Assessment #2

Since the assessment for week 7 that I posted to my blog on the 23rd of April I have been working on my sites every few days. I’m going to miss posting to them; every time I find something of interest or think of something to look up on the net, my first thought is that I can use whatever it is for MPI104!

Summarising the work completed since the 23rd of April:
- My blog has increased by 25 postings, taking the total to 47.
- My my Delicious account has increased by 36 to a total of 56 bookmarks, spread over 12 bundles.
- My Fickr account had 79 photos, then when it reached the maximum of (free account) 200 images, I had to delete a lot make way for new ones, taking its current total to 159 images which have been organized into 3 sets.

Functionally, changes to my blog include an updated sidebar that includes links to fellow MPI104-2007 students in Friends (most if not all); and a Favourite’s link. The site counter has been changed to enable me to access site statistics (details).

From an aesthetic perspective I did try other templates (see here) and alterations to my current template but found that the one I’m using is still the most aesthetically pleasing to me. I did, however, rearrange the sidebar contents into a more logical format, with Blog Archive at the top, instead of Friends, which has now moved to the bottom of the sidebar. I would like to be able to make the Friends section into a scrollable window, to reduce the physical size it takes up on the blog page, but am unable to work out how through “Customise” and I don’t know enough HTML to do it myself. I also added the RSS feed for my Delicious site.

Some of my more interesting links include a Those were the Days story in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3; a Mature Age rant; and a look at Sadomasochism.

Still interesting, but on a lighter note (pun unintended) there are the posts featuring The Piano Juggler; Phil Collins and a familiar tune by Queen.

Delicious appears to have no capabilities for improving your sites' aesthetics, except through function. By this I mean that by bundling tags and then collapsing their categories, the site is visually tidier.

The same can be done with “Your Network” and “Your Fans”, all of which I’ve done.


I’m unable to work out how to clear “Links saved for you by other people” – I tried saving all of them and then deleting the ones I didn’t want from my bookmarks, but they still appear on the save for you page, stopping me from ‘tidying up’ this page. The Subscriptions page can be neatened by creating labels for types of Subscriptions and grouping them appropriately.


I believe my Delicious account meets the 'interestingness' criteria because of the breadth of websites that are bookmarked: comedy, sculpture, tutorials that can help me in my studies, research that has enabled me to integrate Delicious into my workflow. Additionally I have 1 of a kind bookmarks such as Joseph Merrick, jewellery making and The Eagles.

Flickr has provided me with a challenge of sorts; by uploading images for my GRP224-2007 workflow (which I initially perceived to be a good thing) I discovered that the maximum number of photos for a free account is 200, leaving me with the decision as to which photos could be deleted over which ones I really wanted to keep. My current total of 159 images has been put into 3 sets (General and downloaded, Craft and Uni related), facilitating searches. My current uni courses GRP224-2007 and MPI104-2007 both have images uploaded to Flickr as part of them.

Aesthetically I chose to have the sets present in the home page,


rather than have all small images, which I used when working on the site earlier.


My Flickr interestingness is due to the same eclecticism that is present in my Blog and Delicious sites. I have images of my crafts which I feel are interesting to other like-minded crafters. A comparison of the student-rated aesthetically pleasing Technorati top 100 is of interest to members of MPI104-2007. I have design-related images, images of contemporary musicians, animals and images that are simply pleasing.

While I don't believe that I know the full potential of these sites, I've enjoyed discovering their applicability, and time permitting, will continue to use them, especially Delicious whose usability potential for students is astounding.

RSS reader account

I looked into both Bloglines and Google Reader and couldn't work out what, if any, the differences were between them. At first I though it might have been the ability of Bloglines to add images, but was able to do so in Google, so that can't be it. I decided to go with Google Feeder becasue of the linking between Google products.
I can't seem to link my Google Feeder account to anything because the URL is generic - it doesn't link to me specifically. I think this is becasue as a feeder account it's not designed to be read by anybody but the account holder. I did note that ability to email items from the account's page though, so maybe this is in lieu of a URL link.

assessment #1

Finally… I have spent a great deal of time in the last few weeks catching up to where I should be in MPI104-2007. At least, I hope I’ve caught up!

I have 21 posts in my blog account, plus a Technorati link, a counter, sidebar links to my flickr and delicious accounts and a YouTube video bar that I’ve set to play music. I have also imbedded photos from the net and from flickr. The items on the assessment checklist have all been completed.

My flickr account has 79 photos. I had trouble with organising these because of the free-account limit of 3 sets; I’d already created 2 for GRP224-2007 as part of my submission for an assignment. When I tried to combine them I ran into difficulty and accidentally deleted an image. I’ll have to delete all images from 1 of the sets and re-upload them into the other. I’ll then divide the remaining photo’s I’ve already uploaded and those ready to upload into some sort of order. All images have been correctly tagged and the assessment checklist points accomplished.

The delicious account has 20 bookmarks, bundled tags, links for others and bookmarks to my blog and flickr accounts. All other checklist items from the assessment list have been completed.

All of my accounts have degrees of ‘interestingness’, although that is highly subjective and hard to quantify. I believe this is the case because of the eclectic nature of the material I have uploaded or posted. My blog, for example has information about extreme body modification, pavement art and The John Butler Trio. In addition to items of interest I have posted materials that will be of benefit to me over the course of my graphic design studies - animating in Photoshop.

Delicious really came to be useful for me, not only did I learn the basics of the interface, but I've been able to bookmark sites that I will actually be using this semester for another course. All items in the bundled tag refer to information relating to BMW - specifically its logo and identity. Additionally I've bookmarked information about creating vector art; also need for this semester. There are links to sites related to comedy, music and art.

Flickr is not as eclectic as my other 2 accounts- the time needed to resize, crop and retouch images has prevented me from uploading all that I'm intending to. In addition to the visual diary information for GRP224-2007, I have images for GRP223-2007 and photos from my own life. Already selected and scanned, but still to resize etc, are photos relating to my uni work in illustration and design and images of my scrapbooking and cardmaking.

Of the 3 sites we have used in the first 1/2 of this semester blogger has been the most fun, flickr the most work and delicious the most potentially useful.