Dec/110
2011 – Achievements and Standpoint | Feitos e Ponto de Situação
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The year is almost over and I have the need to put things into some perspective. So, despite considering it as one of the worst years I had in my life, I’m going to look at the things I did, and try to prove myself it wasn’t really that bad. ACHIEVEMENTS Professionally, the first half was good, I was teaching in a training program created by Porto University, instructing journalists from Cofina, one of the biggest portuguese media groups. I worked with over 200 journalists and editors and it was a really rewarding experience. I think I changed some minds and helped many improve their skills. The rest is not up to me. I also worked as an instructor with the team of P3, a new youth oriented news website, which was a different challenge because they were online only, thus with a whole another approach to content production. And my teaching days were then over. I had to go back to be a student and finish my overdue MA final project. It wasn’t that good, and I could make all the excuses in the world because I really have a few good ones for not doing better and they would all be true, but the fact is I could have done better. Still, I had a commendation over it and I got an upgrade in my degree. So far it hasn’t impressed anyone. I wanted to develop a few projects but with all the problems I had this year some were postponed and I had to give up on others. I wanted to open my own business as a multimedia journalism producer/ consultant, but there’s a crisis going on, and people around here weren’t very impressed with my credentials. I have far better recognition abroad than in my own country, which kinda pisses me off. The fact is, I didn’t create my own job, nor I have one to complain about. Meanwhile, I invested in video content, using a HDSLR, all my efforts can be seen here (only those uploaded in the last 3 months count). I did a short doc about a cultural association I work with, and most of the stuff I made is based on the events we have there, like concerts and exhibitions. It’s a good testing ground and I’m planning to use what I’ve learned to create more journalistic stuff. |
O ano está quase a acabar e tenho a necessidade de pôr as coisas em perspectiva. Apesar de achar que este foi um dos piores anos da minha vida, vou olhar para o que fiz e tentar provar que afinal não foi assim tão mau. FEITOS Profissionalmente, os primeiros meses foram bons, fui formador num programa criado pela Universidade do Porto para a Cofina, onde trabalhei com mais de 200 jornalistas e editores das várias publicações do grupo e foi uma experiência fantástica. Acho que mudei algumas mentalidades e ajudei muitos a melhorar as suas capacidades. O resto não é comigo. Também dei formação à equipa do P3, o que foi um desafio especial porque eles estão exclusivamente online, logo com uma aproximação completamente diferente na criação de conteúdos. E a seguir acabaram-se os dias como professor. Tive que voltar a ser estudante e acabar o meu projecto final de mestrado. Não correu lá muito bem e podia dar todas as desculpas – e até tenho algumas muito boas e que são verdade – para isso, mas sei que podia ter feito melhor. Mesmo assim, passei com louvor e tenho agora um grau académico melhor. Até agora ninguém ficou lá muito impressionado com isso. Quis desenvolver alguns projectos mas com todos os problemas que tive este ano alguns foram adiados outros esquecidos. Queria abrir o meu próprio negócio como jornalista multimédia / formador /consultor, mas há uma crise lá fora e as pessoas não parecem muito impressionadas com as minhas credenciais. Tenho melhor reconhecimento noutros países do que aqui, o que me deixa um bocado lixado. A verdade é que falhei em criar o meu emprego ou a arranjar um de que me possa queixar. Entretanto investi na produção de vídeo com uma HDSLR, podem ver aqui alguns dos resultados (só os dos últimos 3 meses contam). Fiz um pequeno trabalho sobre a associação de que faço parte, e muitos dos videos são sobre coisas que por lá vão passando como concertos e exposições. É um bom tubo de ensaio (!), e estou a planear usar o que aprendi para fazer conteúdos mais jornalísticos. |
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I also wrote some interesting posts for the blog (check list below) and started a monthly column in a computer magazine, and did some articles for P3 (people there like me, what can I do?). I wrote an article about documentaries in this non-linear world, and a post at Innovative Interactivity about what features a news product should have. |
Escrevi ainda uns posts interessantes aqui no blog (ver lista abaixo) e comecei uma coluna mensal na PCGuia, e fiz ainda alguns artigos para o P3 (o pessoal lá gosta de mim, que é que posso fazer?). Escrevi ainda um artigo sobre documentários neste mundo não linear, e um post convidado sobre as características que um produto jornalístico online deve ter. |
- The upward spiral and the tornado effect: monitoring the spreading of news
- The failure of the single product business model
- #MAProject: Basic concepts – The JTeam and Views to a Crisis
- The Rise of the Zombie Articles (or why staying up late doesn’t make you smarter)
- O DN tem uma nova redacção, mas tem uma orientação para o online?
