End of the semester

I'm sad to say that the semester and also my time at NYU is coming to an end. My time at NYU has been a lot of fun and I've definitely learned a ton about myself, my friends and teaching!

This Advanced Tech Applications course has given me some valuable tools to create interesting and engaging websites and media.

As the year winds down and the hunt for jobs and a new life begins, I fondly look back at my time in graduate and undergraduate education and am thankful for the chance to live through such a time of self-discovery, self-improvement and learning.

Additions to the Tech website

I've been adding more and more things to my assignments page on my NYU Tech class website (https://files.nyu.edu/pd799/public/ata.html). We've been working on creating Flash documents with movement and buttons that control the starting and stopping of objects moving across the screen. I've been having a lot of fun connecting buttons to moving objects and controlling what they do-or don't do!

On the web hosting front, I've been using GoDaddy (godaddy.com) for a couple of years or so and have never had a problem with them. They have cheap domain names and the ability for a lot of addons, on of them being the option to hide who you are from the WhoIs directory, which is very nice.

If you want any more information about my life, feel free to check out my website www.pauliewallie.com or add me on Twitter, @robotdinosaur

What I know about Flash in four words

"Not a whole lot"

Before this technology class, here's what I knew about Flash in a nutshell...

-It's an Adobe product now

-These days, it's resource heavy and tends to tax my processor more than I want it too

-The video side of flash is slow and unwieldy - youtube has been a pain recently

-it's a programming language/web posting protocol used to put animations on the internet

-it's architecture is very old

That's about all I think I know about Flash itself...I suppose I'll learn more as the semester continues (and if I do some 'google' hunting!!)

Browsers

I've been using a number of different browsers for a bunch of years now. In my PC using days, I always preferred Mozilla Firefox (www.mozilla.org) because of it's stability, speed and safety compared to Microsoft Internet Explorer. These days, I try not to go near too many Windows-based PCs or Microsoft IE for the sake of my own sanity.Right now on my Macbook, I have installed Apple's Safari, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Of the three, Safari is definitely the fastest, Chrome is the most stable and Firefox is the most compatible. I've used Safari more or less exclusively since 2004 and have rarely had problems with it. Once in a while it will stop responding or be unable to show a webpage correctly. In these times, I switch right to Google Chrome.

Chrome has taken the place of Firefox for me-meaning that it's my number one standby for Safari. If Safari fails in any capacity, Chrome is right there to pick up my web-surfing until Safari can sort out it's

issues.

Firefox is great for security, privacy and compatibility. Born out of the open sourc

e community, Firefox has always been a safe haven for compatibility and different online plug-ins (customizability).

I really like Safari the most; it's where all my stuff is-bookmarks, history and saved passwords. I am also used to all the keyboard shortcuts-how to open a new tab, closing a window, minimizing opening a new window, bookmarking, etc can all be done without using a mouse...how EASY!!

The almighty first post

Ah-yes...it's about 10 til' 11pm here in my apartment and soon I will be feasting on Asian food. I'm eating so late because I have been printing pictures since class ended. I had my three baths ready for the exposed paper since even before I had to go to class. With the sun going down sooner during these winter months, I've been able to print pictures earlier than if it was spring or summer.

A couple of shots came out okay...I'm still learning how to expose pictures correctly with my enlarger and stuff. I rolled my own 35mm film today so now I have two

new rolls of B&W film all ready to go. I'm going to try and shoot around the eas

t village tomorrow I think-I've been shooting in Washington Square Park with my Polaroids, the Pentax and the Kodak.

For those unfamiliar with my film setup, I have an old Polaroid camera that is unlike the type that we grew up with-it's from the 1960s-70s and uses a type of manual pull out film. You take the picture and instead of the picture popping out like the Polaroid cameras from the 80s and 90s, you have to pull out a tab so the picture starts developing.

Once the tab is pulled, the photo and chemicals go through a roller thus starting the reaction with the paper. After you hold it under your armpit (for warmth) for a minute or so, the picture is developed!! You then peel away the chemicals and paper and VOILA! An 'instant' picture.

The Pentax

Spotmatic Sp as it's called, is a camera from the 1960s as well. It is a straight-forward 35mm film camera. Up until today, I have been shooting with store bought rolls of film-at about 4 bucks a roll. TOO EXPENSIVE. Instead, I opted to buy a 100ft roll of 35mm film for about 50 bucks and roll the film into cartridges myself-thus saving boatloads of dough.

The Kodak camera belonged to my Grandparents and was used in the 50s. It uses a type of film called 120 film and has bigger dimensions then a 35mm film. At only 8 pictures per roll, you can imagine how careful I am about my subjects.

I finished my one and only roll of Polaroid instant 600 film (the one we're used to) today. I'll post a few pictures-they'll be the last I take until the Impossible Project (www.the-impossible-project.com) manufactures more 600 film.

I hope you weren't totally bored at this post...actually I don't really mind if you were or not...more than likely you learned something from it! :)

This weird looking thing is a negative I developed of a cell phone tower (looking up into it) taken on my g'parents old Kodak.