Poke! Facial advertising; 'iPhone apps'; House from 'Up' (27th August 2011)

Companies using facial technology to look for potential customers [LA Times]

Law enforcement uses this technology to track down criminals and thugs. But looks like commercial companies have another idea on using this same technology as well. Of course, they're not using that to catch thieves in shops, but rather, they are trying to figure out the person who is looking on a camera-mounted screen and get an idea on how old the person is, and then push out information that they think the person would be interested. Facial recognition technology has become one of the newest tools in marketing, even though privacy concerns abound. Some people feared that once their faces are captured from the camera, they will be exposed to dangers like identity theft, information exploitation, and more. But somehow companies like Kraft and Adidas are very interested since they mostly just want to pinpoint a demographic based on age and gender to tailor their ads. Hopefully in the future, we won't see something similar to those in Sci-Fi movies where companies can make clones out of their faces!

iPhone apps we'd like to see [Crikey]

Crikey made this sarcastic picture that resembles the interface from iPhone's App Store. Now that Steve Jobs has resigned developers can upload whatever they want to the highly regulated App Store! And looks like there are some entries that reflect how ironic the Australian government system is, and some of them even tell us how major news companies are hacking our phones. Have a look!

Beautiful house from 'Up' is realised, Disney unprecedentedly allows [The New York Times]

For some people, especially kids, they would love to own that symbolic house after watching the movie from Disney Pixar's Up. No wonder some bloke who specialised in custom-built dwellings from Salt Lake City has built one since he is so obsessed with the movie. Mind you, the listing price is USD$400,000. Seems quite affordable. The man behind the design is Blair Bangerter, a son of Norman H. Bangerter, who served as governor of Utah from 1985 to 1993. The younger Mr. Bangerter first saw Up two years ago. He himself as an animation fan, was so exciting that the film gave a special role to his other passion, houses, and thus became so busy with replicating the colourful Victorian in real life.

After some 'dealing-with' with Pixar, the company behind this marvelous movie, he was finally allowed to build the house and sell it while keeping the profits. One reason why the house was permitted to be built was because the director of Up has intervened on behalf of the project. Well, that will surely attract sightseers and travellers from around the world, not to mention Pixar fans and Up fans alike.

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Poke! New busway; Hurricane in the US; Brisbane Festival!! (26th August 2011)

Easter Busday to open Monday [Brisbane Times]

Good news for people who live in the eastern suburbs like Coorparoo, Cannon Hill and Carindale. Translink is prepared to open their next busway that lies from Buranda to Main Avenue, Coorparoo on Monday. I've been living in Carindale for around 6 months with my homestay family when I arrived in Australia back in 2010. And I can see that the area around Stones Corner were always clogged with traffic since there are so many sets of lights are built upon that road. So no wonder there are plans that could help easing the busy hours when commuters were in a packed bus while having to endure the turtle speed and constant braking. Now that the busway has completed, it will cut around eight minutes from a trip along Old Cleveland Road. That would mean a lot for commuters, I can guarantee.

Hurricane Irene picking up strength [NASA]

Here's a picture giving you an idea on how massive a hurricane looks from heaven's above. Hurricane Irene is now intensifying into a category 3 hurricane. And the projected path shows that it will swipe across the State's east coast from New England to New York, up into eastern Canada. Flights are cancelled, people are rushing to get their necessities packed, buying foods and drinks for evacuation, and government is preparing to confront this massive storm in the upcoming days. It will be a crazy week for them I assumed. Stay safe, eastern citizen of the United State of America.

