Vivalin's Blog

hmm...

2007-12-15T01:16:00.000+11:00

so I'm at a bit of a conundrum this blog was created to comply with an assignment for my Multimedia class however that class has now come to an end (well it did about 6 months ago!) and I am not sure what to do with blog now.

Option one I close this blog down for good. Cos quite frankly it is getting a little annoying still recieving SiteMeter notifications about my blog not receieving any hits cos Im not keeping it updated.

Option two I leave it up and try and check on it occasionally or when i get those SiteMeter notifications and i remember this still exists. Cos I am actually quite proud of the layout and stuff so would be a shame to forget it all together.

Option 3 actually keep it active and try and update it regularly with the ins and outs of my life.

Option four...I have no option four.

So if you feel like offering your opinion on any of the above options oer if you have thought of a 4th option please comment me and tell me you offerings!

Have a safe and merry Christmas

peace and love xx

Assessment Post #2

2007-06-11T21:57:00.000+10:00

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

2007-06-11T21:07:00.000+10:00

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.

2007-06-10T20:47:00.000+10:00

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

2007-06-07T20:29:00.000+10:00

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!

2007-06-06T19:55:00.000+10:00

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

2007-06-05T15:10:00.000+10:00

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

2007-06-04T13:40:00.000+10:00

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!

Technorati

2007-05-22T09:48:00.000+10:00

So for this week we had to create our own Technorati account, at first I was confused as I had no idea what the heck Technorati was. After having a look at the website and talking to fellow classates who had previously signed up for it I kind of started to understand it.

Technorati seems to be a kind of search engine - the article on Wikipedia says it is and works the same as Google. In some ways I think Technorati is similar to Google as it does work along the lines of a search engine only rather than searching through every websites tags for what you are looking for, it only searches through registered blogs for whatever you are looking for.

At the moment my Authority is 10 and my Rank is 517,486. My authority (which is a horrible word!) means how many people have saved my blog as a favourite and my rank is where I come in the technorati ranking system for the most amount of authority and favourites...I think. The smaller your Rank number the closer to the top you are.

Over the next few weeks I will keep watch on my authority and rank number to see if it improves. If you would like to see my Technorati then feel free to have a look!

Aesthetics...?

2007-05-15T09:47:00.000+10:00

What is Aesthic?

Answers.com defines aesthics as "An artistically beautiful or pleasing appearance" which I feel is a good start to the understanding of what aesthics means. I feel there are many componants within defining aethetics such as there should be quality within the look, it should be pleasing visually and the overall feel should be one that doesn't make you feel violenty ill! Aethics is ultimately all about the way something looks and whether or not the viewer finds it attractive or not.

Aestheically pleasing website...

I think the Splendour in the Grass website is one that is visually pleasing, especially for my age group. It uses bright fun colours on a black background but keeps the colours to a minimum of 3 - pink and green for text and red for the fruit. I think it is a lively website that makes you think feel like Splendour is going to be fun weekend outdoors but is not overpowering. It has rotating images of the headlining artists which looks good and is informing at the same time.

I think that Accept Jesus, Forever Forgive is quite possibly the worst website ever for aethtics, this site makes me feel violently ill just being there. The biggest piece of crap I have ever seen with constant flashing background in the colours of the rainbow. What were these people thinking? Apart from that it only has a cluster of links to other pages within the site etc. at the top of the page nothing at all what so ever describing the site or anything. This is a piece of rubbish!

What makes a good website is firstly the content contained within the pages followed by the way it looks, whether or not it is visually pleasing or makes you want to vomit! Also whether or not a site is easy to navigate around and that it is quick at downloading each page.

The difference between web aesthetics and print aesthetics is mainly the font style, as websites need fairly standard font so everyone can read it from all computers as well as it not looking retarded on the screen as it might if it was in cursive script and wouldn't be very easy to read. Where as print is hardcopy so it can have all kinds of fonts and be legiable. Also print can have more detailed images as it doesn't need to consider bandwidth!

XML, RSS, Reader...What The?!

2007-05-08T09:39:00.000+10:00

What is XML?

XML is a markup language for documents containing structured information such as words, pictures etc. A markup language is a mechanism to identify structures in a document. The XML specification defines a standard way to add markup to documents.

In order to appreciate XML, it is important to understand why it was created. XML was created so that richly structured documents could be used over the web. The only viable alternatives, HTML and SGML, are not practical for this purpose.

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What is RSS?

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Users of RSS content use software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators". The user subscribes to a feed by entering a link of the feed into the reader program. The reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it checked, and if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.

The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer to the following standards:
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
RSS formats are specified in XML (a generic specification for data formats). RSS delivers its information as an XML file called an "RSS feed," "webfeed," "RSS stream," or "RSS channel".

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RSS Reader:

Johannes asked us to create a RSS Reader with either Blogline or through our google account. As just before I had to make the decision of which to choose everyone started playing around with their iGoogle accounts and Hannah some how accidentally created her RSS Reader through that which seemed easy enough and she showed me how too so I went along with it and thus my decision was made as to use google or blogline.

I am interested to see how this RSS reader will help me or keep me intriguied by finding new and interesting items for me to view. I'm hoping it will be a great web tool.

