Thursday 25th Feb 2010

Today we started off with an extra 10-20 minute catch up on our mind maps, I was able to finish mine off this morning.
Afterwards we were split into groups of three to write down notes on our research.
I was with Adam and Jamie, we took it in turns to talk about our research and write down notes on the PC.

Later this afternoon we researched into Podcasting and then again were split into groups, my group at the moment is Jason Buss, Sean Ryan and Jason Cheeseman.
We are going to research and work on "Modern Warfare 2" (Call of Duty 6)

We are going to make a Podcast about it, but before we do that we are going to plan everything out and make sure it all sounds good and well presented with a practice run.

It has been a good and easy day, and I have enjoyed it (As well as it is also my Birthday today) :)

I shall check with myself to promt myself to do the work on Monday morning.

Have a nice weekend all! :)
Luke

Wednesday 24th Feb 2010

Today I researched more into my work on section A, they were CD, Music Radio and Podcats.
I am currently on Podcasts and am halfway finished. I shall work on these from home later tonight and have it ready for tommorow morning.

Although I do not have a lot to say I shall update this blog either tonight or tomorrow morning.

Luke

Monday 22nd Feb 2010

Today in Key Skills we went through our portfolios.
We had to make sure we have everything up to date and completed.
I sent two peices of my work to Andrea by e-mail as the printer was unable to work this morning.

Later after break we went through Assignment Brief 1.
We then reviewed Powerpoint on the topic of Broadcasting/Non-Broadcasting with a discussion group activity.
I was placed in group 2 and we had to think of ways of how you broadcast an advert, or certain things that are non-broadcasting.

Later on we started with the Research and we had default mind-maps.
We could choose from either A,B,C
They contained either CD usage and various other things we have to research.
(I shall update this soon)

Luke

Thursday 11th Feb 2010 chosen song review work

My chosen song is: 21 Guns by Green Day

Green Day is a rock band, they have been playing since 1987 till now.
Their recently new album is 21st Century Breakdown.
They have done loads of gigs and perform at lots of festivals and tours.
The Band members are Billie Joe Armstrong (Main Singer and Guitar) Mike Dirnt (Back Singer and Guitar) and lastly Tre Cool (Drummer)
They have also won 4 grammy awards for albums and songs.

The song 21 guns is about a man and a woman in a room with both at opposite ends of the wall, all of a sudden gun shots come blazing through the walls and both the man and woman are scared and in cover at first, the second time round they don't seem to care that it happens, and the third time they get up and move to each other and then start kissing, lastly they are in the middle of the room holding each other while bullets are flying from one end of the room to the other.

It fits into an action scene and also love, you would think someone would get shot because you don't know where the bullets are going to hit.

I like the song because the lyrics are good and the video is fantastic.
I like the way they have worked on it, it must of taken a long time to get everything right and then get every detail in. (The fish tank shot and having to maybe clean all of that up)
Also the music is powerful and excellent, the loud noise of guitars and drums show a powerful rock effect.

The only thing I don’t like about the song is that it goes pitch black when the couple start kissing, it doesn't seem to make any sense at all.

My overall opinion is that it is a good video and has great music to it, but I think a little explaining about the video would of been good and also it could show some detail, the fact the song is named 21 guns is kind off odd because you don’t know how many guns are firing through the walls.
I found afterwards that the reason the song is named 21 guns is because it is an anti war song refering to a salute for when a soldier dies.

My rating of this song would have to be 8/10 because I don’t like this song as much as I liked the American Idiot Album.

Images

Thursday 11th Feb 2010 Game review

Game Review on Fallout 3



The games developer is Todd Howard, he is the video game producer and designer and also an executive game director for Bethesda Softworks.
He also produced and directed the game The Elder scrolls series.
Information about the game:
The game is set in the future of the year 2277. It is the sequel of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 which were available on PC.
The game starts you off as a baby and allows you to edit your sex (Gender) Name, Face, Hair and also any other features.
Once you have finished editing you character, your mother unfortunately goes into cardiac arrest and you are rushed out of the room by a doctor.










