My First Podcast

I decided for assignment four to join efforts with a friend. We discussed the nature of the topic and agreed to cover the relationship between art and the Internet. With this knowledge, I contrived a vague concept proposal that I believe to be well written and would hopefully sway our lecturer into accepting our proposal, while allowing us more time to think through our design. It didn’t!

The response was quick as it was devastating. This led to an acknowledgment that we needed to create a carefully constructed view of our podcast, so we met at 9:00 am on Saturday in the library and we spent a long day working on six different sections. We walked away pleased with our efforts and I believed that creating a new concept proposal from our semi-detailed notes would be simple.

After the first hour and half of sitting in front of a screen full of text, none of which was useful, I felt like screaming. Then I shuck off the fear and frustration, made a cup of tea while I considered the faults of the first proposal and constructive criticism offered by our lecturer. I soon realised that it needed to discuss the content in a factual manner, so I imagined how the finished project might look then wrote a description of my vision. This produced an acceptable concept proposal and the short-lived but deserved high, gave way to the practical matters of how to complete the assignment in the given time.

There was only one answer and I invited my colleague to stay for the weekend. Saturday arrived and we sat at the kitchen table with all kinds of recording equipment. Then we carefully discarded each piece as it either did not work, produce a terrible sound or crashed the computer. We finally ended up with the internal microphone of a Mac. We spent the rest of the afternoon feeling foolish, frustrated and rather annoyed at our poor performances, but we had completed all sections of the podcast.

We woke the next day eager to fix the problems and finish the podcast. We soon learned the only way to overcome our mistakes was to careful write down a script for each section. The day passed quickly as our progress moved at a snail’s pace. We finished towards the end of the afternoon feeling rather happy at completing that fragment and relieved that the efforts of constantly trying to be creative had passed.

To find suitable visuals we agreed to duplicate this task, then meet the following weekend and take the best from each podcast and create a publishable attempt. However things did not go to plan, I completed an eight minute plus podcast with visuals all taken from either ‘General Public Licence’ or ‘Creative Common’ sources. Only to be told, by way of my friend’s grapevine, that anything over six minutes would result in a zero mark.

Time for a back up plan, my comrade decided that my visuals were wonderful and he would strip and chop at the audio until it was six minutes long. We met later to finish off the assignment by adjusting my visuals to match the new time scale, create an mp4 from our exported WMA file. Each believing the other knew how to do that! After some frantic searching and a number of near misses we created an mp4 file, which we uploaded to my webspace and with the creation of a RSS txt file we had created our first podcast.

The podcast can be seen at:

http://savethebush.comli.com/podcast.rss

Facebook Application: Evaluation and Gestalt

The completion of the project triggered a reflective period, in which a number of personal recommendations and thoughts to ones own self occurred.

Specifically:

• A large amount of time and effort during the early phase was wasted, as a result of not being upfront about each others skills. This was due to working with a friend; if two random students had been placed together to fulfil this project they would of ascertained each others skills and avoided the wastefulness. Next time I undertake a project with a friend I will encourage us to be honest and upfront about the skills we can bring to the project.

• During the design phase of the project we’d decided upon the name of ‘Save the Bush’ and although we had checked other possible names on Facebook for the possibility of an application with the same name. We must have forgotten to check this one and it appears there is another app with the same name. On reflection a written list of tasks to carry out may have stopped this fundamental mistake.

• Although there are a number of applications dealing with George Bush and his time spent as president, I still feel that our app had a feel of uniqueness. By dealing with his current position in the here and now, we had hoped to gain a lot of users. I still believe that if it had been launched just at the right time, it would have been tremulously successful. We underestimated the amount of work needed to produce the amount

• Our decision to create an application based on current affairs didn’t take into account the fact that the subject matter had a short life expectancy. Hence, the time taken to initiate the project, to learn the new Facebook languages and develop the written material, had in fact sealed our projects fate. At the time of its launch it had become irrelevant and yesterdays old news.

Facebook Application: Entrustment and Launch

It fell to me to write numerous descriptions for various parts of Facebook and a webpage to include extra information about the purpose of our application. It was not long before I found that writing about our project was not going to be as straight forward or funny as first I first imagined. I had been looking forward to making several slights against George Bush’s record as President, only to realise that I needed to remain impartial, for our application to remain within its purpose of judging the general mood towards Bush now he has gone.

So I began in sober mood to write about our application, our purpose and to formulate a ‘Privacy Policy and Terms of Service’. It all felt a little flat and far from our original discussion of adding humour or creating the correct mood and enticing new users. To use emotive language to create agreement or outrage and hopefully hook both groups into taking part and using our application. After a while I did find ways of adding, I hope, a little spice to encourage the user to make a stand and partake.