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Standpoint This was one of the longest, strenuous years I have ever experienced. Even though I was able to accomplish some goals, they look meaningless in the overall outcome. I’m broke, unemployed, I have no perspectives. It has always been one step forward and three behind. I had to give up on a lot of things, and basically I feel like it’s 2001 for me (another bad year) but with a heavier burden. I wasn’t expecting this. My projects are moving slowly, there is no money or time to devote myself fully to them. I’m starting 2012 on basic survival mode, but that’s the outlook for millions of Portuguese people this year. Going abroad is a possibility, I understand Nando’s is always hiring. There’s a lot to decide in the upcoming weeks. Still, I’m on the market, I’m trying to sell training and consultancy programs for local and regional newspapers, I’m available as a freelancer both for national or international media, and I’ll be presenting a few more ideas if things don’t get any worse. 2011 won’t be missed, too many bad things have happened, but such is life. I’m finishing way worse than I started, and I’m considering other options for my future, because life is unstoppable in its motion and either you roll with or get crushed. I’m a roller. Death to 2011, I’ll look back on it with a bitter taste in my mouth. |
Ponto de situação Este foi um dos anos mais longos e extenuantes que vivi. Apesar de ter atingido alguns objectivos, tudo parece inútil no balanço geral. Estou basicamente falido, desempregado, sem grandes perspectivas. Foi sempre um passo para a frente e três para trás. Tive que desistir de muita coisa, e sinto-me de volta a 2001 (outro ano péssimo) mas apenas com um fardo ainda mais pesado. Não estava mesmo à espera disto. Os meus projectos pessoais estão a andar devagar ou parados, não há dinheiro ou tempo para me dedicar a eles. Vou começar 2012 em modo de sobrevivência, mas sou e mais uns milhões de concidadãos. Ir para fora é uma possibilidade, também se lavam pratos lá fora. Há muito para decidir nas próximas semanas. Por enquanto, estou no mercado, a tentar vender programas de formação e consultadoria para media locais e regionais. Estou disponível como freelancer para publicações nacionais ou internacionais, e tenho mais algumas ideias na manga se isto não piorar. Não vou ter saudades de 2011, aconteceram demasiadas coisas más, mas é a vida. Termino o ano bem pior do que quando comecei e estou a ponderar outras opções para o meu futuro, porque a vida não pára, ou a acompanhamos ou somos esmagados pelo movimento. Morte a 2011, vou-me lembrar deste ano com amargos de boca. |
Dec/116
Mestrado | MA Online Journalism #done | #feito
"MA-MA-MA-MA-MAAAA DIPLOMA" by The Knack
As some of you might now already, I finally finished my MA in Online Journalism that I attended last year at Birmingham City University (UK) under the guidance of Paul Bradshaw. I had to postpone the delivery of the final assignment so this is why I’m getting my diploma now. And now I can say a few things.
I want to thank everyone who supported me in this great experience, from my colleagues in Birmingham who helped me out and had fun with, especially Dan Davies and his wife Jules who received me in their home in the first night I got there and put up with me through out the year, Caroline Beavon that is like my British sister, Ioana Epure who is amazing in everything she does and Mikel Plana, though he dropped out mid course he is related to some of the best and funniest moments I had there.
And there are many others, with whom I still try to keep in touch despite the distance, but life sometimes has other plans. I expect to see most of you again in the future, if things turn out for the best for me. To you all my deepest thanks and appreciation for those amazing moments.
I’d also like to thank all the staff at BCU that had to deal with me now and then, to the teachers who asked the right questions and made me look at things from a different perspective.
