Monday, January 26, 2004
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 14
I think everything I just wrote for my fourteeth blog entry got deleted somehow so I'm going to add another entry just to be sure. Just for reference, the other one was kind of long and I'd be upset if I had to write it all again. Basically it was talking a little bit about the final project and what I liked and didn't like about it. Didn't like all the definitions or the timeline that we had to construct for it. But I did like researching about Time Travel. Gave me a few extra points to make when arguing if it can or can't exist. I had finished my other blog wishing everybody a happy break before spring semester. Hope everybody gets a lot of rest, cause when school starts up again, we're gonna wish we had more time off.
I think everything I just wrote for my fourteeth blog entry got deleted somehow so I'm going to add another entry just to be sure. Just for reference, the other one was kind of long and I'd be upset if I had to write it all again. Basically it was talking a little bit about the final project and what I liked and didn't like about it. Didn't like all the definitions or the timeline that we had to construct for it. But I did like researching about Time Travel. Gave me a few extra points to make when arguing if it can or can't exist. I had finished my other blog wishing everybody a happy break before spring semester. Hope everybody gets a lot of rest, cause when school starts up again, we're gonna wish we had more time off.
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 14
It suddenly dawned on me here at 2:00 in the moring while I'm putting the finishing touches on my class web page that I had not entered a fourteenth entry to my class blog. I wasn't really sure what to write about in today's entry because we didn't have class today. Instead, we were graced with a snow day and allowed to stay home from school. Hopefully, everybody slept until about 5:00 pm like I did and then went out and played in the snow.
Anyway, since we didn't have anything to write about class today, I wanted to take a few moments to reflect upon our final class project - the science fiction website. First of all I have to say that Dreamweaver is a great tool. Anybody who wants to design websites and is just getting started should really look into this program. It makes designing fast, easy, and efficient. As for the actual class project, there were a few things that I wasn't crazy about putting into this website. I thought it was okay to have a few definitions of science fiction. Everybody should have an understanding of the term, but to look for over 15 different definitions I thought was a little much. It gets to a point where you have so many definitions already that you just don't care anymore. The different websites explaining about your topic is understandable as well. The timeline was just a waste of time in my opinion. I think I had more history on the timeline than I had information about science fiction. And to add a whole page just for that seemed stupid. It also seems like a few other things were thrown in there just to add stuff that each student should have in their project. Overall however, I enjoyed working on it. Gave me a chance to look at a lot of cool websites pertaining to Time Travel, and now I have better points to argue when I'm arguing either for or against it. Can't go wrong with that.
So, having said that, I conclude my final blog entry and hope that I will recieve a good grade on the project and in the class. Everybody else, have a great break! We're going to need it before Spring semester.
It suddenly dawned on me here at 2:00 in the moring while I'm putting the finishing touches on my class web page that I had not entered a fourteenth entry to my class blog. I wasn't really sure what to write about in today's entry because we didn't have class today. Instead, we were graced with a snow day and allowed to stay home from school. Hopefully, everybody slept until about 5:00 pm like I did and then went out and played in the snow.
Anyway, since we didn't have anything to write about class today, I wanted to take a few moments to reflect upon our final class project - the science fiction website. First of all I have to say that Dreamweaver is a great tool. Anybody who wants to design websites and is just getting started should really look into this program. It makes designing fast, easy, and efficient. As for the actual class project, there were a few things that I wasn't crazy about putting into this website. I thought it was okay to have a few definitions of science fiction. Everybody should have an understanding of the term, but to look for over 15 different definitions I thought was a little much. It gets to a point where you have so many definitions already that you just don't care anymore. The different websites explaining about your topic is understandable as well. The timeline was just a waste of time in my opinion. I think I had more history on the timeline than I had information about science fiction. And to add a whole page just for that seemed stupid. It also seems like a few other things were thrown in there just to add stuff that each student should have in their project. Overall however, I enjoyed working on it. Gave me a chance to look at a lot of cool websites pertaining to Time Travel, and now I have better points to argue when I'm arguing either for or against it. Can't go wrong with that.
So, having said that, I conclude my final blog entry and hope that I will recieve a good grade on the project and in the class. Everybody else, have a great break! We're going to need it before Spring semester.
