Assessment Post #2

Well it's that time again where we must write our assessment post to complete our assignment. This term's work was similar to last term in the sense that we had to keep up our Blog, Flickr and Del.icio.us accounts only this time we had to look more at the aesthetics of what we were doing. With Blogger it is a lot easier then the other two, though Johannes has said that the Flickr aesthetics go also on the images you have uploaded which helps!

I have completed the checklist and am fairly happy as well as proud of the work I have done particularly with the aesthetics of my blog. So here we go with summarising in detail the work I have done this term which will hopefully give me more than a pass again! =)

Again I have attempted to keep up with the required 10 hours a week though I may have slipped some times as I felt this terms work wasn't nearly as interesting nor as structured.

FLICKR - My flickr account

☑ 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



I think the first few pages at the moment a quite aesthetically pleasing, with lots of pretty landscapes from where I used to work in the UK, the images I took for VPA104 Assignment 1 as well as my screen shots etc. Page 1 of Flickr account

I have uploaded a lot more than 30 pictures in fact I have uploaded so many images that I ran into the problem that Flickr will only display my most recent 200 images, so any older ones are now hidden.

I re-arranged my sets so that they are now organised into images from Uni, Back home and my trip over to Europe in 2006, which means most photo's I am uploading at the moment fall into one of those categories, though there is the odd exception.

I made sure I went through all my images that I had already tagged with the MPI104-2007 tag and checked whether or not I felt they were related to other students in the class as well as then adding any new ones I felt were worthy of the tag. A lot of them are probably more for people who live on campus or are my friends in the subject but they are of interest to other students within the class.

I've added favourites, joined a few groups and have quite a large contact list. All my photo's a titled, have descriptions, tags - ones that aren't MPI104-2007.

I've made comments on Annies Flickr, Erin's Flickr and Miss Tiz's Flickr as well as a few others.

DELICIOUS - My Del.icio.us account

☑ 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 a lot harder to do anything aesthetically pleasing with then Flickr or Blogger so I changed the view of my bundles to cloud rather than list which I am a lot happier with.

If you view my Del.icio.us account with only 10 items per page then I easily make the 3 pages of bookmark requirement.

All bookmarks have descriptions and tags and when bundling all my tags I ran into the problem that you couldn't bundle tags saved "for:", luckily that day I was reading comments on the Metablog and ran across someone who had already told you about the problem and my mild heart attack stopped as you had changed the checklist to say all tags except those with "for:"!

I scrutinized again as to what was of interest to other students and I think I limited my bookmarks to those that would help with our subjects rather than all the sites I found interesting and hoped other students would too. So those of interest have the MPI104-2007 tag and those that are of no interest don't!

I have most of the Tuesday class in my network which is good I didn't have to do that task and I had already saved links for others such as Matt and Hannah as well as some other students in the class.

Again Del.icio.us is a lot harder to do anything aesthetically with then the others but hopefully my efforts have been enough!

BLOGGER - My Blogger account

☑ 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

I think in the last class we decided that 14 was the minimum amount of posts for this assignment and luckily I already had like 19 but me being me went out and wrote a few more that are hopefully a lot more interesting then some of them which were for class. Some more interesting ones are Bit of an update, My weekend with mummy!, Full Board Crawl, Centurion - Yaz's 21st and Good aesthetics - changing my layout.

I went through all my post and made sure there were working links in all, which meant going right back to my first couple of posts and rectifying the fact there were no links. Some posts the image is the link as it will take you to my Flickr account as they are post made through Flickr.

As you can see from my blog I went to a fair bit of effort to create a new template - I'm fairly happy with it except for where the header and body join. I spent probably 5 hours attempting to work out how to use HTML etc. and finally did and am super proud of myself! I think the colours are very pretty and reflect my happiness and fun side that I show within my posts. If you read the post Good aesthetics - changing my layout you can see my trial and errors and read all about my efforts to get it where it is now! I am really happy with the aesthetics of my blog, I believe it looks good, is different, fun, visually pleasing, use of function is easy and you can still read the text easily, I also have tried to put my side links in order of importance!

I have a Fave this badge from Technorati (and currently I have an authroity of 16 and a rank of 340,322), I have a RSS feed for Del.icio.us, I have a counter with sitemeter and I have faved the Metablog.

