LED tattoos

The university of Pennsylvania are developing LED tattoos, which consist of microchips, made from silicone and silk which are placed under the surface of the skin turing the skin into a screen,where you could display your latest flash animation and watch TV.

The silk will eventually dissolve leaving just the electronics behind and allowing the chip to mould to the skin keeping it in place.

It has already been tested on mice and as well as having an aesthetic quality similar to a tattoo it could also be used for medical purposes. Research is in place to see if it would work when detecting peoples blood-sugar by attaching the chip to neurodevices that tie into the body's nervous system then displaying the results on the individuals skin.

I think this is a really good idea as as well as having medical properties it allows people who are turned off the idea of having a tattoo because its a permanent thing, to finally get one. As its a screen it also means you can change the tattoo once you become bored with it, you could even play a whole animation on your skin or just turn it off completely.

Although i don't really like the idea of a chip being placed under my skin i suppose its more appealing than a needle being scratched in to the surface of the skin and i definitely think i would consider getting one.

I stumbled across this image while looking at other peoples blogs, the whole image is made from type which i think is really effective. Each image is made up of the letters of the word in french. I think this is a great image as its so simplistic but it works really well.

assignment 4

In Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta's Throwing Sheep in The boardroom social networking is explored in detail, expressing why such sites and blogs can be useful in the working environment, from helping to create and sustain relationships to promoting an individual or a business. Nothing is perfect and with this in mind the authors have also stated the problems which can arise as a result of social networking.

Blogs are a useful way for an individual to express their thoughts and opinions, a great way to get noticed and for new relationships to form. Fraser and Dutta (2009:182) say that bloggers have an advantage over newspapers and other contents of media as they respond quicker allowing the information to spread at a faster rate. Due to there being no rules, regulations or space limits to a blog the information expressed within them usually allows for a greater insight in to someone's opinion. It also eliminates the fear factor of just being themselves because no editors are involved and they can therefore write what is on their mind. By doing so their personality is expressed allowing someone to respond creating the foundations for a relationship to flourish.

As a result of blogs being filled with an individuals opinion it is questioned whether blogs are credible and studies show that people are less likely to trust the information on a blog than they would be if they were told the same information from a friend “According to findings published by Forrester Research, when consumers are looking for credible information about a product or service, 83% would trust a friend or acquaintance... while only 30% would put faith in the views of a blogger”. (2009:183)

(Fraser & Dutta 2009:09) tell us that social networking seems to be a good thing for your social life but not for your career. Many companies are controversial to the use of it within the work place and figures released by the Freedom of Information Act at the end of 2007 showed that hundreds of British employers had been disciplined for using social networking sites while at work. “Why so much fear,distrust and paranoia?” (2009:10) Fraser and Dutta believe this is because there is a possible threat to privacy and security which allows for competitive information to be revealed and also because its considered as a wasteful distraction to employees.

Some people have even been fired after there employees have found things published on their social networking sites which they deem as unacceptable “Ellen Simonetti, an attractive 29-year-old flight attendant from North Carolina working for Delta Airlines” was fired in 2005 after she uploaded sexy photos of herself wearing the Delta Airlines Uniform.(2009:186)

Despite this some companies have found social networking sites to work in their favour and Sun Microsystems' CEO Jonathan Schwartz says “blogging is a matter of corporal survival... we communicate directly with customers, employees and the broader business community through blogs.” He believes in time that blogs will be like emails and the majority of people will be using them without choice. (2009:191)

Evidence by Granovetter (2009:50) shows that people find jobs through weak tie acquaintances rather than through close friends, and social networking sites because they connect to online friends and acquaintances are the ideal place to create these weak tie bonds or e-quaintances, as there being called. The social networking sites help to strengthen the weak tie e-quaintances and Fraser and Dutta (2009:52) point out a site which is doing so. Doppler.com allows you to know if one of your e-quaintances will be at the same destination as you during your business trip. Simply provide Doppler with your destination and then Doppler will send an alert to your mobile or online device of who else will be there. Weak ties can even be more useful within organisations as they allow and encourage open communication and information sharing on a broader basis rather than with just the people we know. Thus making it easier to find that person with the expertise and knowledge required.

After reading Moral Spaces in Myspace: Preservice Teachers' Perspectives about Ethical Issues in social Networking, Teresa S Foulger, Ann Ewbank, Adam Kay Dutton Sharon Osborn Popp, Heather Lynn Carter I believe the main point to be to make people aware of the issues surrounding social networking and how it can have an effect on pupil teacher relationships. As yet, there are no rules stating the teachers role within the cyber world. Therefore according to the situation and people involved some people may believe the teacher to be crossing certain boundaries. Social networking sites cause problems to student-teacher relationship which then causes problems to teacher-parent relationships.

