Luke Parker's Blog

Alan the Alien!

2007-02-26T14:52:00.000Z

As you all well know, the character that i have created for my lastest project "MLILB" is called Alan the Alien. Well here is the first digital version of him for all to see. It is in black and white at the moment because I am having trouble with adding colour.

Epic Blog

2007-02-12T11:22:00.000Z

This week I have been out and about recording some test footage for the site. The footage that I have is to demonstrate the pushing force. It’s basically my car being pushed by one of my friends. It’s only test footage to see what can be done, it was done in bad weather so in a week I will record better footage when there is more daylight.

My plans for this week are to create the scene for the site and create the loveable character that’s going to be the newsreader, Alan the alien. I will also consult my friend for the music and my other friend to record the narration.

Well that’s all I have for you this week, goodbye and for heavens sake comment on the blog.

Blog Diamond

2007-01-29T11:49:00.000Z

Next week is the hand in for the pre production work for our assignment. This deadline isn’t as daunting as the other ones, because I know that I am on target and if needs be I can always throw in a couple more hours to complete everything.

Last week I planned out that I was going to do the design work for the assignment but that did not happen, I got a mental block and there was no way out of it. I have now decided to go with the approach of creating 3 small pictures and showing a theme between them. This method lets me change the layout without ruining the whole look of the design.

Once I have decided on my 4 designs I am going to go into more detail and create wireframe versions of them. From that I will get feedback to help chose what is going to be the final design, then create a digital version of it.

So all in all it seems relaxed, i will be blogging later on in the week on my progress and to say if i'm still in the same mood.

Happy Blog

2007-01-25T12:30:00.000Z

Hi people

Well I’m glad to say that I am working really well with the assignment so far, I’m ahead of schedule I believe. I’ve been in the same frame of mind that I was in on the HND meaning that I have been working at the same pace as I would have been if I were on the HND. My time planning is working really well and I have been keeping to it, roll on merit criteria.

This week I have:

Completed most of the web plan, the goals, target audience etc but I need to revisit the goals because they are not as detailed enough and are not measurable goals.

Done rough designs for the site. This took longer than I thought because of there being more than one screen per design.

I have worked out the questions and the content that is going to be on the site. I’ll need to check over the language of it to make sure that it’s right.

Although I have to check through a lot of things again I can because I still have over a week left before the first hand in date, which is on the 5^th February.

HNC

2007-01-16T10:57:00.000Z

I’m back after a refreshing 3 weeks off for Christmas and the New Year. I know it’s late but hey, happy New Year people! Over the break I have been thinking about the course and what has to be done for it, I realised that in the next semester and there is a lot to do and I believe that it’s too much for me. But alas there is hope in the form of a HNC, a sidestep to a different course that awards me 150 UCAS points, the hours are greatly reduced and hopefully the stress should be too, I’ve had to come to terms that Santa doesn’t exist, any more stress and I’ll have to go to therapy. Just kidding of course, I won’t need therapy.

Joking aside, making the decision to move over to the HNC course wasn’t an easy one to make. I believed that moving over was a really bad option and that I didn’t want to do it. If I was to pass the course then I would end up on the second year of a university course going by the way I have been working, and doing the HNC option will reward me the same outcome.

I have been given my new assignment and my first impressions of it are that it looks quite interesting because the target audience is one that I have never had to cater to before, children in Key Stage 1 of primary school so that’ll be a challenge.

Deadline looms

2006-12-12T17:53:00.000Z

This week I am going to talk about the iME assignment. Well the time is drawing closer for the portfolio website to be completed and work is going well. I am well on the way with the layout and soon will be putting in all the content. There have been a lot of design changes mainly due to the fact that I tried so hard to be truly original that I came up with nothing, or should I say nothing worth following through on. I looked again at other portfolio sites that have been created and took inspiration from them and wrote down the things I liked about the sites, this influenced the latest design.

CSS is still quite difficult but I am learning incredibly quickly how to utilise it. Dreamweaver doesn’t make it any easier either because for some reason it doesn’t display the page like it would be displayed in a browser. That aside I’m making good progress.

With there only being a week left to get the website created and to complete the ‘On The Job’ assignment the pressure is starting to mount, so because of that I have set aside more time this week to do work, initial estimates show that I’ll be doing more than 20 hours self study this week, but after that I can look forward to a well deserved break for Christmas.

That’s my blog entry for this week short but sweet

Bye

Luke

Project Manager for a Day

2006-12-05T17:48:00.000Z

Brief review of the week, there was an absence of our project manager this week for both days, so it was up to me to lead the team on and I believe that we have accomplished a lot. It’s not easy picking up where someone left off and I believe he’ll be the same next week.

