I finally fired up a new weblog called “Colorings,” which I plan to use as a daily journal to keep me on my toes during the winter break,and possibly beyond. For now it’s open to the public, and anyone that was keeping track of this blog is welcome to peer in on whatever I’m writing about on “Colorings.” The first post is probably a little scatter-brained, but I hope they get better with time. Definitely don’t be afraid to leave comments, since as we all know, writing is a social process and feedback can only help me. Enjoy!
A few weeks ago, my classmates and I named this blog “Against Our Will” because blogging was foreign to us and we were reluctant to post so frequently on one. As the module ended last week, the posts dropped off expectedly, with my last post self-aware of its terminal nature. (see “Writing with Pictures”) Now here I am, typing more or less proactively (my posting quota is not technically met), breathing life back into this purely-experimental writing space.
Not since a strictly summer-spanning journal written in a traditional black-and-white composition notebook have I written for the sake of writing. In hindsight, that experience was most likely crucial to my current writing ability, but I still abandoned it for simple reactive writing. I will most likely improve faster by keeping up with a blog like this one, so it is probably in my best interest to start a spin-off. It will keep me light on my figurative toes so I can more confidently tackle essays and other projects. This is no huge revelation, but constant blogging is pretty much exercise for my skills as a writer.
Essentially everything I was writing before was something I wouldn’t have written unless prompted to. Just like this blog, those essays, those reports, those short stories, were done “against my will,” no matter how well they were done. Surely, if I plan on making a living out of this, it should be fun, lest it become a joyless stint like working at a supermarket. Forget exercise; I need to want to write, and a blog will take me there. It will take me into the realm of social writing and, instead of being like the campanilistic products I continue to treat my compositions as, they will be additions to conversations in text. I just hope someone will be listening to my willful writing.
I still feel the need for that moment of clarity in several aspects of writing, and that includes picking a title. Thus, when I think of a fitting title for my own embryonic blog, I’ll give y’all a holler on this one.
The story that I am about to explain happened a few weeks ago, but it is good to write about because it shows that the registrar is not well organized (or maybe just all of savitz)…
During the summer I took a class at the community college nearest to me. After getting a good grade, I had the transcript sent to Rowan, using the address that they gave me in the office. After two months, Rowan said that they still did not have it, but this did not make sense to me. I called Brookdale (where I took my summer class) and they said it was definitely delivered because they are notified when a letter has been delivered to another school. I called Rowan again and they said the address I wrote down would go to the admissions office, not the registrar. After calling the admissions office, they had no record of ever getting it.
I just feel like this school is not as organized as it could be. I believe they misplaced my transcript, and because of this I had to pay for another trascript to be sent to Rowan from Brookdale. Fianlly, after two and a half months, my credits were transfered!
This weather is so disgusting! I hate when it is humid, hot, and misting outside. I am ready for it to get a little bit chillier outside, so I can start wearing warmer clothes. I am sick of my summer clothes and it is so hot now everytime I go on campus. In the beginning of the week, Campus Crossings made us shut off our air conditioning, and I had never been so uncommfortable.
Thank goodness we are able to turn it on last night because so many people have been complaning. I just wish they would wait to switch off the air conditioning in Crossings until it gets a little bit colder outside; Because as of now, it is still way too hot.
I am very mad at myself because every night, I set my alarm clock for my class the next morning, and apparently, last night I forgot. I did not wake up until 11:45 this morning, which meant I had missed our class, and I was very upset at myself. It is unlike me to do things like this, and I’m mad because it was our last day of the module. This class was too important to miss, and I hoope I will understand what was said in class. This module was very interesting because it taught us how to relate writing and technoogy in sociey.
I am very overwhelmed right now because I am getting so much homework in all of my classes. Can someone save me???
Ok, so, I am extremely tired this morning and i really don’t want to go to class. I know this is lame but it’s all that’s on my mind. I woke up about 3 minutes ago, got dressed and sat down at my comp because i really wanted to say something important, intelligent….no such luck. I guess in recent news, I am writing a research paper on organic vs inorganic foods. If anyone has any thoughts as to this, I would love to use you as a source in my paper
OH!!! So, writing a novel is one of my goals…and this weekend, it all came to me, all the characters, the plot, EVERYTHING. I cannot wait to put it all together. And no, it’s not going to be one of those teenage romance novels. It’s deeper than that. I’m so happy!!
So, I guess my anguish for going to class and my happiness for figuring out my novel idea cancel each other out. I guess I’m just blah…
The philosophy-heavy readings assigned for Friday presented concepts familiar to me. I knew of Magritte’s painting of conflicting media and the concept behind it: an image is not the same thing as what it represents. – a picture of a pipe is not a pipe. I also knew how visual imagery greatly helps transmit ideas. Just seeing Magritte’s painting when reading “Visual Rhetoric,” admittedly boring and hard to follow at first, helped me to absorb faster the concepts being thrown at me. There is a reason why kindergarteners aren’t reading text-only literature in library class. Visualizations are the easiest way for the brain to learn.
