praxis « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Erste Mietererfahrungen mit dem Energieausweis

energiepass — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:44:24 +0000

Der Blog www.Immobilien-Energieausweis.com berichtet hier über eine erste Untersuchung des Berliner Mietervereins zum Thema Energieausweis.
Auffällig ist vor allem, dass ein durchaus nennenswerter Teil der Mietinteressenten offensichtlich nicht erwünscht war, weil er beim Eigentümer nach dem Energieausweis fragte.
Insgesamt wird deutlich, dass sowohl auf Eigentümer- als auch auf Mieterseite immer noch erhebliche Wissenslücken beim Umgang mit dem Energiepass bestehen.

Synchronizing the width of elements in an ItemsControl

Josh Smith — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:57:40 +0000

When I use an ItemsControl (or subclass of ItemsControl, such as ListBox) to display a list of items, I often want the width of an element in each item to match the width of the equivalent elements displayed for all other items. That is easy to achieve by setting the Width property of an element in the DataTemplate used by the ItemTemplate property, but using hard-coded width and height values is generally considered to be a bad practice. It's better to not specify a width, and let the element figure out how big it should be based on its content. But, if the element created for each item in the ItemsControl is sizing to its own content, that means that the sizes of all elements created for items will usually not be equal to each other.

For example, the screenshot below displays an ItemsControl populated with some strings. The ItemsControl has an ItemTemplate that contains a TextBlock with a light blue background color. Notice how each item is just wide enough to display its content:

What I would like, however, is to have each item be equally wide, and that the width of all items is the width required by the widest item. In other words, all of the TextBlocks should be as wide as the TextBlock that contains the word 'Whatever'. As I mentioned before, I could solve this problem by hard-coding a Width for the TextBlocks, but that is a very fragile solution.

It turns out that there is a very clean and simple solution to this problem. The trick is to rely on a not-so-often used feature of the Grid panel. Grid has an attached property called IsSharedSizeScope, which I will set to true on the ItemsControl. I then wrap the TextBlock in the ItemControl's ItemTemplate inside a Grid, and give that Grid a single ColumnDefinition whose SharedSizeGroup property is set to some arbitrary identifier. Here is that XAML:

When I run the application now, the UI looks like this:

You can download the demo project here. Be sure to change the file extension from .DOC to .ZIP and then decompress the file.

Enough Obama V. Clinton - Iraq is Burning!

hgmma — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 21:37:28 +0000

We have become so mired in the sheer pettiness of this trivial tit-for-tat Democratic primary that that recent horrific updates from Iraq are ignored. There have been some great diaries/comments posted over the last few days attempting to bring the discussion back to where it should be, but the consensus however still seems to be with Hillary’s Bosina story or Obama’s pastor. I am just to blame, I have allowed myself to get caught up in this inconsequential and brainless diversion while the prospect of a McCain presidency escapes our imagination and fails to motivate us as to the dreadful truths that will come knocking on our nation’s door.

Over the last 24 hours the Iraqi city of Basra has shown what is to be a prelude to the surfacing of violent divisions among the secular Shi'a within the Maliki government and Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. With at least 55 people have been killed and 300 in Basra according to the AP and rising deaths in Sadr City this could explode to a level that will make the Suni insurgency look like a swarm of mosquitoes. What is certain is that this is becoming more of a proxy way with the American supported Maliki government on one side that the Iran backed Shi’a militias on the other. Of course Bushco doesn’t want to portray this volatile situation as such since it conjures up memories of the PRG since the Maliki government lacks the political support among the Shi’a to fully engage al-Sadr in an overt battle against the Mahdi Army.
On CNN Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner stated;

"Enforcement of the rule of law in Basra is not a battle against Jaish al Mehdi, as some suggested. Nor is it a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran as others have purported.
"It is the government of Iraq taking necessary action to deal with criminals on the street with weapons," Bergner said, making reference to the Arabic name for the Mehdi Army.

