How To… Get Thrown Out By Your Landlord.

Week 4 Assignment – CRITIQUE/INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS: Finishing ‘Op-Ed’ web opinion piece; reading and critique on article by Bernstein (as a blog entry); ‘How to’ instructional web page materials (choice of serious or ‘tongue in cheek’ approach).

The Idea

Have you ever just had that urge to annoy your landlord? frustrate him beyond despair? or just ruin their property? well this is the place to be, a concise guide on…

HOW TO GET THROWN OUT BY YOUR LANDLORD

THE STEPS-normal

1.Be loud. This works in many ways really, loud music, abusive shouting etc. fairly self explanatory.

2. Pull up the carpets. Stomping on bare floorboards is much more effective at upping those decibels.

3. Bed action (real or manufactured). Any loud screams and the bed hitting the wall will annoy other tenants and the landlord. There’s nothing like disturbing other peoples sleep.

4. Watch TV at ridiculous hours, i find national geographic works best, monkey screams, whale song etc.

THE STEPS- crazy

5. Paint all the walls, doors, floors, yourselves if necessary, black!

6. Turn your stairs into a water slide, great fun and causes a flood. (only works if your flat/ apartment has stairs, bungalows will not work.)

7. This is only to be used in drastic measures… set fire to and burn down your flat/apartment.

IMPORTANT: make sure you leave your place of residence swiftly after setting fire to it.

WARNING: points 5 to 7 may result in death.

Carrying out just a few of these should result in you being kicked out, if not, you have a problem. Enjoy the tips.

A summary of 10 tips on writing for the web.

Week 3 Assignment – OP-ED (Editorial writing for the web): 1. Preparatory thinking for an ‘Op-Ed’ piece; 2. Comparing three writing approaches: print, ‘conversion’ to web writing; ‘born digital’ web work – discussion in class followed. (posted this or next week).

Mark Bernsteins article ‘10 tips on writing for the web‘ covers a range of ways to keep readers coming back to your site for more.

The majority of the tips are simple things that most of us would normally adhere to anyway such as write for a reason, write tight and write often. These are all standard things that any web writer should already know.

Make good friends and make good enemies are good ideas that people may not think of. Good online friends will widen your sites availability and good enemies will create debate and spur on not only your site but your ‘enemies’ as well.

Letting the story unfold is a good point as writing a blog, people may think to just write what they are feeling on that day. however, if the entries link in some way it creates better cohesion within your site.

Number 7, stand up, speak put is also obvious because it is fine to write your own opinion, but if you’re writing about a subject that involves facts and figures, make sure they are correct.

‘Be sexy’ should really be called ‘be personal’ because a personal blog will be more interesting if it is written about things you would normally not share, especially if you’re site/blog is confidential.

Keeping archives is a good tip as some readers will like one or two particular articles which they would like to read over and over. Also, if you have ‘an off day’ with your writing, it wouldn’t be the only showcase of your work available.

Finally, the last tip to relax mentions not worrying about punctuation and spelling errors. I think this is a bad idea because although it could be seen as giving the blog/site character, you can easily create character while correcting your mistakes. It also makes the page look very unprofessional.

Which came first…The bicycle or the bus?

Week 3 Assignment – OP-ED (Editorial writing for the web): 1. Preparatory thinking for an ‘Op-Ed’ piece; 2. Comparing three writing approaches: print, ‘conversion’ to web writing; ‘born digital’ web work – discussion in class followed. (posted this or next week).

I’m driving into Cambridge, or any city given that matter, all i’m confronted with is hoards of crazy cyclists battling it out with power hungry buses.

Monday evening, 5pm, the perfect example.

I am driving towards the cathedral traffic lights, i want to turn left, so i have to enter the bus lane. The bus wants to turn right, so they leave the bus lane. A cyclist decides to play a game of chicken inbetween the two of us. The cyclist wobbles out infront of me, nearly falling over, careers into the path of the bus, forcing it to slam on it’s brakes, and nearly kill me.

I think they annoy each other as much as they annoy the rest of us.

Shouldn’t there be some kind of test for cyclists. Maybe something simple like balance maintanance. You should not be able to ride a bike, if you are not able to ride a bike!!!

Belarusians employ German spy to plot Englands downfall!

IN CLASS ACTIVITY

from Mirror Online

So, what’s standing in front of a fourth straight world cup qualifying win for England? that’s right, it’s a German spy. Oh, and in case i forgot to mention, he’s also worked for Saddam Hussein.

Don’t worry it’s not as bad as it seems. Belarus coach Bernd Stange has previously guided Iraq to fourth place in the 2004 Olympics, which technically, was a job under supervision by the dictator.

