Well, its been a long time! I hope you all missed me, but in all honesty I haven't had time to miss you. My last post was in August of last year, and so much has happened since then. Times change, friends and technologies evolve, but school never ends! Still, my times at Chattanooga State helped me navigate through the halls of even higher learning, and I am now a Senior at UTC. And here it is, summer of '09 and I am back to my beloved Chattanooga State Augusta R. Kolwyck library, working with some of the most talented and entertaining people in the world!
This is going to be a great summer, full of new adventures and stories. I am still addicted to all things Twitter, Facebook and txting, with the new perspectives time brings.
Since we last spoke I have deleted my Myspace (why did that take me so long?) written an article for the UTC Echo on Twitter (http://bit.ly/kTLC9) and worked for the UTC Fine Arts Center/Theater sewing costumes for two semesters of incredible plays and musicals, including Little Shop of Horrors, Recent Tragic Events, Enemy of the People and PEACE by Aristophanes, an adaptation of a classic Greek comedy.
Working in the theater was a great look into a different facet of literature, one that is not only read but vocally and physically expressed. I still enjoy settling down with a good book or three, but the cultural and interactive aspects of theater have enriched my outlook. Working in the quiet and sunny sewing gallery at UTC, sewing anything from victorian-esque Russian woolen morning dresses, to a sock-puppet "Joyce Carol Oates" to silvery pink metallic snakeskin doo-wop dresses kept my hands busy and my mind free to ponder.
Nobody can deny that this last year, these last semesters have been times of extreme change and impact on everyone. November of last year, and the events leading up to the election of our President were exciting times at UTC, demonstrations, campaigning and finally the real feeling of celebration (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxWjZZ5tkx4) on campus, both election and inauguration days. I really felt grateful to be student then, as history was made and dedicated in my own life and the life of my country.
Finals weeks were another great part of my school year, the UTC library keeps it's doors open for 24 hours during finals weeks, as crowds of students packed up their notes, books and red bulls and headed to the library for crunch time. I spent many great nights with my friends, quizzing each other on Shakespeare quotes, slapping together last minute art projects, pooling our change for a huge pepperoni pizza and wasting a lot of time on Facebook.
With finals finally (lol) over and my books sold back to the store so I could pay my parking tickets, my summer stretches out before me. I am working for Convergys here in Chattanooga, on the DirecTV project, changing the world one subscription to HBO at a time, but I really wanted to come back here, to where I am typing this now, my beloved Chatt State Library.
You will hear from me again soon! Less rambling next time I promise :)
so glad to be back....
Hana Grace
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
On the Flip Side...
There was an average of 207.9 million cell phone users in America in 2005, according to Infoworld.com. I am one of this number, and among my wide friend pool I have only one friend who doesn’t have a cell phone, or at least use one on a regular basis.
I was talking to someone the other day while programming some important days into my calendar, and they crossly said:
“I remember the days when a phone was just a phone”.
And a phone may just be a phone, but a cell phone, by definition of its very mobility and access makes it much more than that. Try driving somewhere unfamiliar and late at night without it and see how safe you feel! The generation of touch-tone phones and huge belled brass alarm clocks are behind us, my generation uses our phones to remind us of important days, communicate with friends, colleagues and businesses, for entertainment, as a calculator, a notepad, a music player, a camera, as a blogging tool and an email device.
We send text messages to each other, having abbreviated “conversations” exchanging information such as movie times, test scores, weather conditions, dinner plans, weak knock-knock jokes, or just to let the recipient know they are cared for.
We send text messages to GOOGLE (466453) with restaurant names or movies and GOOGLE texts us back addresses, numbers and show times.
We can activate our phone number on Facebook and directly upload pictures from our phones to the site, send messages, and update our statuses from one small keypad.
We can download games onto our phones (I have Bejeweled and Ms. Pac Man) and music, either to play when our phone rings (as a ringtone) or to play over the line when someone tries to reach you (a ringback tone). If you have more than one ringback tone you can make a jukebox and have random tones play on shuffle from call to call, or you can personalize individual tones to individuals own musical preferences.
You can also set different ringtones straight from your phone to ring for different people. For instance, one of my friends is a Tenacious D lyric, another, the chorus from a Pink Floyd song, and another a cheesy single from Boys Love Girls. This way, you can tell who is calling you without even picking up your phone!
