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Myspace was used to advertise a pyjama house party and I went for a number of hours. It’s amusing when you’re at a party in your pyjamas. It makes a change from all those fancy dress and I began wondering about the walk of shame and whether wearing pyjamas on the way home constitutes the walk of shame. The party was good although it did not really begin till later on when everyone arrived. There were lots of people I’ve known for two to three years by now. The stories were good and the conversations too. Some were interesting whilst were some left you a little confused. I went to central London with one friend and we stayed in a night club till the first tube in the morning. The club was quite full of people because the top musical act of the week had played there an hour or two before we arrived. I don’t know the group so I’m left indifferent. This part of the night continued till the early hours of the morning. We caught the first tube home. I gathered my stuff from the friend’s place. Two people were sitting in the stairwell chatting, saying that they had not gone to sleep but that everyone else was trying to sleep. I encouraged them to enjoy their stairwell before continuing on my way. Back to halls where I encountered some french-speaking friends. Conversations and random activities continued until around 7 in the morning. It had been an 11hr night/party for me and I’m surprised at how quiet everything is today. It must be the calm after the chaos of a good night out.

Whilst reading an article about the music and book industry I was surprised by what was written. They say that the music industry and the record shops were expected to survive the digital revolution whilst the bookshop was expected to die with the advent of sites like amazon. There is one possible reason for this. The nature of the medium. A song is a work that takes five minutes to listen to in it’s entirety and can use other supports to be consumed on. The book on the other hand is a medium that requires for people to sit down and thumb through various pages to assess the writing style before deciding on whether to purchase it. As a result they’re far more likely to go into a library and check that product than a cd shop. At the same time myspace, among other websites is the new music shop. Go there, browse the categories and find various obscure acts, discover them and purchase what you enjoy. It’s not quite that easy with books. I’ve bought quite a few books and dvd in the past few months but no music in physical form.

You should always visit friends in their country of origin because it’s fun. Within a week I’ll be in Sweden enjoying Swedish hospitality. I booked the flights today so within a few days I’ll be flying off once more. It’s not that being in a country for too long bothers me but simply that this opportunity won’t last very long. I liked Sweden the previous two times I’ve been there so I’m going again. It’s a bit of a misnomer because although I’m a full-time student I only have 2hrs a week of tuition with the rest of the time left for dissertation work, work experiences, and of course the technology module. I’ve been listening to this week in media, power user tv, Net at Night, and This week in tech for several months by now, therefore, it’s part of my culture to think about tech.

I’m listening to meet the press by NBC and it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking as the governor. It’s quite amusing.

julia - Jan 4, 2007

The snow yesterday morning was lovely. Pity it didn’t last long. Bit disturbed by the fact there are different ‘premium’ and ‘standard’ halls at your uni - who says the class system is dead in Britain, eh?!

Snow began to fall this morning at 3 am and a group of those living in halls went out to enjoy the fresh snow. it was falling for several hours and everyone was enjoying it. There were snowball fights between the premiums and the standards. That’s Premium block and standard blocks. Some people were continuously pelted with snow whilst others simply enjoyed being out in the snow. A remote-controlled car was there driving around but struggling. The tires were skidding. When will these people learn that you accelerate slowly in snow and gradually build up speed? I’ve got a video of this morning but I still have to capture it.

I went for a meeting today and the documentary idea is far clearer now than before. Thanks to the help of the tutor I’ve got a far more focused way of looking at the question I wanted to ask. I still need to write a third draft of the proposal and get it approved. In the meantime I can already start writing the introduction to the dissertation explaining the context and setting the scene for the remainder of the document. Going to be fun from now on.

We had to listen to three hours of this subject today and discuss it. It’s amusing how the discussion focused on the iPhone, iPods, and what apple, in general, was doing. Several years ago I was downloading music and copying it to minidisc in the days before the mp3 player and iTunes. It was a time when bandwidth constraints were greater therefore patient people would get the content they desired. Over the years bandwidth increased and BitTorrent and other software came which made the experience much faster. I-tunes came along and gave one of the legal alternatives to access music. They also sold the player. Did they create a revolution or simply see that there was a market and take this as an opportunity to specialise in that? Now members of the older generations would say that Steve Jobs had a wonderful idea of providing this service and that he was innovative. Others, such as myself, are more skeptical. I believe that the mp3 format made the sharing of music without too much loss in quality much easier and smoother than it had been before. As people had more and more music in this form they began to see the need for adapted players like the minidisc and earlier mp3 players. More efficient ways were found but it was the realm of early adopters, power users. Those for whom technology is as easy to use as the pen to calligraphy. Apple did nothing more than realise there was a market and offer what people had been demanding. In the US apple TV is a great product because you’ve got the content to purchase and view. In Europe, the market is still too far behind on this particular issue therefore the device is not interesting. How soon will it be before Europeans can legally buy the most recent American shows? in two months or two years? With today’s media infrastructure we see everything that’s going on everywhere therefore the old way of dividing the world into media zones has to be rethought. By the way, I’ve finally understood McLuhan after my lecture today. It took a while and since no one had explained it to me so clearly I had been under the wrong impression.

If you’ve ever worked with students or you’ve ever had a few good nights in a row there’s a rule everyone lives by. That rule is that nothing shall be done before 5am, whether it’s consuming a good meal, putting on clothing other than pyjamas or other. It’s a time when everyone rests. Especially on a sunday. I was out by 930 today because I had to travel across London for a shoot with some students for the rag week. I don’t know much about the thing but it seems typical of pre 1970’s universities where they are bound by an extended legacy. My uni seems to lack this unfortunatly. I don’t often shoot and edit a piece on the same day. I usually take my time and eventually get round to it. At least today was different. It’s been a good weekend.

Last night I went to central London to get some information about a possible shoot and edit for students at another university. If we get a camera then we can do something for tomorrow. 1p coins in student unions are dangerous. If one happens to fall in you’re going to have to drink it. Touch the cup is another game I saw yesterday. It’s a strange game because of it’s aim, at least with last night’s drink. Before going to sleep two students were outside the halls yelling and trying to get into the building. one of them kept yelling “where’s my shoe”, “I’ve lost my shoe”. Sometimes you hear strange things