I realized in the last year something had changed in me, and although sometimes I don’t know what it was, I know “why”, and I feel I’m better because of that. Now and then people come and ask me about the course, and I always say it’s worth the shot, and that they at least should consider seriously the option of doing this MA.
The most important of this thank you list is Paul Bradshaw, who has been really patient with me in these last 18 months. I remember clearly the day he asked if I want to be part of the first class of his MA: my life was not going well, I was broke (again) and considering giving up all things journalism. I went for a run that day to sort things out in my mind and establish a plan, feeling like Indiana Jones rescuing his hat in the very last second.
I asked for a loan because I never had the money to pay for something like this, and so I joined the inaugural class of this course, that was brilliant because Paul got us in touch with real people, real situations and real work environments. This business is changing too fast to grasp all the novelties, but he managed to keep us up to speed. He’s a brilliant guy and I respect him a lot. So, thank you so much Paul, this meant a lot to me.
Closer to me are others that I already thanked for everything they did. You know who you are because I already told you how much your support meant to me. But I have to publicly thank my parents, who have always been there for me. My family is not average middle class, make that lower middle class, we don’t have a car, we don’t own a house, they make the minimum wage but still managed to make things happen. And of course, in this picture there’s my grandmother that always saved the day when I was in a financial distress. She passed away this summer and I feel I never thanked her enough.
To tell you the truth, I say the year I spent in Birmingham was the best one of my life, despite the hardships, frustrations, failures and micro-disasters along the way. I can say the opposite of 2011, it’s been one of the worst years ever, and though I had a magnificent work experience with Porto University, too many bad things happened through out the year, and my final project resented that. The final result isn’t brilliant, but I have to be honest, for a moment there I though I wasn’t going to make it. I wanted to pass with flying colors, but it’s amazing as it is.
The future from here looks dark, I’m broke (my financial records are a roller-coaster from hell), trying to survive in a dying economy in a country where hope is something that faded long ago, and I’m stuck with a loan for the next 7 years that I can’t pay. And there’s the regular expenses, like a roof, light, water, food, internet. I’ve been here before, but this time it’s a bit more complicated. But I’m trying, and I’m not leaving my hat behind in any circumstances.
Anyway, it’s done, there are no regrets, quite the opposite: I am better, happier, richer as a person (and hopefully financially too anytime soon), and this is a huge achievement for me, probably the biggest one so far, because no one just hand it over to me, I’m still fighting for it.
Thank you.
Aug/110
#MAProject: Basic concepts – The JTeam and Views to a Crisis
As I’m trying to finish my MA Project, I realized that when I write my final Production Report it will be more about failure than success. But this could also be because I haven’t got much feedback on what I’m doing, so I’ll just put it all out in the open. Tell me what you think.
The JTeam
The starting point was to create an informal team of journalists, specialized in multimedia and interactive narratives, that would follow specific production guidelines to tell marginal stories to main issues. This was also my main idea when me and my MA colleagues started developing Hashbrum, a hyperlocal website dedicated to cover the “neglected stories of Birmingham” (looking back through the filter of recent events we could have done so much more), but we failed to follow that line, although the basic concept was there.
When I say “informal”, I mean “not fixed”, the team would vary from story to story, since every story needs different skills and sensibilities. It could also work as an external Multimedia production company embedding journalists from established media brands. Another example of this would be Spot.us, and the way they change journalists and editors for every story. Having the people and the tools, this would be a team of journo-mercenaries (at least we would admit that), although mimicking the A-Team for journalism doesn’t look that good after you’ve seen others doing the same for other (probably more successful) businesses.
And this would be it: a pool of eager, talented, skilled journos ready to step into action armed with multimedia and interactivity and witty remarks. This also has a more broad organizational model, but for now this is enough.
So, what would be the J-Team’s first assignment?
Views To a Crisis
While living in the UK, I noticed that most of the information about the standards of living, the economical and social situation in Portugal we’re skewed – to say the least - and, above all, inaccurate. Portugal looked worse a year ago from the outside than it really is nowadays, and I thought about how much speculative journalism can affect the image of a nation. Not that the news were wrong, the facts were just a bit blown out of proportion. If we consider that many media groups are cutting back in correspondents, and that the international media doesn’t care for local media if they can’t understand it (i.e., speak in a foreign language) maybe they will never be able to deliver an accurate account of what is really happening. I’m not saying that I didn’t see a good coverage from some British media about the risks Portugal was facing, but I wondered how they could paint such a bad picture and how much of that was cause or effect.
