Riki Thinks: One last for the road

Quite the storm brewing out there, quite a relaxing sound.  But that aside, what a long strange trip it has been, from Sept. to now.  Seen somethings that I thought I would never see (snow in Nov. Whats up with that eh?) and some I knew I would (essaysss).  But for the most part it all worked out.  One of the most important things I at least learned (may not apply) was the concept of They say/I say and how useful it can be when introduced o your paper.  I have written argument and persuasive  papers, but I have never been shown a tactic quite like this.  The thought of not only trying to forward my idea, but to also forward the idea of the opposition in order to make your idea seem more valid was almost absurd sounding.  Yet, when you look at it in practice, it really does seem to work, dispute what try to tell myself.  The apparent simplicity of it all, mention the oppositions argument, then mention your own in order to frame both sides of the story, to better explain just what the heck you are doing here, Tricksy hobbitses will never see it coming.  This is of course not all I learned, but for the most part, this was the newest fangled idea that I was introduced to, and one that I think will stick with me for a good while.

Fry Time: What makes a Community

A community is a pretty cool thing that does not care what you think. sorta. At its core, I would say it is a group of people, big or small, tied together by common ideals, beliefs or location.  For the longest time a community had to be formed in one area, and situated there for it to survive.  Now you can also have an online community, which is becoming much more popular in todays society.  The attractiveness of the online community is that you can access it just about anywhere you have internet.  You do not need to go out and talk to people or see them, you can just log on and chat with them.  But even online, communities still need to be bound together by a few simple things.  They have to have an overlying goal that will hold the people together, and you need to have a central place to meet. And thats what makes online so attractive, it provides all that and more.  Plus, being able to retain anonymousness is pretty legit.

Fry Time: Buying online?

Shopping online is a very important part of our economic growth.  More and more it seems that people are looking to the web for just about everything, and that includes shopping!  I can say that while I have not bought a lot, the things I have bought are very important (Video games).  And for the most part I will only buy from respected sources (People with good reviews and PayPal) because otherwise there is just to much that can go wrong.  And when things go wrong, they really go wrong and we do not want that to happen.  So, I just keep a very close I on the things I buy and where I buy them.  Without PayPal, you run a serious risk just right there.  I also think it is very important that wherever you are buying the item from allows for peer review.  Peer review is important because it lets you know if the source is trustworthy and legit.  I don't want to say I am paranoid, but for the most part I am paranoid.

Riki Thinks: SLO

Well its more like I am SOL.  But lets see, I am very capable of using an Academic Database. Especially one as well set up and maintained as the UWT Library.  It makes it very easy to gather resources that are relevant the the topic at hand.  For instance, one of the sources I used for my paper started out as a source I was just using for background information. In the end however, I found that it would be better served as an active source used on my paper than that of supplementary research.  Close reading is something I am not so good at. long spurts of reading such as we did with Rettburg are just not good with me.  I need to take more notes when doing that in order to be able to keep hold of that information.

Riki Thinks: Revising

Well, Revision is where you take something that is there, like a paper, and begin to change it.  These changes can be based on any number of new ideas, peer comments ect. that allow you to modify what ever it is you are trying to change.  Seems more often than not, when you are going back for a revision, or at least in my experiences, they are pretty big ones. Whole sections getting scrapped be they obsolete or vestigial. For the most part, a revision is an attempt to make something better, but sometimes you might make a change for the worse, but I think that is largely a matter of personal opinion. Point is... Change, when monitored and controlled can lead to advancement, and that is a lot like what we try and do when we revise.

Riki Thinks: Essay 2 Peer-Review

Oh boy! To early in the morning for this crap... Need to go to bed for once.  Paper was... Eh... Could have been worse, could have been better I guess.

Riki Thinks: Annotated Bibliography

This was fun. I really can not tell you why, but I just got some really twisted kicks out of this for some reason. Must be tired and delusional... Anyways, Found this article in the Library Archives. A full copy of this should be available Here. However, do to the fact that it requires you to be logged into the UW system, coupled with the fact that is deep in a search... That may just lead you to nowhere and cause your computer to melt down. But hay, that is half the fun right?  Just because I love you though, I cited the source (Probably wrong, but it gets the information you need across) below my annotation, and you can also try clicking the link in the Citation to get to the article.  If you really want to read it that much.