Foulger, Ewbank, Dutton, Popp and Carter did an experiment with 68 freshman undergraduates who took part in anonymous pre and post homework reflections. General aged 18-25 with two students in their 40s and the majority were female.

To begin with pupils had to get a functional understanding of social networking sites, learn about specific instances where teachers' use of social networking sites for educational purposes followed their pedagogical positions. They then had to read opinion pieces written by inservice educators of the benefits and disadvantages of social networking in education. For the third part the students read news stories from links about teachers and soon-to-be teachers who were punished for using social networking sites by their education institutions. Responses to the above where collected on an online form. (2009:08)

One of the scenarios consisted of a teacher who after inviting students to view his online profile then viewed the students and found illegal activities. On contacting the parents the parents state that the teacher has violated their child's privacy and complains to the school administration. The students then had to decided whether or not they thought it appropriate for the teacher to be disciplined.

The students had several things to consider when making a decision such as “What is the appropriate teacher role in this situation?, Is the teacher responsible for alerting parents to the students illegal activities or is the information outside of the teachers jurisdictions?... does a student have a right to privacy regarding a posted social networking profile or has the students given up those rights by making the profile publicly available?” (2009:09)

The pupils responses to this varied and using the ethical concerns coding framework found that 31% of preservice students thought disciplined was warranted and the teacher should be punished. After an intervention based on a review they read by Kim et al 2006 they believed that teaching the students about controversial social networking issues using cases would help to improve the students' recognition of multiple perspectives as well as the range of ethical vulnerabilities inherent in social networking media. (2009:11) This altered the results as the percentage of people who thought the teacher should be punished increased by 21% to 52%.

Although in this case it was only a scenario certain cases have led to teachers being reprimanded as Stacey Synder from Millersville university who failed to receive her teaching certificate and instead received an English degree after campus administrators found photos on her Myspace profile which represented her as a drunken pirate.(2009:01)

In another similar case Tamara Hoover a high school art teacher at Austin (Texas) Independent School District was fired after nude pictures were found on her Myspace and Flikr accounts. Due to her being an art teacher her pictures could be regarded as art in its natural form and Hoover settled for a cash settlement.

After studying both of my sources I have learned a lot about social networking and how it can have an effect on relationships. Throwing sheep in the boardroom, Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta seems to address both sides of social networking and how it can advance the work place, as well as cause some issues. Moral Spaces in Myspace: Preservice Teachers' Perspectives about Ethical Issues in social Networking, Teresa S Foulger, Ann Ewbank, Adam Kay Dutton Sharon Osborn Popp, Heather Lynn Carter touches more on the disadvantages social networking can have on a learning environment and the tensions this can put on a relationship.

As both sources are relating to different areas they don't include many similarities apart from both agreeing that social networking sites create privacy issues “a threat to personal privacy, an open invitation for slander and defamation and a danger to the security of competitive information.” Fraser and Dutta (2009:10)

“The parents believe the teacher has violated student privacy” Foulger, Ewbank, Dutton, Popp and Carter (2009:09)

Billy Hoffman, lead engineer at web security specialist SPI Dynamics when talking about Web 2.0 says “We're continuing to make the same mistakes by putting security last...they are not thinking about security and they are not realising how badly they are exposing their users.” I would agree that although social networking sites have a lot of advantages privacy is an issue as there are ways for people to hack in to accounts, steal personal information or even target potential victims as the Sophos Security Threat Report reveals,these are all serious problems some which are easier to overcome than others. I believe that the stealing of personal information could be solved quite simply by not posting anything on a public site which you do not wish others to see or to make your profile private so only friends or people you wish to be able to view your account can. Maybe this issue is not because of the sites themselves but because the users are uneducated on the risks concerned to their privacy when using these sites.

Other similarities within the sources are that by using social networking sites regardless of your profession, they can result in job loss if what you've posted to your site is deemed unacceptable by the seniors of your profession.

Fraser and Dutta in Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom state that online sites can create a link for people within different organisations to communicate openly allowing them to find that specific person they need for the job this idea is backed up by Howard Rheingold as he says that social networking sites “connect people and build relationships across boundaries of geography and discipline.” I agree with this as it allows you to access other peoples knowledge and contact them if you wish without actually knowing them. It allows you to easily find that person and create a relationship to an extent easier than on a face to face basis as time zones and time in general don't exist as it can be done at your own leisure.

The journal is a slight contradiction due to the fact it doesn't see this as a positive, as it actually creates issues, because it allows both teachers and pupils to view things about the other parties which they may not necessarily have wanted to witness (Tamara Hoover) . After having witnessed this information issues then arise about what to do with it and if its acceptable to be viewing the other parties site in the first place. The journal talks about a possible scenario where a teacher finds that one of their students is involved within in an illegal activity and after having informed the parents the parents believe the teacher to be breaching privacy. Although this is just a scenario i do believe that certain parents would think like this if involved in a similar case but if the teacher had witnessed a particular pupil being bullied and then informed the parents of this they would view it differently and be grateful for the fact the teacher had found this information out.

After reading both sources I believe there to be many uses for social networking within the business and learning worlds, although there are some things within these sites which need to be designed better to eliminate certain issues and allow relationships to form without the risk of revealing too much information which could then be stolen. In the case of student teacher relationships I believe that although there is the risk of privacy issues and teachers getting involved out of school hours I think it could be useful for teachers as it could allow for then to get to know there pupils better which could therefore result in better educated pupils as the teacher would possibly understand the need of the student more clearly.

Further studies needed would probably be to interview teachers, parents, and pupils to find out more about how they feel toward the privacy issue relating to this area and how they feel about it.

Also possibly try to find experiments or interviews with people who have experience on whether relationships are as effective or as genuine when made online, as despite social networking sites allowing you to make friends online is it the same as can you really get to know them with out viewing body language etc. Experiments could be hopefully be found on cross-search and then evaluated similarly to the way I have done previously throughout this summary.

Bibliography

Evans, J (2006) Cnet news The Security risk in web 2.0 Available:http://news.cnet.com/The-security-risk-in-Web-2.0/2100-1002_3-6099228.html 02/12/09

Foulger, T, S, Kay, A, Ewbank, A, D, Popp, S, O, Carter, H, L (2009) Moral Spaces in Myspace: Presevice Teachers' Perspectives about Ethical issues in Social Networking

Fraser, M & Dutta, S (2008) Throwing sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and world West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Rheingold, H & Kimball, L (2000) Rheingold Associates,

Available:http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/onlinenetworks.html 02/12/09

Author unknown (2009) Help Net Security Social networking sites must improve security Available:http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=7786 02/01/09

Foy Vance

Last night my flat mate and i took our other flat mate to see Foy Vance in Glasgow for her birthday. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, as it really isn't my type of music, very slow and very depressing but i went along with an open mind in hope his music would be more enjoyable live.

When we arrived the supporting act "Kill it kid" had already began playing and i really enjoyed them as they were closer to the genre of music which i like. The guy had a very deep voice which really didnt't suit his appearance as it was surprising how such a "manly" voice could come out of this lanky teenage boy. They played several songs all of which were quite catchy.

Foy Vance came out all on his own with his wee acoustic guitar and began playing, he was hitting all these different pedals and singing in to several microphones and before i knew it, it sounded like he was surrounded by lots of other musicians when in fact it was all just him. It was quite impressive and everybody was bopping along.

Every know and again though he would go back to a slow song where nobody would move or even mouth the words, very different from any gig i've been to before as every one usually sings along at the top of there voices. This kinda gave the impression people weren't enjoying it, as i knew i wasn't but i suppose the genre didn't really allow for you to scream your lungs out.

Foy Vance himself was quite a quirky wee man as he'd respond to any shouts from the crowd with a witty comment that made the crowd chuckle but his music didn't portray this personality at all.

When he began playing Michael Jacksons Billie jean i thought o great a song i can sing along to but no he killed it. It was too slow and just awful.

As it came toward the end of the show i couldn't wait to leave, as it had been the longest hour and a half of my life and he still hadn't even played the song i knew. To my "delight" he came back for an encore and sang "Indiscriminate act of kindness" although i don't particularly like this song i knew most of the words as my flat mate constantly sings it. This allowed me to appreciate his performance a little more as i was able to sing along.

Despite Foy Vance being a very talented musician i can't say i really enjoyed the whole experience, but least i can say i i've been and i have to say his music is definitely more endurable live.

A Christmas Carol 3D

After being disappointed by the fireworks but still in the christmasy mood, we decided to go and see a Disneys Christmas Carol in 3D - wow!

As well as having a great story line the effects in this movie were amazing, much better than Toystory in 3D. It was so realistic and at some points you even forgot you were looking at a drawn character and not a real person.

The movie made me jump a few times when i thought the images were actually going to hit me in the face.

I definitely think 3D movies are the way forward, as when they are made right, it is an unforgettable experience.

Winter Light night

Last night i went to the christmas light night in the city centre and expected something quite amazing due to all the hype, however i was a little disappointed. When we arrived in the city centre it was all christmasy with the lights and cosy from the warmth coming from the stalls at the continental market and i couldn't wait for the fireworks to go off.

We decided to sit by the fountains at the Caird hall to wait for the fireworks to go off and once they began could only hear them . :( We walked further down towards Boots and saw that the fireworks were coming from behind the building but you could hardly see them.

I don't understand why the fireworks weren't put somewhere more visible, as no matter where you stood within the centre you struggled to see them. Fireworks are quite expensive so i would have thought more preparation would have gone in to organising where the best place to set them off would have been, because in my eyes it was a big waste of money!

Dragons den

Monday morning is the dreaded Dragons den presentations which i'm not looking forward to as i hate talking to big groups of people. Although personality has a lot to do with this i also think its down to lack of practice and experience.

Coming to uni is about the only time apart from (possibly 4)"talks" in English at school that i've been expected to present my work to a group of people, so i find it quite a challenge and a know a challenge is meant to be good for you but when you have deadlines to meet and other things to worry about you don't really need to add another stress to your list.

As much as i hated doing "talks" at school i think i would have appreciated it more now if we'd been expected to do it on a more regular basis, as now it wouldn't feel like such a task. I think it would be a good thing to learn in primary schools as if you get introduced to it a such a young age then it would just be the norm and monday would be a breeze.

Throwing sheep in the boredroom!

While reading through my book for the dreaded attempt at activity 3 i have realised that my research may have gone off on a bit of a tangent, leading me more on to social networking in the business rather than the relationships social networking creates in the business.

I wonder if this matters hmmm...

"you can use it as long as you don't break it"

I recently asked a friend to borrow something of hers and got a reply of "as long as you don't break it" this got me thinking about how annoying this saying is and how inappropriate it is, as

why would i break it?

Unless i was to physically throw it or stamp of it then its pretty much impossible to break a product when following the correct instructions on how to use it. Once somebody has said this to you it puts more pressure on you and you feel more nervous when using their product making you more likely to make a mistake and break it. There is also as much chance of them breaking it themselves as there is for me to break it so why bother saying it.

Flyers

Flyers about nights out appear on my desk, on the tables on the cantina and pretty much all around the university every week. This really irritates me because its such a waste of paper, i'm fed up of looking at them and they genrally end up doodled on, scrunched up or as litter on the floor .

In a university where were constantly made aware of sustainability and told to think about the effects our designs will have on the planet etc you would think students would have come up with a more eco friendly way of advertising such events.

Even a couple of larger posters would probably do the job as less would be needed and they wouldn't end up as litter on the streets like the flyers.

top websites

For activity 3 we were asked to state our top five websites for keeping up to date with the graphic design world, listed below are the websites which i think would be useful for this:

http://www.eyemagazine.com/home.php

a great online magazine showing and reviewing the works of graphic designers.

http://www.cmykmag.com

a website showing off the works of the newest talents allowing creative directors, agents etc to recruit, also keeps you up to date on any events which may be occurring.

http://www.graphicdesignblog.co.uk

Blog regularly updated with the latest news in graphic design includes some interesting and useful blogs.

http://www.designweek.co.uk

a website covering all topics of design, interesting to keep up to date with.

http://ilovetypography.com/

useful website for keeping up to date with typography.

We were also asked to list our top 5 websites for keeping up to date with the world in general, here are my top 5:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

This website is useful as it shows the latest news and is updated regularly so you'll never miss a thing.

http://twitter.com/

Twitter is great for keeping up to date with the interests of others and if you know the right people then you get to know the right stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/

Lists information from all genres with the ease of just having to listen. There are also areas for you to leave opinions and comments which can be useful as you find out what other peoples thoughts are on similar matters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Useful for keeping up to date on the latest headlines, and basically what is going on in the world around you.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/

another website to keep you up to date with the latest news, covers all areas including buisness travel and style which keeps you up to date with whats in and whats out in the design world.

Tweenagers

Tweenagers - the new generation of 8-12 year olds, who are in to the latest labels, make-up and are basically growing up too fast.

During todays lecture we watched a documentary from Panorama where we were shown the lives of three tweens and were told it would make us sick.

One of the children interviewed was a 12 year old boy called Izaak he labeled himself as a skater and described it as someone who likes to skate and has a very individual fashion sense. He stated that he wears what he thinks looks good and not something just because everyone else is wearing it, as that would make him a sheep. But when on a shopping trip he didn't like any item of clothing which wasn't considered "skater boy" therefore he is kind of being a sheep, as he is only wearing clothes skaters wear and is following "the" fashion. This little boy was full of attitude and confidence and got what ever he wanted because his mum said she felt guilt is she didn't give in.

We were also shown the life of a 9 year old girl called Adele she was obsessed with the latest labels and stated she wouldn't hang around with one of her friends as much if they didn't wear labels. When asked why this was she said that if you you don't wear labels you'll get bullied as you'll be known as a nicky no name and if you hang around with a nicky no name then you will get bullied for being friends with them. I find it quite shocking for a little girl to think this way and to be so obsessed by labels that you would stop being friends with someone.

Her wardrobe consisted of DKNY, Diesel and Ted Baker to name a few, when i was her age i wouldn't of even known what those labels were, i would have been too busy playing with my dolls or maybe even trading pokemon cards.

She also replied to a question with something like i don't do it because it reminds me of my childhood, hello your only 9 this is your childhood. What is the world coming to when a nine year old responds like this, she doesn't seem to want to be a child, but why not? it's like the best time ever, you have no responsibilities, no stresses and you just get to basically have fun.

The last tween was a 12 year old called Imogen she had a completely different view to Adele on labels she believed that if you wore clothing with a labels then you were basically showing that the shop owned you as you were branded by them. She bought clothes from charity shops and unlike the majority of tweens this didn't seem to bother her. She may have had a different view on this if she hadn't been home schooled as had been subject to peer pressure.

Her parents don't agree with advertising and therefore make her put the tv on mute when ever it gets to the adverts. Her parents believed that they should be the ones brain washing their children and not the adverts.

After watching this documentary i certainly was left feeling sick . I've always know advertising has a strong effect on people but never knew it had the power to make children no longer want to be children. Tweens don't want dolls, or toys or games for christmas anymore they want expensive clothes sounds a bit like me and i'm almost twice there age.

Activity 3

For this task we had to research a mixture of books, journals, and websites relating to our topic. My topic was relationships, in particular in the working and learning environments so i decided to look into social networking and how this has an affect on relationships within these environments. My research involved using cross search for the first time which proved to be fairly simple. I started by inserting words such as relationship, effective, business, social networking, brain etc into various different categories including psychology, humanities and social sciences. On first glance there seemed to be loads of relevant journals but after looking through my basket and reading through the journals there were less than expected. I then decided to try and find some books and requested a couple from the library but unfortunately they didn't come in time so i used the internet to read the blurbs of the requested books and a few others which i thought were of relevance and then found a couple of sites and stated all my findings within the bibliography below:

Bacon, T, R (2006) What people want: A managers guide to building relationships that work

United states: Davies-Black Publishing

This book explores relationships at work and the affect gender has on these relationships. Bacon reveals “What people want” from their relationships at work along with a number of tips and tricks and some real life examples to help managers build better relationships within the workplace.

Cook, K, S (2005) Networks, Norms, and Trust: The social Psychology of Social Capital 2004

Cook explores networks of trust relations and how they come about. He explores the conditions in which they occur and how the social capital can be affected by this .

Foulger, T, S, Kay, A, Ewbank, A, D, Popp, S, O, Carter, H, L (2009) Moral Spaces in Myspace: Presevice Teachers' Perspectives about Ethical issues in Social Networking

Is about how social networks are an innovative method of communicating but can lead to issues of privacy as there is no teacher conduct on the online world. Also states what advantages can come from it.

Fraser, M & Dutta, S (2008) Throwing sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and world West sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Fraser & Dutta explore the rise of social networks and how this is altering the world around us, businesses in particular. It talks a lot about Enterprise 2.0, and how people mistake it for a new software and therefore goes on to explain all about it and what can be achieved from it. The book illustrates its points through the use of illustrations.

Heap, N (2001), Available:http://homepage.ntlworld.com/nick.heap/Effectiverelatwork.html 11/11/09

Heap has been interested in relationships for over 30 years, and expresses this by talking about relationships and how to build effective relationships at work. He also talks about what makes effective relationships and things which can get in the way. Although he states that he has attended a course where he had to look at behaviour it is hard to know whether what he states is reliable material.

Newman, M, E, J (2003) The structure and Function of Complex Networks

Newman looks at a variety of social networks and how they work. Including the developments of these systems, he presents his findings using graphs models, etc.

Phillips, S, D (1991) Meaning and Structure in Social Movements: Mapping the Network of National Canadian Women's Organizations

Phillips talks about social movements and how people within organizations form collective identities. His research focusses mainly on the networks of 33 national Canadian women's organisations. The results show that their ambitious nature creates a network which is bound by a collective identity of liberalized feminism. Showing the possibility's for this type of thing to happen within other group or organisations creating stronger knit groups and therefore better relationships.

Rheingold, H & Kimball, L (2000) Rheingold Associates,

Available:http://www.rheingold.com/Associates/onlinenetworks.html 11/11/09

Kimball & Rheingold talk about the advantages of social networks within the work place, and how it allows people of different time zones and slightly different professions to easily communicate with one an other at a time that suits them. It permits the the exchange of knowledge and experience between people within the company and they believe that it can enable an organisation to achieve many things. These include: “Provide an ongoing context for knowledge and exchange that can be far more effective than memoranda, Attune everyone in the organisation to each other's needs – more people will know who knows who, who know what, and will know it faster...Amplify innovation – when groups get turned on by what they can do online, they go beyond problem solving and start inventing together, create a community memory for group deliberation and brainstorming that stimulates the capture of idea and facilitates finding information when it is needed...Attract and retain the best employees by providing access to social capital that is only available within the organisation and many other things. Although this source seems to know its stuff on relationships within the work place and social network it doesn't state any solid facts only opinions and experience and therefore might not be fully reliables.

Scott, A, M (1977) The logic of International Interaction

This journal investigates how interaction is affected by the increase in international systems and how the system becomes complicated and more difficult at an increased capacity.

Uehara, E (1990) Dual Exchange Theory, Social Networks, and Informal Social Support

This journal looks into the relationships between social structure, interaction and perceptions of support in the event of crisis. Dual exchange theory in particular is focussed on within this journal and data is taken from ethnographic studies of social network mobilization among low income black women in the event of job loss. Although this doesn't hit specifically on relationships of all genders and race within the business the data collected for the ethnographic studies could be used to give an indication of how colleagues would act in the event of need or crisis from another colleague.

Public transport, what a joke!

Today i had to get the bus home, wasn't impressed as i'm not the greatest fan of buses and todays journey confirmed this view.

Firstly while waiting for my bus an old woman asked one of the conductors when her bus was going to arrive and he told her it had already left, she replied but my bus getting in here was late so why didn't it wait for me the conductor replied quite rudely we can only hold the buses for 15 mins and your bus was late. Fair enough they can only hold buses for 15 mins to prevent more delays but it wasn't the old ladies fault her bus was late and she didn't deserve to be spoken to in that manner, especially to be told the next bus to her destination wasn't' coming until the time she was expected at her destination. She then told the conductor that she was going to have to phone to let the people who were to collect her know that she was going to be late, then off she went to find a phone. The least the conductor could of done was to let her use the phones on the premises but no, that would have just been too much effort for him.

Once my bus had arrived my friend and i queued to get on. On boarding my friend said she heard the conductor say we were going to need a mechanic, instantly we thought the bus was broken but sat down anyway, thinking surely they wouldn't let us on if it wasn't going to go anywhere.

Ten minutes later we were still waiting to depart but thought it was just because the transfer bus hadn't arrived yet. 20 minutes later, transfer bus been and gone we were then told that the bus wasn't going anywhere as it was broken but there were four spaces left on the other bus, but we would just have to change at Broxden. We obviously wanted to be one of those four but also knew that everyone would want to be too. Suddenly two girls screamed we'll take them then two other people followed. AAAA! we had missed our chance.

6.40pm, meant to be home at 7 and we still hadn't left and there didn't seem to be any signs of us going anywhere soon ,was svery annoyed, eventually we were all told to move on to another bus. After getting on the other bus the driver asked if anyone was going to Kinross, my friend and i put are hands up and the driver grunted and groaned at us. The driver wanted to by pass Kinross and go straight to Edinburgh to cut out some time for the journey, which is quite reasonable to avoid further delays but what if someone was waiting to get on the bus at Kinross and we hadn't have been on it, then he wouldn't have gone through and they would have missed there bus also, shocking!

After this journey i am even more inclined not to use the bus service in the near future as it is so unreliable and a complete joke. Whenever you have any questions they talk to you with the least amount of manners possible and look at you as if to say, are you stupid, why are you wasting my time but to be honest its what there being paid for, to provide you with pleasant service and an enjoyable journey. I have yet to experience this though.

Cafe science "Is there more to home than the heart"

I have just arrived back from the "Is there more at home than the heart" lecture at sensations. I attended thinking that the lecture would be relevant to my seminar work, although this has proved not to be the case. Despite this it has raised the question where is home to me?

I would consider myself a "home bird" as although i like going to new places and on holiday etc i always miss the familiarities and comforts of my own home and especially my own bed, and therefore thought i would soon become homesick living away from home for the first time. Surprisingly after several weeks of living away from home i was still to feel homesick, this shocked me as i am no longer surrounded by the things i would consider most familiar to me, my family, the usual routines and of course my house,my room. If being away from these things doesn't result in being home sick, then it can't be these things that make a place feel like a home or is it?

My new room is surrounded by all the things from my old room, so maybe this prevents the new location feeling like a new location, as all the objects within it are familiar to me so it doesn't matter about the aesthetics of a room or place itself as long as its filled with your belongings.

The people within my flat are familiar to me although they don't compensate as my family they have began to follow similar routines and habits of my family members so maybe its the actions and routines followed that makes something familiar and homely and not the people themselves.

With all this in mind i guess home isn't just one place, it can be lots of places, any place as long as your surrounded by your belongings, familiar faces and routines.

How does design relate to the power of context pt 2 (the magic number 150)

After thinking and thinking and thinking my thoughts led me to the idea of creating a product which could increase social channel capacity, in the hope it would allow companies to run as successfully once a capacity of 150 had been reached.

Logos with hidden meanings

I recently came across this site about logos with hidden messages and i was amazed at how simple but effective each logo was.

A few of the logos i've seen before but obviously haven't taken in as i've never noticed the discreet but very clever messages imprinted in each one, such as; the Toblerone logo.

I've been aware of Toblerone for many years and have consumed my fair share but have never once noticed that the mountain at the top had the figure of a bear in it, i was also unaware that the arrow in the amazon logo, as well as representing a smile conveys they stock everything from a to z as it starts at the "a" and ends at the "z". This shows that logos are more complex than we think and as well as being aesthetically pleasing there is usually a deeper explanation as to why they look the way they do.

http://theroxor.com/2009/10/22/23-brilliant-logos-with-hidden-messages/

Brainstorming and Discussion

I have to admit i wasn't looking forward to this task at all, as i was a bit unsure of what was expected of me and i still am, but once i got in to it and ideas began to emerge i actually started to enjoy it.

Ten minutes was all we gave ourselves to brainstorm each topic, and within that time limit we wrote down as many things as we could which related to our chosen segment of the book. I chose The power of context part 2 (The magic number 150) and at first we struggled with things to say but after looking over my mind map words began to flow and before we knew it our ten minutes were up.

After brainstorming the other topic we decided we would discuss straight away while everything was still fresh in our heads, instead of discussing each topic individually we decided to discuss the topics together and just state the ideas we had for either of the topics. Again we struggled with the magic number 150 and the only thing we could really come up with was business buildings and their car parks having a limit of 150 spaces, we thought this was almost a duplication of Gore but decided to write it down anyway. After a long discussion in to the other topic we then began to come up with more ideas for the magic 150 and i have now been left with lots of things to think about.

Facebook used to be the place were you wrote on walls poked your friends commented on you day and shared photos among friends, now people seem to be using Facebook to play games one game in particular which seems to be the obsession at the moment is Farmville.

Farmville is a virtual farm where you begin by designing the way your farmer looks then start planting seeds. Each seed has a different price and harvest time which is in sync to real time. You can expand your farm, purchase buildings, animals, vehicles and decorations You can help out at your friends farms to gain extra cash, send them free gifts and also do various things to work towards gaining ribbons.

I began playing the game after my friends told me how good it was, at the start i found it a bit slow and not very exciting but it then became very addictive, and i found myself checking my farm every time i logged into Facebook to guarantee that my plants would be harvested on time and wouldn't be spoiled. Now after (i hate to say it) several months of playing the game i am beginning to find it a bit boring but still continue to play it, why is this? what makes a game so addictive that even when you you would probably find more excitement from watching paint dry you still continue to play it?

The truth is i'm not too sure but what i do know is that it definitely has the stickiness factor.

Cafe world similar to Farmville is virtually the exact same game but you run a cafe instead of the farm and guess what after a week of playing im already addicted. ARRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH!