Friday, January 23, 2004
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 13
We spent most of the day working on our short stories in class. Working in a group of five is fairly hard as we all had separate ideas of what to do. However, I think we also got more ideas out there as to what we wanted to do. None of us think that the story is absolutely brilliant, but it's something we enjoy all together. We're proud of it, and hopefully everyone else will enjoy it as well.
On that note, I wish everybody a great weekend.
We spent most of the day working on our short stories in class. Working in a group of five is fairly hard as we all had separate ideas of what to do. However, I think we also got more ideas out there as to what we wanted to do. None of us think that the story is absolutely brilliant, but it's something we enjoy all together. We're proud of it, and hopefully everyone else will enjoy it as well.
On that note, I wish everybody a great weekend.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 12
I am still not a fan of William Gibson's writing style and I don't think I ever will be. It's just way to confusing to actually comprehend. Althought I enjoyed the short story we read last night better than Neuromancer, I only credit this to the fact that it was 15 pages long.
On another note, we watched Trekkies in class today. While it was interesting enough to keep my interest for the past hour and a half - I wasn't a fan. I just thought the people in the film went WAY to far with everything they were doing. It's one thing to be a fan, but it's something else to be the person who decorates their entire office dentist office with Star Trek memorobilia. I'll go over it more in my response tonight.
I am still not a fan of William Gibson's writing style and I don't think I ever will be. It's just way to confusing to actually comprehend. Althought I enjoyed the short story we read last night better than Neuromancer, I only credit this to the fact that it was 15 pages long.
On another note, we watched Trekkies in class today. While it was interesting enough to keep my interest for the past hour and a half - I wasn't a fan. I just thought the people in the film went WAY to far with everything they were doing. It's one thing to be a fan, but it's something else to be the person who decorates their entire office dentist office with Star Trek memorobilia. I'll go over it more in my response tonight.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 11
Finished reading Neuromancer last night. I thought the story was terrible. It was so incredibly boring that I just couldn't pay attention to it at all. Hopefully I'll never have to read it again. The only other thing we did in class today was talk about The Matrix. This was hard for me as well cause there really aren't any questions I have left about the movie since I've analyzed it for five or six different class now.
Our group is meeting tonight to get a good head start on the short story though. We'll see what we can come up with.
Finished reading Neuromancer last night. I thought the story was terrible. It was so incredibly boring that I just couldn't pay attention to it at all. Hopefully I'll never have to read it again. The only other thing we did in class today was talk about The Matrix. This was hard for me as well cause there really aren't any questions I have left about the movie since I've analyzed it for five or six different class now.
Our group is meeting tonight to get a good head start on the short story though. We'll see what we can come up with.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 10
After a long three day weekend of reading Neuromancer I have come to one simple conclusion. That is that the book could be one of the most boring I have ever read. Never have I had to read so many paragraphs over again and again, and still I wasn't able to understand the story. After reading it I had to go online to figure out exactly what I had just read. It's a shame, cause the summary makes the book sound incredibly interesting, yet I just can't get past the incredible dullness of the detail added into the book. Everything is described so vividly that it started to drive me up the wall after awhile. Unfortunately I'm going to have to read the rest of the book tonight. Maybe my opinion will change a little bit.
Wanted to take this moment however to say that I'm not really sure I did my response paper on Neuromancer correctly. I did not see the email we had recieved and just wrote a typical response. I guess you could say that the theme I wrote about is the dystopia. But I wanted to throw in some questions here on my blog to make sure I did the assignment right. I had already asked a few question, one being why there are so many references to pink items in the story. The second question I wanted to ask was how the Matrix is portrayed exactly in this novel. I understand what it is played like in the movie "The Matrix" but wasn't sure if this was exactly the same thing. Was hoping somebody could enlighten me on it. My third question would have to be why he killed Dean. I know I haven't exactly understood every aspect of the story, but this part really confused me. Wasn't sure why he had to kill him. My final question would have to be what all these events are leading up to. So far in the story, it feels like it has skipped around a lot and I'm not exactly sure what it's all getting up to. Hopefully, I will be able to answer all of these questions either through the rest of the story or during a class discussion.
