Acronyms, in my opinion, are stupid and unnecessary. They are just for lazy people who don't want to spell out words and therefore do not appreciate good grammar. I appreciate good grammar and can find it annoyingly difficult to talk to people when all they want to do is the use the first letter of words to create a bunch of seemingly random letter that only they understand. For this reason, I find it hard to think of new acronyms when a lot of them are already there. HJNTIY could be one, I guess. Standing for He's Just Not That Into You (totally not a stolen movie title.) TJK could mean Totally Just Kidding, and YRG8 could mean You're Great, which is definitely something everyone wants to hear that away.
There are many places where you should never use acronyms. When writing an email, especially a formal or professional one. When writing a school or business essay, acronyms just make you look juvenile and make it appear as if you can't spell. I doubt you would be picked for the job if you had acronyms on your resume, and I know I would not be accepting you into my college if that was the way you were going to spell.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Communication Compass (Assignment One)
If there was anything in this world that is gray, it would be the internet. The internet has never been a good or a bad thing. It has always been and forever will be the way that it is used that will cause people to believe that it is either black or white. For that reason, it is obvious that there would be both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to something like digital communication.
Digital communication is the electronic exchanging of any information. This can be anything from texting and emails to Facetime.
Of course, although some people choose to see nothing but bad, there are good things. Digital communication allows us to easily communicate with people who are far away from us, whether that be a province or a continent, it doesn't matter because distance does not matter. It allows us to easily transition files to one another, which helps us decrease our carbon footprint because it cuts down on our paper usage. We can have meetings with numerous people attending them, with none of them in the same room, and we can stay in touch with people that we never would have been able to, because it is so easy to do.
Although all of these things are convenient and helpful, there are many disadvantages as well. I know from experience that this can cause people to be awkward when talking to people face to face. Digital communication can become an addiction, and it can be hard to unplug. People forget that there are other things they could be doing, like going for a hike instead of looking up pictures of the trails. We become a society that relies on technology, and that can be just as toxic as a society that relies on a drug.
There have been many advancements in the technological world, and because of that we have a lot of new technologies and websites that have become wildly popular. Facebook has become nothing but more popular ever since it was created in 2004. Twitter, too, was instantaneously a hit when it was out for the public. Snapchat has just been created in the last few years, and it is a very popular, excessively used app that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. All of these three websites are a form of social media, and that's the key to popularity when it comes to website ideas and design. People love to connect to other people, they thrive for it. The idea of being able to send texts and photos to people so easily has almost moved beyond the want, and is now the need. Which is a problem in itself, but people choose to ignore that and instead partake in it.
With these advancements though, many forms of digital communication are becoming lost and forgotten, and will soon be irrelevant. Emails now are mainly used for things that require them, like signing up for a social media website. People mainly contact each other via text or Facebook. Even talking on the house phone or landline is becoming widely unpopular. People have unhooked them and have cancelled their plans. Does anyone even use a phone book anymore? Phone numbers can be so easily found online and saved as a contact on your cellphone, that I'm not surprised many children today have never heard of them. Plain old texting, too, has started to lose it's cool. With the development of Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and other social and instant messaging apps, people don't even need cellphone numbers to communicate. As long as you have an internet connection, you can talk to anyone in the world, and anyone in the world can talk to you.
It's bad enough that many of us are constantly on our phones and looking to talk to people that are not with us in person, but there are many situations that we should not be communicating digitally, but we are.
I find one of the worst possible things you could do is talk to someone via text when having an intense or serious conversation. I have done this more times than I would like to admit, and I hate it. I hate participating in it, I hate trying to decipher the context of the other person's text, and I hate worrying about whether or not said person took my words the wrong way. It is extremely stressful, and I usually feel terrible both during the conversation and for a long time after it. I think this is definitely a time when it is worth it to pick up the phone (unless it's long distance which, again from experience, sucks).
