Learning ‘Casts are Cool

People used to laugh when I told them I started watching a videocast on yoga. But I found the idea profound. If someone can do one on yoga, then why not a personal trainer, or a landscaper, or a nutricianist? You may attend my yoga classes, or I train you, or I help you lose weight and, oh by the way, here is a little value-add — my pod- or videocast. Who remembers all the correct moves when away from yoga class or weight training? New media is giving service oriented professionals a way to express themselves, establish themselves as experts, and to rise above the noise in competitive fields.

Mary got me thinking about this subject with her two contributions this week — one on yoga, the other on the Japanese language.

My two casts for this week are one from Yogamazing and one on Japanese Language. The yogamazing one is on “alternate nose breathing”, which the yoga teacher here mentioned last week, and I didn’t think he was being serious. The cast is here: http://podcasts.yahoo.com/episode?s=8d951432cc452b244da5892ff97ba7b1&e=135.
The Japanese podcasts are various japanese language lessons. As I’m interested in learning Japanese, these would be pretty useful to listen to. The website for all of the podcasts can be found here: http://www.japanesepod101.com/.

Effler Suggests Ask A Ninja: Pirates

Mary sent in her podcast as Ask A Ninja, one of my favorites. While not technically a “pod”cast — it is a “vid”cast — it’s still a good example of the differences between podcasts and videocasts. I highly recommend Ask a Ninja — we will see examples in the class — and this episode about Pirates of the Carribean.

Effler Blog

Mary Effler,

here’s the link to my blog:
http://maryeffler.blogspot.com

Well, now that I have a blog, I guess I should give it a purpose, huh? I chose the name “A continental breakfast for Socrates”, simply cause after philosophy class one day, that sounded like a really cool name for a website or blog or book…or something. Maybe a classic rock band.

In internet studio, we were asked to brainstorm ideas for a website (as our assignment at the end of that class is to develop a full site). In looking at that list, I realized that several of those could be adapted into a blog form as well. Looking at the name of my blog, I could do something related to philosophy…either posting reactions to certain works of philosophy that we look at in class, or posting basic info on philosophy, or something like that. As I have an interest in world religions, I could try to relate philosophical matters to understanding religion. Or I could really mess with people’s minds and have the name be completely unrelated to the blog whatsoever, and have it focus on something else entirely, like Dilbert, or web/graphic design, or kittens in space.
Well, I’ll be serious at this point, and say that at the time, I would like to do something with philosophy for this blog, as reflecting upon it in a blog might help me better formulate my ideas for class discussions and essays in my philosophy class. I was also considering having my internet studio website deal with philosophy, so it would be a good addition to that website, should I choose to focus on that. Do you think this would work?
I’ll get the podcast info to you later.

News and Comic Blogs

Mary Effler

For the homework part of this, my two blogs that I’ve picked out are Something Awful and Megatokyo. Something Awful is a website that is updated daily with some kind of front page story, and includes MANY different categories of photos, stories, etc. which are updated at various intervals (there is a bit of mature content on there, though). Megatokyo is a tri-weekly updated webcomic, with the author and his helper making blog posts typically with each update below the cartoons. Here’s the links to each; they’re pretty straightforward:
http://www.somethingawful.com
http://www.megatokyo.com

Personal Synopsis: Effler

Mary Effler

I’m Mary Effler, the really young one. I’m an entering Freshman this fall, after having graduated from Hebron High in Carrollton, TX this spring. I have an on campus job as a CA (Computer Lab Assistant) in the McDermot Library, and my current declared major is Arts/Technology. My interests include foreign languages, Asian culture, philosophy, world religions, web design and coding, computers in general, reading, and occasionally drawing. My goals include getting a Masters or PHD in translation, and doing something with languages in the future, possibly a translator for the government, or translating books, or teaching English in a foreign country. I would also like to continue designing websites in the future. As for my experience, I work with websites, and have recently become skilled with using Macromedia Studio MX/8, as well as Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. When it comes to video and such, however, I don’t have much experience at all.  I hope to learn how to do some of that in this class.