Now to assert that these are "criminals" or rouge Shi’a elements is solely for the consumption of a very ignorant and naïve American public. There is no such thing as "rouge Mehdi" elements, one needs to understand what al-Sadr’s movement means to the general Shi’a population in Iraq.
According to GlobalSecurity.org

Hujjat al-Islam Muqtada al-Sadr says that the Mahdi would soon return, in Iraq. This rumor, touching the core of Shi'i faith and eschatology, is being spread by Sadr's preachers. In the Shia tradition, the Mahdi is the 12th Imam, who is in occultation. Muktada al-Sadr says the Americans were aware of the impending reappearance, and that the Americans invaded Iraq to seize and kill the Mahdi. His supporters chant Sadr's name at rallies to imply that he is the "son of the Mahdi." Sadr has stated that the army "belongs to the Mahdi" as an explanation of why he cannot disband it, as has been required of other private militias. Although the reappearance of the Mahdi central to Shia thought, it is unusual to raise claims of the imminence of this event, and other Shiite clerics have avoided the messianic ecstasy that such claims can induce.

What is important here is the prevalence among Iraqi religious Shi’a that Americans are there to prevent the appearance of the Mahdi. One cannot underestimate the power this message has among this population, it would be comparable to the Pope issuing an Encyclical that a particular group of people where here to "seize and kill" the second coming of Christ. Also we need to understand that al-Sadr only has limited control over this movement, therefore in essence the whole Mehdi Army are "rouge" making such claims meaningless. al-Sadr could not control this even if he tried which is why he comes up with orders of "disobedience" to describe the resistance taking place.

Refocused in my effort to end this illegal war.......
Two recent events brought me back from the stupidity of the Democratic campaign;
One, the grim numbers of 4000 and 89,938
Two, the really powerful Frontline special Bush’s War

We have become complacent in believing that a Democratic president will end this disaster in Iraq to the point where McCain has a more than legitimate chance in winning the presidency. As far as Iraq goes, I no longer will allow myself in believing that this mess will clean itself up in January 2009 upon the swearing in of a new president. We have lost too much and gotten too caught up in the promises of politicians to the point that our justified anger and outrage over this illegal war and occupation has turned into venom against supports of another politician. My God, who have I become?
Every day I wake up and look at myself in the mirror and luckily I have a stark reminder of what my values are, today this brought me into focus. I have the word Praxis tattooed to my leg (yes I was a bit crazy in my younger days).

Praxis, stems from the Hungarian Marxist philosopher Georg Lukacs
Praxis generally means practice in social action through a deliberative manner;

Practice is active, rather than being a passive observation, and is directed at changing something. Practice differs from activity in general, because practice is connected with theory, which gives its means and end. Practice is only enacted through theory and theory is formulated based on practice. So long as theory and practice are separated then they fall into a distorted one-sidedness; theory and practice can only fully develop in connection with one another.

In other words, real change, social or otherwise cannot occur without a fully articulated premise by which our values are implemented. It is my contention that our values have been separated from this ugly campaign and we are now in a hazy unintelligible path that does not articulate our anger over this war. So I ask all of you who have also perhaps lost your focus on the brutality of this endeavor to redouble your efforts in speak out on the illegality of this war and our demand that those responsible in fabricating the need and implementing the policy be held accountable.

Gleich nochmal

Gerd-Lothar — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:48:53 +0000

Weil heute ein schöner Tag war und es gestern so gut lief, fuhr ich heute gleich nochmal zum Platz. Sobald ich dort war, machte sich bei mir eine lockere, befreite, wohlgemute Stimmung breit — scheinbar ganz ohne Grund (ich brauchte nur auf den Rasen zu gehen, schon war ich an dem Punkt). Gestern war es noch anders gewesen. Aber wahrscheinlich hat es schon mit dem gestrigen Verstehen zu tun, daß es reicht, dieses Einfache auch so einfach zu erleben und nichts anderes mehr zu brauchen. Mit anderen Worten: Man hört auf zu denken. Es reicht, die Bälle zu schlagen — wozu eben auch gehört, sich immer nur auf die eine Bewegung, den einen Schlag, das eine Ziel zu fokussieren. Und dann sinkt man in diesen Moment ein. Es gibt keine Probleme, keine Fragen, nichts Störendes mehr.