Brisbane Festival at South Bank [Quest | Courier Mail]

On South Bank, a massive festival will be revealed soon as well as a good opportunity to start my research essay for my COMU1311 course! $13.5 million was used for this event which starts on 3rd September. One special feature of the festival is a corridor decorated with LED-blacklit Interactive 'Light Scope' accompanied with complementary soundscape. Besides that, the festival would feature 40 productions, 700 performances, four world and eight Australian premieres. I simply can't wait to be one of the 'foreigners' who will be going to events and see performances, while having fun with people around me. (also, while doing important jottings for the essay. Fun times /sarcasm)

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Focus: Personal Media use and Production Diary (Assignment #1)

An interesting experiment has commenced 2 weeks ago as I tried to find a specific pattern for my media usage. Well, media usage differs from person to person, and I noticed many people has suggested that Facebook is one of the item that we should included. However, since I'm not always ON Facebook, I prefer taking it as a part of my Internet browsing usage. Also, I have categorised them into several sectors: Multimedia (YouTube, videos, music, Podcast, Internet browsing), Circulation (TV and newspaper), and Creation. (Blog, photographs)

I'll highlight a few things that I found interesting in my usage traits.

TV vs Internet browsing

Looking at my table I have filled in for the past 2 weeks, I don't really see much of a surprise for me. I've always been spending tremendous time on Internet since there aren't much to watch on TV unless it's Masterchefs, which usually I would watch while having my dinner. But since it's over now there is this lame Renovator show running, I probably would only watch 6:30 with George Negus and the 7PM Project at night, both are the favourite TV show at night. I don't even watch anything else so I can say the TV's purpose was either watch cartoons or news.

Music vs Video

I'm a music collector, so during web browsing I tend to listening to my music as well, but in some occasion, I'll stop the music when I have to concentrate writing my blog and typing news entries. Video is another sector I really love, because I usually watch movies on my laptop since I don't have a DVD player around, and YouTube videos are always my breakfast TV of choice. Watching YouTuber's new video is the best thing to do to start your day! During weekends when I have more time, I'd watch even more YouTube videos before I get to my first meal of the day, depending on what time I usually wake up.

A funny thing is, as I put it onto a line chart, I found myself having quite a similar trends in the middle of the chart as you can see. Maybe as I watch more video that day means that I would listen to more music?

Internet browsing vs Newspaper

Ha ha ha. I am just proving a point here that I have never picked up a single issue of newspaper for the past 14 days. Well, I don't have a habit on paying $1.5 every day just to feed my consuming needs because I don't really like the feel of the newspaper. After you finish your paper, your hands get dirty and you have to wash it. Unlike Internet version of newspaper, like Courier Mail, Brisbane Times, The Australians, they all have their own website for me to visit. And Mum! Clean hands! They've got all the main news covered there, although you'd have to pay for some some premium content. So I found newspaper is not doing anything for me.

Media creation

I have my own blog but I usually only post once in a few while, because that blog was meant for me to spit out my thoughts about something I am mad at. But the journalism blog that I started out since the 2nd week of uni, I found myself posting almost every day, since I want to treat it as my ground to polish my writing skills. I would spend sometimes over an hour on some articles like Focus and Donny Recommends section. Well, all and all, it's an interesting thing for me to devote in, and I love it so far.

For other kinds of media creation, I take photographs. Quite a lot. But strangely I found myself taking less after I got in uni, but that doesn't hurt me as I only get out in some weekends and take things that I love to see it framed as a picture.

Wrap-up

Detailed chart of my usage in the past 14 days. Click to enlarge!

So there you go! Even though I have to log my media usages, I didn't change my habits in order to make the chart look 'beautiful' or fabricated. I just do my normal routine, and as I finish, I log that in as I go. Again, this is a very interesting experiment I've worked on. I hope I could see how other classmates did theirs and perhaps I'll do a personal reflection on that!



D.

Poke! Finding good school for kiddies; New plan for airport; Steve Jobs leaves his post (25th August 2011)

Article Day! No deaths, no crime. Just offbeat news for today.

7 things you need to know about a school before you enrol the kid [Time]

Parents! Take care of your children's future with these steps that you would have missed! This article gives an idea for clueless parents who will enrol their kids in the coming future. Sometimes, selecting one good and prestigious school is a thing, however, you'll need to take a deeper dive into their school system. For instance, look at the teachers and see how they treat the kiddies during class. Also the relationship between teachers and the kids are something that parents should take note of. Good read!

