was nice, felt like a proper summer morning. Finally, I was home, having no special need to go to sleep quite yet I stayed up for a little longer. By around 8 am I was asleep. It had been an interesting night....
Bad organisation — Oct 28, 2006
When you’re the producer one of the first things you do is make sure that the person you’re meant to be filming is at the location where you want him at the time you would like him to be there. A few days ago though, when someone else was producing the talents did not show up and we waited five hours for no reason. This was frustrating since i had at least two other things I could have been doing instead. Today I have another more spontaneous vox pop gathering excercise around central London and probably Camden. I’m not sure about the best location but we should see this within a short amount of time. I’ve been thinking more about the topic of my dissertation and the research queston and whilst reading Documentary In the digital Age I think I may have found an essay question. I have to fine tune it to be neither to focused nor too broad....
Back to uni — Sep 14, 2006
I’m back in England, at uni, in a new room, for another year....
Back in London — Jan 12, 2007
I’m back in the northwest of London waiting for Monday to come when I can fall asleep in the first lecture of the week… In reality that’s probably not going to happen. Instead, it’s going to be the final three modules before the course is over. It’s going to be fun since I love the modules I need to do. The flight was good, enjoyed watching a film on my i-pod, and finally getting a proper opportunity to check my noise-canceling headphones out. They make quite a difference....
Approaching the first deadline — Nov 5, 2006
It’s six weeks into the course and the first deadline is approaching. It’s for globalisation and I need to work on it today to save on stress later in the week. I went out to Central London to record some vox pops asking people about myspace. The weather was good and people were quite willing to talk to the camera. In fact, it’s quite surprising to see what a high percentage of people accept to talk about. In general, they accept to talk if they know about myspace. I was editing for a few hours on Friday, getting one or two interviews shortened for later in the production. We’re missing a lot of footage at the moment. We need to listen to the interviews, see what is mentioned, and according to this decision on what shots best illustrate what is being talked about. I’ve watched my fourth Broomfield documentary, soldier girls, last night. It’s a different style. He’s far less visible in front of the camera and it focuses almost entirely on one problem recruit. We only see him at the very end when the problem recruit leaves the service....
And That's When Flames Caressed My Leg — May 25, 2007
Last night after visiting my new flat and getting to know one of the people that live there I came back to the bar in Halls to chat with friends but that didn’t last long as there was a lack of atmosphere. Everyone migrated to the field and that’s when it’d become more interesting. Whilst some people went to get firewood we broke some branches into more manageable pieces, got some newspaper, and started a fire. I love building up fires so I helped to encourage the flames and attempted to make the fire catch. After a few minutes it did and some people came with palettes and other flammable things onto the fire. We got a nice big flame going and the fire was so warm we had to be at least ten meters away. Some were drinking beers, others were drinking wine. I eventually went to get a coke because it’s too warm otherwise. Occasionally the grass would light due to the heat and start migrating away from the fire and I kept having to put those fragments of fire out. Occasionally the fire was so hot that there was nothing anyone sane would try to put out. At one point I saw the grass light in a few areas so ran towards there and stamped on it. My body created a little area of low pressure which meant the flame caressed my trousers. It didn’t combust but one or two people did yell a warning. I walked away. It’s at about this time that I stopped maintaining the fire. It was burning very nicely. Eventually, the security guard came and asked who started the fire. “we don’t know” was the answer we gave, of course, after all, it was a team effort and we’ve finished the academic year anyway. He prowled around but there wasn’t much he could do alone. He would eventually call both the fire department and the police to come and take care of the fire. This was one of the amusing moments. The field is shaped in such a way that there are steep banks down which the fire truck could not come. As a result, we could see the fire fighters trying to work out a way to get to the fire and extinguish it. Eventually, they drove as close as they could before pulling out the fire hose and spraying the fire. Many people cheered this as fourty onlookers had gathered. A little later the police came and told us to go back into our rooms. Some people stayed on but I went home and eventually went to sleep. Nice way to mark the end of term and uni life....