Until next time kids...Peace Out and in the words of Maffew: JJ lol!

Time to summarize for Assessment 1 MPI104-2007

2007-05-01T01:03:00.000+10:00

Alright so it is now that time of the term where we are due to be assessed on the work we have done for this class and I am to detail what I have done in this post. It is probably of no interest to anyone except Johannes or whoever marks it, unless you are looking to see how I have set things out, in that case have a squiz and also look at the Metablog for what you are to write about!

For this assignment I had to create a Gmail, Blogger, Flickr and Del.icio.us accounts. I was to go through the checklist and complete tasks (detailed below) as well as show interestingness within my findings. I also had to get involved with the online communities which I feel I have been within the MPI104 classes as well as outside these.

To begin with I need to talk about how my Blog, Del.icio.us and Flickr accounts have been interesting. I feel they have all been interesting as I haven't just stuck with the same topics and styles of sites the whole way through. I've written on different topics, I found many different websites in lots of different areas, and I have hosted lots of different photo's from different events in my life. I've tried to make my accounts broad but also at the same time show an insight to what I am interested in, not just what I think might interest others!

I have frequently added and updated and tried to do the 10 hours a week requirement and I feel I have achieved this, though it is hard to tell as up until Thursday just gone I was on dial up at home and it took a lot longer to do things there then here.

BLOGGER: My Blog account - Vivalin's Blog
☑ user has links in sidebar
☑ user has more than the minimum posts
☑ user has links in posts
☑ user has commented on other people’s posts
☑ user has updated profile
☑ user has uploaded picture for profile
☑ user has experimented with templates
☑ user has experimented with fonts
☑ user has experimented with colours
☑ user has picture/s in post/s
☑ posts have titles
☑ blog has description
☑ has added a list or other page element to their blog
❑ has listed on technorati or similar service
☑ has counter

Initially when we made our blogger, I was like "yep another blog... (as I already used MySpace to blog with)" but I've come to realise it is a lot handier then MySpace at times as it has more features ie. using Flickr to create posts, better layout, easier to archive. I feel I have done well with my blogging for this assessment and have progressed with my style of writing (cutting out some of the rambling) as well as the subjects I write on. I am most please with the following posts: Splendour in the Grass, Something a little more interesting maybe?! and Last post for Assessment 1!. I think all in all I have done 16 posts, which I believe is quite good. I have even done a couple of posts using Flickr to get to Blogger!

Aesthetically at first I was using a template with green as it's theme (as I prefer simple styles) but change to a pink themed one a little while ago. I have put in side links, as well as uploaded an image to the blog and my profile. I also have included a Del.icio.us link roll on the side and a tag one at the bottom of the page (which is in blue writing and partly the reason I changed the template to pink as I felt they went better together), I also put up a slide show of images of my friends and I just to personalise it a bit more.

I have tried to tag each blog according to what I was writing on, and hope I have done it correctly. I've consistently gone and read others blogs from the MPI104 classes and made comments. Occasionally having to use this as a form of "chatting" with someone!

FLICKR: My Flickr account - Vivalin
☑has uploaded pictures
☑has progressively uploaded more pictures
☑ pictures have titles
☑ pictures have descriptions
☑ pictures have MPI104-2007 tag
☑ pictures have tags other than MPI104-2007
☑ user has joined MPI104-2007 group
☑ user has pushed picture/s to MPI104-2007 group
☑ user has contacts
☑ user has joined other groups
☑ user has nominated favorites
☑ user has commented on other user’s pictures
☑ user has profile
☑ user has flickr post on their blog
☑ user has posted working link to this post (or flickr account) on metablog

I created my Flickr account before we set it up in class (only the weekend before mind!) as I had just put my photos from overseas on to the computer and wanted to share them with my friends and they were all using Flickr because of the tagging set up. I really enjoy using Flickr I think it is a great tool for the web to be able to host and show my images to people anywhere in the world and to find other people with similar interests in the style/subject matter of their photos!

Aesthetically I played around with the different formats they had, but as it is a free account they were fairly limited. I chose small images ( I wanted to show more on a page) with sets down the side, I don't like the fact that free accounts get a maximum of 3 sets, I think thats rubbish!

I commented on a few images that I liked or made me laugh: Hannah's Flickr, Erin's Flickr, Matt's Flickr. Also on Flickr I made sure to tag all of my photo's with what they were about ie. For my trip through Europe I mark the appropriate ones with MPI104-2007, along with where the photo was taken (city) and with topdeckgrandeuropeanoct2006 as this was so my fellow travellers on this tour could find and view my photo's just like I had found theirs by searching for that tag.

As I said before I've been uploading images from my trip through Europe as my fellow travellers on the tour I did have all used Flickr to host their images so everyone on the tour can see them and all with the same tag. I've also put up some photo's from my adventures with friends from uni at parties and going out, along with images with my friends from back home and funny images to make people laugh that another mate found on the net with the main subject being animals.

