Journal 60

Wow my last journal entry. I never thought this day would come. As with most other journals, I have no idea what to write. As much as I sometimes despised writing these things I have to say that I am going to miss them. I enjoy just writing about my day or what I am planning on doing. Because of this, I recently installed Movable Type on my website kellehan.com. I will start writing in the blog every few days once you are done grading the portfolio portion. So really I thank you for making this assignment and I can say in all honesty that I will miss your class. Maybe someday I can be in a class of yours again, or I can come for a recommendation or something. Anywho, I think you should check out my podcast and tell me what you think about it being a fellow techie, I am always looking for more feedback even if it’s “this sucks,” because we can always keep improving. Otherwise, nice knowing ya.

Journal 59

So in my last journal entry I talked about my podcast and how I had finally finished it. Now with history out of the way, I think I should talk about the future. With the episodes of Season 1 finished and up, I got together with my friends involved in the show over Thanksgiving break and threw out the idea of a Christmas special. They were all for it and we are planning one now. It’s not really the start of a new season so we are dubbing it season 1.5. Also we might possibly be making a one-year anniversary show in February, but we are trying to focus on the Christmas special so we can make it really good, unlike most of the episodes in the first season. During all of this I also have to finish putting together the website, especially since we finally bought a legitimate domain name, Techspresso.net. The next few months should be exciting for Techspresso and I am looking forward to the second season starting this summer.

Journal 58

Well I am feeling pretty good right now. I say this because I recently accomplished a goal I have been working on for a little over half a year now. See I started a Podcast last February called Techspresso. From the name you can probably decipher that it’s a bout technology and coffee, my two loves. Anyway we cranked out two episodes to start off on a schedule of about one every month. I absolutely dreaded editing them though. I was using a program on my PC because at the time my PowerBook wasn’t good enough to run Final Cut at a decent speed. So needless to say I eventually stopped editing them. We shot 3 more episodes and I would always promise that I would edit them, but I never did. Now my MacBook Pro comes in, with a copy of FinalCut Express 4.0. I got on a little editing stint after the Open Source movie so after that I decided to take a weekend and edit them all and upload them to Vimeo (screw youtube). Now all 5 episodes are up on Vimeo for the world to see, you should check them out at either Techspresso.net (not finished, that’s my next task) or Vimeo.com/techspresso.

Journal 57

I remember you saying that you bought an iPod and/or iPhone earlier this year as a present for yourself. Because of that, I assume that you use iTunes. Well I am here to tell you to stop! I know surprising for me, probably the biggest apple fanboy you know telling you to stop using an apple product, but there is something better. And it’s Open Source! It’s called Songbird, you may have heard of it before. The reason I finally put some confidence in it is because it finally reached version 1.0. This is a big step and it means that many of the previous problems have been fixed. The program is actually based on Firefox of all things. This means that much like Firefox, it has a huge list of extensions to make it better. I personally enjoy the lyrics extension so I can actually sing “Revved up like a douce” instead of “Wraped up like a (feminine hygiene product)” lol. Best of all it now not only supports iPod management, but it also is finally able to play back iTunes DRM’d songs. There are a few flaws though, for one I can’t map the previous/play/next buttons on my MacBook Pro keyboard and it includes “The” when sorting so The Beatles and Beatles are completely different things. I can get past that because of all the extensions though. You should check it out, it’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Journal 56

4. Is there more freedom for such commentary on cable news?

I believe that there is more freedom for commentary like this on cable news, if not only for the reason that they have more time to fill. In the 24 hour news cycle that cable news stations go though every day, you can only report on a story so many times until it is beat to death and people will stop watching. So to fill that time, news networks like MSNBC, etc use commentary, because lets be honest, almost anyone in the world could go on for hours about how they feel on certain issues, throw someone in there that feels differently and you've got yourself a program.

Journal 55

3. Would this make his news show more -- or less -- appealing to you?

I am not going to doubt the need for some commentary in the media, but if Olbermann made a segment like this for everyone of his show, I would not enjoy it as much. I think that there would then be too much commentary and not enough actual news, which I believe is more beneficial to the viewer. Some people might disagree with me on this point, and for those people I say go watch Fox News if you want to see excessive biased commentary, with little or no factual news.

Journal 54

2. Do you think Olbermann's comments are sincere or is this a TV performance?

When I first started watching Olbermann's segment it seemed as if he was being sincere with everything he said. But as time went on it seemed more like a scripted performance. I am not doubting that he supports gay marriage, but it seems like he was I guess you would say "milking it." One example that first tipped me off was when he paused right after the beginning of his segment, took a deep breath as to seem deeply uncomfortable with Proposition 8. He repeated this many times throughout the segment, each time then switching to a different camera, which made it seem more like a performance to me.

Journal 53

I had a pretty interesting topic I wrote about in my Journalism class throughout the week. It centered around a special 6 minute segment TV reporter Keith Olbermann had a little while after prop 8 was passed in California.

1. Is it appropriate that such a prominent news reporter should have a "special segment" to plead to Californians about the ban, or is he going too far?

