Tag Archives: Assignment

Some extra blender projects!

Well since I heard that CONTENT POST ARE NOT GETTING GRADED. My motivation to make these post have been cut down in half, this whole website is only up because of this class I am taking. And I do say I may be a little disappointed about just hearing this recently about these post not getting graded. But I shall stop complaining and just finish what I started, so here you go.

First lets start off with the donut series progress, I am sure you want to see the how my progress went over the week I was making this donut.

Bet you werent expecting to see a realistic looking donut huh? Well what you just saw was a sequence of picures a and progress I did over a week. And it probably took you 1 minute to look at those at least if you took you time, instead of scrolling to the bottom for the finished product. Well its not over just yet, I made a animation of this donut sliding in the frame of this scene and this was the most fun part of this project. Here it is!

Now that I look at it. This should be a post of its own, sorry for the plot twist. But I feel it is appropriate for this kind of post, adding any more would seem a bit much right? well thank you for looking at this. Any questions? please comment, I haven’t got any in these lat few months!

Online Comments – Process post #12

Since the beginning of the Internet way back in the late 1990s and very early 2000s, making online comments on blogs and chatrooms have been around within the Internet. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were just starting to get popular, and more and more people started to buy devices that can connect to the internet. People started to realize that anyone can create an account and post what they would want to because they can put false information on their account. These are known as fake accounts, and whoever uses these accounts can get away from the consequences from the general public.

Since there is a sense of anonymity for these fake accounts when they post comments, the comments they post can get pretty cruel and concerning. An article called “The Psychology of Online Comments” by Maria Konnikova states that, “forty [percent] of people in the eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-old demographic have posted anonymously.” (Konnikova, 2013). Hate comments can stem from many reasons, from a user not liking the other, to rumors’ being spread that make the public generate hate towards the user. Although it may not be nice to receive these comments, it is always a good idea to ignore them since it is just the internet; and if it gets out of control seeking support may be needed.

References:

Konnikova, M. (2013, October 23). The psychology of online comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved April 4, 2023, from https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-psychology-of-online-comments

Publics and counter-publics – process post #11

n the article called “Where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind”: Networked counter-publics in a polymedia environment” by Bryce J Renninger. It goes on about how the public can be formed by social media. Publics are a group of people who are interested in a specific topic or idea, and on social networking sites (SNSs) publics and counter-publics could be formed very easily. The article goes on about how the public has been forming on SNSs, and one example of a public is the Asexual community. The Asexual community has been online for a while, and “…it was not until then that an asexual identity, named as such, came to be defined and codified.” (Renninger, 2014). The internet is a great place to grow, expand, and jumpstart ideas and communities since it can be accessed from most devices in the modern world.
Since the internet, there have been many social sites and chatting sites, one site that has grown greatly is a site called “Discord”. “Discord is a voice, video, and text chat app that’s used by tens of millions of people ages 13+ to talk and hang out with their communities and friends.” (Citron, 2015). Discord is a chatting platform, much like WhatsApp and telegram. Though notice how it is marketed towards a younger audience, which means the trends and topics which will be more popular will be different from other popular platforms. In the “discover” tab where people can join public open server chatrooms, Gaming servers such as Minecraft, and Roblox is one of the most joined. Offline vs online communities have very different properties, online is more accessible and anonymous, while in-person can be more engaging. Though everyone has their own opinion of which is a more effective one for engagement or accessibility

References:

Renninger, B. J. (2014). “where I can be myself … where I can speak my mind” : Networked counterpublics in a polymedia environment. New Media & Society, 17(9), 1513–1529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444814530095

Citron, J. (2015). What is discord: A guide for parents and educators. What is Discord | A Guide for Parents and Educators. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://discord.com/safety/360044149331-what-is-discord

Peer Review #3 – Kashish Shodwani

Website being reviewed: http://kashishshodwani.com/

For this third and final peer review of this class of PUB 101, I was assigned to review another blogger’s website. For this peer review, I am told to observe the website’s marketability to an intended audience group. I was paired up with a student named Kashish Shodwani, and her website is called “BRAINY BLOG” I think this was one interesting website to look into. For starters, some may notice that there is an eye-catching title to the website, there is this picture of a plastic brain and huge text stating “Unlocking the secrets of the brain.” As for her about page, she starts by greeting the viewers of her website by saying “Hello psychology geeks…” Which can give a big hint of what she had imagined her audience to be. As for the about page, she said that she is a major in Psychology. She said she hopes to grow by learning better about her life by understanding how she and others work; Hearing this reminded me of an article called “How To Talk to Stranger” which goes into how to be a more friendly persona and how to talk to strangers out in the world (Hamblin, 2016).