This week I am going to talk about my iME assignment, at the moment I have got the basic design down and it’s starting to get some colour, and also been toiling with CSS and trying to make my layout work. I thought instead of getting a template off the Internet and adapting it that I’d create it from scratch. The reason I did it this way is because I could put my CSS knowledge into practice and I’d get a sense of achievement from it. Doing the CSS for the site is not easy and is a quite lengthy process, mainly due to this being the first time I have done CSS from the ground up and it’s not doing what I want.

With the deadline for getting the site up and running getting ever closer, I know I’m going to have to spend a little extra time with CSS so that I can complete the site with ease. For the people who don’t know about my site, here’s the link, http://www.luke-parker.co.uk. At the moment there is only an error page but in the near future I will replace it with the fully functional site with all the bells and whistles and midi files I can get on there (only joking).

This is my bit from the week. I’ll post again later on in the week with a progress update.

Bye

Luke

Everything in it's Place

2006-11-28T18:01:00.000Z

This week I have taken another step in my organisation, people that know me know that I am not too great with my organisation, I had a tendency to just wham all the loose pages of work that I had into my sketchbook so when it came to finding anything like my time planning documents I couldn’t. So I decided to do something about it. I went to staples after college on Monday just before I dropped off someone at the bus station, and bought a multi pocket folder that is tabbed and divided up with tabs to make it more organised. That was one problem solved. Then I had the idea to make my time planning sheets into a booklet and staple them all together. These two things took me about 10 or 20 minutes to do but it has made everything a lot easier to transport and find. The next task is to organise my sketchbook.

The On the Job assignment is now into its second week. The web plan for that is completed and now we’re onto the digital mock-up of the intended site. The weird part about this assignment is that I have to wait to be told what to do by someone and not be able to do what I want. The good part about it is that I don’t have to spend the time thinking what to do because it’s already planned by someone else.

The plan for this week is to complete the digital mock up, complete my detailed 6 month learning action plan and to complete the designs for the sites on my other assignments.

My 6 month learning action plan is progressing onward, I have a basic idea of what needs to achieve over the next 6 months and by Thursday I will be ordering the books that I need.

Thanks for reading, comments will be appreciated.

Bye.

Group Effort

2006-11-26T13:40:00.000Z

This week we have had Assignment A11 handed out, the group assignment. I was a little worried about it when I got the initial email telling us about it, and a little more worried when I looked at the assignment brief. But when Monday came around it didn’t seem that daunting, our project manager has made it clear what needs doing for when and the appropriate documents have been created.

Hopefully by the end of the week we will have the web plan done and dusted. On Wednesday evening we have a meeting arranged in our group, because we all have jobs to go to it’s going to be done a little differently. Through an instant messenger program which we have all signed up to.

For the iME and the CiSSy assignments I will be getting the designs near completion, maybe down to the digital mock-up of iME. My first task is to create a detailed plan for the week, leaving time to create some checklists that will help me throughout the other assignments and make sure that I don’t make any small mistakes that might make the difference between a pass and a higher grade. I’m aiming for the stars.

On the subject of assignments, I got the result of the Culture Vulture assignment and I wasn’t surprised with the result, I went into the room confident that I had passed it.

On regards to the 6 month learning plan, it’s a little brief at the moment, so a little work on that and I’ll be well on my way, at the moment the only thing I can do on this learning plan is do some online tutorials on photography and research what I can on business management until Friday (Payday!!) then I can purchase the books I so desperately need to continue.

Thank you for reading, comments again will be appreciated.

Luke.

My name is Luke and I am a BLOG champion….. Apparently

2006-11-16T16:19:00.000Z

This week was the hand in for assignment A10 – Culture Vulture, this deadline has been the most laid back deadline I had, I got in college for 9, printed off my work, assembled it, made the CD and proof read it. It got handed in an hour before deadline. I’m confident that I have passed it.

On Monday I had a conversation with Steve and it put into perspective the amount of time we have left and the amount that has to be done. He also stressed the importance of the blog, because it is a way to show the progress throughout the assignments and therefore can be used as evidence to get the merit criteria and even the distinction because the evidence for D1 and D2. Other things that were brought up was time management and the approach to work, by doing it in layers rather than sequentially

This week I am going to finish the web plans for both CiSSy and iME and get screen designs made up for them both. In the iME assignment I will have got all the digital designs created and will be uploaded onto the blog for feedback so stay tuned.

Something that I have noticed on the blogger site is the ability to have an email sent whenever a comment is posted on the blog. It’s in the dashboard settings under the comments settings.

The next assignment we have is a group one, this one I have not been looking forward to because of the group aspect of it, I’ll like working in a group but I’d hate to be the one that lets the group down.

