i think i might just like all this after all

At the start of the year i had no idea what a blog even was. But I'm glad i learnt all about it and other clever things like links, RSS feeds, technorati and what not. I really enjoy putting photo's on flickr and checking out every one elses happy snaps and creative pictures. I've even used up my the limits of my free account.. MYflickr . I joined a few groups, some for photography and designs, music festivals and I was even thinking of getting a tattoo so joined the group 'tattoos on females' for some inspiration.

Del.icio.us turned out to be a really useful site as well. At the start of the year i decided i wanted to write down all the websites i came across which i liked but having them all bookmarked in one place where i won't lose them makes it so much easier. Using it to record sites I've used for my uni work as well as other interesting things I find along the way is really cool.

I have also experimented with the templates, fonts, colours. I think there is a good balance between form, content and function. I guess I thought about what I liked when visiting other websites and tried to incorporate these ideas into my own. I tried to incorporate pictures in my posts whenever I could and tried not to make my posts too long with too much jargon. So when writing definitions on things like HTML and RSS feed I used the description i understood the best so that anyone else who gets confused as easily as me might also eventually understand.

I want my page to be easily read and easy to follow. I kept my backgrounds plain because I find it hard to read text over a picture. I listened to Jo's advice and made sure i didn't do anything silly like make a page of red and green with nothing inbetween but stuck to colours that i think are aesthetically pleasing together. But i guess its kind of like interestingness and everyone is different in what they think looks good. Which kind of makes me think how can one person mark everyones work on how good it looks if everyone thinks differently on what they like. But then we are taught rules on things like colours, typography, sizes and spacing so perhaps thats how.

South Ball

I've run out of space on Flickr... so here are a couple of pictures from South Ball the other night. I'll put the rest on
MySpace

21st Birthday Parties

There have been lots of 21sts on the past couple of months. I've posted lots of photos on flickr that I've taken for them, the latest is Joes Risky Party take a look..

StatCounter

I'm using StatCounter to see how many visitors i've had to my site. It is up to 87, and i think quite a few of these are from me visiting my own blog and the main day it is visited is Thursday, (when the workshop is on). Most people get to my site through other bogspots and del.icio.us, and my highest visitor length is from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

I like knowing how many visitors my blog has. using the StatCounter is a great tool to find out whether my site is successful or not. Its useful to know which pages are more popular. If some pages are being overlooked it probably means i need to improve or make the navigation to those pages more obvious. Or entice my visitors to find out more about these pages.

what is technorati anyway?

The technorato website says:

Currently tracking 82.7 million blogs

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

But it all started with blogs. Blogs are influential, personal, or both, and they reflect as many topics and opinions as there are people writing them.

Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second.

Technorati. Who's saying what. Right now.

Another good answer to this question is right here

Live Earth Concert

Well didn't end up getting any tickets to Spelndour In The Grass. They had the worst ticket selling system ever!
So anyone else who missed out there is another option to listen to some live music...

Live Earth Australia Concert - 7-continent, 24-hour Live Earth concerts to be held on 7/7/07.
The Australian concert will be staged at Aussie Stadium in Sydney.
Tickets for the show go on sale in Australia Friday, May 18 at 9.00 a.m. (AEST)
The global concert will begin in Sydney and continue across all 7 continents with concerts in Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, London, and Rio de Janeiro before concluding at the Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

The lineup is no where near as good as Splendour but still sounds ok:
Blue King Brown
Crowded House
Eskimo Joe
Ghostwriters
Jack Johnson
John Butler Trio
Missy Higgins
Paul Kelly
Sneaky Sound System
Toni Collette & The Finish
Wolfmother

Live Earth Blog

no excuses

Another way i keep in contact with everyone is through facebook. Some people i know refuse to use myspace so another good way of finding long lost souls and just chatting to friends is through facebook . At first i found it kind of confusing because i was so used to myspace but after a while its pretty useful and i'm still discovering nifty little things you can use with it. So i'm going to add it as an aesthetically pleasing site..

bad websites

I found that these websites were not aesthetically pleasing.
The text is difficult to read. There needs to more contrast between the background color and the text color. Some have poor choice of a background/text color and size. I think background colours need to be simple and should not compete with the content of the page for the users attention.
Constantly running animations are distracting when used excessively. Also in this category are excessive, large, flashing & obnoxious advertisements. The message gets buried in a sea of clutter!
Fake error messages are annoying too. Some of these bad webpages also had fake error messages that trick new computer users into clicking on an ad.
I think the main thing that makes these webpages bad is that all the colour makes clutter. Trying to fit too many things onto one page makes it confusing and difficult to navigate.


bad website


pageant style


fuzzy martain's lair ?


bob's awesome links


I thought microsoft would have a good design microsoft

aesthetically pleasing

These are some websites and blogspots i found aesthetically pleasing.
Some of them are pages for designers and magazines so no doubt they are set out well but i like the way they are all easy to read. I found that these pages which had minimal things on each page were easier to navigate, nice and spacious. They had a lot of pictures which i definately like on a webpage because reading things off the computer screen gets tedious after a while, i guess it depends what you're looking for though.



idn magazine



riot magazine




this way design



ken olling

its all about what things look like

AESTHETICS: The term aesthetics comes from the Greek αισθητική "aisthetike" and was coined by the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735 to mean "the science of how things are known via the senses." And in English, mushc the same study was called studying the "standards of taste" or "judgements of taste."