We can program in phone numbers for friends, family and work, and create groups of people to send a mass text message to at once. This year for spring break I travelled down to St. Augustine with one of my friends, since they don’t all Twitter I kept them updated by sending a mass text to my “close friends” group. I have also utilized this feature to send out party invites, movie plans/times, and for a “school” group, test times, reading assignments, and class cancellations (woot!).
In case of emergencies something to be aware of, your phone can send a 911 call even if there is no available signal, and the dispatchers should be able to track the call and send help. In the light of several tragedies at schools, such as the Columbine shootings, and the Virginia Tech tragedy some schools have prepared an emergency text alert system to warn students of danger via their cell phones. Not all schools offer this program, but not all students are aware of it even if they do, so be sure to check into the likely possibility that yours or your student’s school has this program.
I have already hit on the benefits of the online “mini blogging” program Twitter, but it is worth mentioning again. I daily reap benefits from this amazing phone accessible program, from getting a great quote for this very blog, or hearing weather reports from a neighbor before I attempted to leave campus during a storm.
Just as it is with any evolving interface, the cell phone adapts to its user. However much you want to use it, and for whatever purpose is up to the individual, just be aware, and try to get excited about the wide spectrum of uses it presents.
I was talking to someone the other day while programming some important days into my calendar, and they crossly said:
“I remember the days when a phone was just a phone”.
And a phone may just be a phone, but a cell phone, by definition of its very mobility and access makes it much more than that. Try driving somewhere unfamiliar and late at night without it and see how safe you feel! The generation of touch-tone phones and huge belled brass alarm clocks are behind us, my generation uses our phones to remind us of important days, communicate with friends, colleagues and businesses, for entertainment, as a calculator, a notepad, a music player, a camera, as a blogging tool and an email device.
We send text messages to each other, having abbreviated “conversations” exchanging information such as movie times, test scores, weather conditions, dinner plans, weak knock-knock jokes, or just to let the recipient know they are cared for.
We send text messages to GOOGLE (466453) with restaurant names or movies and GOOGLE texts us back addresses, numbers and show times.
We can activate our phone number on Facebook and directly upload pictures from our phones to the site, send messages, and update our statuses from one small keypad.
We can download games onto our phones (I have Bejeweled and Ms. Pac Man) and music, either to play when our phone rings (as a ringtone) or to play over the line when someone tries to reach you (a ringback tone). If you have more than one ringback tone you can make a jukebox and have random tones play on shuffle from call to call, or you can personalize individual tones to individuals own musical preferences.
You can also set different ringtones straight from your phone to ring for different people. For instance, one of my friends is a Tenacious D lyric, another, the chorus from a Pink Floyd song, and another a cheesy single from Boys Love Girls. This way, you can tell who is calling you without even picking up your phone!
We can program in phone numbers for friends, family and work, and create groups of people to send a mass text message to at once. This year for spring break I travelled down to St. Augustine with one of my friends, since they don’t all Twitter I kept them updated by sending a mass text to my “close friends” group. I have also utilized this feature to send out party invites, movie plans/times, and for a “school” group, test times, reading assignments, and class cancellations (woot!).
In case of emergencies something to be aware of, your phone can send a 911 call even if there is no available signal, and the dispatchers should be able to track the call and send help. In the light of several tragedies at schools, such as the Columbine shootings, and the Virginia Tech tragedy some schools have prepared an emergency text alert system to warn students of danger via their cell phones. Not all schools offer this program, but not all students are aware of it even if they do, so be sure to check into the likely possibility that yours or your student’s school has this program.
I have already hit on the benefits of the online “mini blogging” program Twitter, but it is worth mentioning again. I daily reap benefits from this amazing phone accessible program, from getting a great quote for this very blog, or hearing weather reports from a neighbor before I attempted to leave campus during a storm.
Just as it is with any evolving interface, the cell phone adapts to its user. However much you want to use it, and for whatever purpose is up to the individual, just be aware, and try to get excited about the wide spectrum of uses it presents.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Blog in a Bottle
If you throw a rock out into an ocean or lake you will probably never see it again, but the ripples it makes are visible for a few moments. When I began blogging I thought that it would be like that, a momentary ripple and then the words would be swallowed up by the massive “waters” of the internet. Instead, I received a pretty broad reaction. Complete strangers read my blogs and shared kind thoughts and reactions, and much needed criticism. I started to wonder, was this how a writer felt? Was this a tiny taste of the pie I was working for?
