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It feels really great

Byrichard

For the past hour or more, I’ve been listening to music and working on my dissertation and I’ve just hit 9500 words on my dissertation (disso as it’s affectionately referred to) and it feels great. I’m so happy that I have two weeks in which to proofread, re-write, and improve what I’ve written.

It’s the first time in my life that I finish the writing part of my assignment two weeks earlier than the deadline. I’m not crying victory yet (french expression: mieux vaut ne pas crier victoire), after all, I’d expect myself to do at least another ten to fifteen hours of re-writing. I still have to format the references properly and look for video captures that can help illustrate my points so that the layout earns extra points.

Reading this post you’d be led to believe that I take this work seriously, and the truth is I do. I started it last summer when I came back to London looking for work. I applied to at least twenty jobs without luck and as I was growing demoralised I dropped by the library when no one else was there and borrowed as many books as I thought I could carry without a surtax on the plane. Over the summer I worked through over twenty chapters about film theory and created a documentary over 50 pages long and 25,000 words in depth. I also watched hundreds of hours of documentaries. Aside from the website, it’s the biggest project I’ve ever taken on.

I hope I do well.

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A Typical Day Two Weeks Before Uni’s End

Byrichard

Just put on some music and now I’ll tell you about a typical day, just two weeks before the end of uni life for me. My phone is set so that it rings every morning at 9 am and the reason it gives me is “catch a flight” because I had set that particular alarm to wake me up before one of my numerous flights.

It doesn’t often get me out of bed, I usually snooze till about 11 am and that’s when there’s noise from the cleaners. I open up the laptop and I start surfing around the world wide web syncing up with what’s happened whilst I was sleeping. It’s not until about two hours later than I do something productive like get out of bed, take a shower, and then get on with the public phase of my day.

a few times I’ve woken up and got straight into one of the three assignments that are due within the next three weeks. I stop working when either it’s at least an hour later or I’ve run out knowledge and because it requires research I decide it’s easier to get sidetracked by something else.

Around 2 pm I go for a walk, as an excuse to listen to a podcast. I get myself what is required for a sandwich and get some ice tea. Time to relax whilst eating.

Until this point there’s a chance I haven’t been sociable so I walk over to the uni library, it’s only 5 minutes away so it’s no struggle. As I arrive there I go from one friend to another, getting a little insight into how well they’re doing with assignments.

With certain people you find that they’re halfway through the dissertation, others are finished. Some were working on their advertising module course work and others claim not to have started writing. I’m glad I have. (slight understatement)

There are a few groups of people I hang around with. Sometimes I go to a venue and I film a friend’s gig, as happened or I go to the SU bar (which hasn’t happened for the past two weeks and won’t happen before next Monday. The third option is to hang out with more friends in halls.

Once I get home I do some more work, sometimes another two or three hours. I found that at one point I was so anxious and worried about my work that I couldn’t go to sleep before I had progressed with my dissertation.  I’m lucky that way. My mind has become the perfect nag. I’m grateful for this.

Sleep is easy, I lie down, pull the laptop screen down and see that it latches. Listen to my ipod and fall asleep.

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Facebook And Technological Determinism – A Case Study

Byrichard

What’s the worst thing about being a student. The stress never disappears. What’s the best thing about being a media student? As long as you can find the theoretical background that goes with an activity you love you can justify doing a case study on the topic.

I’m fresh back from the library where I went through looking for some books about the internet and society, the virtual community, reading digital culture, The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory, and finally the social shaping of Technology. I’m not going to read every single page but rather going to explore the notion of community and how it affects contemporary life.

I know that the World Wide Web has progressed from such a point that being online is no longer the domain of geeks but rather the empire of all those with interesting lives. Look at musicians and sites like Myspace for example. Look at the FIBA website during the FIBA 2006 world Championship. Look at everyone posting pictures of cats on various websites. It’s part of the digital lifestyle.

The premise of my case study is simple. Whereas five years ago being online was seen as something that only the least socially apt of people would do the opposite is now true, as demonstrated by the popularity of Myspace for a while, Facebook at the moment and then Virb for the near future.

Those who saw the death of society because of how technology is getting people to stay at home without conversing with anyone in their physical world is a thing of the past. Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook (the mobile version) MSN messenger – the mobile version all ensure that we’re wired whether we’re sitting in a bedroom on a beautiful sunny day or standing outside under the torrential rain. Of course, there’s no rain but the point remains the same. A world where people can only be online from behind a computer is gone hence greater sociability.

Let’s see how I manage to integrate that notion into my case study 😉

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Excess Use of Network

Byrichard

Here is my daily good morning message from the ISP:
Yesterday you exceeded the daily usage limit of 500MB as referred to in our Terms and Conditions. This type of activity could have a detrimental affect on our network
unfortunately be forced to downgrade your service to a throughput limit of 56Kbs dial-up speed, for a period of 5 days.
I download over a gig a day when I’m at home on average, that’s 30 gigs a months or more.