On completion of all the needed text, I found a free webhost and started to build a website, well a webpage that maybe later would become a website. I used ‘The Gimp’ an open source graphical manipulator to create a title and border then I added the text and the website was complete:

http://savethebush.comli.com

I spent some time adding a little css to ensure the border picture repeated down the left-hand side of the page, as well ensuring the text remained unchanged throughout. I removed and corrected some of my elemental html mistakes, then evaluated the finished product to find it unreadable. Therefore, I added more css to provide margins to the text that added a uniformity that helped the user to read quickly and accurately.

On completion of this stage in development, I email my team mate to make him aware of the webhost I had secured and the domain name ‘savethebush’. This would allow him to gain access to the pictures of George Bush that we’d agreed would be ideal for our application. As well as allowing him to make a judgement on what would be needed to bring webpage up to a professional standard. As he had far more experience than I in this field. This would also allow him to ask for help in completing his part of the task.

The application was completed on the 5th of February and launched. During the on-line testing a number of items needed to changed. Please see the finished application at:

http://apps.facebook.com/save_bush

Facebook Application: Design and Development

The overall look and structure of the application’s graphical user interface was developed as a result of trail and error. An initial sketch of the most basic outlook was evaluated and improved upon until both party’s reached an agreement. The interface would predominately feature a neutral photograph of George Bush to allow user to instantly understand that this app was about making a political decision, albeit in a fun way. Directly underneath the picture would be two hands (left and right) one showing the thumb up as the positive reaction to the question posed and the other downwards, like a roman emperor giving his judgement on a gladiators fate.

Then we reached the first obstacle namely naming the application. We understood the necessity for a verbally attractive title and it would have been too easy to go for a comic but biased approach, such as “Burn the Bush”. After a while we managed to agree on a catchy but memorable name of “Save the Bush?” Which we felt could have comic undertones and allow people to formulate an answer to the poll or reflect on the past exploits of the Bush administration.

Next we bumped into second delay, by both turning to learning the new languages posed by Facebook we became extremely bogged down. Instead of relying on each others abilities. After a nearly a couple of weeks slow progress and some frustration, we decided to re-evaluate the situation and find a way to speed up the process. We agreed that we would split the project into two parts and utilise our individual skills.

My team member had more experience of programming and I have often enjoyed attempting to write witty pieces. So it was agreed that He would be mainly responsible for the programming of the application. While I’d take over writing its description, homepage, privacy policy, webpage, notification, introduction, while finding a poignant heading for the app, as well as any other written work. Everything between would be the responsibility of both of us.

Facebook Application: Research and Application

Our initial discussions about possible applications, for Facebook social website, showed that both members of our team had no understanding of what was the purpose for an application on Facebook. So we decided to research differing applications and read the links provided by the lecturer.

We were particularly interested in what an application could be capable of delivering; what the users found interesting and which did they dislike; could they be useful or just for fun.

Through, carefully reading of the set links and the development material on offer through Facebook we decided on certain rules that we’d use while thinking up an idea.

These provided the backbone to our ‘many’ brainstorming sessions:

• Reduce or rid the application of all or any complexity.
• Facebook is about social gatherings of friends and the application should try or use this factor in its design and purpose.
• An application that plays on current trends, fashions or fads that probably would be short lived was ‘not’ a bad idea.
• Visual appearance is a vital element in making the application appealing and reputable. The integration of the application is the foundation to being successful in this area.
• The biggest hurdle was finding a way to ensure the user viewed our application as a quality product. Apparently, how the well it responded to commands in terms of waiting times is a major factor.

This was also a significant obstacle, we had no money for hosting with a company that could guarantee good throughput, yet to ensure quality we couldn’t keep the user waiting. Therefore, this led to the understanding that any application we would decide upon would need very little throughput to carry out its main purpose.

After researching the ‘what and why’ of Facebook application we started to brainstorm about possible ideas. We probably undertook a number of these sessions, before we started to come up with some very interesting and unique creations. Then an interesting but almost predictable phase came about during this brainstorming period. But not how to put these wonderful ideas into practice! No it was “if we went ahead with them who would own them!” So we decided to put them to one side and save them for a future time, when our thoughts and ideas belong to ourselves.

So we began again and decided on creating a poll about the demise of George Bush, to see if people truly thought he was all bad and would he be missed. This possibility satisfied the previous hosting problem, while providing a platform whereby everyday Facebook users could express themselves on one of the most significant events of 2009.