As for the design and aesthetic of the website, I noticed it has a very similar colour background and formatting to the POSIEL website which is our home site for this class. I feel that this design, intentional or not makes a sense of familiarity within the site since most of the returning audiences may be students in the same class of PUB 101. For the marketability of this website, I believe the top of the page is a great eye-catcher, it has a bright orange brain picture on the right, and Big bold text stating “A dive into how to use psychological concepts in everyday life: Tips, Tricks and Insights.” Which may make the reader interested to read more about psychology. The big bold text can make an easy marketing strategy for her viewers, which can make the difference for people stay on her site or not. The typing style used in blogs on this website is very formal with proper punctuation and grammar. This typing style can give the feeling that the author makes blogs for people who are more sophisticated in reading longer blogs and readings.

One of her blogs called “Fight the Stress” this blog goes on about how stress is very draining to almost everyone and how we should control it. I feel that Shodwani’s public audience in mind was other people who are interested in Psychology. For example, Shodwani stated in her introduction sentence saying “Hello psychology geeks…” which is a massive giveaway to Shodwani’s idea of what her public was going to be on. According to an article called “Publics and Counterpublics” by Michael Warner, Warner stated that “A public is a space of discourse organized by nothing other than discourse itself.” (Warner, 2002).

Bibliography:

Hamblin, J. (2016, August 25). How to talk to Strangers Irl. The Atlantic. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/civil-inattention/497183/

Warner, M. (2002). Frontpage. Public. Retrieved March 23, 2023, from http://knowledgepublic.pbworks.com/

Mobile Data Review – Process Post #10

For this week, the readings have made a shift in content. Although these shifts happen every week, I thought that this week was different from the rest. While one of the readings involve the basics of SEO and other things, the reading that caught my attention was the data on mobile usage and apps. The data collected was from 2022, and the article is called “S T A T E O F M O B I L E 2 0 2 2.” This study collects data on apps downloaded and where it is downloaded in each country. The article states that there are “Globally 230 Billion Downloads…” (data.ai, 2022, pg. 7).

Some examples of data that I found interesting was the use of apps from each generation, one of the top most used apps by Gen Z according to data.ai is Instagram, followed by Spotify, Netflix, then Snapchat. I was also surprised that male and female usages were different for the top-used apps. Accordingly, males’ top downloaded app was WhatsApp Messenger, while females’ top downloaded is Facebook. Overall this article is a great source of collecting and looking at data, and I suggest that you take a visit to it as well.

References:

Unknown. (2022). S T A T E O F M O B I L E 2 0 2 2. PUB 101: The Publication of Self in Everyday Life. Retrieved March 22, 2023, from https://posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dataai__state_of_mobile_2022__en.pdf

Recent Blender projects

So, I noticed that I have not posted anything much about Blender. Yeah, I know this was originally meant to be a blender website so let me fix it.

Also to go off topic for one second, these blog posts are nice and everything but there has been something I have been questioning. I am making these blogs purely because this is something I enjoy. But one thing that is making me think is how this is for the PUB 101 class. And I feel that makes a difference. Let me explain, if I were to make a blog because I wanted to I would make one out of fun. Though with these blogs being graded, I feel as if all blogs must need a certain length. For me, this makes these blogs more of a pile-on with all the other assignments, process-post, and reviews we have to do. But hey, I am just a guy stating his opinion online and it may not matter. So my bad for going off track, let us continue our blogging!

Here are some nice dominos being tumbled over, I was trying out the physics feature on this. Watch out for the little surprise at the end of this video. Oh, and just for one more add-on to this piece, the “S” and “G” are meant to be my initials. 🙂

Hey, this one took a while to do, mostly because I was trying to figure out how to make the ground look realistic. Apparently, in some versions of blender, there was a template for rock texture and depth. So that is being used in this little short video. As for animating the text, I had to make sure the text lit up at the right times, so each text are there own separate object, not as one big text.

A picture of a sheep in cube shapes. facing the left side.

Here is a sheep, we do not talk about the sheep. the sheep although made of simple things, but knows a lot of things.

bright gold text on a checker floor saying "Stirling"

Here is a cool thing I did here, notice something? Yes, the floor is reflective, that’s what you thought right? Yes, this was cool, I added a thin glass material right above the floor, which automatically added the reflection which I thought was so cool.
Thank you for looking at my art dumps, if you have any questions, please type in the comments, I may choose to request somebody’s idea if I get any!

