VictoriaMara

Just thinking

I was just sitting here and thinking about the fact that everyone has gotten so involved in the disscussion about same sex relationships. Why?
There are those who are against it which I can understand and then there are those who are gay which I understand the view that they have.
Why do other people fight for the rights of gay people? Is it because they are the ones aware of the past and how people have been treated?
I understand that every faith thinkins that being gay is wrong and I would not take this issuse into a church. But, here is what I ask, Why can't two people od the same sex fall in love and be together, and have a wedding that is not in a church?
One last question which I know will make everyone mad. For the people who are against it what difference does it make to you? You are not being forced to be gay and you dont have to have any part in it, so why is it such a big deal why can't we just let them be happy?

Thinking about what Even said

I was looking though some of the class blogs and found one by Even that I think could be a really good topic to discuss. I know that some people get upset by this and will not want anything to do with it but here is what Even said .

What does everyone think about everything going on here. Are the rights of gay people being taken away because others are afraid of change?

Let me know what you think.

Bloging

The Labyrinth Unbound: Weblogs as Literature

The catagories of web blogs are disscuses in this essay and it leads into the artical that I did my presentation for class on. Women and Children Last: IN the artical that I did my project on it talks about the brake down of different types of blogs.

Then it takes it one step farther, it brake sthe types down into geander and age as far a popularity.
The artical was really interesting and some what long but informative. I like how it showed that there are more adult male blogers and then there are more teen female blogers.

This makes sense if you think about it because teenage girls like to talk to their friends and gossip, so they can do that online.

While boys are still playing more sports and doing more outdoor things.
Then when women get older they tend to have children and more responsabilities then men who can be on the computer more.

Another opinion that I have is that until women prove themselves in the bloging comunity they will not be taken into consideration as A list bloggers.

Hopefuly these teenage girls will continue to blog and when they become adults prove themselves as great bloggers and get women into the repected bloging as more then just teenage girl telling about the everyday life they have to life.

I found the artical interesting and I am glad that I picked to present this topic because it was something that I liked.

Women and Children Last

Women and Children Last
"Guernsey (2002) claims, on the basis of informal observation, that 40-50% of bloggers are women. At least one report (Orlowski, 2003) goes further, asserting that a majority of bloggers are teenage girls.

What percentage of blog authors are females and teens? To address this question, we conducted a gender- and age-focused content analysis of a random sample of 357 blogs collected from the largest available blog tracking site.

We collected blogs twice, six months apart, as part of a larger ongoing longitudinal analysis of the weblog genre. At the times of our data collection, in March 2003 and in September 2003, the blo.gs site was tracking a total of roughly 350,00 and 700,000 blogs, respectively.

We used the site's �random� selection feature to collect two samples from these totals: the first containing 203 blogs, and the second containing 154 blogs."

The information was gathered by the random searches that where done. They then went through each blog and found any thing that woudl indicate the sex or age of the bloger and they where able to find the information most of the time.

March 2003
September 2003
Total

Male
100 (54%)
64 (48%)
164 (52%)

Female
84 (46%)
68 (52%)
152 (48%)

Total
184 (100%)
132 (100%)
316 (100%)

Ages of the blogers
March 2003
September 2003
Total

Adult
111 (60%)
49 (37%)
160 (51%)[5]

Emerging
--
33 (25%)
33 (10%)

Teen
73 (40%)
50 (38%)
123 (39%)

Total
184 (100%)
132 (100%)
316 (100%)

There are more teen female blogers then male teen blogers but there are more adult male blogers then adult female blogers.

Age and sex is also skewed for the type of blog that is created. A journal type blog is most popular for teen females and adult males take over the rest.

Mass Media Reports
more males (88%) are mentioned in the articles than females (12%);
males are mentioned multiple times in the same article more often than females;
males are mentioned earlier in the articles than females;
males are more likely to be mentioned by name than females; and
all 94 males mentioned are adults, except for one adolescent male blogger

Weblog Scholarship
Scholarship on weblogs is still in its infancy, so there is little published literature as yet. However, some scholarly activities associated with weblogs already show evidence of an adult male bias. Conferences to discuss weblogs have thus far tended to attract more male than female participants.

twelve out of sixteen papers (75%) presented in the four sessions dedicated to weblogs were authored by men, and males made up roughly 70% of the audience who attended those sessions

Make a Paper Airplane

In class to day Dr. Jerz handed out a sheet of paper and then split the class into groups. each group got a paper with pics. on it and the group had to write intructions for the task.

My group had paper airplanes. I thought I wrote good details so that someoneo not looking at the pics. could make the same plane I was. Well then I put that to the test. We went out into other groups and tested the guid that we had written.

Mine did not go well, but it showed me that people dont always pay attention to every word and that peolpe dont give the same meanings to words. What I wrote I thought made sense and I could make the airplane. Then when someone else looked at it they didnt know what exactly I was trying to get them to do. I guess that was the point of the class today.