DELICIOUS: My Del.icio.us account - Vivalin's Del.icio.us
☑ has saved bookmarks
☑ has progressively saved more bookmarks
☑ user has integrated delicious into their workflow as a tool
☑ bookmarks have descriptions
☑ bookmarks have tags
☑ user has bundled tags
☑ user has subscribed to tags
☑ appropriate bookmarks have MPI104-2007 tag
☑ user has joined a network
☑ user has saved links for others
☑ user has bookmarked their flickr home page
☑ user has bookmarked their blog home page
☑ user has delicious post in their blog
☑ user has posted working link to this post (or delicious account) on metablog
☑ user has included link roll (or rss feed) on their blog

At first I was a little dumbed out by what to make of Del.icio.us as it didn't really make sense, but after fiddeling around for a short while I worked out it was quite useful. I was able to search for a type of site and it would come up with a big lsit of other peoples and its saved time immensly as most people are only going to save useful sites and it is a lot easier then trudging through all the sites search engines bring up.

So far I have 35 bookmarks saved, but I'm sure this will grow as I keep using. I've saved the regular sites that interest me (mainly bands), but also saved sites about fire twirling as I am beginning to get into this and Del.icio.us was a great place to look for good sites, I've saved bookmarks for Harry Potter fan sites as they keep up to date info from all Harry Potter related sites, and is particularly useful to ind out hidden knowledge for the up coming last book! I've also bookmarked sites that intergrate with my workflow ie. Photobucket, ImageShack etc. a long with sites to do with getting a forklift license as my dad wants me to get one and a site for vegetarian recipes so I can find appealing meals and ask my mum to cook them for me.

I've found Del.icio.us to be the hardest to get into so far but am slowly getting there and gradually understanding what it's all about and am keen to keep using it!

Overall I feel I have completed this task well, I've done nearly all of the checklist points (minus technorati as I wasn't sure what this was) but have at least attempted to try most things and put in the hours! I hope my hard work and effort will also display "interestingness" and be graded accordingly, if not it was a good learning curve!

Last post for Assessment 1!

2007-04-30T23:51:00.000+10:00

Well this is my final post for my MPA104 Assessment 1 and I was trying to think of what to write and to make one final attempt and writing an interesting post and suddenly thought “hey, maybe I could write a blog post on what interestingness (which by the way is not a word) really is". Easier said then done.

My first stop was at Wikipedia. Wiki is a really good online encyclopedia type of website and is often a really good place to start assignments from (though not to cite for an essay as it is not up to University standard of being a reliable source) or at least be pointed in the right direction.
The first thing Wiki gave me for the search “interesting” was the Flickr site, which I found slightly amusing but didn’t feel this was what I wanted to write my blog on.

Next I tried searching for “interestingness” and Wiki brought up related pages which were mainly about interest rates and some on human interest and public interest topics, these may be interesting but it would depend on the content of what the issue they were discussing and again were not really what I was searching for to create this final post about.

Thus I gave up and decided I could not find anything worth while to write my final post on interesting about, but didn’t want to leave this post at that. So I have decided to write a little bit about what I’ve been doing in the hope it will be of some interest (Oh my God, can I write interesting any more times!).

Well to begin with I have now moved back into Stewards B Block! And it is still really great and it has been fantastic to see all my friends again, I can’t believe how much I have missed them and it was only a 3 week break!

Last term everyone brought with them belongings from their rooms at home to make their Stewards room feel more homely and I guess to make them less homesick as well as helping them settle in easier. Me being the type to not think about stuff like went “Pfft! As if I need those things, I’ll be right, there’s no need!” and I was alright, it’s not like I died or anything but I did miss being around some of my belongings I was used to seeing every day. This time around I have brought back with me so much stuff it’s ridiculous. I have successfully unpack (minus connecting my printer yet) and have decorated my room with posters and photos, as well as memento’s from my trip abroad to Europe last year, so I have all my shot glasses on my shelves that I collected from every country I visited while I was away! Other than moving back I’ve also been taking a new path in the styles of music I listen too.

During the holidays I went through a massive Beatles stage, I’ve always enjoyed listening to the Beatles but really only knew off their number 1 hits. I like most styles of music, usually I listen to punk, rock, indie, alternative so this was a little of the normal track for me. My favourite song by the Beatles is “I am the walrus” which just before the holidays Elise and I constantly played/ sang while we studied/ did folio work for Crazy Lady class and I think this is what lead me to have to keep listening to them, I also found my friend had put quite a few of the Beatles albums on to my Ipod which was handy!

They are my mum’s favourite band and anytime we were on long car journey they were our compromise as I couldn’t handle her listening to talk back radio and she couldn’t stand listening to my normal music. I also wanted to learn more about the “Fab Four” so Googled them and got the official site which gave a quite good though brief overview look at the biography of the Beatles, I really enjoyed reading this style of writing as it was brief yet informative and well written! I did want to see if I could find something else on them and found this good Fan Site which gave a longer biography of them as well as lots of little snippets of information and trivia facts.

