Date

Description of learning activity. Comments. Time spent/Total

Feb.5, 2003

Yes, I started 2 classes late due to late registration. Anyway, today I just worked on the About Me assignment using the MS Office Mac and attached a screen-capture of DOA X-Treme Volleyball from the IGN Games site. It doesn’t really mean anything to me, but I didn’t want to put up cars and stuff. Too vanilla. Overall, the class went for approximately 2 ½ hours but my assignment only took all of 30 minutes (should be less, but it still took me some time getting comfortable sitting down and all…)

30 min.

Feb.5, 2003

Back home, I searched download.com (http://download.com.com) which now seems to have adopted a very bizarre web address. I mean, .com.com? You can still reach it by simply typing download.com in the address bar, so who cares. Anyway, so I was searching the site looking for adware-removers because I’m currently getting spammed to death ON MY DESKTOP. That’s right, I can sit here not running any application and I would still get advertisements in the form of message pop-ups! I do have Ad-Aware installed, but you know, you can’t rely on one program forever. So here I was, searching through heaps of "free to try, $50 to buy" software until I came across this very promising freeware by the name of Spybot – Search & Destroy. It has very good reviews and I read that it can catch some things that Ad-Aware can’t. So I tried it and hey, very powerful indeed! In the end, though, my spam problem was still NOT resolved, leading me to believe that it’s a problem of open ports in my connection rather than spyware. I think I need a firewall.

2h (2.5h)

Feb.6, 2003

So today I’m working on Macromedia Dreamweaver in the Mac lab. As pseudo tech-savvy as I appear to be, I have actually never heard of this application before. Yes I am aware of web-design programs but I have personally never used one. See, back in the old days when Geocities was still offering free and quality hosting, I used to hardcode everything because using things like Microsoft FrontPage somehow makes me less elite (which it does). Anyhow, so here I was working these curriculum lessons until I got bored and decided to just tackle the actual assignments and learn from there. As of now, I have completed the Imagemap and Disjointed Rollover assignments. Not bad, I know what I’m doing.

2.5h (5h)

Feb.7, 2003

I encountered some little problems here and there regarding the location of files and link directories, nothing major. Dreamweaver completed.

2.5 (7.5h)

Feb.7, 2003

I spent the night downloading some video files off the net (.avi format, to be exact) and I can’t view them. The file is there and it’s playing, alright, but there is no video! What a bummer. So I came to the conclusion that it is some codec issues and I went to divx.com (http://www.divx.com) looking for a patch update or something. I ended up having to download the actual official player which has very little features and basically sucks. Fortunately, the updated codec is not limited to that player only, so I could go back to using RealONE and ATI Multimedia Centre.

1h (8.5h)

Feb.8, 2003

Right. So my Math12 class requires me to have a graphing calculator to work with. I don’t have one, don’t care to shell out $100+ dollars for it, and I don’t feel like renting it from the school for $30. Yet the homework is piling up and I cannot do them without a graphing calculator, so what am I to do? This night, I took it upon myself to search for a graphing calculator program that I can use at home. Sure, I won’t be able to bring it to school, but that’s another problem I could deal with later. First stop: download.com of course! It also proved to be the last stop in my search! Just type in graphing calculator in the search field and there’d be lots of results. I tried out a lot of these software but they’re all horrible. Then I chose Graphica 1.1 because it had an 89% thumbs up rating and its description seemed like what I’m looking for. Long story short, after a lot of messing with the program, I found it way too confusing to use. I ended up just borrowing a TI-85 from my friend next door. Bah! Oh, one more thing: don’t trust the user ratings too much!

2h (10.5h)

Feb.10, 2003

Exactly as the title suggests. So yeah, today I was working on the second batch of assignments using Macromedia Fireworks. This time, I didn’t even bother with the curriculum lessons as they don’t count for anything and I don’t have much time in this course. Anyway, I had found this unit to be somewhat easier than the previous Dreamweaver one for whatever reason. Perhaps this is because I had experience with image editors before. Completed 2 assignments today. I would’ve completed all 4 if I didn’t spend so much time doing the Fundamentals Review Test!

2.5h (13h)

Feb.11, 2003

Quick and simple: I just came in to class, completed the last two assignments left on Fireworks, then spent the rest of the time thinking about what to do for the Flash splash banner.

1.5h (14.5h)

Feb.12, 2003

I regret to say, but I still didn’t have any idea on what to do for my Flash splash banner. Then it hit me: I don’t even know half the functions in this program, so even if I had an idea, how would I go about working on it? And so, I started doing the lessons included with the software. Hey, it’s a start.

2.5h (17h)

Feb.15, 2003

Ever downloaded any music and felt that the beginning or the end stalled for too long and you just want to cut them? How bout weird noises or a particularly crappy part of a song that you just want out? Well, personally I’m very picky about my music, so naturally I’d be inclined to search for audio editing software. Today, I went to my trusty source (read: download.com again) hunting for a good, user-friendly, multi-featured application and, lo and behold, I have discovered this little gem by the name of GoldWave. This is a really fantastic product allowing you to cut, mix, distort, restore, you name it. The interface is simple enough for an amateur like me to navigate with relative ease, yet there are functions deep enough that only the pros would understand their usage. I’m still exploring!

Of course, I have also tried the other editors, some of which have even higher ratings than GoldWave. But overall, I feel that it is still the best for me personally.

2.5h (19.5h)

Feb.17, 2003

Hey, every man needs his own ride sometime, and well, I’m a man too! So tonight I just spent my time looking for cars over on CanadaTrader.com (http://www.canadatrader.com). Looking through pages and pages of this digital car catalogue ensured that my eyesight wouldn’t last through the night. PS. Yes it took me 3 hours. Where’d the time go?

3h (22.5h)

Feb.19, 2003

Indeed! I had figured out what to do for my Flash splash banner. It occurred to me when I was sitting in class doing nothing in particular. I realized that I was humming this theme song from the Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop, then voila! Some concept images popped in my head and I quickly set to work. Of course, it wasn’t like some divine intervention where I knew exactly what I was doing with minute detail, but I was experimenting with different animations playing to the tunes of the music. Pretty successful for what it’s worth, methinks.

1.5h (24h)

Feb.21, 2003

Yep, it’s the site linked from the InfoTech12 page about digital filmmaking and things (http://www.newvenue.com). I had checked out a lot of the submissions and interviews and…wow. How am I ever to pull off anything like that? And to think I’m gearing to being a filmmaker in the future myself. Must…fight…on…!!!

1h (25h)