Last words

So this is my final blog post for New Com Tech, unless I'm more of a douchebag that I previously appreciated and I'm missing something more on the important side of criteria. >_>

My task today is to summarize this course and the time I've spent in it, and feign that I was paying attention and learned a whole heap of stuff.

But seriously, as far as first semester uni goes I'm pointing and mocking every poor soul who took psychology instead of a course like this. I've had Creative Arts Practice (where I met and maintained a good roll call of friends and foes whom I respect), Effective Writing with their 'effective' three-words-for-every-three-lines-per power point presentations, and New Com Tech.

I've experienced entirely different things in each of the courses. I've experienced painstaking boredom in my EW lectures but found a lot of inspiration in the work shopping we did in tutorials. I found CAPRA to be filled with peers and even a few tutors and lecturers who I respected and enjoyed my time with. And New Com Tech provided me with the hardcore information side of my first semester of Uni. No discredit to my other subjects, but New Com Tech was the only subject that I found I was surprised with the content being so bloody interesting. Everything from the Turing test to the blogging was an enriching experience. I found I had a competent tutor who I got along well with (not pointing any fingers ---ADAM--- >_>) and a lecturer who -really- knew his shit.

Seriously. There's nothing worse than sitting through a two hour lecture with some lecturer who's just reading off his powerpoint. Steve really went into the nitty gritty info on all the content in the lectures, and then when I went along to my tutes the same afternoon my tutor (not poiningt any fingers ---ADAM--- >_>) knew what Steve had lectured about and could correspond with us feeble students and satisfy our curiosities. Fucking brilliant!

The only places where I'd take marks away was when we had those PR girls come along and give us a 'surprise' seminar on the wonderful world of PR. What a colossal waste of time for -anyone- who wasn't doing journalism. As a BA enthusiast I'd like to think I was referring to the majority of the class just then. >_>

All in all, I was very content and satisfied with the course and its content. The help was well-informed and extensive, and my tutor (not pointing any fingers ---ADAM--- >_>) had a wicked beard. Facial-hair enthusiasts unite!

That's all, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Oh, and Mr. Muir, don't forget to email me some feedback for my essay.

Goodbye!

Playing catchup - Part 1

Here, my delectable viewers, is the second little Photoshop oriented blog-picture-posting task. So I've got to edit some pictures in Photoshop (unheard of for someone like me. Never touched photoshop in my life >_>), and explain what I've done and why I've done. Piece of cake.



Friends - These (not including the douchebag on the left) are my friends. They're all from my Creative Arts Practice lectures/tutorials, and I've been rolling around with them for a whole semester now. They mean a lot to me. That isn't to say of course that anyone not in the picture doesn't mean anything to me, I don't happen to have pictures of all of you. >_> What I've done is actually part of my Creative Arts Practice assignment that I'm just dubiously appropriating now into this here blog. The concept is obscurity, I suppose. There's certainly an element of displacement and disassociation all stemming from the fact that the people in the image are veiled by the techniques used to obscure them. The point of this is embedded in the idea that your friends are an emotional point in your existence. I don't think the aesthetic of seeing them is important, because how I feel for them is an entierly emotive state of being. Essentially, i connect with the people I'm close to because of no physical association, my links are internal, whatever that means.



Communication - How I fucking wish I had a phone, and far more importantly, a funky psychedelic -blue- phone. Being homesick -does- include missing having a hard line. I figure when I get home I'll just be dying to call someone. Does that make me pathetic? Of course, there is a myriad of other activities I'm doing to abuse once I get home. Sleeping in my comfortable, -double- bed in an air conditioned room.
Working however, I won't be looking forward to. The notion here is I've been experiencing a completely different kind of communication for the last six months. I've been very net-based (not a surprise really) and the only other technological communication I've has been over the mobile.
Strange then that I decided to interperate communication as a technological thing, then?


