4/25 Class Warmup Blog

According to my timeline, by this week I should have done most of my research and taken notes on my sources. Now I should be starting to make a thesis and do an outline. However, sometimes real life intervenes. A friend of mine has been in the hospital, so between that and catching up from all the time I missed for rugby, I haven't really had time to do all of the research I should have been doing. Now things are a little more settled, so I should have some time to get more research done and get things moving.

Oral Presentation

To be honest, I did my presentation slides and outline before reading the Lunsford article. So I wouldn't say that my presentation was informed it. The article made enough sense, but it pretty much had the general advice that people always give about oral presentations (consider who your audience is, try to catch their attention, repeat yourself, use clear visuals, practice, etc. etc.).

In terms of my presentation today, the #1 thing I'm worried about is going over time. I practiced a couple of times, and I came in between 2:55 and 3:42 on different times, just depending on how long I took on each topic before moving on. It's sometimes hard to figure out how long you've been standing up there when you're giving a presentation! Oh well, I'll just try to move briskly through everything and hope I get done in time.

I've also been thinking about whether or not I spent too much time on the introduction and not enough time elaborating on my research. I like my intro because I think it's interesting and will get people to pay attention, but I'm not sure if all of it is completely necessary for the presentation - I could have spent more time elaborating on the topic.

I was also considering whether I stuck too closely to the format of my written proposal. I did stick to the same sequence, but I made an effort to translate it into oral and visual rhetoric rather than written. But it's not anything incredibly new and original, like some of the things mentioned on the course website (movie trailer, expose, etc.). I think it gets the point across, though.

I think that my Powerpoint slides should be helpful and keep everyone's attention. That's what I spent the majority of my time working on for the presentation. I had to wade through a lot of pictures to find ones that worked. Not to mention worrying about size and picture quality. I also learned how to use this cool program that Macs have called "Grab," which makes it really easy to take a screenshot (that's how I did all the images of the Google pages).

Well, we'll see how it goes.

4/4 Class Warmup Blog

Dibbel writes: "It gives me no small satisfaction to think that the system of centralized, limited-access publishing that instilled that fear in me will be dwarfed into irrelevance by a wide-open system that, via Usenet alone, already publishes the equivalent of 1000 books a day."

While I agree with his message that the internet is changing the way we view authorship, I don't completely agree with the statement that cyberspace authorship will dwarf traditional, published varieties. The internet is great because it gives us so much information, but at the same time we often have no idea who is at the other end of a post or a webpage. There is often no way to hold that author accountable or view his or her credentials. Part of what is appealing about traditional published text is that authors have to remain accountable to someone - their editors, their peers, and their readers. We know who they are and they can be questioned about their methods and data.

Research Ideas

My two leading research project ideas are:

1. Online queer fan communities. When I used to have time to watch some TV shows regularly, I was pretty caught off-guard when I went online about how many online fan communities were based around a queer interpretation of the show. One of the major manifestations of this is "slash" fan fiction, in which the author writes a fictional romantic story about two male characters or two female characters from a TV show or movie. A lot of these communities also form around forums where they discuss everything from the last episode of the show in question to politics to their own lives. The best example that I have found so far would be "The Kitten, the Witches, and the Bad Wardrobe", a forum dedicated to the lesbian couple of Willow and Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Another example that kept coming up was fan fiction for the show Xena: Warrior Princess, which portrays the two main characters as romantically involved. One of the most popular sites in this category it seems would be the stories of Missy Good, who apparently became so popular among Xena fans that the producers of the show asked her to help write a couple of episodes.

2. Online advertising. It seems that a lot of companies are getting into the online advertising game, and in a more innovative way than in the past. Previously online advertising mostly consisted of targeted banner or text ads - now some companies are creating interactive online ads, videos, and other non-traditional ad projects. I think this really reflects the continuing growth and mainstream acceptance of the internet and world wide web, as now companies feel that they can reach more and more people online. One example would be Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" website, where the user can type in commands and watch a video of a man in a chicken costume carrying them out.

Right now I would say I am more drawn to the first topic, partially because even in the preliminary looking around that I have been doing, people in these communities have already been really helpful in pointing me in the right direction. That definitely makes my job a lot easier, especially in finding . Also, I think the topic is really interesting because some people literally spend every day interacting with these online communities, and they seem to be getting some sort of support and connection out of it that maybe they don't think they can get otherwise in their everyday life. I'm still not counting out the second topic, though.

My First Blog Entry

I've never kept a blog before - to be honest, I have the preconception that people who keep blogs are kind of self-absorbed. Who wants to hear about your life everyday anyway, huh? Ok, maybe it would be interesting if you were doing an around-the-world tour or something, but I don't see why bloggers need to let everyone know that they went out to pizza with someone from their psych class, or that they're feeling particularly stressed because they have midterms (like every single other college student around the world). And who has time to write a 5-page blog entry every day? So I never really got the whole thing.

Some of my friends do blog, though, and they've tried to convince me that it's a good way to keep in touch with your family and friends. Maybe I can buy that, as my relatives always do say that I don't keep in touch enough and that they never know what I'm up to. And when I have been travelling I send out mass emails anyway, so I guess blogging could be another way of doing that.

I've also been hearing about all sorts of other blogs, besides ones about people's own personal lives. I remember hearing about all of the political blogs that were going on during the election and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. I think some organizations and events even have official bloggers now, so I guess it's catching on outside just personal use.

I guess this class will let me see how I like keeping a blog over the course of the quarter. Who knows? Maybe I'll decide to keep one up after that so that I don't have to rely on emails to keep in touch with everyone. At least then my relatives can't complain that I never tell them what I'm up to!