Das Pitchen klappte so gut wie noch nie zuvor. Beim Üben lagen die meisten Bälle wesentlich näher bei der Fahne zusammen als sonst. Auch die anderen Distanzen gingen gut. Dann hatte ich noch den Driver zum Ausprobieren mitgenommen (den ich sonst nie benutze) und schlug damit ab. Hatte ich mit ihm bislang fast noch nie richtig getroffen, so kamen sogar hiermit ein paar weite und gerade Bälle zustande. Aber eines weiß ich jetzt definitiv: Diesen Schläger muß ich in den Müll werfen. Weder werde ich damit glücklich werden noch jemand anderer. Ich hätte damals nicht auf dieses stark herabgesetzte Sonderangebot hereinfallen sollen. Nun ist das ganze Geld, auch wenn es nicht so viel war, perdu. Lieber hätte ich in Ruhe testen und vergleichen sollen. Das werde ich nun demnächst noch nachholen.

O educador enquanto agente da transformação?

Luciana Bolognini — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:40:34 +0000

Apresentação

Neste texto abordo a questão educacional a partir do educador social, que tem sua ação pautada na busca da mudança e compreensão da realidade. Ator que proporciona um diálogo problematizador, e envolve o educando na busca de soluções. Este texto é fruto de experiências que vivenciei como educadora social e a reflexão realizada com outros educadores sociais, refletindo sobre a prática do educador (não formal) e sobre a teoria adquirida no mundo acadêmico. Também foi importante para a reflexão, num segundo momento, a visão estigmatizada que os educadores¹ fazem do jovem (pobre-periférico). Este é visto como incapaz, seja por culpa da sociedade, da família ou por culpa própria, ou como causador de inúmeros problemas, sempre relacionados a temas de marginalização, delinqüência e violência. Ou em última hipótese, sujeitos a demandarem a intervenção de resgate e salvamento, e se nada der certo, a punição (ABRAMO).

O contexto

O modelo de desenvolvimento brasileiro (principalmente nas capitais), altamente concentrador, exclui expressiva parcela da população dos mais elementares benefícios do crescimento econômico e social. Os processos de segregação social e a expansão da área metropolitana através das periferias contribuem para o comprometimento da integridade física e mental dos cidadãos que nela vivem. Grande parte da população mora em regiões menos favorecidas das grandes cidades, perpetuando uma herança social e econômica cada vez mais devastadora e desigual. Esse fenômeno tem refletido diretamente nas famílias que muitas vezes negligenciam a educação de seus filhos, por diversos motivos e deixando o desenvolvimento educacional, fundamental na formação da cidadania, apenas a cargo da escola. Entretanto a escola pública no Brasil vem se deteriorando e perdendo sua credibilidade institucional, e por conseqüência não consegue prender a atenção dos estudantes, pois muitas vezes o saber é transmitido de maneira distante da realidade do educando e sem nenhum vínculo afetivo². Para a maioria desses adolescentes a representação social da escola é aterrorizante e animalesca uma vez que dentro das mesmas eles sofrem descaso e descriminação, devido sua condição social, por parte de funcionários mal remunerados e despreparados para desempenhar a função de educadores (formais).

A construção do sujeito social

É na juventude que ocorre o desenvolvimento do indivíduo como sujeito social, capaz de modificar o entorno social e realizar projetos pessoais. Dentro do processo de formação do sujeito social existem diversos pontos importantes que conduzirão o indivíduo por caminhos (reais e mentais). Portanto, ponto fundamental são os padrões de referência formados ao longo da vida. A sua formação é permeada pelas imagens dos papeis sociais desenvolvidos pelos membros da comunidade, essas imagens são associadas a modelos de comportamento (referências), ideais ou não. Isso dependerá dos valores do grupo e dos modelos que forem compartilhados, mas serão os modelos disponíveis que irão atuar como referência. Segundo Berger e Luckmann este é o processo de aprendizagem do mundo que já existia e que passa a ser partilhado por todos.