After an interview blunder, Stange, the German, admitted he had being spying on the English when he said “I personally didn’t see the whole match against Kazakhstan, just the highlights,” said Stange, who has been preparing in his native Germany with his squad.

“Our spy – the German coach I’ve mentioned before at a Bundesliga club – faxed me a detailed match analysis and it looks as if England had real problems in the first half. We must draw encouragement from that.”

Stange also claimed that were he not to find a replacement for Alexander Hleb on the left wing, he would consider playing himself.

So, all in all, a German spy with links to a terrorist dictator will try to stop Theo Wallcott, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney tonight in Minsk, and if necessary, he will do it himself.

Let’s hope he’s as good at spying as he is at guiding 59th place Belarus to number one at in the Fifa world rankings.

Review of Sports news websites and blogs.

Week 2 Assignment – A WEB REVIEW OF THE WEB: compare at least three contrasting web sites (see course blog for details). Task involved reviewing and also analysing ‘web style’ writing.

And here is the answer to the question every sports fan wants to know – where to go for the latest sports headlines when your killing time.

I looked at two mainstream sports news coverage websites and compared them with an amatuer blogging site for the same theme. The three sites i looked at were BBC sport page, Sky sports news and Caught Offside.

Firstly, the BBC page looks efficiant and organised. The main stories are in bold headlines with pictures down the centre of the page. Sufficient teasers come under the titles of every story such as “Ferrari’s futuristic pit system may have cost them the title”. This gives the reader and insight into the article.

All the different sports are catorgorised down the left side of the page which makes the page easy to navigate and to find the article you are looking for. A text scroll also gives news updates for all the headlines across the top of the page.

When you go into an individual article, the paragraphs are short and chunky, making the page easily scannable. It is also accompained with a captioned picture and links to other parts of the site in a footer. The BBC page is very professional and well organised to make the experiance as easy as possible for the reader.

The Sky Sports News page is very similar to the BBC page in language terms but very different in layout and visual effectiveness. All the headlines have teasers that have a good insight into the story and the story itself is fairly straight forward and to the point.

The website is less well organised and complicated to search through if you are looking for an individual story. The only effective organisation is the catergories along the top which when clicked on, take you to each sport.

All the headlines are available but the subheadings don’t stand out enough and make scannability and navigation much harder than on the BBC page. The page isn’t helped by the adverts all over the screen which makes the page look cluttered. It is still a good website but more organisation and better use of visuals would make it a much better page.

Caught Offside is an opinion blog that focuses on the main football stories but gives them a twist such as Steven Gerrard scoring hisn 100th Liverpool goal but where does he rate amongst Anfield legends?

The overall layout of the page looks good but unproffesional. The website doesn’t deal with a huge amount of stories so there is no need to catergorise the articles. The website is easily scannable and is a great way to submit your opinion on the latest news and gossip, with comment boxes below each story. The articles have headlines that could work as teasers on their own, but they also include the first five or six lines of prose which i think is too much for the source page.

The articles themselves are the perfect length. They give enough information with a mixture of fact and opinion as well as quotations if appropriate.

The only real organisation is evident below the teaser where articles have been tagged in relation to other articles in the archives. Apart from the organisation of the site, Caught Offside is a very good blogging site and with the complexity of the Sky page, The BBC sport page was the best example i found.

Danny Wallace: The worlds most uncelebrity celebrity!

Week 1  Assignment - BLOGS AND BIOGS: autobiography (introduction); ‘celebrity biography’ designed for web fanzine or similar, or a web biography of a fictional character from literature or media.

Daniel Frederick Wallace (born 16 November 1976) would be best known for his documentary hit on BBC2 titled ‘How to start your own country’. Daniel was born in Dundee, Scotland, growing up in Loughborough and Bath, England.

His early work was writing game reviews as a 13 year old for gaming magazines. At the age of 18 he began writing radio comedy whilst at the University of Westminster. At 22, he bacame the BBC’s youngest producer as one of the main men behind the award winning ‘Dead Ringers’, as well as ‘The Mighty Boosh’ and ‘Ross Noble Goes Global’.

As a journalist, Wallace has had columns in The Guardian and The Independant. He has also turned author, publishing highly acclaimed comedy books such as ‘Are You Dave Gorman?’ and ‘Random Acts Of Kindness: 365 ways to make the world a better place’. His most famous work remains to be his Bafta award winning series ‘How to start your own country’ in which he started his own nation inside his london flat calling it ‘Lovely’ and recruiting over 40,000 new members of his nation. Wallace has since done alot of presenting work including ‘Test The Nation’ and light hearted ‘Schools Out’. He also has a weekly saturday morning show on London XFM whilst continuing to write and present.

Danny Wallace, The creator of BBC 2 hit ‘How to start your own country’