Exit Through the Giftshop

On Friday, my class as well as two others went on a feild trip to the ROM. We got to see a few exibits in the ROM such as the Greek Exibit, Canadian History Exibit and the Egyptian Exibit before leaving the muesum.At the exibits, we saw plates,vases,and statues in the Greek section, paintings in the Canadian History section and stone tablets in the Egyptian section. My class was at the ROM as part of our culminating activity. After we had lunch and walked around a little, we all met at the Cumberland Theaters to watch Exit Through the Giftshop. It was a film about a street artist named Mister Brainwash who went from filming anything and everything to filming for a documentary on street art to becoming a street artist himself.

I kinda liked this movie. It was made by Banksy and had interviews from Banksy,Invader and Sheppard Fairey. The funny thing is that after Mister Brainwash tried to make a(bad) documentary on street art he and Banksy kinda switch roles, making MBW the artist and Banksy the film maker. I liked it because no word of a lie, the movie kind of inspired me, by the end of it, even I wanted to go out and do some street art around the neighbourhood. I'm not going to give spoilers but if you have the chance, if you haven't seen it already, go and watch it. It's a great movie.

The Longest Week Ever Retrospect

So as I mentioned in a post I did earlier this week,on Monday to Wednesday myself as well as Nemo, Jade and Ms.Silverman were at a Toronto Star workshop learning about audio and video, writing for web, useing google maps as visual aid for story telling and a bit on photography.

On Day 1, we got there a few minutes late. A table was made for us to use our laptops on(we were the only students at the workshop btw). We had to set up a Blogger account and a Twitter account T.T(I don't really like Twitter :/)and listen to one of our host talking about different sites for social networking(ie Facebook,Myspace,Twitter). Then one of our speakers came up and explained how maps can be an effective visual tool for stroy telling so we had to create our own maps on google to tell a story from our childhood. For another part, Nemo,Jade and myself were very bored by our host. Nemo fell asleep(although it didn't help that she didn't sleep the night before) and Jade and myself had big a conversation on Facebook and a mini one on Twitter. The food there was pretty good though. In the mornings they have sesame seed bread(I didn't have that)and raisin muffins aswell as an assortment of tea and coffee. In the afternoons the had apple pie,cupcakes,and carrot cake.

Day 2 was the best out of the three days beacuse we learned a bit on photography and different cameras and microphones.Our next assignment was that we had to make a video about things to do or see on Queens Quay,Team L.O.L and a jouralist named Allison did a multi-media video on Street Meat. We recorded video, took pictures, conducted interviews and ate lunch. Once that's all done we went back to the Toronto Star building and started to edit the video. The video wow'ed everybody and it didn't help than Nemo's blog was the single best looking blog entered into the blog beauty contest.

Day 3 then went back to being boring, which disapointed me a lot because I had high hopes for day 3 because day 2 was so fun. On day 3 we learned about how to write for the web. A lot of the things he was talking about were the exact same things the Mr.Koczij had talked about regarding web structure. This assignment was to report a fake news story about a Sea Monster in the Eastern Gap useing Vuvox,Twitter or Blogger. Nemo won the blog beauty contest and won us all free Toronto Star jackets.

The next day I come back to school. I forgot to tell all of my teachers that I would be attending the Toronto Star workshop for 3 days not to mention the 3 days of work to catch up on. I was also supposed to usher for Spring Sensations, a function where the school provides dinner and live music...but I couldn't because I had to work on Yearbook like I've been doing all week..with the exception of one day where by the time I got to the school, the yearbook team went home.So unfortunatly I had to ditch Spring Sensations and I forgot about recording some footage for L.O.L because I've been working on yearbook all night.
I died that same night because as soon as my face hit the pillow, I was out like a light.

Finally, still tired fron Thursday, went to school and wrote 2 test. 1 for Math and the other for Canadian History both of which I think I did pretty good.Sadly enough I still don't know what I'm doing on my web design assignment and I've gotten started of my painting for art. Then surprise, surprise afterschool I went to work on Yearbook until 5:30. Overall it's been a pretty busy week... I'm just glad that it's a long weekend and I don't really have to think about school until Tuesday :)

The Longest week ever!!!!....so far

This week has been a very long week. Since Monday, I've been on a 3 day Toronto Star workshop dealing with Writing for web, Videography(including editing) and we touched a bit on photography. Yesterday we had to do a video about things to do in Queen's Quay. Ms.Silverman, Nemo and Jade and I as well as a journalist named Allison did a video on Street Meat. Honestly the only thing more fun than making the video was making the adults( because we're the only students at the workshop)look very VERY bad. At the end of the week i'll write a big huge retrospect about my week on my blog but for now you can watch the Video called Street Meat that we did yesterday. :)

Website Critique

A good website is a site that follows the 10 Elements and Principals or Web Design. I will focus on 3 of the principals to critique two sites on whether it's a good site or a bad site. In my opinion, Wikipedia is a good site because:

1)It doesn't make the user think. It gives the user instant information by typing what they want to search in the space provided and it gives them the information they're looking for.

2) The site is easily searchable. If you were to type in Pizza Hut and click the "search" button it will give you the search results and give you a choice as to which one do you click,or if you are sure that if you type in Pizza Hut and get the restaurant chain that it will take you right to the page if you click the "go" button.

3) It's also not afraid of the white space. Because it's an encyclopedia site, it specializes in providing information in an organized and efficient manner through it's use of headings,sub-heading, as well as visual imagery.

For theses reasons, I give Wikipedia praise as a well structured site.

Now I site that I have visited a few times in the past is a site called projectfree.tv. Even thought it's not an information site, it is lacking in some of the elements of web design.

1)It doesn't focus the users attention. The attention of the users eyes are drawn everywhere between the bright orange background and the long list of tv shows available to watch in bright blue print. The colours don't contrast each other and they over-use the red arrow icon.

2)Keep it simple. This may or may not be the designers fault but the useless ads on the page make the sight look more busy than it actually is once you scroll down.

3)Don't waist the user patience. A few times I've gone watch a specific episode of a show that I watch only to have to scroll down a big long page just to find it. The user shouldn't have to spend all there time tracking down a specific episode when this task should take 30 seconds to a minute.

Anyway, I digress. For these reasons I praise wikipedia as a good site and say projectfree.tv needs to update their site. K later ;P