Mandatory Blog Post #16 - Welcome Back Class

Hello everyone,

Welcome back for break. I don't want to be academic or thought provoking this post. This one is just for fun.

I hope you has a break void of too much academic use of technology. May your break be full of Facebook and YouTube and not of papers and EBSCO. We deserve a break from it, even if we can't avoid it anymore (see last blog post)

See you in class and see you in a more academic post later in the week.

Mandatory Blog Post #15 - What A Webcomic Can Do For You

Since it is nearly free to publish anything on the Internet, creative people have taken full advantage. With websites like DeviantArt and Tumblr, artists have found a place to publicly post their art. Before the Internet, an artist had to get noticed by selling their art on the street or doing some crazy performance art. Now, even without people buying the art directly, artists are able to make money through commission and ad revenue, all because of the Internet.

An art enthusiast can now say to themselves "Why go out on the gross and dirty streets for art when I can go on the gross and dirty Internet to see it?" That art enthusiast is right; there are no boundaries or dirty streets getting in the way of an artist and his/her audience.

A glowing example of artists free from boundaries are web-comics. If an artist/writer wanted to get noticed, they had to: A) know someone in the industry; B) Go to yearly conventions and submit portfolios; or C) get lucky and get noticed. Most of those are hard to accomplish, but not anymore. If someone wants to get noticed, they can host their content on a website for anyone to view at any time. They may not get discovered, but their chances are higher; they will also be seen by so many others.

The artists also have more freedom with their content and share the majority, if not all, of the profit.  

I'm not going to get too far into the theory of the Internet and how it has cut out the middleman in publishing a work, but I will give an example of my favorite web-comic.

ExplodingDog

This is a web-comic based entirely off of titles that fans send in to Sam, the creator. Each comic consists of one image with the title and maybe some additional words. He has been making comics since 2000, an is still going. He has had a good amount of success by selling merchandise, framed drawings and now he has a children's book. His sense of humor is off-beat and you are often left wondering why you are laughing. It is smart, silly and non-vulgar.   

  

Mandatory Blog Post #16 - Homework Break

Technology has allowed for so much in academia. It has changed the way the classroom works in ways that I have explained in previous blog posts: digital papers, immediate communication with teachers through email, and online lectures. It is great what it has allowed for us to do with our education, but I have a personal gripe with these great things too. This technology has also allowed for teachers to give more homework over breaks and holidays.

With digital assignment, a teacher could very easily make an assignment due during the middle of a break, rather than after the break. Right now, I'm writing this blog during my break. Now that there are almost no physical barriers between students and their teachers, the teacher can ask for homework to be due at anytime: breaks, weekends and even holidays. I hope that teachers would at least have the decency to not ask for assignments on holidays, but you'll never know.

I'm not going to make this too long, because I am on break, but I just wanted to let you know that the digital revolution has also created a world where there are no breaks, only periods of time where we are not in a class room.   

Mandatory Blog #14 - RaySipeLadyGaga

There is a man on YouTube who  posts about three videos a day. His name is Raymond Sipe, AKA RaySipeLadyGaga. He is one of my favorite YouTubers and I think that everyone should give him a watch. He is an elderly man from Florida, who makes some of the strangest, funniest and most true-to-heart videos around. This man really enjoys what he is doing.

He has three main types of videos that he produces, all with props and all repetitive in their nature.

 A Capella:



Songs with music.:



And movie quotes:

)
He has evolved in his craft by constantly introducing new props and ideas. He gets the majority of his content from audience suggestions and comments. After watching these videos, you can see that he really enjoys what he does. I think that is the most important feature an artist can have, the ability to love your job.

Mandatory Blog Post #13 - The Digital Marketplace

Isn't it wonderful that we can purchase anything we could ever want on the Internet, and at a cheaper price? With an Amazon account, we can buy books for almost half the price that it would cost in a store like Barnes & Noble. We have digital goods distributors like Steam that sell video games for almost one-fifth of the price (normally during their many sales). This is great for the consumer, the distributor and the company giving the rights to their products to the distributors. It isn't great for the physical world, however.

I'm sure we are all aware of the fears and speculations about Walmart's moving into small neighborhoods. Many people feared that, because Walmart is able to sell products at a much cheaper price, it would drive local business to ruin. This was the case in most places. Some were able to survive on the idea of 'helping a small business,' but it simply was not enough to keep all of them alive. This is the same fate that awaits physical stores when the Internet starts to take over completely.    
What is the incentive for going to a store and paying $10 when you can get the same thing online for $7 (assuming one has Amazon Prime with free two day shipping). Well, if you don't want to wait those two days you might want to buy local. Some people prefer the interactivity when going to a store; I know that I prefer to go to my local record store and talk the workers about music and to talk to comic book store owners about upcoming and past releases. I can't necessarily get that online, but, boy, can I get them much cheaper.

The same with video games. PC is my primary choice for video-gaming and physical copies can still be a bit pricey. Services like Steam make being a PC gamer cheap and convenient. While I do love this, I wonder if this is making video games disposable. I am an avid collector, as I mentioned in my Scott McCloud blog (you should read it). I love to show off my collections of CD's and comic books, I used to able to do that with my video games, but not anymore (I am referring to my PC games here, I do have collections of games from my various Nintendo consoles). With the constant Steam sales, I often find myself buying games that I would not have normally, and they end up just sitting there, unplayed. I would not dream of doing this if I sill had to pay 50 - 60 dollars for my games, not that I'm complaining. My PC collection is kind of meaningless at this point, I would not want that with my other collections, but I fear that it is the dark future of the digital marketplace.            
 