I had previously written a post about counters and visitors but it wasn't specifically aimed at visitors to my blog it was about all my 3 accounts though I do touch on each, and I had only just started using sitemeter then so didn't have much information on my visitors, but I now can see many things from how many people access my blog a day or week, how long they stay and where abouts in the world they are from! You can view my post I made about visitors to all my accounts here, and I hope that it satisfies the checkpoint!

Well thus concludes my final post for this Assessment #2 and hopefully it is sufficient enough for me to do as well again i this assessment as I did in assessment #1! I believe I have achieved an overall good aesthetic look throughout my accounts as well as keeping up with my work being interesting. I have enjoyed this class and have learnt lots of different things to do with the net and forming communities and I am pretty pleased with myself for the effort I have put in and what I have achieved!

Good aesthetics- changing my layout

So as part of the checklist for this Assignment #2 one of the things was too have experimented with templates, fonts and colours. Now I could have easily lied and said I tried and after a few hours of attempting to change my template and getting nowhere I was tempted, though this wouldn't have really been lying as I had tried.

Luckily enough I stuck it out and managed to create a template that I am fairly happy with! First of all I had to change my basic blogger template to a different one then I went about trying to find layer and skins on the net to download and put on my blog but unfortunately was trying with MySpace skins websites like Pyzam and Blogskins so they were rejected.

Anyway I did find one template made for blogger on someones blog skins site that I really really liked! Unfortunately blogger again rejected it and I attempted to then save the images as they were but couldn't as there was some copyright on them, so I ended up doing a screen shot of them in image ready and putting them into Photoshop.

After a lot of trial and errors and attempts and finding the right piece of HTML to replace I finally got where I am now. You can see by the screen shots my attempts to make a good template, and a lot of uploading of different sized images into Flickr and Photobucket. A lot of trials and errors!

I am pretty happy with the way my template sits, I got rid of the grey boarders after hunting for the code for ages and took away a silly grey swirl as well as getting rid of this green bar seperating the header and body, I changed the font, size and colour of the text. I think for a first effort I haven't done too badly not quite happy with the join mark between the header and body but it will do for now!

I love the colours I think they are pretty and I am so proud of myself for all the work I did to get there! Now I must begin my final post for my Assesment #2 so as to email it to Johannes!

Wish me luck!

Centurion - Yaz's 21st.

Well Friday just gone I was planning on having a quite night and to try and get some assignment work out of the way...boy did that NOT happen!

C Block was going to play Centurion - a drinking game where you do 100 shots in 100 minutes. I sort of thought hey, I'll go along and watch have a beer and good laugh then do some work. Alas I joined in the game and was the only female to finish! It was hectic and a lot harder then what it sounds! The game was played with Abbey, Harryanne, Party Marty, Poodle, Neighbour Nick, Sally, Alex, Kenny, Philo, An (she didn't get very far lol) and myself!

Saturday I again planned to do a lot of assignment work, and again not a lot happened though a little more than Friday! 5.30pm on Friday Elise, Amanda, Tinkabell and myself set off on our mini road trip to Albury for our RA Yaz's 21st birthday party!

Yaz's party was held in this room that I'm guessing is a restaurant or cafe during the day called the Grind: Feed Store and it was a great place just right for the size of guests. The speeches that night were tear-jerking as it was plane to see Yaz has so many family and friends who care greatly for her!

After the party was over we all went out to the Bended Elbow which is a British style pub downstairs and a nightclub upstairs. Was good fun dancing with everyone and making new friends!

Spent the night at Yaz's though got in very early at 7:30am and attempting to sleep before heading back to Wagga at 10:30 this morning! Once back I slept for the rest of the day!

It was a great weekend meeting Yaz's family and friends from back home, becoming friends with others from Uni as well as making the 100 club!

Until next time Peace Out xox

Full Board Crawl

On Friday 1st June all full board students participated in the Full Board Crawl. What this entailed was each Hall of Residence having a theme and dressing up and providing a drinking game, which everyone would move together from one to the other.

We started of the night with a group BBQ and some light drinks for most, then began the "heavy drinking" with our first drinking game being held at the Butler Halls, their theme being Butlers and Maids made for some quite interesting costumes particularly from some of the boys who went as maids in skimpy outfits! Butler's drinking game was Kings Cup and basically entailed turning over playing cards each one having a different task i.e a 4 card ment girls had to drink. Personally I think they were just yelling "Drink" at us and that we weren't really playing properly!

