This is starting to be a lot of fun. It also, due to time factors, has convinced me I need to buy an Apple laptop besides the laptop I have through HP. I enjoyed putting in the B-roll and the text clips, it was fun moving the audio from the video and still showing Ryan in and out of the other clips for audio and video I imported. I feel much better about our first assignment as well as I remember how to do more and more functions without having to look them up. The only part that bothered me was that there we blank parts in the audio, and I feel that audio is the biggest part in production for videos. So, hopefully, we'll learn how to put in other forms of audio as well as the audio from the video because I don't want silence. I'm really excited!

Texting

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/technology/29drill.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

This happens to be another prime example why people from the M-Generation cannot hold a verbal conversation. They are so used to texting what they want to say they'd rather not call someone to communicate when they can short hand it with T9 Word. It wasn't bad enough that everyone and their grandmother had a cell phone a few years ago, but now kids will text their elders instead of doing the courtesy call to check in.

Brian Allen Blog

http://www.ksfy.com/blogs/allen/29625609.html?blog=y

I love to read KSFY blogs by Brian Allen. He has interesting topics, great guest bloggers, he changes his material up, and uses a lot of Thomas Jefferson quotes. I appreciate his efforts and finds what he says to have merit. Not all of his blogs are very serious or affect people's live though. These are the blogs I find myself looking for more often than others. Who interviews his 4-year-old about his life? What could this little boy possibly have to say? Did Brian have nothing to blog about, and if not, why not just skip blogging that day? We love reading about kids, that's why. This little boy isn't any different than other children his age, but he is a really cute kid. It's an personal interest piece that reaches people on a more personal level. How different it has become to reach people through your children though.

I also really liked this guest blogger

http://www.ksfy.com/blogs/allen/27043699.html

It's really long winded, and I didn't read all of it the first time through, but somewhere in the middle of it, he starts giving little pictures to the big world... they are funny, but true. Another part of his blog I suggest people check out. The other blogs on KSFY aren't as good as Brian's, so I stick to his more often.

Dual Monitors

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2008-09-25-two-monitors_N.htm

I was really excited when I read how easy this was. Recently I started a new shift at my job that will require the use of two monitors to keep up with job junctions since they are increasing our workload ten fold and decreasing our call volumes by hundreds. I worried that I wouldn't be able to go back to a single monitor and have started thinking about getting a dual monitor for my personal set up so I can do multiple things at once and not feel like I have an overwhelming amount of bars open on my screen. I'm happy to have such easy instructions, even if the changes do come at a fairly high price.

Future Bumper Stickers?

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/multimedia/2008/09/found

Wired magazine. Usually full of interesting ideas, usually very unusual actually. A good source for all things tech savvy and nerdy though. So imagine my surprise when they decided to take their time to create bumper stickers from the future! First of all, who cares? Second of all, do that many people actually use bumper stickers that they would have an interest? And finally, do those people who use bumper stickers as a form of communication subscribe to this magazine or check out their website? Probably not. Upsetting even further, next week's future idea, what will the McDonald's happy meal look like in 10, 20 or even 100 years. Again, who cares? We only eat that crap because it's convenient and on every street corner of America... and they soak it in grease. Useless for two weeks in a row.

Fine What is Built to Help You

http://keloland.com/NewsDetail6162.cfm?ID=0,74210

I was very confused when I read this. We find this technology to bring electricity through something that happens very naturally and relentlessly, the wind. So a company builds a large number of wind turbines in a place that is naturally windy due to flatness from a glacier and they didn’t get the right kind of okay. So now we want to fine them for supplying electricity to 60,000 homes because of this technicality. I think it’s wrong and disappointing. Why can’t they make them pay taxes or some other form of money but at least let then continue to benefit society in a new technology that is clean and doesn’t require any kind of production, it is the wind after all, why can’t they keep it? I think $200,000 may be enough to seriously injure a company and put it on it's back since its so new. Ridiculous!

Flip Cam Video!

Robbie wants a job. Any job. Using the flip camera can be fun and useful, but the conversions are not much fun!