As much as I like the fact that someone like this would care so much about something like this to make a special comment about gay marriage, I think that he is going a little too far. If you look to what the root of the media is suppose to be telling you it is the straight facts. Non-biased news. Sure over time opinion sections in newspapers, television broadcasts, etc have come into play, but I don't think that commentary is what the mainstream media should be peddling out to their viewers. Okay, make a comment about you feeling on the issue while bringing up the story, but I don't think that comment should be stretched out into a 6 minute "special segment." I don't find this surprising from a reporter such as Olbermann because he is somewhat famous for always making his point heard especially when it clashes with something Faux Noise Spin Doctor Bill O'Riely says.

Journal 52

As far as the design goes, the CRAP principles I believe are used. I don’t have much in the way of text because of the nature of the movie, but when I did I made sure there was a lot of contrast by putting white text on a black background. I also made sure there was ample space around the text to make it easy for the viewer of the movie to read. The way I framed the characters was also influenced by CRAP. I made sure that they were presented with space around them to make sure the viewer was paying attention to the right character.
I had to gather a few people together to make this project work. I found out quick that getting people to agree on a time is easier said than done. Because of that, a bulk of the work on the project had to be squeezed into basically 3 days leading up to today. This made it very hectic for me and in retrospect I think I should have picked an easier mode like a brochure. But in the end, I am pleased with my movie, and hope it will persuade people to take a look at open source software.

Journal 51

Of course though you can’t stop everyone, this is where the main character comes in, Mr. Gonzales. The government caught him using open source software and were now threatening to throw him in prison, but he escapes while the interrogator is out of the room. It is not his mission to spread the word about open source software, and free the world from the clutches of the greedy software companies. I should mention that my idea for making a full length movie was eventually scrapped in place of a trailer for a movie because of time constraints, more on that later though.

Journal 50

I started off with an idea for a movie that would glamorize certain pieces of open source software. I wanted something that would be both educational and entertaining to my audience of college students. To accomplish that goal, I set out to make an epic-type movie. The movie would be sort of a spoof of a serious action movie. These types of videos can be found anywhere these days, from video sites like YouTube, to the silver screen. They are also very popular with college students.
With the basic idea for the movie under my belt, I set about forming a plot. This part was actually pretty hard for me because I haven’t written any type of creative work in a while. To come up with the plot I sat at my desk with the list of software I wanted to incorporate into the movie. Eventually, after a few hours of hitting my head against the keyboard I arrived at a plot. The movie would start out with the typical movie announcer “In a world…” and go on to explain how, in the future, software companies would control the government forcing people to buy more upgrades and banning open source software all together.

Journal 49

So I think its a good time to maybe start my reflection that is due on Friday, anyway here we go...
From the time I heard that we were going to be doing an assignment like this I was excited. “Finally, a chance for me to show off what I can do!” I thought to myself. The project I enjoyed most in your class were the articles I wrote on open source software, so it was a no-brainer that I would be remixing one of them. I chose the article written towards college students because it was a little more informal than the other article which meant I could have a little more fun with it. I have been making short movies for classes since I figured out how to operate a video camera many years ago. I haven’t gotten the chance to make any sort of video for any class in college yet, so making one based on the content of this article seemed like the right thing to do.

Journal 48

I am excited. Why am I excited? because this weekend is opening day for rifle deer hunting season in Michigan. Now I know what you are probably thinking, me a hunter? Really? I know I come off as a person that would not only not hunt, but would be protecting animal rights or something, but in reality I have been hunting since I was in 7th grade. I love going hunting every year on my property up north. Except for having to get up so early every morning, lol. I usually have to get up at 5:30am so I can get out to the blind and get settled before the sun comes up. Even though it is so early and I am definitely not a morning person by any means, I still love going out. I love the anticipation of seeing a deer and how my heart races the moment in comes into range.I am sure a lot of people probably don't like the idea of hunting and to be honest I was really sure of it when I frist started all those years ago, but it's fun and if you think you are up to it, maybe you should try it.

Journal 47

I had another taping of Focal Point last night. I would by lying if I said that the show gets going like a well oiled machine. Actually I don't think I have ever been to a taping where at least one thing didn't go wrong. The taping usually starts out with people showing up on time around 6p.m. We usually set a goal of getting started by 7p.m. so we don't spend most of our night there. But then something never fails to go wrong, usually it has something to do with the prompter either not working or being at the wrong resolution to show up on the monitors hooked up on the cameras. One time actually the reason we were having problems was because the prompters weren't plugged in! That took about 10 minutes to diagnose. I am used to these types of things, but this show in particular went really bad. When we finally did start at around 8:30 it took us way longer than it should have to shoot the show. We tape the show "live-to-tape" so theoretically it should only take 30 minutes to tape since that is how long the show is, but one of the luxuries of doing this is that we can allow screw ups which take up a lot of time.

Journal 46

I love House. No not like my house, the show House on Fox. I had never watched it until I came up here to state and my roommate watched it. Now a days, I can't get enough of it. It is so unlike any of the other typical hospital dramas out there like ER or Grey's Anatomy (ick!). I find those type of shows very boring and predictable. But shows like House and my other favorite hospital show Scrubs have something different about them that makes them interesting. In House's case you have a very intelligent jackass of a doctor that pretty much gets away with anything becuase of how good of a doctor he is. Also his abrasive Vicodin popping personality makes for some interesting scenes when interacting with anyone. The best part of it is you don't really need to know much about the series to start watching it, so if you have never seen it before, you should check it out, it's on usa a lot, and new episodes are on every tuesday on Fox.

