assignment two visual

After carefully reading through the assignment and going through all of the articles over the previous weekend I have come to learn a few things about the visual blog. I did not search for other blogs I simply just went to the listed links. Just from viewing those links you come to learn alot about the blogger. I particularly enjoyed the Cheezburger site. ICanhasCheezburger seems to be a site in which cats are the focal point but not just cats. These cats are put into funny situations. There is a picture of a cat hiding in a trash can in which the cat says something along the lines of I am just an unsuspecting trash can throw away your left over meat. I cracked up once I read that and could not help but to continue looking at the pictures which were comical. I do beleieve that pictures help to tell a story and that from looking at images in a web blog you do get some personal insight into what type of person the creator is. If we think about the cheezburger website for example we could assume that the creator has a fondness for cats and making them do silly things. Either that or the person is simply a comic who loves to have fun. Many assumptions can be made just from viewing an image as well as conclusions. When people put together their web blogs and import pictures and youtube videos they are trying to express them selves and their thoughts as well as their interests. One visual blog that I enjoy which may not be a blog is located at vote4amare.com in which the aformentioned NBA star has several videos of himself encouraging visitors to vote him into the All Star game. So blogs do not just tell a story the serve a purpose and that is to get something accomplished. Lastly in posting my very own blog for the first time I am still learning the ropes. Blogging is as foreign to me as the chinese language but I hope that to date my blog says that I am a huge sports fan especially of football. I am sure that most of my blogs will have some thing to do with sports and that you will learn that in my spare time I watch ESPN quite frequently. In fact I know more about what is happening in sports than in any other news medium out there. If you were to ask me what is happening in the world you would get a blank stare but if I was asked what major news happened in sports Id say Steelers are world champs, Nadal and Serena win the Australian open, and Michael Phelps is under scrutiny for recent bong related photos. What can I say I am the epitomy of a sports nut.

Historic Game

So by now if you have not noticed Im very fond of football. Im actually cringing as I write this because there will be no football until August which saddens me deeply. Last night's game will go down in history as one of the better super bowls whether you look at James Harrison's one hundred yard interception return, Larry Fitzgerald's amazing fourth quarter, or Big Ben connecting with Santonio Holmes for the game winning touch down. This game had all the drama, glitz, and glamour that make the super bowl the spectacle of the year. Though some of the commercials were questionable (see Macgyver spoof probably on youtube) there were definitely some laughs in between the drama. One that comes to mind is definitely the etrade commercials with the talking baby who called someone a shankapotamus. If you turned the game off after its conclusion then you more than likely missed it. There were also previews for yet another Fast and Furious movie and perhaps the more highly anticipated sequal to Transformers due out this summer. As a watched the drama unfold I sat and thought to myself about what it is that the Superbowl represents to me. These days I have jopined the copuntless fans who watch the event every year no matter if their team made it or not just because of the drama. I thought about the ads that are ran and the two million dollars spent to get a commercial slot during the game. I came to one conclusion sometime in my life I must somehow get involved with the Superbowl, whether I one day make it as an analyst on sportscenter or if I work for one of those companies that shells out the money to have their commercial ran. My long time dream is to be a sports writer and work my way to ESPN somehow but to be involved with the Superbowl would be a dream. Lastly I have to touch on what we witnessed last night and that was a team from Arizona that no one picked to do anything hold their own against a "scary" defense. The cards continued to fight and move the ball against what was labeled the best defense in the conference and even after the final touchdown they were moving the ball. Whose to say if Warner and Big Red did not have another minute or so the outcome could have been different. Now we have to wait a year to see what unfolds and if it is not apparent getting to the Superbowl is not easy. It will be easy to see how things unfold next year for the Cardinals will they bounce back and be just as good if not better or was this just a fluke season. I know one thing all eyes will be on Big Red and the rest of the nfl next year.

1st thoughts

It's officially up and running. This is my first thoughts on this blog site. I have to say it's exciting because I know about blogging but I have never actually blogged before except on myspace if that even counts. Those blogs were usually after a few hennessy and cokes any way so they were basically gibberish. My first thought is this the world has gone mad. In this day and age we have a black president the phoenix suns are on the snide and the cardinals... I repeat the cards are going to the super bowl. I never thought that I would see the cardinals achieve such great success and having a black president is a completely separate mile stone in itself. Has life just lost touch with reality and heres the crazy thing alot of people think the cards can actually win including me and Im a giants fan. I have to say that Im already enjoying having my own blog just because I can talk about this sort of thing or anything that I so desire. I am still in awe of what is happening in these United States we have had a black president for a week and everything is going smoothly and the cards are playing in the biggest spectacle of the year. Seriously change is good and let's see what happens next....

Mayhem and Cyberspace

First I have to start by saying those two articles were very interesting to read. The first article dates back to 1996 a time when I was still in middle school and this whole internet and cyberspace idea was still fairly new. What was a wiki back then if you would have asked me I probably would have called it something a female uses for her feminine hygene needs. None the less the article seems to challenge what was going on in America and foretell what is to come in the future. Sure enough over a decade has passed and now a days even a cell phone can access the web. You can use the web to get information on anything or even any one which is some what scary considering that people do enjoy their privacy. To me the article is quite wordy and seems to really just be a vision for what will happen in the future and in a way seems to be a rebellious cry for reasons that I do not fully understand. For whatever reason the author seems to be mad at America and vows that cyberspace can not be contained or stopped which to this point it really has not been. If I need to know how to to deal with an infant child who has a cough I can go and look it up on Web Md, if I want to know the score of the basketball game last night (Go devils!) I can look it up on asu's sports website. All of this is just a click away and it seems as though the web is ever changing becoming faster and more efficient on a daily basis. My question becomes is it possible for cyberspace to actually exist, in this technologically advanced age our brains want everything fast and easy. What if one day we make the machine so smart that like the matrix we are actually enslaved by the machines, the world wide web takes over and cyberspace rules with an iron fist? Of course this is all fantasy and I do not forsee it happening but the question is always out there what if?

The second article which I will briefly touch on seems to be another form of rebellion. I had never heard of the term culture jammer until today when I read this article and I must say the idea seems to be a dead one. Who are these people who come up with these parodies and where are they hiding. I have only been to San Francisco one time I do not recall seeing any billboards with this type of vandalism or exploitation of a company any where. I believe it is a form of protest to the mainstream media but to me its a phenomenon that is dead. I could be way off because for all I know there could be an entire culture of these "jammers" going on right now. I suppose that there are other ways to express this tactic such as screen print t-shirts or buttons, or things of that nature. However the idea is foreign to me. Most screen print t shirts have a positive message to this point (i.e.- the various Barack Obama shirts), but whose to say that in some way some of those shirts dont use that very same type of rebellion. In short I feel as though this idea was a good one to touch as an intro to the class as well as the first article because they both show just how far we as a society have come in terms of the digital age. I just spent forty minutes on my phone looking at a new dance and learning how to do it thanks to you tube. Ten years ago I would have had to wait for a video to come out.