Week 2

Well here we are in week 2, well actually closer to the start of week 3. I'm sitting at home now, reading over the very meager notes that I took in this weeks lecture. One item has caught my eye however and here it is.

Ferdinand de Saussure

1900 - Semiotics
* Semantics - the relationship of signs to what they stand for.
* Syntactics (syntax) - the formal or structural relations between signs.
* Pragmatics - the relations of signs to interpreters.

Oh and quickly for anyone reading this, I've decided that from here on in any blocks of text that I pull directly from my notes will be displayed as above (in blue and centered).

So anyway, basically I've spent the last 30 odd minutes reading about this guy 'Ferdinand' and his ideas. In doing this I have come across quite a large body of notes taken in 1910 by one of Ferdinand's students (found here http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm). Strangely enough, in all of these notes I didn't find a single reference of semiotics or any of its subsections.

For this reason, I now sit here periodically typing away at this blog as I read through various bits and pieces of information on semiotics. Most of the information is incessantly difficult to understand and seems more like I should be reading it for my effective writing course, rather than new com tech.

Ah, it seems that I have discovered some reference to semiotics but under the French wording of semiology. I won't bother copying the information that I have just read into here, as I've provided the link to it above. I also lack Microsoft Word at the moment and don't really know how many words I've written here, as I don't want to give Chris to much to read I'll start to wrap this week up.

With this I'll just leave a quick note about the movie we watched during our lecture. The film was called "La Jetee" and to be totally honest, was incredibly difficult to watch in the lecture theater. It didn't help of course that I was dead tired, but I was on the verge of sleep for the second half of the film. I do plan however to find the film and watch it again at home, with a large amount of caffeine.

Well that about wraps it up, sorry Chris but I'm pretty sure thats more than 300 words haha.

Until next week.

Week 1: Tutorial 10-12 JBS

Well, back on the internet. The beginning of my first computer class for my journalism course and already a wonderfully "subtle" hint towards 4chan.

For those that don't know me, my name is Jack. I'm studying journalism, as i stated above, this year and plan to move into that profession when I finish. I'm starting a blog as one of the 'oh so many' course requirements that seem to be thrust upon a poor, first year student. This reason aside however, after listening to the first lecture of this course; new communication technologies, I have begun to see more uses for this blog than simply completing an assessment.

I plan, hopefully, to use this blog to attempt to display other pieces of my writing and receive some feedback. As I'm writing this in fact, my tutor is informing the class of how the internet and computers in general have changed the way society works. This fact is what has led me to my attempt to use this blog as a staging ground for other forms of writing.

I have honestly found it amazing that in a single week of this course many of my ideas about the internet and its uses in writing and communication have changed. No longer simply a portal to /b/ and its many internet superheroes, but a medium by which to promote and discover talent in areas i had not before associated with the web.

These thoughts aside however, there is an assessment criteria to this course. The first of these items is in fact, this very blog. We have been set the task of updating the blog weekly with around 300 words or so, and to have approximately 3000 words by the end of the course. This part of our assessment incorporates 30% of the overall mark for the course, but should be quite fun and not really much of a burden. Not alone in its web based assessment, the blog will also contain a separately assessed essay at some point during its life. Although this has only been set out as 1000 words, and 20% of our marked criteria, the large number of references required seems quite daunting compared to what I have become accustomed to through school.

It seems that I have rambled, as I usually do when put in front of a keyboard, about close to nothing. To conclude this first post of mine I suppose I should mention that I really have enjoyed the course so far, and from what I have seen of the course so far, presume I will continue to enjoy it.

Until the next time I post on this, my own little piece of the internet I shall say good bye.

P.S. For those that don't know what it is, google /b/ and see what you can discover.