Not trying to imply foreign media in Portuguese mismanagement, my idea was to have a more human approach to the subject, and turn those doom and gloom numbers into real faces and places, and share their stories of perseverance, misfortune, readjustment or evolution in a critical economical environment, and show them to an international audience by making that content available in Internet’s lingua franca, English.
But once back in Portugal and having being in touch again with the national media industry, I realized the “real” country wasn’t just misrepresented by foreign media: Portuguese newsrooms, due to their own hardships, have been concentrating their coverage on the mainframe issues and falling into the number and statistics trap. Not all, fortunately, but we are being fed the crisis every single time we look at a newsstand, or listen to the radio or watch the TV news, and sometimes it all looks like a damned math problem. Well, it is, but I hated Math. And since major news outlets are cutting back on their own local correspondents, I got that feeling that something was skewed all over again, with most of the message being conveyed from and directed to major urban areas, most specifically Lisbon, which does not reflect the realities of the rest of the country.
In my research for outliers from this type of coverage, I came across with an initiative by Público, one of Portugal’s leading newspapers, that developed an interesting approach to depict the effects of the crisis in regular people. Their approach is to follow five different families from different parts of the country. Called “A year in the crisis“, their goal is to have first person accounts using dynamic languages like video, set against background analysis provided by data and critical reports. It’s a very solid concept, and that meets many of the ideas I have for my own project. They are trying to figure out what has changed in these people’s lives and how they are adjusting to cope with all the setbacks created by an economical downturn, while keeping the stories human.
My idea is a bit more broad though. These families are sharing their experience, but I also care about the young graduates who are thinking about leaving the country because they can’t find a job, or those who are going back to their hometowns since they can’t afford living in great urban areas although the job offers are even more scarce. Or how some are demonstrating their discontentment through urban art, or how they are helping others in more dire situations. And I also want to know how life is for those who have always lived through their own crisis, that this one will only aggravate. Others are creating new opportunities reinventing their own life and career options, and many are trying to keep doing the same things they always did before: there weren’t any big losses in the Summer music festivals that happened all over the country, for example.
This would be complemented by a comprehensive set of data visualizations that would show how the situation has evolved, how it has its toll in different parts of the country (I’ve been trying to create a map of unemployment by municipality), and provide tools so each user could relate to specific data sets, using calculators or queries. I’ve been playing with some data viz tools and the only thing I can show now is a sunburst graph depicting the money the government has spent in its executive responsibilities. It has no framing or further explanations, it’s just a technical experiment.
A set of production guidelines still has to be established, but these depend on the range of the content, how it will be produced, and under which business model it will fall under. But business models will soon be discussed here too.
I have been trying to establish partnerships with other people and organizations – some related to independent media – especially aiming at the non-profit model, but I’m open to suggestions. And if you feel you have what it takes to be a part of it, registrations are open. Well, not real registrations, just send me an email if you’re interested.
What do you make of this? Would foreign media be interested in a coverage “from the ground”, and would Portuguese media also be available to work in the production of this type of contents and use them in their own platforms? What flaws do you see in this concept?
I’m all eyes and ears.
Jan/112
Year Zero
A Brummie skyline. This was home for a good part of 2010
Though all the reflections about the year are usually made in its last week, I’m only writing them down now. 2010 was an amazing but busy year, so busy I had to leave this post to 2011. Here are my thoughts on it.
The first half of the year I was in Birmingham doing the MA Online Journalism with Paul Bradshaw heading the course. It was probably the smartest thing I have ever done in my life because I got to learn new things and meet amazing people, my colleagues included. I blogged extensively about my time there and some of my experiments during the course with online journalism tools and narratives, so you can browse the blog for more info on that.
I still have a final project to wrap up the MA, and that is one of my priorities for this year. But I’ll talk about this later, because I think I’ll need your help.