As well as going back in time and listening to the Beatles, I also started getting into dance/ house music which I think may be due to the fact living here in Wagga and going out so much there are so many Sydney/ Canberra folk who listen to this genre and it has rubbed off on me. During the holidays I really got in The Presets which I think are a Melbourne band and are fantastic to dance too I’m particularly fond of their tracks “Are you the one?” and “I go hard, I go home”.
Another good Aussie dance band I was listening to quite frequently is Sneaky Sound System who are from Sydney and they are brilliant I absolutely love their songs “Pictures”, “UFO” and “I love it” they are great tracks to have played whilst out dancing the night away!

I am really enjoying listening to these different styles of music that generally I would have just brushed to one side and never given a chance! I’m loving learning about new things, it’s great!
This is Viv signing off for MPA104 Assessment 1 (even though I have to write another post for Johannes to actually pass!)

something a little more interesting maybe?!

2007-04-25T21:50:00.000+10:00

Hello fellow bloggers/readers! How are we all? I'm not too bad, am still stressing a little that I haven't done my work thoroughly enough and that my things aren't interesting. So in another attempt to create interestingness I've decided to put a small bit of my art work I did at the end of Year12 but not for my VCE.

I finished Year 12 in 2005, and as I was applying for uni courses that were all in the area of the arts I, like I'm sure most of you had to do, had to have interviews and show my folio at the different universities I was appyling for.

Now one uni/course, aside from wanting an interview and a look at my folio also set us the task of creating a story board to send in before our interviews. Now we were given four; for lack of a better word "topics" which were:
- Don't look down
- End of the line
- The fan
- and there was a fourth but I have forgotten it.

There were some guidelines to this story board it had to be told in 10 frames, using drawing, collage or photography as the medium. The last two frames needed to tell a moral to the story or be a twist or something along those lines.

I decided to choose the "topic" The Fan, and most things that come to mind when you hear those words are like a football fan or a fan of a band or something like that. I started thinking along a different line of like ceiling fans or air cons and then it came to me, pedestal fans! From there I created the story of my friend Mulla falling in love with this Pedestal Fan and dating it on a date.

So I have created a slide show with the photographs I took for this task and put them in this blog for you to view. As it's on a bit of a loop the first image to view from is that of my friend offering flowers to the Pedestal Fan at the front door.

Let me know what you think etc.

Enjoy!

Splendour in the Grass

2007-04-23T19:48:00.000+10:00

Well guys and girls it has been like 5 days since I wrote my last post *shock horror* and for some reason decided to re-read Johannes' Blog post from back in the last week of school, and am now starting to freak out, that although I've completed quite a lot of that checklist there is still a lot that I feel I haven't covered thoroughly enough; especially for what we are ment to link in our final blog before emailing it to Johannes! I was told by Matt the other week that I ramble too much and that my stuff isn't interesting and now I am doubley freaking that I will fail from lack of interestingess!!! ARGH! Anywho, so for this post I decided to write about the festival Splendour in the Grass.

Last week a friend's sister asked me if I had seen the line up for Splendour in the Grass cos Triple J had annouced it and she said it was quite impressive, telling me that they had announced Bloc Party were playing. So off I toddled to Splendour In The Grass.com and pretty much had a heart attack by the shock of how great the line up was! So many of my favourite bands are going to be playing there!

Splendour in the Grass is a music festival being held at the start of August (6th-8th I think) for a weekend up in Byron Bay, so basically great music along with camping for a whole weekend!

As I said before Bloc Party was announced last week to be one of the main acts, they will be playing on the Sunday. For Bloc Party who reign all the way from Britain this will be their second appearence at Splendour, with the release of their new album A weekend in the city. I haven't yet listened to this, but if it is anything like their first album Silent Alarm then I have lots to look forward too!

Also playing at the festival and hailing from Britain is another one of my favourite bands, the Arctic Monkeys they too have just released a new album (came out today) Favourite worst nightmare with the first single being Brainstorm - it's similar to older stuff by the Arctic Monkeys but a little more edgier and a lot faster, I'm not sure whether I like the song or if my doubt comes from the crappy download I got. The Arctic Monkeys will also be playing on the Sunday.

Yet another band coming over from the UK to play (there are lots of them!) at Splendour and the one I am most excited about, the Kaiser Chiefs! They are also another band to release a new album Your's Truly, Angry Mob with the first single being Ruby. This album I feel is not as good as their first album Employment, but it would be very hard to make another album to this standard and Your's Truly is still a great effort and still worth a listen! I am so excited for them to be playing, I saw them live at a festival in England last year and it was an amazing performance, so hopefully this one will be as well!

There are quite a few other British artists playing (Lily Allen) as well as lots of local produce including Powderfinger (as they are bringing out a new album), Hilltop Hoods, Grinspoon and Josh Pyke.

I have decided I desperately want to go to Splendour in the Grass, even if it will take us like 2 days to get there, and Matt and I have talked about organising a group and driving up there! So anyone interested in going should so totally come, it will be well worth it. Tickets go on sale on the 12th of May I think and are $185, then in addition to this ticket you need another ticket to camp (these sell out very, very quickly) which is a further $115, I know it's expensive but for a great weekend who cares. To buy the tickets you also need to have access to a credit card as ringing in to buy is the only form of purchase as they print your name and birthday on the ticket to stop scalping.

One great weekend, hopefully a good group of friends, brilliant bands, camping, lots of fun and a mad road trip! Come on guys lets go to Splendour in the Grass 2007!

