The semester is now over, and what a great experience it’s been—especially with this class!
This class, PUB 101, was interesting to me because I have never really been in a student-centered class, where we work on basically one project throughout the entire term—which, in this case, is our website.
I loved how the lectures were more conversational than a “traditionally” structured lecture. Suzanne really tried to get the class engaged in lecture content by having conversations with us and even by having us play games like Kahoot!
Lauren also gave really detailed feedback whenever I asked for it—and even sometimes she just tells me during tutorial or office hours when I visit her. She is such a nice and fun person to talk to and I loved having her as a TA.
I honestly cannot believe that the semester is over already. Time flew so fast! Over the last—and fast—13 weeks, I really learned how to portray my online self publicly through my site. The energy I felt in this class is great, and I hope to see more of this energy in my future classes!
Want to drink some refreshingly easy to make lemonade while reading this? Here’s the link! Something I’ve been missing recently is childhood. I remember being around five years old and setting up a lemonade stand in my living room, because I grew up in an apartment, and having the time of my life. I spent hours taking the time to draw a sign, scout the perfect table, and set up everything just right. Now I barely have the attention span to watch something for more than twenty minutes. Despite having less and less of an attention span, I still manage to waste a large portion of my little free time doing absolutely nothing. Whenever I get a break or am taking rest I immediately pick up my phone and scroll. It almost feels beyond my control. Completely mindless. Social media has engraved itself in my life in an almost self-hating manner. Every time I spend more than ten minutes on Instagram or TikTok, I leave the experience feeling almost numb. The accessibility and ease of social media is what makes it so alluring. There’s no time for setup or cleanup like most of my hobbies, like drawing or baking. And on top of that it is catered for my shortened attention span. When I look at my phone usage and see the hours dedicated to social media, I always wonder what could that have been used for instead? Is there a hobby I might have taken on and mastered by now instead of being updated on the newest trends? My plan going into my time off is setting aside some of my free time for specifically phone free usage. I want to see if this changes my productivity or boosts my creativity in someway. Basically, I want to get my time back.
When figuring out the layout of my pages, in regards to content I kept in mind the f reading pattern. In keeping with the pattern, I made sure to have a strong horizontal menu and limited the amount of body text on the home page. This allows to user to clearly understand the navigation of the website, as well as the aesthetic, without being bombarded with content. Another navigation decision I made was to unify content through landing pages for the broader page categories, for example the PUB 101 page has links through titles and images to the child pages (Process Posts, Mini Assignments, and Peer Reviews). This interlinked nature of content creates easier navigation for the user, while also drawing their attention to other published content. The concept of Kafe Corrective is the idea of stress baking and ranting. Although these categories are within their own respective pages, I included links to the recipes on each corresponding rant to create a connection between the two pages and allow for easier user exploration. To further reinforce user flow between content, each post also has a section at the bottom that recommends other content that have been marked with the same category.
Copyright enables intellectual property to remain and retain publication rights to its originator. In our current digital media age, content is continuously shared and repurposed in new ways. Through platforms like TikTok, short audio clips are paired with either still images or videos to create a new meaning or interpretation of the original content. Because of this remixing of mediums and content, it is often hard to locate the originator of the actual content used within these trends. The remixing and sharing of content results in the question, who should get the credit? Although an individual might have a copyright to a specific piece of content, remixing content arguably creates new content that goes beyond the original. Digital media also allows for instantaneous publication. As seen on social media platforms, posting content is pretty much immediate, and is typically not regulated unless flagged by a different user. Due to the scope of content being posted, reposted, and remixed, it is easy for copyrighted content to be published and remain published for a few days without immediate repercussions. The user on these platforms is also the publisher, meaning there is less of a screening process for how and where content is published to. Digital media continues to blur the line of what should count as intellectual property and for who? The anonymity of social media paired with the ability to self-publish results in more and more publication of remixed media.
