24.02.10

This morning we watched a video before finishing our Mind Maps on different Audio Products. I am working on MP3s, Music TV and Talk Radio. I have found the research easier and more informative in the mind map form than doing it just on a word document. Mainly because you only put in the most important points rather than researching every aspect of a subject.

22.02.10

This mornings Key Skills session was not great as we had already done the assignment we were asked to do so we did not get much done.
This afternoon we started assignment 1 of unit 2/Audio Production. I have managed to get a good deal of research done on MP3s anfd other file formats plus I have learnt about the differences in Broadcasting and nonBroadcasting.
I also excepted my place on next years Games Development course!

11.02.10

Today we have been finishing the research that is the first part of this unit. We had to choose a song out of the current top ten and research the artist and give our opinion on their work. I chose Jedward, a couple of Irish twins from X Factor. I found this quite a trial as there is nothing to recommend them or their work.
In that respect I guess I did learn something as giving an opinion on something that you dislike is so much harder than giving an opinion on something you do like.
We also had to research a computer game which I found alot easier, even though I dont play alot of computer games any more I could still pick a game that I have enjoyed playing in the past which made the task that much easier.

Halo Research page two

Bungie Software Products Corporation founded in 1991 by two students at the University of Chicago. They focused
primarily on games for the Macintosh in there first nine years, creating the Marathon and Myth series as well as Oni, a third person action game with characters and environments heavily influenced by Manga.
Then in 2000 they were taken over by Microsoft and the game Bungie were working on at the time was rebranded and became the flagship game for the launch of Microsoft’s Xbox. That game was Halo – Combat Evolved. The game became the new consoles ‘Killer app’ and the game and its subsequent sequels have sold millions of copies world wide.

THE AUTHOR IAIN M BANKS & HALO
In 1987 Iain M Banks released his science fiction novel Consider Phlebas. The book is based on his Culture series of books, set millennia in the future at the peek of human scientific and technological evolution. In this novel, as in at least two other books in the series, the Culture has the ability to create entire planets and also what they call Orbital’s. Anyone that has played Halo would recognise the Orbital’s as the Halo that is the basis of the game and since the book was released 14 years before the Xbox, Bungie has defiantly taken some inspiration from the work of Iain M Banks, and why not? The guys a genius!
The Orbital’s are not the only reference Halo has taken from the work of Banks, in his book ‘Against A Dark Background’ there is a passage, albeit a small one, that is undoubtedly relevant to the game.
"The Lazy Guns had not had a happy history; they had turned up during the Interregnum following the Second War, seemingly products of Halo; the vast Thrial-polar Machine Intelligence artifact/habitat destroyed by whatever mysterious weapon had been fired from - and which appeared to have obliterated - the moons of the giant gas planet Phrastesis."

Halo Research page one

I would say that Halo 1 has been one of the most important computer game releases of the past decade, not only did it give serious gamers everything they wanted, a proper story line and excellent graphics ( for the time), it was also easy to just pick up a JoyPad and start playing.

THE PLOT OF HALO
Its the 26th century and you play, in First Person, Master Chief, a Cybernetically Enhanced Super Soldier, one of only a few surviving members of the Spartan II Project. At the start of the game Master Chief and his feminine artificial intelligence construct, Cortana, are the only survivors after there ship the Pillar of Autumn crash-lands on a mysterious ring shaped planet called Halo. The planet is in the hands of the Covenant, a race of aliens who are but one of the enemies you will face through out the game. After rescuing Captain Keyes and any human survivors you find along the way, Master Chief is ordered by Keyes to reach Halos control center to suss out its true purpose. When he reaches the control center he finds out that the Covenant has accidentally released a parasitic alien race named the Flood, capable of overwhelming and infesting any sentient life. Now the race is on for Master Chief to discover how to activate Halo which is the only way to stop the Flood spreading through the galaxy. But if only it was that simple, it turns out that the activation of Halo would bring about the end of all sentient life through a chain reaction of similar Halo installations through out the Galaxy. Now the only option is to destroy Halo, whilst fighting not just the Covenant and the Flood but all Sentinels. Cortana discovers that the only way to destroy the Halo installation is to set the crashed ship Pillar of Autumn to self destruct. To do this they need Captain Keyes authorization code who, unfortunately as been infected and turned into a Proto Gravemind Form. In the end Master Chief manually causes the Pillar of Autumns fusion reactors to melt down and he and Cortana narrowly escape the explosion.
I never actually completed the game though I did play it for some time and I found that it is the kind of game you could go back to again and again, pick up your JoyPad and get straight into the action. Very easy to control and satisfying environments, weaponry and general game play. Out of Ten I would defo give it a Ten.