Essay One

Freedom of Speech on Social Media

Gossiping and discussing have appeared for a long period of time, the only thing that changed is the ways the news spreads. If in the past, the fastest news you could hear was from mouth to mouth as a rumor, then nowadays, you can easily access all sorts of social media platforms to know about the latest news. But because everyone has their freedom of speech, it causes lots of issues about fake news, racism, violence, and hatred on these social media platforms. With the era when human rights are put first, everyone’s freedom of speech becomes more difficult to control.

Last year, Donald Trump becomes one of the people who have been banned from using social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. The reason is simply that his speech was not accurate and it started an unwanted protest that harmed many people. Freedom of speech is for everyone but Trump was banned to speak on these platforms was an ironic matter. It would not be bad if social media was used for the right purpose, but in these few years, as the internet outgrow, it is harder to control what people write on the internet. Why would social media become a place where everyone easily expresses themselves to the world? It is because on the internet, we, the users are nobody. This online disinhibition effect is called “dissociative anonymity”. According to John Suler, author of The Psychology of Cyberspace, dissociate anonymity means that the identity on the internet can be anonymous, no one could know who is writing behind the screen and even if the anonymous do something bad on the internet, they would convince themselves that it was not their action, they did not do it (Suler, 2004). So because of these people, social media become a toxic place. A few toxic comments can actually shape public opinion easily, especially if you only listen from one side. A few months ago, an author, a YouTuber I know, Lindsay Ellis has quit being a YouTuber and deleted all of her accounts on social media because of harassment and bullying she received on the internet after on post of her on Twitter about “Raya and the Last Dragon”. She was being harassed on social media platforms to the point that she mentally breakdown because her explanation was not being heard, but backfired her with even more toxic comments.

From Twitter
(Mustafa, 2022)

There are some extends that a person can withstand bullying from social media. But in Lindsay Ellis’ case, it grows out of control just because she writes about her own thought on Disney’s animation movie and cancels culture related. It would not be too toxic if anyone who has an argument with Ellis on her ideas listened to her explanation until the end. Social media is a good place to express your own thought but in Ellis’ case, the opinion that being pleased by people can be eliminated by society.

Freedom of speech on the internet can shape public opinion easily because the human mind is easy to sway. The way that can easily sway a person that involved with personal freedom. If any of the politics violate freedoms, the public would not stand for it. Because of the pandemic, many of the restrictions as well as rules have violated the freedoms that the people usually have, for example, their own choice in vaccination and wearing masks. Recently, the truck convoy has made a big protest in Canada about vaccination and vaccine passports. Most of them make their opinion about how unnecessary the vaccination is since the people who got vaccinated can also have a high chance of getting covid-19 and vaccine passport did not help much in preventing the pandemic. On CBC News around February 19, because of the protester, who have blocked the way on the street and causes many disruption to the neighborhood, the polices have to do their best in order to arrest truckers (CBC News, 2022).

This is a serious matter on social media because the way the protester where trying to delivers where quite convincing. It is hard for anyone who got mental health issue during the pandemic can pass the opportunity to protest against the government and get back their own freedom.

It is more serious when most of them were thinking that anyone who believes in the governments was actually being brainwashed. In the eyes of others who are not protesting, this is the action of selfishness. But to the truck convoy, it was because of their freedom in democracy. During this period of protest, many people took advantage of the opportunity to create fake news that made many people worried. Not only in the countries but fake news can also be possibly created from outside of the country. There are many people who use fake news with fake accounts to stir the politics inside the country, according to CBC News: “A former official in the State Department and Department of Defence under George W. Bush, Kristofer Harrison, said in an interview that Russia uses dummy profiles to promote all sorts of polarizing content across the political spectrum, from Black Lives Matter and defunding the police to white supremacists and yellow-vest protests.” (Panetta, 2022)  

Why is freedom of speech more severe and violent in highly democratic countries? Because they value human freedom more than countries that are democratic but control human freedom. Countries where they control the source of information easily gain people’s trust because they believe that the government is always right and for the people. So like in China, free speech is allowed, but sensitive topics will not appear on social networking platforms. Therefore, it is easier for the government to control information, and public opinion will not be easily distorted or changed by an individual or an organization. Countries like the US and Canada place great emphasis on freedom of expression and human rights, so it’s completely normal for leaders to be mocked.