The game telephone is notorious for showing the contortion of information as it gets passed from one person to the next. I believe that social media is our current telephone. As younger demographics tend to watch TV or read the news less, our main outlet to current events is through their publication on social media platforms. Although this is an efficient way in the spread on information, the verification of the spread information is severely lacking. Just as certain news corporations have affiliations and align themselves with a political standing, social media users and profiles do the same, but I believe due to the anonymity of social media, the publishers political affiliations are often forgotten. As experienced immensely during peak pandemic era, the sharing of infographics that contained tips and statistics with how to avoid catching COVID was everywhere. The issue with these infographics that get reposted, is that the credibility of their information is not verified and therefore leads to the spread of misinformation. As misinformation riddled content gains traction, this content becomes more of a societal truth than an actual fact. It is accepted as true because of it’s scope and mass publication, rather than the credibility of the information within the content. As users we must become more vigilant in becoming our own fact-checkers, rather than be reliant on the fact-checking done my social media corporations.
As I now have an established intended audience, it has made it easier to try and find my tone of voice for writing my content. As my ideal intended audience are fellow university students who also stress bake, I am able to retain my natural way of speaking for the most part. Keeping an overlap in relatability and slight professionalism, is the type of tone that I am trying to keep my content to maintain. Luckily editing my writing to conform to this type of tone is easier as it is my natural way of speaking. The other element of Kafe Corrective, the recipes, is purely professionalism and coherent communication of the recipes. For this while writing out recipes, and editing the instructions I wrote for them, I used other recipe websites as a frame of reference to clearly convey the instructions as much as possible. Recipe writing is not completely devoid of tone, but it is reliant on using clear adjectives for the addition and incorporation of ingredients. Similarly, while editing and refining Kafe Corrective visually I found it useful to take an approach of asking other people for their critiques or perceptions of the website’s aesthetic. Since the first peer review I found it tremendously helpful to get a fresh pair of eyes examining website, as they have a more objective point of view and it also gives insight into how users feel upon first seeing the site. Overall, editing allowed for the fine tuning and modification of Kafe Corrective’s aesthetic and overall tone. Through the multiple iterations of editing, it was easier to account and try to appeal to my target audience through the refinement of published content.
Analytics do provide valuable insight into my target versus actual audience and lets me base my decisions based on previous performance of content and response from my audience. As a content creator analytics enables me to think about things such as when I should post, what form of content is more popular, and what audience it has popularity with. Comparatively, as a user it is worrisome to know that my data is being tracked by each website I go to, and that data is then able to be sold to other companies by my provider. Online user privacy is something that I miss being oblivious to. Prior to a few years ago, I never intensely noticed the correlation between my search history or text conversations to advertisements, but now it is almost to obvious to ignore. The issue is the power hierarchy surrounding data buying and user data usage. For smaller or individually created websites, like Kafe Corrective, the specificities of the data do not go much beyond time, location and entered information of the user. Larger technology companies, like Google, Facebook, or Twitter, are able to retain a much more detailed and personal account of user information due to the terms and conditions that typically go unread by users. The fact that anything published on the internet can never really be erased has always been slightly terrifying to me. This tracked data and immense accountability has ultimately resulted in a “cancel culture” type era, where there is the debate of if individuals should be held accountable for their past actions that have been chronicled online. Growing up in a time where elementary students use social media, it is terrifying to think that anything and everything posted exists in the online space permanently.
Kafe Corrective would have Community Guidelines that restrict the type of content being posted on behalf of the user’s comments. These Community Guidelines would include an intolerance to any form of racist, sexist or any other form discriminatory behavior. They also include an intolerance towards any excessive vulgar language, which will be reviewed and screened by the admin. Kafe Corrective does also not condone the use or spreading of spam or scam content, spreading of misinformation, or the commenting of external links due to the increased possibility of incurring viruses. Kafe Corrective strives to be an open and accepting community that encourages open communication, and encourages its members to treat themselves and others with kindness. Currently, these Community Guidelines are being enforced by each comment having to be publicly approved to be released onto the website. This means as admin I have full authority over the comments that are published on my pages or in response to the posts of Kafe Corrective. If I have more time for implementing the Community Guidelines, I would also add any derogatory or deemed unfit words to a flag list, that automatically flags the comment. For now the process of me having to manually release each comment allows me to have full screening control over what gets published on Kafe Corrective in order to make sure it fits within the Community Guidelines.