In the second half of the year I’ve been working as an instructor – which is different from being a teacher – training journalists to face the needs of the online medium. It has been a rewarding experience, and I’m surrounded by talented, skilled people, with different expertise and with whom I’ve been learning a lot.
In between I wrote a few articles for Journalism.co.uk, a big one for a documentary magazine, worked briefly for a major newspaper defining their social media strategy
And this is the good stuff. Not that there’s anything bad to say about 2010, it was a hell of a year, but with so many things happening I neglected a few things, like this blog. And I kinda lost my mojo (not mobile journalism). I am a reasonable juggler, but not at a Cirque du Soleil level. I had lots of ideas and opinions, you know, the stuff I used to share with all of you and that made me “famous”, but I never got to find the time to post them. That was my biggest regret in 2010, but on the other hand, I’m glad I didn’t, because it made me look at the big picture and see that there are too many “changes” going on. Yes, the inverted commas are supposed to have a ironic effect (both in “famous” and “changes”). No matter how interesting my ideas were, two weeks later they would be outdated.
We saw the iPad craze amongst the media tycoons, which is nothing but a feeble attempt to transport the print logic to a digital device (again). That is not the way, sirs. We watched the Wikileaks effect in different times of the year, and the debate about what is journalism, and what is not. I can say that debate is not journalism, and that once again media focused on the accessory and not on the important stuff. Facebook became the T-Rex of the web, and still many think it’s foolish. Sometimes it is, but it also has big teeth, and it’s smart to be in good terms with it. All in all, instead of broadcasting the news and make their content more interesting and valuable, most media faced the internet like if it was 1999. We’re a bit more advanced than that.
But this makes me happy and more confident about the future. The good stuff will survive and the bad will deliberately jump off a cliff. Never the Darwin theories have been so well applied to an industry.
2010 was year zero, for me and for the future of journalism. Changes are happening in different ways and in different paces, in different places, but the wheels are moving forward. We just have to enjoy the ride. 2011 is going to be the year to do things, after all the learning and thinking, all the mishaps and dead ends. Today is always a good day to start. I just need to be a better juggler.
Just do it, and make it consequent. That’s my motto for this year. What is yours?
PS: by the way, I’d like to thank to all the people that I met this year and helped me move forward, I could have never done this on my own. It’s a long list, but you know who you are. And to those who have always been there for me, well, you know…
Jul/100
The blog, the MA and the future
This blog has been neglected. There, i said it. Call the Blog Protection Services and i might lose custody. The problem is that i have a reason for that. Several, in fact, but these are the ones that matter, and most of them sound so lame i won’t even bother to list them, like “time” or “i needed a break” or a “fresh perspective”.
As you may know, i’ve been doing the MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University, under the guidance of Paul Bradshaw, for the last nine months. Best thing i ever done in my life: not only i got to learn with one of the best minds in online journalism, but i also had a great time living in a foreign country, a first for me. It wasn’t a life changing experience or anything like that, but it ‘s damn close. Now that i’m back in Portugal i’m slowly recognizing the effects it had on me, and i’m in what i call a “hangover period”. You know, you wake up a bit disoriented, and wonder about what you’ve done the night before? No regrets in my case though.
But since i was busy as hell, i put the blog aside for too long. I have a list of posts i want to write, and i’m starting to work on them this week. I have stuff waiting to be posted since last year, but now i know how to do it better. So pay attention to the forthcoming posts, i’m back.
Meanwhile, i was doing this MA like i said. I still have one project to do during the Summer, and i’ll talk about it here soon, but you can take a look at what i’ve done in the last six months in this blog post Paul wrote about the assignments and experiments me and my colleagues did.A timeline, the spontaneous online coverage of the Madeira floods, a multimedia project, those were some of my relevant efforts.
I’m proud of mine – though i think i could have done so much better - but my colleagues were great. Read the whole series of posts so you can have an idea of what we were doing. We got in touch with amazing people, and though sometimes the brits seem hard to reach, i met some of the nicest people ever related to journalism. Maybe i was lucky, maybe they were just polite, but what a difference! The small country blues hit me hard sometimes, but then i also realized that in Portugal we are not behind anyone, we have incredible people working in journalism and new media, the problem is that we don’t have many chances to grow. Well, we do, but no entrepreneurial attitude (i had a class on that), fortunately some people don’t think that way. But that’s for another post.
