University

julia - Jan 4, 2007

The snow yesterday morning was lovely. Pity it didn’t last long. Bit disturbed by the fact there are different ‘premium’ and ‘standard’ halls at your uni - who says the class system is dead in Britain, eh?!

Snow began to fall this morning at 3 am and a group of those living in halls went out to enjoy the fresh snow. it was falling for several hours and everyone was enjoying it. There were snowball fights between the premiums and the standards. That’s Premium block and standard blocks. Some people were continuously pelted with snow whilst others simply enjoyed being out in the snow. A remote-controlled car was there driving around but struggling. The tires were skidding. When will these people learn that you accelerate slowly in snow and gradually build up speed? I’ve got a video of this morning but I still have to capture it.

I went for a meeting today and the documentary idea is far clearer now than before. Thanks to the help of the tutor I’ve got a far more focused way of looking at the question I wanted to ask. I still need to write a third draft of the proposal and get it approved. In the meantime I can already start writing the introduction to the dissertation explaining the context and setting the scene for the remainder of the document. Going to be fun from now on.

We had to listen to three hours of this subject today and discuss it. It’s amusing how the discussion focused on the iPhone, iPods, and what apple, in general, was doing. Several years ago I was downloading music and copying it to minidisc in the days before the mp3 player and iTunes. It was a time when bandwidth constraints were greater therefore patient people would get the content they desired. Over the years bandwidth increased and BitTorrent and other software came which made the experience much faster. I-tunes came along and gave one of the legal alternatives to access music. They also sold the player. Did they create a revolution or simply see that there was a market and take this as an opportunity to specialise in that? Now members of the older generations would say that Steve Jobs had a wonderful idea of providing this service and that he was innovative. Others, such as myself, are more skeptical. I believe that the mp3 format made the sharing of music without too much loss in quality much easier and smoother than it had been before. As people had more and more music in this form they began to see the need for adapted players like the minidisc and earlier mp3 players. More efficient ways were found but it was the realm of early adopters, power users. Those for whom technology is as easy to use as the pen to calligraphy. Apple did nothing more than realise there was a market and offer what people had been demanding. In the US apple TV is a great product because you’ve got the content to purchase and view. In Europe, the market is still too far behind on this particular issue therefore the device is not interesting. How soon will it be before Europeans can legally buy the most recent American shows? in two months or two years? With today’s media infrastructure we see everything that’s going on everywhere therefore the old way of dividing the world into media zones has to be rethought. By the way, I’ve finally understood McLuhan after my lecture today. It took a while and since no one had explained it to me so clearly I had been under the wrong impression.

If you’ve ever worked with students or you’ve ever had a few good nights in a row there’s a rule everyone lives by. That rule is that nothing shall be done before 5am, whether it’s consuming a good meal, putting on clothing other than pyjamas or other. It’s a time when everyone rests. Especially on a sunday. I was out by 930 today because I had to travel across London for a shoot with some students for the rag week. I don’t know much about the thing but it seems typical of pre 1970’s universities where they are bound by an extended legacy. My uni seems to lack this unfortunatly. I don’t often shoot and edit a piece on the same day. I usually take my time and eventually get round to it. At least today was different. It’s been a good weekend.

Last night I went to central London to get some information about a possible shoot and edit for students at another university. If we get a camera then we can do something for tomorrow. 1p coins in student unions are dangerous. If one happens to fall in you’re going to have to drink it. Touch the cup is another game I saw yesterday. It’s a strange game because of it’s aim, at least with last night’s drink. Before going to sleep two students were outside the halls yelling and trying to get into the building. one of them kept yelling “where’s my shoe”, “I’ve lost my shoe”. Sometimes you hear strange things

iPhone - Jan 4, 2007

Yes, the weather has been very windy. I am very intrigued by the iPhone! Will iPhone be as successful as the Ipod? Will consumers abandon buying separate MP3 Players and phones for a device that fulfils both functions? Time will. By the way hopefully the weather will get better. Vic

I found today quite entertaining. I went out and noticed that it was a little windy. Later on, I was heading towards the student bar only to find that it was closed due to windows being blown in. “Oh well”, I thought “time to do something different”. I walked across the street, the name given to the path in the middle of our university, and looked up to the screens, “ship abandoned”, train delays, tiles off roofs, and more. [caption id=“attachment_5829” align=“alignleft” width=“225”] Due to various trees on the line[/caption] As if to provoke more problems for myself I decided to head into central London. There was a hilarious sign. “Because of various trees on track - severe delays on metropolitan line. It’s such a matter of fact, a casual way of saying there’s a problem. I went up the stairs to the platform ad caught a train limited to 30 mph due to the adverse weather conditions. That’s quite a bit slower than usual. We arrived near Wembley Park but the train remained blocked. Apparently they had to change driver and this was holding us up. So to recapitulate six trees on the line, heavy winds, severe delays, and to top it off delay due to the changing of a driver. Don’t they have enough problems as it is? I went to the world’s biggest apple store but there’s nothing new, no apple tv, no iPhone, nothing I haven’t seen already. The trek back was fun in itself. Highly packed trains filled with commuters and masses of people trying to get back to Northwick park after going to Harrow on the hill because the trains were suffering from the weather conditions. I got out and walked home.

It’s fun to watch documentaries when you know that they spent at least two to three years in the making. I like the documentary because it’s an opera rather than a documentary. There is a minimum of comment and a maximum of shots. There are some sequences where you see things happening in front of the camera and it switches to a second camera. That’s because for sequences like the penguins jumping out of the water they filmed it with one film camera and one pole. Doesn’t that make you wish you were studying a media BA. where part of your studies is television. Every field of studies has it’s advantages. One person I know is studying James Bond films, another is doing Disney cartoons. I’m doing underwater documentaries between France and England. Another is doing something related to social elements and zombies. One is doing special effects It’s a broad range and that should make it more interesting to those that have to read through all this content.

Today I got an e-mail which, if I agreed to would open a door to a number of events. I went for a fourty minute walk to think about things and my interior monologue brought me to the conclusion that by being stubborn I would gain nothing but regret whilst by agreeing to a small thing I would win back a freedom. I enjoyed the student life and for a moment by freedom was not as great threfore I found other occupations. Today I was at a comedy night and it was really amusing. I really enjoyed the evening. It’s great to watch comedians bring out the funny things in life for us to laugh at.