Is This Real Life?

As the school year winds down, lectures tend to get more important. We’re given final exam reviews, important hints and instructions for essays and assignments, and so on. This isn’t to say that lectures aren’t important throughout the year; quite the contrary actually. I find that going to lectures genuinely helps me gain a better grasp of the material, rather than sitting in my room by myself reading lecture slides or the textbook.

As this is my final year of university, I have yet to understand one thing about certain students: why bother coming to lecture if you’re not going to listen? Trust me, I’m no saint when it comes to surfing the Internet here and there when I get a little bored. My mind wanders, and I need to take a little break from paying attention. I allow myself at least that, and once I’ve satisfied my Internet-roaming ways, I pull up my notes and continue listening.


A fellow peer of mine has urged me to write this blog post. I do not know her name. I know nothing about her. She often sits next to me in lectures (she is in two of my courses), and not a lecture goes by where she is not constantly connected to some form of social-networking.

She never pulls up a single page of notes on her laptop. Instead, she writes to people on Facebook, chats with friends on MSN while she browses the Internet, and keeps her Blackberry at her side so she can text and use BBM. Worse yet, each time I have witnessed this, her and I have been sitting in the front row of the classroom, in visible sight of the Professor lecturing.

First of all random girl, why come to class? If all you’re going to do is NOT pay attention, couldn’t you be doing that in the comfort of your own home? You don’t need to inconvenience yourself with walking all the way to campus so that you can not listen to what the Professor has to say.
Secondly, you are ruining a good thing for everyone who owns laptops and likes taking notes on them. Random girl, you are the reason Professors want people with laptops sitting in front rows or to get rid of them altogether. You are single-handedly creating a stereotype for all laptop users out there.
And lastly, you are paying for these lectures – don’t you care?


I suppose at the end of the day, none of this is really my business; it’s her choice whether she participates or not. But that’s just the issue now, isn’t it? Participatory culture and social-networking has seeped its way into our everyday lives, ultimately distracting us from the things we should actually be doing and caring about. Will she remember what she talked about on MSN in a few days? Probably not. But when exam time rolls around, will she regret not taking notes in lecture all those times? I’d have to say most definitely. It comes down to whether we think social-networking takes precedence over the “important things” in life – the things that happen in “real life”, so to speak, as opposed to our online life.

Is social-networking ruining the way things ought to be? Is there a right and wrong time to be connected to this participatory age? Let me know if you share my frustrations.

Oh, and P.S. – “random girl” isn’t in our class, so you can all rest easy, I would never rant about you guys :)

The Day The Nerds Stood Still

A little over a week ago my life flashed before my eyes. Well, my virtual life. I was sitting down in the comfort of my bedroom after a long day of school and turned on my Sony Playstation 3. I inserted my game of choice to relax and play some video games and I received this message: “8001050F Error Code. Registration of the trophy information could not be completed. The game will now quit.” I was startled. Did I accidentally delete my trophies? And if so, when? I didn’t understand, but I knew something strange was a foot.

I shut down my system and restarted. I unplugged all of my cables and plugged them in again. Nothing worked. What most confused me is that my PS3 was not connected to the Internet, therefore there was no possibility it was some kind of virus. It was definitely something wrong with the system hardware itself. That’s when I noticed the date on my PS3 was set to December 31st, 1999. The day before Y2K.

I started to panic and decided that I’d stop messing around with the system and instead I rushed to my computer. I typed in the error code I was given into Google, and clicked around. Nothing was helping. After some web surfing, I found a forum that discussed the error, but the posts were 2 years old. As I scrolled through, I noticed that more and more people were posting that very day (Feb 28th, 2010), mentioning the exact same issues I had been having. Then I realized that the forum thread went on for another 20 pages. Clearly it wasn’t just me, and I took a breath of relief.

Eventually, I discovered that every Playstation 3 across the globe was having the exact same issues. There were people from numerous countries complaining about the same things that were happening to me. Eventually it was announced that it was an internal clock error (likely something to do with the fact that leap years occur on Feb 29th). The next day, the issue was corrected, but millions of PS3 owners lost data that they could never get back. It was deemed “the biggest system blackout in the history of the videogame industry” (IGN.com).


What I find so interesting here is that in the culture we live in today, I found that I, almost instinctively, went to the Internet and was able to find help from a random online virtual community. I was able to read what was happening to others on the other side of the world, which helped me understand what was happening to me. In this way, we were all interconnected and assisting one another. I had the answers at my fingertips – I had my peers at my beck and call. And much like when any other devastating news arises, virtual communities allowed all Playstation users to come together and mourn the loss of their trophies. I know I did. R.I.P. trophies. R.I.P.

Taking On The Most Powerful Ladies of Pop

I’ve got an important announcement to make! Well, it’s actually not that important…and now I’ve got your attention, and peaked interests and what have you, and some might even end up disappointed, there are expectations to fill…Whatever. For the final assignment given to us for CS400h, I chose to take on the final project and use my know-how with Youtube in order to do it. So, because we’ve talked so much about participatory media, as well as remixing, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. What I did was listen to some versions of other songs on Youtube, and put together my own original compilation, or remix, if you will, of three contemporary songs that I’m sure we all know: Britney Spears’s ‘Circus’, Lady Gaga’s ‘Just Dance’ and Rihanna’s ‘Disturbia’.

It took me a while to turn it into what it is now. After about three weeks of practicing, I didn’t realize how truly difficult it was going to be to take on my own remix. All three songs deal with different subject matter lyrically, they all have different tempos, and each artist sings them quite differently. Not to mention the fact that the key was one I had never sung in before (I guess that’s what happens when I take on three songs sung by females). I didn’t want it to sound stupid, and I definitely didn’t want to bite off more than I could chew. And three songs everyone knows and loves? What was I thinking? Well, this is what I thought anyway. After changing which lyrics I would sing, or where each section of a particular song will go, I think I’ve finally come to a version that I’m actually quite proud of.

What I’m asking for from you guys, my faithful readers, is to provide any comments, either through this blog, or if you have a Youtube account, comment on the actual video there (and even rate it using the star system). This way, I’ll be able to use all this feedback in order to strengthen my final report for the project. Now, be critical, be kind, be whatever you like – these blogs are anonymous (except for the few of you who I know the identity of. I guess you’ll have to be nice, haha, kidding!). It’s all for the love of music, and participatory media. It’ll make me a better artist, and at the same time, it’ll help me earn some grades!

With that said, here’s the video. Enjoy!