Want to try a new refreshing and simple drink? Here’s the recipe! Metal health is part of everyone’s lives. We all have mental health that we should regulate and take care of, but honestly who has the time? Up until recently, this was my kind of stance on the topic. Mental health always had clear stigmatism in my household growing up. It was often slightly poked fun at, or dismissed of altogether. Coming from a mixed ethnic background, growing up in Canada, and being half-white and half-Japanese, my outlook on debated topics, like mental health, usually vastly varied from my parents. This is something that is generally pretty common from generational gaps, especially when you have parents who grew up in a different country than you. Mental health is a tricky topic, because although it is part of everyone’s lives, the effects are sometimes indescribable or imperceivable to the general public. My slightly dismissive tone towards mental health was formed due to the lack of accessibility to resources and the stigma surrounding mental health. As any university students knows the lack of sleep, food, and constant work is not the most stellar combination. Something that I have noticed recently is my ability to everything else before myself. All assignments and work dominate the hierarchy within my life to the point of where I am unable to maintain a solid structure of physical health, let alone mental. Another thing that I have also found out during this past few months is the importance of talking to others and researching the available resources. Typically there are tons of resources online that are available and easily accessible. And if you are a student, I highly encourage looking into programs offered by your school! Since you are paying tuition you might as well make the most out of it. Helpful links: National Institute of Mental Health BetterHelp (licensed online therapy)
Want to try out a new recipe for some gooey brownies? Here’s the recipe! Almost everyone I know has at one point, or is currently, struggling with burnout. As a student it feels almost inevitable with the amount of pressure we put on ourselves while handling an ever growing workload. I have always struggled with finding balance in my life. Adulthood responsibilities also seem to keep popping up and adding themselves to my never ending list of tasks. Little things that I never had to think about as a child, things like scheduling doctors appointments, or comparing schedules to see friends, all used to be taken for granted. The second I try to relax or take a break, suddenly all signs point to the fact that I’m falling behind. This ultimately results in me never being satisfied. I’m either over or under worked. Part of the issue is being too long-term, big-picture, goal oriented. Although all these qualities are good, and it is beneficial to look to the future, the issue is you are never able to appreciate the present. This semester was an especially difficult one, for a myriad of reasons, due to workload and personal life. In order to try and combat the difficulties faced this semester, I took on the practice of being more grateful for myself and my accomplishments. Although it sounds kind of silly, taking a moment to congratulate myself or appreciate my ability to just complete one simple task helped me feel a lot better about my progress. Often times its truly done with one assignment, immediately onto the next and the cycle just continues to repeat. Implementing a moment of acknowledgment towards yourself helps to break that ongoing work cycle, and give yourself the care you deserve. Finishing an assignment is its own accomplishment and it is important to acknowledge that! Try to reward yourself in some way. Personally, I do cope by stress baking and brownies are always a comfort food go-to for me. Take a moment, maybe an hour or two, and find some way to reward yourself. Not just to help prevent burnout, but you also deserve it.
I know this sounds cliché, but I think this is a big deal to have. My site is all about trying to be optimistic and remaining motivated in a fitness journey while being busy with school, and my posts are mostly just reflections of my experiences during this time. So readers should be respectful of me and my content, as well as anyone else who is going through the same thing I am.
#2 No Hate Speech
Although very similar to the first guideline, this one dives into more specificity in what people should not be commenting on my posts. Any harmful comments are not only hurtful to me, but to anyone who visits my site and is looking for something to motivate them in improving their well-being.
#3 No Spamming
Spamming is annoying, and it disrupts readers from the content they are meant to see on my site.
#4 No Illegal Content or Promotion
Pretty self-explanatory—no one should comment or post anything that promotes any illegal activities.
Why These Guidelines?
My site is meant to serve as a safe space for anyone who is struggling on their fitness journey and wants to find a means to stay motivated. I believe these guidelines enable my site to be a safe space.
Consequences
Anyone who violates these guidelines will be flagged immediately and will be blocked from the site.
I set a goal at the beginning of this semester. I aimed to go to the gym consistently at least four days a week and eat cleaner, and I would track all of my progress along the way. I really thought I could do it, especially since my personal trainer boyfriend was there to help me out.
But school and life got in the way. This term was one of the busiest semesters I’ve had in my entire university career. I was constantly in meetings for group projects, working on my own individual assignments, studying for midterms, and all that jazz.