News worthy! Ha! Yes, everyone, go by my new comic/Creative Arts Practice assignment 'University and Me4 - a weekly travesty strip by Steven Michalski'.

I'm rather proud of this little abomination. It as printed in it's full quality on glossy, photo paper and it looks fantastic and all of that wonderful stuff, and I can't help but feel its going to get slashed to ribbons.

It might have something to do with the fact that I parody the academic staff for the very subject.

>_>

Just maybe.





Australian - this once was the image of a cork, which is a rather fantastic looking little creation now. This is a direct reference to the whole corks that typically dangle from pieces of twine from the hats of apparently every Australian.

Have you ever worn one of those cork-hat monstrosities? They're fucking ridiculous, and uncomfortable as hell.

Strongly not recommended.









Popular - Okay, so I couldn't resist making Justin Timberlake look like he has a really bad case of downs syndrome. This might be one of those incessant spite things where I'm getting frustrated with the materialism of so called 'music artists' these days. You know, video killed the radio star. Half of the music on the charts these days are by people who can't sing, can't make good music, but are perceived as sex symbols by the mass of Neanderthal-esque society.

So yes, Timberlake. Take that.

Does that make me petty? I sure hope so. >_>









This here is Loom. Loom was an awesome game made by LucasArts before they were actually -called- LucasArts, and was actually one of the very first video games I'd ever played.

One of the really interesting things about it was there was alot of musical orientation. Your little dude who traveled the depths of what was quite a serious fantasy plot had to use musical notes in conjunction (if I remember correctly) these looms to open up rifts (or close them >_>) in time and space. It was rad.

The image is just a screenshot that I've funkisised a little, giving it a bit of a crazy frame. That's a technical term.'



Celebrity - So, apparently there is a magazine called celebrity, and the more I think about it if so called 'celebrities' decided they'd want to be interviewed in magazines -labeled- like this then they must be caught up in the whole notion of celebrity themselves.

Well, we can't have them killed, or else no one could star opposite Ben Stillers massive ears in romantic comedies.

What a shame -that- would be.

All I've done to it is apply some filters on duplicated layers, changed the saturation, opacity of certain layers, and layer types. Like for isntance, the grainy cross-hatching is actually an 'overlay' layer. You can do some cool stuff with it.





Anyway, that's it for now.

Dear christ it's my essay!

Well, first of all, I'd like to divulge a certain experience or two that's been looming in the depths of my general health for last week. I woke up one sunny morning with numb gums on the left side of my face, wrote an email to one of my tutors, talked to Beanie about our devilishly sexual encounters on the interwebs a little, and then collapsed on my bed from the horrific, aching pain that was surging throughout my head.

Ow.

I've never been to emergency before, at least not in my immediate recollection. It was an interesting experience, people asking me to grin and frown and sticking what appeared to be incredibly small anus-toys on sticks into my inner-ear and jamming wide paddle-pop sticks down my throat. I don't know how this will make me better! Clearly, the mechanical implement that rammed into my ear dispensed a small chemical that would seep past my ear drum and into my head, and with the paddle-pop stick they must have applied another dormant chemical agent to to the roof of my mouth that would remain quiet and inconspicuous until I sneeze! Climax! The two chemicals mix in tandem with the friction created from my convusing and presto, we have a cure.

>_>

So most of the week I've either been trying to squeeze the pain and pressure out of my head or so doped up on Codepane forte that in either instant I've been relatively useless. The funny part happens to be that I had a New Com Tech essay due on Friday and I was either in too much agony or too fucking doped up to take a fair crack at either. Salvation however lies in the miracle composition of instant coffee, also notably usable as weedkiller. So yes, I do have an essay for you, dear, dear readers. I can't claim that it's headache, painkiller and caffeine free but it's a very decent attempt. I can only hope that it'll be appreciated as one of the great literacy works of this decade. I can only hope that I, mere touch-typing sociopath Me4 Michalski can win the Nobel Peace Prize in the allocated field of -videogames-.

That's be hilarious.