Then it was a quick stop off to collect more drinks from my room before going on to East and West Hall who's theme was the Wild Wild West. They didn't really have a drinking game it was a relay race between all the Halls and they had to spin fast looking up at the sky then ride a broom up and around a bin. Not a drinking game but was hilarious to watch!

Then it was on to Doman who's theme was Domanatrix which again lead to some quite interesting outfits on both the boys and girls part! Their game was a giant twister but I didn't see it so don't know how it worked lol!

Onwards to Stewards the greatest Hall of all! Our theme was Stewards and Stewardess' we put in a lot of effort making posters and stuff to make it seem like an airport and we went all out with a lot of pilots and stewardess and old school pilots; a fair few Top Gun guys as well as some air traffic controllers. Our drinking game was boat races where a line of people each have to skull their drink then sit the cup on their head and the next person in the line will do the same as it moves down the line. First line to finish wins! I didn't see this game either, but then it was on to Stewards C Block common room where we had a dance party and it was hectic but so much fun!

A great night was had by all and everyone was pretty tanked by 9PM, then we all went out and danced the night away!

If you would like to see more photo's from the Full Board Crawl feel free to go to my Flickr account for a squiz!

My weekend with mummy!

So as a continuation of the last blog my mum came up to Wagga from Shepp on the 26th May to visit me for the weekend which was great!

Me and the guys got back that same day from our road trip to Canberra to see the Presets and Riot in Belgium. So showered at uni and headed straight to mums motel where I was going to stay with her for the next two nights and boy was it great to see her, I have missed my mum soooooo much!

That night mum took me out to dinner at the Monastery Brasserie near Wagga beach where Matt works. It was fantastic food and I enjoyed it so much more after living off dining hall food for like 5 weeks! It was cold the restaurant though cos some waitress kept going outside and leaving the door open and I was sitting next to the door. grr! >=(

On Sunday I had a bit of a sleep in and mum went and bought me some pumpkin pastry thing for breakfast! The we headed off to the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. I wasn't huge on their set collection but they had an exhibition on called The Paddocks: An exhibition of life, by a lady named Jenny Blake which I thought was fantastic. She captured farming life spectacularly and if I wasn't a poor uni student myself I'd love to buy some of her work! I thoroughly enjoyed it! The glass collection was fairly good but I wasn't feeling up to looking at the collection properly but I will probably go back some time in the next 4 years that I'm here!

After the art gallery mum and I drove back out to the uni and went to the Charles Sturt University Winery we have on campus here. Of course I didn't try any as I was driving but mum really enjoyed it and bought a couple of bottles of wine. We both did the cheese tasting which was delicious my favourite was the bush tomato one, but mum ended up buying me a jar of their feta which was yummy!

Then it was off to Junee to the Licorice and Chocolate Factory which we had a ball taste testing the chocolate and licorice and learning how it is all made and then playing this skittles game using a ball of licorice to knock down the skittles in an old flour shoot! There was a good band playing which was nice to listen too as we waited for our tour to begin and the building it's all set in would be fantastic to take photo's off as it's half brick, half tin.

That night mum and I went out for dinner at the Bridge Steakhouse and had another fantastic meal! Then it was back to the motel for a relaxed night of TV watching and reading my book!

The next day was exceptionally hard as I had to say goodbye to my mummy, it was great having her here and was fantastic to see so much of Wagga in one weekend and eat such fine food but I really struggled for the rest of the day! I miss my mum heaps and can't wait to get home for the holidays and have her their everyday!

So that sums up the rest of my weekend, over two posts but it was a great weekend! Until next time be safe and have fun!

Bit of an update

So it's been awhile since I've written a blog other than one for our class, so I thought I would give a bit of an update as too what has been going on!

Well on Monday May 14th tickets went on sale for Splendour in the Grass and I got up early to buy my ticket online I even missed my first class of the day but the uni network is gay and wouldn't let me get through to the queue. So I went to the next class to make up for missing the first and found out Matt (who I was going with) had his mum sitting at home ready to buy them. So in class me, matt and Lauren all sat through our class attempting to get into the queue and we did but again the network was gay and kept kicking us out! Grr!