Other scenarios where it is not the best idea to be communicating digitally could be at a funeral, because I would find that rude and disrespectful, especially for those around you who are in mourning. Speaking of that, saying that you are sorry for someone's loss via digital communication does not seem like a good thing to do either. People appreciate it more when you say things in person, the reason or topic does not matter. So when you are listening to someone talk or participating in a class discussion or a conversation with a friend, it does not look like you are paying attention when you are digitally communicating with someone else. Most cases, you aren't. So when talking to someone in person or listening to a speaker, it would not be wise to be digitally communicating also.
ugot.org discusses the topic of the many dangers of digital communication. Although they were all obvious and should be well known already, there were two that stood out to me. Those were cyberbullying and that the identity of the sender can be disguised or difficult to trace. These can actually be in relation to each other. It is very common for a cyberbully to be someone that you know, but they are using the screen to hide their face and their words to hide their voice. When using the internet and other forms of digital communication, you are willingly stepping into a shadowed room where all those who are in there have their faces obscured. Then you walk around and give them information about yourself, which they can choose what to do with. They can either ignore it, or use that information against you. In a cyberbullies case, they use that information and other bits and pieces of fabricated thoughts and they intentionally try to be cruel to you while being in the safety of that shadowed room. That's why any form of digital communication is dangerous, because in most cases, those in the room with you are mostly strangers too. Some think that a stranger is just a friend that you haven't met yet, and in a way that can be true, but not all strangers are friendly. Some will try to hurt you, and that's why you have to be cautious in these situations.
Although there is no way to get kids and people to be less internet obsessed, I think people will eventually find that healthy balance of real life and digital life. That eventually, people will realize the reason they don't feel completely themselves is because they are wasting too much of their energy on what they shouldn't be. That the connections they should be focused on are the real, human ones, not the wireless.
People do tend to worry about what should happen to the internet activity and digital accounts of those who have passed away. Some people decide to keep the accounts going, while others try to delete them and erase all proof pf digital existence, which I can understand. It can be hard to see people still trying to interact with those who are no longer here.
I think we should just leave them there. The internet doesn't seem to be at full capacity yet, so I see no reason to take them down. It lets people look back at what they did, and read about them and the things they said. It's their own personal time capsule in a way, and I like that idea very much.
Digital communication is the electronic exchanging of any information. This can be anything from texting and emails to Facetime.
Of course, although some people choose to see nothing but bad, there are good things. Digital communication allows us to easily communicate with people who are far away from us, whether that be a province or a continent, it doesn't matter because distance does not matter. It allows us to easily transition files to one another, which helps us decrease our carbon footprint because it cuts down on our paper usage. We can have meetings with numerous people attending them, with none of them in the same room, and we can stay in touch with people that we never would have been able to, because it is so easy to do.
Although all of these things are convenient and helpful, there are many disadvantages as well. I know from experience that this can cause people to be awkward when talking to people face to face. Digital communication can become an addiction, and it can be hard to unplug. People forget that there are other things they could be doing, like going for a hike instead of looking up pictures of the trails. We become a society that relies on technology, and that can be just as toxic as a society that relies on a drug.
There have been many advancements in the technological world, and because of that we have a lot of new technologies and websites that have become wildly popular. Facebook has become nothing but more popular ever since it was created in 2004. Twitter, too, was instantaneously a hit when it was out for the public. Snapchat has just been created in the last few years, and it is a very popular, excessively used app that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. All of these three websites are a form of social media, and that's the key to popularity when it comes to website ideas and design. People love to connect to other people, they thrive for it. The idea of being able to send texts and photos to people so easily has almost moved beyond the want, and is now the need. Which is a problem in itself, but people choose to ignore that and instead partake in it.
With these advancements though, many forms of digital communication are becoming lost and forgotten, and will soon be irrelevant. Emails now are mainly used for things that require them, like signing up for a social media website. People mainly contact each other via text or Facebook. Even talking on the house phone or landline is becoming widely unpopular. People have unhooked them and have cancelled their plans. Does anyone even use a phone book anymore? Phone numbers can be so easily found online and saved as a contact on your cellphone, that I'm not surprised many children today have never heard of them. Plain old texting, too, has started to lose it's cool. With the development of Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and other social and instant messaging apps, people don't even need cellphone numbers to communicate. As long as you have an internet connection, you can talk to anyone in the world, and anyone in the world can talk to you.
It's bad enough that many of us are constantly on our phones and looking to talk to people that are not with us in person, but there are many situations that we should not be communicating digitally, but we are.
I find one of the worst possible things you could do is talk to someone via text when having an intense or serious conversation. I have done this more times than I would like to admit, and I hate it. I hate participating in it, I hate trying to decipher the context of the other person's text, and I hate worrying about whether or not said person took my words the wrong way. It is extremely stressful, and I usually feel terrible both during the conversation and for a long time after it. I think this is definitely a time when it is worth it to pick up the phone (unless it's long distance which, again from experience, sucks).
