Monday 14 April 2008
My holidays
I spent two weeks of my holidays in the UK. I was working in my pizza place and doing some university work. I was looking forward to go home. I went home on the 31st of March. It was a long journey. I left home at 22.00 and I caught a train to Wigan at 22.40. I changed my train to the coach and I arrived in Liverpool at 00.00. Later I caught the bus to the airport and I spent the night there. My flight was early morning and I was in Latvia at 11. It is because of two hours difference in tome. At least I took a train to my home city and I arrived at home about 15.00. I spent a super week, I have done many different things and I met many friends and relatives. My girlfriend and I went to the biggest water attraction park in Northern Europe. 40 various attractions are placed on the three floors of Livu Water Park and 7 outdoor. We had amazing time On Saturday when my friend and I were flying a paraglider. I went up to 342 meters from there you can see the whole town. Even more my friends and I had barbeque outside and a sauna. One of my friends and I went to swim in a river after the sauna. I have really enjoyed my time at home.
Mobile phone
Why students can’t use mobile phones in lectures and tutorials?
People are using mobile phones everyday and everywhere. It is very convenience way to contact people. However, it is not everywhere always allowed. There are rules where you can not use a mobile phone for a number of reasons, for example it is obvious that it is not allowed to use them in the university during lectures and tutorials. Because:
1. It is easily distracts other students attention. Moreover, it makes impossible to concentrate on the subject when there are some external noises.
2. It disturbs the lecturer and he/she can not to follow the topic.
3. Even more it shows unrespectable behavior according to the lecturer.
4. Doing the notice to the person who is using mobile phone the teacher looses time of the lecture or tutorial.
5. There are a lot of individual work in lectures and tutorials and using mobile phone makes illusion of cheating.
6. It is impossible for the student to listen to a lecture, to take notes while he/she is speaking phone.
7. Students have paid money for their studies and doing other things in lectures or tutorials they are loosing their money.
8. Speaking the mobile phone is the first step to fail the module, because you are not interested in the subject as well as you are not getting knew knowledge.
9. If there are speakers turned on when the phone is ringing there are magnetic waves what create awful sound and everyone can hear it.
10. You can not enjoy your conversation and speak free in lectures or tutorials. So it is much easier and better to do it outside the lecture or tutorial classes.
There are ten main reasons why students are not allowed to use mobile phones in lectures and tutorials.
People are using mobile phones everyday and everywhere. It is very convenience way to contact people. However, it is not everywhere always allowed. There are rules where you can not use a mobile phone for a number of reasons, for example it is obvious that it is not allowed to use them in the university during lectures and tutorials. Because:
1. It is easily distracts other students attention. Moreover, it makes impossible to concentrate on the subject when there are some external noises.
2. It disturbs the lecturer and he/she can not to follow the topic.
3. Even more it shows unrespectable behavior according to the lecturer.
4. Doing the notice to the person who is using mobile phone the teacher looses time of the lecture or tutorial.
5. There are a lot of individual work in lectures and tutorials and using mobile phone makes illusion of cheating.
6. It is impossible for the student to listen to a lecture, to take notes while he/she is speaking phone.
7. Students have paid money for their studies and doing other things in lectures or tutorials they are loosing their money.
8. Speaking the mobile phone is the first step to fail the module, because you are not interested in the subject as well as you are not getting knew knowledge.
9. If there are speakers turned on when the phone is ringing there are magnetic waves what create awful sound and everyone can hear it.
10. You can not enjoy your conversation and speak free in lectures or tutorials. So it is much easier and better to do it outside the lecture or tutorial classes.
There are ten main reasons why students are not allowed to use mobile phones in lectures and tutorials.
Thursday 28 February 2008
Video clip
How easy is to make a good clip?
We tried to understand this on Friday’s tutorial when we made a short video clip by ourselves. I assume making a video is the artists job. You should be creative, a little talented and you should have ability predict next scene. One of the most important things is plot. If the plot is interesting, people will watch what you have created. If the plot is awful very well made clips with a good quality will be not interested to the public.
Maybe some people remember how long it took for us to make a decision about what we are going to record. The original idea of plot was created by Dave. However, it has some manipulations in process.
I am going to keep in a secret about a plot story, because you will see everything later. I might give you a clue, we created extraordinary plot based ordinary student life. We had scenes with only one main actor. So everyone tried himself to do the best and later we have a group filming. We played around with small clips to put all of them together and to make one clip.
We have really enjoyed what we have created.
We tried to understand this on Friday’s tutorial when we made a short video clip by ourselves. I assume making a video is the artists job. You should be creative, a little talented and you should have ability predict next scene. One of the most important things is plot. If the plot is interesting, people will watch what you have created. If the plot is awful very well made clips with a good quality will be not interested to the public.
