Another - possibly the worst, certainly the most life-threatening - societal issue of the 21st Century

What is WRONG with people? Not all people, certainly, but a good big ol percentage of society are just plain ... bad.

See dear reader (aka imaginary friend), I work in a movie theater. *Pause for pitiful sigh*. One of the few places left in this wonderous planet of ours (aside from rainforests and public restrooms. and public transport. and nightclubs), that people feel the right to vilify beyond normal standards of vilification. I apologise if (when) I exaggerate; everytime I blink images of popcorn-carpeted cinemas and ticket stub confetti bombard me. People are just awful, and I just can't decide who's worst.

1. You've got your standard group of school kids. There's about a million of em, each clutching to the box of popcorn some doll in the candybar just sold to them (remind me to elaborate later on the painful task of upselling), that happens to be bigger than their torso. Afterward, the cinema resembles what a savoury snack bomb site might look like. Hansel and Gretel, eat your heart out - and miss your mouth every second time - cos popcorn trails are quite obviously the shiz, right behind Ben 10 and Dora the Explorer. Maybe they're the latest in personal security. All I know is that school holidays at the movies are one of the greatest tools for abstinence.

Blogalism or tablogs? Journalogs or blogloids? The weblog phenomenon

An article that I read recently (on a blog, incidentally!), discussed the link between blogging and journalism. The first sentence gave me such a sense of understanding, of clarity about the linked worlds of blogging and journalism: "To ask 'Is blogging journalism', is to mistake form for content". After reading this, and becoming a blogger myself, I realised that it is indeed wrong to pidgeon-hole all blogs as the self-indulgent diary entries of cyber-megalomaniacs. They are one of many media platforms and should instead, be judged according to their content.

A blog (the abbreviation of weblog), is a type of mini-website. It can be defined as "a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links". However, this definition is rather generic. Two contrasting examples of blogs that both might fit under this definition are a journalistic research-based blog and a personal entertainment or specialty-based blog.

It was in the 1990s and early 2000s that weblogs were made accessible to people unable to use HTML codes. It is this accessibility that has made blogs so popular today, and yet also contributes to the detriment of their reputablility. On one hand, they are a fantastic channel for media that wouldn't otherwise get past an editor or censorship protocols. On the other hand, anyone can make a blog; and they can say and omit whatever they choose to in that blog. These authors are free to be anonymous, and aren't forced to abide by ethical rules (apart from minor censorship guidelines). Unfortunately, it is hard to trust people to do the right thing. Indeed, who am I to say what the right thing is? I could be anyone; a random person of any age, gender or race who chose the name Ophelia on a lark. Everything that I say could be completely tainted by bias. It could also potentially be completely false!

This modern blogging phenomenon makes it extremely difficult to judge them according to a generic format, as one often can with a newspaper or academic journal. As I mentioned earlier, each blog must be judged according to its individual content. Yet with the thousands, in fact probably millions, of blogs floating unchecked out there in the world wide web - who has the time to check them all?

Ophelia in the blogosphere

This post is probably always going to be in progress. It's main purpose is to serve as a place for me to take note of my experience with this weblog - my triumphs, and any not-so-triumphant hiccups along the way - that will hopefully save another blogger out there a minute or two of head-scratching.

- A design issue I've had with this blog has been synchronising my fonts! After much (Ado About Nothing - can't help but think of Shakespeare!), thinking someone asked me if I had been copying and pasting the posts/articles with different fonts from Microsoft Word. I had. Problem solvered!

- I have fixed it now (somehow), but for a few hours the font in the first paragraph of my Big Brother post decided it wanted to stay extremely and irritatingly tiny, no matter how many times I tried to change it.

- The process of editing blogs can feel a little tedious. Perhaps I'm doing it the long and hard way (it wouldn't be the first time), but I have to click on about four different links to go back to a post from my blog to be able to edit it.

- I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing I can do to change the font colour of the text at the bottom of the opinion poll, or about the lack of spacing between some of my pictures and its post headline.

