So you decided to be lame...

Congratulations on failing and making a decision you will live to regret all the days of your life (and if you believe in reincarnation, then lives).  Too bad you will be missing this.

BUTT, despite your lack of general party intelligence, we still love you and would like to see you at some point on New Years Eve.  The following are the details for the pre-party of the year.

Pre-Party details:
Where: 1030 N Wood, Apt 1 Rear, East Village, Chicago, Illinois  60622
When: December 31st, 7:00pm-8:30/9:00pm

Contact SB or Ann for details or parking info

But Sara, should I bring something?

Why thanks for asking! I appreciate your consideration.  As always, liquor/beer is appreciated if you plan on drinking.  Also, if you have the inclination to whip something up, any food items will be inspected, tested by our resident poison comptroller and if up to snuff, wholeheartedly eaten with gusto (if there is poison found, you will be asked to leave the premises and come back only when you have eaten your food item completely and on the promise that you will not bring poison back)

C'mon SB, what will we do and why should we come?

Well, that's rude first off.  I don't really appreciate your attitude and if hanging out with friends isn't incentive, then you need to check yourself before I wreck you.  We are providing a nice place to have a few drinks and nosh before you venture out into the night and the crowds.  We also would like to toast with our dear friends and pour some out in remembrance of our lost homies.  We also may have games, such as charades, power hour and/or flip cup.  How could you turn that down?

Hope to see you there at some point since I cherish you,
XOXOOXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sara, George and Annie

So you wanna get INN-to InnJoy

Hooray!! You made the smart choice! Good for you kiddo! I always knew I liked you!

InnJoy details
cost: $69 (awkward)
includes: a potential kiss, apps, party favors, all alcohol with the exception of top shelf, meaning all the bros (Jack, Jim, Jose, Capt. Morgan, Johnny Red), the usual suspects (Bacardi, Smirnoff, etc), wine, draft and bottled beer.
time: 8:30pm-1:00am

But Sara, how do I purchase this?

Well friend, let me know by Wednesday and I will contact the appropriate person.

Again, way to make the smart choice.  Can't wait to make it rain with you.

XOXOXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX,
Sara & George

Moore's Law

Moore's law is a rule about computer hardware that was first introduced by Intel's co-founder, Gordon E. Moore, in 1965. The law states that the number of transistors that can placed on an integrated circuit cheapily will double twelve months. Currently, data density has been doubling every 18 months, which is the current definition of the law according to this site. This means that the speed, memory and efficiency of the computer increases, while the cost and power consumption decreases. Moore argued that "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year" (Jon Stokes 2008). Theorists predict that this law cannot hold true for more than a decade without redesigning the hardware. As the number of transistors in a circuit continues to increase, the amount of heat they give off increases as well and may require some sort of active cooling system (Stokes 2008). Another reason the rate may not increase in the future is because most business do not need that much more power. They can survive with what is currently out there. If the transistors keep on getting smaller in order to produce more, they will become to small to even see, develop or work with. It will be impossible for scientist to design them any smaller. In order to keep adding transistors, scientists would need to design the chips differently, make sure that people still need more and make sure users can appreciate the changes. This coincides with futurists' theory that Moore's law will be applied to all technology in the future because integrated circuits will have been perfected, so scientists will just end up replacing the current system. This will lead to almost instantaneous improvement. It seems very plausible that soon the circuits will be impossible to improve and scientists will find another way to increase the speed of a computer. Some suggestions are even increasing the size of the chip, increasing the number of chips used, or even by spreading out or splitting the power that people have across different systems. It does mean that Moore's law will still be in affect, just applied to different technology.