Detrimental effect on our network: What about every time you cut me off for no reason, what about the interruption of service when I get beyond the number of hours allocated p0er month. What about the fact I have over 20 gigs of data transfer but can’t use it?

Limit to 56K, It’s already limited to that speed.
If you exceed these limits on a regular basis, we may be forced to suspend your account.
So interruption of service for no reason isn’t an interruption of service?

For users of Peer-to-peer (P2P) applications such as BearShare, Warez, Morpheus, BitTorrent, iMesh and KaZaA note the following:

Why not stop whining about this and block those services rather than destroy the rest of the services


Most P2P applications you install will usually be configured so other users can access your hard drive and share your files all of the time. This constant file transfer can degrade your computer’s performance and generate heavy traffic loads on the network, making it difficult for other users of the network to work well. The network is a shared resource and we all must use it responsibly.

Network bandwidth consumption is monitored. If your usage could possibly impact the overall performance of the network, your computer may be blocked until the situation can be discussed.

One gig a day is nothing. Two nights ago I downloaded over two gigs of podcasts within an hour without any problems suffered by the University infrastructure therefore why can’t these people cope. If they’re going to block internet access from my machine then that’s a Denial of servic although not an attack. Just sub standard.

Should you have any queries regarding this email, please contact Customer Services

Context and analysis

Diggnation is 120 megabytes per program and Nouvo by the TSR is around 80-120 megs as well. The BBC’s daily news is around 20 megabytes. This week in tech, this week in media and others are around 20 megabytes each.

Diggnation =1/5 of my daily allowance, nouvo = 1/5 as well. Twim etc are a little less but quickly saturate the amount allocated per day.

What’s more interesting is that they currently have at least 7 fibres for 100 people. If the Cern were using those fibers it would be the equivalent of at least 3.6 gigabits per second, as was tested at the 2003 Telecom world event.

7 fibers = 7 gigabits per second, at least theoretically. For 640 users that would be 10 megabits per second. compare that to the 50KB/s and you see why I’m dissatisfied with the service.

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From One Culture To Another Through Podcasting

Byrichard

At the moment I’m listening to a lot of podcasts. Probably 5-10 a day on average. I go through one collection of podcasts and once that one is finished I move onto another. As a result of this, the culture of those I am listening to is sinking through.

Yesterday I listened to four or five of NBC’s meet the press and I found them interesting. I wasn’t always paying attention to what they were saying but it did make a change. I recently listened to the whole of the Net@night series and the previous series on the RSS feed as well. As a result, I’ve learned quite a bit about new technology. It’s been fun. It’s about web 2.0 and how everything is “innovative” although ten years ago people were doing the same it was called differently. It’s all O’reilly’s(sp?) fault.

Today I listened to something quite interesting. It’s the Mac break weekly recorded in Dolby headphone surround or some similar tech. It’s interesting because it does paint an auditory landscape. Leo Laporte was in front whilst the girls on that podcast, Justine and Kendra were to the right, and the guests, whilst two others were to the left.

Walking to the shops with that sound was a little disorienting at first but I grew used to it and it’s more fun. I want to hear more podcasts recorded with that technology.

I am going through a phase of cultural assimilation. I watch and listen to all these podcasts that are coming from the US and as a result, I’m starting to absorb the culture. I’m telling myself that I should move to SFO where municipal wifi is a reality rather than a dream. We’ll see what I do once university is finished and I have the rest of my life in front of me.

We may find that the work experience module teaches me to think more creatively about getting a job. If it does then it’s truly worth writing up tomorrow when I get up.

I’m rambling so I’ll leave you to wait for the next post.

Ciao ciao

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Podcasts and Bandwidth

Byrichard

There have been a lot of discussions between podcasters and the amount of bandwidth that is needed to serve these files. Successful podcasters shift several gigabytes of data with each episode of their podcast and since everything is automated everyone requests and receives the file at this time. This means there’s a massive peak.

I’m interested in the reception side though. I’m on a university network and I’ve used it when you would get a throughput of at least 400 kilobytes a second. That’s quite fast and pleasant. It’s changed since then. Digital village, part of Catalyst has throttled our bandwidth, offering 8 gigs a month paid for by the university but limiting to 500 megabytes a day.

What this means is simple. Anytime I leave iTunes unattended up to a gigabyte of podcasts may be downloaded at once. No problem, when you’re at home with 2 megabits per second or within uni but a big problem. I’m constantly watching over the files and their size in order to stay below the bandwidth limit. It’s frustrating.

Last night I went to have a little fun since I was having a denial of service from Digital Village as they were refreshing the database at the end of the “service month” as I will refer to it. For 8hrs they cut off my service.

