Gimme A Brake!

"Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead." ~Mac McCleary~ Ever been patiently awaiting that parking space right at the door, only to have it snatched away at the last minute? Been cut off on the highway by that idiot in the BMW? Or wondered whether that car in front even has working indicators? We've all been there... In just my 2 years of driving I've had my fair share of road rage. This blog will be about my ongoing experiences on the road, as well as being a place for you - the reader - to come and vent. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-22725418-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); new TWTR.Widget({ version: 2, type: 'search', search: 'road rage, driving, traffic', interval: 6000, title: '', subject: '', width: 250, height: 300, theme: { shell: { background: '#050505', color: '#c92210' }, tweets: { background: '#030303', color: '#fcfcfc', links: '#c92210' } }, features: { scrollbar: false, loop: true, live: true, hashtags: true, timestamp: true, avatars: true, toptweets: true, behavior: 'default' } }).render().start();

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #rabbithole #takeaway (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #rabbithole #takeaway

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #posterblitz (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #posterblitz

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #posterblitz

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #posterblitz (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #posterblitz (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability ##posterblitz

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability #posterblitz (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

#thebintwins #xmp2013 #uc #sustainability (at University of Canberra)

[gimmeabrake]

The Bin Twins (at University of Canberra)

[breacrossmedia]

The Bin Twins are on Facebook! Please LIKE our page for interesting hints and tips on helping the environment and reducing waste!

[gimmeabrake]

I hate goodbyes...

It was inevitable, sooner or later the semester was going to end and this blog would disappear into the blogosphere. Overall, I have achieved a lot more through this blog than I ever thought I would. Just the fact that I have stuck with my original choice of topic is quite an accomplishment for my indecisive self :) I decided early on to do a blog about driving, more specifically, road rage. I hoped that it would be a topic that my audience would enjoy and could contribute to, as well as driving being something  I do on a daily basis – therefore, endless potential for new posts! Im pretty happy with my topic, with it being broad enough to suit most of the necessary weekly challenges whilst being fun and relevant to a modern audience.

The only real disappointment on the content front was trying to get my own original films and photographs of driving incidents. Often I would come across interesting things while driving, however it was usually too hard to get my phone out and start filming (you know, whilst trying to operate a moving vehicle and all...) or it would happen too quickly and with no warning and I would miss the chance to capture it. I believe the inclusion of more videos would have made my blog a lot more interesting than having my audience merely read about my experiences.

This did, however, open up new possibilities for the use of ‘collective intelligence’. By opening my blog up to the public, it is possible to get a much bigger variety of material... many more driving incidents than i could ever hope to experience on my own. Whilst unfortunately I didn’t get any audience members posting any media to my blog, I was able to utilise the reblogging function and the tracked tags of ‘driving’, ‘traffic’ and ‘road rage’ to get other people’s material on my page. This culminated in the inclusion of a Twitter feed which allowed me to track mentions of road rage, from all over the world in real time. This added a dynamic element to my blog which was very effective.

It  was really only when i began tracking my blog on google analytics that my involvement in my blog started to pick up. I was initially quite disappointed in my visitor statistics, with not a single visit until the third day of setting up my Analytics. However, as time progressed and I began exploring the different analytics reports, I started to see a connection between posts and visitors. With my number 1 referring site being the Tumblr dashboard, it was clear that the more I posted, the more visitors i received. This is when i began posting more and more often, even if they were just reblogs – anything to get my name up on peoples dashboards. The resulting increase in traffic is reflected in my visitor graph, which progressed from hardly any audience (except for peaks associated with my rare posts) to a much more steady graph, averaging 3-4 visits a day.

  My most popular day with 11 visitors was Monday April 25th, which was also my first day of posting my blog to my Facebook page. Coincidence? I think not.

One thing I never expected was to have overseas visitors to my blog. The second most visiting country (after Australia) was the United States with 8 visitors, followed by the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Canada.

One thing I had difficulty with was customising my theme. I really like my theme, and I believe the black and red colour scheme with a casual, modern layout really suited my topic (red being the colour of anger). However, I had a lot of difficulty trying to customise the html coding of my page, as it was quite complex, used a lot of CSS and was not very clearly set out. I had an idea of changing the arrows at the bottom of my pages (next page, previous page) into left and right hand turn road signs, however when I attempted this it didn't turn out as I'd hoped and the hyperlinks no longer worked :( I did however manage to change the dot points at the beginning of each post into stop signs :)

Overall I have enjoyed this unit and my introduction into the world of blogging. The unit was well set out, with the weekly challenges not only progressively building in terms of difficulty and interest, but also giving the unit a good structure which forced me to do the assignment a little bit at a time. Had there not been this 'do one fun and easyish thing each week' type setup, then no doubt I would've been trying to do this whole assignment in the last week. Yay for time management :)

So thankyou and goodbye...

[gimmeabrake]

Car Crashes

A slideshow of car crash photographs for all you rubber-neckers out there. What is it about seeing a smashed up car thats so fascinating?

[keepingupwithkimp-deactivated20]

Just because a space exists between me and the car in front of me doesn't mean you should insert yourself in said space.

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