A baixa escolaridade, falta de trabalho, de acessoa bens públicos, ausência do poder público proporciona espaço para atividades ilícitas. A população, muitas vezes, está a mercê da sorte e do acaso e a intervenção estatal é na busca do controle e punição.

Educar – Contra ponto entre educação formal (ensino obrigatório) e educação não formal (educação social)

A educação social não procura promover a aprendizagem de um conceito ou técnica, tem por objetivo fazer a educação para o convivo social, buscando contribuir para a formação de um indivíduo-social capaz de se reconhecer sujeito da história. Por isso ao falar de educação não formal me refiro a esse compromisso de formação, podemos dizer que filosófico, moral e ético. Walter Benjamim afirma que a transmissão de valores sociais só acontece na prática cotidiana e não no discurso conceitual.

Por isso podemos acreditar que o educador seja um agente de intervenção, contribuindo para a reflexão sobre a realidade? A educação formal deixou de lado esse compromisso de formar a base filosófica, moral e ética dos alunos?

Parece-me que sim, e aconteceu por diversos motivos (ideológicos, estruturais, pessoais, políticos, etc.) ao longos dos anos. Os educadores cansados de terem seus sonhos e expectativas frustradas também foram se afastando, mas esse afastamento foi somente do elo emocional (ver Síndrome de Burnout). A educação foi virando um comércio frio... cada vez mais, o conhecimento foi sendo despejado em cima dos alunos sem nenhum vínculo e sentido³. O conhecimento tornou-se uma obrigação, e na verdade virou a obrigação de ir a escola, independente de conseguir compreender o mundo.

O Grupo de Estudo sobre Educação Social – GEES^⁴ entende a educação como o processo de formação de um indivíduo autônomo, que saiba lidar com os obstáculos existentes na vida, sem se entregar à autodestruição. Um indivíduo que enxergue sua realidade, que fique ciente de si e dos outros. Que passe a ver a situação vivenciada como ‘problema’ a ser superado e procure romper com o ciclo vicioso no qual está inserido; uma educação emancipadora. Entretanto esta é uma visão associada aos que lutam contra a opressão, a dominação e a alienação, ou seja o domínio do capital (SADER, E. apud MÉZÁROS).

Para que isso ocorra é necessário proporcionar a convivência que promova respeito, solidariedade e desenvolvimento criativo, possibilitando a participação responsável de todos, levando o educando ao protagonismo de sua própria vida. Também é necessário formar e fortalecer vínculos que permitirão entrar no mundo do indivíduo; estabelecendo uma relação de confiança e respeito mútuo, onde o educador problematize a situação do educando num processo dialógico e legitimado pela as duas partes. A escola (ou locais de promoção educacional) é o um dos locais de socialização secundária do individuo, local no qual este entrará em contato com outros valores, visões de mundo, regras etc... tudo aquilo que compõe o mundo social.

Então, o educador esta no centro desta relação? Ele é o canal para o mundo do outro e condutor da reflexão sobre as diferenças?

Entretanto este pode ser o papel da educação não-formal, Mézáros apresenta a educação formal como fornecedora dos “conhecimentos e o pessoal necessário ao sistema de produção”, como porta voz dos “valores que legitima os interesses dominantes” e por fim como promotora de “conformidade ou consenso” (MÉZÁROS 2005:35).

O educador como agente (com responsabilidade) social

Dentro do contexto apresentado o educador é o agente de intervenção na realidade. Cabe a ele a ação social. Ele é o profissional que desenvolve uma ação pedagógica, sendo responsável por mediar à reflexão, junto ao educando, sobre a sua atual situação e outras possibilidades de vida. O papel do educador é contribuir para a construção de um individuo capaz de conduzir a própria vida?

