Week Eight: Academic Research Project

TOPIC: Social Networking and Today's Youth

Many social networking sites set age restrictions (most often 13+). Children ignore these age requirements, exposing themselves to things such as cyber-bullying and sexual content. They also post personal information either on their profiles or through comments for anyone to see.

Who's to blame? With the new free application craze, more and more games are popping up on social networking sites that appeal to younger children (for example, crazie cabby, wild ones, cafe world, the infamous farmville), thus drawing in children younger than the required 13+.

Week Seven: Internet

On wikipedia, there are 280 social networking sites listed, and out of all those, i've heard of blogster, buzznet, cafemom, classmates.com, deviantART, facebook, flixster, flickr, friendster, gaiaonline, imeem, last.fm, linkedin, livejournal, myheritage, myspace, stickam, tumblr, twitter, and xanga--only twenty. The sites I've heard of that aren't listed are stickydrama and formspring, a current favorite for drama crazed teens. Absolutepunk, a music networking site, also wasn't listed. A site I have never heard of: Amie Street. It was created by Brown University students and serves as an online music store/social networking site.

I mainly use social networking just to keep in contact with friends, but I've found that it's seldom anything but trouble. Recently, after a low key falling out with some friends, I blocked the people involved to keep things calm (I didn't want to read their negative statuses about me, nor did I want them to twist my own statuses into something about them). This plan backfired. Hours after I did this, one of the girls involved found out and was extremely offended. She commented my best friends default picture with an insult directed towards me and tried to tell me off through other means of social networking (insults over formspring, AIM, etc). She became so frustrated, she eventually showed up to my house. Regardless, I still log in daily and waste plenty of time that would otherwise be spent studying.

Week Six: Television

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DULT4L8c8IM
- Length - 2:43
- Description - High-Definition inherently means "high resolution", since the resolution of high def and standard TV differ (480 lines with standard analog television vs. 720 or 1080 with high-defintion).
- Chapter 9: Television
- Question - What are the differences between pillar-boxing and letter-boxing?
- Answer - If watching a widescreen dvd on your standard television, lines on the top and bottom of the picture would be show. If watching a fullscreen dvd on an HD television, lines would appear on the sides. These lines are respectively called letter-boxing and pillar-boxing.

Week Five: Movies or Recordings

2009: This Ain't No Fashion Show -- The Subtle Way
2009 wasn't the greatest year for music in my opinion. It wasn't until the end of 2009 something was released that really caught my attention. The main reason I love this song so much is that I got to hear it in every stage of production, starting with the rough thirty second sound bite (titled "Stewie" after the character in Family Guy) that the band had before they went to Seattle to record with my favorite producer, Casey Bates, who helped to create the perfected CD version. My boyfriend showed me the sound bite one day when we were driving through LA by hooking up his iPod to his car speakers. The next version I heard about a month or two later when his friend Jamie opened a folder of the music on my macbook sent to him by Casey Bates over email. The final version i heard at a party I went to in November where Jamie came in with the actual CD ready to show it off.

Listen to "This Ain't No Fashion Show"




1979: Don't Stop Me Now -- Queen
I have yet to meet a person who doesn't like Queen. Whenever I'm out hanging with friends and having a good time, we'll put this on and sing to our hearts content. It's the ultimate feel good song, as Queen is the ultimate feel good band. My dad introduced me to the band when I was very little by playing his Queen records and dancing with me. When I was a fifth grader and my dad bought a truck which had a CD player in it, he bought the full Queen CD collection and played this song.

Listen to "Don't Stop Me Now"