Off to London!

This isn't a really real post, just wanted to say that I'm off to London tomorrow, and due to the exceptionally busy week I've just had, I don't have any posts queued up, so there will probably be a bit of a gap in posting.

In the meantime, you can check out the Facebook page for Hashtag Magazine, the new digital magazine that I'm launching in eight days with some of my friends (because we don't have enough to do). A large part of why we decided to launch it though was because we all wanted to build our design portfolios, so rather than doing loads of mock magazine layouts, we figured we could write a bit of copy, and actually produce something real and complete! So the magazine is heavily focused on design and less on text.

HASHTAG is a young and trendy online magazine launched in 2014 by five girls based in Edinburgh. We’re obsessed with fashion, food and TV shows, and we’re here to share the fun with beautifully designed articles! For you, we shall travel, eat, drink, pet pugs, and empty our wallets in stylish stores. You can count on us to bring you la crème de la crème of the current trends! 

Also, we presented our pitches in Interactive Media today, and they were offering a bottle of champagne for the best presentation... and I won! :) This is the Prezi I used for my presentation, and you can see all my posts about the project over on my tumblr. My course leader is really encouraging me to actually go forward with the app, everyone on the panel thought it was a really viable product that I could definitely actually make and sell. I'm not sure I have the time or energy, but its pretty awesome anyways.

You Don't Want to Mess With Knitters

For my interactive media class, we are required to propose a potential interactive media project -whether an app or a game or something else. I had been thinking about this since our first class the week before, and was starting to be a bit concerned come Thursday, as it seemed that everyone else had thought of what they were going to do already. However, for the last hour or so of the class (we went over my 30min but I don't think anyone really minded) we split into groups to discuss our projects. I was second, and announced I had no idea. While we went around the circle though, I began thinking about apps and the idea came to me to do a knitting app, so by the time we came full circle and my lecturer announced they were coming back to me, I was ready, and presented my idea for a knitting app.

There are a couple of features that I've thought of so far, and they include things such as:

• Comprehensive tracker for stitches and rows, so that you don't have to keep writing things down and crossing things out.
• Pattern storage.
• Tutorials.
• Dictionary (with pictures) of common terms/stitches.
• Barcode scanner that would check yarn compatibility against patterns for gauge. 
• Gauge calculator (I'm thinking something that would measure how tight of a knitter you are ie. my stitches are always way smaller than my mum's). 
• Needle sizer (just have a to-scale picture on the phone and compare sizes)

I downloaded a bunch of apps, and while some of them have some of these features, none of them have all of them (and some, such as the barcode scanner, aren't in any of the existing apps that I looked at). 

My lecturer seemed pretty impressed with that and said it was really real-world applicable and targeted a specific, interested audience, so I'm pretty excited! We don't have to do any programming work or design, we just have to argue our idea, so this should be pretty awesome! 

No Internet Blues

I am currently (September 30th) typing this post up on my internet-less computer so I can quickly copy and paste it onto my blog tomorrow. My roommate neglected to transfer the internet from his former roommate to himself when said roommate moved out, and his attempt to transfer it last Friday has resulted in our internet being shut off until they can set us back up, which for some mysterious reason, can’t happen until around October 13th, to my extreme annoyance.

On the other hand, I knit half a hat this weekend, finished a book, and watched a lot of old movies and episodes of TV shows, which was fun.

Look at those pretty needle markers Connie made me.

Then again, I can’t watch the Breaking Bad finale, which is extremely aggravating (and before you suggest it, no, I cannot set up at campus or in a coffee shop to watch it, as 90% of the time while watching Breaking Bad I end up screaming at Walter White for all his poor choices and dickish behaviour).

Friday was another extremely busy day. We arrived at campus at 9:30 for more information about the school and our courses, followed by a goal setting seminar, and finally a presentation from The Society for Young Publishers Scotland (which I am now a member of, thank you very much). We also received information about an 8-month internship with Floris Books, which I am hoping to apply for.

We were also finally assigned our tutorial groups, which means I now know my entire class schedule for the first semester.

Monday: Publishing in Context Lecture 9-10, Publishing in Context Tutorial 11-1, Meida Monday Lecture 1-2.
Tuesday: Magazine Business Lecture 9-10, Publishing in Practice Lecture 11-12, Publishing in Practice Tutorial 3-6.
Thursday: Creative Toolkit 9-1, Digital Workshop 1-5

Publishing in Context is the only lecture I had today, seems like we’ll be taking a very broad look at publishing in a historical and modern context in that class. There is no exam, but rather a single case study which makes up 100% of my grade and is due after Christmas (eep!). The tutorials seem to be kind of like discussion groups, there are 13 people in my tutorial, lots of them are from the UK, as well as a girl from China, a girl from France, a girl and guy from the states, and Kate, one of the other Canadians (there are four of us from what I can tell). We didn’t have Media Monday today, as my impression is that it is largely guest lecturers. The creative toolkit is a kind of computer class, where we will be learning InDesign and Photoshop, among others, while the digital workshop is basically a chance for us to use the computer lab for whatever course work we need to.

Wednesday nights there is an optional but heavily recommended movie night. The first couple movies include Agora (2009), The Name of the Rose (1986), and The Ninth Gate (1999). They are, ostensibly, films featuring books (though in a very broad sense). Which ought to be fun.

We also received a print out of the timetable for the year. The weeks are numbered, ie. I am currently in postgraduate week 1, but since the undergraduates start much earlier than the postgraduates, they are on week 4. However, apparently most of the emailed information about events, days off, etc. tend to have the undergraduate weeks, so postgrads have to double check everything.

Some pertinent/exciting dates:
October 21 - Reading week, the Burns trip is also this week.
December 23 - January 3 - Christmas Break
January 8 - assessment for trimester one due
January 11 - trimester one ends
January 23 - induction for trimester two
January 27 - trimester two begins
April 14-25 - Easter break
May 10 - trimester two ends
May 19 - trimester three begins
August 30 - trimester three ends

I also got my new phone case in the mail (thanks again mum). Look at how cute it is!