Tag Archives: stranger

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!

Digital footprint – process post 9#

For the readings this week we had been required to read on the internet and the digital breadcrumbs we may leave behind. In the Transcript of a podcast called “Digital breadcrumbs: the data trail we leave behind us.” by Pod Academy, the narrator goes on to explain how we are always being watched by our cellphones and by social media. For example, the narrator had an interview with Dr. Elisa Oreglia, a lecturer in Global Digital Cultures at SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Studies), to find out more about digital footprints. She said “When you search on Google, that information goes through Google Servers. …Then it gets stored into Google Servers” (para. 18). Meaning that every search, every website you visit can get stored as data into Google servers without you realizing. Then some companies will buy that data to be stored in an algorithm for an audience, if you want to know more about algorithms, I recommend you look at my previous post called “Technology and AI essay”. Moreover, it may be possible to remove some data, for instance, by deleting browser data. Although deleting it may only hide it for you, it will be stored online without you having access to delete it.

Though data was never only online in the first place because later in the podcast, it goes on about how retail stores have been collecting data of their customers as well. An article called, How Companies Learn Your Secrets by Charles Duhigg explains how almost every retail store has access to a “…Guest ID Number, [which collects] each shopper’s consumer behaviour, demographic, home address, occupation, estimated salary, as well as the websites they visit are all recorded.” (Duhigg, 2012). We are all being watched in one way or another, it is just how these companies collect data on everyone. Some may choose to live with it or attempt to resist it. But in the end, it is really difficult, especially with the modern technology the world has created.

Duhigg, C. (2012, February 16). How companies learn your secrets. The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=0

Unknown. (2016, May 3). Digital Breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us. Pod Academy. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from http://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/

How AI is changing fast – Process post #8

Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, AI was known by many as a creation to be made in the far future. Though recently in the 2010s, AI chatbots were already being made open to the public. One bot that became the main source of popularity was Eviebot. According to the official Eviebot website, Eviebot is an, “AI and an advanced, emotional chatbot avatar. She can speak several languages and has become rather popular on YouTube…” (Carpenter, Harrison, 2015). Personally, when I visited the website and asked it about its features, Eviebot responded with, “I can do many things.” It seems when I ask it the same questions, it does not answer consistently. It seems that this chatbot is meant to be one to talk like the average human. Although it has not been updated since 2016. Eviebot was a big trend back then on YouTube, with many famous content creators chatting to it. However, many changes and new AI has been made and are open to the internet.

During the years 2020-2023. A company called OpenAI was founded by Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Peter Thiel, Olivier Grabias and others. It was made to create AI that empowers people and creates different AI models. One model that was created is called “ChatGPT”. It is a Chatbot similar to Eviebot in that it interacts conversationally with a person. Though ChatGPT is more advanced in that it answers facts and creates huge texts in seconds. “[they] trained this model using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), using the same methods as InstructGPT, but with differences in the data collection setup.” (Altman, 2022). One prominent example is how it can analyze huge pieces of text and summarize it as well as right an essay on it. This chatbot has been funded by millions by of company of Microsoft and caused Google to rush their production of creating an AI to match with ChatGPT. The bot Google created to compete with Microsoft is called Bard. And with the development of both causes competition for one to be more advanced than the other. In the foreseeable future, we can see many changes in these models months from now! And I ask, what do you think these bots can have an effect on people in school?

References:

Carpenter, R., & Harrison, K. (2015, November 4). Eviebot at www.eviebot.com. Eviebot. Retrieved March 7, 2023, from https://www.eviebot.com/en/

Altman, S., Hoffman, R., Livingston, J., Musk, E., Sutskever, I., Thiel, P., & Grabias, O. (2022). Introducing chatgpt. Introducing ChatGPT. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt#OpenAI

Blender creation dump

Over the past years I have made many Blender creations, I thought “hmmm, maybe I should show the world some of the things I have created.” As of this post, only some of the content on my website is based on different content that is not Blender. So, for this post, I choose to create a blog on the things I have made. So here are some of the things and stuff I have made:
The infamous text models in Blender

Here are some of the models I made where I experimented with the text editing aspect of Blender.

green text saying "sterling Gauthier"
brown copper Wires forming text saying "Sterling"

This video is right above me yeah? This took a while to do. You may be asking “why is the quality jump so different in such a short time?” Or I am just bad at assuming your thoughts? Nevertheless, This vine creation was when I was still fairly understanding of Blender. The wall is a stock picture to sell the illusion that it was a modelled wall. And the grass text was formed by using Blender plug-ins. I had to model the invisible skeleton for the vines to wrap around, so I choose my name so that it looks cool.