"This article follows a similar thought path as that of West, and discusses the lack of hard evidence in relation to the field of blogging in the Classroom and its effect on the learning environment, especially at Higher levels of education.  The author here takes a much more scientific approach to the writing of this paper, rather than the literary approach undertaken by West.  This is clearly demonstrated in the competent use of the Scientific theory in the examination, the writing style found within the article, and the discussion that takes place in the article.  I found this to be quite useful, the paper is very thoughtful and straight forward with the facts and conclusions reached.  This article makes for a great complement to the West article, but will also provide a much more Scientific read for those of you who are more inclined to that style.  Also, the Blogs referenced in the Article deal with Mathematics rather than a English based topic (as with West) lending to the science based writing style."


MacBride, R., et. al., Capitalizing on Emerging Technologies: A Case Study of Classroom Blogging. School Science and Mathematics 108. 5 (May 2008): 173-83. Web. 12 Nov. 2010.


^ Should be right.  Copied the one listed on the Library page and then cross-checked with Perdue.  Made a few minor changes but overall it looks 

Riki Thinks: Responding to West, Essay Pre-write

Well, for the most part this is a  pretty interesting paper West has put together here.  Picked some interesting people to analyze and makes the information easy to find.  Easy read for a rather confusing subject.  As for my own paper...

Option one seems appealing to me, and yet it does not.  As has been mentioned in class it is often a challenge to discern information about your own blog, about yourself in general and I am just not sure if that is what will happen with me.  But then again, I am so full of crap that I am sure if I tried hard enough I can lay a golden Egg, or at least a brass one... But on the other hand, you could say that Options 1 & 2 are pretty similar, both involve a close analysis of a blog... One just happens to be yours. And we just did that. And I was... Fine with that.  But we also just wrote about that... So I have decided I will do three, and look for some scholarly works.  With the help of the Library Databases, what I think will be the hardest part (The location of scholarly sources) should not be to troublesome.  On the other hand, as West states, this is not a largely published topic so perhaps in the end, all my clever assumptions will come to nothing... Oh well... Such is life.

Fry Time: Research project... Again?

So much to do so little time not filled with being lazy.  What is a guy supposed to do, other than actually doing the work.  Crazy concept that.  But yeah, so we have this research paper.  I am cool with research, and I like that I have a wide range of topics to choose from.  I do not really care what it is, and since we will be in a group it will be a group decision and I will have as much say as the rest of the people.  Which is fine with me. But if I had to choose...
1. Tim Berners Lee - Sounds like a pretty chill dood. Would not mind getting to know a little more about hims seeing as he is the reason for all this internet jazz. Plus, he was on the test, that makes him important, note worthy and above all else, a logical choice. but no one uses logic anymore so he is just there, and a really tempting target.
2. Apple, IBM and or Apple Vs. IBM - So we watched that commercial about these Guys little duel of fates and I thought that it made an interesting point. What makes a computer company good, how do you get to the top, and then fall off or keep climbing higher... I mean this is a pretty broad one, and probably will not see the light of day, but I guess in the end I just wanted to link that vid. because it is smexy.
3. Some form of Internet tech - Routers, servers, backbones and what ever else I might be able to find in the book that seems interesting to me. Perhaps if I can find enough information it will be focused on one tech. If not, perhaps a conglomeration of the techs that make the internet work as it does today.

Overall I hope you can see that I know exactly where I am headed and have a clear and definate plan of attack. This project is a good as done! err... Yeah.

Fry Time: ZOMG SCAVENGER PANIC

Holy crap we have found a couple. But it is really spread out at the moment and I am not really sure how it is going. So yeah, I found a nice house though, and it was for the cheap. And then we are like stalking items and people all over the place. Blowing it up, all over the Internet. Peace.