Until next time when hopefully everyone wants to go to Splendour, Peace Out!

P.S. For any of you interested, in a post I wrote last week on the Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala wanting to know who two comdeians were I finally found out who the Welsh guy is, he was on Spicks and Specks as well as on Rove last night; his name is Mark Watson and he is HI-LAR-IOUS!

Nuh uh Not cool!

2007-04-18T20:21:00.001+10:00

Shark!
Originally uploaded by Vivalin.

So I've been updating my Flickr account adding in some funny images a mate found on th netz... anywho long story short went to put them into a set and it wouldn't let me!

Apparently free account holders are limited to only 3 sets which I already have. I really like sets they make my photos feel organised, they make me feel organised...and clean (yeah I'm not OCD! lol!).

Anywho this is a rant at Flickr I think thats a really uncool thing to do, how does letting me have unlimited Sets affect them in any way, its just makes things neater and organised! If you go on to Flickr Pro you can have more/unlimited (not sure on this still reading up) but I can't afford to upgrade my account I'm a student for Christ's sake! ARGH! Not happy Jan!

That is all

The rubbish on television these days!

2007-04-18T15:48:00.000+10:00

So as most people in our course know...especially those that live on campus, in all common rooms we get Austar YAY! this is a great privilege to me as mum would always say "you watch too much TV as it is, if we got Austar you'd never leave the house" which at the time is fair to say accurate.

Though I've noticed at uni we mainly only have Channel [V] and MTV going and watch a lot of the music channels and basically never switch over to ordinary TV, not that we actually watch that much only if no one is around to talk rubbish with.

Now being back at home I am forced to watch ordinary TV, and as I haven't been watching ordinary TV I have gotten very far behind in my soaps (Neighbours and Home & Away) though I was already 3 months behind after coming back from overseas. Any who trying to catch up with them these holidays has been extremely hard, all these new people and story lines and I've decided they really are a waste of my time! But too move on to some worse rubbish...

Today while eating my lunch I decided to pop the tele on and on Prime was this competition show from America called Master of Champions and what I was watching was Interpretive Pizza Throwing - two teams who each did a different "dance of interpretation" whilst throwing pizza dough bases in the air, I don't know about the rest of you, but this seems the lamest competition ever! I couldn't believe there even was a challenge out there like this and that people were wanting to enter it. How do you interpret pizza dough tossing?

The next guy to come on was a little better he wanted to beat his own personal record of juggling fire whilst dancing on one of those arcade dance machines with the arrows and to complete 250 combinations on the dance machine in 2 minutes. The poor guy missed out by 1 combination, I felt sorry for him. It was very impressive, just to be able to juggle fire is impressive, or to dance on one of those machines but to do both was impressive!

If you would like to watch this show it seems to be on most days at 2pm on Prime for those in the country, but not sure about those with Channel 7.

Even if I felt that second guy who danced and fire twirled was impressive, the interpretive pizza tossing put that show into the LAME box! and after those two acts I had to switch over I couldn't handle it any more!

Whilst trying to find some images to put with this post as well as a link to some more information for those interested in the show, I stumbled upon another website which is for the US Official Dough Throwers team, it has video tutorials to learn off as well as dates of upcoming events, including a demo in Sydney in September!

Any who that's my little random rant about rubbish television. Maybe I will make another post later...we will see!

Peace Out!

...and another thing

2007-04-17T23:16:00.000+10:00

Last night my friends and I also watched the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala which was absolutely hilarious, and I've been trying to find some kind of website or at least a review of the show but can't find anything. What I'm looking for is to find out the names of two comedians, one was Welsh and wore a yellow shirt and spoke very fast and sounded like he was on crack but boy was he funny!

The other is an Aussie bloke I think or maybe British he had a red top on and one gag was about his mum embarrassing him in a spa bath that himself, his mum, dad, and dogs were all swimming in and his mum made a joke about everyone in the Spa having sucked on her nipples! The way he said it was side splitting!

Anywho if anyone finds a review or article or anything or know who either of these two comedians are I would very much appreciate knowing!

One other thing to ask the help of everyone is...I have a display picture up, but I put it up by going through Customize and adding picture that way, but this doesn't count as a profile image does it? How do I host an image in my profile, I clicked on the link beside the box thingy and downloaded those Hello and Picasa programs but cant seem to work out from there how to host an image! Again help much appreciated!

If you didn't see the Gala and some kind person taped it and lets you borrow it, DO IT! It's rate funny!

Peace Out

Melbourne Adventures...if you could call them that

2007-04-17T20:28:00.000+10:00

Hello guys and girls or anyone who reads this (which probably isn't anyone except Matt, Erin and Hannah!). I have just returned today from 4 nights in Victoria's capital to wonderful ye ol' Shepparton...

Last Thursday night I was hanging out with Katie, Ikkin, Duston and Ricky Hoare (lol his name still cracks me up after knowing him for like 10 years!), and Katie told me she was heading back to Melbourne on the Friday to go back to Deakin Uni (sucks to be a Vic uni student! go CSU!) and to go see Dave Hugh's (sucks to be a poor uni student =( ) in the Melbourne comedy festival with her brother. So on the spot decided I still needed to catch up with mates living down there so asked if I could hitch a ride and thats what I did. After a bit of bother with Centrelink and going to pick up my car, we eventually left Shepp at like half 2.