Journal 45

The election has long passed, but people are still talking about it. So I am too. I saw an interesting image on the internet today. The image was a map of the United States colored with blue and red, much like the various maps everyone saw on election night, but there was something different about this one. The difference was that this was one was even more blue than the others with only a few states colored red. Why was this map colored this way? because this was a map of how youth voters voted (18-24). When I saw it all I could think about is how different this election was in respect to youth voting and how Obama helped organize a usually neglected group of voters to win the election. Unlike most candidates, including McCain, Obama realized that youth voters do care and really want to vote, just usually they are not targeted in any way and therefore feel like they are unimportant.

Journal 44

Okay so back to SpartanTV. So besides what I was specifically doing, just being in the studio and being a part of the whole night was awesome and exciting. The best part for me was being able to watch the states light up online while the were being called for Obama and McCain, and then taking that and lighting up our own map. We had one woman who stood in front of it who was awesome, she will probably end up on CNN one day. Also orchestrating the whole night was fun because we not only had people conducting interviews, etc. in the studio, but we had people out in the field calling in with skype. By the end of the night the excitment was running very high, but our energy very low, even so, I can't wait to do something like that for SpartanTV again.

Journal 43

We have a new president-elect! For me the excitement is basically still at the same level as it was last night at 11pm when they called the election for Obama. Needless to say, his acceptance speech was awesome. And also in a surprising turn of events McCain was actually very humble and his concession speech was actually very good, he went back to the pre-campaign McCain that people actually liked. Ok enough about that guy, back to Obama. So Obama is going to be the next president of the United States, wow it feels good just saying that. For me, the most exciting part about all of this is how I was part of it. I keep thinking of how years from now I will be able to tell my family that I was part of the eleciton that elected the first ever black president, and hopefully the president that finally turned the courntry around after 8 years of good ol Georgie-boy. I may be expecting a little much by saying that as I understand the mess that he has to step in and clean up, but for some reason I think he can do it, well not just him, but everyone, like his campaign slogan I believe that "Yes we can."

Journal 42

Wow what a day, for lack of a better term, I am pooped. I am not going to talk about Obama just yet, I will save that for tomorrow's entry because I just have too much to say about the election coverage I was part of tonight for SpartanTV. We started broadcasting tonight at 7pm, right after the first polls started closing and we kept it up until sometime after 11pm. If you didn't know, my job on the show is running the graphics, and usually that is a pretty cut-and-dry task because all of the information was already there in order and you just sit there and click a button, maybe sometime pausing to fix a spelling error. But tonight was different. It was live so most of the information had to be gathered and put into graphics on the fly, especially the percentages for each candidate in each state to go along with the map of the country colored red and blue. Wow there is still too much to cover so I will continue this in thursday's journal.

Journal 41

THE ELECTION IS TOMORROW!!!!!
Well I am just downright excited for so many reasons right now. Not only because possibly one of the most historic presidential elections is tomorrow, but also because of all of the exciting things I will be doing with Spartan TV the next few days. Tonight we are hosted a debate between MSU student representatives of the Obama, McCain, ad Nader campaigns. But this was only a precursor to the big election coverage we are going to have tomorrow. The debate was broadcasted live on Spartantv.cas.msu.edu starting at 8pm. It lasted a little over an hour and was definitely interesting. I would encourage any undecided voters to go check it out on the SpartanTV website if they missed it tonight so they can get ready to vote TOMORROW!

Journal 40

How will this RE/mix help you with your major and with your writing?
This assignment will help me further continue to learn the ins and outs of video editing, which is important for my degree. Companies are looking for journalists that can do more than just write these days. They want people who can go out and put together their own video sequences, in addition to other talents like designing and blogging. As for my writing, I will have to write a creative story for the movie, which I haven’t done in a while, so this assignment will hopefully help me brush up on those skills.

Questions/Concerns
By this point I have put together my fair share of videos, so I don’t expect much difficultly on the technological side of things. When it comes to writing a story and getting people to be in the movie, I can possibly see some challenges. Right now I don’t have much of an idea for the story, but with a little brainstorming, possibly with a few friends I should be able to put something decent together. Finding people to be in the movie won’t necessarily be that difficult as a few of my friends will probably be interested in helping out. Finding time when we can all get together will be a bit more of a challenge though, but not something that can’t be solved with some planning.

Journal 39

How will your new mode strongly illustrate your intended purpose?
Because of the way I hope to promote the software in the movie, I hope that my intended purpose will not be immediately obvious. This movie is going to bring open source software into the story in more of a product placement style. By doing it like this, it will not be immediately obvious to the viewer that I am specifically endorsing the applications and because of that they will hopefully be more compelled to look into the software more.

What specifically makes this new mode the most effective in representing your content?
The movie is the most effective way of representing the content because it not only informs the viewer about the benefits of using open source software, but also excites them. The software will be used in the story to solve problems very easily, thereby promoting it without actually saying “use this software” or something along those lines.