Research on Jedward page two

UNDER PRESSURE – THE ORIGINAL by QUEEN and DAVID BOWIE.
Under Pressure came into being as a song by a round about route, it was originally a Queen song under the title ‘Feel Like’ though the group were not happy with the result. The song as we know it today came about from a jam session with Queen and David Bowie in 1984. It is not easy to say for sure who actually wrote the lyrics for the song, but it seems Bowie and Mercury, with Roger Taylor acting as an intermediary, probably wrote the lyrics.
There has been some disagreement about who actually created ‘that bass line’. In ’82 Queens bassist John Deacon credited Bowie with its creation, but more recently both Roger Taylor and Brian May insist that it was actually Deacon himself that created it and Bowie has also said that the bass line was written before he became involved in the song

Research on Jedward page one

This song is a cynical attempt to make money, performed by a couple of twins who represent everything that is wrong with popular music today. You could say that corporate greed has been ruining music for decades but has it ever been so blatantly obvious, so cynically packaged? In the past you could expect a ‘novelty’ song every Christmas where as now they are the norm as apposed to the exception, and when did Eurovision become a weekly event? It’s like you have to pay twice for your music, once (at least) to vote for your choice on TV and then again to buy the single. The point is it has become so obviously about the money, and not even necessarily for the performer, but for the people on the judging panel, who are the real ‘celebrities’.
Rather than relying on any innate musical talent Jedward rely on gimmicks, i.e. their ‘distinctive’ blonde quiffs the fact that they are twins and even roping in Vanilla Ice. They seem to be more interested with Fame for Fames sake than for any real interest in music. Even Political Parties have, predictably, gotten in on the act by parodying the twins in poster campaigns.

The fact that they have chosen a song that has been a hit twice before goes to show that they could not write a decent piece of original music if you held a gun to their identical heads, not that they would have any say in the song they have released.
They came into the public eye whilst competing on the talent show The X Factor, but the fact that they got eliminated has been no barrier to their music being forced upon the public. They are just the latest in a long line of talent show losers, who once eliminated, still release some re-hashed piece of rubbish, grab their fifteen minutes and disappear back into obscurity. Jedward were eliminated on the 22nd of November when they lost out in the judges over 25s vote.
The twins John and Edward were born and raised in Ireland where they competed in various Talent Competitions, taking their inspiration, predictably, from artists such as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and The Backstreet Boys. They suffered bullying due to their taste in music until they moved schools.
The song Unger Pressure is amazingly hard not to like yet the Jedward twins have managed to create a version that is almost unrecognisable from the original, a version that has nothing to recommend it, saying this though the bass line is still enjoyable enough to listen to.
Out of TEN I would begrudge even giving this song a ONE.

08.02.10

This morning during Key Skills we did some research for our exam including dusting up on apostrophes, commas and paragraph's. We then had our exam, mine was a level 2, I am pretty sure I should pass but we do not find out until tomorrow.
This afternoon I have been updating my own Blog and commenting on some of the Blogs that I follow.
I have also been working on my Website, which I am basing on the Band, Nightmares on Wax. This includes creating some images using Photoshop for backgrounds and such, and general research on using Dreamweaver.

04.02.10

Today we have our practical exam, we have to set up a mixing desk, starting everything up in the correct order. The less help that Adrian has to give you the higher your grade. I am trying to memorise enough to get through it with minimal, if any help. Hopefully!

02.02.10

My friend from the Drop In Centre emailed me last night asking if I could do another poster for her, she wants to start a meeting every Friday where the service users can voice their ideas for the centre. The poster did not have to be a great work of art as she wanted to start putting them today, it did not take long to put it together.

01.02.10

When I had my interview with Paul from the Games Design Department he mentioned that he was happy to see I was doing my own work outside of college, such as using Deviant Art.com to publish some of the designs that I have done. I have been creating images, mainly using a program called Paint.Net, for years now but he suggested that I start using Photoshop, as it is the industry standard. The main reason that I have been using Paint.Net is because it is just a lot easier to use, but I can see the wisdom of what he is saying and I now plan to start using Photoshop for the designs that i do in my spare time.
At the end of the day Photoshop may be harder to use, but it is a lot more powerfull than Paint.Net, so the sooner I become more proficiant with it, the better.

01.02.10 - Soundbooth Project

Today I handed in my Soundbooth project and after initially finding the software difficult to get to grips with I was actually happy with how the finished product sounded. I think I put the effects to good use, making my re-mix sound that much more different from the original, and also managed to keep the whole thing in tempo, one of the harder things to do in Soundbooth.
The main thing I am worried about is the volumes of the different tracks, as some of them do go into the red, but to me it sounded spot on.
01.02.10
This afternoon I have been spending some time up-dating my Blogs, I have added quite a bit where possible and plan to put in a lot more content in the future, such as stuff that I have done at home.
I have also up-loaded my Research on making a virtual studio and the Spread Sheet (budget of £10.000) detailing all the different components that would make up my studio. For the rest of the afternoon I spent some time using Soundbooth.