I got dropped of in the suburb Moonee Ponds which for those of you playing at home is next suburb over from Essedon, where 4 of my very best mates (Hanora, Lucas, Undies and Justin) all live together.

In between me getting back from abroad and Uni starting which was only like 5 weeks, I spent most of that time down in Moonee Ponds just hanging with this lot, couple of parties, many adventures, lots random shinanigans and a lot of WII and Guitar Hero and net nerding! So I always have fun whenever I go there as anything could happen. This time however wasn't as eventful as everyone was working or going to TAFE and Undies had her mum and sister down to stay and Justin was being a prick and some new girl moved in who I didn't know and that left me feeling weirded out.

But anywho we spent the weekend bumming around, on Saturday I got my sushi finally! (Wagga sucks for sushi not being readily available) and we went out to a Japanese resturant that night as well, which the food wasn't as enjoyable as I had hope =( that day Lucas and I had also gone and hung with Baz over in Kennsington as he is getting evicted and they were having a open house and we were supposed to go a keep Baz company but got a little lost on the way...plus we stopped for sushi!

That night (Saturday) we had all planned on going out clubbing in the city, but everyone is silly and wouldn't come with me and Hanora so we went on our own. We were heading for this club called Bang! which Hanora often goes to and said would be fun, and the new girl in the house (Bridget) goes there so often she has a list at the door which gets her friends in cheaper and she arranged for us to be on a list that night which was cool!

Anywho this club Bang! is an alternative club with an area for Punk/Emo stuff, then a room for retro and dancier type stuff and upstairs is the metal room. At first it was lame, but a few red bulls later and actually running into people I knew it was great fun, me and Hanora danced for a solid 4 hours straight! It was intense! We only went to the one club as everywhere has cover charges and we are poor! But we left Bang! sometime after 4 which I feel is a good effort!

Sunday brought about some tiredness and very sore legs and feet from all the dancing (poor Hanora had to work) and my sudden guilt that it had been like 2 days without homework! YIKES! Though on Saturday i rose early and took a roll of film to make sure I was using the camera correctly. So decided Sunday was the day to take some more photos for our Photography Assignment. I don't know how well these photos will turn out, I kind of have the ideas behind them but keep thinking negative thoughts about them. Anywho everyone was again working, being with family, or being a prick, so Lucas and I headed off on the adventure of Maccas first followed by photo taking.

I had messaged dad the night before and asked him where abouts in Melbz were these specific things I wanted to take photos off and he had said Hoddle street near kew and Johnston street near Collingwood. Undies mum had also said there were some right by Highpoint shopping centre in Moonee Ponds. So rather then drive all the way across the city we thought we would go to Highpoint then for some bizarre reason Lucas asked me if the streets dad gave me were near the suburb Fitzroy and I said yes Johnston street runs through it. He then had a mad spaz attack and was like "last year when I lived in the city I found this mad arse house that i want to live in, we'll go to these streets and I'll show you the house!".

A little while later we were in Fitzroy and I remembered my dads cousin lived here and that their last name was Mohr and Lucas was telling me the street the house was on was Moor street and I was like that sounds familiar but might just be becuase of there last name. Turned into the street and I was like "this looks familiar, my cousins own that building there on the corner, and thats there house next door" Lucas was gobsmacked and was like (you're bullshitting me, that's the house I wanted to show you". Lol so it turned out Lucas had stumbled onto my cousins house last year and fallen in love with it...how freaky is that!

So we went on to take my photo's which was cool, cos we kept taking random streets around Hoddle, Johnston and Brunswick and finding cool things to photograph because of all the culture around that area. Hopefully these images will work and it wasn't too dark for them!

Monday we slept and bummed some more, Lucas and I hung out again cos everyone was again doing stuff. We went down Puckle street and got more sushi, then went back to the house and became net nerds. People around them are rich and stupid and before uni started we worked out we could use their neighbours wireless internet. So I hooked my laptop up for that to happen. Does this count as stealing? We are still in our house using our computers and they have not set an area limit on their wireless...is this illegal or just morally wrong? Your comments on this would be appreciated.

Monday nigth everyone pitched in some money and we went to the supermarket and bought food too cook up a storm...which I did! YAY me! I made stirfry with noodles for 8 people, I'm pretty darn proud of that effort!

So Tuesday brought about an early rise to shower/ pack/ play guitar hero all before heading off for the station to catch my train home!

Until my next blog, Peace out!
*hearts*
Viv

P.S. has anyone else finished their photography assignment or know exactly what they are doing for it? I feel lost!

Some stuff about me...

2007-04-12T15:28:00.001+10:00

Hey Guys, I said I would try and blog as often as possible so here we go for the second day in a row! I have been on the net for like 4 hours doing all the stuff Joh wants us to do, though this is prolly longer then is should take as I am using crappy dial but thank God am in the process for getting broadband YAY! So lets continue...