Photo Album

To accomplish the set task of creating a photographic album on the theme of “All work and no play”, I brought my own camera into University. The camera was a digital Canon 450D with an EOS 18-55mm zoom lens and in good working order.

During the beginning of the session I collaborated with two other students to create our own team. We decided that our storyline would focus on one day in the life of one student. Showing how he would spend the start of his day being studious and solitary. Then as the day progressed his life would become more enjoyable, as represented by spending time in conversation with a friend in the café that led to a drinking session.

As we were under the time constraint of one hour we decided to use the facilities around the University as a backdrop. Featuring places that the majority of university students may frequent during each day to try and give the story a feeling of reality, for example the library, computer classrooms, the local café and bar.

The majority of the photographs were taken by me and I, due to nerves, decided to rely on the camera’s auto functions. This is something I’d never do when using the camera for my own personal needs. However, I felt pressured (by myself) into gaining properly exposed images and I mistakenly believed that although these auto functions wouldn’t provide any award winning shots, they would give sharp properly exposed photographs. However, mixing this with my nerves and existing medical condition led to lots of poorly exposed, blurred and badly composed shots.

Post production was initially carried out during the practical session of Entertainment Computing. I used Adobe Photoshop for the first time and managed to create a flash based album of all the shots that were taken on that day. I also tried another application package based on recommendations from a fellow student, namely ‘Windows Photo Story 3’. Both applications provided functional and enjoyable views of the photographs.

However, I could see the biggest draw back was the content not the applications, so I took a copy of the photographs home. There I began to select photos based on their relative superior quality and began to use the application ‘The Gimp’ (The GNU Image Manipulation Program).

Using ‘The GIMP’ provided means to crop and select different parts of the images. Then through use of ‘The GIMP’s’ functions, I changed different aspects of almost all the selected images by use of basic features such as the brightness, colour, contrast. I also used some of the artistic features, ‘scripts’, to help add feeling to the overall story. Once I was happy with the selected images I put them together with the aid of ‘Windows Photo Story 3’ into an album.

We tried to create a story of an average solitary student going about his day. How his time was spent initially studying and working hard. Then showing how he would relax and enjoy his leisure time drinking with friends, to recharge and be ready for another day of hard study.

The Appliance of Non-Science

The largest free standing wasted space in any kitchen is the result of a fridge freezer. They have become the poor relation of entertaining kitchen appliances; while the washing machine twirls, the cooker cheekily reveals her glowing inners, the kettle whistles a merry tune and even the humble toaster boasts a make over, becoming shiny and attempts to juggle with your toast.

This upstanding motionless rectangular shape, this large staunch mass of white enamel creates a desert for the eye, as it lies … silently cooling. Many people have tried to decorate this expanse, to tame its near glossy brightness only to fail and fall under the multitude of brightly coloured magnets.

Now has come the time for the sober fridge freezer to throw away its reputation of a quiet upstanding reliable appliance and engage with its peers in entertaining, to let down her draws and reveal to the world that its up for a good time.

On a more serious note, we can see that in fact the facia of the fridge-freezer does provide an opportunity for making the appliance both more appealing and entertaining. I propose that the door of the top compartment could be modified to provide a viewing platform for various media.

Personal photographs could be stored within its permanent memory or downloaded from a local file server, via a wireless link or from mobile phones using Bluetooth. So for example we could show photographs that depict special events, like Christmas card images during the Xmas holiday period or scenes showing what the weather is like outside or the time of day, as seen in these examples.

A small on-board computer would make use of personal configurations and databases, which would allow for complex image schedules that suit the mood and age of the different occupants and different times of day. Thus, ensuring that the pictures are always entertaining and appropriate for the household.

These configurations could be changed as often as wished or left to run the same way day after day. Allowing the users to take special meaning by the images shown, for example a picture of a young child in pyjamas to show its time for bed, or a picture of a bus to show it’s nearly time to go to university.

Configurations could be constructed to remind us of happy days and special anniversaries. Pictures could be shown in special order for comic effect or as a form of cryptic messages. During the long winter nights and rainy days, we could show pictures of holidays to remind us that it doesn’t always rain and that happy sunny days are just around the corner.

The display unit would be able to receive text files from mobile phones and display them on top of the image being shown, allowing important and personal messages to be seen or reminders to be shown. A simple cancel button could be pressed to dismiss the message and return to just the original image.

Pictures can provoke memories and emotions, forcing us to change our train of thought and encouraging us to be imaginative. This mental processing of what a personal image means or depicts, can encourage a more insightful outlook on life. While reproducing the original pleasure experienced at the time the picture was conceived, and we then become the entertained as a result.

Thank-You