An ode to lost votes — Mar 12, 2007
One girl lost my vote a year ago when not turning up to a live interview she was meant to attend, deciding an hour before to cancel Another lost my vote for not having the strength of character to campaign for herself through a medium like facebook or Myspace. One lost my vote for her slogan, which I do not appreciate. Which people are we talking about? We’re all equal. Some have the luxury of misbehaving around uni before going home to their parents to recuperate. Others don’t. I will vote for those individuals I know. I will those whom I have seen work as a team and those whose friends I know. I will vote for those whom have attempted to make themselves visible or known to me whether in person or online by their own steam. In retrospect the campaign has been surprisingly dissapointing. Where’s the student newspaper with the candidate’s applications. Where were the flyers for the people running. Where’s the presence of the UWSU elections anywhere within smoke media. You’ve got voting starting yet do we know any of the candidates outside our circle of influence and friends?...
An Energetic Walk Through London — May 5, 2007
Today is a day of rest for me. I caught the tube into central London and went for a nice hour long walk through the center of London. Starting from Oxford tube station I walked through the throngs of people, dodging them and trying to fray the quickest path through them as possible without having to cut down on speed. I passed by Pall Mall and the Cabinet War rooms before walking along the South Bank where all the entertainers were Masses of people were queing for the London eye whilst others were eating at Wagamama, strada and other restaurants. I passed the Tate Modern and saw the guy with the birds, not a pimp, the reptiles that evolved into feathered creatures. He was there with his public. I pased by a few beggers, some looking worse than others. There was an opera singing girl under one arch and that did make a change, a nice one. Tired of always seeing the modern artists so seeing a more classical application is more interesting. I didn’t stop, and didn’t hear. I was listening to the i-pod. I passed by more objects before finally getting to London Bridge. By then I was getting tired, after all when I got down to the tube I had been walking for an hour at my cruising speed, above 8km/H. Think I covered quite a nice distance and saw many sights. Now I’m content, sitting in my room and I saw that the Digg word stock I bought on trendio went up by 7 points and s...
An academic fox for university — Apr 11, 2007
When you’re s student normal clocks no longer have any relevance to the way you live your life. Sometimes you go to sleep three hours after the sun rose and other times you have a nap at three in the afternoon. Occasionally you sleep from ten at night till 6 am. That’s extra ordinarily rare. When you’re in halls this is particularly true. You’ve got an entire ethnic group in university that takes the university to be the same as school. They come in at 8 am and leave on the dot at 1900 hrs. That’s because they’re still at home and they live according to their parent’s cooking schedule. They love to play during the day. Most of the people I know are of the night disposition. They will party all night and pull all-nighters to get work done rather than get up early in the morning to do things the way non-students do. It’s a great way of life. You might not see the sun in winter but in Summer there’s a chance you’ll be sitting in the sun soaking in the rays whilst office workers are slaving away. It doesn’t matter, in three to four years most students will experience the same so it’s only a question of time. Anyway, the point of this post is that I was leaving the library after doing some work on my dissertation when I spotted an orange fox lurking around. it was looking for food and that’s not hard to find where students have been. I thought that I should scare it off by hissing and stamping my foot but it remained oblivious. I decided to walk up the stairs and turned around. It was heading towards the turnstiles to get into university. Did I meet one of the rare academic foxes in North West London? Let’s see whether I see it at my graduation. How many of you have had such encounters with nocturnal creatures?...
All that remains from this day — Nov 21, 2006
Today a friend of mine was in the news, after being arrested and released in China. He’s a photographer. At the same time, I’m in England and I am no longer welcome to a place where I have spent many hours. I have three documents loaded within the browser to continue work on the dissertation proposal I am going to continue on within the next few minutes or within the next day or two. I’m going home in about 28 days or so, that’s four weeks. I have a documentary meeting, a tutor meeting, and a multicamera meeting, all for around the same time. There is also a globalisation meeting. After that, I may go home and edit what should have been edited already. This depends on what’s decided during one of the meetings. It’s the daily life of a student....