So I finished year 12 in 2005 and decided rather then go straight to uni I would take a Gap year (had planned on doing this since forever!). Beginning of April 2006 off I went flying straight into Glasgow Airport on the west coast of Scotland, I flew with my grandma who had been out staying with us for about 4 months and we were met by my aunty. We then drove over to the other side of the country (it's not really that big of a country!) to the capital city Edinburgh, which would be my home for the next 10 months.

The plan was to have fun and travel, but also to work so I could get that independant living allowance thing from Centrelink. Did take some time to get a job with me beginning to stress about running out of money and being quite home sick but after about a month I evetually found a job through the website Gumtree.com I highly recommend this site for all you budding travellers out there, has sections for most major cities and is aimed at Aussies, Kiwi's and Safa's; and under these sections you can look for jobs or put your CV up so potential employers can find it, you can find places to live through buying/letting or renting, you can buy and sell belongings and there are also groups on there so you can make friends with similar interests if you don't know anyone where you are! Brilliant site.

Anywho the job I applied for was a hotel maid (not the most stylish job, but I needed money) so after emailing through my CV my future boss replied asking me if I would consider taking up there office job as there receptionist was heading off very shortly. Now do you really think I would turn down that offer...clean toilets or answer phones! The next week I went off for an interview and they met me at the station as the place is about half an hour out of Edinburgh. It was a little daunting the interview but I just tried to be bubbly and happy and it worked lol! They asked me if I would like to have a trial two days later when they had a conference, which I ended up waiting at the dinner for the Famous Grouse conference (Famous Grouse is like the biggest whiskey producers in Scotland!).

Anywho I started out just working on the estate to see how this side of the business ran, then two weeks later started in the office, the job was only ment to be until the end of July maybe a bit into August. I answered phones, and emailed people and sent out lots of wedding brochures and did some other strange tasks, one day I had to collect a wedding cake from Edinburgh and bring it out with me on the train...that was scary!

I should probably explain what the company was cos it is very confusing as it isn't actually a hotel its a private house. Basically the Spurways who were my bosses had 4 companies run from this sporting estate. The estate had a Georgian Masion on it and 3 lodges and these were all let out for weddings and conferences and things like that, this side of the business was just known as Harburn House as that was the name of the masion/estate ( images on the side are of the House and the drive up to the House cos I think they are pretty!). Then there were two shotting companies which is how we were a sporting estate these were Harburn Shooting and Dykefoot Shooting.
Then the fourth company was actually more Mr Spurways side which was a Christmas Tree Farm, infact the largest in Britain. and I worked in the office which was like the hub for all of these companies as they all at peak season of the year. I ended up making the job last til Christmas lol considering it was only meant to be 2 months!

I worked with some really great people there and I had an awesome time, my bosses were brilliant and knew that I was on my gap year and if I wanted time off to go travelling they were fine with it.

During the year I went to Scotland (obviously), Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Germany, Brussels, Monaco and Sweden. Most of the countries I visited when I did a month long tour with Topdeck Tours which are exactly the same as Contiki, but better! I did the Grand European Tour was brilliant! If you go to my Flickr account and go to the set Europe 2006 you can see my photos from this tour, though I still have lots to put up, I'm just running out of my allowance for the month!

Soo...that was a little bit more info about me and what I got up to last year and what my job was about, maybe I will go more in depth on some of the other places I went to in another post!

Until next time, stay safe and have fun!

Many random things to talk about

2007-04-11T15:13:00.000+10:00

So this is my first post since the "non-contact" period started, AKA Holidays! As my title suggests I have many things on my mind at the minute and could make them all into seperate blogs but they could be quite brief and un-interesting, which is not what we are after considering we want to pass! Then again I do have that ability to ramble, so we will see how we go!

I do very much want to pass this subject so have set myself the task of not only getting everything on that checklist that Jo posted but to also blog as often as I used to last year! So...

Lets begin with the fact it is now Wednesday believe it or not, and I got back from Sydney last night after spending a wonderful Easter weekend there visiting family and some friends from uni which was really cool!

I stayed on campus Thursday night, even though the majority of people left that day, so it was a little eerie with no one being around, it was like a ghost town! But I had a few friends still there and Austar and my mum stayed with me that night as we were both going up to Sydney together on Friday.

Spent Friday night with Erin (she is in one of the other MPI104 classes!) and she lives in a massive house and it is very impressive! We went to a girl she went to school with party, they had a list and everything you needed to be on to get in which I found realy strange, but anywho my name was on it which was cool, but the party was lame and it was an 18th so I felt bad for the girl. We left the party early and went and hung in the car park at some local park with some of Erins friends, this made me feel underage all over again, but it was still interesting to see how city kids/Erin live and how different it is from the country.

Saturday we bummed and jus did normal lazy Easter Weekend things. Sunday was pretty much the same, everyone went to church except me cos I am a REBEL! and sleep is so much better then church! Easter eggs were good, though I felt sick by that night, and it was jus a very relaxing day as lame as that sounds.

