A New World?

Dear Blogger,

Today is the day my captain and I reached "India", it took months at sea across the Atlantic and at last we have ended our voyage. We were greeted by a group of confused natives who clearly hadn't the faintest idea that we were coming. I also hear talks of us returning to Europe to tell the authorities that we have finally discovered a new world. I don't know about this, something isn't right.

I have the slightest idea that we are not in India, but I have tried to tell the captain that I have been to India before but he seems determined that I either must have been to a different part or have never been before. Perhaps I got the wrong place he says. I do remember a Moorish man telling me that India is across the Pacific and not the Atlantic ocean but we'll see how the weeks go. Besides, these guys sure do have a lot of gold and a lovely landscape.

The people here call themselves Arowaks (as sketched below, I had this man stand still for hours), if anybody knows of their geographical whereabouts could you please send me a response through pigeonmail, as my captain Chris's laptop battery is dying and we have no mobile signal.

Doomsday London

A photo I took whilst in London and edited using my phone giving it a fiery surreality.

Wallet Vine

My wallet is so sick of being empty it's gone to release a mixtape

Random House

This is a very short story about a landlord and his son.

In 1846, in Gloucester lived a widower named Sir George Landlord, who lived with his son, Edmund.

George did not have much time to see his son as he was always very busy travelling to new lands to buy properties, and with land all over the British Commonwealth, he would take his son on an annual trip to one of his many holiday homes abroad; Jamaica, California, Canada, Barbados, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Hawaii, Kenya, Ghana, India and Egypt were just a few on their list of embarkments.

There was only one problem, Edmund was seasick.For the first 14 years of his life however he had never plucked up the courage to tell his father but after a business trip to the Shetland Islands and enduring a 25 hour sea-storm he finally told George that he had long hesitated in asking the permission to spend his holidays somewhere far more local like London. His father then took pity on his son and replied "Son, it does not matter where I spend my time with you, just that we get our annual holiday. Pick a random building anywhere you like and I will do whatever possible to acquire such a place."

The pair went on to spend the rest of their summers together in the house that Sir George went on to buy for his son, rumour has it you can still see a pair of silhouettes in one of the windows every year on the first Saturday of July.

If you do not believe this story, just go to Vauxhall Bridge Road in London, the evidence is there.

RefME

Are you a student? if so, read on. 

Tired of having to search and learn how to reference every time you have an assignment?

Well even if you are not as simple as me but still require a refresher on how to reference your work, or even want to just have a reliable place to store your current references you definitely need to check out the web app RefME. It offers a space technology to find even the toughest of sources using book titles, barcodes, website details, issue numbers and authors names to find the details of seemingly any piece of text and/or information.

You can sign up to the website which then allows you access to the mobile app available on Apple and Android. It really is as simple as it sounds and it allows you to then add separate projects each consisting of different references and journals. It also allows you to change the style of referencing with a catalogue of different types including Harvard, Oxford, AOA and MLA.

It really is a useful app to have on your phone.

Unit 3: What Mean Ye Digital Storytelling? Part 1

The first thing that comes into my mind when I hear the word 'Storytelling' is an adult, usually female, sitting down in a dark space, perhaps a classroom lit by a few candles or low level lights or by a campfire facing a group of around a dozen children around the age of 7 emphatically waving their hands about with wide gazing eyes beading around the small crowd with enthusiasm. The reason I have this image in my head is probably because of my childhood excitement for stories and the fact that all through my primary school days we would listen to the teachers telling us stories and this would be the highlight of the day/week.

I still remember sitting in class when I was 9 listening to my teacher read 'The Vampire Plagues' and being sad every time she would close the book, it always kept us eager to read the next chapter and for this we would be sure to behave in school.

Upon hearing the term 'Digital Storytelling' I think of a more modern form of this, for all I know children in schools ten years later now read these books on a kindle or online, so by this thought I am going to go with the guess that digital storytelling is telling a story through a medium that is transferable through digital devices, like a kindle or on the internet or maybe even on a phone; anything that allows transferable data to be used across a range of electronic platforms... Maybe this is a restrictive way of looking at it but that's my first perception of the term.

Unit 2:Getting Through Bootcamp/Personal Cyber Infrastructure

What an inspiring way to start off a course, Obvious to you, Amazing to others, it really opens up your mind to realise that in fact all of those 'crazy' random ideas that you have every now and then, those light bulb moments that you think people will laugh at because they are too simple are actually often actually well worth the try.

I find it really creative how this unit starts off with an animation about putting ideas out there, it inspired me to look into myself and realise that however things may seem normal to me they can seem abnormal and amazing to others. Some of the greatest inventions are the most simple ideas that many people overlook as being too obvious, simple or a waste of time when chances are if many people are thinking about it means the market will be very large for that particular service or product. A great example are rentable bikes, they are very handy but people do not necessarily want one clogging up their hallways at home. The are also the services many of us overlook like the fact that large companies use the services of other often smaller businesses to help them to achieve what they want, for example, somebody had to make Richard Branson's planes for Virgin, and even staff in many organisations are outsourced from an agency or another organisation. The moral is that there is always space for a good business idea as obvious as unbelievably simple as it may sound, and most important of all, do not be afraid to try and fail, every fall is a step closer to success. The importance of a 'Cyberinfrastructure' actually is not stressed enough out of the corporate world and it is easy not to see it until you read this unit.

I found the gif website GIFfight really interesting and creative and I enjoy seeing the creations of the contributors because you never know what is going to be done with the images.

I also totally agree with the last statement about blog writing that the way I blog will change because although I have written a fair amount of blogs previously this course engages the mind in a totally different way making me truly feel what I am blogging which was previously a very rare thing unless it was a blog I was writing totally off my own back.