Anyway, here's the Essay with all the subliterary innuendos, relatively uninteresting referencing and lack of aesthetically pleasing pictures. Enjoy.

1501ART New Communication Technologies

New Communication and Technologies Academic Essay

The Absorption of Creative Information and Inspired Learning through Narratology in Video Games

Robert Steven Michalski

Student Number: 2576246

Video games have long been subject to negative accusations and connotations regarding psychological influence and particularly association of aggressive behaviour. Only within the last decade however has research been conducted to conclude more objective, less-overblown studies of video games and their effects on users. Particularly, many studies have been carried out to determine the details of narratology, or storytelling, interlaced in video games. Within that spectrum of research, it has been proposed that narratology within video games provides ample resource for the absorption of creative information and inspired learning.

There is a well-known literacy saying that entails ‘the more you read, the better you write’. Many other creative texts have had the same proverbial label attached to them - music, audio dialogue, video and visual aesthetics, and further combinations of these mediums evident in film, television and other cross-platforms are all texts that are associated with the creative information absorption recognised in pure literary reading. However, the medium of video games is the only media platform that potentially combines the visual aesthetic seen in films and television with music and printed text, and intertwines them all in an interactive environment. In this context, video games have the potential to be the forefront of innovative storytelling across the various creative modes, with a wealth of creative resources stemming from the amalgamation of all the aforementioned texts.

The aforementioned interactivity combined with abundances of visual, audible and primarily printed texts (specifically storytelling) is most readily identifiable in the video game genera of the Role Playing Game (R.P.G.). R.P.G. games notoriously focus specifically on the storytelling, plot and character development aspects of interplay to achieve immersion. Developers of this game genre expend most of the available creative resources on the narrative and dialog of the game, resulting in volumes of print text, audible dialog and detailed virtual environments that promote the contexts and content of the story. Similarly, the Role Play community of many multiplayer capable R.P.G. games offer a multi-user role play experience. Neverwinter Nights (BioWare, 2002) was one such R.P.G. that offered the option to create ‘Persistent Worlds’ for role play purposes, where collections of users could create fictional characters to interact with each other in a constantly evolving, persistent narrative. R.P.G. games like this added an extra dynamic to the creative information gathering processes. A user could contribute their own content to many of these perpetual servers, even of only being able to contribute with the ‘in character’ role play of the characters they manipulated with print text, interchangeable visual aesthetics and design-bound movements. It has been formulated by Ph.d student Stuart Woods (2004), among others, that with the player-driven content and broad parameters of many online multiplayer games, this medium in particular may become an innovative form of creative expression, comparable to literacy novels and ‘serious’ content matter typically considered idealistic for a trivial video game to portray realistically.

James P. Gee, author of What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003), suggests that storytelling, writing and practical simulation of dialogue and other texts will eventually outweigh the violent aspect of many video games in favour of more intellectually creative stimulation. He states that “as realistic forms of conversation become more computationally possible (a very hard task), I predict that shooting will become less important in many games, including shooter games. Even now, many shooting games stress stealth, story and social interaction more than they used to.” (Gee 2004: p10-11) Furthermore, Gee’s prediction is already heavily applicable in modern First Person Shooter games compared to their near decade old predecessors. An early First Person Shooter (F.P.S.) game titled Doom (iD Software, 1993) was very simplistic in conveying mediums compared to modern day successors. Doom presented the player with no more than a single blurb detailing the scenario and aim of the game, a user manual with the obligatory instructions and system directions, and was thrown into a very liner action-filled environment where the user simply battled his/her way through throngs of sprite enemies to the end of each level, progressing through the levels of varying difficulty until the user reached the climax and end of the game design. There are little to no external or internal cut scenes, minimal sound recordings with no audible dialogue and little to no print text, narration or development to any conventional plot or story from the otherwise evident moving from one obstacle to a large, more challenging set of obstacles. However, less than a decade later a video game titled Deus Ex (Ion Storm, 2000) relies heavily, if not entirely, on evolving, non-linier narrative and plot, multiple characters and associated complexities, audio dialog and intellectual strategic opportunities and non-linear, often unconventional player choices. Yet it still qualifies as an F.P.S. Other examples of more traditional F.P.S. video games still show similar advancement in aesthetic and narrative texts. F.E.A.R (Monolith, 2005) is an example of this development, utilising aesthetic texts of audible dialogue, evolving narrative and plot, multiple and complex characters to further enhance and potentially level out the visual and interactive stimulation with similar attention to the adjoining creative mediums. Other recent examples that show clear evidence of development and accentuation of narratology in F.P.S. genre alone are Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (Arkane Studios, 2006), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Game World,2007) and less acclaimed titles including Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the Earth (Headfirst 2005/2006). All of the aforementioned titles show clear progression of storytelling by way of all the different creative mediums and texts.