Chosing Blogger

I chose blogger to publish my blog because I was familiar with it. I knew that it was incredibly easy to use and I really like that it is linked to Gmail. I like that I didn't need to create another account here and that it just uses my password and logs me in when I'm using Gmail. I also really like that its connected with Google Reader and Picassa. I really like how my posts are constantly being saved, so I never have to worry about losing posts. I am a huge fan of anything that Google comes up with and I know other people with blogs on this. WordPress was cool because it showed how many words were entered and had an entry page that showed about nine different blogs and their topics. I think that it is nice to be able to see what other people are saying. I thought it was very weird that they let you see up to the date stats about people visiting your blog. I don't really need to know who is looking, especially since this is just for recreation, its not a professional blog. I think that LiveJournal's voiceposting feature was cool, but the blog seemed to advertised for me and it was talking about paying with credit cards. I know that its free but I don't want to deal with advertisers and blog merchandise.
A recent phenomenon in blogging is celebrity blogs and gossip blogs. Some have their own sites while others have blogs featured on ESPN and myspace. Perez Hilton and TMZ blog constantly about celebs, showing pictures and posting gossip. After Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs, he apologized to her via blog and many celebrites have posted comments on their own blogs regarding the incident. "Rap star Kanye West had taken to his blog and issued an ALL-CAPS apology to country star Taylor Swift and her mother. 'I spoke to her mother right after and she said the same thing my mother would've said,' Kanye wrote in his explanation for interrupting Swift's VMA win" (Todd Martens, Los Angeles Times). More famous celebrity gossip blogs have even made their writers celebrities in their own right. There are several popular blogs that have even gained advertisers attention. Gawker media is one such group that expanded in size and popularity immediately. "The catty network quickly grew into a powerhouse, and it now has eight blogs, 20 million monthly readers and more than 150 full- and part-time employees"(Claire Cain Miller, New York Times) Perez Hilton has used his blog to bring forth "his latest venture, the Perez Hilton Presents Tour, which stops Saturday at Metro. The tour is an offshoot of his new music label, Perezcious Music, and includes his first signed act, the French singer Sliimy" (Curt Wagner, Chicago Red Eye). Gossip blogs get millions of hits per day. "Perezhilton.com gets more than 10 million unique visitors per month, according to Henry Copeland, president of BlogAds" (Wagner). Although blogs started small, today they can make millions for the bloggers and give celebrities and gossipers a medium for expressing their opinions. Stars cozy up to bloggers like Perez because they know that he can make or break their careers.

Final Project

When we first started working on this project, we knew that we all disagreed with Putnam’s theory. Our proposal, or draft, was not much different than the final product. We made some tweaks and edited it as we went along, but overall, we stuck to the original plan. One thing that we did add during filming was the Dance Dance Revolution clips. Erin and I were filming at the Union and we saw these kids who were all hanging out playing DDR or watching. When we saw this, we immediately thought it was a perfect example of how our generation uses technology to interact. The first thing I thought when we were watching was that the kids who were playing,(and no offense to them) were kids who probably did not go to the bars and dance or during high school probably did not cut a rug on the dance floor. But to watch them there, they were busting moves that were really cool to watch and were able to do so because originally they were into technology and DDR combines both, so they were more then willing to bust some moves will playing. We figured that our generation might not go bowling or sit around the VA Hall, but we are still interacting with each other. We thought that it would be really cool to show a bowling alley and that yes, leagues still exist, but that our generation is also using technology to interact. We knew that there were groups of kids who get together on Friday and Saturday nights and play interactive games like World of Warcraft. Our goal from the start was to film these kids, who all happened to be really agreeable to being filmed. We had a much easier time getting them to agree to being filmed than we did the older people at the bowling alley, which Erin and I found really interesting since the people at the bowling alley had no chance of seeing the film or of anyone seeing them who would know them. The kids in the dorms though do run that risk, which I guess could almost show how much more willing our generation is to using technology. While we were at the bowling alley asking people if we could film them, we constantly heard, “this isn’t going to end up on YouTube is it?” The input that we got from bowlers and from kids was really good because they all seemed to agree with us. The kids were talking about how they play over breaks and how the game involves a lot of communication because not only do they have to work to defeat their “enemy” which is the other team, but they have to work with each other and stay on the same page to come up with strategy. Putnam claims that “from the point of view of social connectedness, however, the new organizations are sufficiently different…the only act of membership consists in writing a check” (52). I think that the kids that we filmed prove that wrong. Not only do they meet every weekend to play, they have friends who are in other countries that they SKYPE with in order to get everyone involved. In order to do that, they have to set “meeting times”, create a space for the meeting (even if it is only via internet connection), and they share their thoughts and opinions throughout the game, just like if they were together, at an actual face-to-face meeting. Putnam also claims that although the workplace should be a place for social interaction and to form connections with others, it is not “the salvation for our fraying society” (92). The bowlers that we interviewed worked together and each team in the league was work teams. They met each Wednesday night to socialize and bowl and had been doing so for years. That is evidence that the workplace does help foster social connections.