McCloud’s “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art” takes the concepts read about in “Visual Rhetoric” further and expands on them with, quite fittingly, graphic illustrations. He heralds comics and other visual genres as a great communicative device because people easily identify with simplified pictures and concentrate on the idea more easily when illustration is provided. Presented so successfully like a fast paced motion picture on paper, it seems as if graphic novels are indeed the superior medium for divulging information. If this is true, then what edge do I, as a writer who specializes in text, have in marketing my informational productivity?
When it comes to essayism and other forms of composition, I’ve always looked down on cartoons and illustrative arts in general, considering the written word as the proper form to make a point with. Now, in the fast-paced age of computers, pictures do the job quicker, and it seems as if completely written literature is a just a waste of time, as Richard Miller points out in “The Dark Night of the Soul.” What merits do the written word have over the illustration, especially now, when screens reproduce pictures just as easily and costless as they do words? If one has ideas on the same level as me but can draw pictures better than me, does that make him more respectable? What if his ideas are below mine? Does his illustrative skill elevate him beyond me?
The quick, pointed and enjoyable presentation of “Understanding Comics” reminds me of an exhibition that was showing at New York’s Museum of Modern Art over the summer. Dan Perjovschi was allowed to draw stick figure illustrations all over the walls of the main atrium of the museum. The drawings are scant and quick, but combine illustration and text to make a political or social point. The exhibition was a big hit.
This may be the last blog I do on this site. It strains me to post something meaningful so frequently, but in hindsight it definitely doesn’t hurt to compose so proactively. This is definitely the future of writing, and it pays to keep up with it. I may start up my own blog after this one.
The Internet: One can find so many ridiculous and entertaining things on it. Pictures of cats with captions, people blogging their odd everyday experience, and thousands upon thousands of assorted random videos. Since I currently lack the creative energy to comment upon something, I’d like to share with you some of things I have found on my Internet wanderings:
This video is titled The Sandman and was created by a gentleman called Paul Berry. It was created in 1992 and has won several film awards around the world. This one caught my eye because it was a retelling of a European folk tale. Its animation has a very creepy, but somewhat childish tone to it. If you can handle the creep factor, the short is quite well done and makes an excellent video to share with some friends on a slow night.
This website is a series of blog entries detailing the adventures of an American teaching English in the Japanese school system through a program called JET. He comments on his experience teaching Japanese children and being a foreigner in Japanese structured society. The entries are largely comic in nature, with nicknamed characters making reappearances through the entries. I’d recommending starting from the begin for such a reason.
Will It Blend? is a series of advertisement videos for Blendtec. The videos are short and are simple, consisting of an intro, some catchy music, and the host Tom Dickson dropping an item into a Blendtec blender. Its amazing to see what these blenders can do and the after effects of the blendings are usually amusing to watch. The short nature of the videos also makes them perfect to sneak in after a lunch break at work or during a slow day.
Well, I have quiz tomorrow on Buddhism, so studying must be done. Night folks!
Reading Mathe’s essay on social bookmarking got me thinking about the practice itself. For the uninitiated, social bookmarking is the practice of using special social bookmarking sites to tag and comment on web pages, so that others may search through them and view them based on the tags one applies to the web page. This video may explain it a bit better then I can.
What excites me most about this practice is the user controlled aspect of it. The amount of information on the Internet defies normal classification methods, like those used in libraries or coporate databases. Those systems are created by highly educated programs with large amounts of time and resources to create them. However, creating a formal classification system for the Internet would take a staggering amount of time and manpower. Social bookmarking offers a much more feasible alternative. Its major advantage over formalized systems is its ease of use and social aspects.
Formalized classification systems require a great amount of time to consider whether or not a piece of information falls into a specific category. Also, as Mathe states, being able to classify things in a formal system also requires a fair amount of education. On the other hand, social bookmarking only requires one to register for a website (most requiring no more than a user name, password, and email address) and they are ready to begin tagging pages. The process of tagging quick and easy as well. One simply clicks on the appropriate icon for the social bookmarking site, types a couple of words that describe the page, and click OK. This speed and ease make many people more inclined to tag websites then if there was a formal system in place.
The second advantage of social bookmarking over formal systems is the social aspect of it. One who classifies things within a formal system submits their classifications to a small group of people for approval. This procedure is slow and can take quite some time. With social bookmarking, ones tags are available immediately to other users, and thus user feedback. Others may give you comments and suggestions on how to better relabel your tags to fit with more widely used terms. This social aspect also aids in the location of information. This way, you still help organize the information and use terms that will make it easier to find.
Social bookmarking seems like its going to be the way of the future. It goes along with the Internet’s theme of user created. Everyday, more and more users are logging in and tagging more and more websites. Others are relabeling tags to over come vocabulary differences between language. The amount of categorized information is growing, as is its clarity. Maybe one day we’ll reach a point where most of the information on the Internet is tagged or categorized in some way. That day may be far off, but I’d suggest looking into this social bookmarking thing, just so you don’t get left in the dust. A couple potential websites to use are:
