Video Reviews

Smart Homes Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdd41G0q7Nw&feature=youtu.be

 

I found this a very engaging video mainly for the visual design aspect of the approach.  Firstly the video does a good job simply ticking off the required boxes of the assignment, making sure everyone contributes to the presentation and overall conveying information about smart homes in a succinct and easily understood way.  More than that though what I really liked about it was the approach of having the various group members sketch out pertinent images on a white board while the narration played over it.  There’s something about that particular action that really engenders a blended sense between classical education tactics like white board sessions and the digital new frontier of education through media learning.  It reminded me most of the Khan Academy videos that also utilize a more hands-on visual aesthetic to their complimentary imagery.  If I was to raise a critique however it would be that some of the narration felt a little shakey at times and could’ve been a bit more polished but that's a small gripe all things considered. 

Amazon Web Services Video 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muotZg0wCuI&feature=youtu.be

The Amazon Web Service video definitely came off as seriously ambitious and to a certain degree managed to achieve the lofty goals it set for itself.  I very much enjoyed the amount of audio work that went into this video, a good degree of sound mixing and music work helped make this video infinitely more memorable.  Alternatively the visual portion of the video was more mixed especially given the narration that wet with it.  While some of the video sections were very well done and informative as the presentation went on the information became a little more cluttered and unclear, especially when the narrator entered into an analogy about tools and birdhouses that was ultimately more confusing than helpful.  It also felt very much like there was going to be more after the initial spurt of narration and I would’ve liked to have heard from all the group members not just the one, still I understand Amazon Web Service infinitely better now than I did before watching this video.   

Presentation Reviews

Virtual Reality Team

I thought the virtual reality team had a lot of very intriguing images and presentation format but kind of fell flat in their actual presentation.  You get the sense the presenters are somewhat uncomfortable up on stage in front of everyone and the presenters often came off very quite and shy or stuttering.  I realize that everyone has some amount of anxiety when it comes to public speaking but it left the group feeling decidedly unprepared in my opinion.  It definitely felt like it was more rewarding to just read the information on the slides and examine the images rather than actually strain myself to make out the mumbled and quiet speech of the presenters.  They did seem well informed during the question and answer portion of their presentation so that was refreshing. 

Interactive Cartoons

This team came off very clear and well spoken, all the presenters felt thoroughly prepared and were easy to hear and understand with proper enunciation and a full command of the topic at hand.  However their information felt a little shaky, while the presentation was adequate I can’t help but feel let down as I’m still unsure what exactly defines an interactive cartoon.  Additionally I don’t quite comprehend how exactly an interactive cartoon is separate from say a flash game or various other examples of interactive animations.  I feel like a more stringent definition of terms would’ve really bolstered my understanding of the material here.  I also felt like we didn’t get much grounding in terms of cons just all the pros. 

Off Day: Group Work

            Once again I’m unsure if any learning journal is actually assigned for this date but I intend to post one regardless.  With class canceled to allow us more prep time on our projects our group met up for the first time outside of class to discuss the upcoming presentation along with the matter of the 3-minute video.  This is the first physical group meeting we’ve ever had not counting brief conversations in class between talking points and so forth and the results were less than encouraging.  Luis seems very quiet and timid though willing to put in the work necessary to help make these projects a major success but Anthony seemed reticent to most of the suggestions.  My biggest issue with Anthony is his irksome habit of only providing problems and no solutions, most of his time during the meeting was spent fretting over a lack of official guidelines for what the power point and video should entail.  While I certainly appreciate Anthony’s concerns towards structure he came off more distracted than anything else, like he was simply treading water and marking off time till one of has to leave and he could escape our company.  Discussing audio recording for the video was even worse as he constantly shot down my suggestions and brought no personal initiative to the table, it may be necessary to nursemaid him through the process entirely or alternatively simply cut him out of the video all together.  Our current plan is simply to do voice over with still images as that’s the easiest option for our various busy schedules with me acting as central coordinator.  I have no doubt that Luis will provide his audio as despite his shy exterior he’s demonstrated consummate professionalism and follow through but as I mentioned I have some definite concerns about Anthony’s ability to work as a team player or provide me with what I need in a timely manner. 

Presentation Skills

            Presentations and public speaking have always been a strong suit of mine so I found this particular lecture to be something of a repetition.  It did however go very well with Karen’s class concerning presentations in the 300 lecture lab.  What I’ve found to be the most challenging thing for me concerning presentations is two fold; firstly there’s the issue of the presentation itself and then there’s my speed.  While I don’t feel all that nervous when presenting I have been told on numerous occasions that I have a bad tendency towards rushing my words.  I believe this to be a trait I carry with me from my Eastern days and formative years in Massachusetts.  I’ve found the west coast to be far more relaxed and sedate than the east where there is a major emphasis on conveying as much information as you have as quickly as you can convey it and I tend to keep that mindset when presenting but perhaps its more counterproductive than I might realize.  The other major issue for me is, as I mentioned, the presentation itself.  While I'm generally fine at assembling the necessary information to craft and informative presentation where I can sometimes bog down is in arranging it.  Specifically in trying to electrify the presentation with more personality and verve through lay out and visual design.  I find there’s nothing more disheartening in a presentation than a plain white background with flat black text, that kind of presentation exudes a sense of minimalistic effort on the part of the speaker, as if it were copied directly from an essay.  Additionally I find that visual aids can be far more informative and creating more impactful memories and lessons than simple words.  A picture or even a stylized word can convey so much more than letters on a page as well as sticks in the mind more permanently.  I also find that simple bullet points tend to offer more of an enticement to read directly from the slides, which is one of the worst mistakes a presenter can make.  My problem though is that I sometimes try TOO hard to excite with my power points and the information can become lost in the razzle dazzle of backdrops, animations, and images. 

Defining Success

            This was a very refreshing lecture and I am incredibly pleased to hear Doctor Tao speaking on how success is defined both personally and as a society.  It’s long been my personal feeling that the very existence of a societal definition of success is a negative, acting only to smother the aspirations and goals of those who choose to pursue a different life avenue than the most financially secure one.  After all the notion that money should be the most important goal of a person walks hand in hand with the idea the idea that a person’s job is the soul thing that defines them and gives them merit.  This philosophy is and always will be toxic, serving to reinforce harmful ideals about employment and self esteem that force people into wasting their lives working at jobs they hate and are not valued all in the name of monetary security and an inflated sense of self-worth due to their occupation.  I’ve seen this personally with close individuals who’ve been left devastated and directionless in the wake of losing a position or suffering some form of money issues.  They use their job as a crutch for self-definition and once its gone they emotionally and mentally collapse, unmoored without the tools to pursue a version of success that doesn’t come with an big occupation title and a big salary. 

            The points about habits and what constitutes a habit were interesting as well as were the personality types discussion.  I’ve taken a personality test before but I’ve never found them to be all that reliable.  Simply put I often find that my alignment with introversion or extroversion can waver in the extreme between both sides.  The legitimate definition of the terms is that an introvert draws energy from solitude while an extrovert draws energy from people but I often find that where I draw energy from can radically shift between those two extremes with little to no consistency as to why.  I will say that the test is a very useful tool for understanding brain chemistry and especially how our brains will react to certain chemicals.  For instance being an extrovert predominately I find that caffeine makes me far more productive during the morning hours.   

Group Work Day

            I was unclear as to whether or not this week still warranted a learning journal but as there was an assignment to work on the final presentation I felt I should still complete some kind of entry.  As my group and I have rather conflicting schedules we’ve chosen to engage with each other predominately through online channels, which I find a tad ironic.  Our subject is Cloud Computing and to discuss that subject and construct a power point around we have elected to utilize cloud-computing services like Google Docs and Gmail.  That alone serves to highlight the invaluable nature of cloud computing in our day and age and the way it’s come to permeate every strata of our daily lives.  With that in mind I feel this presentation should be relatively easy to construct, especially thanks to Luis.  Luis is the only one of the three of us who is a CSIT major, specifically in the role of network security, a very touchy subject for cloud computing given the very high profile leaks from Apple’s photo cloud system earlier this year.  Luis’s previous knowledge concerning the cloud and networks in valuable has proved invaluable on the research side.  I’ve elected to collate our information into a presentable power point that hopefully will engage our classmates.  I do however worry about the physical presentation itself, as I seem to be the only member of our group with any confidence in public speaking.  Luis tends to keep his voice low and reserved with a decided slowness to his speech and I feel he’ll ultimately end up reading off the slide.  The microphone should be a fine work around for his volume control I just hope he can inject his performance with some amount of energy.  Anthony seems thoroughly unprepared for the presentation while also seeming more than a little distracted by other projects and inflexible when it comes to my requests but hopefully that won’t be an issue long term. 

Resume Building

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS0nPwAzA3g&feature=youtu.be

Career Development

            Career development is a topic that is thoroughly close to my heart as I would very much prefer to have a career over simply a job like many others do.  Additionally in my line of work as a communication design major career development goes hand in hand with personal brand development, another major interest of mine.  Doctor Tao mentioned a plethora of valued and interesting options for career starting points and possible areas of advancement.  It was interesting to hear Tao’s point of view and information about the various means and methods of starting one’s career in comparison to the advice of the alumni a couple weeks previous.  I do wish Doctor Tao had touched more on internships, in particular some of the troubling stories I’ve heard from friends, colleagues, and mentors about the way internships can be used to farm talent as it were.  Though I’m sure there are any number of serviceable internships that serve to give you a foot in the door at a company I’ve heard a fair share of horror stories about unpaid internships that exist solely to get as much work out of students as humanly possible while giving them as little back as possible with no hiring at the end of the experience.  I personally am more inclined towards the freelance and self-sufficient approach to career development as it’s more compatible with my own goals and life template.  Options like developing my own games, doing freelance 3D modeling for clients, and case-by-case communications work strikes me as a preferable approach to developing my professional resume and personal brand than slaving a way at a permanent post if only because of the autonomy afforded you through freelancing and personal projects grants a greater chance for personal achievements and accomplishments.  To me that’s what a career is in essence, a collection of accomplishments that speak to your skills and capabilities.  I do of course recognize and acknowledge the risks of this approach and in particular the enhanced work demands of approaching a career from a more independent position but I feel the personal and professional gains far outweigh the risks. 

Graduation Process

            If I may candid here at the start I had no idea how complex the graduation process was.  I had initially simply assumed that if someone simply had the credits they would be awarded a diploma upon completion of the necessary classes.  In fact I have to wonder if all the perfunctory hoops that graduates need to jump through are truly necessary beyond just cementing that it is their intention to graduate and leave the university.  I understand some requirements of the graduation process such as the capstone project.  Making sure that graduates from majors like communication design or computer science or even televisual arts have a large portfolio of work to display to perspective clients and employers is a noble goal and one that permeates nearly every aspect of these majors and the capstone serves as the pinnacle of that goal.  But some of these other aspects of the process feel a bit like artificial goal markers inserted to inflate the process or if I were feeling uncharitable; restrict student’s opportunities for graduation to prolong their attendance to the university.  Other aspects come off like leftovers, outdated and vestigial procedures from a previous that really should be streamlined out of the graduation process given the advent of superior technologies that could easily expedite the process.  All speculation and griping aside however this was a thoroughly informative presentation that really conveyed to me the structure of the graduation process and everything that I need to do to complete this process.  Though my own graduation isn’t until spring of 2016 I recognize the importance of early preparation to ensure the process of graduating is a decidedly smooth and easy one, after all there’s no telling if I might find a way to expedite my own goals and graduate earlier than 2016 in which case being prepared is very important.   

Alumni Presentation

            The alumni presentation was a fascinating and thoroughly rewarding experience.  It was a great opportunity to hear about real people who made the real transition from students here at CSUMB to the workforce.  With the growing economic instability that still plagues our job market a future beyond school can often seem daunting and more than a little intimidating but hearing how well these alumni were able to parlay their education and natural skills into major careers really helped allay those fears.  I especially liked hearing from Christina V. Ferrante.  She was the alumni who started her own creative consulting business working towards brand development and promotion for athletes and other sports professional.  I really respected her determination and self sufficiency, creating your own business and maintaining that business are some of the hardest career options to follow but there also ones that I am thoroughly interested in pursuing myself.  Hearing Christina talk about how she handles the pressures of achieving her life goals as well as pursuing growth and evolution for the company she created was truly inspiring.  It was also incredibly refreshing to hear from a creative professional from the Communication Design major.  Sometimes it can feel like the communication design major exists solely to prop the computer science majors and make their projects more accessible to the outside world so it was good to hear first hand from a CD major who went on to do her own thing ultimately separate from the world of information technology and computer science.  Erik Uppman of Sixty Eight West was also interesting; his story of gaining experience and networking was very enlightening.  It helped to really drive home the importance of knowing other individuals to achieve your own objectives rather than the far too pervasive stereotype of both creatives and programmers as solitary individuals who work in ultimate isolation.  It really puts the importance of community and teamwork in sobering perspective. 