Development plans for unused areas around Brisbane Airport [Life | Courier Mail]

Allocated area for the plan of developing the Airport surroundings

A design firm has won Brisbane Airport Corporation's heart to become the mastermind of the upcoming plans for establishing the undeveloped area, covering 2700 hectares of mostly swamp land. Sad thing is they won't build a theme park, it will be only used for business and industry instead. Bugger. Hopefully they won't destroy the nice swampy view from the North side.

Bye CEO of Apple! Steve Jobs backs himself to the backstage

The influential signature person for Apple, Inc., Steve Jobs, has finally announced his resignation. In my opinion, this wasn't any shock news since he's been in medical leave for the past half of the year. And there were already speculations around the rumour mill saying that he is no longer healthy enough to take the duty himself due to the suffering of pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant earlier in his career life. Now, Tim Cook, who had been serving as the company's operating chief and acting CEO, was now named CEO. As a semi-Apple fan, I am looking forward to seeing the new stuffs that will be announced in the new age of Apple.

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Poke! Fire tragedy; Rebels captured Gadhafi compound; faking cross? (24th August 2011)

11 people died in horror house fire [Courier Mail]

Fire incident at a house in Logan

A horrible incident happened during midnight last night that stunned Australia. This Polynesian family from Logan was totally shattered when their house was on fire. 11 people, many among them are still children, was perished around midnight, while 3 person was luckily escaped the disastrous fire. There's been gas tanks and trucks that have caused several explosion after midnight. According to the press, it is believed to be the worst fire tragedy since the Childers Backpackers fire on June 23, 2000, which claimed 15 lives. There is an assumption where this house hasn't installed a fire alarm that could've saved this family's precious lives, but as investigation is still in progress, we still don't know what exactly caused the fire.

New developments as rebels captured Gadhafi's compound [Brisbane Times]

Libyans are able to see the future as the rebel warriors successfully entered the compound where Gadhafi once in. Rebels have moved quickly to secure Tripoli since entering on Sunday, and finally after days of fight against the military force. Now Libyans are celebrating and jubilating on the street in the capital of Tripoli, since the dictatorship of the 42-year regime has finally come to an end. However, it is still a mystery where Gadhafi is, and hopefully in the near future we can see him captured and finally may Libya be free from the turmoil and progress into a free country.

Nine news faking crosses over Morcombe search site [Brisbane Time]

A sinister act that confused audience and loyal news watchers as Nine admitted that they had faked the crosses to the news helicopter to hover over Daniel Morcombe's search site at Beerwah. In reality, the helicopter was nowhere near Sunshine Coast, let alone close to Beerwah. Now Nine has some explaining to do as it is incomprehensible that the news reporter claimed they were crossing the scene while the helicopter wasn't even there at the time. And it's extraordinary that they don't even know where the helicopter is during the report. Misreporting is a fundamentally unacceptable in the news industry, and that proves a point to me that I don't really watch Nine news at any occasion.

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Focus: Planting a bomb or a blossom at your kid's wellbeing and development?

I thought I'd like to share a little story about myself. Looking back, I've always been a nice kid, if not, I am often described by my parent's friends as a polite, patient and well-taught kid. But sometimes in my childhood, I must have done something so mischievous, so raunchy, something that would instantly startled my mother's temper. I remembered some, and most of them didn't end well for me. But looking back now, I don't hate my mum, I just felt I was angry and sad but I didn't really put much blame to my mother.

I know some of my friends, whose mother had never beat them up or using physical violence like sticks hitting and smack on the bum, which I found it is impossible. By impossible, I mean sometimes for a parent, if you do nothing to show your authority to your child, they will not listen to you and years gone by, the child will become more disobedient and rebellious, trying to battle against the upper level of dominance. Showing authority by smacking and punishment is needed for a child's development in my opinion. But as I looked at them, they are perfectly fine and nice, not like those baddies and vandal fiends roaring at you across the street at night.

But at the same time, some parents did offer strict rules and regulations at home and outside home where children has to abide with them or else they will have a serious consequence. Again, children turned out to be nice citizens, but some children are as hard as a rock. No matter how you push them to the east, they will drag themselves toward the west. A saying in Chinese described this very nicely: 'Good advice may sound harsh to the ears' Whenever children have to listen to their parent's constant scolding, they tend to dislike it. Moreover, if you tried to force them to behave in something they refuse to, they will directly turn against you.