Through studies of narratology in video games research suggests that rich resources of creative information and learning material are available to be absorbed by the user. Video games across many platforms and genres, even F.P.S. games, are also contributing to this with further utilisation of visual, audible and print texts in advancing interactive design, leaning in a more story-driven, progressive direction.

References

Gee, J.P. 2003, What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Murray J. “From Game-Story to Cyberdrama” in Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat (eds) 2004 First Person, MIT Press, Cambridge, p1-11.

Perlin, K. “Can There Be a Form between a Game and a Story?” in Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Harrigan, Pat (eds) 2004 First Person, MIT Press, Cambridge, p12-18.

Curran, S. 2004, Game Plan - Great Designs that Changed the Face of Computer Gaming, RotoVision, Switzerland, p64-79.

Furner, I. 2004 “Video game playing does not appear to improve cognition processes of attention and executive function” Honours Thesis, School of psychology, Griffith University, p1-22,36-40.

Woods S. “Loading the Dice: The Challenge of Serious Videogames” in Gamestudies, Vol. 4, issue 1, http://www.gamestudies.org/0401/woods/

Dormans J. “On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules” in Gamestudies, Vol.6, Issue 1, http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/dormans/

Castronova E. “On Virtual Economies” in Gamestudies, Vol. 3, Issue 2, http://www.gamestudies.org/0302/castronova/

BioWare 2002, Neverwinter Nights, http://nwn.bioware.com/

iD Software 1993, Doom, http://www.idsoftware.com/

Ion Storm 2000, Deus Ex, http://www.eidosinteractive.com/games/info.html?gmid=50

Monolith 2005, F.E.A.R., http://www.lith.com/home.asp

Arkane Studios 2006, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, http://www.ubi.com/UK/Games/Info.aspx?pId=4503

Headfirst 2005/2006 , Call of Cthulhu – Dark Corners of The Earth, http://www.callofcthulhu.com/

GSC Game World 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Chernobyl, http://www.stalker-game.com

Well, there you have it. A little over a thousand words of pure Me4 antagonizing drivel.

Stat tuned for fun with Microsoft Word! >_>

Douch.

-Me4.

P.S. Movie quote of the week: "You want to get nuts? *grabs fire poker and bashes a silver-tray table* Lets get nuts!"

If it's any help, it's an earlier Tim Burton movie. >_> That was a big fucking hint. Goodbye!

Virtual alternative realities and me4.

It's week eight I believe, and asides all the usual hubbub of university work, being penniless (largely the fault of the fact that I live in Australia >_>), watching movies and meaningless hours spent lingering on the internet at home, enjoying the company of my girlfriend and having crazy, glazed, unbridled sex with Beanie, whom I am only mentioning in this context because -she- happens to be the only person who will read this blog, thanks guys, my university career has taken a turn for the stagnant.

Yes, that's right. I'm growing uncomfortable with the lack of things available for me to do. It's not that I'm bored. I pride myself on being a pseudo-creative who -never- can be bored, and to maintain that consistency I need to strike down the coming storm of lack-of-shit-to-keep-me-content before I actually get to it. So no, it ain't boredom. It's pre-boredom. And the worry is considerably worse.