Journal 38

Materials Needed
Putting together “Open Source: The Movie” will require a few items. Most importantly I will need a camcorder, computer, editing software, some type of compelling story, and people to play roles in the movie. I will also of course need my article for information about the software I am going to be promoting in the movie. I have all of the hardware and info required to put this together, but as of now I do not have any story put together or people who can appear in the movie.

Key Questions

How will your new mode address your old and new audiences?
As stated above, my new mode will address my audience in a way that is cannot be achieved in a simple article. The movie I believe will not only interest college students, but get them excited about Open Source software because of the way it is portrayed in the movie.

Journal 37

Planning Guide:
Original Background
The assignment I have chosen as the subject of this RE/mix project is my first article. The article was about the benefits of Open Source software and it was aimed towards college students. The purpose for writing the original article was to inform college students on how easy-to-use and customizable Open Source software is in hopes to get them to use it instead of more expensive paid alternatives.

New Background
The new mode I hope to create for this topic is a engaging movie that promotes to software. I am planning on making more of a “epic” type movie, with a back story, possibly a spoof of a popular movie, that will promote the products without it being blatantly obvious. These types of movies are popular with my audience of college students and I feel will therefore be able to draw them in, keep their attention, all while promoting the topic.

Journal 36

The research paper is due tomorrow. As I am almost done now, I thought I should look back a reflect on what happened. I had a few problems with the paper throughout the process of creating it. The biggest hurtle was, well actually writing it. My procrastination almost prevailed again, by that I mean I basically didn't really get down to writing the actual paper until this week. I had kept up with all of the mini assignments that went along with the paper, but when it actually came down to writing it, I put it off a little. But I got it to a semi-finished state the other day and with the comment I got in class today I think I can finish this off pretty easily.

Journal 35

Abstract: The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the site of the worst nuclear disasters ever. The plant is located in the Ukraine and was in full operation up until the accident in 1986. The accident occurred because of an emergency black out experiment the plant was testing. During the experiment, partially because of human error, the reactor they were testing (reactor 4) became unstable and eventually built up enough steam to create two large explosions. The explosions not only caused the plant to catch on fire, but also released large amounts of radioactive debris. This debris had negative affects on the health of the people and the environment around the plant. It caused diseases, including cancer and contaminated large portions of land. Since then though there have been advancements in nuclear reactor design and safety and it’s not likely that another disaster like this will happen again.

Journal 34

Kouts, H. (1988). Safety of Nuclear Plants in the United States. Radiation Research, 113(2), 211-216.

After Chernobyl, the safety of nuclear power plants came under great scrutiny and with the US having the most nuclear power plants at the time it was only natural that people would wonder if the same thing could happen here. This article aimed to convince people that the power plants in the US were in fact safe. The Radiation Research Society published this article in Radiation Research and even though there are no references at the end, I believe the article is credible because of who published it. Though this article is rather old, I believe the information in it is still very useful, and I plan to use it when talking about how another nuclear disaster like Chernobyl is being prevented today.

Journal 33

Well the annotated bibliography was turned in last friday, but I still had two more sources, and I suppose they can still count as writing, okay enough validating this to myself...

Baverstock, K. & Williams, D. (2006). The Chernobyl Accident 20 Years on: An Assessment of the Health Consequences and the International Response. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(9), 1312-1317.

This article is basically split up into two different sections. In the first part, the author covers the health consequences of Chernobyl from Psychological problems to birth defects and various types of cancer. In the second part the author goes over how the world responded to the disaster and what we can learn from it. This source comes from a scholarly journal and has both an appendix and references at the end of it, so I believe that it is credible. This article has a lot of information about the common illnesses caused by the disaster, which will be helpful when writing. Also since it goes more into the international response than other articles, I will use it when I talk about that.

Journal 32

Ahearne, J. (1987). Nuclear Power After Chernobyl. Science, 236(4802), 673-679.

This article starts out by covering how the reactors in soviet nuclear plants work. From there it goes into the events leading up to the Chernobyl disaster. It ends off by talking about how the disaster affected not just the Soviet Union, but also the world. This document is credible to me because it comes from a scholarly journal and makes sure to reference the information used at the end. Since this article has a well-organized section about the events leading up to the disaster I will mostly be using it for that purpose, but also for how Chernobyl affected the United States.

Journal 31

Nuclear Energy Agency. (2002). Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts. Retrieved from http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/reports/2003/nea3508-chernobyl.pdf

This document focuses on the health impacts of the Chernobyl disaster. It goes through the release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere shortly after the explosion, the dose of radiation people attained, and how that caused various diseases. Also the document looks at the environmental effects of the disaster. This document is credible to me because it is coming from an agency specializing in nuclear energy and also because of its references page. I plan to use this document to talk about the health of people involved in the disaster and how the environment around Chernobyl was effected and forced to adapt.