In conclusion, the role of social media nowadays is very important, but anyone who use it need to have sense of responsibility. Because the internet is unpredictable, there are no saying when your word would hurt someone you do not even know. Social media can be toxic most of the time but it is not mean that it was not good. Using social media for expressing your own thought is good but everything that is post on these platforms need to be checked as many time as possible so social media can be come a place where everyone can enjoy and looking for different opinions.

References:

Suler, John. 2004. The Online Disinhibition. Retrieved from: https://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html

Panetta, Alexander. 2022. U.S. Congress asks Facebook: What role did fake overseas accounts have in promoting Canada convoys?. Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/congress-convoys-facebook-1.6357381

Mustafa, Filiz. 2022. Why did Lindsay Ellis Quit Youtube? Twitter Explained. Retrieved from: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/12/28/lindsay-ellis-twitter/

CBC News. 2022. Protesters against COVID-19 measures march in Toronto after gathering at Queen’s Park. Retrieved from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/protest-saturday-toronto-closed-roads-1.6358087

Essay 2

The past few months has been life-changing for me in all aspect of life. And one of the best things that has happened is that I’ve finally built my own blog. Having a blog has been a dream of mine for quite a while. I have tried multiple times to start one, but always ended up forgetting about it, and giving up. But this time, with the help of PUB 101, I was finally able to keep up with my blog. Frankly, I’m quite proud of what I’ve built in the past three months. And through this process, I’ve also learnt a thing or two about myself, my blog, website design, and more.

Comparing to the beginning of the year, I’ve gotten to know my online self a bit better through PUB101 and the blogging process. I’ve noticed my behaviour changes when I’m on different media platforms. When I am on instagram, which is where all my friends are active, I am very cautious with my every move. From the perspective of the Online Disinhibition Effect, I treat my Instagram account as the “true self”. It is supposed to represent who I am in real life. And especially since my account is an business account, I HAVE to be on my best behaviour on Instagram. In my mind, everyone is closely watching and judging me on Instagram, which is why I always overthink and analyze everything I post and share. What ends up happening is that I would not post anything for weeks, sometimes even months, because I don’t consider anything being good ENOUGH for my feed.  But when I am on my blog, I behave very differently. I am affected by “You Don’t Know Me dissociative anonymity)” and “You Can’t See Me (invisibility)“. I feel much more carefree when I’m posting on my site. Yes, my blog still has my name on it, but people who visit my website are not necessary people that I encounter with in real life. I don’t feel that my audience has an existing expectation of me, and I don’t need to be actively matching that exception. I feel that I could post whatever I’d like, and no one could judge me or define me over it. That is why I did not promote my blog to anyone on Instagram for quite a while. I wanted to keep my blog as a safe space, away from all the opinions from people that I care too much about. It has been quite an interesting journey seeing the different sides of my online self, and slowing learning to understand and accept that they are all me, and I don’t need to shy away from certain things or hide certain parts of me.

Not only have I started to understand my online self, I’ve also realized what my blog is really about. In the beginning of the semester, I envisioned my blog being a lifestyle/personal blog. I wanted to write about fashion, dance, travel, life. I wanted to share my stories, advices, and thoughts about everything that I’m interested in. Now thinking back, this plan was a bit unrealistic, unorganized and lack of focus. Going through all my post, I realize that I never ended up posting anything about dance or travel. I have mainly been focusing on posting some of my projects in fashion and photography, and as well as in the topic of wellness. Learning and researching about different types of blog and their definitions has helped me re-define my blog. I’ve learnt that lifestyle blog covers a variety of topics and it is mainly advices and suggestion based. And personal blog is more about the author of the blog and her/his personal stories, experience, and daily life. Now, I consider my blog more as a personal blog, with a focus on wellness and personal growth plus a part of my portfolio. Wellness and personal growth is something that I’ve been focusing in my own life for quite some time now, and posting about it has been very beneficial for myself. So I’d love to continue on that path and see where it would take me and my blog.

Through building my blog, I’ve also gained some knowledge and experiences in website design. I’ve spend hours and hours on WordPress trying to build my site into what I wanted it to look like. One of the biggest challenges was selecting a theme that fits my every need, which has been proven absolutely impossible. This problem is mentioned in the reading of “Design machines” .These website building services don’t care about the content or the individuality of the websites. Design machine’s example is squarespace, and how “its entire business model relies on the fact that you can paste any ’ol passage of slop into their system and it will look acceptable.” But thanks to the restriction of themes, I was able to dive into the learning of plugins and more design rules.Through class and readings, I have learnt about things like whitespaces, balance, rhythm, and more. It has also help me realize how much I’d like to master this skill, and I am planning on taking a few graphic or website design classes in the future.