Anyway, I actually have a task to complete for soon-to-be-Docter-Muir.

We're looking at 3d social chat environments, or as I prefer to perceive them, extensions of the devils own will via virtual alternative realities, and the differences between them and regular old text-based instant messaging programs.

Yes, I quake to think of the majority of the internet community, already bloodied beyond all recognition with the absortion of horrors such as MySpace and YouTube and popular online webcomics, stooped to such a low level of intellectual stimulation by devolving their creative and intellectual capacity with this relatively new, visual interface for instant messaging worlds. There's no doubt in my mind that -some- MySpace bloggers actually have something interesting, albeit coherent, to say. There's no doubt in my mind that some of the content on YouTube is actually worth taking a gander at, worth the trouble of chewing up your bandwidth to observe something truly inspiring. And my girlfriend would probably throttle me if I neglected to say that some web comics have either potential or quality content available. The fact sadly remains, however, that the majority of the internet community is ridiculously immature, lazy, undereducated or expressing chronic symptoms recognizable in cases of downs syndrome.

Every time we add another complexity to our communication the majority of people experiencing that new technological leap seem to devolve considerably. We've all seen how the actual typed english language has been flushed down the proverbial tubes ever since 'txt tlk' and 'IM abbreviations stopd u frum typing propr' came into the forefront of the majority of the masses electronic communications, all evidence of intellectual content and creative inspiration vie the english language has been all but obliterated. I can see now that adding a visual, immersible (to some) 3d environment is going to deface another side of human intelligence. It's all perfectly clear to me - friends meeting up on their favorite alternative reality to giggle incessantly, without pretext might I add, and try and arrange their 3d representations into the most giggle-snort-worthy arrangements.

First we shredded the language, now we're going to dull the mind.

I might be sounding radical, but fuck it, radical people are like rock stars. You either get very high, very arrested, very comatose or very sexed up. All cases wind up dead, believe it or fucking not.

So yeah, I think it's a bad step towards the decent of human communication. It's interesting that I've taken this very blood thirsty perspective to the whole idea of virtual, interactive worlds considering that I frequent as a roleplayer and/or storyteller on several virtual worlds, so to speak. I guess it's because what I do with my peers is so vastly different than what the masses contribute to. I write coherently, without defacing the english language (or so I hope), and create and motivate creative works and stories. I am a storyteller. I am not a giggle-snorter.

That is all. Enjoy your freedom from reading my rant.

-Me4

P.S. Movie quote for the week: 'You'd drink too if you knew the world half as well as I do!" A notable clue might be that to speak this line of dialog you need to voice it with an english accent, and slur it as if you're incredibly inebriated.

On the fifth week of New Com Tech, my tutor gave to me.

He gave to me this task of finding (or alternatively dubiously procuring) a series of pictures that represent the various words he's provided me with. One picture per word.

Lets see how I go.

Friends

What can I say? They look like they're a group of young individuals who are enjoying life, and more importantly in this specific example - enjoying life together.










High Tech

Hell yeah. The first thing that came to my head was that whole realm of micro-science technology. Computer chips and overtly complicated wiring with that innovative, creative looking twist.

But fuck that - this is a toilet.

And really it's a good example of advanced technology. Technology is essentially becoming an infestation of comfort. We don't need all these extra technical functions on a toilet. The function of a thunder box is to collect and dispose of your persistent human waste. The comfort infestation I'm talking about is placing all those toilets with electric seat warmers, stereo systems and intricate water fountain features. >_>

It's an infection!

News

So it'd really be -more- appropriate to have a picture of a modem. But I'm still currently, and blindly might I add, choosing to believe that -most- of the worlds population are first and foremost informed by television.

So yes, look - it's a satellite!







Summer

Summer - Heat - Get it? >_>

Well, realistically it was probably released in the summer.

