MPI104 Assessment #1

So here ends week 6 of my university adventure (slightly early thanks to Easter being right around the corner). I find myself on the computer dishing out another blog post for all of you beautiful chipmunks out there who care enough to read this. Although I'm sure you are all aware that this post is an obligatory one, forced upon us by the lovely coordinators of this course, I will do as I must to liven the mood.

Receive mood enhancer in 3, 2, 1...

Feeling better? Good. Let us continue along the enchanting journey that I have taken so far:

My journey began when I created a Gmail account and the next week, a Blogger account. At this point in time I have succeeded in creating 6 darling little Blogger posts (if you include this one). Among my favoured posts are the one where I compare Facebook to an infection (“Facebook, that Cancerous Growth We Adore”) and my one about the amazing artist/human being, Chris Scalf (“Talent and Humility”). With these I added tags or "labels" to each post, to make them easier to find by people looking for things in particular.

Not only does Blogger let you vent you’re frustration and/or adoration of humanity to people who don’t really care, but you can also change the backgrounds of things! WOW! I went with the joyful black and grey checkered pattern. It symbolises how square shapes enjoy each other’s company and rally together as a team when something needs to get done. You’ll also notice the font and colour of my post titles represent my yearning to be loved. Speaking of Star Wars, something else that I did with my blog that was quite cool was adding an inviting little banner at the top of the page. Who doesn't love Star Wars? Seriously. If you haven't seen it, you can see it on my Blogger page, right here.

Lonely? Fret not. Blogger has you sorted with that too; You can comment on other people’s blogs to make them feel all fuzzy and warm inside. For example, I commented on Thalia Haynes' post, "A Favorite Past Time - Art". As well as Laura Wingrove's post, "Inspiring".


Don't worry kids, Blogger isn't the only thing we've been doing; We also signed up for Flickr and Delicious accounts.

Right now I have 12 links on Delicious. These are important or interesting sites that I visit frequently, like deviantART, The Escapist Magazine and YouTube, to name some of my favourites. These are the sites I go to to gain inspiration or procrastination. As for Flickr, I have been lucky enough to upload 6 neat little images, some of which are photos of myself, others being some of my own hand drawn illustrations. But Flickr also allows one to favourite images of interest. You can find 3 of my favourites right here.

My Flickr Photostream
My Delicious Links Page

So, in conclusion, I have enjoyed the subject of MPI104 so far and look forward to continuing my gallant quest for knowledge on the interwebs and beyond.

May the Force always be with you.

Talent and Humility

For this blog I wanted to pay some respect to someone I admire. He's an artist called Chris Scalf whom I first found on YouTube with his video "Painting Sarah: A Portrait of Autism...". If you want to watch a magnificent time-lapse speed painting (which you really should), click on the link below.

"Painting Sarah: A Portrait of Autism..." video

He also has an old blog that he made in 2009 which was, for me, truely inspiring. I suggest to anyone reading this to go and read it. Seriously, if you have the time, read it. I know I'm setting you a lot of homework but it is well worth it. Not to mention, this guy does cover art for some of Dark Horse Comics Star Wars collection and has a DeviantART profile showing off some of his awe inspiring work.
Chris Scalf's "Humility" Blog
Chris Scalf's DeviantART page

Honestly, this guy is so inspirational the story he tells about his life raising a daughter with autism, but also in his talent as an artist. Any aspiring artist should check out his work.

Hope you all check it out for yourselves. That's all for now!

Delicious, But Does It Taste Good Too?

Quite recently I started up a Delicious account. Delicious is a well designed little site that allows users to save and organise links to other websites that they enjoy and plan on going to in the future. It's a fairly simple concept and it can be very useful to the right people. For example, if you are the kind of person who is frequently accessing the internet and visit a multitude of sites in one sitting, this is the site that you should have set as your homepage. However, if you are the kind of person that I am, and only really visit a select few sites often it is slightly less useful. Seeing as though most browsers have a favourites/bookmarks section easily accessible to anyone, it feels like more hassle that help when needing to find a specific site.

Whilst it is an ingenious website which would certainly prove invaluable to the right kind of people, I'm just not one of those. With that in mind, I would rate Delicious, 13 baby monkeys out of 27.

That's all for now, but if any of you little baby monkeys want to check out my Delicious profile you can do so right here. Enjoy!

Facebook, that Cancerous Growth We Adore.

I would like to speak briefly on the subject of Facebook, to set the record straight. I don't like Facebook (cue gasps and fainting women). I think it is an infection on the human race. The initial idea of it is not so bad, but merely the thing it has mutated into, that is, a slimy, drooling, disease ridden beast. Allow me to substantiate my opinion: Facebook is a perfect time wasting device which encourages users to seek out and add other people as "friends", who in real life you would not even have the inclination to interact with at all given the choice.

There is a myriad of useless things to do on Facebook. From the rubbish games, to the liking and commenting of pointless groups and status updates. You can even post some bulls*** statuses of you're own. Whether that be some dumb lyrics to a song that relates to nothing or no one or talking about how depressing your life is, some people don't care how insignificant it is. This time could be put to so much better use but instead people zombify themselves, to a point that I wouldn't be surprised if in some hundred years time, the world eventuates into some WALL-E plot line, without the happy ending.

To further illustrate my point, here are some informative YouTube videos:

LtMkilla - I HATE Facebook

Smosh - ATTENTION: Facebook Users

I'm going to wrap this up otherwise I won't stop. In short, I feel like people need to stop relying on Facebook and other time wasting sites, or else the world will succumb to exhaustion via stupidity. I find it harder and harder to have faith in humanity when I see what we have become. And although Facebook is not entirely to blame, it has definitely played its part.

Screw you Mark Zuckerberg.

Thank you for reading.