other

notes about studying methods:

http://e-courses.cqu.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=...

SQRRR METHOD OF READING

There is a method of reading that all of our students will benefit from; it is called the SQ3R. Let me describe how to use the SQRRR method (Believe me it is wonderfully efficient).

I have an external 120Gb firewire hard drive which has travelled with me from Sydney to UK to Auckland. It's worked really well. Well, until last week when it fell over and now makes horrible clunking noises when it's spinning up. Unfortunately this drive holds my ipod music files - copies of my cds and records that I couldn't bring with me from home. Luckily I'd done a full transfer to my ipod a couple of weeks ago, so the music is intact, but I can't export it back onto a hard drive (planning on buying another 2.5" drive instead of the firewire drive). I just found an article on endgaget about transferring files from your ipod back to hard drive using ephPOD. cool :) now I just have to buy the new drive and try it out.

week 2 photoshop files for mmst11001 uni subject

different 3d balls, saved at different qualities
(unfortunately I cropped the drop shadow)

I should have spent more time on getting the image to look more 3d, but I wanted to try out the different formats vs filesizes and quality so I spent more time on this aspect.

reading notes from Balsem's chapter on Semiotics

page 7-9
(pdf page 3-4)
[quote]
... signs are socially active forces, and so is interpretation. Therefore, the study of signs and the semiotic perspective on social communication is a relevant activity. But it can only be so if the factors so far encountered are taken into account. Signs are not things, but the result of acts carried out by individuals belonging to social groups. They do not emerge in isolation, but in relation to other signs, previously produced. They are based on grounds and result in effects that deserve to be studied as part of a larger endeavour whose goals stretch beyond purely academic understanding.

I received and email from the guys at www.radioheritage.net who are setting up a non-profit project involved in 'Sharing the stories of Pacific Radio'. The site has a wealth of information, but they are looking for assistance in putting audio on their site, so people can listen to some of the radio programs. Unfortunately I don't have a great deal of spare time to assist them in depth, but I can provide some advice if that's of use so I replied as such. Perhaps this will be useful to others as well. We were always getting asked for advice on how to do internet radio (it's rather easy once you do it - people think it's harder than it actually is!), and these days with podcasting being so popular and becoming more prominent, anyone can create, broadcast and distribute their own radio programs, whether they be music related, talk show/story format or a combination. anyway, here's a few ideas, I'll try to post more as I get a chance. perhaps some tutorials or help notes on how to setup these things. posting video shows/videoblogs is what I've been trying out lately too, though most of my videos are still offline as I practice editing and capturing the story element.

semester 3 uni timetable

day
week 1
week 2
week 3
week 4
week 5
week 6
vacation
week 7
week 8
week 9
week 10
week 11
week 12
review
exams

date
14-Nov
21-Nov
28-Nov
5-Dec
12-Dec
19-Dec
26-Dec
2-Jan
9-Jan
16-Jan
23-Jan
30-Jan
6-Feb
13-Feb
27-Feb

course 1

notes from the Media Education and the Marketplace video lectures

I woke up at about 4:30 this morning then couldn't sleep properly, thinking about this week's nightmare at work, but must have finally drifted back to sleep as I woke again at 11:09 and then drifted off for another sleep.

I went to the Auckland Hip Hop Summit on Saturday afternoon and caught some of the b-boying / breakdancing DISRUPT THE FLOOR heats and semis. The finals were held that night but I didn't make along. The Hip Hop Summit website will have the results. I took some video and am trying to convert it so I can upload to archive.org. What a challenge this is proving to be! The camera records direct to DVD which is great for previewing directly on my pc (or dvd player - though I don't have one here in Auckland), but the software that it comes with doesn't provide much in the way of conversion utilities. :( I have some software called MGI VideoWave which I've had for a while - since buying my Belkin usb/rca converter I think. It works ok - it's like a mini- Premiere package with a basic interface. But it doesn't open mpeg2 files or DVD .vob files directly.. So, to use this method, I need to connect the video camera to the Belkin video input and capture the vide and audio. Now, the camera does AC3 audio inherantly which sounds great on the DVD, but pretty crap once it's been recaptured - especially since the input on the level meter is stuck at 100% so it's really high level. I can capture the video this way, save as .avi file, then open in Quicktime and convert to .mov but quicktime is dropping the audio altogether!