All that is left from three years is one essay and one dissertation — Mar 6, 2007
Yesterday I handed in my penultimate essay. There are two main assignments remaining. the first of these is a tech case study which should be fun to do. I already have an idea of a topic that I know fairly well. with the second it’s the dissertation and I should really spend a few hours progressing with that. I had one of those classic nights on Saturday. You begin with the idea that you’re simply going to drop into the cinema and watch a film before going home and watching the lunar eclipse from the relatively low light pollution of the area around the halls. This plan disintegrated as a friend encouraged me to stay out and go out clubbing instead. I knew I had the penultimate essay to finish. Most people hate the night bus because it’s so full of weird people, some are just drunk, others are in worse states and finally some are amusing. On occasion you’ll enter the bus and a girl will offer you some crisps and you won’t say know, to which someone next to you asks whether you’re really going to accept them. Later on you understand that it’s the brother joking around. In other cases you’ll find that it’s like a plane cabin. If you’ve ever flown easyjet and got up to go to the front of the cabin you’ll know the sight. it’s that of two hundred people having a nap. It’s a soothing sight to see so many relaxed people. Occasionaly some people get cold so you lend them their jacket and you walk them home before rushing home to finish your essay rather than taking the time to get to know more about them. There are a lot of people that hate the stop at Sudbury but having lived there last year I know a little secret. That there’s a 24 hour shop where you can buy jaffa cakes and lipton ice tea for the second part of the journey. What I enjoyed most about saturday was the people I met on the bus journey home....
A Writer Can Expect To Revise His Work Over A Hundred Times — May 7, 2007
Those words were magic, a writer can expect to review his work over a hundred times. That so many times. Can you imagine going through something one hundred times? By the end, you’re going to go mad. Actually, when I’m working on video it’s not unusual for me to watch the same five minutes 20-30 times till I’m satisfied it’s perfect. I’ve been applying that procedure to my dissertation which is why I still haven’t completed it. I was feeling discouraged this morning but this afternoon when I heard the sentence I’m now using as a title for this I felt encouraged. Of course, it’s hard, of course, it’s repetitive but if you want to write well you’ve got to give it the time it requires. What’s the point in having a dissertation to write if you’re going to do it within two days. What about all the thought process. What about all the conversations you’re missing out on. I joked with someone who was still taking notes today, “45 credits… ah that’s worth at least 45 minutes of work”. She probably hates me for saying that but come on, it’s your dissertation. It’s the first time that people want you to blab for so long about a topic of your choosing. No one else tells you what to write, only how you should write it. Some friends are smart, they chose the subjects they love. So did I, means you’re studying even when you’re not. Add to this the process of writing. It’s enjoyable. Put some music on, zone out for an hour or two and just write, research, and learn more about what you love, then write more. Write to learn rather than the other way around. I love the thought of writing to learn. It’s a book I read several years ago, when still at La Chat in Geneva. I think I’d like to be a writer. I don’t mind academic writing as long as I have as much time as I want, or else organise my time so that I fool myself into believing I have as much time as I want. There’s one paragraph that’s taunting me at the moment, I’m going to trick it though, and it will be tamed into a relevant bit of text....
A Week and Two Days Left — Apr 30, 2007
There are about nine days left before the deadline and I’m up to revision five of my dissertation and I’m feeling fairly happy about it. i’ve spent two days working off the printed copy before transferring these changes back to the electronic version. I’ve got almost everything I wanted to do done for today. The next step is to get all the graphics, tables and the bibliography in order. In this detail alone I may expect to spend two or three hours if things go well. I’m happy to have got this far as I can still change anything that i feel really needs changing. Tomorrow I may attempt a smooth read, making sure that everything is as it should be....
