Uh oh, PDP again.

So here we are at the end of the second year. For all the hard work and sleepless nights, it has flown by. Now PDP rears its head once again, and I admit with all the deadlines and work placement stuff, I had completely forgotten about it, and my blog. I am not a natural blogger it seems, for when stuff happens to me I don’t feel the need to share it with everyone.

This is probably because deep down I don’t see why anyone would care, or indeed even read about stuff on my blog, but that is probably because I simply haven’t written much of interest on it. It’s all a vicious cycle. I know many other IMPs are equally disdainful of the whole blogging thing, but then some are very enthusiastic I would imagine.

As far as my personal development over the year goes, I’d say its probably in line with what the tutors and whatnot would hope for. I’ve learnt some stuff, and done some stuff, and it’s all been pretty interesting and challenging for the most part. I have enjoyed and hated this year in equal measure, though the hatred fades with time and retrospect.

My plans for work expereience didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped either, mainly because of my extreme limitiations in where exactly I can do it. London is simply out of my price range for renting and too far from where I’m based to commute. I had hoped to find something inBournemouth, but my lease runs out too soon to do a full 6 weeks, and bournemouth placements are unsurprisingly rare anyways. As it is it looks as if I shall be working with my half-brother, doing some php e-commerce stuff for the shop he runs. Dull no doubt, but probably quite useful.

Bring on the 3rd year.

Politics

I was considering the question posed for our short theory assignment. Where is a media space where people can discuss and debate politics? Well, it seems to me that against all preconceptions about the role of web2.0 media sharing sites like youtube, they actually make a good forum for creating political awareness.

Most people are only exposed to politics through mainstream media, mostly newspapers and television. Very few people actually read manifestos etc. most of us get our ideas about politics and politicans from news shows and video clips.

This is where Youtube and their ilk come in, being the ultimate resting place of pretty much anything that has ever been committed to video, politics makes its entrace. Perhaps most notably at the moment is the huge spate of Ron Paul related media on the web. These videos spark heated debate in the comments and generate even more discourse through video responses and so on. While this may not be picked up upon by actual politicians and mainstream media, this does create a greater degree of political awareness in people who may be otherwise indifferent or apathetic about politics and politicians.

Ultimately if it makes people curious to learn more about political issues, then it is having an effect on the political landscape, even if only minor.

Give me content!

So my website is more or less finished. It’s live and running, though a couple of minor formatting glitches need sorting. It works though. So, now I need content! This means YOU! (whoever you are, if you are anyone.) in the unlikely event that you are reading my blog, I urge you to visit http://impserver.bournemouth.ac.uk/~ascott/index.php and register. It’s quick, painless and then you can post some awesome pictures and help me to not fail! everyone wins.

Second life, scary shiznazz

So i made my second life character. Unlike what seems like the majority of second lifers who want to create attractive sex dolls, i decided to see how the customisation options could be pushed a little harder. I recreated yoda, kitted him out with a lightsaber and a sexy robe, all built by myself. I then proceeded to find a porn island and wander amongst the orgies waving my lightsaber, spouting wisdom to see if anyone would comment. They didn’t. but on the brightside, I found a room with a bong and some crack.

Year 2 – Enter the PHP

So, here beginith the lessons.

Year 2 of BAIMP has begun, and we are now in the opening stretch of the first project, a collaboratively authored community based website. Well not so much collaboratively authored, but certainly the content will be collaborative since it is meant to be the input of the aforementioned community.

Quite what I’m going to do still eludes me at the moment, but that is not yet of prime importance, since I still don’t know enough php and mySQL to actually make anything anyways. This is important though, PHP and mySQL databases are the bigguns in the interactive media world. I suspect almost every job I do if and when i graduate will involve php and mySQL in some way shape or form. Flash is all good and pretty, but its the database rooted websites that make money and create communities, without which any website is doomed to fail.

In the Web 2.0 world, people expect to be able to comment, to sign up and talk about things, to add their own media to their favourite websites. Pretty much every web phenomonen includes a php based community based interactive side to it, even if its just a comments system.

Most people immediately think of facebook, myspace and youtube when they think of community based websites, but pretty much every website of interest I can think of has community building in some part.

I wish we had more demonstrations to get our heads round this, the real meat and potatoes of interactive media. God forbid they sack one of our demonstrators, as it is we’ve only got 2 who are already spread over some 150 odd imp students spread over 3 years.

