Some further Admin

Okay, it's good to see that people are starting to post and respond already, and doing so under your own names. Lucas, and those who have been responding so far, are doing things exactly correct: even if your login name is unique and strange, please sign off your posts with your own names. It makes things much easier from a marking perspective, and also provides a transparent community.

Firstly, FTVMS203 has a course reader with weekly readings available from Film Department reception, and it'll cost a few dollars for printing and binding. There's one reading a week, and we expect everyone to have read the article for the week before the tutorial in order to get the most out of discussions.

Secondly, in the past I've had questions about how the blog assignment is dated, so I thought I'd clarify that to begin with and save confusion.

The week runs from Monday through Sunday inclusive, with the next week starting on the Monday. The mid-semester break is more time you can post in, meaning that you essentially need to post six times across fourteen weeks to be eligible for full marks in the assignment. Posting less than six, or in less than six weeks, will cost marks before we even get to the posts themselves. Since we're aiming for the blog to be a community, it's better to contribute throughout the semester rather than saving it all to the final six weeks.

From prior experience, there will be some people who find the blog assignment intimidating, particularly if you're not used to technology. This is a perfectly relevant point to discuss in your blog posts, so don't be afraid to just start talking about why you don't like the blog.

Another question which comes up is whether the comments you make in response to other people's posts can count for the assignment. They can. BUT:

As the course outline recommends, it's a good idea to save and date copies of your responses on your computer as you make them, to make them easy to find when times comes to hand things in. You can search the titles of posts made to the core blog, but cannot search the responses. This can make them hard to find. Another option, which also works for the Blog As Community element, is to make your response in a new post, and make a link back to the post you were responding to. Again, this means you'll be able to search for it, although saving a copy to your computer is still the best policy.

I'll go over some of this again in tutorial, but for now, have a good week.

Anyone have any other questions at the moment? If you can read the blog, but don't have an invitation yet, send an email to my address on the course outline and I'll get a new one to you.

- Kevin.

Tutorials in Week 2.

Hi everybody.

The three tutorial times available for the course are:

Wednesday 11-12
Wednesday 3-4
Thursday 1-2.

All tutorials are in Arts 316.

- Kevin.

iWant You iNeed You iBaby

What's crackin' 203,

It is hard to describe the joy I felt when Monday's class eventually settled on Apple's wonder gadget - the iPhone. For weeks leading up to its release I found the iPhone an almost infinite source of humour. If Apple is the new McDonalds then iPhone is the Big Mac Combo: burger, friers and a coke. A quick search on YouTube and I discovered two short clips that I think will enhance your own personal iPhone experience.


#1 - The iPhone's functionality and superior gadgetry



#2 - The political aspirations of Apple



I guess the only downside to putting all of your eggs into one basket is that when you drop the basket all of your eggs will smash. Imagine losing your cellphone, internet connectivity and iPod in one foul swoop! Luddism here we come! Continuing the metaphor, the end product of the Will It Blend guy's blendtastic efforts could be coined 'scrambled eggs'.

Despite all the knocking, I still want an iPhone. Don't call me a hypocrite, I'm just technologically confused. There's something inherently sexy about the damn thing. It's the Porsche 911 of cellphones - expensive, fast, good looking and the envy of all your Honda driving friends. "Who cares what it can do, it makes me feel good!" Regretfully, in a penis enlargement pills-like dilemma, the iPhone may not live up to the personal fulfillment expectations of many eager Americans.

I guess that's enough from me. Feel free to add your own 2 cents worth. Regretfully, this 2 cents (US) would only leave you 1 / 30,000th of the way to buying your first 8GB iPhone.



Lucas Cooney

http://www.myspace.com/kooneyman

Greetings all.

Hi everybody, Kevin here.

I thought the degree of discussion and debate in the lecture was a really positive start for a potentially workshop-format class, and a good sign.

I'll be putting up more information/survival-guides for the blog over the next while, but first I thought I'd open with something that we wouldn't be able to easily do if we didn't have the class blog.

Since one of the whole concepts for the paper is how technology and culture interact, I thought I'd throw out something for people to chew on. It's a comic, by which I mean a complete, scanned, multipage entity like you'd see in a comic store, and part of an ongoing series, although it stands by itself:

"Another Cold Morning," Transmetropolitan #8, written by Warren Ellis.

It's going to take a long time to load, but I'll be interested to see what people think of it.

- Kevin.

Booting up

So, welcome back. Semester Two already! I will talk about this blog (responsibilities, rules of engagement etc.) in the first class. But one thing I would like to emphasise from the outset is that this is NOT an anonymous forum. Well, let me qualify that. If you'd like to remain anonymous to the big wide world (this blog can be read by anyone), then it's fine to use an ID that does not identify who you actually are. But you cannot hide behind anonymity when it comes to other participants in this blog.

We (Luke and Kevin) need to know who you are and, by extension, other members of this blog can know who you are. We insist on this principle because we want people to use this blog responsibly i.e. to be accountable for the things they say. Flaming, trolling and the like is just "so 1997"! More to the point, it's not constructive. So don't write anything you don't want attributed to you.

In fact, we would prefer you are just upfront and don't just use an enigmatic ID for your posts. If you do have some groovy ID, consider signing your real name in your first couple of posts and make yourselves known to the group.

Disagreement and frank debate is great - that's part of what we're here for. But that can always be done with due care and respect for the people you're disagreeing with. Right, enough of the touchy-feelies. I look forward to reading your posts.

So here's my opening gambit: an article in yesterday's Herald. I find it a little depressing to see NZ's Chief Censor appearing as the voice of reason, whilst an Auckland academic is cited to lend credence to the scapegoating of violent video games.

Note, though, that she is only cited as saying there's a link between playing violent video games and aggression. She doesn't specify a causal link in one direction (i.e. violent video games cause aggressive behaviour). But would the casual reader spot that slippage or just finish the article with a sense that there is academic credibility for the causal theory? The placing of the paragraph towards the end of the article (who gets the final word?) and the word "however" that the paragraph kicks off with, all encourage such a misreading and the academic in question would have no control over that. (In other words, I'm not criticising her.)

Of course, none of this is as dismaying as the mini-supplementary article at the end (it appeared as a box-out in the paper version) which reminds us that the US executes 16 year olds from abused backgrounds. And I started this post feeling so positive...