Maybe some people remember how long it took for us to make a decision about what we are going to record. The original idea of plot was created by Dave. However, it has some manipulations in process.
I am going to keep in a secret about a plot story, because you will see everything later. I might give you a clue, we created extraordinary plot based ordinary student life. We had scenes with only one main actor. So everyone tried himself to do the best and later we have a group filming. We played around with small clips to put all of them together and to make one clip.
We have really enjoyed what we have created.
Sunday 17 February 2008
What is facebook?
Facebook is the social networking site. It is very fast developing. At the moment it is the first site in uploading photos (14 million of photos are updated daily) and it is the 7th in traffic ranking (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook).
First of all, the site is created to help people to communicate in absolutely different ways. Apart from that the facebook can be used as traditional inbox, it also contains many different features which help to make communication more untraditional and interesting.
To my mind, applications are the thing that makes communication more interesting. There is a huge variety of different applications. My own research gave more the number that shows that there more than 16000 of different applications.
So what are applications?
Application is a tool that allows you interact with your friends and networks. Examples of applications that Facebook has built are photos, the news feeds, the wall, gifts, market places, pokes, status, events, applications and video.
Information can be exchanged in many and many different ways. It can be published news what other people are doing and what events are upcoming. The next way of sending information is the wall what means that the information is published that everyone can see that. Sometimes it is very suitable the post in the wall in a group where everyone can read it or the wall gives a description of a person whish the wall is it. Visual information can say sometimes more than 100 words. These can be photos with tagging the friends or with exciting comments, but also it cam be gifts which can symbolize something special or videos giving us information. Market places, events and status gives different information too.
These are basic applications which are already added for new users. However, the user can add many and many other different applications.
My favorite applications.
I would like to list 10 applications which I like the most and to give short description about each.
Books iRead- shows you what you have read or what you would like to read or not. Its my favorite, because I like to read reviews and compare ideas.
My Personality - I like psychology and I like questionnaires. So this is the reason I took this quiz which gave information about what personality I am.
iLike – this applications gives a chance to became a fan of your favorite band and to listen their songs or to watch their videos. It is a nice interaction with
Wrestler – sport game. You challenge your friends for the matches and the win gives an opportunity to get a new moves and forms. I always found a good fun to play a game.
Flog Blog – it helps me to integrate my existing blog to facebook quickly.
How British are you? – I found fun to do this quiz, because I am not British. However, the result shows that I am the loveable Brit.
Horoscopes – I believe in Horoscopes that why it is interesting for me to read them.
Friend Quiz – How well do you know your friends? I was interested to check it.
Top Friends – this application helps to show how really you love your friends and who the best one is and who is the worst one.
Emote - if you want to show your mode to everyone than to use this application is a good idea.
I would like to write about the first two in more detail. Why they are my favorite?
The first one is books iRead application my favorite for several reasons. The main one is that I like reading and this application gives me to make list, write reviews or just rate the books what I have already read. I can also read others reviews and compare opinions. I can find people with the same interests and taste. There are so many books added to this application that I can do browsing different books with different genres. I have just started doing searches about books what I am interested about. Besides this, I started reading reviews and I found a lot interesting information.
The second one is My Personality application. I like psychology very much and this test is based on a real psychology questions what makes it more realistic. The result is shown in a diagram way with 5 lines showing different percentage of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Above the diagram is an explanation about what it is and how much of this have you got. All this items are taken from the international personality item pool using 100 questions (according to http://apps.facebook.com/mypersonality/about_the_big_five.php#openness).
Facebook is the social networking site. It is very fast developing. At the moment it is the first site in uploading photos (14 million of photos are updated daily) and it is the 7th in traffic ranking (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook).
First of all, the site is created to help people to communicate in absolutely different ways. Apart from that the facebook can be used as traditional inbox, it also contains many different features which help to make communication more untraditional and interesting.
To my mind, applications are the thing that makes communication more interesting. There is a huge variety of different applications. My own research gave more the number that shows that there more than 16000 of different applications.
So what are applications?
Application is a tool that allows you interact with your friends and networks. Examples of applications that Facebook has built are photos, the news feeds, the wall, gifts, market places, pokes, status, events, applications and video.
Information can be exchanged in many and many different ways. It can be published news what other people are doing and what events are upcoming. The next way of sending information is the wall what means that the information is published that everyone can see that. Sometimes it is very suitable the post in the wall in a group where everyone can read it or the wall gives a description of a person whish the wall is it. Visual information can say sometimes more than 100 words. These can be photos with tagging the friends or with exciting comments, but also it cam be gifts which can symbolize something special or videos giving us information. Market places, events and status gives different information too.
These are basic applications which are already added for new users. However, the user can add many and many other different applications.
My favorite applications.