Interactive media

One example of interactive media that I am addicted to is the Impossible Quiz. Once I start, I cannot seem to stop, and usually while I'm play, other people try to help. I have yet to defeat it and I don't even know if it is beatable. But either way, it is incredibly addicting and is a good example of interactive media. The game requires you to click on different things on the screen in order to access the next page. Each page is different and requires you to test out a lot of choices in order to move on. The Impossible Quiz

Video Project Reflection

College Life: County Market

When we started this project, we had a bunch of odd ideas floating around that we knew would be entertaining for us, but very few other people would understand. So we drew a blank when we were trying to figure out what would work and what was new and unfamiliar to us. We originally were going to find out which had better deals, the Dollar Tree or County Market because we know that some of the things at the Dollar Tree are actually less than a dollar at real grocery stores. But we weren’t able to get a car for the weekend and the video camera that we checked out didn’t work, so when we tried to do it over the weekend, we failed. Erin and I were trying to figure out what we should do instead and since we are at County Market all the time we decided we would find out what other people thought about it. I think that this is a much better angle because it is much more relevant to students. We wanted to know why that location, why now and who shops there. We both also thought it would be really cool if we could build off of our last project, the podcast, so we decided to kind of treat this like it was part of a show for college kids. We figured since County Market was on campus and we really needed a grocery store, it would be cool to “show students around”. If it were a real program, I think that it makes sense to have our embarrassing moments stories one day a week, then do a segment on the new or cool places on campus so that students can know what’s up. The show would really appeal to kids because it caters to them without being boring. I really like doing visual projects like films because I think that you have much more opportunity to be creative. My high school projects always ended up really fun, so I was really looking forward to this. I thought using the camera was really easy and we switched off so that we both got the hang of using it. One downside of using the camera was that it looks really shaky, but I don’t think that that could have been helped. I thought the project would take much longer to complete than it actually did. Once we got there, I think that we were pretty lucky getting good interviews with people who actually used County Market and had been there before. Using the iMovie program to edit was tricky at first because neither of us had ever used it. We had no idea how to go about editing on the computer. During high school, I made at least 5 movie projects, but I would just tape over parts that had screw-ups. It would take hours to get through the project, but the editing software made it so much easier. We could cut anything that wasn’t perfect, which was awesome. The program was really easy once I got the hang of it though and a lot of fun to play around with. I don’t think that any two parts of the movie that we made are shown in the order that we filmed them, which is really cool. I was able to edit out parts that were shaky and mess around with it until I got a finished product I really liked.

10 Things

So over break I realized there are a lot of things that I don't notice all around me. I'm hoping that was what we were supposed to focus on. Here are some:
How tall my little brother has grown
how people react when you mooch off their "finished" plate
how loud my roommate talks, especially in the morning
different accents that we all have
how good music can get you excited
how friends tend to dress similarly
there is always one voice that is louder than everyone else at church
that one person is always slower or faster
the difference in dress extremes at my church
the difference in how people dressed in Panama City- tourists vs. locals
the facial similarities between myself and my brother
how warm weather automatically puts a smile on peoples' faces
how happy bright colored houses made me feel
how we are more willing to look ridiculous with people we don't know
the way people react to funny hats
how people bond when they smoke
how much more friendly people are with fellow vacationers
graffiti is everywhere!
the weird noises my friend makes when she is reading
how much more affectionate one of my friends is

St. Paddy's Day Questions

Does an interview add credibility to a documentary? If there were no interviews in a documentary that you were watching, would it have the same value to it?