Journal 30

Vainrub, E. (2006). Twenty Years After The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Retrieved from http://radefx.bcm.edu/chernobyl/english/Chernobyl20yrsOn-English.pdf

This article, much like the previous source listed, covers many aspects of the disaster. What differentiates is from the last source though is that it gives a lot of numbers and statistics, which I believe are a critical part of a research paper. This article is credible for many reasons, for starters it comes from an educational website (.edu), it was written by an expert in the field with a PhD, and finally as with any credible source, it lists references at the end. I plan to use this article mainly to get statistics and figures to support that will support some of the statements I will make in the paper.

Journal 29

Well it's time to start pulling some double duty with these journals. It's annotated bibliography time...

Nuclear Energy Institute. (1997). NEI Source Book (5th ed.). Retrieved from http://www.insc.anl.gov/neisb/neisb5/

This document is not specifically based upon Chernobyl, but nuclear power in the former Soviet Union in general. It is quite lengthy so I am focusing in mostly on what it has to say about nuclear energy in the Ukraine, where Chernobyl is located. The document basically covers every aspect of the Chernobyl disaster in addition to covering soviet reactor design with schematics. The reason I know that this is a credible source is because the document is coming from a government agency and also because the document has a list of resources and everyone involved in its creation. I am most likely going to be using this source a lot because of how complete it is, but also a lot when describing the design of the reactor and why it failed.

Journal 28

I just got out of my drawing class, and man I have to say, what a day this was. It may have started at about 1pm, but it was still long... Let me give you a brief rundown of what happened today. I woke up at around 12:30, about 3 hours later than I was planning. I got out of bed and sat on my futon and watched TV for about an hour until I could start making coherent thoughts, yeah it takes me a while to wake up. So then I did a little more researching for my paper and put together a brief outline of everything I want to hit in the paper. Next was your class, which actually wasn't bad. After you let us out I went back to my dorm and ate my first real meal of the day, I had had a poptart earlier, but that hardly counts as a meal. I then worked on my drawing homework which was due in 2 hours, yay procrastination! Then drawing class came, it's a 3 hour class, but today it seemed like eternity. Usually in the class I can look at a new concept and use it, but today I just couldn't grasp what we were doing. But it's all over now, all I need to do is finish up my Visual Representation for tomorrow.

Journal 26

So I feel really lazy right about now. I slept through yet another math class this morning, but this time it was an actual lecture at 8am. This is not good. Right about now I am thinking that I probably shouldn't have stayed up until about 2:30am with my suitemates. Yeah bad decision. But what am I going to do about it now, like they say what's done is done. Thank god the notes are online, and usually my professor goes over what he taught the day before briefly in the first 5 minutes of class. Anyway, moving on from that... I have been thinking of how I am going to start my paper. I am pretty sure I have found enough resources to at least start it, I still need more info on new safety imposed to prevent another explosion. I suppose I should make an outline of some sort to organize all the information I want to hit on, yeah that's what I'll do.

Journal 26

I woke up at 1:30pm today. This is a problem. Why you ask? I had a math class a 11:30. Now you see? I missed a class. This is something I have done, well never until now of course. It wasn't an actual math lecture so I really haven't missed out on much. It was a math recitation, which is basically like an hour long review session. I am kind of pissed though because for one I really don't like that class too much so I tend to drift off during lectures so the recitation usually helps. And two, if I were to attend 90% of the recitations then I would have gotten extra credit at the end of the year. But since missing one recitation equals less than 90%, I have no hope of getting any extra credit, which I could probably use.

Journal 25

So I have been doing a little more researching for my paper. For the most part it has been going pretty well. I have been finding mostly scholarly resources through the online resources through the MSU library. There are a few concerns though, many of the articles would probably be considered outdated. This is a problem because many of those articles I find very useful for explaining my topic of Chernobyl. I would think that since the accident happened all the way back in 1986 that resources from even around that time would be very useful, but obviously not current in some areas. I have also been searching through government sites as you suggested and I am finding a wealth of information there to, including pictures which will be helpful friday.

Journal 24

Okay so here is my part of the deal for canceling class. If you were wondering, the Obama rally was awesome. I didn't actually get into the rally to see him though because I was busy working on Spartan TV, which actually may have been more exciting to me than actually getting into the rally to see Obama. If you didn't know, Spartan TV is the internet television station started by a few people from Focal Point, the broadcast news program for Michigan state. The station is done through a site called Mogulus.com and is on 24/7, though most of it right now comes from a few hours of programming that we have looped over and over. So I have noticed that this day is too long to just talk about in one journal entry to for the rest read Monday's entry, yeah I know, procrastination at its finest, but to be honest I couldn't think of what to write on Monday so I kind of put it off for a little bit.

Journal 23

Today was the first taping of Focal Point. If you didn't know, Focal Point in the broadcast news program that is put out every two weeks. If you read my journal entry from last Wednesday then you already know all about the practice taping that I went through. I went got to the studio a few minutes before 6pm, I didn't have to help set up like last time and come in at 5pm. When I got there I was kind of worried because I still wasn't totally certain on what I would be doing, and from what they told me the taping would start right around 6pm, but as it turns out, boy was I wrong. I think we actually started taping at around 8pm and finally finished at 9pm, even though it should have only taken about half an hour because we record shows live to tape which means we treat it as a live performance, but as you know we're only human and this is the first time we are all doing this together so there are bound to be screw-ups. So to end this off quickly the taping went pretty well and I got everything that I had questions about answered before the show started so it ended up going well for me and I am excited for the next show in two weeks.