Later when you 19 your father tells you that your mother would be proud of the you.
You then go a year forward and you are 1 years old, your father asks you to walk to him and then leaves the room.
You then jump out of the play pen area and read a book to edit your learning skills.
Once done you age more and more, the next time you see yourself as a 10 year old boy, you then get handed the Pip-boy 3000. (Shown to the side)



Later at the age of 19 your father leaves the vault and you must go and find him to find out why he left the vault.
Once you have the left vault the choice is yours to do what you like.
You could go to towns and buy new clothing and armour.
You could even kill all civilians in a town or city and start a war.
Or you could even hire a companion and find a lost dog and pled your way across the wasteland with some company and protection.
The image on the right hand corner shows how you can use VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System)
this helps you to aim and shoot enemies, this freezes time allows you to shoot an enemy wherever you like.
My thoughts and what I like
You can roam around the wasteland for however long you like, due to short daytime the dark can be dangerous, most creatures and patrols of enemies come out mostly at night time.







A few weapons to keep handy are listed below.
Melee weapons:
Jingwei’s Shocksword (Available after the Downloadable content “Operation Anchorage”)
Energy Weapons:
Laser rifle/Wazer rifle
(Wazer Rifle given to you by a young boy who cannot say any words pronouncing the letter L) Example Here is my Wazer Rifle.
Destablizer (Alien Rifle, you can obtain this weapon on the Downloadable content “Mothership Zeta”)
Big guns
Gatling Laser
Missile Launcher
Mini Gun
Grenades
Frag Grenades
These weapons are most handy and easy to use and my favourite to use.
Armour and Clothing
Armoured Vault 101 suit
Power Armour
Outcast Power Armour
T-51b Power Armour
Winterized T-51b Power Armour
Sunglasses

Also I do however enjoy wearing the armour without headwear as I don’t then get confused of who I am following and who is behind me.







Locations (Most scariest)
12- Deathclaw Sanctuary- Filled with hundreds of deathclaws in dungeons.
Mainly a lot of numbers- Metro stations, filled with either Ghouls or Raiders and sometimes Supermutants.
8C- Dunwich Building- Filled with a lot of Ghouls.
46- Yaoi Guai Tunnels- Filled with Yaio Guai hostiles.
3B- Vault 108- Filled with Gary clones, they jump out on you in certain places and whisper “Gary” to freak you out.
If you could avoid these places then you should be fine!



What I like about the game:
I like the fact how it’s your own story, you can do whatever you want when you want.
You could play as a character that has evil karma and could go around killing civilians and destroying towns, or you could be a neutral person who does some good and bad, or lastly you could be a good person and do tasks which earn you good karma and also a bonus of money.

If I could improve the game then I would add the fact off taking more than one companion with you.
Also some more locations could be added to the map, I know that extra places get added onto your world map when you get the DLC for the game, but for people who want to stay on the game and travel more then this would be a good thing to look at.
And lastly it could be a two player game, perhaps online and you could travel the wasteland with up to four people and have four dogs, and it would be good if you could have more weapons available.
The Control of the game is excellent, the way you can customise your character and move around easily is very good and simple to use, it allows you to open doors by pressing the A button on the Xbox-360 and the E on the keyboard for PC.
What I don’t like about the game:
The one thing I don’t like about the game is that you have to sometimes go underground and inside the metro tunnels to get to certain locations.
I think this is quite annoying and I think it would be better if you could drive a vehicle or maybe even fly a Vertibird that you could take from the Enclave.
My overall opinion of the game:
I think this game is great, I brought it a few days after Christmas in 2008 and badly wanted to play it as my friends said it was great and I had read reviews about it.
I had watched lots of YouTube videos to see what the game play and action is like.

My Rating:
I would rate this game 9 out 10, the reason I choose 9 is because of travelling around the map and also the limit of only hiring one companion and having a canine companion. Also with three add-ons that I have played so far I would recommend them if anyone has completed the game and want more action and quests and more storylines available.






Links to some Fallout 3 Videos

Game play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-qbOegkSck


Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPt08UYmyMo

Thursday 11th Feb 2010 pasted work (song)

Owl City is a solo artist, having only one member though he plays guitar and also sings. He has had eight albums out and is playing his next gig on 22nd Feb 2010.
I think Owl City are quite good, I only like one of their songs though which is Vanilla twilight.
They have been playing for over three years now and performed and made many albums.