The sad truth for me, even though I do enjoy supporting local businesses, is that I do not have a choice here in Potsdam. Since Strawberry Fields Music closed, I have nowhere to buy CD's. I either have to wait to go back to Syracuse and go to the Soundgarden (great place by the way) or order them online. The same with physical video games, there are no video game stores in the area. Until just recently, I couldn't get many comics here, but there seems to be a sudden interest as Misty Hollow has started selling comics and the shrinking Tim's comics continues to order books even though they had trouble in the past, and continue to.

I don't want to advocate for anything, even though we know who's going to win in the long run, but I don't want to lose the physical world to the digital one, even though it is cheaper and more convenient.

Mandatory Blog Post #12 - Shirky and the digital mob

I love technology. I love how it brings us together faster and better than we have ever been. I love how simple it is for me to form a group on the Internet with like-minded individuals like myself. Facebook groups allow for multiple people to post and share images and those members can share those pictures with others outside of that group. No matter how annoying it is to see these posts on our feeds 24/7, it is nothing short of amazing. I don't like the pictures, but I love the idea behind them. What I don't love, however, is the mob mentality that forms because of such technologies.

Thomas Jefferson said this

In chapter 1, Shirky describes an event where a cellphone was left on a cab and then went from a missing phone case to a theft case. I'm not going to describe the events because all of you should have done the reading and understand exactly which incident I am referring to. The results of the "theft" led to somewhat of a mob mentality towards Sasha, the girl who "stole" the phone. Sure, the phone was recovered, but at what cost? Sasha was exposed to sexual harassment, threats and was arrested at 16-years-old. That is a lot for a person to go through for a missing phone, even though she didn't do the right thing and return it to the owner. This whole event is one big gray area in which we are confronted with the paradox of whether we embrace or fear technology and the people who use it.

I'm sure that we all remember the Piers Morgan article we read in class. Morgan used language that many felt was inappropriate, including the person he was interviewing. This led to thousands of people attacking him for simply using language that wasn't accurate enough for them. It is a touchy subject and he used what language was available to him. It was easy to see him as the bad guy when so many people were defending the person offended and were harassing Morgan.

It's simple logic really: he did something they didn't like, they responded negatively in mass, others saw and joined in, 'oh, he must be the bad guy if so many people are acting like this.'

I think a more accurate thought process would have been more effective in handling the situation. He said something they didn't like, people respond negatively in mass, before others join in, they think 'what is it like from his angle? did he do this deliberately or was it a mistake of language?'

I think it's better for people to look at something critically, rather than grabbing their torches and marching towards the evil.

          

 

Another example of mob rule from our class is the article where Justine Sacco was fired for her tweet consisting of the words AIDS and Africa and "I'm white." She deserved to be fired for what she said and websites like Twitter were able to get the news out and get her fired form her job while she was still in the air. This happened so fast and quick that there were crowds of people with signs waiting for her plane to land. She got what she deserved in terms of treatment and punishment from work and it's good that she was fired, but did the ends justify the means?

Was it right or safe for the Internet to do this? On one hand, she got what she deserved and on the other hand, she could have been physically harmed by these mobs. Again, it's just one big gray area. It's too complicated to say in a few words, so I'll use five.

We need to be cautious. 

Mandaory Blog Post #11 - Fonts can be distracting and stuff

Our discussion of fonts in class the other day got me to thinking about the uses of each of the many font styles available to us. When writing an academic paper I typically write in Time New Roman because it is the standard and isn't distracting. It cuts straight to the point and doesn't detract form my message. I understand that people use different fonts when writing for a certain audience, but when I am writing an academic paper, I do not want the professor to pay more attention to my font than to my message.  If a font is too pronounced, then it can simply get in the way.

To show this, I created a custom font with my friend, which consists of my handwriting. I do not have the best handwriting and I often find that it is too difficult to read and distracts the reader form what is actually being said. I apparently have handwriting that closely resembles Comic sans, so we entitled the font JomicSansBS. It should show up on all of your browsers as it is embedded within the HTML.

So, here we go.

Hi everyone, this is my tenth post on blogger. I have to make two posts every week: one about in-class content, the other about anything of my choice. I like to relate the free posts to class discussions or something relating to the digital age. My blog posts are often times ignored by the class, either because my name falls somewhere on the blog list where they don't often look, or my posts and opinions are simply not interesting.

I don't tackle controversial issues pertaining to society, but I do like writing about things I enjoy. I don't enjoy being negative and placing blame on anything and then proposing a solution that will require several exceptions to actually work. I do, however,  like talking about comic books, video games and doing silly things like making my own font and seeing if people continue reading past the first few sentences.

I like my readers to be able to read something that will make them think about things in a new way, like my post about Scott McCloud and the infinite canvas (you should read it). I don't want to guilt trip anyone, I simply want to expose them to something new. This post is a good example. I doubt that any of my readers have thought about incorporating their own customs fonts into their posts, but thanks to this, they might be inspired to do so. 

See? I do write about interesting things, I just do it in a different way. You can find tutorials for making your own font online. Click over there, to the right of this:  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=creating+your+own+font

I hope that you were able to read all of this.

I bet all of that was pretty hard to get through, content or font. If so, you were most likely distracted by the font itself and you either stopped reading or forced yourself through my handwriting. Fonts can be pretty distracting, but if I have to say that I learned one thing from this, it would have to be...

Be careful of what kinds of fonts you use. Some people may be too distracted by them to actually finish reading what you have to say.