Learning Journal 6: Social Media in the Classroom

This was certainly an interesting experience seeing an attempt to integrate social media into the classroom.  On the one hand I see the appeal of this approach, especially in a large classroom environment where it can be difficult for the teacher to connect with every student and get every viewpoint.  However it’s important to remember that such integration must be careful controlled and planned.  It was obvious the live tweeting of our ideas on teamwork wasn’t as well conceived as it could’ve been given the anonymous nature of the medium we used it was far too easy to turn the proceedings into a caption contest.  I didn’t really feel that this was a good use of class time, especially given how similar our views on teamwork were.  It strikes me that what was really needed here was something to really encourage us to break the mold, maybe an activity that paired up different groups in a team working activity that we would deconstruct afterwards to determine how well teamwork worked in action as in the abstract all our ideas remain perfect but execution is the true indicator of their effectiveness.  Alternatively I could see something more geared towards getting truly out of the box concepts on teamwork forward, as I mentioned pretty much everyone had the same basic answers to the teamwork questions about communication, resources, understanding each other, basically a group-think consensus on what team work is.  It would be interesting to try and chip past that outer shell of assumption and really develop a deeper, freer understanding of the concept not limited by our ideas of consensus. 

Learning Journal 5: Where communication meets computers

This is something that's been hanging over my time in this class like a bad smell, a visible funk that fills the classroom every Thursday at 10AM that I can't ignore any longer because this week it was at its most intense.  This class is meant to act as a combination class both for CSIT major and CD majors yet I constantly feel like CD majors end up on the seriously short end of that stick, we’re the second class citizens it feels like, the homeless guys who were magnanimously invited to CSIT’s thanksgiving.  For instance look at this project we’re currently working on and how Dr. Tao phrases the terms of the project “select a subject that’s important to the major,” not the MAJORS, not YOUR major, but THE major, the one single major that everyone is considered to be part of.  My group ended up with the subject of cloud computing yet I’m a CD major with an emphasis in 3D modeling, this is not something I should be spending my time on because it’s not actually important to my career path.  Even the terms of the project itself work exclusively off the idea that you’re the kind of code monkey whose going to hack out a plan for your programming, nothing to do with designing interfaces, visual aesthetics, graphics, or anything else related to the people who are here as communication design majors.  There’s a whole segment of my project that needs to be devoted to the risks of cloud computing and I don’t see that has anything to do with me, I’m not going to be designing any cloud networks, at most I might be hiring someone else too and at that point THEY would know about the threats of cloud computing, that’s why I’d hire THEM.  You don’t insist that the Bio majors to projects on quantum mechanics but demanding CD majors throw together network security presentations is somehow better?

Time Management

            These sites certainly have a lot of interesting things to say about time management but I’ve never really found time management to work as a viable approach for me.  I’ve tried structuring my time in a very rigid nature, blocking out everything I need to do and when I should do it but there’s something about putting things into a schedule I almost instinctively turn against.  Maybe it’s the way having a strict schedule makes the assignments and responsibilities seem more like work or chores than they already are causes me to want to procrastinate more, or maybe it’s that I don’t like any kind of order imposed on my life but I tend to do my best scheduling work when I play things by ear, letting work flow from me as it will instead of trying to force it.  Unlike some people I know I tend to rely very heavily on my right brain, the creative side of the brain that governs imagination, obviously I’m not incapable of using my logic and intelligence (I am trying for a math minor) but I think my right side is the dominate one in terms of just how I act and what motivates me.  In that respect it makes sense that I tend to be more inclined towards free form work instead of rigid structure, I mean you can’t force creativity or creative energy and that’s what it feels like when sit down for “scheduled work time” on a given project, I can chip away at it but I have no real energy or imperative to accomplish anything. 