Other scenarios where it is not the best idea to be communicating digitally could be at a funeral, because I would find that rude and disrespectful, especially for those around you who are in mourning. Speaking of that, saying that you are sorry for someone's loss via digital communication does not seem like a good thing to do either. People appreciate it more when you say things in person, the reason or topic does not matter. So when you are listening to someone talk or participating in a class discussion or a conversation with a friend, it does not look like you are paying attention when you are digitally communicating with someone else. Most cases, you aren't. So when talking to someone in person or listening to a speaker, it would not be wise to be digitally communicating also.
ugot.org discusses the topic of the many dangers of digital communication. Although they were all obvious and should be well known already, there were two that stood out to me. Those were cyberbullying and that the identity of the sender can be disguised or difficult to trace. These can actually be in relation to each other. It is very common for a cyberbully to be someone that you know, but they are using the screen to hide their face and their words to hide their voice. When using the internet and other forms of digital communication, you are willingly stepping into a shadowed room where all those who are in there have their faces obscured. Then you walk around and give them information about yourself, which they can choose what to do with. They can either ignore it, or use that information against you. In a cyberbullies case, they use that information and other bits and pieces of fabricated thoughts and they intentionally try to be cruel to you while being in the safety of that shadowed room. That's why any form of digital communication is dangerous, because in most cases, those in the room with you are mostly strangers too. Some think that a stranger is just a friend that you haven't met yet, and in a way that can be true, but not all strangers are friendly. Some will try to hurt you, and that's why you have to be cautious in these situations.
Although there is no way to get kids and people to be less internet obsessed, I think people will eventually find that healthy balance of real life and digital life. That eventually, people will realize the reason they don't feel completely themselves is because they are wasting too much of their energy on what they shouldn't be. That the connections they should be focused on are the real, human ones, not the wireless.
People do tend to worry about what should happen to the internet activity and digital accounts of those who have passed away. Some people decide to keep the accounts going, while others try to delete them and erase all proof pf digital existence, which I can understand. It can be hard to see people still trying to interact with those who are no longer here.
I think we should just leave them there. The internet doesn't seem to be at full capacity yet, so I see no reason to take them down. It lets people look back at what they did, and read about them and the things they said. It's their own personal time capsule in a way, and I like that idea very much.
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Journal #1: Digital Security
After completing the Digital Security assignment (found below), I was not at all surprised with the results. Almost everyone I know has, at some point, used a weak and well known password, which is a terrible thing to do for it threatens your digital security.
I found this unit easy and I understood it well. There was nothing I found confusing or difficult, and for that I am grateful, because we all know how much it can suck when we need to do projects that are.
I like to think that my passwords are secure. Sure, I may use the same one for almost everything I do, but I don't think it would be easily guessed. For that reason, I'm choosing not to worry. I think the most important thing to consider when creating passwords is complexity. The more intricate the password, the harder it will be to guess, which will ensure your digital security.
I found this unit easy and I understood it well. There was nothing I found confusing or difficult, and for that I am grateful, because we all know how much it can suck when we need to do projects that are.
I like to think that my passwords are secure. Sure, I may use the same one for almost everything I do, but I don't think it would be easily guessed. For that reason, I'm choosing not to worry. I think the most important thing to consider when creating passwords is complexity. The more intricate the password, the harder it will be to guess, which will ensure your digital security.
Digital Security (Assignment One)
The two worst passwords listed on the bbtnb.ca website are "123456", and "password", and I agree that they are easy to guess. When you don't know the person and you are trying to hack into their computer or other devices, these are always the first ones people tend to try. For that reason, I have never used any of them. I tend to stick to random, not significant words, capitalizing one or two of the letters and adding some numbers on the end. This way, I know that unless I tell people what it is, or someone is an incredibly skillful hacker, I won't easily have my information leaked.
I think seniors would be more likely to use these passwords, and although this is a stereotype, typically they aren't as well informed about the internet and the devices that can connect to it. So when something requires a password, they put something that would be easy to remember, such as 123456, not thinking about the consequences that could arise from it. I know a lot of adults though who warn me about this, and tell me to make sure I have a strong password, so to say that most adults would use these type of passwords would be a lie.
There are a lot of terrible passwords out there, more than just the two that bbtnb.ca listed. Other passwords that I would not recommend using would be your name or the name of anyone in your family, your address, your birthday, and other easily known pieces of information that is related to you.
