Monday, June 8, 2009

Online Presence

Over the past few weeks I have been enhancing my online presence. An online presence can be anything online that will inform others about yourself. Images of yourself, a CV, your thesis or oppinions and even pictures of your work build together to form an online presence.
To create my online presence I have used both this blog via Blogger and my website through Google-sites.

On my website I have uploaded a photo of myself and some photos of my work with descriptions under each image. These images are saved in a mixture of gif and jpeg files so that they will download quickly. I have also added a movie that I have made about my mision trip to Samoa using widows movie maker, and have added an attatchment to my current CV which is processed by microsoft word and shows my history, qualifications and personal statement.

On my Blog, as you can see I have documented my learning process in digital literacy. Along with this you will also find some of my oppinions regarding different things we have learnt and found during this class.

Also check out my website Beeonlinenow

Didital Literacy Movie Maker

This is a wee movie I have made for digital literacy. It shows a little bit of what we got up to on our mission trip to Samoa in 2008.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009


Stephen Fry on free software from DragonWeb on Vimeo.

I think this video is great because it gives a wee bit of history about the computer industry and gives a great explaination of what free software is all about.

Free Software means that there is no cost to download it and it is open for us to change in order to improve it. There are various free software programmes available to us at the click of a button.

These are two of the programmes I personally use:

Open Office: This is the equivalent of microsoft word. It has Writer, Presentation and Drawing etc so anything you might want. In terms of visual appearance it looks just like word 2003.

GIMP: Gimp is the free equivalent of Adobe Photoshop. So far I haven't found anything that this programme can not do that photoshop does.

However there are many others such as Blender which is a 3D animation programme, Scribus which is similar to InDesign and Inkspace which is used for graphics.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009


This image is by Jeff Kleber and is copyright. Normal laws apply

"Oh So Criminal" by Keir Smith

Oh so criminal is a video clip that has a power charged political message regarding loop holes surrounding the current copyright laws.
Because the clips are pointing at loop holes, they are obviously within the right side of the law however that doesn't mean that the clip is disagreeable. I can see how annoying this clip would seem to those whose work has been cleverly altered to fit into these grey areas of the copyright laws. However I think this clip is a witty way to poke fun and is some what necessecary in helping to cover over these areas.

"12 Monkeys" vs Lebbeus' "Chair"

The movie "12 Monkeys" starring Burce Willis and releasde in Decenber 1995 features a chair that is remarkably similar to the sketch produced by artist Lebbeus Woods.
I believe that the directors of this film and Universal Studios have taken inspiration for the prop of the chair and the set of the shots around this scene from Wood's sketch and believe that this is a clear infringement of copyright.

The George Harrison Case

In Digital Literacy today during our copyright lecture we were posed with the question did George Harrison borrow musical ideas from Ronald Mack's "He's So Fine" is his song "My Sweet Lord"?
Although the melody and chordal structure are remarkably similar, the lyrics and overall sound produced by the vocals and instruments are dramatically different.
The tempo of "My Sweet Lord" by Harrison is slower and has a highter presence of instrument than its claimed counterpart "He's So Fine"
I Think that because of the difference in sound due to vocal and instrumental use as well as the difference in tempo, George Harrison shoult not be found guilty of copyright infringement.
I also hold this view because within the musical ovtave, there are only eight notes. So therefore somewhere along the line, there was going to be a point where two songs were going to sound similar.