Learning Journal 4: Pat Watson

I thought that today’s presentation from Pat Watson was an absolute delight, Pat is an amazing teacher and I always relish the chance to enjoy his presentation.  He’s got a real personal style and flair for public speaking that either really jives with you or really doesn’t.  Even Pat himself will tell you that he’s the kind of teacher that doesn’t really have a middle ground when you get down to it, people either love him or they don’t and to their credit I can see why.  This is my second semester working under Pat Watson while definitely working much ore closely; in spring 2013 I had him for 3D character and environment modeling of characters and this semester he’s both running my Multimedia class and my internship working with the Monterey Historical museum and I’ve found he has a very unique teaching style that I would describe as intense if but for the negative connotations that word has.  The thing about Pat’s approach that I like is how little hand holding there is, he’s certainly willing to help but if he’s assessed you to have the skills to accomplish a task he won’t micromanage you or give you step-by-step instructions, just the command to go forth and accomplish.  I see why others don’t like this approach though, you end up seriously out on a limb and you have to take a lot of your own initiative but I think people tend to misinterpret his sink or swim attitude as dismissive, which is not the case.  I’ve always got the impression that if Pat Watson says “okay now just go do it” that is him saying “I believe in you to accomplish this without my help, you got this.” And I find that to be very encouraging. 

Project Management

Going over the project management material I was initially struck at the staggering degree of carelessness with the youtube video, which was completely unavailable when I tried to review it.  After which I turned my attentions to the interactive presentation, which I found overall to be flawed at best.  The design of the presentation was ultimately poor and made very lackluster use of the visual cues and elements built into the video.  At the same time the material being covered was far too broad trying to answer questions like “what is a project?” which no self respecting sane person would really need answered by an interactive video slide. 

Learning Journal 3: Degree Learning Paths

         Having carefully examined all the possible degree pathways provided by the ITCD website I’ve decided that I really don’t like the sound of any of these really boring, drawn out, programming degrees.  I mean the computer-programming world is already thoroughly clogged with computer science bachelors who are being run out of a job by the folks in China or India, okay I don’t actually know that as a researched fact but this is also my research journal informed by my opinions and perceptions of the world so I’ll say what I liked and post what I like.  No I feel the masters in instructional technology would be a far better fit for me, partially because it would allow me to graduate with the skills to do 3D modeling for simulations and presentations, a very well paid freelance position that is thoroughly in demand due to the low number of modelers out there, and partially because that’s what an adviser suggested I go into, the same advisor who said I should take this course.  I’ve always been very skeevy towards programming, especially disliking the arrogant, smug, sense of superiority that seems almost endemic to most programmers who seem to think the ability to bash out some functional lines of code have made them into Doctor Manhattan.  It’s the same thinking that condemns Mac but praises PC, ignoring the fact that it was Mac’s unique and striking visual design and streamlined easy to use interface that helped popularize personal computing to the point that independent programmers can make millions by designing apps and random start-up internet companies.  Did I have a point I was working towards here? I think it was that I don’t like programming and I don’t care for most programmers which is why I’d rather take the more secure career path of 3D modeler. 

Learning Journal 2: Studying Ourselves

Study practice has always been a bit of a tricky subject for me.  I understand the need to study but the method by which I do has been an ever shifting and evolving process as I struggle to determine what manner of studying is truly effective for myself.  Initially for the longest time I didn’t even understand the concept of studying, it was like a foreign idea to me, a strange alternate occurrence that only happened to other people.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around the process.  It wasn’t until I was studying at a community college level that I finally clicked into understanding the process of it, the idea of repetition and even then I found simply reading, and re-reading, and re-reading material really wasn’t that conducive to my learning and applying the subject matter in an actual test setting.  When I came to CSUMB I eventually found what helped me most in studying was mock quizzes and worksheets, large lists of problems I could attempt as many times as I needed to understand the process behind getting an answer to a question rather than simply memorizing the information.  I feel that’s something not emphasized enough when it comes to studying, that the important thing to learn is the process more than just the random nuggets of knowledge, after all learning the process makes something universally applicable as opposed to something that can only help you in the brief instance of a test or quiz and becomes locked into a very limited and specific scenario. 