Different styles of parenting will not determine how a child will turn out to be in their adulthood, and there is no consistence about which method of child-raising is the best one.

So I realised not every family is using the same method of child-raising, although there are several similarities in concept, every parent do it differently. But things can sometime go off and some parents are often seeking shortcut to resolve their children's bad behaviour.

Is it acceptable for mums to do this to their kids? Let's decide.

Here is a perfect example of a mother telling her boy to not to shoplift. She used a radical measure to counter this problem - by putting him on the street while he's wearing a badge written, 'Do not trust me. I will steal from you as I am a THIEF.'

The thing I found in the article was even though the mother has took him for a tour to the detention centre, a walk in the police station showing him cells and cuffs to hint the consequence of stealing, in order to educate his 10-year-old son to not stealing things from shops, he still performed shoplifting. Well, for a mother dealing with such a troublesome young boy, it must have been frustrating.

Now that she noticed everything she's done was held to be ineffective, she decided to use the concept of 'humiliation' as a punishment for his son's wrongdoing. However, this act has stirred up a heated debate regarding whether his mother's act is doing mare harm than good to his son, as the media reported this incident in the news.

I am not certain about others, but I understand her mother's intention is to use this method to let his son to reflect on his acts of shoplifting. Plus nowadays, children are having much more protection and looking after than the past generations have ever had, making the society believe that other than suggestion or encouragement, every other punishment methods should be banned from using on children, that gives children an overwhelming idea that their parents will not smack them, ground them, or even raise their voice at them.

Giving so much protection and attention from the society, I believe children of a certain age will understand no matter how raunchy they misbehave, they won't be suffering from consequences. This has to be changed and rationalised because if more children are like that, the significance and the influence of parents will be diminished. Saying that this kid will be a criminal and suffer from traumatic mental shift is a bit far-fetched, but I think the society shouldn't criticise this mother's act of tough love. I think she will know and capable to make decision on what best it will be for her son.

Source

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Poke! Pricier transport; Pedo-stepdad; loneliest plant (23rd August 2011)

Brisbane's Transport price raise for another 50 percent [Courier Mail]

Not fair. not fair! Seems like the ever-inflating commodity price and commuting price is getting heavier and heavier for us International students. You can see the Australian currency is getting all time high, yet the things here are still as expensive as gold. Now, the City Council of Brisbane has decided in the coming years, they will increase the price for each zone gradually to 50% by the year of 2014. Now, by that time, I think there'll be no one taking buses and trains since this already priciest city in the world is still heading to that way. Have they studied about diminishing marginal returns?

Ridiculous mum re-married to pedophile stepdad [Courier Mail]
What sort of maniac will a mother of 2 daughters get married to a man that abused her daughter for 2 years? A Brisbane mum has all the eyes on her as her now husband was alleged to molest her daughter when she was 12 years old back in 2007. Her daughter, who cannot be named according to the law, gave a letter to her mother telling that she is going to marry a child raper, before she got married to this man. She never confronted this issue to the man and they got married together on 2009, after the man has apologised to this girl. The police were informed as soon as the daughter told her biological father about this abuse. The act is sick and perverted.

Introducing the loneliest plant in the world [NPR]
There are over a million species of plants in the world, but one stood out as it survived the asteroids bombardment in the distant past that wiped out dinosaurs, survived through five different ice ages, and evolved itself through eons. Now, there is only a single male tree left in the world in London, along with other genetic clones around the world's botanic garden. This tree is named E. Woodii, a cycad, a kind of tree that lived since the Jurassic and Triassic era. However, they have genders and without the opposite sex, they cannot pollinate. Without pollination, they can't grow seed and thus will ceased to reproduce and the situation now was the researchers have wandered all over the Ngoya forest in Africa, where they discovered this specimen by John Medley Wood in 1895, has yet to find a female E. Woodii. So, you can see why it is called the loneliest plant in the world, and who knows if the tree will die in next year, or the next hundred years without successors?