But still. Heat.











Unconventional














So for this one I decided to use an example of my own work. I had a character I once created an avatar for who had a glass eye. I went through several stages of creating that glass eye, and -eventually- I decided to do something 'unconventional', aha! I created this symbol above, and incorperated it into the image, among other rigorous procedures, to be the actual 'iris' for his glass eye. Turned out like this.


University life

-Ha-.

Yeah, bad narcotics jokes aside.

I was looking for a picture of a bearded man sitting in front of a computer screen. One of those caricatures showing the depravity of the computer-reliant junkie.

But I failed. So look - all uni students become addicted to meth!


Well that'll do it for this week. If anyone knows where I live, please bring by either food or money. Or crystal meth, preferably.

Movie quote for the day is as follows: "If there's a hole in the Ozone layer, how come I can't see it?"

Anarchy in Week Four

Everything is hectic - I'm behind on -all- of my readings, I'm not sleeping very well, I have absolutely no money to rent dvd's with my brand spanking new rental account though I'll never stand down and admit that particular defeat, and my girlfriend is spending the weekend in Brisbane so I'll -somehow- have to mange the weekend without any social or digital support.

-Fuck-.

And to top it all off, my favorite blogging tutorial includes a rather stomach-churning scavenger hunt regarding -both- pumpkins and Grant Hackett, I have to figure out what I would want my essay to be written on using only library resources, and last but pointedly not quite so least detail a few opinions and definitions on the topic of search engines.

Take a breath, we're going to powerhouse it until we strike gold.

Part 1

This certainly isn't -exactly- what I've been told to set out and do, but I'm taking creative steps here and that should be appreciated! I've been looking at articles concerning computer games and honestly, and actually to my surprise as well, almost all the articles I've found have been -negative- accounts. This has inspired me to suggest my -own- thoughts an opinions to base my fictional essay on. I'm a firmly believer that like any form of interactive media, be it books, dice-games, fucking boggle, trivia pursuits of different varieties and even ridiculous choose-your-own-adventures, computer games have the wonderful ability to dispense knowledge at an inspiring rate. This isn't of course to say that any computer game will benefit you with copious amounts of knowledge - Of course not - one of the points I'd want to raise in such an article would be the idea that -interacting- in any sort of game that requires you to think is a tool that can help one learn. Admittedly, it's an idea that needs a wealth of time and extrapolation, but I'm just outlining points at this point.

Another topic I'd like to do would be concerning 'creative media', and how it inspires us and also provides us with further knowledge. I'm not talking about 'this is how you build a fucking house' knowledge, or computer programming knowledge, or even arm-chair knowledge. I'm referring to a much more primal, 'visual' sense of knowledge. Let me explain what I mean.

I consider myself an ideas person. As an amateur, aspiring novelist/whatever the hell I end up being, I consider myself a storyteller. It's important to me to absorb as much knowledge and as many ideas as I can to give my imagination the broadest palette I can afford. Every time I play a computer game, watch a movie, listen to music or read a book I am contributing to the enriching process of that palette. I'd stay away from the topic of reading other novels and such in my article, as every bastard I've every run across and likewise crossed has told me that I will ultimately and superbly fail as a writer if I do not read. Fuck them, says I! I have other methods of inspiration, and just because I don't draw it from one -particular- source out of a possible universe of media doesn't mean that I will write something that is -boring-. In the article I'd defiantly focus more on the concept of movies, music and interactive video games. Music and movies have always been the underdog to the theory of 'development' regarding the more you read the better you write, but none have had such a bad rap as video games has endured. It's literally the -only- media platform that can potentially, and often does, combine visual aesthetic (such as in films and television), music, written text and present it in an -interactive- environment. So consider that this platform can encompass all these different elements that cinema, television, music and written literature provide and you've got a wealth of possibility for new, innovative storytelling. Fucking for the win.

So yeah, I'd elaborate on those sorts of ideas for my essay.