Journal 22

Today I am going to try something different, I am actually going to use this journal for a real purpose, not that my random ramblings aren't a purpose. Today I am going to talk about the new assignment we went over in class. I picked Chernobyl for the topic of my research paper. I am actually very excited to learn more about this topic. I have always been interested in how something as catastrophic to not only the Ukraine but the whole world happened and how people are making sure that it never happens again. So to start this out I am going to lay out what I hope to learn and write about in the paper. There are so many ways to look at a disaster like this and I hope to cover as many as them as I can so my paper could be possibly useful to others than myself. First I will focus on how the accident happened, this is an obvious one, but it seems like a good way to lead into the paper. I will also hit on how it affected the surrounding people and environment. And finally and this is a biggie to me, I want to focus on how it is being prevented today since from the little researching I did today there are still reactors identical to the ones used in chernobyl being used today.

Journal 21

I am going to be honest, sometimes I fall behind on my journal entries, with this one it is painfully obvious that I didn't write it on Monday. But anyway on with the Obama rally. Spartan TV had set up their base camp I guess you would call it at the Music building, within ear shot of the rally, which was helpful later. The plan was to report on the happenings in the line which basically stretched across campus and then later stream the rally live to anyone watching. So for the first few hours we would have a camera pointed at the line and then do little live hits talking about what was happening. We would also the the camera around and find interesting stories like a school teacher that brought his whole class to the rally. We also interviewed the small group of McCain supporters who actually had a press secretary, intense right? Then finally came the rally. We had cameras set up right in front with the rest of the press so we got an awesome shot. At the peak we had about 180 people watching the station, which for the launch was a really good number.

Journal 20

Project's due tomorrow and for once I have basically finished everything and not waited until the last minute. There are still a few things I would like to do to finish up my reflection based on some of the suggestions I got today in class. Right now the articles are basically just words in a word document, but I hope to get some graphics or pictures into it. I have a lot of experience in laying out pages and making graphics from being the graphics editor on my school newspaper last year. I don't know if I will have time to do all that though. I just got out of my drawing class and I unfortunately have to study for another math quiz tomorrow so I won't have time to do any of that tonight. On top of that, I am going home tomorrow and my ride will be here at 10am, right when I get out of my journalism class. And it is going to take me to port huron first to meet up with my real ride who is at his boat, so I might be cutting it close to the 5pm deadline and might not be able to get everything done, I guess only time will tell though.

Journal 19

I finished the edits on my articles before class today and the reflection is going well, just to give you a little update. But this is not going to be the focus of my journal entry. I just got back from a practice taping for Focal Point. Focal Point is the broadcast news program for Michigan State. Because of my background in putting a variety of graphics together for my high school, I was put in charge of running the graphics for the show. I showed up at the studio at 5pm, 1 hour earlier than the anchors, etc. with some of the other crew to set up the set, cameras, etc. Then after a little while we started trying to get through the show. There weren't many graphics because they had just switched to a new news system and we were basing the show off the last show from last year, so there wasn't much to do, hopefully it will be more interesting on the real show. I will also hopefully putting together some graphics for the show which is what I really want to do.

Journal 18

The article project is due friday, uh-oh. It's not that I having problems with anything right now, my reflection is going pretty well, what I have done of it at least. Based on the suggestions I got last thursday in class I decided to do a little reorganizing and re-prioritizing on both of my articles. For starters, both my articles basically started out the same way by talking about the process of designing open source applications, but as I was reading it on thursday we noticed that college students probably don't really care how it was designed, businesses would because they might be basing the operations of their company on these apps. So instead I decided to focus on the apps themselves in the college student article. Also with the business article I will give some application recommendations at the end to get a little more specific. I haven't done it yet, because to be honest I was lazy all weekend (gotta stop doing that). But don't worry it will get done.

Journal 17

Well it's Monday, and we all know what that means, back to the grind... Not that I don't enjoy going to all my classes, I like them, well most of them. I just got done with my morning classes and I have some bad news, on friday I have my first Statistics test. Up until now we have had 2 quizzes, the first one I aced with flying colors, while the second one, well let's just say I didn't do so hot on. It's okay though because the quizzes are only worth a small portion of our grade and there are a lot more of them. Anyway, I really need to crack down and study for this because there are only 4 tests in the class so I guess you could say they are somewhat influential to my grade... I don't want to be one of those people that did really good all throughout high school, and then just dropped off the deep end when they went to college. Although this is not as bad as some other people and I am probably just overreacting.

Journal 16

Man what a stressful day today was. The reason is that today was finally the day that all my procrastination caught up with me. I have been putting off assignments in my math class, my drawing class, but not yours of course... That was sarcasm, it doesn't come off well on the interwebs. I had actually put off finishing off my two articles until thursday morning. On top of that I put off my sketchbook drawings for my drawing class. One of the assignments was a "2-Hour" drawing that actually only lasted about 45 minutes, shh don't tell my art teacher, lol. And then on top of all of that I had to study for my statistics quiz that I have tomorrow. I gotta say I don't think I have ever put off this much work, I seriously didn't have any time to do anything fun today. It's finally over though, and I am going to make sure that this never happens again because  I can't deal with this much stress.