About the song:
The song is about him not feeling alone when he thinks of someone.
I think the song is quite good and has a calm genre. I would class it as “easy listening”.
Towards the end of the song it gets a little louder and lets out a lot of emotion.
Lots of people seem to like this song as it is rated 5 stars on YouTube and has many comments.


What I like about the song:
It’s gentle, relaxing, and emotional and could be a nice song to share with a girlfriend/boyfriend.



What the song fits into:
I would say the song fits into something calm and easy to listen to, it has the kind of same similarity as James Blunt.
He tends to write emotional music and express it. Other people listen and sometimes feel the same and then feel better afterwards, and sometimes music such as this can make people cry.



About the Video:
The video isn’t very good because it just focus’s on one of the album pictures and you can just hear the song you have selected as though it was background music.
This is a disadvantage unfortunately because it would be good to see a video about the song.


What I don’t like about the song:

There is one I don’t like about the song, at the beginning of the song there is a loud tiny beep sound, it hurt my ears and I thought the file/video had been corrupted or something.
YouTube has hundreds of videos of one song as it narrows down the searches for a song you are looking for.

Images:




















I found these images on Google images.


Overall opinion of the song:
My overall opinion is that I think the song is quite good.
At first I judged it when I saw other people listening to it, when I listened to it my judgement and criticism for the song changed.
Whilst listening to the song I realised it reminded me of my old memories.
It reminded me of fun times I used to have with friends and times where I am alone and upset.
This song really is emotional, I think the reason it was made is because a lot of people in the world are emotional and need songs like this to listen to through hard times.
I myself listen to a lot of songs like this, sometimes it makes me sad and other times remind me of good memories.
My opinion of the song is that it really relaxing to listen to and I like it.

My rating:
I would rate this song 9 out of 10 because there is one thing I don’t like about it, it’s a good song but it needs a video to show what kind of song it is, someone could easily understand this by the lyrics and the song itself but it would be so much better if the video was there.

Owl City links:
Vanilla Twilight Video (Song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aENY16Mjw6k

Fireflies Video (Song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kXyuzuCKNw

Blog updating- Monday 8th Feb 2010

Today I am catching up on updating my Blog.
Recently we have finshed Unit 8- Recording, it was an easy Unit to carry out and get on with.
I didn't enjoy the Unit that much because I'm not into music and the elements of desigining it and editing it, however I do enjoy listening to it.
The track that I came up with was not very good, If I had more time available then I would of made it sound better and perhaps add more effects to make it sound better.
One of the problems in one of our tasks set was that when we were out recording sounds in the public in our groups was that not all of recording seemed to record and we couldn't use it in our tracks.
The research was sort of Easy and sort of Hard, because it was quite difficult to look up certain pricing and choose quantity over quality.
I have been doing well with the work so far and feel as though I am improving each week.
But however when I first started the course I felt as though I wouldn't be able to manage with the Research and tasks set out for me, but I am now doing alot of the research independently.
I am quite worried about my grading, I am worried because I am not sure whether I am going to get a Merit to pass to get onto the the next course which is Games Development.

Later during today I shall go back and edit some of my posts, I will look out for posts that would need examples or more detail and even add some pictures or evidence that I have worked on a certain task.

Also I must write one or two posts more about how I found Unit 8(Recording) and express what I found easy and what I found difficult and whether I would manage it better next time.

This morning we had a key skills session, after a weeks of preparation I was ready for the exam, I felt as though I did well and should hopefully get a good score.

Unfortunatley I cannot upload any print screen due to errors.

Luke Burge

Monday 1/2/10

Today we did Key skills and Media:

In key skills we learn about apostrophes.
I found it a little hard to get the hang of it at first, I then got used to it when a sheet came to me. I only found two of the questions difficult because I wasn't sure where the apostrophe went.
Also I didn't do the other side of the sheet as it looked alot harder to work on.

I think I may need to improve my understanding of apostrophes.



Later today we handed in all our work for assignment 2.


We had to hand in the following below:

Research

Spreadsheet

Printscreens

Soundbooth audio

I handed in all my work and had everything completed.
It has been a nice easy day and was glad I had time to edit my mistakes on my word documents.

I know this a short blog but will be able to type more up on Wednesday when we start something new.

Luke