A box with text on the bottom right saying "Sterling"
The same box and text saying "sterling" but with a circle of light surrounding it
The same cube/box with text saying "sterling" but with the shadow on the right side.

Okay, I am guessing you want to see some of my other creations. Other than the text parts in which I seem to do a lot. I do make other interesting things. Here are some of them for your eyes to look at!

Ha! got you, You thought it was going to be something that was not related to my name. I am not sure if you noticed but I like to put my name in my projects, like any other artist. All right, I show real creations without my name on them!

I am not sure why, but the way this liquid crumbles down gives me shivers down my spine. Not in the “ew that’s so gross to look at!” type of shiver, but a shiver of satisfaction from this.
And here is the last thing I can currently find as of this post. I may have to look deeper into the files to find a random file that I have made in the past. These files use to be in one place, but I choose to organize them into separate folders. But I did not realize that the folders were in different storage. So here is what is left so far!

Thank you for looking at my art gallery, it was a pleasure! For this post (if anyone sees this), I want you to guess how my name is spelled. Is my name spelled as “Stirling or Sterling?” I leave you with this thought in mind. But for now, I enjoy showing my work. And I hope to plan to have a process video blog of me making something in the future.

Blender snowman journey – first video blog…

I wanted to create a snowman for a blender project to hopefully remember the basics more in my head. This is so that I do not keep having to look up things online. So, I started off figuring out how to add things to the blender. I started by clicking “start a new project”. I then proceeded to figure out how to add items, every new blender file has a default cube in the center of the project. I right-clicked and removed the cube.

A grey area with a cube in the center, many other things on the side, which does not need to be addressed

I then remembered how to add more objects to the area, by pressing “Shift + A” and it gave me options to add to the world. I choose to add 3 round spheres. and moved them on top of each other. And that was the base of my snowman. I added more spheres and moved them to the face and eyes, and added a cylinder to make a hat. And lastly, I added text saying my Username to have proof I made this, sort of like adding a signature to your art. Then render the file into a finished project.

Picture of a white snowman, with text saying "Stirling"

Then I thought “this was too easy, I should make it more complicated!” So I decided to do was to make a short video blog of what I did, I am going, to be honest I thought it was going to be easy to make a video blog! Turns out it is harder than I thought.

To conclude, I built a snowman and choose to make it a greater snowman with a friend. And I choose to experiment with a video blog, I hope in the future, my video blogs will get better in quality and more enjoyable.

Cherry Blossom!

Cherry blossoms in Cantonese: 櫻[jing1] 花[faa1]

It has been raining all week except for Wednesday, so I went to Stanley Park to look for cherry blossoms! It wasn’t as pretty as I thought it’d be because when I see the photos on Instagram, they look very pink, but when I see them in real life, it is much whiter than what I saw on Instagram (looks like people have photoshopped too much!)

I was a bit disappointed, to be honest, so instead of taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, I took pictures of people who are taking photos of the cherry blossoms. At first, I noticed a lady who was sitting under the tree smiling. I took a photo of her. She later started walking around and I noticed that I accidentally took quite a lot of pictures of her, so I thought it’d be polite to send her the photos. It was my first time to walk to a stranger and tell her I secretly took pictures of her. Imagine if someone walks to you and says things like this… Luckily, she was very friendly and was happy that I took photos for her! She has never been a model and has people take photos for her because she never knows how to pose, which I have the same struggle. So I kept chatting with her while I press the shutter in order to capture her most natural look.

I am so happy that she likes my photos and I can make her feel special and confident! Maybe I should do that more often when I secretly took photos of strangers, that could be one way of making friends. Who knows?

More photos that I took on Weds here!

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