Week 8 Tutorial Task (Part 1)

The advanced uses of Microsoft Word; The Mail Merge. The performing of the described tasks that led up to the mail merge were all relatively easy to follow. As it was an advanced walkthrough there was no need to explain, for example, how to put a word into bold writing or the like, so unnecessary details were avoided with no harm caused. The whole close and open the document was needless and a waste of time and something that was eventually avoided. However the actual mail merge section was a little confusing. I had to 'walk on my own legs' as it were and find my own way for one part of it. This was simple in essence however and minor problems were overcome. Mail merging would mostly be useful for doing what the exercise described (sending information in a formal way to someone a distance away) as well as possible edits that you could make to an assessment on the computer (Advanced Exercise1 - track changes).

The Microsoft Excel exercises, while harder to use than the Microsoft Word ones, were relatively easy to follow. I aim the explanation of this to my use of Word being more frequent and common than that of Excel. The only part of the exercise that i was unsure of was the making of the chart. After it was produced it looked different to how I thought that it would. The information was still all readable however it simply looked different. The macros section I was told to abandon for a reason i already cannot remember. This software would be extremely useful in the running of a business. The Auto correcting formulas would be of unimaginable importance. one mistake on paper could mean columns of incorrect data whereas using Excel one correction would fix all.

Week 6 Tutorial Task - Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Part 2

The movie Dodgeball is perhaps the greatest movie of all time (in my opinion). The countless one-liners that can be applied to real life situations are low witted but awesome all the same. The article on Wikipedia is an accurate assessment of the movie however some of the critics comments were lame to the extreme. The article covers the basic storyline ruining the ending if you haven't seen it already but also raises some interesting topics concerning the directors take on his ending being replaced etc. Links to all the actors as well as who they played was listed in a table near the top for easy access and details on the making was all listed in the article. this made it very easy to understand. This article was well written in with the guidelines of wikipedia and it was fairly balanced showing opinions from both sides on the movie along with other non-biased information. To improve this article i would say that more information could be added about maybe the making of the movie for example where it was filmed etc. Otherwise a solid reliable article.

Week 6 Tutorial Task - Ultimate

Ultimate is a sport played with even players on each team with a Frisbee. The page on Wikipedia is an informative article about Ultimate. Every point and detail that is given is truthful and accurate. It covers all the facts from every angle with an easy to understand technique. For someone interested in beginning to play Ultimate this article would most likely be the best place to start. After looking up Wikipedia's Guidelines for usefull Articles I have found that this particular article on ultimate follows these guidelines as well as the best article could. When talking about the sport in general the article does not make comparisons with other sports or the like to show that it is better. It does include people's opinions (not the editors) but that is the extent of it. I honestly believe that this is a perfectly set out web page article and do not believe that it could be improved unless the rules of the game changed or the like in which case updating would be necessary.

Week 5 Task

Walter Benjamin believes that there is a certain "aura" about the original copies of a 'work of art'. The "aura" he describes relates to the sense of awe that surrounds the original copy. He believes that the history of the history behind it, its publicized authenticity and cultural value of the object are all apart of the "aura". He further goes on to state that he believes that by reproducing these original copies in different ways it takes the "aura" of the product away. In contemporary digital media the same questions are valid. With music the original copy of the music would be seeing the band, orchestra, artist, etc playing live in concert. This in itself would contain the "aura" of the object, however, once the music has been reproduced, for example, through recordings or a spread over the internet, the music looses its aura. There is something 'special' in seeing the performance live as to buying or downloading the video clip off the internet.

Nowadays anyone with a computer can create things digitally or reproduce other peoples work. So the question to be asked is "what does that mean for art and the aura of the object?' Benjamin believes that by simply reproducing an object any way would be taking the aura away from the original copy so it seems fair to say that reproducing the item digitally would have the same effect. When it comes to creating something digitally the creation would be the first seen of it so that copy would have its own aura, however, once the object had been posted around the internet or copied to some other place or area, it would lose that aura simply because it wouldn't be unique anymore.

With photoshopping there are two possible directions that this could go. Firstly the photoshoped image could create a new aura for itself separate from the original copy. In this case it would still be a copy of the original with the common factor being same basic outline of the art. An example of this is with the Monalisa. If someone visited the museum where this famous painting was being kept and took a picture of it, put it on their home computer and photoshoped a pair of sunglasses on it with a beard to make fun of it. It would be stealing part of the originals aura as it is a kind of copy of it while creating a new aura for itself as a unique picture. The other direction this could go, using the Monalisa example again, would be that the copy would insult the original at such a cheap technique being used to recreate it and the aura would be lost to it. I believe that Benjamin's ideas would suggest supporting the latter over the former.

Benjamin believed in art having its own aura before computers and the like (digital and electronic equipment). Something created digitally is the same as something created non-digitally. The object in question would have an aura of it's own as long as it was created from scratch and not a copy of something else.