A Typical Day Two Weeks Before Uni's End — Apr 24, 2007
Just put on some music and now I’ll tell you about a typical day, just two weeks before the end of uni life for me. My phone is set so that it rings every morning at 9 am and the reason it gives me is “catch a flight” because I had set that particular alarm to wake me up before one of my numerous flights. It doesn’t often get me out of bed, I usually snooze till about 11 am and that’s when there’s noise from the cleaners. I open up the laptop and I start surfing around the world wide web syncing up with what’s happened whilst I was sleeping. It’s not until about two hours later than I do something productive like get out of bed, take a shower, and then get on with the public phase of my day. a few times I’ve woken up and got straight into one of the three assignments that are due within the next three weeks. I stop working when either it’s at least an hour later or I’ve run out knowledge and because it requires research I decide it’s easier to get sidetracked by something else. Around 2 pm I go for a walk, as an excuse to listen to a podcast. I get myself what is required for a sandwich and get some ice tea. Time to relax whilst eating. Until this point there’s a chance I haven’t been sociable so I walk over to the uni library, it’s only 5 minutes away so it’s no struggle. As I arrive there I go from one friend to another, getting a little insight into how well they’re doing with assignments. With certain people you find that they’re halfway through the dissertation, others are finished. Some were working on their advertising module course work and others claim not to have started writing. I’m glad I have. (slight understatement) There are a few groups of people I hang around with. Sometimes I go to a venue and I film a friend’s gig, as happened or I go to the SU bar (which hasn’t happened for the past two weeks and won’t happen before next Monday. The third option is to hang out with more friends in halls. Once I get home I do some more work, sometimes another two or three hours. I found that at one point I was so anxious and worried about my work that I couldn’t go to sleep before I had progressed with my dissertation. I’m lucky that way. My mind has become the perfect nag. I’m grateful for this. Sleep is easy, I lie down, pull the laptop screen down and see that it latches. Listen to my ipod and fall asleep....
A sunday morning — Dec 10, 2006
It’s Sunday morning and yesterday was another day of shooting and editing. As a result of that, the documentary has progressed a little more. One or two more segments have been added, graphics have been improved and the project as a whole looks good. There’s still a lot of work to be done and I’ve been thinking of extra graphics and shots that could help make the documentary more interesting to watch. Another 7hrs before editing is over for today...
A Stream of Conscience on Noise and Flat Hunting. — May 17, 2007
As the title indicates I’ve upgraded to the new version of WordPress and I’m trying it now. I’ll have to see what the great features are in this version. I know that they were having some last-minute problems with tags but we’ll see whether they resolved those. Aside from changing browser today I also started looking for an apartment as I am so tired of the noise made by drink fueled students. I’m not against drinking but I am against the noise they make every single day that they are at home. Why not have a bottle of wine between friends and chat for hours. Why does everyone have to lose grip on reality? Is life that terrible for them? Back to the upbeat stuff. Flat hunting as a solitary person is great for a number of reasons, firstly complete freedom. You have the freedom to live anywhere that interests you, without taking other people into consideration. Of course, I do look at everything according to tube lines and distance. The closer to the center I can be better. Another consideration, of course, is to find people whose company I enjoy living with. A good home is a perfect place from which to cope with the struggle that job hunting will be in the next few weeks and months, as they flow by. There are three flats that I am already scheduled to visit and I may look for a few more during the day tomorrow. The more I visit the more informed the decision. The first phone call is always the hardest. I was struggling so much in fact that I forgot about one flat and started sending out two or three e-mails in the hope that through the writing of applications I would clarify within my mind what it is I wanted to communicate. That served me well. Within three phone calls, I had already summoned far more courage and I’ll keep looking whilst I have the time. I need to draw up a list of the things that are important to me for when I get to the flat, to make sure not to forget something that would influence my enjoyment of this new phase in my life. I’ve got till the second but if I’ve got an agreement by the second of June I’ll be much happier. --I wrote this post whilst listening to Chopin. Second time in as many days that I listen to this. A change in personality or expectations? Time will decide....
A Larger Readership Than The Student Newspaper — Apr 17, 2007
A few days ago I was with a friend discussing the student media within my university. I’m not speaking about the content created by those in the various courses but rather about the student newspaper and television channel. It’s gone downhill over the past year. In my first year at uni although people poked fun at the student magazine they used to get it in order to get all the events listing. It meant that you knew a month in advance what was going on what night and so university spirit was stronger. At the same time, some second-year students of the time decided to create a student television program in which they got up and running external to the student union. In so doing they guaranteed success. Last year the student magazine coasted along and the first discussions about it becoming a newspaper happened. Since then it’s been downhill. We’ve gone from having a glossy magazine coming out once a month with all events listed to having recycled paper as a newspaper. Rather than having people fighting to get their articles published an apathy seems to have formed around the project. There is no features editor, no listings editor, no main editor, and no layout person. This is a uni with 23,000+ students of which 10,000 full time. You’d be led to believe that they could produce some content without too much difficulty. The one thing that’s doing relatively well is the student radio but it’s not independent of the Student Union, therefore, it seems to run better. If they had kept podcasting as they were doing last year then I’d still be downloading and listening to those programs as I walk around London. I’m ready to leave university and get on with other more interesting projects. I’m ready to get back to the world of work. I only have about three weeks left of work....
