Week 13: Final Assessment

Yeeee Haaaaa!, the final one. I must say, for me, it has been an enlightening if not harrowing experience. However, it has been a extremely positive one in the end. I have converted to Mac and that alone is a significant achievement. There is no question in my mind that I will benefit tremendously from the knowledge gained. Yes... it is true that I see it from three different perspectives.

The "Good"; web links are no where near as difficult as first presumed and handy for making easy connections for the outer people looking in. Flickr is great and now a personal favourite of mine when it comes to parking images for easy access around the globe. I only wish that I had known about it earlier. Delicious, is "Delicious" and is now a staple of my daily cyber diet. How I managed without out it before is beyond my comprehension, and I even find myself preaching the benefits of this wonderful bookmarking site like some kind of Born Again evangelistic patriarch who is ordained in the ministry of 'Delicious'... Hallelujah! Donations can be made on my website.

The"Bad"; Blogger, which I am modestly proficient at now, but ranks right up there with Facebook as the consummate time waster for anyone who has a life.

And the"Ugly"; Technorati, which I can't really comment on at this point because it clearly states in the university policy that the use of profanity is strictly forbidden.

So what did I learn from this subject over the course of the semester?

1) Multimedia is vitally important to my life, both now and into the future. After skirting dangerously behind the iworld for far too many years, I am now embracing the path forward to "Technological Singularity". (Look it up, its coming to a theatre near you)
2) I do understand the purpose of web links and see them as essential in all forms of communication. Email, blogs, websites and so forth, providing easy access for respondents, as well as inviting further click through and page views on websites. Moreover, I can actually implant them myself with the skills gained from the course.
3) I have learnt that blogging has its place, and though I doubt that I will have the time to actually do it, I view it as a necessary part of promoting any business venture online or off.
4) Flickr, what can I say that I haven't said already. What a great place for the web images I find, and I get them on whatever continent that my feet are peddling on. Thank you!
5) Delicious, again is a spectacular find and I will cherish the benefits into the future. Don't forget to leave your donations at the door.
6) Templates, yeah I know what they are now.
9) FTP & Athene, got it.
10) Counters and RSS, an essential part of any web page, although I still would like to know how to choose the one that counts uniques.
11) Technorati, Burn in Hell!

Week 12: Revision and Assessment Prep

Well it came around faster than I expected.

Week 11: Technorati

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. Technorati looks at tags that authors have placed on their websites. These tags help categorize search results, with recent results coming first.

Yes it is true, Technorati is much more that just a search engine for blogs. Its is a more annoyance and the bane of my existence in class. If I get my hands on that Technorati Monster he'll be mounted over my mantelpiece above the fireplace.

Week 10: Counters and RSS

A web counter counts how many times a website or certain page has been viewed. Most counters count the number of unique hits a page gets while others count how many times a page was viewed even if the same person viewed it repeatedly.

A Johnson counter, on the other hand, (or switchtail ring counter, twisted-ring counter, walking-ring counter, or Moebius counter) is a modified ring counter, where the output from the last stage is inverted and fed back as input to the first stage. A pattern of bits equal in length to twice the length of the shift register thus circulates indefinitely. What, you ask, does this have to do with Web Counters? Not a damn thing, but it looked funny at the time. Johnson counter...come on its funny.

Week 9: FTP & Athene

Without going into a long bombastic harangue full of technical garb; File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol used to exchange and manipulate files over a TCP computer network, such as the Internet.


FTP promotes the sharing of files and encourages the use of remote computers to provide website interaction. It also shields the user from variations in file storage systems among hosts. Additionally, it allows efficient and reliable data transfer. Overall FTP simplifies the creation, development and manipulation of websites for a common user.

On the down side it seems that the original FTP had certain security issues with the method of transferring files since there is no method specified for transferring data in an encrypted fashion. This means that under most network configurations, FTP commands and transferred files can be captured by anyone on the same network using network analyzer software. However, there are a number of solutions for this problem now. Secure File Transfer Protocol or SFTP, Transport Layer Security (TLS), Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) cryptographic protocols all provide a degree of security that addresses the issue.

Here is a working Link to my Web page.

Here is a Link to the Week 9 MPI104 post.

Here is a Link to the MPI104 Blog.

Select a random link and take your chances!

Week 1: Welcome To My Blog!!

According to the Webster's New World Thesaurus/Dictionary; Anger, wrath, rage, fury, annoyance, irritation, exasperation, Oh! lets not forget, the bad tempered violent tantrum, is exactly how I feel a this very moment. I make an special effort to add all kinds of funky photos and extras to my blog, thinking Oh! that will be way cool, and instead I delete the whole flipping thing from cyber existence. Can somebody please tell me where the way-back undo button is on Blogger?

That's what I thought. So here it is again, now completely out of order.