Imagining the Blogosphere

"typical blog" is written by "a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life."
I can see why this is the case. For teenagers the computer is a mager source of comunication, with blogging they have found another way to talk to others about them self. We all know that is a teenage girls favorite thing to do. No one my be interested in her life but the few who are make her feel more important in the word just by posting on her blog and if a stranger posts it is even better because then she feels that other people besides her friends are taking notice in her. I understand that blogs are a lot more then just away to get your life out there for people to read. They carry information so quickly and serve different jobs for different peolpe. I also think that the reason more teenage girls are bloging just about them self is because the older people in the U.S., most of them lack the computer knowledge. I know that my mom is happy with the fact that she can do the billing at work on the computer and that she knows how to get directions off of mapquest. I feel that the audience will change as they get older and they understand the computer more and more.
The web site I used is Into the Blogosphere

Visual Blogs

Even though my blog is not a visual blog I see the importance of visuals to get peoples attention. I have a boring blog and I am trying to talk myslef in to fixing it up. Reading the artical and looking at the other blogs that is linked to was amazing. The things that people can put in their blogs to make them more personal all th up to the people that put nothing but pictures in the blog. The pictures on the blogs that where linked to are amazing. I am not so sure that I would want to put a picture of my self up on my blog simply because I dont want to hear comments about my looks everyone feels they need to give their nedative opinions and I dont want to hear them. I could alter my text to maybe give my page some thing to look at. I also might look for some pictures maybe about softball of course. I really feel that a picture of a pitcher for the U.S. team or something would give someone an idea about me.

Blogging vs. Reality T.V.

What is the difference between blogging and reality T.V.? The disscussion started in class today and I really believe that they have a lot in common. The difference is the rules and the simple fact that someone else besides the person experienceing the event and the reader get to pick what you see and what you dont (as chris said in class) I really started to understand his point that on a blog because you are the director (as Even said) you can say what you want and do what you want with the story on your bolg. Others can only comment if you want then to and you can always post back to the comment to clear things up. I feel that bolging is a better from of reality T.V. because it is actual people telling actual stories about their everyday life and things that they find interesting or that touch them.

Portfolio 1

Coverage
Story Driven Videogames
The web and 9-11
Anatomy of a weblog
hot text
weblogging handbook Writing for the Web

Depth
Story Driven Video Games
The Web and 9-11
hypertext

Interaction
Hypertext
Story Driven Videogames
The weblog Handbook

Discussions
File Sharing
Anatomy of a weblog
Poem

xenoblogging
Melissa Lutz
Social Anxiety

Wildcard
Poem
life of the party

The Weblog Handbook

"The Weblog Handbook" by Rebecca Blood is another book used for class. This book intrduced the class to bloging.The book shows how to write in a blog, ways to personalize your blog, and she gives some do's and dont's to webloging. Some of the major things that you never do, and that will only start trouble are:

Never attack someone on your weblog. they will see it and it will be trouble.

Never complain. People are coming to your weblog to see something interesting they dont want to hear you complaining about everything.

One thing that you always, always must do is give credit where credit is due. If you use somone elses stuff to understand what you are writing about link to the page or say that you used this page.

I am glad that I know the rules now and the book has made me a better blogger.

Writing for the web

"Writing for the Web" by Crawford Kilian is a book I also used for class, but it is more for writing web pages. This is more of what I am interested in if anything. I have found in this book that, what they call chuncking is very important to a web page. Chunking is the braking up of the text in a page.

This makes it better for skiming and easier to read. Like with newsletters you can always make a link that will take the reader to for information. Also, something that is important, know who you are writing to, know the audience. This is important because if the writing is not clear to the reader then you didnt do your job as a writer.

Here is a link to find "Writing for the web".

Hot Text

Writing a newsletter for me was one of the hardest things in the world. I was not sure what was important and who would actually care about what I was saying. Reading over "Hot Text" I learned some tips about how to make my newsletter a little better.

I got tips like:Make an attention grabber title. People will stop and take a look if you get thier attenion.

Also all information should be new and informative.

Text should also be short and sweet with links to more information. This makes the newsletter easier to read and to find the information you want.

I put the news letter together and let me tell you it is hard to set everything up and come up with all those titles.

Here is a link to get the book "Hot Text" if anyone is interested.

Anatomy of a weblog

This was very helpful. I am one of those people who know nothing about computers and I needed all the help I could get. My weblog is still very plan and not colorful at all, but I at lest know how to post and make links. This presentation was informative and made me feel a little bit better about weblogs. I am glad that i had the chance to see this presentation and that I can link to it for others to see. I still dont understand the computer and I dont know how to do much. I do understand how to navagate my way around the weblog now and it because I have this guid.

Maybe someday I will get good enough with blogging to make mine colorful and cute. I dont think that will happen anytime soon!!!

The web and 9-11

This was just a very interesting topic all together. Anything about 9-11 will get my attention and I was a little upset in class when this presentation didnt get much time. I was really looking forward to seeing it. I did go and look at it on my own though and I really liked it. The site about remembering was nice. I also think the attack on the government was interesting. Another site that I found that could be interesting is from google. I dont know if we will ever know the entire truth about 9-11 but what I do know is that it happened and the United States needs to learn from it.

Other sites with great stuff about 9-11:
Sept. 11
9-11 commision
Fahrenheit 9/11

Story Driven VideoGames

This sounds like the best way to play videogames. If I was going to play a game I would want it to be story driven so, i would know and understand the character I was playing. To me it seems that the game would be more interesting and keep me interested longer if I could just pick it up and play and I didnt have to sit there and learn all about the person I am playing and why they are doing whatever it is that they would want to do in the game. The story also makes the game. If it is a stuid story line and it doesnt spark your interest, as a player you are never going to play that game. This is an interesting articale I found about videogames you may want to take a look
here is the link to the presentation.