Learning Portfolios Review

http://itcdland.csumb.edu/~miniguez/#Core

This is overall a pretty good CD/CSIT learning portfolio though still not exactly great.  I give it credit for having some very impressive examples of the person’s work and the design of the portfolio is at least ambitious but it’s also thoroughly amateur.  It doesn’t feel like I’m looking at someone’s professional portfolio  so much as I am just looking at a student project, if this was my site I wouldn’t spread it around.  I think my big problem is that god awful big picture stamp right in the upper right corner, it just looks wrong and off and doesn’t exactly jive with the overall aesthetic of the page.  The visual design of the portfolio feels like it’s a funducation page about the American revolution from a local museum in Connecticut that didn’t have a ton of money to spend on the page and they blew most of it registering a domain name.  Maybe the big human face focus could work if this was meant to showcase Miguel’s comedy talent as a designer, sort of like the cover of Weird Al’s mandatory fun but as is it just looks slapdash and non-committal, like he couldn’t decided between being bland and generic or cheap and tonally confused so he combined both. 

http://itcdland.csumb.edu/~hhampton/ILP/digitaldesign.html

This is just bland as far as portfolios go, and I mean blander than bland, I’m talking eating plain crackers with nothing on them and following it up with some tap water and plain white bread untoasted.  The color design seems like it should work all playing off a combination of ice tones and sea foam but it creates this very blended look that makes the page looks far too vast and empty, like the text are just little freckles of activity in this blank and pitiless environment.  I like some of the examples of work like the T-shirts and the trip wise brochure all look very nice, especially the brochure, which, if I didn’t know better, I’d have actually thought was a real in use thing.  Mainly though my take away was that there seems to be a rule that says all project must be intensely boring because if I didn’t actively have the web portfolios up at this moment I probably couldn’t tell you about any of them despite having spent a good 8 minutes going through the entire site.  They’re just all very milk toast and general, I suppose that’s the point, that these are jobs and business portfolios because the best use of your time at school is designing milk toast examples of your skill to impress local businesses.  I don’t know maybe it’s just me but there’s really very little here I’d feel proud of if I had made them, I’d be proud of the money I’d earned from doing them I suppose but not the end product itself, I get that not every design project needs to reinvent the wheel but shouldn’t you want to showcase the projects where you did reinvent the wheel?  Again I suppose you could throw up the big disclaimer of this is just a means to an end, the end being getting hired but that can’t be a goal in and of itself, there’s got to be more to it than that.  I suppose it’s possible both of these people just have the ultra-simplistic life goal of find job and don’t starve, enjoying the simple pleasures of consumable media and gainful employment but that just strikes me as an intensely unfulfilling lifestyle, no one should obsess over just getting hired and making enough money to eat because with that mindset you aren’t living you’re just existing. 

Learning Journal 1: ITCD Presentation and What I Learned

What I learned from the presentation today was that design work sounds really boring, I'm sorry but it does.  I appreciate a good font choice just as much as the next person which is why I decided to post this learning journal in comic sans, it's the most fun of all the fonts I find and I'm sure everyone agrees with me on this, it was the font used in such critically acclaimed works as Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns and those list on the New York Times best seller list and frequently appear on lists of best or most influential graphic novels of all time, to say nothing of having been adapted into big budget films, one of which (Dark Knight Rises) is in the exclusive club of films to make more than a billion dollars which seems like a hard thing to argue with.  I don’t know I suppose there’s something to the elements of color balance which seems kind of interesting but I don’t think that’s really worth a degree or even classes, all the stuff I know about color balance I’ve learned from my own research and gut feeling, that feeling of personal aesthetics.  If there was a key lesson that’s applicable to everyone though it’s about communication, specifically that clients will always be terrible at it, after all if they were good at communicating thoughts and ideas they wouldn’t be hiring someone else to design something to communicate thoughts and ideas for them.  Also that map of Silicon Valley was some sobering stuff regarding the realization that the software business has somehow created a tense land grab even though basically everything about the product exists in a virtual environment and could be done from anywhere with a strong internet connection.