After a long three day weekend of reading Neuromancer I have come to one simple conclusion. That is that the book could be one of the most boring I have ever read. Never have I had to read so many paragraphs over again and again, and still I wasn't able to understand the story. After reading it I had to go online to figure out exactly what I had just read. It's a shame, cause the summary makes the book sound incredibly interesting, yet I just can't get past the incredible dullness of the detail added into the book. Everything is described so vividly that it started to drive me up the wall after awhile. Unfortunately I'm going to have to read the rest of the book tonight. Maybe my opinion will change a little bit.
Wanted to take this moment however to say that I'm not really sure I did my response paper on Neuromancer correctly. I did not see the email we had recieved and just wrote a typical response. I guess you could say that the theme I wrote about is the dystopia. But I wanted to throw in some questions here on my blog to make sure I did the assignment right. I had already asked a few question, one being why there are so many references to pink items in the story. The second question I wanted to ask was how the Matrix is portrayed exactly in this novel. I understand what it is played like in the movie "The Matrix" but wasn't sure if this was exactly the same thing. Was hoping somebody could enlighten me on it. My third question would have to be why he killed Dean. I know I haven't exactly understood every aspect of the story, but this part really confused me. Wasn't sure why he had to kill him. My final question would have to be what all these events are leading up to. So far in the story, it feels like it has skipped around a lot and I'm not exactly sure what it's all getting up to. Hopefully, I will be able to answer all of these questions either through the rest of the story or during a class discussion.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Literature of Science Fiction - Day 9
I'm going to spend this entire Blog entry talking about the ideas that we have come up with for our short story. The five of us started by doing exactly what the teacher said. We threw out absolutely every idea that we could come up with (good and bad). Once we had gotten about a list of ideas, we decided to start narrowing them down in a slow process. At the end, we came up with three basic ideas. We were going to go with either Robots created humans, time travel, or the alteration of a historical event. I'm proud to say that we actually didn't use any of these ideas, yet the helped us to get where we wanted to go with this idea. I don't really want to reveal what it's about, so all I can say is that it is about civilization being aliens. Have a great weekend everybody!
I'm going to spend this entire Blog entry talking about the ideas that we have come up with for our short story. The five of us started by doing exactly what the teacher said. We threw out absolutely every idea that we could come up with (good and bad). Once we had gotten about a list of ideas, we decided to start narrowing them down in a slow process. At the end, we came up with three basic ideas. We were going to go with either Robots created humans, time travel, or the alteration of a historical event. I'm proud to say that we actually didn't use any of these ideas, yet the helped us to get where we wanted to go with this idea. I don't really want to reveal what it's about, so all I can say is that it is about civilization being aliens. Have a great weekend everybody!
Thursday, January 15, 2004
Literatrue of Science Fiction - Day 8
Last night's homework was absolutely awful. The one story we read "Identifying The Object" was terrible. I have never been so confused by a story in my life. And the other one was really too short to even get an emotional feel to it. So I wasn't crazy about the reading.
In class today we watched the movie "Men In Black" which has always been one of my favorite movies. For my discussion paper on it, I wanted to go over the topic of symbolism, or more in general the "neurolizer." The passing of the neurolizer from Kay to Jay was a big deal and represents growth of Jay throughout the movie.
Another thing I wanted to suggest was the possibility of using the movie "Equilibrium" for maybe a future version of this class. I was able to watch this movie for the first time last night and wanted to give it some props. If you haven't seen it before, be sure to check it out.
Last night's homework was absolutely awful. The one story we read "Identifying The Object" was terrible. I have never been so confused by a story in my life. And the other one was really too short to even get an emotional feel to it. So I wasn't crazy about the reading.
In class today we watched the movie "Men In Black" which has always been one of my favorite movies. For my discussion paper on it, I wanted to go over the topic of symbolism, or more in general the "neurolizer." The passing of the neurolizer from Kay to Jay was a big deal and represents growth of Jay throughout the movie.
Another thing I wanted to suggest was the possibility of using the movie "Equilibrium" for maybe a future version of this class. I was able to watch this movie for the first time last night and wanted to give it some props. If you haven't seen it before, be sure to check it out.
