The Doors

Can you find your way out?

The Doors - To be added

MPI104 assessment 2

Its that time again, when we get assessed for interestingness and aesthetics. So the question is, do I think my pages are aesthetically pleasing and are interesting?

Lets start with Flickr:
has uploaded at least 30 pictures
has organized pictures into sets or pools
has uploaded screenshots of details of examples of good aesthetics in websites all pictures have titles AND descriptions
pictures of interest to other students have MPI104-2007 tag
pictures of no interest to other students do not have MPI104-2007 tag
all pictures have tags other than MPI104-2007
user has pushed at least 6 pictures to MPI104-2007 group
user has at least 12 contacts, joined at least 3 groups and nominated at least 6 favorites

With flickr I have tried to upload aesthetically pleasing, as well as interesting photos and images. Unfortunately my desire to do up my blog got in the way. But most of those are private (Hence why there are less than 30 images). But I have put things up which I think people will enjoy. I have put all my images into pools, although I have only 3 crude ones but they suffice.

Del.icio.us:
has saved at least 3 pages of bookmarks
all bookmarks have descriptions
all bookmarks have tags
has bundled all tags
all bookmarks of interest to other students have MPI104-2007 tag
bookmarks of no interest to other students do not have MPI104-2007 tag
has several other delicious users in their network
has saved links for others

Del.icio.us was more interesting to do I think as most of my links had to do with humour and flash animation. But I believe it worked as it was offset by university links, links to movies, games, and such. Most of the links are there for a person to enjoy and chuckle at. I just hope people enjoy reading them and viewing them as much as I do. For example, if you like crazy music; visit Lemon Demon.

Blogger:
has more than the minimum posts
has used working links in all posts
has experimented with templates fonts and colours
has included rss feed of their delicious bookmarks
has a technorati “fave this blog” button on their blog
has nominated ba-ma metablog as a favourite on technorati
has counter (or sitemeter etc button) on their blog
has a blog post about the visitors to their blog

Okay, blogger was hard for me. I don't like to post what I do on the web, my opinions and such; when I first started the year I had a bad impression of blogs, thinking they were for angsty teens and nothing more. But I have learnt that there are good and bag blogs, and most of them are good. Now, aesthetically my site could be better. While I think I got fairly creative with the header, I could have changed more of the blog to suit my tastes, made it suit the lightbreaker theme. And I am disappointed with my lack of posts. I could post my lastest bits of art, or my day. But it seems boring and trivial.

Overall, I think I managed to achieve some balance between form and content in my sites. Even if my blog could be spruced up.

Visitors

Another ye oldy I was mean to talk about a while back. On my blog I have a counter, its rather simple and just tells me how many people have visited this blog (Between 100 - 200) other than that. I know nothing, maybe I should head over to sitemeter and join...

With Flickr though I can see how many people have visited my page and I know who watches me... I think... At least I know how many people look at my pictures (strangely enough the picture most viewed is also on my DA page... I'll get you a link... Here you go Chibi Grim).

With Delicious I have no way of knowing how many people visit my page... But that isn't the point of it really is it? I mean, its for my links, so I search faster.

So I really don't know anything about the people who visit my pages. I am content for the moment with that

Flashes of old

As I have mentioned before, I dabble in flash (Or I still would if Flash MX 2004 worked on Vista). So I thought you might like to see them. Unfortunately all my flashes are on Deviantart so these are links to the pages.

The uber-smexy series based on the comic by my friend Zsarke:
- Ubersmexy
- Ubersmexy 2
- Ubersmexy 3
- Ubersmexy 4

I do have two more... But I don't think they are worth putting up.

Ta

Shrek 3

Okay, last week friday I went and saw Shrek the third. I must say, I was disappointed with the movie. As usual great graphics, some pretty funny parts; but it lacked somewhat of a storyline. Prince Charming just didn't make a good villian, all he wanted was revenge against Shrek. They could have really used the high school scene in the movie. Made it a bit longer and such. Then there was Merlin, funny character... He could have been used to make the film much funnier; mucked everything up and then Shrek would have to contend with that...

So, frankly I thought the movie was somewhat childish. The storyline could have been better, and thats all there is too it.

Aesthetics

Okay, okay. This is a bit late I admit it. So, we were asked 'what is aesthetics?' apparently its how we deal with or consider beauty, the ugly, the sublime, etc and how it applies to fine arts.

So good aesthetics on a webpage should merge together. Run together, and no one element stands out but all complement and help each other. But with web page aesthetics there are other considerations that make it different from printed aesthetics. The bandwidth of a persons internet server is important, as it affects how long it takes to download and display your page. If the page is too big, the person may lose interest if it takes too long to download. Ease of navigation is also important, what if its is near impossible to find something on your page? Well, people won't stand for it and will go somewhere else to find the information they want.

Heres an example of mixed aesthetics, the newgrounds main page.

This webpage would work quite well if it wasn't for the adds displayed here. The difference in colour just makes the page seem jerky and ruins the black and gold colour scheme of the page. But in other terms, the aesthetics are quite good. Newgrounds is easy to navigate through, and you can find flash movies or songs in a matter of moments. Bandwidth is a problem as the page uses flash everywhere; so it a long time to download everything unless you have cable.










Keenspot is another page with good aesthetics. It has a simple colour scheme which allows the eye to travel over it. Its easy to navigate and its bandwidth is low enough for anyone to download in moments. And its content, although just webcomics is good, and varied.















This is a poor blog by Nyoronn has poor aesthetics. While it is easy to navigate and doesn't strain your bandwidth, its all links to other sites. And they are repeated again and again. There is no content here, this person is just using the page to advertise sites. Also visually, its confusing; whats the site about???