Riki Thinks: Reading, Quote from West

The article was quite well written and seemed to cover a lot of what we tried to do with our first essay.  An interesting thing I found comes from the West article Weblogs and literary response, and is used to help explain her reasoning as to why her students are building identity's as "Web Literate communicators":

"All three students seem aware of the expectations of this digital form, which includes an informal style; frequent use of abbreviations and acronyms; and a relaxed stance with respect to standard English grammar, usage, and mechanics. (569)

West makes a strong argument about what it means to be web literate individual and uses the evidence she accrued earlier (various examples of abbreviations and altered spellings of wordz) from the students posts as evidence of their Literacy.  But while this does ring true for most communications on line, it also is true that with increasing regularity, "frequent [usage] of abbreviations and acronyms" is likely to get your post ignored  outright, and taking to "relaxed [of a] stance with respect to standard English grammar, usage, and mechanics" will often get you banned (Made unable to continue use of a forum, chat service ect.).  The web is trying to clean up its image a tad or at least make itself easier to understand, and moderators (modz, The Ban Hammer, ect.) will often not tolerate BS (I am sure you can figure this one out?) posts unless the forum is specifically for such conversations. On the whole though, I do a agree that to be web literate, you must first understand where the web began..  On a completely unrelated tangent, are ellipses (. . .) not the coolest things to use??

Riki Thinks: 10 min free write!

Well. What can you really say about a paper you had to write... It was fun I guess, learned a lot and am glad I had the opportunity.  Then again, writing was always one of those chores that was just that... A chore.  But overall I think this one went pretty smoothly as far as some of my papers go.  Research was pretty straight forward and did not require to much sifting.  It was also nice not having to go confirm facts because they are primary source.  I think I learned a lot from the reading we did, especially in the They say, I say book.  Then the idea that if you include a concept in your paper, it not only makes your paper more coherent and intersting to read but... Things just make more sense. What a novel concept. Heh, novel. Literature humor. But then I also had a lot of problems with this paper. I still found myself rambling a lot and had to really work to narrow my focus to actually get it to my topic.  That in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, because school is all about learning what and what not to do.  Overall I feel that while it could have been better (then again I think we all say that about anything we do right? No? Just me?) but for my first college paper I think it was a good indication of where I am. Lucky for me this is not for a grade, and really is just that, and indication of where I stand as a writer, and thats what counts in the end.

Fry Time: Other odd things around the net... Shopping carts?

Slowly but surely, the man is trying to cage us in.  Make us become reliant on the internet, make us become one with the Matrix, and then WHAM! Skynet and its all over. Oh wait, wrong movie.  But the internet is trying to become alot more like real life, take for instance the Shopping cart. You might say, which one Ian? The one in the market, or the one online that I put my virtual representations of goods into to take to the virtual representation of a cash register to... You get the picture.  Well, they are actually very alike.
- They both are there to serve you, you tell them what to do and what you want to put into them. Fancy that eh? The cool thing about the virtual one is sometimes, if your lucky, it will make suggestions to you on what else you should buy based on what you have already put in. Crazy...
- You can put whatever you want into it. Its "your" cart after all, use it how you want to. You can even take things out you find you no longer want. The cool thing (Seeing a pattern yet?) about the virtual one is you do not have to go back and find where to put the items you no longer need, because it does not really exist yet... It just disappears into space... Yeah. Sounds cooler if you are as lazy as I am.
- Another nifty thing is that the cart is right there when you come in. Just chilling there waiting to be used, as though you two where fated to be... So romantic. I mean, Useful, yes thats right, useful. And yeah, the cool thing about the Virtual cart is you do not have to push it around the store or return it, it just kinda follows you around, and when you leave it just vanishes. Harsh man, just harsh.

Well thats all for now, remember to always say thank you to the unassuming cart and use it well! It is, after-all there to serve you!

Fry Time: Creepy things about the Internet; VANITY

So, right now I am typing on a blog. A blog anyone can see if they really wanted to and put in a minimum of effort to find it. Not so bad because of course, I am putting this out on the web willingly.  But there are some things that maybe I do not want out on the web for all to see with just a few clicks and a name. Thats just creepy right?  I never really bothered to do a vanity search before because... Well I never considered there would be anything out there one me.  And even when I did one, I did not find much about ME per say... The first resuault is a FB page that is not me, and the most interesting one was probably the Article about an Inspector in England with my name. Funny stuff. Then you bring in the really creepy stuff... Like Intelius (http://www.intelius.com) which is just wrong... I mean It did not show me as afar as I could tell, but It is just scary none the less. In the end, the only way to find someone as low key as me was through FB... Lame...