- The more I attempt to polish and format my blog, the more design issues I seem to face. Paragraph breaks are one example; things seem to be fine until I change something which appears to set something else off. It is slightly irritating, yet I am accepting it along with the freedom of the blogging territory. No one thing is completely without fault!

- Apart from these minor issues, I quite enjoy blogging. It's rather liberating to create something that is entirely under your control; that you can edit and fine-tune and change dramatcially if you choose. Creating and using a pseudonym gives me a sense of freedom to express my personal opinions without the harsh protocols that may come with different publications, such as print.

Head to head, paper to screen: differences in design

As technology rumbles by in a flurry of dust and money, change is thrust upon all of us. This is clearly visible when we observe the contrast between designing for a traditional print publication, as opposed to the way we would design for an online one. According to DC Reep, the purpose of document design is to "provide readers with the information they need" (2006, p 134). The aim is to both organise your information and capture - and hold - your audience's attention. Designing for any mode requires patience, and a willingness to learn and experiment.

General principles shared by both online and print publication design are balance, consistency, headings and graphic aids such as pictures and colours. The contrasts between the two media modes stem from the way we read them. Reading is our brain's method of decoding and analysing the information our eyes are showing us. It involves and prompts not only decoding and analysis but response, comprehension and critiquing - all in a matter of milliseconds (Walsh 2006, p 25). When we (members of the Western culture) read a print publication, we do so in a linear fashion. We look first to the top left corner and "work our way across and down, going from left to right and back again, until we reach the bottom right corner" (Wheildon 1990, p 8).

An online publication is different, in that we usually 'scan' the screen, rather than 'read' it the conventional way. Our reading path has little or no set direction: we can go where we want to, when we want to, and at the click of a button. Graphic aids are especially helpful in attracting the attention of the reader. When designing an online publication one must keep in mind that the colour scheme should be kind on viewers eyes; as prolonged exposure to a computer screens is a strain on eyes (Parker 2003, p 270).

This is just a brief overview of the design process, and the similarities and differences that exist within that process. However, I believe it is especially important to take stock of the following statements before you begin any form of publication design:

- Universal rules do not exist in the realm of publication design - only suggestions do.

- That "tools and techniques that [work] effectively in one situation won't necessarily work in another" (Parker 1990, p 1)

- Finally, consider your intended audience during all steps of the design process, and tailor it to them.

References

- Parker, RC 1990, 'Beginning observations', Looking good in print: a guide to basic design for desktop publishing, 2nd edn, Ventara Press, Chapel Hill NC, Chapter 1.
- Parker, RC 2003, 'Designing documents for web distribution', Looking good in print, 5th edn, Paraglyph Press, Scottsdale AZ, Chapter 14.

- Reep, DC 2006, 'Document design', Technical writing: principles, strategies and readings, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York, Chapter 6.

- Walsh, M 2006, 'The "textual shift": examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', Australian journal of language and literacy, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2006.

- Wheildon, C 1990, Communicating or just making pretty shapes, 3rd edn, Newspaper bureau of Australia Ltd, North Sydney.

Dumming inglish down 4 us kidz

In a 2008 BBC article, academic Ken Smith (an incredibly generic and equally difficult name to google by the way), has suggested that we should accept spelling and grammatical errors as "variant spellings". Smith is a university academic who corrects exam and test papers and year after year is confronted by 'thier', 'arguement' and 'truely'.

I find it depressing that either lacking education or laziness (or both) are permeating so heavily through our society that we would be willing to break the rules of the English launguage. After all, thousands of people run through red lights every year. What would happen if the police suddenly said, 'Look dudes, we've been trying. But they just keep doing it so, I guess we'll allow it'. It would be goddamn chaos you shitty shitty men of the law.

So my argument is, would the majority abide by the rules if those same rules are breached by the minority, and without consequence? I don't think so. Furthermore, how can we improve if we are never corrected? Although criticism can at times be disheartening, it is often the best way to better yourself.