Overall, this has been one of the most relevant, beneficial, and fun classes that I’ve ever taken at SFU. I’ve really enjoyed learning about my online self through the process of building a blog. I am definitely going to keep this blog going, starting with an re-design of the whole site, since I’m now more clear about the direction of my blog. And once my upgraded site is finished and running, I am planning on incorporate more content between my Instagram and the blog. I would like to show a more 3D and true version of myself to people in my life through my online presence.


 

Reference

 

The Online Disinhibition Effect

Design Machines: How to survive the digital apocalypse

Revealed: Which are the Most Popular Types of Blogs?

 

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Peer Review #3

This week, I had the pleasure to visit Jill’s Book Blog.Jill's Book Blog Homepage

Jill’s Book Blog — Adventures of Accessible Reading, as it states quite clearly in the title tag, is all about books. Reading through Jillian’s blog, I learnt so much about her and her favourite thing to do EVER — Reading!! In 2018, she read 96 books in 365, which is so crazily impressive. Jill’s Book Blog at the moment features three categories: Book Reviews, Accessible Reading and Posiel. From the type of content that Jillian has been constantly posted, i think the intended audience of the blog are book lovers like Jillian herself. People who would be frequent visitors of Jill’s blog are people who love reading, who also love to learn more about certain books and how others think of them. And since most of the books that have been reviewed are mostly fictions, romance, thrillers, etc, I figure the demographic of Jill’s blog are the demographic of these books, which are mostly teens to young adults and young professional, predominately female. And lastly, in most of the post, Jillian’s tone of voice seems quite lighthearted, excited, and playful most of the time, which also leads me to believe that the age of the intended audience of Jill’s Book Blog are around 17 to 30.

In my opinion, Jillian has done a great job in terms of keeping her audience engaged with her constant and high-quality content. The design of her website is fairly simple. There is quite a lot of white space, which is a great thing, since it makes the blog seems way less cluttered. On that note, the fact that there are not too many menu options also makes the blog seems less overwhelming. When I visit Jill’s website, I always find myself feeling calm and collected. And a lot of that has to do with the timeless design that Jillian has chosen. One thing that I do wish Jill’s blog could improve itself on, would be the homepage. At the moment, when users of its site opens the homepage for the first time, it has all of the most recent posts on one page, positioned vertically, and it causes the homepage to be quite long. Since most of the audience of Jill’s blog are around our age, I think it would nice to make the homepage slightly shorter with more directions to the posts. In that way, her audience could find what they want a bit easier, and it would decrease the bounce rate of her site. Another thing that I think could be improved would be finding some way to break up some of the text-heavy content. Since it is a mostly text-based site, it would be nice to see some more breaks in between paragraphs, it could be by highlightin certain quotes, adding images, or just adding simple lines and subheading, in order to keep her audience even more engaged with her content.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed Jill’s Book Blog, and I am excited to see where this blog would develop and process in the future.

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Mini Assignment – Remix

With VFW fast approaching, I thought it only made sense to create my own vision of the VFW poster by remixing a few images together. One of the most special things to me in the poster would be the Vancouver skyline that I photoshopped in. I wanted to make sure the poster not only represents fashion, but also Vancouver as a city. Hope you guys enjoy it.

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Main St. Development in Photos

Below is a sequence of photos from Vancouver’s False Creek and Main Street area taken from the Google maps database. They date from 2000 to 2018 (excluding ’06 and ’10 – ’12).

It takes a few cycles of the GIF to notice changes. A particular area of interest is south of the water.

The stress associated with the transformation of old neighbourhoods and soaring property values have been felt in many modern cities around the world. Indeed, this problem may come to define era in coming decades.

This stress has a particularly tangible burden on cultural spaces, which tend to pull in less profits than a traditional business, especially if they are presenting alternative forms of media.

As you look at this sequence, consider how Vancouver’s landscape, or the landscape of any modern city, may come to accommodate cultural spaces. Where could those spaces be? What effects will the inclusion or exclusion of these spaces have on your city? Are these the right questions to ask?

I would love to read your answers to these questions in the comments below.

Adam