Journal 15

If you didn't know, I can be a bit of a procrastinator and all this week I have been putting some stuff off that I probably shouldn't have. And well as you can assume this was not the best decision I have made. The thing is, I got so used to not working as hard in school as I usually did my senior year of high school, I know typical Senioritus right? Well now that I have been at college I am finding it hard to get back into the swing of things especially with all the easy distractions I am surrounded by every day.

I guess though that I'll just have to buckle down and get stuff done and work harder so this won't happen again, which I think it unfortunately will, but hopefully not as bad. Anyway I need to get to work now.

Journal 14

Well I just don't have any idea what to write about today... I guess I'll just start talking about what I usually do when I don't have anything to talk about. Technology. As you can assume, I am a bit of a mac fanboy, I have been using macs for about 3 years now and have never thought of switching back well to windows at least. There have been a few times where I thought of switching to Linux. Truth be told though, Linux is fun and all, but it seems like too much work to be used as an everyday computer. Though this may sound like a cheesy line from an apple commercial, but with a Mac everything "just works." On the other hand with windows most of the time, everything "just works, maybe, eventually, with some work." Okay that might be a little harsh, but that's the way I have found things to work most of the time when I am using Windows, which is only when I have to.

Journal 13

I hate mondays, says Garfield while still laying in his cat bed after giving his alarm clock a good smashing. Why does Garfield hate mondays? I don't know, why is he even getting up? He doesn't have a job or any type of school to go to. It doesn't make sense. If anything, I should hate mondays, which I do, why? because I have the pleasure of having two, count them, two morning classes on Mondays, first Math and then Journalism, I happen to really enjoy the Journalism class so that is not that bad, but waking up for the Math class is a really big pain, in fact when I get off classes I usually end up taking a nap to make up some sleep before your class. Well I guess there is nothing I can do about it now, but it still sucks...

Journal 12

So it's September 11th and for the first year since the attacks happened, people aren't really making as big of deal out of it as they usually do each year. Which I guess is good and bad at the same time. It's good that people aren't making as big of deal anymore because it was almost like the anniversary was being exploited. But it's also bad to think that Americans have forgotten about something so devastating to so many people so quickly. On another note about september 11th, what is going on with the rebuilding of the towers? There has been a plan in place for years now, but it seems like it has been taking them forever to get anything done on it. I mean this is suppose to be a symbol of how strong America is and how we can bounce back after a terrible tragedy like that, but it doesn't seem as effective the longer and longer it takes.

Journal 11

Well it's Wednesday and I am sitting here watching one of my favorite shows, Mythbusters. I don't know if you have seen the show before, I am sure you have at least heard of or about it, I mean who hasn't. Anyway this show is just downright awesome and one of the greatest show ideas in a while. Think about how myths were though of before this show was around, if you were confronted with a myth you were pretty certain wasn't true and the people or peoples you are talking to disagreed with you, you really had no argument to back you up, but now with the advent of this show you can end a argument on most myths with one simple phrase, Mythbusters. And people will believe you most of the time because they either watch or have heard about the show. To be honest sometimes when I think a myth is untrue I will just say that Mythbusters disproved it, even if they really didn't, and people will believe me.

Journal 10

I've been in college for about 3 weeks now, and I have noticed that a lot of the excitement has started to wear down. With all of those thoughts slowly getting out of my head I am starting to think about all my friends and family I have at home and how I am really starting to miss them. I think I am going to go home this weekend and see some of them. It's been 3 weeks, I've been here long enough to justify going home for a weekend, lol. And also I am joining a Intramural Roller Hockey Team so I need to head home and pick up some equipment to play anyway. If you haven't noticed I am trying to justify going home to myself, and I think I am doing pretty well. I do have a lot of homework that should probably get finished over the weekend, so I am going to have to try to fit that in with hanging out with friends.

Journal 9

In my last journal entry I talked briefly about the new iPods that came out, quickly referring to the new Genius feature in iTunes. At that point in time I had not yet upgraded to iTunes 8 so I didn't have a chance to actually use the feature and didn't know much about it aside from what I saw in the apple keynote. Now I have been using Genius for a few days now, and I have to say that it is the best feature added into iTunes since I don't know the iTunes store itself. I have downloaded so many songs that I probably would have never even thought of downloading because of genius suggesting songs to me in it's sidebar as I listen to music. Now this can also have a bit of a drawback for me. See over the past few days I have downloaded way to many songs, lol, because they are just right there and so easy to download. So I guess I will have to start showing some discretion before I download with genius so I don't go broke.

Journal 8

So new iPods came out today, and woah. If you have yet to notice yet, I am quite a bit of a Mac fanboy so I get pretty excited when things like this happen. I watched the whole keynote that Steve Jobs gave at his special event. Ok now on to the ipods. The biggest change in the lineup comes in the iPod nano. This is now it's 4th generation. The biggest change is how it has gone back to it's tall and skinny design with a long display that still provides a decent video watching mode. Other than that and the addition of Genius, which is a new iTunes feature that not only suggests songs to you based on your music library, but also can compile playlists that will fit together seamlessly with one click. The new iPod touch also supports this new feature in addition to dropping in price and getting a new redesign with a few ascetic changes like it being thinner, gaining volume controls on the side like the iPhone and also gaining an internal speaker for "casual listening."

