Greg Carrick – HND Interactive Media

This week has been very interesting so far; I think we were all expecting Steve to get us to make a presentation for reading week, which is why it didn’t come as much of a surprise to us all. After these two days working from home I have realised how hard it is to concentrate when there’s so many distractions, and I also didn’t realise how easily I could get distracted even by the smallest things.

I suppose I’m not as bad as I’m making out, since it was only really Mondays when I kept getting distracted. That was because the computer kept playing up and I was having trouble connecting to the internet on it, so I went on my dad’s laptop. The only real mistake about that was that I ended up sitting down stairs and that was the big distraction as my dad was watching TV, so every few minutes I ended up finding myself glued to the TV.

Tuesday went a lot better as I reinstalled some software on the computer and could connect to the internet again. This limited most of the distractions, as I was upstairs isolated in my room (well I wasn’t exactly isolated but it felt like it!). So this meant on Tuesday I got a lot of work done and proved to myself that I can work from home and get work done.

I am not looking forwards to doing the presentation, like I guess most of the class aren’t. But it’s something that I am going to have to do sooner or later and when I think about it every one else has to do it, so why should I be the one who tries to avoid doing it.

At the moment the presentation thing is not bothering me too much, I actually want to do it and get it over and done with because avoiding it will only make it harder to do in the future. It looks like we’ve got plenty of them to do on this course anyway. But saying that I know that on presentation day my feelings will change, and I’ll just let you know now, if I come in on Monday looking very ill and shaking, I’m scared to death about doing it! Let’s just hope I don’t get that nervous.

For the rest of the week I’m going to practice this presentation over and over and it will probably be the only thing I’ll think about till Monday. I’m also going to try and not worry myself about it, because that will make it a lot worse on the day.

This week I am going to relax and take it easy. I have already read through the A3 Back to basics assignment and will read it through a few more time to get familiar with it. I will then start to write down some questions I have about it. I’m looking forwards to going back to college to find out my results, which hopefully I won’t regret getting. But at the same time I’m nervous as I know we are going to have to do a presentation, which I am really not looking forwards to. Suppose we have to do them sooner or later though.

I have also been looking into buying a domain name and web host, I know which web host I am going to use, but when I tried to buy a domain name I was not allowed. This happened on a number of websites and they all said I had to ring customer services to proceed with my request. Does any one know if that is a normal procedure? I have tried phoning 123-reg.co.uk, but could not get through, so I’m going to try again tomorrow.

For the rest of the week I am going to try and forget about the presentation thing and start messing about with some programs to get used to them.

There is also another thing that I’m nervous about and that is what Steve has in store for us in reading week.

Today we handed in our first ever assignment. I’m sure I can say that everyone in the class is relieved to get it over with, I know I am. Now we have a week off and it will give us time to get the first assignment out of our head, as when we come back, there will be twice as much work to do, and less time to do it in.

The deadline morning was an easy day for me, I did not have to rush and try and get any work done, all I did was arrived at 9 and hand my work in. I am really pleased that I had all my work done for the night before and I know that this took most of the stress out of me. I am definitely going to try get all the work done early for the future assignments.

Saying that, the night before the deadline I was working until about 1 in the morning to get all the work done and was surprised how fast the time went by, I didn’t even realise it was so late. I didn’t really do that much work that night, it was more just touching up the work with what John told me to do, then spellchecking and proof reading it.

I’m not sure how well my work will do, I really don’t want to refer, but if it comes to it, I’m just going to have to get on with it and do my best to get it up to a pass.

The hardest part of the assignment for me was doing the technologies required to view the website. This is because I was unsure what to write about and had to do a lot of research to find out about them.

The lecture on presentations was very interesting but at the same time made me very nervous, as I realised that we would soon have to start doing presentations and I’m really not looking forward to that. I have never been very confident and get really nervous when told I have to do a presentation. All I can hope for, is that after I have done a few presentations, my nerves start to drop and I feel more confident about doing them.

The best way to finish this post is to say good luck to everyone on your results.

Now the deadline is only one week away, I thought I would be panicking and have lots of work to do, but at the moment I’m feeling quite calm and should have it all done before the weekend. Saying that I’m not sure how the standard of my work will face up to Steve’s marking and how many mistakes I might find in my writing. I’m surprised I feel like this because before the seminar group I was rushing the work and worrying that I’d done it wrong, then after the feedback from Steve I realised I hadn’t mucked it up and was doing okay after all.

I think that getting the work done one week before a deadline, then having a seminar group like we did, is just the best idea ever! As in my case the seminar group gave me a much better understanding of what else I needed to do, which was the references and delivery requirements.

I’m pleased with the new seminar groups as I’m with Shaun and Andy, who are both more confident than I am. So hopefully been with them, should help improve my confidence and make me ask some more questions in class.

After putting all my work in Page Maker, which by the way I’m feeling a lot more confident about using, I realised that I’d done quite a lot of work or more than I’d thought anyway. I never thought it would take as long as it did to put all the work in Page Maker, even though John and Steve said it would take two days, I didn’t think it would. But after all the messing about, lining up the references and making sure it was how it needed to be, I have to do all that again. As there are some references I didn’t add and more needs to be added to the delivery requirement, so the messing about starts again.

After thinking I was on course to have all the work done early, I remembered that there was still the evaluation to do. For some people this isn’t a big task but as you have already guesses from reading my posts, I’m no good at expressing my thoughts and feeling about events. So it will take me a while to get that part of it done.

Things to do:

• Evaluation
• Incorporate all references
• Proof read and spell-check
• Create CD label
• Finish Technologies Required

Even though I have known the deadline is close, it has finally hit me how little time there is left to get the assignment completed. I have stuck to the production sheet reasonably well, as I have started all the tasks when I said I would, but then not finished some of them when I said I would. So now I am feeling the pressure and think I’ll end up putting more than 16 hours self-study in this week.

I thought I was getting to grips with the weekly time sheet but in the support group, John pointed out that the tasks set were not micro enough and have to be split into smaller tasks. He also said not to limit the screen designs to your technical knowledge, which I have been doing slightly but then as my target audience for my website is at a younger range, I have tried to keep the designs simple.

I am really enjoying using Page Maker since you can line everything up so accurately, but there are a few things that bug me, like it’s hard to select things when you have put them close together, also how easily something is put out of line, then just will not go back into the same place as before. I have also realised the limitations of shapes the program can make, it may just be my inexperience of using the program and more can be made but I couldn’t create the shape I wanted.

This leads me onto how friendly everyone in the class is and how willing they are to help each other, I’m glad that the class is so kind and helpful. For example, Tom W was helping me a lot by showing me how to use Page Maker and then when Gary found out I couldn’t create a shape he stopped what he was doing and figured out a way to get the shape I needed. Thanks both of you.

The two days at college have been really enjoyable, but an event at the end of Tuesday’s lesson could not have happened at a worse possible time. That was my Pen Drive packing up on me, which meant I couldn’t take my work home and do any that night. So now I have to go into college on Wednesday to get a copy of my work and waste a night’s worth of work.