Riki Thinks: They Say, I say

This book is quite an interesting read... And i'm sure I would be able to type up a slick blog post about it if I could stay awake to type this that is (Long night and all).  I was struck by a couple sections in the book.  First and foremost was the section on a idea I am not new to but never was very good at, Telling the audience why it matters.  This is one of those things you get ingrained into you every year and yet I still am not that good at it.  Thankfully, the book is quite detailed in this regard and I think I will finally be able to to improve that area of my writing.  They even have some simple templates I can use as examples.  And speaking of Templates... The other thing that I found interesting (whether I use them or not is up for debate) are templates they have strewn throughout the book.  At first I was like, "Huh... They are trying to make me conform... Sneaky," but then the book said the exact same thing (more or less...) and I was like "whoa."  Some of them are pretty specific, but I might be able to work a couple of the more open ones in, or I might just use some from chapter 7.  I think if I where to look through the book again I will probably find some more goodies, but I have a need... a need for Candy.

Riki Thinks: Presentation Reflection

I have heard it said that when it comes to presenting, going first is always your best bet.  You can go up there, clean slate, and even if you know your going to do horrible, you still have the sense of knowing that your done. you do not have to sit there, knowing your turn will come and you will have to go up eventually.  I however, and a coward, and would rather just sit there and never go up (but we can not all have that chance now can we).  But for some reason I decided I would go first.  Nice job, and thats probably the first thing I would change. Going second is a much better option.  My third change would be to ask the Professor what they wanted from the presentation, because even if she told us before, I had obviously forgotten and was thus just making things up.  For the most part, I do think it was a helpful experience, I gained a lot of insight for listening to others, and have made a number of useful additions to my paper.  That being said my paper is still a mess, much work to be done, no time to loose!

Riki Thinks: Reading; "Blogging" and your paper

Jill Walker Rettberg's book Blogging gives you a very general overlook of the process of making and maintaining a blog.  For the most part, I have had a bit of trouble finding a lot of information that could refitted for use in my research paper.  That being said, as the paper is on blogs, and the book is about blogging, there are a few sections that I can relate to.  The section I thought I could most relate to comes on under the heading of 'Social Network Theory' (59) and discusses the idea that 'weak ties' (such as those that might exist between a blogger and the person he has never met who just happens to be reading his blog) are more effective at introducing new information than the 'strong ties' you have with your close friends.  I found this interesting because this is exactly what we are doing with this paper, forming weak ties with various bloggers and gaining what new information from it.  This information will then be presented to the class (what you might call a strong tie?) and allow new information to enter the group.  Funny how that works out eh?  Another thing they mentioned (and I mention simply because it is legit, although possibly out-dated and flat wrong) is the 'Small world' experiments preformed in the 1960's.  Rettberg goes on to say how links on a bloggers site signify connections with others, helping to bridge between people. Interesting stuff...

Riki Thinks: Research Changes

Well It would seem I have a few things I need to change in my paper.  Need to actually figure out a thesis, which I guess would be a good start.  While I think I have a general Idea of where I am trying to go with it, a general idea is not gonna fly very far.  Also, I think it would help to begin refining my paragraphs so as to spend less time rambling and more time answering the question.  My only concern would be that without my rambling I may not have enough to finish the Four pages... But thats just how it goes I guess.  I can worry about making it to the end when I get my thesis set, because hopefully when I have that taken care of, finishing the paper should fall into place.

Fry Time: Fun with HTML

Well, HTML is pretty much just like I remember it being.  A bit tricky to get the hang of, mess one little thing up and low and behold you are missing a paragraph here, a title there and for some reason your background is hot pink instead of blue.  But that’s just how things work I guess, always have to change things up until you find what works.  On the plus side, I like being able to customize the page.  It also gives me a reason to use the < and > keys for things other than a , or a . Ha, that was a pretty weird sentence; the spellchecker is a tad miffed with me now.  Mostly, it is not something I think I would really get into, but it is pretty fun to mess around with. Besides, why would I bother taking the time to express my individuality and creative nature in making a web page when the web just makes them for me?  Wait... Did I just hear you say Big Brother… Who’s that?

Riki Thinks: Research and Progress?