Some people wonder how long a password should be to be considered strong, and I think most websites will not accept anything less than eight characters. I agree that anything less than that would not be the best choice. People usually make remarks and say the odd comment when they see someone typing in a password that is seemingly a mile long, but I would bet you anything in the world that no one else is reading their emails. Strong passwords are important, and if you are using a password that is similar or the same as one of the ones I talked about here, I strongly suggest you change it! It could save your life! (Not really, unless you are stupid and like to meet up with creepy strangers).
I think seniors would be more likely to use these passwords, and although this is a stereotype, typically they aren't as well informed about the internet and the devices that can connect to it. So when something requires a password, they put something that would be easy to remember, such as 123456, not thinking about the consequences that could arise from it. I know a lot of adults though who warn me about this, and tell me to make sure I have a strong password, so to say that most adults would use these type of passwords would be a lie.
There are a lot of terrible passwords out there, more than just the two that bbtnb.ca listed. Other passwords that I would not recommend using would be your name or the name of anyone in your family, your address, your birthday, and other easily known pieces of information that is related to you.
Some people wonder how long a password should be to be considered strong, and I think most websites will not accept anything less than eight characters. I agree that anything less than that would not be the best choice. People usually make remarks and say the odd comment when they see someone typing in a password that is seemingly a mile long, but I would bet you anything in the world that no one else is reading their emails. Strong passwords are important, and if you are using a password that is similar or the same as one of the ones I talked about here, I strongly suggest you change it! It could save your life! (Not really, unless you are stupid and like to meet up with creepy strangers).
Timey-Wimey Stuff
This is what Toni and I did for our final photo editing assignment.
I am a geek. Get over it.
I am a geek. Get over it.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Monster Mash
As you can see, I've created a monster. Literally.
For this assignment, we had to find a piece of thrift store art and paint a monster into the scene. As you can see, I have painted this creature with weird pussy eyes, and I honestly have no idea where it came from. It started with one eye, and then it just sort of came from there. Nothing inspired me, I just started doodling and then the doodle came to life!
The easiest part of this assignment was finding the picture, and the hardest part was deciding what to draw. I found this assignment easy though, and I'm really glad with how it turned out!
Friday, October 2, 2015
Toon Town Photo Bombing
What happens when cartoon characters spring to life? Or we decide that we want to lead a life in a pixelated world? What is it that happens when students are asked these questions, or they are just told to do an assignment and how to do it? Why am I asking so many possibly rhetorical questions?
Okay, I'm done now.
This assignment is called Toon Town Photo Bombing, because it is a chance for students (like me) to get creative, and design a scene where both real life and the silly fantasy of cartoons come together. I found it pretty cool, although I am so unoriginal that I sat for a day at my desk, staring at the blinking line in the search bar of Google, not sure what exactly to do and thinking I was a failure at life. Or, at least BBT class. Eventually, this is what I came up with.
Okay, I'm done now.
This assignment is called Toon Town Photo Bombing, because it is a chance for students (like me) to get creative, and design a scene where both real life and the silly fantasy of cartoons come together. I found it pretty cool, although I am so unoriginal that I sat for a day at my desk, staring at the blinking line in the search bar of Google, not sure what exactly to do and thinking I was a failure at life. Or, at least BBT class. Eventually, this is what I came up with.
As you can see, this is Dumbo with his new family of real life elephants (click words for links of pictures I used). It's not very creative, I know, but come on, Dumbo is cute, elephants are sweet, I see nothing that could go wrong with this!
I chose this scene because I honestly couldn't think of anything else, and elephants are my favorite animal, which I know I have mentioned at least once, if not twice, before. So, why not? I'm happy with how the final product turned out and that's all that matters.
The assignment mentions that this kind of work can be related to film and documentaries, which is definitely true. I have thought about a career in film actually. After high school, I like the idea of moving to Toronto to take up Screenwriting at the Toronto Film School (TFS). I would like to do something like that because I love to write, and I loved watching old movies with my mom when I was younger, like Alfred Hitchcock and Richard Brooks and Steven Speilberg, and you get to learn about them, and why they chose to direct and write the things that they did, and I like that and want to be a part of that. Screenwriting is a way to put my love of writing and film together, and I can't think of anything else that would be able to satisfy my life in the way that I want it to right now. I know that is subject to change, but at the present moment, I like the thought of it very much.
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