Photos of the World

One of our final assignments for Digital Literacy is to come up with a concept, and ideally an implementation, of some sort of ongoing blogging project. The idea is that we start something knowing that we will continue to add to it over time. An example is David Silver's "gone" posts. Every time an evil leader (my words, not his) is fired or arrested or quits, he posts a photo with the word "gone." He also has a Flickr gallery of these entries.

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is how global it is. It can do a lot to break down artificial barriers we've built between groups of people. With the help of Flickr, I'm going to start posting photos from around the world.

Since I'm traveling to Tacna, Peru in a few weeks, here is the first photo, from Tacna:


"la dueña del pan"
by arcketipo

Best and easiest blogging and photo tools

I have a question for all my digitally literate friends. In May, I will be going to Tacna, Peru with a group from USF (mainly computer science, and some dance people). We'll be serving a few schools down there, and one activity we want to do with the kids will be digital photography and blogging. Last year they did something similar to what we want to do this year, and they used Flickr for photos and Vox for blogging. When I tried Vox a year or two ago I didn't like it because you had to be a member to comment. I don't know if they've changed that, but my inclination is to use Blogger because that's what I've always used. My inclination is also to use Flickr, because it's what I'm most familiar with. However, there are other tools out there that may be better or easier. I looked at Picasa (Google's photo site), and it seems simpler to use than Flickr, though maybe less powerful. It would also probably make the kids' photos less visible because it isn't nearly as well-known as Flickr. For me, that's significant. I also tried poking around WordPress, and it seems more or less equivalent to Blogger (with an emphasis on open source, which is awesome). Does anyone have thoughts on Flickr vs. Picasa and Blogger vs. WordPress?

Here's an photo one of the kids took last year:

Finals

Two classes down, two to go. My final today went pretty well, especially considering how little I studied. We'll see if my professor can read my horrifying handwriting. I think I at least got all the multiple choice and true/false right. My first essay was pretty good, I think, second was okay, third was very poorly organized, but I think I conveyed the important points.

I'm working on my MySpace paper, but MySpace slows down Firefox so much, it's annoying. It doesn't help that I have ten profiles open right now. Heh.

My goal for next semester: Not have to pull a single all-nighter.

My goal for today: finish this paper by 3 a.m.

What I think is more likely: finish most of this paper by 9 a.m.

Then I have to finish my other paper. How does this happen? It's not entirely poor time management, but I should have spent way less time in front of the TV. Media has such a grasp on our lives! Good thing it's my major.

Also, I'm going to Peru next May and I'm excited. :-) I'm just sad that I'll probably be missing graduation parties, but whatever. It's Peru.