Well, another week has passed and now it seems it is finally time to judge if I have actually made any progress on this Blog a paper.  I think for the most part it is going pretty well actually.  I was able to choose a topic that I think I will actually enjoy, and I also found a blog.  That makes two major points down, right?  The rest should be cake, right?  If only life where so simple and easy (the cake is a lie anyways).   On the flip side I have lot of information, and I have done quite a bit of preliminary scanning and examination.  I have what I can hope is a lot of “good” information to work with.  This being said, I will not actually be able to figure this out until I actually start… Which I may not be planning to do until later today (probably right after the lab, great plan right?).  But I am currently confident, and that is half the battle as they say… Or was it knowing is half the battle and confidence gets you killed… Anyways I think the hardest part for me will be taking meaning from all the photos, trying to get deeper information from them and all that. But I think It will all turn out for the better, and if it turns out I do have a metric but ton of problems, well we only need two pages for Tuesday...

Riki Thinks: Reading, Engaging, Quoting

Rettberg claims that “as people spend more time online they spend less time on other media. This means that the tried and tested sale strategies of the previous generation… aren’t working as well as they used to” (128). Basically, because we are spending more time on the computer and the web we have less time to spend watching TV or listening to the Radio (the once kings of advertising).  This particular excerpt was very interesting to me in part because I almost never watch TV anymore (which for some reason makes this all the more prevalent to me), but mostly because of how the blogging community reacted when ads began integrating into the web.  Chapter 6 speaks about blogs as a means to make money, and some of the methods to do it.  Adding ads to you blog is one of the mentioned strategies’, along with donations and such.  The thing that got me was that ads can bring a fairly steady income, like it has for Dooce and yet many people complained about the early addition of these ads (Rettberg, 132-133).  Now, I will not sit here and lie that I enjoy ads popping up in my face when I watch a YouTube Video, or the ones that play music while I am trying to read something.  Truly I cannot stand them and most of them are selling things I have no need for; but for the most part I will tolerate them simply because I can understand why ads are there, and I just enjoy the site to much to give it up over some ads.  Apparently I am not the only person to think this way because  this is exactly what happened with Dooce.  Even with the introduction of ads, her readership still continued to grow because people cared more about what she had to say then the annoyance provided by the ads.   So while people may dislike ads and people may complain about them, in the end the site gets needed income from them, they are for the most part easy enough to ignore and I guess we brought this on ourselves by spending more time blogging then watching TV.

 Btw, 364 words makes a serious wall of text. ^

Fry Time: Email Vs. Post Mail

I went to the post office the other day. Well okay, I have not been there in quite a few months, okay fine years... But I have BEEN to a post office. Outside they have a kind of drive by Mailbox drop box thing where you just drop your mail in to have it sent off. Thats pretty clever. Email is kinda like that, with the ability to simply take your letter you just typed (Another bonus because I have pretty horrendous hand writing) and just put a address on there and send it off. Quick, sweet and to the point. But they're some things that for the time being should still be sent regular post (Like those holiday cards that everyone loves!) but it just seems silly to send a letter when you can just type up an email.  

But then we have the similarity between reviving mail and email as well. When you go to open your corner mailbox on any given day you can expect a wide assortment of letters, ads, flyers and other less savory things (Like that Electric bill :o). It can often be that way with your online mailbox as well, the types of things you can receive over the web are limited only by the imagination of the people sending them. That, I believe, is what makes Email so great, that although you may not want most of what you receive, there is still really no limit to what can be sent to you.   

Riki Thinks: Writing & Research

My interests... What does interest me. Well I spend a lot of time online reading all sorts of things from various web comics to random news Articles. I also have spent many laughter filled hours Perusing The Chive. When I am not online, I enjoy long bike rides over hill and dale, mostly because it beats driving. Gas is just to expensive for a cheap guy like me and I really just do not like driving... As for the type of blog I would like to follow, I think it would be interesting to follow a an Entertainment blog, possible one about Video games. I figure since I spend so much time on them as it is, A blog based on things that entertain might be quite... Well Entertaining.

Hello Everyone!

What kind of writer am I? I am but a person who thinks they can write, but luckily does not do it often enough for people to figure it out. Maybe I will figure out how to do it eventually. I enjoy a good read and I really do not have any taste in music, just listen to whatever. All in all pretty dull.