Ao estabelecer a relação com o educando, o educador assume a figura de referência e põem em prática seu conjunto de valores, normas e maneira de ver o mundo. A partir desta contraposição de olhares, o educador será o condutor da reflexão sobre a realidade por meio de um diálogo problematizador que procurará levantar questões sobre a realidade do educando?

Neste caso o educador (principalmente ao dialogar com a juventude) tem de estar disposto a lidar com novas formas de comunicação, formas simbólicas e culturais, muitas vezes não conhecidas. Pautar sua ação no rompimento das construções sociais baseadas no senso comum, que constrói a imagem de uma juventude alienada, sem consciência de si e sem interesse pela participação política e social. Helena Abramo, ressalta que está é uma visão falaciosa do jovem, pois olhamos para a juventude de forma já estabelecida. Esta socióloga afirma que existe uma necessidade de desviar o foco do olhar e propõem um outro olhar para este universo juvenil. A socióloga aponta para as formas de participação política, não-política e também as experiências não-institucionais. Se o educador mantiver seu olhar preso nos modelos históricos de participação , encontrará poucas organizações que o satisfaça e ficará com a idéia de população desinteressada.

Cabe ao educador dialogar com essa novas formas de organizações e considerá-las importantes, propor ao educando uma reflexão sobre elas: porque a atitude violenta ou o 'crime'? Qual o objetivo da sua participação nestes eventos? E em outras atividades?

Por fim, a educação social vai além dos conceitos técnicos e científicos. Aquele que se propõe a desenvolver a atividade de educador deve ter a ciência de que é uma relação de trabalho muito complexa, no qual o objeto e o produto do trabalho é outro ser humano, que exigirá um envolvimento afetivo e o compromisso com a formação do individuo social. Também tem de estar disposto a lidar com o desconhecido, pois somos diferentes e temos formas diferentes de intervir no mundo que recebemos. Todos estão reelaborando e produzindo novos códigos, valores, necessidades, etc.

Quem de fato faz a educação não é somente as teorias educacionais ou filosóficas, o conjunto humano responde pelas práticas que consolidam o sistema de ensino. Quem são os educadores que estão nas escolas? Eles estão lá para reproduzir ou para romper a ordem estabelecida? A educação social é apenas uma retórica ideológica? Ou é possível inclui-la nos sistemas formais?

Bibliografia

BOURDIEU, P. (Coord). A Miséria do Mundo, Petrópolis:RJ, Vozes, 1997.

ABRAMO, H. Observatório Jovem – participação e organizações juvenis, in SÃO PAULO (prefeitura). PROJOVEM – formação de gestores municipais e educadores – textos selecionados para formaçõa inicial.

BENJAMIN, W. Reflexões sobre a criança, o brinquedo e a educação. São Paulo, Duas Cidades; editora 34, 2002.

BERGER, P. e LUCKMANN, T. A Construção Social da Realidade - Tratado de Sociologia do Conhecimento.

CODO, W. (coord) et. al. Educação: carinho e trabalho – Burnout, a síndrome da desistência do educador, o que pode levar a falência da educação. Petrópolis/RJ. Vozes. 1999.

FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogia do Oprimido, Paz e Terra, 45ª ed.,

GREGORI, M. F. Viração – experiências de meninos na rua. Companhia da Letras. São Paulo. 2000.

MARTINS, M. A. V. O professor como agente político. Edições Loyola, São Paulo , 1984.

MÉSZAROS, István. A Educação para além do capital.

SEVERO, Antonio J. Preparação técnica e formação ético-político dos professores in BARBOSA, R. L. L (org.). Formação de educadores – desafios e perspectivas. São Paulo. Unesp. 2003.

1principalmente na educação formal.

2a questão do vínculo afetivo pode ser melhor entendido na discussão que procura entender a relação ente trabalho e afetividade, realizada por CODO, W. in Educação: carinho e trabalho.

3Paulo Freire define esta relação educando-educador como educação bancária, pois apenas deposita conhecimento.

4 grupo formado por sociólogos que atuam como educadores sociais em processos não formais de educação.

