On Thrusday and Friday I was still waiting for the laptop to arrive but it didn’t arrive until the Monday. So being stuck with no way to progress the website, due to the current pc being slow, I spent those two days trying to storyboard, roughly, different drink manufacturing method in their simplest forms.
On Monday, I had to call in sick.
On Tuesday, I arrived in to the new laptop, which costed me a most of the week just downloading and getting the langue to work with the program.
Productivity is a bit down due to the fact that I’m now just working on css and documentation and trying to wrap my mind around the php (which is a bit of mind-melter) while I wait for the new pc. I figure a solution around the mysql problem by using mySQL workbench to upload the downloaded database but php still won’t work on the browser, which I spent most of today, Wednesday, but gave up at around half three.
Wednesday, I worked on downloading the database in the hope of setting up an offline version and,by accident I changed a setting which knock the online off. We called the host provider and they helped us by changing it back.
Thursday and Friday, due to the problems with phpMyAdmin and mySQL I worked on the static side of the website the css while I wait for a new laptop to come in which will should arrive in week 2. I worked on styling the navigation bar try to update it and make it more user friendly. Which I succeeded on the end of Friday.
Monday, due to lunch meetings and a conference the office closed around 12 do I just sent the morning catching up with documentation which I had fallen behind on.
I started my work placement yesterday. We went through what the website need to be, I suggested to switch to wordpress, due to the fact that the website was hard to current website was hard to comprehend, I hace knowledge of php but not this much. I spent a lot of time downloading xampp and wordpress. I spent a lot of time messing around with them.
When I arrived this morning, Clarissa stated that she would like to keep the original site just upgrade it. So, the next few days will be me trying to get my head around the coding and developing
I was slightly surprized when I saw this week speaker but I got over it pretty fast. Emma Wade, a young women not much older then myself, is an artist who went from industrial to innovation. She talked about how she went from the printing industry to the art world. She describe all the projects she had worked on when she was in collage and how she carrried the same type of work into her everyday work. She an artist who wishes to stimilize human emotions through media and inventions. She created a spot light for the the average person, showed her dogs life through media, and invented a jacket that hugs you!
I think she is awe inspiring but needs to practice public speaking a bit more.
Wow!
That’s all I have to say about this week’s speaker. I was so glad that I had stayed back for it. I was thinking of bunking off ’cause I was a bit tired but I am glad I didn’t!
Clodagh had Ian Cudmore in to speak to us about film editing. It was amazing. He went through his CV but told it like a story, unlike the previous week that told it like it was common knowledge and didn’t give it much heart. He talked about starting off in NCAD and working his way through life as a freelancing editor. It was really cool. He showed us videos of what he shoot/edited for music artist in his early work and then showed us what he had been up to more resently with RTE. He gave us insight on how the structure of RTE worked and how tough it is at the bottom but how much easier it gets as you work your way up. This is what I want to get into the visual media side of things, I’m not really into the old text media, or the management side, so this lecture really spoke to me more then anyone else so far. The next speaker has to live up too this guy, really,really do not eny them.
This week’s guest speaker was Edward Melvin, for ICAN a company in the Digital Hub, Dublin. Unfortally he couldn’t make it in person but the previsous year, the current second years, recorded his visit from last year, when they were in their first year. (I know, it’s all very confusing and simple at the same time!) Anyway, Ed talked about his duty as a project manager, which is the person who is in cxharge of making sure that a deadline is met on time and as cheapy as possible. He showed us, via the previsious year’s video, what quailifcations he had and the projects he has managed, his CV in other words. He described what pressures that he is under and that he is the leader of the project- not in a direction sense but in a management way.
I think that it was a good effort for a guy who doesnt do public speaking for a living (better then some I have see and has it for a career), but the area on which he had talked about didnt hold that much appeal for me but I enjoyed the lecture, well the video of him giving the lecture, anyway.
On monday we had a guest speaker, Geraldine Gray. She’s a lecturer from the Department of Informatics, and she talked about how the human mind works and how each individual learns in their own way. There is three different ways of learning : Audio learning,Visual learning, kinaesthetic learning, and how each personhas one main way of learning. I found out that I’m a visual learner and I think this will help me with my studying skills (well, to improve what little there is). I found that the lecture was enaging and interesting as I like physcology, to a point. It wasn’t too heavy that it bored you to tears but gave you all the info you needed to know… it could have been worse!
Back again to ITB, back again to work.
This is now a new part of my course, a busier part of the course - the second term. We have only just arrived back and the lecture are talk about doing huge, exciting yet vest amount of work. This semester I have to write an account of the new module (well there all new) “Working in Digital Media”- though I may touch on the other module that I am doing this semester as well. These other module include; Human-Computer Interaction, Web Development 2, Mutlimedia Authoring and Digital Imaging.
Clodagh Lynch is the main organizer of the Working in Digital Media module and we had our first lecture with her this Monday. She told us, the first year group, that we have to keep up our blogs about our first year at ITB, as part of our CA work. I wonder if the lecturers of this course want us to become permanent blogger I’m not really fond of working with text… But if it has to be done it has to be done. Maybe I’ll grow to like it… doubtful but maybe…
Anyway back on track, Clodagh gave us a run-down of what CA work that needs to be done and the marking scheme; this is what we have to do fo the CA, which is 100% CA
Clodagh quickly went through what each piece would entail, and showed us good examples of each, so we knew what quality we’d have to aim for in each assignment. She also told us there’d be a class outing to the Digital Hub and another exhibitions as well sometime before the Easter holidays. Clodagh explained that the Digital Hub was a center where new businesses based in digital media when starting up and even stayed based there for a while. It really intrigued me and now I really want to go.S he also said that there would be guess speakers in her lectures.
Later on that day, my class ,Group B, had our first lab in Digital Media with Damien Cox. I was really put out to discover that we weren’t in the Mac labs at all but in a PC lab which will be really annoying if we got work to do in Abode because the ol PCs doesn’t have that programme at all. We started work on our firt assignment that day which was creating a CV.
Then Tuesday came and I had the last of the three labs decided to W.i.D.M this week with Clodagh, where we started to learn how to use illustrator. I find it really hard to use at the moment but I’m sure, I’ll get use to it in time.
That was my busy first week to a busy semester, and that was just one module. So don’t even get me started on the other subject!
This week, we did not have a lecture. We spent the time instead working on the typography project which we given the previous week (finished project down below).
I had finished the free hand sketch and started the typography image by hand (we had the option to do it on photoshop) on Monday and by tuesday, I had finished the project altogether. I was very happy with the results. Though the typography is in my own hand and is not that legible, I think the penmanship gives it a unique character and also tells you what type of person I am… a messy one!