Video with background

Today we learned how to edit out a green screen to put a picture behind the object of our video. I found it very interesting to play with the green removal options and the softening effects when the green taken away causes jagged lines and edges. I didn't think this would be useful knowledge, but as I do more research for my area of study (advertising) I realize that I will need all the skills I am learning to be a diverse and useful employee to any firm I may join.

This is what coffee and no sleep gets you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMriTkE3igY&feature=related

This was the best thing I’ve ever watched! He’s so confident that he’ll be fine because he hasn’t slept in two days and is running on only coffee. How do you get the first question wrong on millionaire? Better yet, how do you get that question wrong? We’ve been taught to do that for our computers since we could understand what it meant, we live in that era. We are the M-Generation. Surge protectors don’t have anything to do with water; if they did there would be a world of hurt going on due to that electrical current he couldn’t figure out. After watching that clip and a few others, I found this one, it only gets better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNNjAJZk9i0&feature=related

Now you know, elephants are larger than the moon. All videos of her saying that are too blurry or hard to hear, but she takes almost five minutes to decide elephants are bigger than the moon.

But the next clip should restore some faith in the American population after the last two links nearly crush everything you held to be true about this being a wealthy country, including intellectually.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8JrsnpWUSw&feature=related

No life lines were truly used, and he only one to call the important person in his life to let him know he had won, and to feel proud of his son. All it takes is 15 questions and a lack of stupidity to become a millionaire. But I think I’ll stick the 401K plan I have set up with my job. At least I’m guaranteed that return.

The New Facebook

http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home

Why do the designers of sites for communication and reconnections always have to go in and change what has already been working so well for the people that uses their sites? Redesigning the face of facebook has created uproar in facebook participants worldwide. They took something that was uniform and user friendly and made it into myspace! The abstract version in place now makes me almost want to discontinue my use of their site due to having to fidget with different buttons and settings to find the old applications I liked so well on my old page.
So back to my question, why do they have to change something that is working? Did we ask for them to change it? Does it help bring more users on? And if it does, who’s paying to use the site so they need more users anyway? Was this change due to the encouragement from companies that do help fund the upkeep of the site? Or do they really just have nothing better to do than to play with new ideas and see how many of their users they can upset.
Evidently it was to help advertise for their providers better, however, I don’t feel its right. Couldn’t they put it to a vote? A lot of users are Americans and we like voting on things, and when the vote can take place online, it has been proven that we respond better and more people vote for things online than we do for presidential elections. I just want the old facebook back.

First Video

Video making has definitely changed since high school. We were not expected to know how to use the cameras or other videos systems, we just took previously recorded video, watched until the parts we wanted, uploaded it to the computer, stacked it together with some still photos we had and put music to it. Done. It never took long, but it was a lot of fun. Here, it feels weird being on camera, kind of weird, I got really self conscious, but getting the video was much easier, I liked it a lot better than having to watch all the tapes over and over until you get the right part. The audio is a lot easier, and editing was much quicker. I like editing video and playing with different options to create something out of nothing. It's a silly sentence that makes no sense and has no place in my life, but it was fun seeing a different face and voice pop up for every word i chose to use. I think this class over all will be a lot of fun whether I work in a group or on a video by myself. I like being able to be creative inside fairly permeable parameters.

Return to online orders

Tell me this isn't anti-productive. My flip camera started in Hodgkins, IL on September 12. It was then shipped to Indianapolis, IN on September 13. When it left there it arrived in Louisville, KY also today, September 13. It arrived in Louisville at 7:30 this morning and still hasn't left. Where is this camera going? Last time I checked Illinois is much closer than Kentucky. Now the frustration of being able to check where your order is sets in. Looks like my hopes of having my camera by Monday or Tuesday are gone. Maybe by Friday next week I'll have that expensive little camera that's taking a wayward trip right now.

Online Orders

Unfortunately for you to see what prompted this rant you would need my password, which I'm not willing to give since I have a lot of personal information on my amazon profile. You'll have to do with personal experience with amazon, or you can imagine it I'm sure.