I think it’s finally sunk in the importance of time management. I have been doing it but not been able to evidence it. Once I do the sheets properly I will have the evidence and I will be able to start getting these merits and distinctions that are so sought after.

That’s my blog of the week, comments will be appreciated. See you later.

Luke.

Blog Subscriptions

2006-11-12T15:02:00.000Z

If you’re using Mozilla Firefox you can subscribe to each others blogs Using RSS. It shows up a list of all the posts that that person has made, just found it out so I thought I’d share it (It's the little RSS icon at the side of the url). Any questions? just ask.

Luke

The End........Working Backwards

2006-11-11T17:36:00.000Z

First of all apologies for missing last weeks blog entry.

This week we have taken the designs that we have done and incorporated them onto a commercial product. As we were doing the designs we didn’t know what they were for, this week we got told what the product was. It is a shoe and we have to incorporate the design using pretty much whatever application we wanted. My weapon of choice was Adobe Photoshop the same application as all my peers I believe. At the moment I have my main design created and put onto the shoe but I’m going to get another made up from one of the other designs that I have created. So I have something to evaluate when the time comes.

Things to do before my return to college are:

This blog entry (haha)
The Second Shoe design
The Web Plan for CiSSy
Screen Designs for iMe
Take another look at the CSS task we did

There is a lot on that list but because I have a week off work it’ll give me plenty of time to catch up.

Luke.

The Beginning

Six Month Learning Plan

2006-11-10T17:21:00.000Z

This is a basic outline of my 6 month learning plan. I have 2 things in mind that I’d like to learn in the next 6 months. The first thing being business management, the reason for this is that the business that I will be going into will either be a small web design business, freelance or join up with a friend who is starting his business up.

The business that my friend is starting up is a coach business which obviously is not the business that I am in but he will need a website and I think that it will be a really good experience to join in with, if the company really takes off and is a big success (which I hope it will be) then I will be sorted with a good job. The other thing that I am interested in and want to learn over the next 6 months is photography.

Photography is something that I am interested in and having the skill to take my own photographs will save a lot of money because I won’t have to get stock images online which can cost up to and over £1000. For the business section of my 6 month learning plan I will purchase and borrow some books about running a small business and read them thoroughly.

For the photography section I will also get books on it and I might talk to some of the photography students about the basics of photography and ask about cameras and which camera to purchase.

This Weeks Countdown Conundrum “glob”

2006-10-18T17:18:00.000+01:00

This week our tasks to complete were to finish task number one for the CiSSy assignment and to choose 3 cultural icons for the Culture Vulture assignment. Both tasks were completed and I didn’t feel pressured like I used to do in the past.

Monday’s class, we went through all of our choices for the cultural icons and I (with the help of Steve) chose the icon that we were going to write about. The icon that I have to talk about now is the Fender Stratocaster. The rest of Monday was spent doing research, creating the time plans in my sketchbook and creating an essay plan.

Tuesday I carried on with my Culture Vulture assignment and added a little more to my research and have made a start to the actual essay. I learned a few things about time planning, to make things into very small chunks and that I don’t have to use the time planning sheets that were created by the tutors (as nice as they are), I believe that I will benefit more from one that I create because it’s my own approach and will have more motivation to stick to it. Lists are rapidly taking over my life, much to the joy of my tutors, it is going to be the first thing that I do in my self study because we have a week “off”, and when I say week off I mean that we have been given a lot of extra tasks which will get us back up to speed with things.

There are a lot of tasks for this week and the holiday too, the main tasks are to:

Complete task one of culture vulture
Complete the web plan for CiSSy and the web plan for the second part pf the iME assignment
Create a proposal for a 6 month learning outcome stating the things that we’ll have to learn that is not part of the course curriculum
Make amendments to the CSS essay
Organise filing structure because there are duplicates of things and it is wasting unnecessary space

That’s all from me for this week, thank you for reading and your comments will be appreciated.

Bye.

Blogtastico

2006-10-10T17:17:00.000+01:00

Hello to you all for another week of interactive media madness. The last week was a case of organised chaos. With the deadline looming I had to complete the immense list that I prepared earlier that week. The main things that I had to do were the executive summary and finish off the other parts of the assignment. The other 3 tasks needed referencing and then putting into the template. The irony of this week is, in task 3.3 I mentioned something called scope creep, that’s where there are lots of little tasks added and then it equates to one big problem, which is what happened. I made the list, but I didn’t mind about the size of it because I knew that they were all small tasks that wouldn’t take long, but the small tasks seemed to last a little longer than I expected and it all ended in on a difficult few days work near to the end of the week.

This week I have had my new assignment handed out, or at least the first task from it, so I have to come up with 3 design icons from the 20th century. The new assignment is called culture vulture (it rhymes… fantastic).

