Just Being ACB

Who am I? I'm just a college kid who is a little too loud and loves texas a little too much.

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Virilio Pt. 3

"Vision is no longer the possibility of seeing, but the impossibility of not seeing"- Gary Hill

What does this mean?? Virilio, you are a rough man to read. What is this, olde english?

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Virilio Pt. 2

This is equally as rough as the first reading. How do people get through this? I mean, seriously. The microphysical environment sounds pretty cool. Using technology in our bodies, that's interesting. Pacemakers and such have been around, but these new tiny objects? As small as a mosquito prick? I think I might actually be able to go to the  doctor. These small transmitters could tell the doctor about everything going on in your body and it can transmit to an outside computer. Virilio then goes in to some more physics that I can't even begin to understand. I never took physics. I took IPC sophmore year of high school but that's as close as I got. I don't really understand the space/time/light types.

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Virilio's Open Sky

Professor Price, you were right. This reading was pretty rough. Critical Space. Real Space. Real Time. Half of what he's speaking about is going in one ear and out the other. Goodness. I do understand his term meeting at a distance or being "telepresent." Isn't that sort of the idea of Skype? Where you are meeting with someone but you are in seperate places? I don't know. This is pretty heavy. Optoelectrics? I t sounds like a type of lasic surgery machine and the description sounds like Terminator. Bodies are being transferred one by one to machines???? I'm starting to become scared of the world. What is happening??

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A Look into Greenville's Nightlife

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Writing on the Web

When writing on the web, you are not writing for you, but for your audience. They are the most important, and you need to understand what is crucial to write, how long, vocab, and organization. They are your readers and you are writing for them.

Redish gives 7 steps to understanding your audience:

 List your major audiences

Gather information about you audiences

List major characteristics for each audience

Gather your audiences' questions, tasks, and stories

Use your information to create personas

Include the persona's goals and tasks

Use your information to write scenarios for your site.

Use these tips to help understand your audience and guide your writing.

For successful web sites, the audience needs to be able to find what they need, understand what it is they're finding, and act appropriately on that understanding.

This is where the home page comes in. The home page should be a neat, organized starter window, with your pathway pages linked to it. The pathway pages will lead you to your destination pages. You want to keep everything clean and simple. If a homepage is unorganized, then I won't give it the time of day. I know I will just get frustrated so what's the point?

Some tips for the home page include:

identifying the site, and establishing the brand

setting the tone and personality of the site

helping people get a sense of what the site is about

letting people start key tasks immediately

sending each person on the right way, effectively and efficiently

Redish knows what I'm talking about. Be EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT! KEEP IT ORGANIZED!

These tips will help you have a cleaner website overall. Keep them in mind the next time you are on the internet.

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A Look at Greenville's Nightlife

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Forces Within the Screen

This chapter was actually fascinating. I was pleasantly surprised. When I was in Photography and then again in Broadcast Communications, we learned all about the dynamics of photos: horizontal vs. vertical, off-kilter planes, framing, figure and ground.

Lines are very important in photos. They direct your eyes around the picture. The lines can make it really interesting. I completely agreed with Zettl's idea of horizontal photos and lines being much more calming, while vertical is much more dynamic.

My favorite part of this chapter were the photo illusions. These photos use positive and negative space to distort the image. Here are two examples:

Are the lines crooked or straight? How many triangles do you see? It's incredible how much just black and white can distort a picture. For the second image, you are applying psychological closure, otherwise known as gestalt- a perceptual whole that transcends its parts. You see a large white triangle, even though it is not defined by lines.

Vectors and the Rule of Thirds can also make photos more dynamic. When the object is turned to the right, your eyes flow through the image. When it is turned to the left, it upsets the flow and makes you follow a different path. You always want whatever the object is to be turn in towards the photo, so your eyes will stay on the photograph for as long as possible.  Rule of Thirds is when the photo is split into three and you stay along the lines. It can make the photo much more interesting than just seeing the object in the middle of the image.