A Healthy Amount Of Downloading — May 29, 2007
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A funny day — Jan 18, 2007
I found today quite entertaining. I went out and noticed that it was a little windy. Later on, I was heading towards the student bar only to find that it was closed due to windows being blown in. “Oh well”, I thought “time to do something different”. I walked across the street, the name given to the path in the middle of our university, and looked up to the screens, “ship abandoned”, train delays, tiles off roofs, and more. [caption id=“attachment_5829” align=“alignleft”] Due to various trees on the line As if to provoke more problems for myself I decided to head into central London. There was a hilarious sign. "Because of various trees on track - severe delays on metropolitan line. It’s such a matter of fact, a casual way of saying there’s a problem. I went up the stairs to the platform ad caught a train limited to 30 mph due to the adverse weather conditions. That’s quite a bit slower than usual. We arrived near Wembley Park but the train remained blocked. Apparently they had to change driver and this was holding us up. So to recapitulate six trees on the line, heavy winds, severe delays, and to top it off delay due to the changing of a driver. Don’t they have enough problems as it is? I went to the world’s biggest apple store but there’s nothing new, no apple tv, no iPhone, nothing I haven’t seen already. The trek back was fun in itself. Highly packed trains filled with commuters and masses of people trying to get back to Northwick park after going to Harrow on the hill because the trains were suffering from the weather conditions. I got out and walked home....
A funny day — Jan 18, 2007
iPhone - Jan 4, 2007...
200 1990 to 2000 hits on my i-pod — Jan 3, 2007
I’ve spent the whole day working on a report which is due on Monday but since I have to send it by post I decided to complete it a few days earlier in order to send it off. I’m in the process of printing it off now and then I can have fun with other subjects. There’s fresh powder snow on the slopes so snowboarding could be quite a bit of fun, especially with all those unmarked runs which may have enough snow for the fun to continue. I downloaded a lot of the hits which were popular whilst I was riding on the bus to school when I was younger. there are quite a lot of memories in these songs. they’re the songs from my generation, and I am old enough to say that. Those 25yrs old are part of a different generation than those pre 25 years old. Over the next year, many of the people I know will join my generation ;)...
Excess Use of Network — Apr 22, 2007
Here is my daily good morning message from the ISP: Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions. This type of activity could have a detrimental affect on our network unfortunately be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days. I download over a gig a day when I’m at home on average, that’s 30 gigs a months or more. Detrimental effect on our network: What about every time you cut me off for no reason, what about the interruption of service when I get beyond the number of hours allocated p0er month. What about the fact I have over 20 gigs of data transfer but can’t use it? Limit to 56K, It’s already limited to that speed. If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account. So interruption of service for no reason isn’t an interruption of service? For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following: Why not stop whining about this and block those services rather than destroy the rest of the services Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly. Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your usage could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed. One gig a day is nothing. Two nights ago I downloaded over two gigs of podcasts within an hour without any problems suffered by the University infrastructure therefore why can’t these people cope. If they’re going to block internet access from my machine then that’s a Denial of servic although not an attack. Just sub standard. Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services Context and analysis Diggnation is 120 megabytes per program and Nouvo by the TSR is around 80-120 megs as well. The BBC’s daily news is around 20 megabytes. This week in tech, this week in media and others are around 20 megabytes each. Diggnation =1/5 of my daily allowance, nouvo = 1/5 as well. Twim etc are a little less but quickly saturate the amount allocated per day. What’s more interesting is that they currently have at least 7 fibres for 100 people. If the Cern were using those fibers it would be the equivalent of at least 3.6 gigabits per second, as was tested at the 2003 Telecom world event. 7 fibers = 7 gigabits per second, at least theoretically. For 640 users that would be 10 megabits per second. compare that to the 50KB/s and you see why I’m dissatisfied with the service....
Excess Use of Network — Apr 22, 2007
wham - Apr 1, 2007...