The author talks about prepping for the interview through pre-interviews, writing questions, getting a list of questions from the interviewee, etc.. But some interview that we see are completely unscripted. Does the prep work make them scripted and therefore more easily manipulated to fit the needs of the interviewer?

Which do you think are more realistic or more credible, the live interviews that are completely unprepared, such as ones outside courthouses, on the red carpet, on the streets, etc., or the ones where the person is being interviewed while sitting at a table with a set of prepared questions, after lots of prep work has been done?

Do you think the chances of getting the interviewee to reveal some important information that is unknown more likely if they haven't had a chance to "practice" what they are going to say in a pre-interview?

When you are watching an interview, does the setting usually play a role in how you view it? What is more appealing, an interview that takes place while the two walk in the park, or where they are both sitting comfortably in a room?

When watching an interview, do you even notice how the questions are being asked i.e can you hear the actual questions, can you see the interviewer, etc.?

Podcast Reflection

Our Podcast!

When we decided to do this project, specifically, when we decided to interview people for their most embarrassing moments, I don’t think we realized how much fun it would be to create. We started out with a pretty good idea about how to capture these moments: go out on Unofficial, when people will hopefully have looser tongues, and interview them. Then we would just transfer the interviews onto GarageBand. Of course, we ran into a problem immediately; our tape recorder was not digital. We knew that it was possible to get that on the computer, so we figured we would just handle that problem when we needed to. We took the recorder out on Friday and talked to a bunch of people, or at least tried to. Another problem we encountered was that college kids are shameless. So many of the people that we asked told us that they didn’t have any embarrassing stories, which I guess I can relate to. Yeah, I have stories that should be embarrassing, but they’re pretty common things, so they don’t really embarrass me. To this day, the most embarrassing thing that I can think of that has happened to me was in grade school. Awkward and embarrassing things happen to college kids all the time, especially when alcohol is involved. So Erin and I ended up having to get stories the next day as well from kids who were walking around. We got a lot of good stories, but of course, most of them were incredibly foul and dirty. We were not sure if that would be a problem at first, but then we realized that those are really the only embarrassing moments that people have, so it couldn’t be helped if we wanted to stick with the same topic. When we got to the recording process, we had trouble figuring out how we were going to transfer the recordings onto the computer. We didn’t really like the idea of holding the recorder up to the computer mic since the sound quality was not going to be as good. It was much easier and more effective to just transcribe the stories from the interviews and then just read them ourselves. The project flowed very well with just us recording because we were able to summarize stories and leave out parts that weren’t really relevant. I think that us recording it also made it more of “our” podcast. If we had just used other people’s interviews, it would have been more of a compilation than the “show” we were looking to make. We also had trouble at first figuring out how to work the microphone in the MACs. At first, we were afraid that the sound quality would be really bad because we were just using the computer’s built-in mic and we were in the public computer lab, but I think that it turned out really well and that the sound quality is fine. After we recorded, we saved it to the flash drive and tried to play it, but of course it didn’t work. The song that we used apparently didn’t save, so we had a really hard time figuring out why it didn’t save and how to do that. We finally got it completely saved, but being us, we couldn’t get the link to work from our blog. For some reason, it was saving each individual recording that we made, but not the whole, smooth project. After encountering all of these problems though, both Erin and I were really happy with our final project. We had a lot of fun adding sound effects and editing the piece. I would actually love to make another one, because the whole process was really cool. We both said that we would want to make more, even one a week, which wouldn’t be hard to do since we didn’t use all of the stories that we got and it wouldn’t be hard to get more. We actually had a ton of interest in the final project as well from the people who gave us their stories, so I promised that I would post the link on Facebook for them to listen as well. Who knows, maybe we’ll do a weekly podcast if its “critically acclaimed”, seeing as people never stop doing embarrassing things.