In the meantime, I’m only 5 minutes’ walk from the uni library and it’s open 24hrs a day. This university has good download speeds. Using the wifi connection I downloaded 2 gigabytes worth of podcasts and videos within about one hour. The connection speed for university fiber is fast. It’s at least 600KB/s sustained. That’s a 40 meg file within 4-6 minutes when you’re downloading three at once. It’s a great feeling.

In halls, it’s disappointing and frustrating. I don’t like Catalyst. They’re behind the times. They provide a sub-standard service and I feel that people should know about it. I’ve spent at least 11 years online now. I know what to expect from an ISP. Digital village doesn’t provide it.

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Time For The Dissertation Re-write

Byrichard

Now that I’ve achieved my goal of getting most of my dissertation written I’m going to take a day’s break and work on another of my assignments to clear my head and also to make sure I complete all assignments by the required date. It’s been a long effort but last night I spent several hours working on my dissertation, getting it up to 8800 words.

The word limit is from 10-12000 words and having almost 8.8K means I’m 1200 words away. With re-writing and clarification of certain points I should easily get up to the word limit that was set out initially. I’m happy about the state of affairs. Over two weeks for editing and cleaning up of the text.

There’s another assignment that I will work on the 22nd of this month and another which I will start working on later today. With the way things are going, I should quite easily be able to meet all the deadlines and have time to be human by the same opportunity. It’s a great feeling. Finally, the glacier that was pressing down on me is starting to melt and I’ll begin to rise up as the pressure is released, much as England is doing since the last glacial age hundreds of thousands of years ago.

My Dislike Of Cleaners

Byrichard

Several times I have had to clean the exterior of Airbus 320 and similiarly sized aircraft. You get some really long brushes and firehoses and you spray the plane before you clean it. it’s hard physical work and it’s done between midnight and five am. It’s not a pleasant job.

Now that you know the type of cleaning I’ve done I want to express my deep dislike of cleaners and why. Every single day they pass in the halls and bang around, speaking at the top of their voices when students are in need of sleep. We’re also in need of a feeling of privacy in the form of silence. Every time some idiot walks by talking loud it’s annoying.

Then you’ve got the blocked doors and rooms. They’ve been polishing every floor over the past week so that when everyone who’s had the luxury of going home over the holiday comes home to a clean building. I have to put up with the chemical smells and the blocked paths. Imagine going to a door and waiting for three or four people to finish their work. Others polish the floor and you have to go another way.

Today I’m angry because of the cleaners. They decided to polish the floor whilst I’m doing my laundry. The clothes have finished being washed and they’re currently waiting to go into the dryer but that can’t happen until the floor dries, in two hours.

Why can’t they carry a warning, why can’t they do it at the time when the laundry room is closed. It annoys me that everything has too be done during the day when it’s most inconvenient rather than at night when out of service. I hate the 9 to 5 mentality whereby convenience is destroyed for the everyday user.

Why today, why now?

Tired of communal life.

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A Larger Readership Than The Student Newspaper

Byrichard

A few days ago I was with a friend discussing the student media within my university. I’m not speaking about the content created by those in the various courses but rather about the student newspaper and television channel. It’s gone downhill over the past year.

In my first year at uni although people poked fun at the student magazine they used to get it in order to get all the events listing. It meant that you knew a month in advance what was going on what night and so university spirit was stronger. At the same time, some second-year students of the time decided to create a student television program in which they got up and running external to the student union. In so doing they guaranteed success. Last year the student magazine coasted along and the first discussions about it becoming a newspaper happened.

Since then it’s been downhill. We’ve gone from having a glossy magazine coming out once a month with all events listed to having recycled paper as a newspaper. Rather than having people fighting to get their articles published an apathy seems to have formed around the project. There is no features editor, no listings editor, no main editor, and no layout person. This is a uni with 23,000+ students of which 10,000 full time. You’d be led to believe that they could produce some content without too much difficulty.

The one thing that’s doing relatively well is the student radio but it’s not independent of the Student Union, therefore, it seems to run better. If they had kept podcasting as they were doing last year then I’d still be downloading and listening to those programs as I walk around London.

I’m ready to leave university and get on with other more interesting projects. I’m ready to get back to the world of work. I only have about three weeks left of work.

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Three Thousand To Go

Byrichard

In three thousand words my first dissertation draft will be ready. This evening I may be able to get up to ten thousand words and from that point on it will be about the re-writing of one section after another until I am happy that I have fit in as much relevant information as possible into the dissertation.

It’s been great weather in London over the past two days especially. Far fewer planes were flying yesterday, therefore, there were far fewer contrails than usual. It’s another beautiful day today and everyone’s going to take advantage of this. It’s too nice to sit indoors in front of the dissertation when the sun is out. Summer is teasing us too effectively.