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.

Twitter

Now that I've been using Twitter for a couple of weeks, I'm ready to concede that it does have some good points. I follow ABC news, and I've found that it's a good source for news and other information. I don't have a television, or really listen to the radio, so unless I read a newspaper or go online I can often miss important things. So that's one good thing.

I'm also following Marshall Breeding, who's a bit of a big-time guy in the world of Digital Information Management. I actually discovered him for Information Discovery, but some of the articles that he posts onto his Twitter account are quite relevant to this course. He also has a website which is full of interesting information. Judy O'Connell, who I've mentioned on here before, is also on Twitter, and she posts some good links for Information Management.

My favourite Twitter account, however, is louis as art. I'm not at all a One Direction fan, and I'm not even sure if it's pronounced the French way or not, but some industrial person has taken the time to find artworks that are evocative of photographs of Louis from One Direction. And some of them are brilliant. Here's a few examples:

sunrise // chris hobel pic.twitter.com/g4Kjv4AMBB
— louis as art (@artlikelouis) March 19, 2015

(one more first day of spring post) abstract knives // unknown pic.twitter.com/ZkjFlugYKL
— louis as art (@artlikelouis) March 20, 2015

pink shadows // ellen ys - #KCA #Vote1DUК pic.twitter.com/0qxaCAwTnu
— louis as art (@artlikelouis) March 28, 2015

I also just taught myself how to embed tweets! Took me a little while, but after last weeks class in HTML, I didn't panic, I followed the instructions, and did it myself! It really is amazing what I'm learning here.

Week Two

The collective horror over the invasiveness of Twitter was an interesting thing to behold this week. It does appear that Big Brother is watching us, and is using our own blithe disregard of privacy to do it. After reading up on it a bit, the issues are worse than I had realised. Cookies I knew about, and didn't much like, but I didn't realise that applications on your phones (Siri for example) can listen to your conversations, gmail can read your emails, and cars can tell insurance companies about your driving habits. It's frightening, really. Mother Jones has an interesting article about it, read it here