LFYT Syllabus 08

MP:me — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:22:52 +0000

Learning from YouTube
Media Studies 135, Fall 2008
Monday and Friday, 12-1:10
Alexandra Juhasz, Fletcher 226, X74431
Office Hours: Mon 11-12 and Fri 9-10, or by email appointment
alexandra_juhasz@pitzer.edu; www.youtube.com/mediapraxisme
www.youtube.com/groups/lfyt08

Friday, September 5: Course Introduction (assign groups); technical workshop (2-3:30)

Monday, September 8, Friday 12, Monday 15: TOUR #1: EDUCATION

Monday 8: Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Foreward and Intro
Watch Tour #1: www.youtube.com/mediapraxisme (before class)

Friday 12: Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Part 1 (ch 1 and 2 required, exercises on
additional chapter)

Monday 15: Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Part 2 (ch 7 and 15 required, exercises
on additional chapter)

Section Assignments: We will break into three groups for the assignments for Tours 1-6.
Group 1. Respond to, and embed into tour a video or comment (due Sept 8). 3 min max.
Groups 2/3. Keeping the theme of this section’s tour in mind, find or make a video that illustrates, responds to, or expands upon an optional reading, then add a comment to help cement the link (due Sept 12 for 2s or Sept 15 for 3s). 3 min max.

Make sure to record your assignments on your own YouTube site and the class site:

www.youtube.com/groups/lfyt08.

You’ll need my permission to join: mediapraxisme.

There are 6 total assignments. 2 responses to tours (one as a video, one as a comment), and 4 responses to optional reading. You will present them to the class on the day they are assigned. If you are absent, or don’t have them prepared, they will be marked down one degree of a letter grade per day until received. But, better late then never.

Friday19, Monday, September 22 and Friday 26: TOUR #2: ENTERTAINMENT

Friday 19: Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Part 3 (ch 20 and 21 required)

Monday 22: Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Part 4 (ch 24 and 25 required)

Friday 26: Watch Augmented Tour #2 (e-class): add a comment for extra credit

Section Assignments: 2. Respond to tour (26); 3/1 Respond to reading (19/22)

Monday, September 29 and Friday, October 3, Monday, October 6: TOUR #3: POPULARITY

Monday 29: Watch Tour #3 before class, Common Culture, 1

Friday October 3: Common Culture, 2-3

Monday 6: Common Culture, 4-6 (5 and 6 required)

Section Assignments: 3. Respond to tour (29); 1/2 Respond to reading (3/6)

Friday 10, Monday, October 13 and 17: TOUR #4: VERNACULAR

Friday 10: Convergence Culture, Introduction, Watch Tour #4

Monday 13: Convergence Culture, 1-3 (Chapter 1-2 required)

Friday 17: Convergence Culture, 4-6 (chapter 5-6 required)

Section Assignments: 1. Respond to tour (10), if you made a video last time, comment this time, and visa-versa; 2/3 Respond to reading (13/17)

FALL BREAK

October 24, 27 and 31: TOUR #5: OWNER/USER

Friday 24: Serious Leisure: 1, Watch Tour #5 (Video Art Conference, Pitzer)

Monday 27: Serious Leisure, 2-3

Friday 31: Serious Leisure: 4-5

Section Assignments: 2. Respond to tour (24), if you made a video last time, comment this time, and visa-versa; 3/1 Respond to reading (27/31)

November 3 and 7 and 10: TOUR #6: COMMUNITY/ARCHIVE
(Note: we will be conducting this section of the class using Socratube, a developing educational site that is allowing our Beta use. To be developed as a research project)

Monday 3: Mining the Home Movie, 1-13

Friday 7: Mining the Home Movie, Foreward and Introduction,
Watch Augmented Tour #6 Elearn! E-class on socratube.

Monday 10: Mining the Home Movie, 14-27

Section Assignments: 3. Respond to tour (3), if you made a video last time, comment this time, and visa-versa; 1/2 Respond to reading (7/10)

November 14, 21, 24: On-Line YouTube Research Presentations

Find and research a study of YouTube on-line. Summarize their findings and respond with a video. 4 min max.