D.

Focus: Lecture - Ethics, Codes and Conduct

On this week's lecture, we took a look at how codes and ethics work in the journalism industry. Recently, the industry is criticised as one of the most prominent press in UK, News of the World, was exposed with phone hacking scandals. People questioned their morality and their codes of conduct, whether they have ever respect other's privacy and try to be in a honest news industry. However, they failed to do it.

Now, back to the lecture. Our guest speaker Dr. John Harrison showed us a couple of advertisements including printed form and TV ads. Then he asked us about how ethical or unethical one advertisement seemed to us. Of course, different students has their different views, and so did I. While I found some of the ads are funny, they tend to do it in a rather poor or, may I say, inferior way. The creators of the advertisements like to catch our attention by using shocking content and suggestive material. But of course, not every advertisement is shown in prime time or 'kiddie time' where children watches TV after school or before school. So, there is an existence of the regulation board. Their work is to categorise each advertisement into their suitable on-air window. For printed posters and billboards, they don't have much control over them as everyone who travel past them will look at them. So there is a ethical question that ponders us. How can we tell everything from:

Good and bad?

Ethical or Unethical?

Right from Wrong?

Right, so in the lecture, John introduced 3 main ethical theories to us, which are 'Deontology', 'Consequentialism', and 'Virtue ethics'. And I am fairly intrigued by how consequentialism works.

Consequentialism is all about getting the right outcome, no matter how we did it, and by any means the outcome is the most important thing we should take care of, and 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. Believing how News of the World has followed these rules so closely, they've done something so shocking in a dishonouring and demeaning way, leading to their closure. So, should we just do what we want and don't care about the consequences? A good question to think of.

p.s.: I think John is using a bit too much BLOCK LETTER AND I FOUND IT A BIT CONFUSING TO FOLLOW!!



D.

Poke! Libya close to freedom; Daniel's shoes; soldier wounded (22nd August 2011)

Libya on the brink of true freedom [CNN]
Now, after 6 months of civil war claiming countless lives, and trained rebels trying to topple the Gadhafi's 42-year ruling, the freedom fighters and their allies have controlled most of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. However, Gadhafi is still remaining unknown regarding his location in the capital. Confident that victory was close, the rebel government began making plans to govern. A complicated civil matter happening in the northern African country, and I hope the country will be free from the regime of Gadhafi, and once and for all united as a sovereign country.

Shoes found in site confirmed as Daniel's [Brisbane Times]

The Morcombe family can finally
consider funeral plans for Daniel

After the breakthrough of bones and shoes, the Morcombe family has finally given a chance to plan of a funeral for their late son. Bruce Morcombe, father of Daniel, has spoken to media after the police confirmed the shoes found at the Sunshine Coast search site are the same Globe brand as Daniel was wearing when he disappeared in 2003. Although they cannot confirm if the size of the shoes are of Daniel's feet, they said their characteristics were consistent with Daniel's shoes. It's raining so heavily in this few days, forcing the team of searchers to pause their search today, hopefully the weather will turn fine and let the search unit continue their search as soon as possible.

Australian Digger heavily wounded in Afghanistan [Brisbane Times]

As of now, there are no detailed report about an Australian soldier who was involved in an incident in Afghanistan. But the article said if a death is confirmed, it will be the 29th solider fatality in Afghanistan amid the current operations. Sad news of the unrest war-zone and the families, and I just hope that Australia will send their troops back home and end this ridiculous 'peacekeeping' mission.

UPDATE: Soldier confirmed death from sustaining severe wounds. My humble condolences.



D.

Donny Recommends: The Island (2005)

Time to have a movie recommendation for my readers. For me I don't really like to see those holiday movies where everything was either 'BAM!', 'WOOSH!' or 'SPLAT!'. It doesn't serve any purpose for me, and I sometimes even find it revolting just to watch with my friends where they were simply watching it for the explosions and actions. Well, not for me. I paid tremendous attention to the plot and the meaning behind films so that makes me usually watch it either with one or two friends, or even alone. Sad? Not really, I'm just enjoying the time spent with myself.