Disclaimer - I fucking -hate- television. I'm not for mindless consuming of propaganda and restless, boring sitcoms and commercials that essentially boar away at your intelligence. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy some of the programming that's selected and created for television - I just don't watch it. I suppose it's like music - what's popular and rates well usually never coincides with what is quality.

Part 2a:

So firstly I'd just like to point out the coincidental links to the grandiose Teamo Awesomeo on my blog page, two of which who have supplied me with different accounts of the very answers I need for the scavenger hunt. Yes, I want to copy these answers. Not because it'd be dubiously easy and I'd not have to -actually- research the length of a Giraffe's tongue, but because It'd be an example of me not relying on Google or Wikipedia to search for the information I'm looking for. Unless I'm heavily mistaken that's the point of the scavenger hunt in the first place.

But alas, here I go.

1. What is the weight of the world's biggest pumpkin?

The largest pumpkin ever grown is 1,502 pounds. It was grown by Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island. It was weighed in on October 7, 2006 at the Rhode Island Weigh-off.

http://www.pumpkinnook.com/giants/record.htm

2. What is the best way (quickest, most reliable) to contact Grant Hackett?

Check it out - post on his LiveJournal.

3. What is the length of a giraffe's tongue?

A giraffe’s tongue can be up to 21 inches long. It is also prehensile, which means it can grab and hold onto objects. Some people think the color is to keep the tongue from getting sunburned.

http://www.plsd.k12.pa.us/final_projects/06/vaughnessa/fun%20facys.htm

Good lord.

4. How would you define the word 'ontology'? In your own words, what does it really mean ?

The study of existence, essentially.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=ontology

5. What was David Cronenberg's first feature film?

Stereo.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065036/

6. When was the original 'Hacker's Manifesto' written?

January 8 1986

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker's_Manifesto

7. Why do all phone numbers in Hollywood films start with '555'?

For many years, 555 was unassigned as a dialling code in the US and could thus be used to prefix fictional numbers with impunity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-2357,00.html

8. What is the cheapest form of travel from Crete to Rhodes?

Ferry at 4:30 in the morning that arrives at 2:10 pm, with three stops in between.

Ridiculously long link.

9. What song was top of the Australian Pop Charts this week in 1965?

1. Que Sera Sera - Normie Rowe and the Playboys

http://members.optusnet.com.au/designprint/music_1965.htm

10. Which Brisbane band includes Stephen Stockwell on keyboards and vocals?

Stephen played keyboard for Brisbane punk band, the Black Assassins.

Pure bloody awesome.


Bluh. I'm going to leave it there for a bit. I'll come back later with a fantastic addendum to this blog, finishing off this little task.

But for now, I'm going to retire into the depths of my cramped, dusty apartment and contemplate how I'm find the money I need to rent a few movies this weekend.

See you next time, devout and aspiring readers. >_>

Quote: 'It's not that I don't trust you, I just don't fuckin' trust you."

If any of you can get that one I'll give you a shiny penny.

-Me4

Having further read my third week notes I've discovered that I need to speak on the New Communication Technologies that directly influence my life.

Well that's easy.

Some of my closest, best friends are people who I've never known in a personal space. As strange as that sounds, the internet has provided me personally with enough mediums of communication that I've developed friendships with like-minds and essentially people who are on the same wavelength as I am who I'd never have the opportunity to otherwise.

The internet aside, I do own a mobile phone, and have found myself dependent on the use of it. So what? I can recognize the fact that I am a human being who's grown up involved in the progressing technologies and have become an important part of my lifestyle. I'm all the wiser for it. I'm computer literate, I can touch type, I've got a broad selection of knowledge that I'd otherwise not have been exposed to. I fucking rock .

So yeah - it's everywhere. It's a part of my life and I can comfortably admit to that.

Another quote for you Cronenberg fans: "All hail the new flesh!"

It seems fitting, considering the content of this post. >_>

- Me4