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The Redesign of Webpages

In Fagerjord's Multimodal Polyphony, he talks about the "age-old opposition between words and images" and Umberto Eco's idea that this upcoming generation will have fewer images and be much more text oriented. I completely disagree with this. We may used to be a text-oriented society but now images are everywhere. Instagram and SnapChat, which  both consist of pictures, are some of the new social medias. Twitter has you using 140 characters or less. How are we becoming more text-oriented when we are are forced to keep text short and sweet and communicate through images?

Facebook has a new design that they will be launching later this year. It will have much larger images and less text to distract. CNN.com even states that they are moving more towards Instagram and becoming much more picture heavy. Nicholas Thompson, confounder of The Atavist software company, says that "the whole web is moving towards a different aesthetic than it has had in the past. It will be much cleaner. There will be fewer links... it will be simplified and there will be larger images. Everyone is going that way." If you want to see the actual article and video, the link is posted at the bottom of the page.

I think that today's society is moving towards an easier-to-understand, image-heavy web. We learned about chunking in class and keeping the paragraphs small and tight because large text can overwhelm readers. We are moving away from large bodies of text, instead replacing them with images. You don't have to use your imagination to create these scenarios in your head from the text you have just read. There's no need! Everything is photographed shown.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/06/tech/social-media/facebook-news-feed-redesign

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The Zen of Listening

I really liked this title of Douglas's chapter in Listening In. To me, the title sums up what the chapter is about. I talks in part about the different types of listening, the history of listening and a few other things. What really stuck out to me, though, was the hearing and listening part. That is so true!

We hear everything, but we don't always listen. They are two completely separate actions. In the car, you will just be hearing what songs are being played on the radio and thinking about a thousand other things, but as soon as that song you love comes on, poof! Everything you were just thinking about disappeared and you are dancing and singing at the top of your lungs to the latest Taylor Swift song, or whatever tickles your fancy. I just think that's really neat about the differences between the two.

Another example is when you are speaking to someone. My mother will tell me that I'm deaf and I never hear anything she says. Well, that's a lie. I do hear everything, sometimes I just choose not to listen. Completely different.

I just really enjoy the radio and listening to things. I don't know if it's my background in music or what, but I just love it. I will sit and listen to music for hours. Every song holds a different memory for me and while sitting there, I can call up my mental scrapbook every time a new song comes on. Listening is so much more active. You use your imagination to visualize everything. It's great!

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While an audience caters to a group of people, a viewer is just one person. They can identify with a photograph or video on a personal level. They learn to associate certain feelings with certain products when they identify and relate to an advertisement. There is always something for a viewer to identify with. When I see the Budweiser Clydesdale Super Bowl Ad, I tear up like a baby. Not only do I have a lifelong love of horses, but it reminds me of the relationship I have with my dog, Angus.The relationship between the trainer and the horse is just so wonderful, and it reminds me of how Angus and I have been together for 13 years. Having Landslide by Fleetwood Mac doesn’t really help either. It is very easy to identify with that song on a emotional level. Now, I don’t know if I will associate Budweiser with the same warm fuzzies in my heart as I do when I see a picture of my pup, but it will always remind me of how wonderful that commercial was.

P.S. There is a picture of my sweet boy on the About Me page. He's precious.

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Sports Photography

I agree with Rowe's idea of gendering in sports photography in "Framed and Mounted: Sports Through the Photographic Eye." There has always been gendering in the media, especially when it came to sports. Typically when there was a male athlete, they were looking like a serious BA doing cool, athletic stuff. When it came to female athletes, it was typically more of them posing or having a loved one congratulating them. The media has gotten much better on having them be more equal.

As you can see, the photos have become much more even, showing both of them doing  something athletic as opposed to having the male athlete be very athletic while the female is much more subdued.

I don't agree with Rowe on how sports photography parallels with porn. That's weird. His points do make sense but no. Porn and Sports photography do not go hand in hand. That's weird. This section on porn and sports is huge. Just no. I did sports photography. This just feels weird talking about it. Nope.

Refer to the two pictures above. Do you get any sexual stimulation from those photos? No, you probably don't. It's pictures of sweaty people. I could post photos of the other genre here, but that is highly inappropriate and frankly, I really don't want to go in search for them. I'll pass. So do sports photos =porn? To me, they do not, but to each their own.

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Viva Espana!