On Monday I went over to Elise's (another friend from uni) house in the Northern Beaches, when she said she lived ages away from the city I didn't think it was that far but it was! She's another person with a massively impressive house where you can see the sea, I'm so jealous of these Sydney folk! So Monday was another bumming day, we watched her favourite movie, Frequency (this link takes you to a bit of a review on the movie) which I really enjoyed and would recommend others to watch.

So that was my Easter weekend, doesn't sound like much but if I went on and on you would stop reading so there was no point!

I'm now not sure whether to keep going with all the random thoughts running through my head because this is already pretty long and I don't know how much people will bother with reading it, so maybe it would be wise of me to break all these thoughts up into seperate blogs. At least I will be able to achieve my goal of constant blogging!

Until next time... be good!

Flickr

2007-03-27T10:27:00.001+10:00

Me
Originally uploaded by Vivalin.

Todays task was to set up a Flickr account, and be part of yet another online community. Luckily i already had a Flickr account...as I set it up on the weekend when I put all my Gap Year photos on to my computer. Everyone that I was on a tour with during October and November last year has hosted there images from that trip on Flickr making them accessable to all of us that want them as we are all putting the same tags on our images.

I think Flickr is a brilliant tool to have an account with, as everyone who got images on my trip that i missed out on, I can now view them all as one...and knick them if I feel the need!

We were also asked to join a pool, though my friends from my trip were not belonging to any pool associated with our trip so i decided to create one and will send out invitations to them all, and then we will all be able to keep in contact in a much easier way then some of us emailing some and not others, this way all can see what is written and keep in touch!

I feel I should also head out and find pools that are of interest to me, maybe some of my other friends from back home have Flickr accounts, or maybe I will find some complete random pool that just interests me and see what happens!

To finish up I like Flickr, I now just need to get into gear and upload the rest of my holiday photos, then create other sets and put in non-holiday photos!

Until next time, I will leave you with the link to my Flickr account link so you can view the few images i have uploaded!

Peace Out

Del.icio.us account

2007-03-20T09:51:00.000+11:00

Soo...I just wrote another blog moments ago trying to rectify my blog from last week so as to make it into the Random Student Blog spot, but felt that I needed to create another post to talk about this weeks topic of Del.icio.us, as I guess this is what we are being accessed on!

After reading all the information in the BA-MA blogspot i headed over to Del.icio.us to create my account. After Jo explained some things about (mainly rambled etc.) I went to a couple of sites that I found interesting and tagged them to my account to see how it all worked.

After doing so, and looking at Vanderwal's bookmarks things started to click upstairs and I began to see the advantages of having a Del.icio.us account. Not only can I post a whole swag of links that i enjoy so that they are all in one spot together but I can also give my friends the link to my account and they can go to my tags and see what I'm talking about without having to think about 8 bajillion web addresses that I think are great.

I think everyone linking to each other will be brilliant we can all find new and wonderful sites out there that our friends know about. Also being able to find other del.icio.us users with similar interests to me will introduce me to new sites!

This link will take you to my Del.icio.us account! hope you enjoy the few tags I have made!

Rectifying last weeks blog!

2007-03-20T09:35:00.000+11:00

Alrighty then, this is my second blog using blogspot. Apparently my post last week wasn't up to scratch compared to other blogs last week, so I must rectify this to make it into the Random Student Blog section under our BA-MA blogspot, so as not to fail.

I have gone in and read a couple of other students blogs from last week (some students in my class, some from others) and most seem to say general things about where they are from what course they do, likes/dislikes etc. etc. so maybe I should go down this path briefly to try and gain some points to get me into that Random Student Blogs section I want to be in so badly. I am meant to be writing on the topic of Del.icio.us but think I will write a seperate blog for that!

sooo here goes, sopme facts about me:

- My names Viv
- I'm 19, almost 20 which really scares me
- I do a double degree of Multimedia and Photography
- I'm from a town called Shepparton in country Victoria
- I finished school in 2005 at Notre Dame College
- I took 2006 off and went travelling through Europe
- I lived most of 2006 in Edinburgh
- I love Scotland and all things Scottish
- I hate waking up in the morning

I think that sums me up enough for now and hopefully I have rectified myself enough to get acknowledged and gain a Randon Student Blog spot, and with that I will leave you once again!

First Blog - titles are lame

2007-03-13T09:33:00.000+11:00

As you may guess from my title I hate creating titles as they are lame and too hard to think of at the time, along with the fact you always run out of characters before you've finished writing what you want your title to say and most of the time people honestly don't care what the title is!

I enjoy rambling and many blog I have written end up with a lot of ramblings and nonscence. I have been blogging for some time now, but have always used a different blog site up until now that was more appropriate for my needs. As I was overseas last year and used blogs as a way of writing my thoughts down of my travels as well as my friends back home being able to read and keep up to date with everything I was doing. If you would like a read of my blogs from overseas (I believe there is 50 odd of them) then please visit MySpace Blog.

I believe for the time being I have nothing further to say as I find it extremely difficult to think about what I am typing and listening to Jo at the same time, along with the fact he seems to keep getting cranky because me and my fellow classmate Matt who I am sitting next to keep helping each other out, rather then nagging Jo all the time we have chosen to work things out amongst ourselves...we are NOT chatting!

Until the next time I am urged to blog Peace Out!

Viv