Media & My Future

I finished making my website today in class. Despite mankind's advances in technology, something will always go wrong, even if it is minor. The school server was malfunctioning earlier this week & the Mac I was using stopped working, so my progress was momentarily halted. I enjoyed making a website, but I wish I could have done more with it if I had more time to devote practicing with DreamWeaver & the other adobe programs.

I want to have my own personal homepage, other than this blog of course, to use as way to express my interests w/out giving away too much personal information (I'm looking at you My Spacers!). The internet is a gateway to get-away w/out having to actually leave your house. I would like to meet people across the globe via the net, but I would want to meet them in person as well. The internet should NOT replace live human interaction, as this can have very dangerous consequences.

The world wide web allows people to share information at paces man could never have imagined decades ago, but how much of it is reliable? Information needs to go through editing & verification processes, at least info that is considered important.

I do NOT want to read something that was completely compiled by a program that gathers data from numerous if not countless sources; in this example there is no quality & fact checking; that scares me.

I love watching animated movies & shorts on the internet, from YouTube or Newgrounds; such things take a lot of talent, time, & energy to make. I really want to learn how to make a flash animated short, oh the crazy carnage I would unleash onto the interwebs!!!

My mass comm internet class has taught me that I still have much learn if I truly desire to continue & proper in the already saturated market of mass communications; in other words, knowledge & its application =s power.

Student Film: Samurai Pawpaw

2 of my friends and my grandparents made a film parodying Don Quixote, albeit w/ a samurai twist instead of a knight, & Mario's "mushrooms". The whole point: a slightly trippy & hilarious comedy. I just wanted to make the funniest film I have ever made...for now. What ever you do, don't eat the mushrooms & stay up late watching tv! Here is the link to my Youtube page.

Current.tv "Pod"

I watched a short horror-comedy titled "Fearby" by a person who goes by DerekTS on current.com. It was a very enjoyable short film that reminds me of my 2nd college film of a toy frog coin purse, the embodiment of Murphy's Law, harassing a friend and me. It a couple of instances of cursing, but otherwise it's PG to PG-13 in rating. Here is the link. In this college film, a black furby with a white belly torments a poor security guard. This type of film has been done a ton of times, i.e Child's Play, Puppet Master, Slappy the ventriloquist's dummy from the Goosebumps horror stories, but to my knowledge it has never been done with a furby; those toys are annoying as heck, they never shut up unless you take out the batteries!

Media Past, Present, & Future

After watching the short videos "Web 2.0...The Machine is Using Us" and "Epic 2015" all I can say is...Run for the hills!!! Skynet is coming!!! The machines are finally rising against us!

Okay, with that out of my system, pun unintentionally intended, now on to my real opinion.

The rapid growth of technology, both hard-& software, global communication has become that of sci-fi of years past, meaning once was considered poppy cock and fantasy is now a reality. Media has grown from telling stories around fires and print on paper to new interactive mediums, i.e. video games, websites, live chat (text & video), etc. TV, magazines, & newspapers are becoming less popular as stand alone mediums and is slowly being merged with the internet as at least somewhat interactive mediums. I do not completely like this; I like to watch TV, minus most of the commercials, and watch a story unfold, I do not always want to be part of the action taking place. Sometimes I just like to be an observer, a listener, or watcher. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics once said that he believed that the feeling of holding a comic book in one's hand, or any printed media for that matter, would be missed so it would never completely be disappear. I always like "bathroom reading", I don't want to read tiny digital text when I'm on the can, I like bigger text that doesn't hurt my eyes.

The different types of media are being converged more & more in this day and age but each still has its own niche and use. I would like to watch a video while I'm driving, but listening to music or a talk show is a lot safer because my eyes aren't diverted from the road. The whole world isn't "hard wired" yet, so many countries and are still developing and only a few of those people may have access to the world wide web. What I'm trying to say is, though media has become a whole new creature than what it was 50 years ago, politics, war, poverty, global problems, our own egos hinder the progress of technology its benefits to to the world at large.

Favorite Podcast

Every since I was told about ask a ninja a few years ago, I can't stop watching it. The internet phenomena that are ninjas, definitely not the historic Japanese assassins who were all too human, who can do almost anything humanly and inhumanly possible. The "Ask-a-Ninja," whose true name is never revealed, cashed in on the popularity and has become the phenomenon's poster boy. He will tells the viewing public the various ways his kind can "kill" us, though his sarcastic charm takes away any tension from being "threatened" or "killed". Watch 1 episode and you'll see what I mean! You can subscribe to his podcast from a link on his website, aptly labeled subscribe, or on iTunes store for free!