Welcome! Welcome to my blog. It is an interesting blog, or at the very least an entertaining blog. Ok, if you're the really critical type it's a pretty average blog, but I try.

In retrospect it is a blog without interest apparently? (0 Comments)

Here is a Link to the mpi104 metablog.

Week 7: Assessment

500 words EH! Well that was three. No wait! now its seven? Hold on that makes sixteen...Ok, this could go on for ever. Assessment time already and I can't believe how much I have learned. Yes it was painful getting my thick head around most of it at the beginning, but now it seems second nature, and what a relief. To summarise what I have done goes way beyond the shear course material and deep into the realm of computer platforms. Yes, its true I hadn't touched a Mac before rocking up to the lab on day one, and it did actually take me ten minutes to find the on button. Now more than ever I look at my PC with contempt, where is the anchor rope eyelet on this block of metal, while truly becoming a Mac convert.

Blogger; I have made a post for every week of material covered, thus totaling seven, and attempted not to compound the already tedious marking process with excessive amounts meaningless babble. At the same time a degree of creative effort was put forth to keep it light hearted and minimal, as the instructions where for a 'blog' and not a 'Splog'...Here is a Link to one of my more interesting posts. Here is a second Link just because. The blog template has been changed 3 times and the colour has moved from blue to green to blackish clouds. I have made several comments on other blogs, most not containing any interestingness, however this comment Link is not bad. Tags, got them. MPI104_2009, geotagged, delicious, CSS, Flickr and a large amount of tags in other weeks of work including the relevant / related labels. Unfortunately I find it hard to allocate time to blog aimlessly and who really cares about what I think anyway, so besides scouring through the blogger applications, widgets and goodies I have kept it to markable size.

Del.icio.us; I love this site and have added it to my own personal tool bars. It represents a great find for me since it consolidates all of my scattered website lists from three continents and provides them on demand anywhere I travel, subject to internet access of course. I have bookmarked 30 web pages for this exercise, although i have collected a great deal more under my true name profile. Some of the bookmarks that interest me are trade and industry news or production related sites that assist in my field of endeavor. The rest are of classmates blogs which provide easy direction to their pages. On my own profile the predominant interest is vast since there is no possible way to recall all of the websites for which I have interest, especially when comparing site statistics and performance.
Here is a Link to my bookmarketed 3 favorite web pages.
Here is a Link to my first favorite web page.
Here is a Link to my second favorite web page.
Here is a Link to my third favorite web page.

Flickr; I did enjoy this website and spent an incalculable amount of time locating truly interesting image. Yes, I was confused about just how many we were required to add each week, but the effort was worth the end result. There are 60+ images in my photostream, 6 excellent sets of 10 images, and one small set of my personal favorites. Check them out!
Here is a Link to my 3 favorites from other Flickr members.
Here is a Link to my 3 personal favorite images.

Here is a Link to the mpi104 blog.

Week 6: Templates

CSS provides more flexibility and better control in the presentation of web pages. It allows multiple pages to share formatting, and reduces complexity in the content. CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles and layouts. Presentation in CSS is separated from structure and print.

CSS can define color, font, text alignment, size, borders, spacing, and other characteristics. It can do this independently for on-screen and printed views. This means that you can change the layout of a web page without changing the content.

CSS allows the widest possible accessibility with the broad access to information and services.

The adoption of CSS has had problems due mostly to poor implementation and support.

Well that was a mouthful, not to mention boring!! Bottom line...CSS lets me tweak my page easy.

Here is a Link to some templates which may interest you.

Here is a Link to the mpi104 blog.

Week 5: Del.icio.us

Delicious is a sweet find. This site would be excellent for anyone who is moving frequently between computers. I will surely be adding it to my personal tools list. Besides the usual stupendous list of applications, I admire the story behind the man.

In 2003, Joshua Schachter released the first version of Delicious. Then in 2005, he left his day job to work on it fulltime, and by the end of 2005 he had sold it to Yahoo for an estimated $50 million. Not a bad effort for a couple of years work.

Also interesting is the Domain or URL, "del.icio.us" a cool example of domain hacking, which combinations letters to form a word or phrase. What a great idea, just when I thought I had bought my domain quota for the year.

To be sure, there are other competing bookmarking services, but none command the value anywhere near the range of Delicious.

Here is a Link to Delicious

Here is a Link to the mpi104 blog.

Week 2: My First Web Link

Ok, so you're wondering why my first Web Link is here between Week 4 and Week 5. Yeah I know, how does he manage to post all the other stuff and then say that Week 2 naturally comes after Week 4? Well...I could be dyslexic or maybe it was just beyond me to delete the lot and start over in a chronological order, and anyway if I did it would then seem like I didn't lift a finger until the very last moment. So here it stays, untouched, unblemished, and as close as it gets to the correct order.

Here is a Link to my First Post

Here is a Link to the mpi104 blog.