So, thats it. I hope I didn't bore you. Ta ta

Halllllllllllllooooooooooooooo

Did I mention, I like Halo?

Apparantly, Halo 2 has been out since April 11... I didn't know... WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME!!!!!!! *screams and runs in circles*

Now I'm on a quest. I must obtain Halo 2... It is a matter of life and death. If I don't get it, well... Um... The pie dies!!

Okay, enough randomness. I saw Pirates of the Caribbean last week, it was pretty good. Very action, but I thought the storyline was basic; even though a friend assures me it isn't. But parts of the story just feel tacked on too me. Though all the action was cool, and those rock-crabs were cute, and the extra Jack's were hilarious.

tata

RSS and XML. Just what are they?

So, what is RSS and XML?

What is XML?

XML is a markup language for documents containing structured information such as words, pictures etc. A markup language is a mechanism to identify structures in a document. The XML specification defines a standard way to add markup to documents.

In order to appreciate XML, it is important to understand why it was created. XML was created so that richly structured documents could be used over the web. The only viable alternatives, HTML and SGML, are not practical for this purpose.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is RSS?

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Users of RSS content use software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators". The user subscribes to a feed by entering a link of the feed into the reader program. The reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.

The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer to the following standards:
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel".

So why is RSS important? Its important as it allows us to see the most recent up to date information on a website. Also, with using an RSS feed it is possible to jump to a site without having to go through a bunch of websites just to get there, so you avoid all those little annoying things (Like pop up adds).

We were asked to either choose bloglines or Google Reader, I went with Reader. I went with reader since I already have a Google account and thus I don't have to register with another web service. Quite handy really.

MPI104 assessment

Hi everybody. Before you begin to read this, I would like to say this is for my class MPI104 and thus if you are just browsing around, you don't have to read it.

So, I'm meant to describe just how interesting my blog, del.icio.us and Flickr accouts are.

With my Blog I have met the all the points in the MPI104 checklist. I have actively seeked out new forms of life, and civilizations, er... I mean webpages, and topics to discuss on my blog. Although my attempts have seemed to have fallen short. I do update the page and try to make it interesting, I look through other peoples pages to see if they have found anything interesting (By the way, do you use Instant Messangers? If you would like to try something different go to IMVU a new 3D chat program who's constant advertising is driving me insane). Also if any one can direct me to blog templates compatible with Blogger I would be grateful as whatever I have found has failed. I have experimented with templates, fonts and colours as well. But I like the colour scheme of this template so much I loathe to change it. Although that Minima dark I tried to work with, I gave up on it. Okay, so my blog isn't that interesting, its functional.

My del.icio.us account thankfully is much more entertaining. With it I have once again completed all the points in the MPI104 checklist (I'm so proud), and have continued to put in interesting links. By the way, webcomics rule! You must read Ubersoft! Unfortunately I have not grown my network that much, and seldom look at it. Although the other day I got a link for the forum cinema, so I'm starting to look more often at my network.

With Flickr I'm disappointed. I have put in only a few images and have met only a few of the checklist points. I have tried to look for interesting groups and pools, although I seem to fall short each time. (Search for stargate, I get stargate haters) Also, I find I have little to post. I mainly draw not take photos, and I put all my drawings up on Deviantart (I'm afraid if I post them on Flickr I main find lawyers knocking on my door one day).But I have taken a risken and submitted my beloved chibi grims. Also I have found a few images that I've liked, the cute apples by Vivalin I adore.

Ultimately, I have posted some more interesting things. But I could have done more.

Dabbling in Flash

I used to dabble in Flash MX, for fun. I wasn't particularly good as my understand of actionscript was rather limited. But here is the best flash movie I have produced Uber-smexy 4. Its based off one of my friends comics. Her name is Zsarke and you can find her webpage here.

Ye Olde Gamer

Have you ever wanted to play a game that is on a system that no longer exists. Or is so old, that it is near impossible to find, or you are nostalgic for the gamer days of old. Well head to Game Downloads you may just find the game there.

Archspace

Hey guys. How many of you are sci-fi nuts?
Well, if you are here is a cool website for you Archspace
Essentially you run your own small empire, explore, expand and conquer. You manage the day by day operations of your empire, what sciences you research, and you get to design your own star ships.

You can start with the gunboat class, and work your way up too the Doomstar (which requires a massive technological and industrial base). After that you must defend your empire from the players who eye your worlds for the resources they contain.

The only flaw in the game is player to player communications. Most people want to be lone wolfs, but if you can find a group of people who are willing to work together and support each other in your system, then it becomes easier to win as you can alliance yourself with these players and establish trade with them, and even send ships to each other as gifts or to defend your friends.

So, if you enjoy sci-fi and are looking for something new, try Archspace.

The world of Flickr

Today, I had the wonderful experience of opening a new flickr account. Which required me to open a yahoo account so I could post pictures. Okay, flickr is website that allows you to post your pictures, put them into sets, and join groups of people. So... I'm reminded of deviantart.

2 weeks 3 days

Yes. I count how long till the mid sesson break.

Anyway its week four, and nothing truly interesting to tell. Other than I shall acquire a new computer sometime next week.
...
...
THANK GOD!!! Oh and yesterday (19th of march) was my birthday. Of which nothing spectular happened ^^

Playing

Okay, I'm playing with this blog now. Trying to figure out how everything works. *pokes stuff* I have also learnt that I dislike Mac's... Alot...

Link to my DA page

Heyo, hiyo, hello, hi

Yes... Hi... And... I have nothing else to say really ^^;


visit my website at deviantart! www.tyveras.deviantart.com