Time planning, my favourite word. I’m getting better at it slowly but surely. I have got into the habit now of making lots of lists for things I am going to do, it’s a good way of keeping track of what’s been done. Yes I know that it has been taught to me before but now that I have figured out for myself that it works it’ll stay in my head and I will use it. Anyways with the new list fever that I have I bought a whiteboard for making my lists. I’ll have to plan some time to put it up so that I can plan some time with it.

For next week I have to complete task 1 of the CiSSy assignment, research the icons and I will add to my sketchbook, because it’s been a little neglected.

That’s my post for the week, get them comments down guys.

Week Four in the Big Brother house

2006-10-04T11:27:00.000+01:00

…and Luke is called into the diary room.

Well this week hasn’t been as productive as I’d like, mainly due to unforeseen circumstances, my car being out of service and it needing to be repaired which took two days to sort it and then another two days were taken up for a popular music festival. It has placed me behind in my work by a large margin, that’s not going to dampen my spirits or my optimism. I have looked at the tasks that need to be done for next week and I’m confident that it will all be done on time.

Next week is the hand in for Assignment A9 “thebiz” which involves producing an executive summary as if I was setting up a small freelance web design company, and adding any finishing touches to the other parts of the assignment. Time planning will be more important this week than most because of the impending deadline and the work that I need to catch up on.

This week I created/finished off the action plans for the other 2 assignments iMe and CiSSy. I created a list of tasks to do to complete the A9 assignment on Monday morning, and it was quite a big list but the individual tasks end up being quite small and it makes it easier to handle, I have actually completed a few of the tasks already and taken pleasure in crossing them off the list. The class got taught some basic CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and it into practice on a small exercise provided by John.

Time planning has never been my strong point and I don’t think it ever will be but the more time planning I do and the more I know about how long it takes me to do each type of task. That aside I can make it to places like college and work on time, that is something I have never had a problem with. (…….Monday. for those in the know I turned up at the right time even if we started later)

My task for next week is an obvious, to get my time planning right and finish off A9 while still setting aside time to do the iMe and the CiSSy assignments.

Thank you, you may leave the diary room……

One Blog To Rule Them All.

2006-09-27T12:41:00.000+01:00

Hi Peeps,

This week there has been drama… (of sorts), it starts with my car giving up on me and me having to take the train into college.

Brief review of last week, the task that had to be completed was the essay on web usability was completed with ease, I believe that I could have made the essay a lot larger if I wanted to but I was conscious that there was a 1000 word limit. An action plan was created for the CiSSy assignment so I have a clear idea on what steps that needs to be taken. The action plan for the iMe assignment I unfortunately didn’t do because I couldn’t make any tasks for it, but after a talk with john I am out of the dark and ready to get it done (it’ll be first on the list, right after, make list).

This week I have made a good progression towards completing task 3 of theBiz making some good research about managing a team and planning a budget. I also defined a list of roles for a 4 team web design team which I was quite shocked about. Nobody in the class wants to be project manager but 2 people are going to be, who? I don’t know.

I believe that I have gained a lot of knowledge, I know the basics of CSS and I also know how to create a business plan and a database.

So the plan for this week is:-
Create List – Done
Create the Action Plan for the iMe Assignment.
Produce the Roles of a 4 Person web design team.
Create the business planning documents.
Research CSS

That’s my agenda for the week. Hope you enjoyed my latest blog and I would appreciate comments, good or bad…or good.

Bye.

A Calm Sea Does Not Make a Skilled Sailor - Chinese Proverb...

2006-09-19T18:22:00.000+01:00

…and this week has been no exception. I’ve been planning out the next stage in the assignments after a mad first essay.

This week time planning has taken a more productive roll, it’s more substantial and makes me see how much of the week I actually have to myself. It is getting there.

The Biz went off to a good start minus a small mishap with the FTP server and colleges restrictions on the internet. The next task has gotten off on a good foot and I have a few pages of good material for when I type up the next essay.

iMe, the assignment that this blog is part of and gets graded for, well to surmise me and my peers talked about each others blogs and gave feedback on them. So through the changes there will be ‘Blog Improvement’.

CiSSy, my thoughts on this assignment are…

It’s going to be a lot of work and my time plan now has space for it. There’s not much to say on it this week. I have created an action plan draft for the assignment which I think I made a good job of.

Oh and my pen is nearly out of ink.

First Blog

2006-09-13T11:36:00.000+01:00

First week first blog.

I have had my assignments issued and there is a lot of work to do over this semester.

I have started back this year with a more optimistic outlook on what has to be done and I have realised that time management is essential to me successfully passing this second year of the course.

So far I believe that I have made it clear that I am going to make more effort in my studies because I am not keen on the idea of working at the cinema for the rest of my life.

'enjoy your film?' no thank you.