Deep!

Since I have a swanky new “Deep Shiznazz” section, I thought I might as well use it. I am afterall in a bloggy mood, something I haven’t been in for several months. So here goes.

Morality is something that gets bandied about a lot these days. Not morality itself obviously, being conceptual in nature, it would be impressive if someone could actually bandy it about.

What I mean is that everyone uses the word morality in their agenda. And no one ever seems prepared to admit that morality is purely subjective and ever shifting. Everyone seems convinced it is some kind of absolute, something unchangable and concrete.

When the yanks want to justify their invasion of Iraq, they quote morality. Saddam was immoral, he was evil. When the Islamic radicals want to justify their attacks on Americans they also quote morality. Americans are immoral, they are evil. Both sets of people are pretty convinced they are right and the other is wrong. Yet, being conceptual, how can morality ever be anything other than subjective? The very fact that it only exists within our minds means that its meaning is shaped by our minds. Which means that to every different person to a greater or lesser extent, morality means something different, and when cultural differences are greater, so too is the concept of morality.

Religious people like to say that morality is something ordained and handed down to us by God, that without God (by whatever name you call him) there is no morality. I use Christianity as an example here because it is the religion I am most familiar with. Chrisitans cherry pick which parts of the Bible they adhere to. For example, there are many parts of the bible that condone slavery, murder and a myriad of other nasty things that in our modern society are considered immoral. Now the very fact that Christians choose to ignore these parts of the Bible indicates that they get their sense of morality from some OTHER source, namely society itself. Over the hundreds of years of our society certain practices have become seen as distasteful, and later immoral. Equally certain practices have gone from being the height of evil to acceptable. Society evolves and changes because of people’s ever shifting ideas and situations. It is a complex dance that takes generations, and is a testament to how interconnected we all really are.

Which is why our morality here in the western world is different from other culture’s morality. You see, there is no Right and Wrong. there is only what is socially acceptable and unacceptable. Its a finely detailed sketch in greyscale, ratehr than a simplistic illustration in black and white. People who say “society has lost its sense of morality” speak nonsense, because society and its norms and practices are what dictates what is moral. It’s not that we have become immoral, its just that standards for morality are shifting.

Homosexuality for example is something that many conservatives and religious folk brand immoral. It is wrong; the Bible says so. the Bible of course also says that people who work on the Sabbath should be stoned to death. Yet this facet of Bible brand morality is not so hotly adhered to. Why? Because our society moved away from seeing stoning people for working on the sabbath as an acceptable practice many hundreds of years ago. It is now socially accepted that working on the sabbath is ok. However, acceptance of homosexuals is still relatively new, only a few generations old really. In a hundred years people will look back and think we were savages for condemning homosexuals as immoral in the same way that we look back at the witch hunts and think the inquisitors were savages for carrying out God’s will to suffer not witches to live, by burning every poor woman who happened to have a wart on her nose or who could tell the difference between poisonous mushrooms and happy mushrooms.

Our social morality is what shapes our religious morality, not the other way around. Otherwise we’d be neck high in slaves and people being stoned.

Enough ranting for today, who knows if I am lucky I might get shouted down (figuratively) by some fanatic. Never argue with fanatics, because they aren’t listening. You can’t debate with someone who has already made up his mind, you can only make him look stupid so other people won’t join him in his opinion.

Back to PDP.

Don’t look back in anger

And don’t let the title fool you. I hate Oasis. Well, hate is a bit strong. I like three of their songs, the rest are just a bit samey and whiny.

Moving on, as I write my PDP essay, I have gotten to thinking over the past year and how it has gone. Time really does fly when youre having fun, and it has been a really fun year. A few bits and peices of intense drama I could have done without, but that is always the case I’m sure. I am kinda sadthat the first year is ending, and that next year I will have to actually work hard. And the bastard work placement I will have to find next summer. I really hate work placements. But it must be done, and so it shall be done. I will approach next year as I approach all things in life, I will just muddle along and cross every bridge when I come to it.

I never have been much of one for planning ahead too far. That’s one of the things about this essay I don’t like, I can barely plan what I am going to do in two weeks, let alone in a year. I guess thats the point, its sposed to help me be a more organised person etc etc, planning ahead so on and so forth. It’s just not a genetic trait for me I think. No one in my family is any good at planning anything. I never know what anyone is doing right up until they do it, and I am kinda the same.