Thanksgiving

December 1, 5, 8, 12: YourTours Due
Alone or in groups create yourtour, 15 mins max, on a YouTube topic of your choice.

Final: Respond to one group’s tour with a comment or video.

ORGANIZATIONAL STUFF

Reading and Viewing Assignments
There is a moderate reading and viewing load in this class. You should come to class having completed the reading due on that date, so that you can actively contribute to class discussion. There are five required books, four are available at the bookstore, and all of these can be found used, or in the library on reserve: Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Silver, ed.; Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins; Serious Leisure, Robert Stebbins; Mining the Home Movie, Ishizuka, ed. (Common Culture, Paul Willis, is out of print, try to get it used on-line, used. It is on reserve).

This is a class based on your participation on YouTube, thus I expect that all assignments are completed for presentation at the assigned class period.

Make sure to record your assignments on your own YouTube site and the class site:
www.youtube.com/groups/lfyt08. It’s simple: If I can’t find them, I will not grade them.

Tour/Reading Responses
6 total due, ungraded. If you complete 6=A. 5=B. 4=C. 3=D. 2=F.
Late assignments will move you down a notch (from A to A-, for example), per day.

On-Line Research Project
Alone, or in pairs, you are responsible for finding another on-line attempt to research, study,
or analyze YouTube. Summarize and respond to their findings as a video. 4 mins max.

YourTour
Make and present your own tour, alone or in groups, on a theme of your choice. 15 mins max.

Final and Participation

Respond to a classmates’ tour with a comment or a video.

Reponses, 30%
Research Project, 30%
Tour, 30%
Final and Participation, 10%

Make sure to record your assignments on your own YouTube site and the class site:
www.youtube.com/groups/lfyt08. It’s simple: If I can’t find them, I will not grade them.

9/4/2008

suenosalvadoreno — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:59:28 +0000

This has been a big, big week.

It's not done yet.

Monday morning, we started our praxises. Chan and I got to El Cedro with Sur Lidia and no sooner had we gotten there than we went on a home visit. Trena, praxis coordinator, had told us that home visits are the most important part of the experience, especially in El Cedro, but if we didn't get to one in the first week, that it was okay.
First hour we're there, we go to a home in the community where people were gathered to say a rosary for a youth who had died the previous year. First, though, we have to eat. 2 tamales, a cup of coffee. Now we can pray.
Did I mention that I didn't previously know the Our Father or Hail Mary in Spanish?

I learned really fast. An hour of praying will do that for you.

The rest of the day went by fairly quickly, and we spent our last hour or so sitting and working with a jewelry-making group. I made four necklaces. The group's story is really interesting.
Background: El Cedro is poor. Dirt poor. These people get by by the skin of their teeth, they work to the bone, and the only reason why the children are not completely malnourished is the lunch program offered at the center. Their water pump recently broke, just two weeks ago, and it's no loner covered by warranty. Each family would need to give $50 to get a new one, so the community might not have running water for months. People are missing teeth, missing gums, missing shoes and soap and food.
A few months ago, a Maryknoll missionary came through and taught the women how to make necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. She also set them up with a grant (possibly a loan, I can't remember) to buy supplies to start out on. The women have been meeting twice a week, making jewelry to sell in San Salvador. These women are very proud of their work, proud of the money they earn. But it's not enough to feed their families. It's not enough to pay for a new water pump. It's just something to do for a couple of much needed dollars. To buy a bar of soap, maybe. Or a bag of lentils. Or a bus ride.
It's totally beyond my realm of comprehension what it must feel like to try to raise a family on next to nothing. I hope this community can trust me enough to let me learn from them.