I told y'all about my Anvil photos, but I decided to show my Spain ones too. Or actually just one. Some of my photos are at www.averybonora.blogspot.com. There are some rando photos on there too, but I have a couple Spain ones on there. I'll leave you with my best Spain picture, though. This was taken as an HDR (High Dynamic Range) image in a neighborhood in Madrid. This is my favorite picture that I have ever taken.

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Looking Back on the Anvil (Photojournalism)

So I did the Digital Still Photography reading but then I realized I would rather show my pictures and my newspaper articles and talk about those than the reading. It is semi relevant. I just love photography. I was a photographer for The Anvil, my high school newspaper, and I also went to Spain with National Geographic for photography. I love it. So here are some pictures.

This was one of my first pictures in the Anvil. I was so excited even though they misspelled my name. It was my job, as the photographer, to go out and find the perfect picture to help tell the story and accompany the print.

On the back of every issue, there was always the Photo Story page where the photographers got to pick a topic and run wild. Those were my favorites.

Then I got my very first two page spread picture. It was for the biggest football game of the year. Now let me tell you, I am about as far from athletic as you can get so being on the field during the games were HUGE! It was so incredible and i felt so important with my footlong telephoto lens and field pass. If you've seen Friday Night Lights, that is a perfect example of your typical Texas High School football game. I actually went to state because the judges loved the focus of this picture. The fogging is a little cheesy but it works with the text.

Now this right here was my pride and joy. My high school was part of many that were involved in Shattered Dreams, a replication of a drunk driving accident complete with ambulances, firetrucks, and even a hearse. It was a terrifying experience seeing your friends and classmates laying lifeless in the parking lot, even though you know it's only pretend. I was one of only two photographers allowed to shoot this. This double page spread was my baby. I won State for this.

Now this was the last thing I ever got to do for the Anvil. My senior column. The only time I ever got to write. It was a fun experience but I do prefer the photography aspect of Newspaper much more. Late nights were some of my fondest memories from high school.

Photojournalism is incredible. So many aspects go into something that looks so simple. You need the perfect photograph to accompany the story. I would take hundreds of pictures just to find that one special photo that fit just right with the picture. When you're a photographer , it's what you do and you love it.

PS- for anyone who wants to actually see the news articles and pictures before they were chopped up- http://www.memorialanvil.com/news-magazine/archives.html. 2008-10.

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Blogging and Journalism Pt. 2

Once again, we read about the debate between Blogging and Journalism in Rettberg’s Chapter Citizen Journalists. Are bloggers journalists and is blogging true journalism? Not all of them are, but some can be. All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs. There are many different types of blogs and some are dedicated to true journalism. Others are dedicated to travel, fashion, cooking, and photography. There are so many different blogs that you can not put them all into one little box labeled Not Journalism. It just doesn’t work that way.

Journalists can have blogs as an easy way to quickly get their information out there. That blog is considered journalism. They are journaling. (Apparently, this is a made up word.) But not all bloggers are journalists. Rettberg even quotes a survey by Pew Internet Research stating that only 65% of the bloggers interviewed did not consider their blog a form of journalism. That also means though that 35% did. Which is fine, because as I have stated, not all blogging is considered journalism but it is definitely present.

As we learned in class last week, there are 3 different types of blogging: Corporate, Personal, and News. Hey look! That actually says news is a type of blog genre. Woah…

If you are going to have a journalism blog though, you might want 3 things: Authority, Credibility, and Objectivity. Those can seriously help or hurt you if you are starting a journalism blog. It is always good to stay objective when writing for viewers, because if you make your views too strong you might turn off some of your readers. Credibility is probably to me the most important one though. Apparently, there was some huge scandal where they announced Justin Bieber was dead. I don’t know who reported that but it got around. If there was no official statement, then it’s probably not that credible. There’s a favorite comic of mine about a girl who was telling another girl a rumor and the other girl goes “Who started that?” The first girl then says “I did.” Yeah, thats not too credible when you are starting a rumor or there is not a true source from where you heard. Just stop.