I ordered the flip camera on amazon.com thinking that, ordering it a week in advance with regular shipping, I would have it before class met again. As I go through and check my order multiple times a day, however, I am finding each day for the last three days that my camera still has not shipped. It seems I will have to pay the extra $10.98 for two day shipping to have any chance of receiving the camera next week, and it still isn’t expected to be received until September 16. Since today is September 11, I wasn’t aware that two business days came about on the 16th.
But all of this got me thinking about how tracking packages has evolved. I do almost all of my shopping online anymore since our only outlets are JC Penny and WalMart, which don’t exactly provide choices. When I want something really fast I still won’t pay for the extra shipping because let’s face it; I’m poor. However, I track my packages religiously. How did they stand it when mail became mobile in the first place? No tracking, actually no real knowledge that anything was actually on it’s way. Who puts that information into the systems so that we can track what city our package is in? Evidently they just scan the number and bar code assigned to each package when it comes in and when it goes out so that when we put in the code they gave us with our order, or in the e-mail they send after the order is complete, it shows when it showed up and when it left again. The system is pretty amazing overall, and still completely slow and unreliable in the United States Postal System, or even starting with the original supplier; as in this case.
Speaking of slow mail, how’s this for inefficient?

http://keloland.com/NewsDetail6162.cfm?ID=0,72439

Blogging... The new homework?

http://keloland.com/NewsDetail6162.cfm?Id=0,73661

When we were assigned a blog for 25% of our grade I was skeptical about how it could be considered a 'graded assignment'. It almost seemed too easy to be considered a college course.
It obviously isn't just an insane idea to make our lives easier since all college students need a computer today to even consider getting through a college degree. Evidently high schools are picking up the idea. A little guarded and fully edited. Not a true blog by any means, however accepted as an assignment. Is this the next form of homework? Are writing papers a thing of the past? How will this affect the ‘alliteracy’ of the M-generation? Yes, alliteracy, it is defined as having the ability to read, but choosing not to, a linguists nightmare. I believe it will affect it greatly.

Our generation already has no clue how to speak or write due to an increase in the technologies we’re provided. More English papers are written in texting and IMing formats. They don’t know how to write complete sentences, they don’t understand the meanings of words in the texts they are expected to read, they live on Wikipedia. According to Dr. John Taylor Wikipedia is the fast and dirty way to get anything wrong. So back to my original question, is blogging to next form of doing homework? I really hope not.

Numbers for reading and writing are on a steady decline and they are only expected to get worse as we move further into the digital age. When we text or IM we can think over our response and re-type it multiple times until it is how we want it to sound, this is an issue for spoken conversations. Some don’t care what they say, how they spell it, what the words really mean. They type anything and hope that with enough bells and whistles the teacher accepts what they’ve written. Is that the path we should continue to encourage?

I’m not saying blogging is a bad idea for students to put their ideas into writing, but standards need to be set and kept if this will work. Nor should other forms of homework diminish. Grammar and spelling should stay staples and be stressed more than they currently are in public high schools, papers should still be written and graded and many texts should be assigned to be read for a broader appreciation for what technological advancements have brought us. Where would we be without that original printing press? Would anyone have the ability to read besides the ordained and scribes without it?

We are a now society, we take for granted the things that make our lives easiest and forget the important parts of our cultures and histories that have brought us to today. We live in the media generation, but we should be enjoying every kind of media, especially the text found in good old fashioned books. Like the old saying goes, “If want to end a society or culture, burn their libraries,” too bad Americans have less and less respect for those accommodations that our ancestors worked so hard to create.

Introduction

Hello,

My name is Megan. I enjoy running, writing, reading, volleyball and dance. In my free time outside of class I work part time in a call center for credit cards. I hope to go into a marketing department for this company after graduation. I also like to spend time with friends, watch Mad Men with my best friend Drew, cook, bake and facebook. I am a full time student at SDSU, majoring in Mass Communication, specialization in Advertising. I am working to get minors in marketing, business, English and history. I enjoy learning, challenges and debate.