I would like to list 10 applications which I like the most and to give short description about each.
Books iRead- shows you what you have read or what you would like to read or not. Its my favorite, because I like to read reviews and compare ideas.
My Personality - I like psychology and I like questionnaires. So this is the reason I took this quiz which gave information about what personality I am.
iLike – this applications gives a chance to became a fan of your favorite band and to listen their songs or to watch their videos. It is a nice interaction with
Wrestler – sport game. You challenge your friends for the matches and the win gives an opportunity to get a new moves and forms. I always found a good fun to play a game.
Flog Blog – it helps me to integrate my existing blog to facebook quickly.
How British are you? – I found fun to do this quiz, because I am not British. However, the result shows that I am the loveable Brit.
Horoscopes – I believe in Horoscopes that why it is interesting for me to read them.
Friend Quiz – How well do you know your friends? I was interested to check it.
Top Friends – this application helps to show how really you love your friends and who the best one is and who is the worst one.
Emote - if you want to show your mode to everyone than to use this application is a good idea.
I would like to write about the first two in more detail. Why they are my favorite?
The first one is books iRead application my favorite for several reasons. The main one is that I like reading and this application gives me to make list, write reviews or just rate the books what I have already read. I can also read others reviews and compare opinions. I can find people with the same interests and taste. There are so many books added to this application that I can do browsing different books with different genres. I have just started doing searches about books what I am interested about. Besides this, I started reading reviews and I found a lot interesting information.
The second one is My Personality application. I like psychology very much and this test is based on a real psychology questions what makes it more realistic. The result is shown in a diagram way with 5 lines showing different percentage of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Above the diagram is an explanation about what it is and how much of this have you got. All this items are taken from the international personality item pool using 100 questions (according to http://apps.facebook.com/mypersonality/about_the_big_five.php#openness).
What makes a good application?
I have described my favorite applications and why they are the best ones for me. Now I would like to analyze what makes applications good. There are 10 components what describes facebook application anatomy. These are Product directory, About, Left navigation, Facebook Canvas Pages, Profile, Privacy settings, News feed, Alerts, Message attachments and Requests.
Now I am going to describe what they mean. An application should be added to Product directory where all applications take place. The next component is about what gives a short descriptions about an application and ask the user to install it. Component Left Nav requires adding application with it name and symbol on the left side of facebook. Facebook Canvas pages are Home page and dashboard pages. These are the main page of the application and the page what gives the user to manage the application. Profile has two pages what are profile box showing recent update about the application and profile action links which can quick links to the main page of the application. The page Privacy settings gives a variety of different settings to help to the user with the privacy, for example not every one can see your applications. News feeds shows information about your application manipulation to everyone when they login in the facebook site. Application can send notifications that why Alerts are required. An application can also contain massage attachments. Finally request means that the users friends can conform or ignore application send by you. These 10 components are making application good and if some of them are missing or they are not good enough, the whole application is not good (According to http://developers.facebook.com/anatomy.php).
These were my ideas about facebook, about its applications and about what makes them good.
Saturday 16 February 2008
The Ethics of Digital Photo Manipulation
Ethics are moral principles or they are rules which are acceptable by society. Every person has their own morals. These principles can be completely different to the ethical rules. This is the reason why there are so many discussions around digital photo manipulations. There is very thin line between what is ethical and what is enhancement. Basically, the viewers judge the photo and decide what is ethical or not.
There are different purposes of taking photos. If the photo is taken only for artistic purposes the aesthetic play a great role then than photo deal with beauty, taste and enjoyment. This manipulation is accepted as ethical. The other reason can be personal and image manipulation does not any play role at all. However, political or economical purposes are different. If your purpose is to portray a scene as truthful, then it's not ok. Besides this, it is not ethical to manipulate picture of political heads without their permeation or manipulate photos to create new pictures with different context.
Sometimes manipulation is just necessary. The example is to make printable bad photographs. The contrast, bright and size change of the photo can make it much nicer and more realistic. The second example is red eye in photos. The many pictures still would have red eyes if photographers didn’t change the original scene by adding the flash.
All things together, it is not for 100% clear where is the line of ethical principles and where is moral one.
The purpose in digital photo manipulation is very important. So is the photographer artist or he made photo to create lies?
There are different purposes of taking photos. If the photo is taken only for artistic purposes the aesthetic play a great role then than photo deal with beauty, taste and enjoyment. This manipulation is accepted as ethical. The other reason can be personal and image manipulation does not any play role at all. However, political or economical purposes are different. If your purpose is to portray a scene as truthful, then it's not ok. Besides this, it is not ethical to manipulate picture of political heads without their permeation or manipulate photos to create new pictures with different context.