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History of Blogging

In Rettberg's chapter Bards to Blogs, we are learning about the history of blogging. There was a major transition from orality to literacy, where we went from a culture that purely spoke to a culture that could write as well. This plays a major role in the history of blogging. Without becoming literate, there would be no blogging. Vlogging maybe, but no written word. There was a second transition from print media to electronic media. The transition, according to Ong, does not segue straight into blogging though, referring to radio and television instead.

I think it's interesting that Plato found writing destructive. I'm okay with that theory. Writing has never actually been my strong point. I grew up a theatre nerd who had to memorize everything so I have a great memory for remembering random facts. It is just way more personal to communicate verbally than through writing. That may just be me though, because of my dislike of writing. I ramble for hours on end.

Blogs, I guess, are now different because you can comment and edit, so they are changing constantly. A little less stationary than the writing that Plato was referring to. Plato also probably lived in the time of dinosaurs and stone tablets like my parents. (Sorry Mom and Dad! Love you!)

Before blogs came about though, there was print. Print helped our culture to achieve literacy. With wider access to books and other things you could read, it increased your literacy skills. Yay Books!

There are now different types of literacy, according to Rettberg, that are developing as reading and navigating on the Internet gets more popular. As you post and publish your blogs with your words, videos, photos, and other things you are becoming, obviously not just more literate in your words but also in how to work the Web.

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Blogging 101

What is a blog? In Brian Carroll's Writing for Digital Media, he refers to blogs as a type of of personal publishing. Anyone can have a blog and there are many different types of blogs. Personally, I like the personal idea and fashion blogs. Some of my favorites include:

http://www.serioussouthernshopaholic.blogspot.com

http://www.sequinsandstripes.com

http://americansaturdaynights.tumblr.com

I look at blogs from several different platforms such as blogspot and tumblr. There are so many different platforms now and it is seriously so easy to create a blog.

Bloggers as Journalists

Honestly, I really liked Carroll's quote "Many journalists blog; many bloggers do journalism." I think that is so true. I personally think of it as a Venn diagram. I just tried to make one but unfortunately I forgot how and it was taking too much time so I gave up. Sorry.

Journalists can keep a blog, which is in fact considered journalism. (If it is informational or about current events, methinks.) Bloggers can blog about current events or about something informational. Whatever that topic of their choosing might be. So it could be considered a Venn diagram, if my stupid computer would have let me make one.

Corporate Blogging

Corporate blogging seems pretty cool. I mean, if you are a donor for whatever organization or you are just interested in the company, then it is really nice to be able to just hop on Google, find the company's blog and read about whats going on as of then. It's pretty interesting. When I worked for Texas Children's, they were in talks about getting a Tumblr and having a weekly blog about what's going on around the hospital and incredible stories about the children. Personally, I think that's a great idea.

Media Blogging

First off, let me say that they mention the Houston Chronicle and that's really exciting. I'm a crazy Texan. Lots of pride. Can't help it. Back on topic: blogging for media is a great thing to do. For people who want to be caught up on the latest news ad what's going on where, it's really nice to go to a site and see everything. I just think it's a great idea. It's the media. They need to be able to use every type of media offered.

Once again "chunking" is discussed. Chunking- the act of having small paragraphs online so it is easier to read for the user. As you can see, I've tried to keep my paragraphs short so that it is easier to read. Yay!

The Top 10 Steps for Better Blogging by Brian Carroll:

Write every day- It's easier to get in the habit and like Rebecca Blood says, your writing should improve as you go.

Schedule your blogging time- so readers can refer back to that time as they are awaiting your latest post. Plus it helps you get into the habit.

Be authentic- just be yourself. Readers can tell if you aren't into the work. Have fun with it.

Carve out a niche- Pick a topic and stick with it. I don't want to read about politics then switch to cooking then off to travel. Commit to your topic.

Be curious and take lots of notes- Reading every single thought that has popped into your head will be time-consuming and obnoxious. Pick the ideas that matter.

Engage- talk to your readers and get feedback.

Learn the software- Upgrade your blog every once and a while. It's nice to have a change-up.

Promote yourself- it's the only way you are going to get new viewers.

Break up the text- START CHUNKING!! Wooo! It's easier on the eyes.

Be ethical- use your judgement. Make good decisions.

Well, there are the 10 commandments of blogging as written by Brian Carroll. Go off and be a better blogger!

-ACB