Anyways, back to reminiscing. It has been an eventful year,m which is why it seems weird how short it feels. So much has happened but at the same time it feels like its only been a couple of months, rather than almost a year. I thought college sped by, Uni is going even faster.

Anyways, enough blogging for now, it’s just an excuse for not finishing my PDP essay I shall get back to writing the cursed thing now, it’s slowly getting there, tho I don’t think its very good. And luckily they’ve supplied me with a handy self-evaluation form as well, so i get the joy of telling them that i don’t think its very good and why -.-; Self-evaluation is another thing I have long had a problem with, but thats another rant for another day.

Hmmm, PDP

So it’s been a while since my last post. I doubt anyone will read any of this anywyas. Oh yes, except for the loevely people who mark my PDP essay which will have a URL for this. Hmmm. PDP, to be honest, I think it is a bit of a silly thing. I kind of understand the message and motive behind it, but is a “skills audit” and a “reflective essay” really the best way to encourage students to develop their skills, both in terms of media and just general professionalism?

I suspect not. It seems like we are trying to quantify something which isnt really quantifiable. I don’t generally analyse myself, and draw up detailed “action plans” to improve whatever my analysis finds lacking. No, life is much more fluid and organic. If we feel we suck at something we work towards improving naturally, organically without doing something as contrived as drawing up an “action plan”. The whole thing just makes me think of stupid corporate initiatives to improve staff morale by ordering employees to hug each other 3 times a day and file reports detailing how happy each hug made them.

I guess some people do function in a less organic way than I do though. I suppose an action plan for improvement might be useful for the kind of person who needs structure to function. My girlfriend for example would be lost without her diary, in which she dutifully notes down every little thing she needs to do, no matter how mundane or how regular an event it is. Yes I can actually see an improvement action plan benefiting her, and people like her. But back to me for a moment (self centred arent I ). I really dont work that way. I already know what I do well and don’t well, and have a fairly good idea on how I can improve myself. I will not benefit from somehow translating these very organic thought processes into an essay. All this essay is doing for me is giving me a headache. I honestly see it as a bureaucratic hoop that must be jumped.

I love how abstract the things they want us to plan to improve are too. I could get more behind this whole thing if the things we are meant to plan for improving were things like “software usage”. Thats a proper developable skillset, which can be planned for. Practising, reading up etc etc. Group work? how the hell do you plan to improve your god-given ability to scoially interact with people in a groupwork situation? Stage mock groups with your friends and family, organise a day of groupworking where everyone comes in and shares their ideas on how to group work more cohesively? It’s something that can only come with practice and of course the ability to interact with people to a degree without pissing them off, while still being able to pass along your ideas. These arent the kind of skills you can plan for.

Anyways, I am starting to rant, so I will  cut this short.

Work, zomgs!

So it’s been a while since my last post. Have been a bit busy I guess, distracted by various goings on. Have started working on my project in earnest now though, admitedly a little late, so I will have to put a major effort in.

Here’s a picture of my main character. Needless to say, there is a lot of effort involved in this, having to draw him from every conceivable anlge that i will use, plus the backdrop, props and othr characters are all still to come. I have a list of Graphics as long as my arm as it is, and I haven’t even finished all the main character images.

The Normality Flux

Well, things have reached that point where I’ve pretty much re-settled into being in my brother’s new house here in Milton Keynes. It was very strange having settled into uni to be back here, in a strange house. For a while I actually missed my room the same way i missed my old room when I first went to uni. But people are nothing if not adaptable, and so now I feel right at home, which means I have mixed feelings about going back to uni. On the plus side, I know within a week I’ll feel right at home again, so being anxious about going back is futile.

It is an interesting way this works though. People will always adapt to the way things are, and begin to see tham as perfectly normal. We can live through anything, so long as we have time to adapt our mindsets. This goes from little things, like coming from a world where the internet happened to other people, to a state where it is the very basis of my education and something I would struggle to get by without right through to giant things like living in a democracy or a dictatorship. I used to live in Zimbabwe, a country run by a megalomanical madman. The thing is though, when I was living there, it all seemed perfectly normal, and any other way of life seemed outlandish and unrealistc.

Which just goes to show, so long as people think of something as normal, they will not think twice about it. If you can make people think something is perfectly normal, then you can make them behave, think and live in any way you want.