A goddamn fantastic - and hilarious - example of this recently featured on 30 Rock. Main character Liz Lemon snags herself a handsome boyfriend whose lived his whole life in a 'bubble'. He thought he was a tennis god because women begged him to teach them. He thought he could cook fish with Gatorade. He was a doctor that didn't know how to perform the Heimlich manouvre. This ignorant pretty boy led an charmed life because no-one had the guts to criticise the actions, cooking or medical skills of a beautiful person. (The beautiful person in question is Jon Hamm. Yup. Drool factory).

They say ignorance is bliss; but who are 'they'? What if 'they' didn't even know how to spell ignorance? Would we still refer to this age old axiom time and time again if it had been mispelled the first time?

Language in itself is amazing; we just take it for granted because we use it every day. It is a tool that has withstood the test of time, that allows us to understand what other people want or see or feel and allows us to communicate the same to others. The English language is a beautiful and complicated creation. I marvel at the music of phonology and the intricacy of semantics; at silent letters; at the eleven different ways of pronouncing the letter 'a': (“age”, “bad”, “bath”, “about”, “beat”, “many”, “aisle”, “coat”, “ball”, “beauty” and “cauliflower”).

We are the generation coping with - and still contributing to - the loss of the Ozone layer. Many of our endangered animals are currently on the brink of non-extistence. Our civilization has already lost so much of its culture to floods, fires, earthquakes and the wankerish aspects of human nature. Let's preserve the rules of our languages and grammar, and take it one extinction at a time shall we?

World Wide Web = Big Brother?

Big Brother. We've all watched the reality television show (anyone who denies this is a liar... or a saint), but before the title 'Big Brother' became all about nudity, tedious arguments and romances that barely lasted out the fifteen seconds of fame it represented dictatorship and oppression. The article discussing the World Wide Web and it's latest web-threat has further chipped away at the steadily tinier piece of security I find harder to hold on to.

The article suggests that Web users - and our personal activities on the Web - can be tracked by governments and corporations. These organisations have these capabilities in order to monitor and evaluate the success of their sites.

I can't decide how I feel about this. On the one hand, I am taught that measuring and evaluation are tools that must be used in order to be successful. Yet a larger part of me shudders at the thought of being monitored like a Costa Rican spider monkey.

I doubt there's anything that can be done to stop this process, I just hate the thought of someone snooping on me while I'm snooping about on Facebook.

Someone always spoils the fun: Paying for online content

A recent survey of almost 5000 people in the US and Europe has indicated that readers of online newspapers might be willing to pay up to 97% of what we normally pay for the print versions!

Now, I don’t have a particular issue with new forms of technology and advances in media publishing, or even with people wasting their money. In fact, as the girl under a self-imposed ban from eBay (after one month, one dress and fifteen dollars postage), I am one of the worst people to judge the spending habits of others.

What I do have an issue with is when people do and say things that affect the rest of us. It’s all good and lovely that you’re willing to pay for your business section, but don't tell anyone! In doing this you are ruining a perfectly good thing for the rest of us. You are hindering society. The market researchers click their heels together on their way back to the office where they smugly publish these results, and bam! Everyday Joe is forced to buy his access to his previously free online sport and business reports.

Indeed, Rupert Murdoch is currently scheming how to slug us all a few extra bucks, and plans to have this scheme up and running in as little as twelve months. Lucky for me I have no interest in sport; or business. But it’s the principle of the whole thing!

I’m beginning to see this pattern occurring more often in my life; when something seemingly inevitable looms over the horizon and it could easily be prevented by public unity, but never is. My case in point is the Live at the Zoo mosh. There was no way those flimsy barriers were going to hold that crowd, and every time a couple of idiots in crowd surged forward, the people in the front had no choice but to succumb to inertia and go flying.

I ask, why can’t people just stop being helpful? (What my inner bogan would really love to ask is: Why can’t people just stop being dumb? However, as that could be is offensive, I will refrain).

I propose that from now on we, as a united public band together. Let us take our inspiration from Freedom Riders of the 1960s, from Mahatma Ghandi – let's stick it to the man ... Peacefully!