My body felt tired. My brain was ALWAYS tired. Even though I was not physically moving as much as I would if I were to go to the gym, I was in no mental shape to push myself to go workout or even cook for myself (my mom does that for me…thanks mom! <3). If I did these things I would feel stressed thinking I am just wasting time when I could be studying.
I did not workout the last couple of months…well I did for a week and then stopped…does that count? Anyways…everytime I would go back to the gym after God knows how long, it would honestly feel like I am starting back to square one each time.
And that never felt any good. As someone who used to lift really heavyweights a year ago, it never feels great to know that I am struggling with weights that used to be so easy.
Also I am slouching more now. As a SIAT student minoring in Publishing, I am CONSTANTLY sitting at my desk in front of the computer. My back is also always cracking, and it hurts by the end of the day because of how long I have been sitting for. I feel like if I have gone to the gym consistently throughout the semester as I planned, then maybe my back wouldn’t hurt so much.
As for my diet, I think I’ve done fairly decently. By sticking to my diet (most of the time), I think I was able to maintain my weight for the most part, which is a very good thing! However, I do know that if I had gone to the gym consistently, I could have lost more weight.
So that is where I’m at. I was not always in the best headspace when it comes to this, but I know that things will get better from here. Next semester, I hope to find more time to put my physical and mental health a high priority, and to be able to do the work in doing so.
Regardless, this has been a great semester—I have learned so much and have had great experiences. Can’t wait for the next term! Time to rest for now (:
This post was intended for Week 13, December 6, 2022.
Check out this TikTok I made of a feature that will impress all your neighbours! “Tesla Lightshow” is a holiday feature that rolled out to Tesla cars via a software update in December 2021. The lightshow blasts a song through the car’s internal and external speakers with the car’s lights, mirrors and even windows! It’s a fun, light hearted feature that will definitely catch the eyes from neighbouring houses.
Featured photo: N. Cristovao (2021). Tesla releases Holiday Update with 2021.44.25. Not a Tesla App. From https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/upcoming-features/id/661/tesla-releases-holiday-update-with-2021-44-25
These community guidelines are designed to make this website an inclusive and welcoming platform. We welcome everyone especially those who are currently a Tesla owner, an electric vehicle owner, a prospective electric vehicle owner and even those who are just curious and passing by! This will ensure that this website is a safe space for everyone and creates an engaging environment for a wide range of diverse individuals!
Guidelines:
We will not tolerate any form of hate speech including but not limited to: Age, Disability, Ethnicity, Gender Identity and Expression, Nationality, Race, Immigration Status, Religion, Sex/Gender, Sexual Orientation, Victims of a major violent event and their kin, Veteran Status. Those engaging in these forms of hate speech will be banned from accessing the website and may face penalties and/or prosecution
Treat others online the way you would want to be treated
Everyone has their own opinions, please be respectful if your opinion differs with another individual
Do not give out personal information online and respect each other’s privacy
Rationale for Community Guidelines:
I started the community guidelines with an introduction as to what the community guidelines were for. I made sure to clearly mention that the website is a safe space where everyone is welcomed. Notice, I didn’t mention that only Tesla owners were allowed, nor did I mention only guys were allowed…
While this is not an exhaustive list of guidelines, I believe this is the optimal amount. It lays out the most important guidelines to follow for my website, without fire hosing my audience with a list of rules that might deter them from my website. I intentionally left out a guideline relating to trolls in hopes of utilizing the counter-trolling strategy where my audience can “flood the victims of abuse with kindness” (Stein, 2016). I feel like if I included a non-troll guideline, this would actually encourage the trollers to troll.
I am hoping that this brief set of community guidelines will lay a foundation of expectations for those who visit my site. Community guidelines tend to be updated as the world evolves. The internet faces new types of problems and learn to adapt to them through updated community guidelines. I believe this will be the same case for most websites from our Pub 101 class. But for now, these are the finalized community guidelines for TessDrives.
