Back at Uni

The semester has started for the new year, thank god. It's too long a break, I really missed it. I didn't do any of the things that I was planning on doing over the holidays. I did do a bit of interesting course-related voluntary work, but I'll discuss that in another post. Instead, all I did was
work, read, lurk on the internet, watch television, and not much else. I didn't start running (still don't have the pants), I didn't do Codeacademy (I feel bad about that one; I really should have done some of that), and whatever else I was planning on doing, I didn't do that either.

So, new subjects for school! I'm doing two subjects this semester: The Information Professional, and Information Provision. The Information Professional is about working in the Information Management world, and for this subject we need to do a three-week placement. RMIT organises the placement for us, which is totally amazing, we just need to submit a preference list. Here's my seven choices:

1. National Gallery of Victoria (NGV)
2. ABC: Archives and Library Services
3. Parliament of Victoria: Library
4. Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine
5. Alfred Health
6. Museum Victoria
7. Supreme Court of Victoria: Law Library

As you can see, I couldn't decide on a particular field that I wanted to do, so I chose a range. I picked the NGV as number one because I have a background in Art History and I really want to be able to have a wander around in the archives. I would be happy to do any of them though, they all would be interesting I think. So now I have to submit my resume and wait for RMIT to organise it for me. 

Summer Holidays

So I finally finished the semester, which is a great relief! I just found out that I got an HD on a scientific report, and I'm super-chuffed about that. I feel like I'm finally improving at writing reports. Now I have four months off Uni, and I need to find stuff to keep me entertained. I'm going to keep playing around on Trove, and I'm also going to learn JavaScript. Codeacademy, who I have talked about before and love, has a whole bunch of different courses that you can take online, all of them free. It's really good for someone like me who has never done anything like coding before, because it is simple, easily understood, and also updates in real time so you can see exactly what you have done.

After I've done that, I'm going to help a friend build an online store. She wants to sell all the vintage clothes that she has collected, and her brother-in-law was supposed to make her an online store, but I've known her for a couple of years now and he hasn't done it in all that time. So I'm going to do it for her. It shouldn't take too long, hopefully, and it will spur her on to get organised.

Other things - I'm going to take up running. I've never done it before, and I'm going to give it a go. I'm going to read a book called Sleepwalkers, about the first world war. I'll give my house a really, really good clean, which is boring but needs to be done.

Here are two digital information interesting things that I found this week: an article on The Atlantic, by Walter Kirn. If You're Not Paranoid, You're Crazy is about how pervasive digital technology has become, and how it's listening to us, and it totally feeds into my own concerns about information and privacy. Also, Internet Live Stats shows you in real time how many web sites there are, how many emails were sent today, as well as instagram, google searches, and other internet related items. It's pretty amazing to see the numbers tick over so rapidly.

Reflections

I have found this assignment to be a real challenge, but a challenge that I have enjoyed. Having only a small amount of familiarity with a lot of the subjects addressed within the first five weeks, I was easily daunted by the ideas and technologies that we were going to use. However, as we tackled them one by one, I found that they were interesting and enjoyable. I think a great advantage was working within a group, where we were able to support and assist each other as we progressed.

I never thought that I would enjoy HTML as much as I have been! I've never used HTML before, and was scared by the very thought of it! I think that when you see it, without knowing that there is a strict procedure and rules that you can follow, that the very sight of it is confusing. But now, after using it a bit, I'm able to understand it and use it. I'm still progressing through Codeacademy, onto CSS now, which is a bit harder I think but still, easy to understand so long as you follow the rules. This is probably the biggest thing that I'm going to take away from this subject - that I can use HTML, and that I'm actually quite good at it. I think it's the logic of the coding - it appeals to my preference for order.

Other things that I learned through this course

• How to embed a map
• How to use Twitter, why we should use Twitter, and how to embed a tweet (I was very proud of that one, it was my first attempt at HTML, and I was practically giddy with delight when it worked)
• What a document is. I'm still quite interested in that, but I really think that Suzanne Briet's claims about the leopard being the document is the position that I agree with.
• How to use Endnote. This tool is great, and one that I will definitely be using in future studies.
• This one is really just to point out that look, I just made an unordered list using HTML and isn't that amazing?

The biggest thing that I will take away from this assignment, however, is awareness. Previously, I had all of my social networking sites open to the public, all of my information freely available, and I was using only a couple of passwords, often for more than one website. Now I have a lot of different passwords, all complicated and different, as well as changing the settings for privacy for a lot of sites. I think that privacy is going to be a huge issue in the coming years. And it is something that I feel slightly more ready for after this course. 

Google mapping

This map contains directions to the house that I grew up in, in the lovely town of Castlemaine. I've included directions by car, as well as a link to the Victorian Heritage database where there is a description of the house. It's a reasonably important place; built right around the beginning of the Gold Rush in Victoria, it was the old police station in Castlemaine as well as the last place that Robert O'Hara Bourke lived before he went off on his expedition (which didn't turn out well at all). The woman that my mum sold the place to painted the house blue, so if you go to the street view, it looks totally different today.

Originally I tried to embed the map using the google+ share button on the left hand side of the map, but I kept on coming up with a ginormous map when I tried posting it. So then I used the button on the bottom right of the page, which gave you sizing options, but that wouldn't keep the directions on the map. In the end, I used the first URL again and changed the sizing myself in the code, and I think that it has turned out fairly well!

This week I have also been working through the activities on Codeacademy, which I have actually really enjoyed! I think that a big help is being able to see the updates that you are making to the code in real time, so you don't have to refresh the page or submit your work to see where the mistakes are. Also, the badges that you are awarded as you progress really help, it gives you something to work towards and also break up the sections a bit more. I've posted a badge onto my twitter page, like a big proud dork.