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.