And answers.com tells me that AESTHETICS is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and expression of beauty, as in the fine arts. It isthe study of the psychological responses to beauty and artistic experiences. A conception of what is artistically valid or beautiful: minimalist aesthetics. And something that has an artistically beautiful or pleasing appearance.

So i need to make my blog easthetically pleasing because no body wants to read the content if the form is ugly.
I need to think about what makes a good website -- Design (things like colour choice, alignments and visual interest), Message (Content- the goal of my website, target audience, what I want them to do. Provide appropriate and, in this case, interesting information), Architecture (Organise pages so the audience can understand), Be easy to read and well organised, Be interactive (good interactivity engages the user and makes site memorable).

SCM magazine

Making a little street magazine is my assignment for GRP2223. So far I've done the cover.. please leave any comments and tell me what you think. I'm using interviews of EES, a photographer and Rin the scientist for the inside. Still haven't got many ideas for these 3 yet but they will come.

Issey Miyake

Everything we've done in graphic design so far has been made on the computer so the latest assignment where out GRP223 class actually has to make a package for a fashion exhibition is kind of refreshing. And a little challenging, i hope it doesn't turn out too dodgey looking. This is the logo and invitation I've made so far for the assignment.

Issey Miyake : How we should live

Any graphos or anyone else should let me know what you think.. changes ? suggestions ?

And for anyone else doing the assignment here are some good links to sites on IM:
official website
The official website is actually really cool. The type and layout is very clever, good inspiration.
products
isseymiyake-watch

what is XML

learning the eXtensible markup language....

XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is.
HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.

What is XML?
* XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
* XML is a markup language much like HTML
* XML was designed to describe data
* XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags
* XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe the data
* XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive
* XML is a W3C Recommendation

XML was not designed to DO anything.
Maybe it is a little hard to understand, but XML does not DO anything. XML was created to structure, store and to send information.

yes.

RSS feed

RSS (Really Simple Sindication)
RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. This is important because you don't have to remember to visit each site every day. You can get the latest headlines and articles, audio files, photographs or video in one place, as soon as they are published.

Technorati

i'm new to technorati?

BLOGGGG

this is my blog its pretty damn interesting and i like the word smog but i need to quit smoking coz the other day i went for a jog and only ran 100 metres before i had to rest on a log but its winter now so theres too much fog to drive to bendigog so i'll just have to sit at home and read a catalogue because its the only mail i ever get people must think i'm a dog or a frog or a hedgehog but only a gollywog would know how to unclog a synagog because its full of eggnog at christmas time i'd like to eat a hotdog and play leapfrog and visit the peeps in family guy who live at quahog

N-Dog

More Firetwirling

This website has more cool pictures of people juggling with fire and playing with glow sticks too it looks craazy and colourful!
juggling with a twist

Fire Twirling

I love the way these pictures of fire twirling turn out. Mel and Kel are the fire twirling queens, i took these pics at James' party and on South Crawl. Pretty Clever!

linking it up

a link to myspace

Splendour

Splendour In The Grass is coming up soon...
For those of you who don’t know, Splendour In the Grass is a music festival that takes place each year in mid-winter in the beautiful environs of sub-tropical Byron Bay. Hopefully i can afford tickets and purchase them before it all sells out ->gotta get in quick<- and make time in my busy schedule to get there! but anyone who is interested should go to the website and check out the lineup because it is was revealed today and its pretty cool...
Splendour In The Grass

HAPPY HOUR!

My favourite day of the week would have to be Friday! Another week of uni over, the weekend has finally arrived and there are atleast 3 happy hours to go to! I like playing pool, although i need to go to more of these happy hours to get some practice because i'm not even very good at it. I took this pic one friday afternoon and forgot to put the flash on my camera but it turned out kind of cool, i think the pool balls look like they're floating.

GRP224 - Berrima Airport

My first assignment handed in for the year! yay! Its all about the process of designing for a corporate client. I've never used blogs before and I've already got two classes to practice my blogging skills in. This is a link to my blog with designs for Berrima International Airport.

freaky deaky south

Its time to make my blog a bit more interesting..
Anybody who lives on South Campus might know what i mean but I went exploring the other day with my friend Rin (i hope i'm not dobbing us in cos i'm pretty sure we're not really allowed in there but perhaps they should lock the doors) and there are so many random buildings with so much stuff left behind its kind of weird. We took some photos in a room full of boxes?? we call it freaky deaky south..

this isn't even interesting its just gross!

or welcome to hell..

flickr...... link

made a flickr account in class today there are lots of great photos so take a look

delicous link

today we learnt about DEL.ICIO.US! its really cool! my link to delicious

Introduction

Hello hello
this is my first blog
yay