Author Archives: irvghady

As much as I am going to miss the class, I’m also excited for the new year. It seems surreal that this is the end to my first year here at Pomona. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to move on but I realized that I’m also ready for summer.
Over the course of this class I really enjoyed the fact that the readings were available online. Not only did it save me a lot of money on textbooks but it also helped with accessibility. I was able to read for class at any point of the day on my ipod or on my laptop.
Wave came to be a really nifty tool as well, it had all of the notes and discussions so I was able to review them later.

The only technology/software I didn’t enjoy working with was Sophie. I can see however, that a lot of my peers really got familiar with Sophie and many used it for their final project. I’m a film/web guy myself so I liked the idea that Sophie had but I did not like their frustrating software.

When it comes to Audacity, I can’t really say much because I like to work in Garageband. Same with video editors. I’m mostly familiar with imovie and even though people talk smack about it and how its for novices, I have come to really like it. I’ve done most of my work on it and I can say that my work in I-movie has rivaled work done on Final Cut.
Overall, the class has been great and it helped me decide to major in Media Studies.

Professor Fitzpatrick, you are great and I hope you have a great summer and upcoming year. As for all the people in class, it was good getting to know you and hopefully see you around campus.

P.S. Since I don’t cry, I’ll have this guy show my emotions. haha

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee925OTFBCA&playnext_from=TL&videos=WP5iwxrlKXk[/youtube]

One Saturday afternoon, I was over visiting my cousins. After a long day at the pool it was only routine to relax by the T.V., play some Gamecube, or go online.
“Dude, you have to check this out, it’s so f****** funny!” My cousin yelled across the room from the computer. I went over and watched my first episode of Red vs. Blue. It was super hilarious!
I can see now how machinima is so easy to produce yet so creative and fun. I’m pretty jealous of Michael Burns for finding money in something so fun. The physics of the game and the ability for the camera to change angles and to have replays in different speed settings makes it so much more interesting. I looked up Goldberg machines on Halo after reading the Spartan Life contest and I was pleased to see so many creative videos. Working with machinima seems like a fun hobby. I have included a fun Goldberg machine video I found!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzCD5vyi83w[/youtube]

The reading for this week was indeed interesting. I can only agree that the game space is natural, neutral, intangible and without qualities. I remember when I first started to play video games and how my pupils had to adjust every time I would get up and out of the video game. It’s true, I said out of the video game because you get so immersed in the game at times that time seems to revolve around the game and not the real world. You start to feel separation from the game and the outside.
I liked the idea of how games have in a sense evolved. We no longer need an actual “space” to play them. We can do so from screens and from our desks. We can play opponents worldwide and with broadband speed. Evolution to the max.

Upon reading procedural Rhetoric, I found that It is true what is said about attitudes towards computers. I love them because they help with organization, productivity, communication, creativity, and many other ways. However, I do not like the rigidness of procedure they follow when It comes to some circumstances. It’s true, they treat everyone the same but sometimes circumstances call for the need of human logic and “new procedure”. The example about the store return policy was a great example. The human clerk was able to bend the rules and instill a new procedure to follow while the online amazon-like retailer has more rigidity in enforcing the late return. Max Weber predicted somethig of the sort would happen. He said society was becoming too beuracratic and would eventually become an iron cage for all people, trapped by too many laws and procedures. Weber, maybe you’re not right just yet but I have to give it to you, It just might become true.

I never was aware of friend feed. It’s sad that such a promising information hub has been over trodden by the major social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. The idea to make the site a central location for all the activity seemed very innovative to me.
I was also surprised when I read about how adults actually make up a big portion of social site usage. One problem I saw with the data however, was that it was from 2008. We have discussed in class that digital media changes from one day to the next so two years is a HUGE difference. I definitely see Facebook as bigger than myspace and usage by adults at an all time high.

After reading Boyd’s piece on Facebook, it really made me want to have been part of the movement that occurred in Facebook. I wonder how I would have reacted? Maybe it would have depended on if I had posted something embarrassing the day before the “feed” feature became installed.
It was really interesting to see how Facebook users slowly adapted to the change and it soon became the main feature that made Facebook well, Facebook. I remember that Myspace also adopted something of the sort and I thought it was really neat. I’m pretty sure that this happened after social networking sites looked to Facebook as the norm in social networking.

I took a sociology course last semester and I remember that I studied weak ties and I find it very interesting how Thompson tied it into his argument for Facebook. I can definitely see how Facebook helps establish these ties that can be useful in the future. Maybe because you constantly see updates about a friend it will give you the courage to ask for help in something. An internship, job, or maybe on homework.

Did you know that we are more likely to date people with weak ties (friends of friends) and ultimately marry them? Yes, so next time you go out and meet your friends’ hot friend, think about it. Just a thought.

After reading the articles for class today I started to think about how youtube has really devolved in my view. Yes it may be a bit more user friendly and now has the gigantic veiny Google Brain behind it but it has become way too stringent.
I remember the good old days when there were no ads or commercials, no limitation on use, and the only bad thing was the time limit. Ahh, the embedding was universal and the content so free.
I feel like such an old timer when I talk about this but it has been such a short time period since the change that it really sucks.

I feel bad about the people such as Kevin Lee who worked so hard on their work only to have it stripped because the software detected the digital watermark and deemed it as copyright infringement. All in all, these topics are very provocative and delicate.