Featured photo: L. Adriano (2022). Insurance Business Canada. From: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/ca/news/breaking-news/osfi-amf-release-capital-adequacy-guidelines-for-insurance-companies-414135.aspx
References:
Stein, J. (2016, August 18). How Trolls Are Ruining The Internet. How Trolls Are Ruining The Internet | Time. Retrieved December 4, 2022, from https://time.com/4457110/internet-trolls/
Assign the 5% to one category of the existing assessment breakdown–overall participation, growth, contribution to the class, peer reviews, process posts, essay
PUB 101 has been quite the experience. From no experience with web design to becoming a WordPress master (just kidding). I do believe that my overall participation in class has been meeting expectations. I’ve shown up to class most of the time, asked for help in tutorial (I even won wordle for the planner), and taken notes on how to make my website better. I think my growth is evident as you can evidently see the effort I’ve put into web development, reviewing my peer’s websites, and incorporating readings into my process posts. The course was heavily dependent on how much effort I put into it, if I put a lot of effort, I would enjoy doing my work.
Though I did not get perfect on my essay, I was honoured to receive the comment from Lauren stating I am a strong writer.
Overall, I’d say I’d rate myself at a 4.5/5 for putting in lots of work into PUB 101.
For this week, I followed a patreon tutorial on how to colour in clothes. I noticed during my Arcane art style study, one of my biggest weaknesses was colouring in clothes and making sure that the texture was appropriate for the attire.
Therefore, I decided to go back to an old patreon tutorial that detailed how to colour clothes and apply the right textures ste-by-step. I found that the process of picking colours for the shadows and illuminated parts are slightly different than the colouring process for other objects. Usually, when picking colours for the shaded areas, I would adjust to a completely different hue in order to ensure that the right shade is chosen depending on the environment that dictates the colours. However, for clothes, I would only ever need adjust the shade within the hue to find the right colours. I don’t know exactly why but the artist who stated that during the patreon tutorial stated that this was true and I think the results back up that claim so I am not going to question that. I’m too tired to be asking why it works, I just see that it works and that the process for choosing the colours is simple.
At the end of the colouring tutorial, I felt more confident in my abilities to colour in clothes. So that’s a win.
For this week, I decided to do an art style study on one of my favourite T.V. shows of all time, Arcane. Ever since this show came out in November of 2021, I have completely been enamoured by the art style as it was something so unique. The only animated films of recent memory that had an animation style so unique that could be comparable to Arcane were ‘The Lego Movie” from 2014 and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” from 2018. While both of these movies excelled in their animation in their own ways, I would place Arcane above all of them. Arcane somehow captured all the subtle nuances when it comes to the emotional expressions from the characters. From the eyes twitching to the eyebrows furrowing, these subtle nuances helped make the characters feel more real and believable, as if they were actually alive.
Anyways, that’s enough gushing about the show. I could go on but I wouldn’t want to subject you to that kind of boredom.
I decided to do a painting of a shot of one of favourite characters from the show, Jinx. This piece took me over 8 hours to complete which was a little more than average. What took me the longest was figuring out the lighting and textures on the skin and clothes. It took me a while to find the right colours to match the ambience of the scene.
I think doing one of these studies has allowed for me to appreciate the art style more. While doing this art style study, I picked a lot of little details that I have missed in my initial binge of the series such as the textures on the clothes, the texture of the hair, and the lighting. Now looking back at scenes and noticing these details, I can appreciate the amount of care and details that went into each frame.
For this mini-assignment, we were tasked to design an infographic that summarizes one’s online self. Therefore, I decided to visualize my levels of stress throughout the entire Fall semester of 2022 in the form of a bar graph.
As you can see, the amount of stress sky-rocketed above 100% from mid-November to early December due to the number of assignments, projects, and deadlines. And I think it’s still going up.
Thank you for visiting Astrometrical, on this site you are encouraged to broaden your tastes in art and contribute to the community by adding your thoughts to the collage. This site’s purpose is to inspire you as an individual and bring attention to those hard-working individuals who deserve it. Here are the following guidelines on how to best engage with the astrometrical community
Please Do:
Interact with others and voice your opinions on the blog and featured posts
Be respectful and patient with others on the site
Give constructive feedback on your experience on Astrometrical
Please don’t:
Use any form of hate speech, whether it be racism, sexism, homophobia, or any other form of discrimination
Post links to your own pages to “self-promote” or any other forms of spam
Breach privacy of others on the site by posting personal information (doxing)