Journal 7

So I have this drawing class every Tuesday and Thursday from 6pm to 9pm. When I signed up for the class I thought it wouldn't be bad, but now after being through a few classes I would have to say that it stinks. Not so much the time of the class, I mean 6pm to 9pm is kinda sucky, but the biggest problem is how long the class is. It's almost 3 hours and every class feels like an eternity. We do get breaks every hour for 10 minutes or so because we can't be sitting down while we are drawing, but even with those the class is just too much. I would rather have the class every day of the week for 1 hour or so than having it the two days for so long. Hopefully it'll get better as time goes on.

Journal 6

In my last journal I made a brief reference to a job I had over the summer. You might not have thought twice about it when you were reading over it, but I think you will think about it twice now when I tell you what it was. Over the summer, I worked at a cemetery. Yeah that's right, a cemetery, jewish cemetery to be exact. Now I know the first thing you went to when I said that, you immediately thought "wow you're a grave-digger?" No I wasn't that's not the only job that a person can have at a cemetery if you didn't know. Though over the course of the summer I did help dig about 4 graves, my actual job title was just general maintenance, which meant most of the time I was cutting grass with a push mower. It was a lot of work, but I gotta say the people there were great and I am missing working there.

Journal 5

I am on my way back from up north and man was it a great weekend. For starters, I finally was able to ride my brother's 4-wheeler. I hadn't been riding it up to now for two reasons. One, and this is kinda a big one, my brother didn't want me riding it, lol. And two, it has a manual transmission which I had no idea how to use until I finally learned how to drive a stick at my job this summer. Another great thing was that my cousin Kevin decided to come up for the weekend too, which is always a fun experience. Besides all of that, my family and I finally were able to do something we have been wanting to do since we got the place. We were finally able to go tubing down the river that runs on the back of our property. It didn't work out as well as we planned though, one the bugs were just atrocious and two the river was really shallow and cold this year so there were a number of occasions where we bottomed out and had to walk down the river until it got deeper again.

Journal 4

Well my first week of college is winding down and as exciting as all of this has been, I am excited to leave, lol. Well not really I mean it's kinda weird to be leaving home already, but I'm not really going home, I am going up north to our place in Marion for Labor Day weekend. So I guess you could just say that I am really going on Vacation which doesn't sound so lame, well I guess going home wouldn't be that lame, but going home after only a week of school is definitely something not everyone does. I haven't been able to get up north much this summer, so I can't wait to get up and maybe ride some 4-wheelers, maybe go to the beach, if it's not too cold lol. Well anyway see everyone bright and early tuesday morning.

Journal 3

I have been watching a lot of podcasts lately. Podcasts are about the most awesome thing to come out of the internet. Most of the podcasts I watch are on a internet television network called Revision 3. The network has been around for a few years now starting with it's flagship program Diggnation which is based off submissions made on the social bookmarking website Digg.com. Over the years though the network has grown larger by adding some of their own original programs and by buying up some other separate podcasts like Wine Library.tv and EpicFu. From this point it looks like there is no stopping Revision 3, and that makes me happy not only because I love podcasts, but because the bigger the network gets, the more it's like an actual TV network TechTv that got bought up by comcast a few years back and totally destroyed just so the G4 network could have one show out of all the other good ones.

Journal 2

I don't have classes until 11:30, and man is that a good thing, because I had a hard time sleeping last night. See I live in East Holden and if you were unaware, there are train tracks running right next to the dorm with a sidewalk across the tracks to the commuter lot. Now you might be asking, well what's the problem? The problem is that trains will come by 3-4 times a night and blow their horn at full blast a lot of times for a little simple sidewalk that I am sure if someone saw a train coming for it would probably decide to wait. I understand that the drivers are just following protocol, but that doesn't change how annoying it is when you are trying to fall asleep and every time you almost do a train comes by and blows their horn. Well I guess there is nothing I can really do about it, but ranting about it does help, lol...

Journal 1

Let's see, what to write about. Well I guess  I can do the typical thing and talk about my first week of college, yeah I'll do that. So anyway at this point I have been through the first week of college and I gotta say, this is going a lot better than I thought it would be. I had been stressing about college for the few weeks before move-in day mostly because things that I saw in movies and on TV. The problem was that mainstream media makes college seem like it is going to be super hard and will no way resemble anything I did in High School. But now that I have been through a full week of classes I have to say that it is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Even living in a dorm is actually kind of exciting. And as for not being like High School that is true in many ways, but some things have stayed the same. Yeah I don't go to class every day for 7 hours straight, but the class length has increased at all for me. Also I was always under the impression that college professors were mean and all they wanted to do is see you fail, but that is another thing that is totally wrong, every professor I have had so far is really nice and exciting and wants to help you out any way they can, as long as you put forth the effort to ask for help.