Bad Website Design

I googled "bad designed site" and the 1st search was Web Pages That Suck.com. Under its link for "Worst Web Sites of 2008 — Contenders #1-10" I clicked on choice #3: HavenWorks.com; all I can say is that I laughed for about half a minute after looking at this site. It has the layout of a poorly designed newspaper on crack, that is the best way for me to describe it. Too much contrasting colors, picture links, and articles are all crammed onto 1 page; try not to laugh or gag after 1st seeing this site!

School Website

Here is the link to the site how I want mine to be like. I can't not hack my own PlayStation 1 or 2 codes, but I would like to gather all my favorite games into 1 source. My main source of influence is GameFAQs, linked here, where I go for video game cheats, guides, & reviews; I like to make a small version of this site.

School Website

I'm creating a website for school that I hope after completion will become a website I can make some $$$ off of and run it independently on another server. The main focus will be my interests in video game reviews, news, and cheats/codes, specifically that of the Nintendo DS and Playstation 2/PS2; since I own these 2 sytems It will also have posts or links to online guides or cheat/codes of my favorite video games. The website’s tone will be humorous, but some pages will be professional, for example, if I add a discussion board about personal topics, such as faith and religion. I am a Christian, so I would like to honor God by having links to other Christian websites and others’ input on things going on in the world, i.e. world events in the news.

Design: I will start out with a light blue background color; but I will experiment until I am satisfied; I hope to later install a background picture. I want a box with my website’s name and links to each of the main pages under the website’s name. I want to use a variety of fonts to differentiate the various pages of the website. At first, the main box that houses the text logo and the links to each of the pages will follow the pattern of the American Flag; red, white, blue, repeat for each of the link pages. I need someone to help me design a logo for my site, I’m not a very good artist; if any1 out there reads this, I'm all for help!!!

Videos and Animations: One flash animation will be a cross changing colors and link to the religious part of my site; another will be a Playstation 2 controller moving or changing colors. I plan to have at least 1 podcast of a parody of Bevis and Butthead, focusing primarily on Beavis, minus the curse/cuss words, heavy metal, and gore. I will play a hyped-on-caffeine/sugar addict called Count Julio; those who ever watched the show at all have a good idea of where I'm going with this =-> I have plans for a standalone video that will be a trailer for a fake internet movie staring my grandfather as a wanna-be samurai. If plans change, the podcast may be of the wanna-be samurai and the B&B pardoy may be the standalone video, only time will tell!

New Media Technologies: the Good & the Bad

Frances Cairncross wrote 25 predictions/factoids in his book The Death of Distance about how new media technologies are revolutionary. The internet, PCs, cell phones, and TV have changed the way mankind does business forever, unless someone manages set to permanently destroy technology like Kurt Russell in Escape from L. A. These new technologies changed mankind, but progress and technology is a double-edged sword; in other words, what may be intended for good can be used for bad. Here are 3 examples from the 25 aforementioned factoids of how new media technologies can negatively affect us:

1. Loss of privacy. Identity theft is crime many fear of today, so the freedom of our privacy will be sacrificed in order to compenstate. I like my privacy, but what is a good balance between security and lack of personal privliages? Until a definitive answer can be given, "Big Brother is watching you."

Security on the internet is needed, I thank the Good Lord Almighty no one in my family has been id snatched, but some people have too many rights taken away because of some biased watchdogs.

2. Decline of National Authority. Kids do NOT need to see certain things on the internet. Video game programmers deserve credit, both monteary & publicity, where credit is do; piracy diminishes their profits. I believe in small government, but when the government by the people for the people has reduced power to protect our rights, we all suffer because our children can be hurt, ie child porn, and the rewards for uniqueness, ie intellectual rights, can be severely hurt.

If someone wants their content shared freely, I'm all for that, but when someone puts their heart and soul into their work and they don't reap the rewards of their labor, that is a major blow to each creator's morale.

3. World Peace cannot ever be achieved with technolocial innovation & advancement alone. As long as people hate, lust, & are greedy, technology will only aide the corrupt.

1st Post of Hopefully Many

This is my first post for my student blog for my Mass Communications class 355. I hope this blog will grow into something much bigger, though.