"Every little helps"

Shopping in St Andrews the other day when a woman in a shop (can't remember the name of it)came up to us and asked are you students, we replied yes and then she said use this voucher the next time you purchase something from us and get 5% off. 5% is that it? Honestly why bother? The whole point of student discount is to save us some money and make items of a ridiculous price more affordable but 5% is hardly going to save you much. I don't think there was anything in the shop cheaper than £40 which means i would save £2, i'm hardly going to survive through the week knowing i've a whole £2 extra to spend. A necklace from this shop cost £90 how can you justify this when it was made out of beads which probably cost a couple of pence each to make and they think there saving us money by giving us 5% off, eh no i don't think so.

According to Tesco "every little helps" and of course it does but a measly 5% off an item priced £90 would mean you were saving £4.50 you'd be better of not buying it in the first place and saving the whole £90 than a mere £4.50. Student discount is shops is generally 10% which in most cases is a bit tight but 5% come on, why bother.

Sushi, what WOOD you do?

VERY rough mock up ideas.

On receiving the task that i had to come up with a revolutionary food source containing both sushi and wood and create the packaging for the product i was excited and also a bit stumped, but began to come up with a few ideas after looking through my original sketchbooks on both subjects.

I decided on some sort of tree which would grow sushi, but came across a lot of issues and question such as;

Does the tree grow all ingredients needed to make the sushi or does the tree grow the sushi already made?

Am i going to package the seeds or the tree?

Is there one type of tree that grows all sushi's or several different sushi trees?

If the tree grows ingredients then one of the ingredients is going to have to be a type of fish, such as lobster or crab, which belongs in the water and it isn't going to be very safe if a live crab is pincing away on a tree while someone walks by.

I then thought that if i wanted the tree to grow the ingredients then i could think of the fish as just meat rather than a living animal and it could be the equivalent to flowers on a tree and the rice could grow like the leaves of the tree. As sushi contains vinegar rice i then thought that the tree could be watered with a mixture of vinegar and water which would then create the vinegar rice. I then realised that for a tree to be able to grow a substantial amount of sushi the tree would have to be quite large, so i have decided to package the seeds instead of the tree itself.

After thinking i had my food source sorted i decided to look at all the different types of seeds and while doing this research came across tulip tree seeds which are dispersed from pods. This gave me the idea to make a tree which grew pods on it similar to the tulip seed pods, but instead of seeds growing within the pods ready made sushi would grow inside them. The heat from the sun would cook the sushi within the pods and the pods would open on completion of this processing letting people know that they were ready to eat. After the sushi has been picked the pods would fall to the ground becoming the seeds, ready to be planted to create a new sushi tree.

I'm now in the process of coming up with ways to package my seeds so far i've come up with a few ideas but am struggling to come up with anymore, need to do some thinking.

CAD

Over the past couple of weeks i have been creating a booklet to advertise and promote trainers. The purpose of the exercise was to get us more comfortable using photoshop and indesign and to experiment with the two programmes. I thoroughly enjoyed creating all the pages within my booklet and as a result have become more familiar with how both programmes work. I definitely hope there are more projects similar to this, to come.

My Website

In the process of designing my website, all is going well so far. I've managed to create both my homepage and a photos page. I've gone for a simplistic, quirky kind of look, which i think works quite well. Really enjoying it as my preferred method or working is on computers and i am looking forward to learning how to master flash.

Toy story 3D

When i heard Toy story was showing in 3D i was ecstatic, and knew i just had to see it. I felt like a child again walking into the cinema & collecting my 3D glasses, i thought this is going to be great. My first thoughts as the curtains opened was Wow! The 3D trailers were awesome, i was amazed at how real it looked. As the movie began i think the novelty of the 3D 'ness' wore off as 10 minutes into Toy Story i thought to myself this is £6 i am never going to get back. I was so unimpressed , why pick Toy Story as a movie to re-release in 3D?

There isn't enough action, nothing jumps out at you or ever feels like its there right in front of you rather than on screen. I suppose it was chosen as its well loved by all ages and genders, its a classic and therefore thought it was the ideal movie to make more money from.

The movie wasn't unenjoyable it just wasn't any better than if i'd watched it old school on a video at home. I was disappointed with my 3D experience but have not been put off watching others in the future, A Christmas CArol here we come!

The Tipping Point mind map

From doing this mind map i have learnt and understood a lot more of the tipping point, it was a very useful exercise as when reading the book it was hard to take in everything which was being said. However this mind map has helped break down all the information making it more memorable.