Anyway, i’m on a break now, doing this course in Porto, and then i’ll be working on my Summer project for the MA. And afterwards i may have a job that allows me to do lots of stuff on the side, and push the boundaries of journalism a little further. I have lots of ideas, so all i have to do is work on them, no matter if i stay here or change countries again.
The future is now, and there’s no better place than that.
PS: by the way, the reason why i’m writing english only posts is that writing both in portuguese and english is time-consuming and i’m a bit late, but i’ll try to go back to dual language soon.
May/100
#Jeecamp unconference
Today i’m at #JEECamp, the unconference about journalism organized by Paul Bradshaw. So far we had Simon Waldman, from the Guardian Media Group, and four breakout discussion groups that debated from business models to newsgathering and production. To have a better idea of what is going on here at The Bond, just follow the #jeecamp tag on Twitter or go to OJB for liveblogging or at JEECamp Tumblr. Soon i’ll share with you more links covering the event.
Apr/102
Breadth Portfolio: Part 3 – Data Visualization
The last part of the series with parts of the report I made for the Multimedia Journalism module, this time about data visualization.
Experiments in Data Visualization
One of the fields I’ve been interested the most is in data journalism, and the visual representation of information. It takes two seemingly opposite mindsets to work with data: one of a statistician and the other of a designer, the analytical and the creative side by side. But I found that data, to be interesting to the audience must have one or both of these features, besides being accurate and relevant: it has to be visually compelling and/or interactive. Once again, technology comes to the rescue, and at the same time can lead us to disaster. The huge amount of tools available to organize and present data relies in different coding languages, mostly Javascript and Flash, and if we are to use live data we must know how to use APIs to direct content into our application. And even if we find a software that does it all for us, we need to know which story we’re telling.
I did some research about newspaper brand values and online traffic of Portuguese news websites, and I came across with the monthly traffic report for all of them. My goal was to understand the relative and proportional position of each one, regarding visits, page views, and how those two values relate to each other. The data I got also has portals, specialized websites, and entertainment magazines so it has a broad range of themes (all charts are available live here – http://is.gd/aZLXs)
First of all I wanted to have a general overview of the size of each one when it comes to space within the Portuguese online universe, so I went for a tree map. The view wasn’t clear enough, so I tried a different approach, using a bubble chart, highlighting just the focus of my research, which were specifically newspapers. It was a better option, and I could have done things even more interesting if I added the paper circulation data. One of the conclusions that I would have found was that best selling newspapers don’t necessarily do equally well online.
But the real risk when connecting data is to draw wrong conclusions from fact. So these are the most successful websites, looking at these data sets right? Well, maybe not. What if we try to understand who are better at engaging the audience and get more page views per visit?
The idea that I got is that we can use data visualization to find a perspective on the subject and that will lead us to a better understanding of what were just numbers on a paper.
Apr/101
Breadth Portfolio: Part 2 – Flash Package
The second part of my Breadth Portfolio series, in this one i briefly explain how the Moseley Road Baths Flash package was made.
Flash
Moseley Road Baths
I’ve wanted to use Flash to create a multimedia package or to aggregate different types of content in one same product. Recycling the contents I had produced previously for HashBrum, I made a serious attempt to build one: “Moseley Road Baths- Pool of Affection”[i].
I’ll avoid commenting on the content of the piece, because all the questions are related to the construction process. First of all, Flash is an almost exclusive of Adobe, and its complexity make it hard to use, but in the right hands it can deliver amazing works. This is not the case, and there are many reasons for it.
First of all, Flash evolved into Actionscript 3.0 which is much harder to use than the previous 2.0 version that I was familiarized with. This wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have planned to use features that will only work with the 3.0 version, like mapping components. So I had to give up on my initial plan of incorporating a map into the piece, if I was to do it in AS2, although I searched intensively Google for solutions. But choosing which script language is used to build a work with Flash it’s just the beginning. We have to decide what contents are going to be featured, which technical specificities they demand, how are we supposed to navigate through them and which aesthetic options we will take. The most interesting part is that it is truly an interdisciplinary experience: I used video, and had to go through the options to embed it, and pick the best format (FLV) and size to convert it to; I had to create a look for the project, and I used image editors to edit pictures and small graphic elements; besides, flash is based in animation principles, so some notions on the subject will help.
Non-linearity is an important factor to this kind of work, and since I had divided the main video to small, independent bits it wasn’t hard to do. When I first started shooting this story, I had the notion I would use it for something like this, so I wasn’t that worried about creating a narrative chain throughout the filming, but just keeping it visually coherent, which under personal limitations is not that difficult.
Flash projects are also all about functionality (the way buttons are placed) and details (the way buttons move). To improve these two factors you must have a deeper knowledge of Flash (beyond button level), which is hard to acquire on your own. Though the web is filled with video tutorials and great websites on the matter, Flash is mostly about a logical process that it is hard to grasp on your own. But I fear the approach I took using AS2 is rendered obsolete, since AS3 is more powerful, albeit more difficult to use. This raises questions about how specialized a journalist’s skills can be, since it takes time to learn these new procedures, and which alternatives are there to Flash packages.
[i] Online http://tinyurl.com/ydufyp6
Mar/101
Moseley Road Baths: Flash Multimedia Package | Trabalho Flash Multimedia
click image | cliquem na imagem
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I had a go with Flash for my assignment for the Multimedia Journalism module of the MA. I recycled some work i had done before for HashBrum, and did what i had planned from the start, though not the way i intended. It is an experiment, and i had to do it in ActionScript 2 instead of 3, because i didn’t have time to learn how to work with Flash all over again. Anyway here it is, comments and ideas are appreciated. |
Fiz um trabalho em Flash para o módulo de Jornalismo Multimédia do mestrado. Reciclei algum trabalho anterior que já tinha sido usado para o HashBrum, e fiz o que tinha planeado fazer desde o início, mas não da maneira que queria. É uma experiência, e tive que fazer tudo em ActionScript 2 em vez de 3, porque não tinha tempo para voltar a aprender a trabalhar com Flash outra vez. De qualquer forma, aqui está, ideias e comentários são bem-vindos. |
Mar/104
Time is of the essence
- the control board: mostly analogical
I’m depressed. Looking at my blog these days makes me feel that way, because i owe so much to it. And when i look at the wonderful stuff other people are posting it gets worse. Not that I would be able to write awesome posts everyday, i wish i could nail one once a week, but it’s like when i was a kid and watched all the other kids play outside, behind the curtains, because i was grounded.
But no one is punishing me these days for misbehaving, it’s just it has been too much stuff going on. I’m reading and trying to do more stuff for the MA, and at the same time i’m trying to make some money, and i’m starting something now i hope to tell you all about it soon. Unless i give up sleeping there’s no way i can write good stuff for you. My hope is after these two deadlines due next Friday things get better. Because i need to blog for all of my readers, and i have been sticking to the english speakers. I don’t have time to write a good post and then translate it, sorry. I also have a weekly column about media in a Portuguese website, and that’s the only thing i get to do when it comes to writing, apart from the occasional article for Journalism.co.uk (making interviews in Spanish, which is not my first language and then getting them back to English).
The MA is an almost full time job, and i have three more part times on the side to make a living. So forgive me if i have been away recently. I don’t like to shove a dozen links down your throat everyday and think i can get away with it, because i don’t. You deserve more from me, but my priorities have been elsewhere recently. Automatization is a fallacy.
If look at the picture you can see how my life is organized: four major tasks (one was the blog, but i had to leave it empty), with the MA modules on top, and the priority part-time below, then the other two jobs, and the project for the last term. I have to plan two weeks ahead to be comfortable, and i don’t have much room for setbacks. Many of you will say “So what?”. You’re right. I’m not whining, i’ve never been so happy about work in my life, there are lots of things going wrong, but i’m feeling great. There is no other place i want to be right now, and the prospects are looking good. I feel privileged for being here, and doing what i am doing. I just don’t have time for everything.
So if you have suggestions, ideas, thoughts or just want to say hi, i’d appreciate that, i spend too much time in front a computer these days, so this is truly a window to the world. Feel free to look in. Now i have to get back to work.