Today, I have five “full” blogs, one each on MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga, this very one I am working on now, and another BlogSpot blog, Starshinethousand.blogspot.com. I also have three “Micro” blogs, a Twitter I update from my phone on day to day life and a library Twitter that I update for this blog, then my QuillPill that I started because of this blog. A long and somewhat ragged list, longer than I had earlier thought! Still, I keep most of them constantly updated, along with reading subscriptions from other people’s blogs.
I know many of my friends that also keep up this constantly reeling list of blogs, some with the added task of Photoblogging and Musicblogging.
Why do we feel the need to throw so many “rocks”? And to throw them into so many ponds at the same time, until the ponds are more like puddles? This has to do some with the themes I explored when researching Twitter, themes of voyeurism, fame and exposure. Writers have been publishing under pseudonyms for years. I am currently reading a book called Behind a Mask, the Unpublished Works of Louisa May Alcott. Before Louisa became famous for Little Women and Little Men she wrote scintillating mysteries for dime magazines, the literary equivalent of modern day tabloids. Because of her sex and status as a writer she published under various romantic pseudonyms such as A.M. Barnard.
The web-blogger can also easily hold this enviable status, and write freely on any subject, from steamy gossip to political barbs, to cozy collections of recipes and reminisces.
Scholastically, a blog is a wonderful tool for any student. As an English major I find it is a great vehicle for posting short stories, and inspirational snippets for my fellow writers. I also find myself doing an updated “chain letter” and doing periodical catch ups for my farther away friends. Artists and musicians can utilize it to spread their work, computer programmers and web designers can use it like a huge online business card, and communications majors can hone their job skills for potential job offers. A blog can be like a living resume, a place to learn and grow an art, or simply a place to shamelessly emote, regardless of who sees it.
This blog is a great example of this tool. I am not a web designer, I haven’t created some fabulous Web 2.0 social networking site, nor do I know all there is to know about the origins of these sites, but through research and hands on work I am slowly learning more and more about a new era that I am a part of, and that will be forever valuable to me someday as a teacher.
So, more than a rock thrown into the massive “waters” of the internet, a blog can be a message in a bottle. Sometimes it may return at your feet, full of responses and applause, and sometimes you may never see it again, but by simply putting it out there you have stirred up a few ripples.
Today, I have five “full” blogs, one each on MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga, this very one I am working on now, and another BlogSpot blog, Starshinethousand.blogspot.com. I also have three “Micro” blogs, a Twitter I update from my phone on day to day life and a library Twitter that I update for this blog, then my QuillPill that I started because of this blog. A long and somewhat ragged list, longer than I had earlier thought! Still, I keep most of them constantly updated, along with reading subscriptions from other people’s blogs.
I know many of my friends that also keep up this constantly reeling list of blogs, some with the added task of Photoblogging and Musicblogging.
Why do we feel the need to throw so many “rocks”? And to throw them into so many ponds at the same time, until the ponds are more like puddles? This has to do some with the themes I explored when researching Twitter, themes of voyeurism, fame and exposure. Writers have been publishing under pseudonyms for years. I am currently reading a book called Behind a Mask, the Unpublished Works of Louisa May Alcott. Before Louisa became famous for Little Women and Little Men she wrote scintillating mysteries for dime magazines, the literary equivalent of modern day tabloids. Because of her sex and status as a writer she published under various romantic pseudonyms such as A.M. Barnard.
The web-blogger can also easily hold this enviable status, and write freely on any subject, from steamy gossip to political barbs, to cozy collections of recipes and reminisces.
Scholastically, a blog is a wonderful tool for any student. As an English major I find it is a great vehicle for posting short stories, and inspirational snippets for my fellow writers. I also find myself doing an updated “chain letter” and doing periodical catch ups for my farther away friends. Artists and musicians can utilize it to spread their work, computer programmers and web designers can use it like a huge online business card, and communications majors can hone their job skills for potential job offers. A blog can be like a living resume, a place to learn and grow an art, or simply a place to shamelessly emote, regardless of who sees it.
This blog is a great example of this tool. I am not a web designer, I haven’t created some fabulous Web 2.0 social networking site, nor do I know all there is to know about the origins of these sites, but through research and hands on work I am slowly learning more and more about a new era that I am a part of, and that will be forever valuable to me someday as a teacher.
So, more than a rock thrown into the massive “waters” of the internet, a blog can be a message in a bottle. Sometimes it may return at your feet, full of responses and applause, and sometimes you may never see it again, but by simply putting it out there you have stirred up a few ripples.
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