Poster of The Island

Enough with the crap, let me introduce this movie The Island. The Island is a science fiction movie about an apparently futuristic compound with people living in it. The people there were told that the outside world was contaminated and therefore they have to follow a very strict regulations in there, from daily diet to social relationships in order to regulate the population and breed.

However the protagonist of the film, Lincoln Six Echo, did not feel competent with the situation he is in, plus more evidence that made him know probably the world outside was different from what they were told to be. So he investigates.

Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson)

One of the main subplot of this film was the Island lottery, where everyone will have a chance to win and escape from the isolated compound. People in there were really anticipating that one day it will be one of them to win the prize. However, behind this so-called lucky draw, it was actually a myth, and Lincoln found out the people inhabited in the compound were actually clones of real people of the 'outside' world, where wealthy people sponsored to clone their body and once ever they have body parts malfunctioning, they can harvest the clone's body and no one will know it. And the lucky draw's use was exactly for that.

As Lincoln found out more and more about this immoral doing of this company which told the sponsors and the government the cloned parts were do not gain consciousness, so he escaped with Jordan Two Delta, a friend who has just won the lottery and try to find their sponsors.

Cloned human fed with fake memories

This movie is really reflecting about the ethics of cloning and it gives me an interesting view on what if this really happens in the future where body parts are simply genetically grown and be transplant into dying people's body. It's a sad to see so many people are being killed just to replace body parts and yet they never know that the so-called lottery was the final destination of their lives where they are being harvested. One scene, where a pregnant woman has won the lottery as she started to labour, and as Lincoln followed the medical staff that escorted her into the surgery room, he found out after she gave birth to a baby, she was instantly injected with toxins and killed in the spot, where the baby was given to a wealthy family. That was really screwed up.

So, I do recommend this film to everyone who wants to have a special perspective about human and their cruelty, not to mention that selfishness and the contrastive morals towards the other kinds of people.



D.

Poke! Bones and shoes; Gen-'cut-and-paste'; kid's thought (21st August 2011)

So I was thinking, does writing comments for 3 stories a day really help my critical thinking and writings skills? So, from now on, I will try to write more "focus" series, or make "Poke" section longer, and I have to do something to make the titles interesting!

Bones found at Daniel's search site [Courier Mail]
I've been watching the development of the Daniel Morcombe case every day. Now, here's another breakthrough after discovering a pair of identical pairs! Now, police has found bones and after a preliminary forensic analysis conducted on the bones, they confirmed that the bones are of human remains. More breakthroughs are good things. I hope this case can be closed as soon as possible. Again, let's thank the police and volunteers!

Misleading sites led to students misunderstanding with misinformed info [Brisbane Times]

Spoof website boasting male can get pregnant.

Well, here's a thing: Nowadays, schoolchildren are very innocent, and they never go to libraries to look for resources for their projects. They tend to search related keywords online to get everything done with computers. Yet, not all information on the Internet is true. Sometimes students are even taught with misleading facts making them ended up misinformed and as they wrap up the project, they might summarise inaccurately and now the kids are warned to stop being a generation of 'cut-and-pasters'.

Research is important but we have to teach the children about critical thinking, differentiate bogus website providing biased information and check the authenticity of the websites. In that way, students will not be learning wrong aspects of a, historical event, if you will, that one of the websites that promotes supremacism claimed Martin Luther King 'was a liar, cheat and drunk and should not be celebrated in a US national holiday.' I believe students shouldn't rely too much on Internet information as again, Internet is full of liars and traps, so be sure you're in a true website when researching.

Approximately 3 Minutes inside the head of my 2-year-old [Jason Good 365]
A funny snippet about how a toddler think and do in 3 minutes as depicted by his Dad. Look at how emotion drove through a toddler like a roller coaster! I love the fact that Jason actually enjoys his little son as he showed different actions while he's watching him. And since the attention span of a child was so short, you'll never know what comes next. These bits and pieces of life and humour makes me want to have a kid so bad!



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