Sometimes manipulation is just necessary. The example is to make printable bad photographs. The contrast, bright and size change of the photo can make it much nicer and more realistic. The second example is red eye in photos. The many pictures still would have red eyes if photographers didn’t change the original scene by adding the flash.
All things together, it is not for 100% clear where is the line of ethical principles and where is moral one.
The purpose in digital photo manipulation is very important. So is the photographer artist or he made photo to create lies?
Wednesday 13 February 2008
Student life
University life is different from life in a college or a school. It is a quite another cup of tea. A lot of students suppose that their life is hard because people did not get used to pulling their weight and being responsible for their own life. So everything rubs them up the wrong way. Early morning classes put students back up. Students do not get up and start their work at the crack of dawn as they prefer to stay in a bed until late afternoon. Assignments ruffle students’ feathers. Many students are behaving as the assignments are in the bag, and they do not start their assignment to the last minute and then they are down in the dumps because they need to work against the clock. Moreover, sometimes they start their assignment but they do not have the foggiest idea about the work they are doing. However, students are in the seventh heaven after finishing their work.
Even finishing the first year in the university does not always help students to understand what they want to do in the future. Very often they have not got a clue what education they want to get. So it means that they chose this course just because they were a bit out of touch with the subject. It is not surprising that at the end of the first year people change their courses because they got the wrong end of the stick. That is why, university has so many options for different degrees that give food for though.
The university always tends to help students and some people take this opportunity. They never do anything by halves. They have never drawn a blank and they pull all the stops to achieve their goal. They always look rushed off their feet, but later these people are up-and-coming students, and they have the edge over others.
However, the majority of students still think about having fun more than about education. They are party animals as they like parties so much, they know all local pubs and night clubs inside out, but many of them are not all they are cracked up to be. Students slip their mind and enjoy their time. As a result students’ education goes to the dogs and they have dug themselves into a hole. Students come up against a brick wall and do not know how to pass their studies.
Students’ lives can be difficult as only students can make up their mind about how they are going to live in the future. So students can be in deep water and struggling with the university work or they can be on top of the world being the best students.
My life
I am going to speak about who I am and about my life, and about how well or not is the life in Preston.
First of all, I need to introduce myself. I am Anton from Latvia. Some people do not know where Latvia is.
It is the heart of Baltics, a country in the Northern Europe. I came from the East of Latvia, close to Russian border. So it is not surprising that I am a half Russian and a half Latvian. I can speak, write or read in two languages fluently.
I wanted to learn something more and to go outside my country and to learn new things. These are main reason why I am there in Preston.
So why did I choose Preston? I had a variety of different Universities all over the UK but Preston attracted me more for the several reasons. You know, it is not easy to choose the university when you do not know about it. The University of Lancashire had sent me a lot of information included prospects, newspapers, letters and even flyers to night clubs. I assume it was the main reason. However, I looked how good it has geographical position, is it linked with other like Manchester. Finally, I have heard about this Uni a lit bit.
So it was a reason to come.
To be honest, I like the life in Preston. I am alright with my studies. It is not easy because of English and moreover, the method of teaching is slightly different to Latvian one.
I have my job which I like very much. I am a pizza man. If you want to try really tasty pizza you are welcome to visit the place where I am working. It is just opposite “Staples” car park.
Besides this, I am doing English classes to improve my English speaking. I have English elective classes and I attend some workshops or free English classes where the teachers are nice.
So this was just a small description of my life and I hope someone will be interested to read.
If you would to know about me, you are always welcome to ask me.
First of all, I need to introduce myself. I am Anton from Latvia. Some people do not know where Latvia is.
It is the heart of Baltics, a country in the Northern Europe. I came from the East of Latvia, close to Russian border. So it is not surprising that I am a half Russian and a half Latvian. I can speak, write or read in two languages fluently.
I wanted to learn something more and to go outside my country and to learn new things. These are main reason why I am there in Preston.
So why did I choose Preston? I had a variety of different Universities all over the UK but Preston attracted me more for the several reasons. You know, it is not easy to choose the university when you do not know about it. The University of Lancashire had sent me a lot of information included prospects, newspapers, letters and even flyers to night clubs. I assume it was the main reason. However, I looked how good it has geographical position, is it linked with other like Manchester. Finally, I have heard about this Uni a lit bit.
So it was a reason to come.
To be honest, I like the life in Preston. I am alright with my studies. It is not easy because of English and moreover, the method of teaching is slightly different to Latvian one.
I have my job which I like very much. I am a pizza man. If you want to try really tasty pizza you are welcome to visit the place where I am working. It is just opposite “Staples” car park.
Besides this, I am doing English classes to improve my English speaking. I have English elective classes and I attend some workshops or free English classes where the teachers are nice.
So this was just a small description of my life and I hope someone will be interested to read.
If you would to know about me, you are always welcome to ask me.
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