In the end I went back to Matt's place and his mum was still in the queue but really near the front so we waited and managed to get our tickets finally but we missed out on camping tickets so we found a camping ground near by where we will be staying at through out the weekend!

The next week on friday the 25th May we had heard that the Presets were playing in Canberra, so An, Party Marty, Philo and myself roadtripped to Canberra to see them. It was a scary/ weird adventure I was driving and it was interesting our roadtrip. Just passed Yass we got stopped because their was this massive accident (because of all the flashing blue and red lights we had a joke going on that it was really the policemans ball, which probably wasn't very appropriate but meh!) and the policeman said we had to go back to Yass and follow the signs to Goulburn and we were like F@*k! that's gonna had and extra 2 hours on to our trip and considering we were already massivly late we were pretty worried.

Anywho we had a good idea to stop in Yass and find out if there was a quicker way we could get to Canberra and luckily we asked the right person. we had to take the old Canberra highway which was mainly dirt and windy as hell and after awhile cars stopped coming towards us and we were the only people on the road in the dark bushland. I began to stress that we would break down and a wolfcreek scene would happen to us, it was scary as hell! eventually we came back out on the road we needed to and made it to Canberra!

We were staying the night with one of Party Marty's school friends at ANU and we eventaully found the campus but couldn't find her building and asked every passer by who all pointed us in different directions. Philo thought it would be funny to tell people we were from Perth even though we had Victorian licence plates, but it was funny considering he was already drunk!

Made it to Elains place, got ready then went off to this club called Moose Heads which was pretty lame, apparently its heaps better on Uni Nights it was interesting though but a bit tacky!

We then went on to Academy to see the Presets and Riot in Belgium where we danced our booties off! it was so much fun unfortuantly it was only one half of the presets playing and he was more DJing then anything but he did play some Preset songs which was good!

That night I slept like a log and we drove back to Wagga in the early afternoon but not before going into town and buying sushi! OMG did I eat suchi! I love it and it was decently priced and was so good unlike the places in Wagga that sell Sushi!

Arrived home knackered as anything and then continued the weekend which I will write about in another blog!

and so we begin counting

Our last task for MPI104 was to look into counters for our blogs. Now why would a counter be useful, simply to know whether or not your blog is popular. If you have a high hit number then clearly your blog is popular and must be an interesting read to people out there, and if sadly you have quite a low number then maybe your blog isn't doing quite so well and the counter might be a wake up call to be more creative or interesting.

Is there anything you would like to know about who visits your blog? the answer yes. what type of people eg. are my blogs reaching my intended audiences and are the visitors people I don't like who are checking out their competition...

So way back in last term I put a counter on my blog and it was increasing slowly but steadily though the look of the counter itself I've never been happy with as it always sat vertically rather than horizontlly and looked a little silly so I have now rectified that. The counter I was using was from the website 100% Free Counters, the list of 50 things we needed to do for the last assesment had counter on there so I just went to google typed in counters and took the first option (in hind sight probably should have looked around a little bit more).
Anyway I have changed my counter to be the one from Sitemeter and as I my old counter was already at 138 hits I decided to make my starting number that on the sitemeter counter, even though the stats will go from zero.

As I haven't had this counter very long I have no idea where the hits come from or how they are referred to my site nor where do they come from, whether google refers them or how long they stay. Though I feel that in the future these statistics will be very interesting to look at and will help me improve my blog.

So with my Flickr account I can tell how many views each of my photo's has had (other then my own) but it doesn't tell me who the visitors were, though if some one leaves a comment on a photo it tells me who left it and put there display pic up as well so obviously that tells me they were a visitor. On Flickr I can also see if any of my images have been saved as favourite as well as who saved them as a favourite!
I can also see recent activity with my photos for up to a month which is cool!

With Del.icio.us you can see down the side of your page who has added you to their network so they are clearly visitors. Also sites saved by other people especially for you would indicate they are a visitor as they know the types of sites you are interested in! Otherwise I can't really see any other way of knowing if someone has visited my delicious account or not.

I will keep trying to learn more about my visitors but for the mean time I feel I have fulfilled this task.

Peace out!

P.S. for anyone interested my Technorati Authority is now: 14 and my Rank is: 381,304 YAY for me!