Tuesday, we had class. Political Science is going to be fantastic. Pedro is brilliant, the speakers we're going to hear from are famous and brilliant, our field trips are going to be brilliant. He talked about how there is no future, no opportunity, no change and no improvement here. How the top 20% make almost 58% of the income, and the bottom 20% make 2.4% of the income. How us coming to El Salvador to learn and study and walk in solidarity is actually huge, in terms of the hope we give to the communities we walk with.
I tested out of Spanish language class. All I had to say was, "He estudiado español por 12 años," (I've studied Spanish for 12 years) and suddenly the professor didn't care that I spoke no better than anyone else, and far worse than some. I'm taking history instead.
After lunch, we had Sociology. Best class to practice passive listening in, ever. Really. He took 3 hours to say that we should critically read our news sources and question their authority. It'll be not too difficult. I'm happy.
Tuesday evening, we had our first fiesta de limpieza (cleaning party), and then our first spirituality night, which went on for far too long. We're a fairly long-winded bunch, us Americans. We love to talk about ourselves.

Yesterday, we went to praxis. Chan and I spent the morning with the garden project, chatting with the women about their families, their work, the garden, but especially about America.
"Are you afraid of flying?" they would ask. "I hear everyone in America flies, all the time."
"Is there cheese in America? Tortillas? Papayas? I have seen pictures of red, red apples and grapes."
One of the women told us that she had had the opportunity to go to the States when she was 17, but at the time she didn't realize what a blessing that would be. Now she has 4 children and she just can't leave. "People die," she told us, "crossing the desert by land or trying to swim across the river. It's very dangerous." Several of her friends have gone, and returned, no problem.
"Salvadorans are hard-working people," she said. "I like to work. And there are many jobs in America, especially if you are willing to work hard."

Our afternoon was spent with the children. I got myself a new nickname. It's a very funny one, believe me. We laughed a lot.
We were sitting with the kids and introducing ourselves and Sur Lidia said, "We should call Chan 'Chanita.'"
"Yes! Yes!," say the children.
"Now we need a nickname for Sharon," says Sur Lidia, "Because none of you can pronounce it."
"Yes! Yes!," say the children.
"What about Shari?"
"Okay with me," I say.
"Or Sharito?" says Sur Lidia, laughing.
I shrug.
Later, 8-year-old René introduced me to his mother as Sharito. I think this is going to stick.

The kids are wonderful. I'm learning so much from them. For instance, I learned the verb "hacer pipi" (to go pee) from 5-year-old Xochitl who needed accompaniment to the toilet because she can't reach the handle yet to open the door herself. Fairly easy language lesson, that one.
We found some paper and some crayons and we colored for a good long time. Or, more to the point, Chanita colored and I tried very hard to do some emotional triage. Lots of, "Wait your turn, we need to share, use your words, here's another piece of paper, let me help you find a book." We had one serious altercation where one boy took the other boy's dominoes, which caused the second boy to burst into tears and kick his friend before collapsing into a ball of weep.
I then had a volatile, violent boy on my lap, and I'm trying to explain that we need to use our words, not our feet. Also, we need to ask to share instead of taking. Also, we need to apologize. Everybody needs to take a deep breath and calm down and use our big boy words.
I failed miserably at that one.
Better luck next time!

Today, so far the only thing I've done is go to Economics class. Let me tell you, this man speaks Spanish. Like, Poli Sci and Sociology seem to comprehend that we aren't quite fluent and they need to slow down, enunciate, and use very simple words with us, at least at first. Economics, no. He speaks at a normal pace (it seems so fast!), and he has yet to dumb down his vocabulary for us. It makes my head hurt, trying to follow an explanation of the differences between a added-value tax and a sales tax in Spanish. (I've looked it up on wikipedia. I don't understand it in English.)

I'm beginning to fall into a routine. It's nice. Mind-blowing, totally overwhelming at times, but nice. Praxis, class, praxis, class. I could get used to this.

And now, to wrap up the World's Longest Blog Post, a very funny translated joke. Enjoy.
A little boy, very smart, loved to tell people how good he was at English. So good. His father was very proud of him, because knowing English could help his son get a good job and be important. Well, one day they go to the market and run into the English teacher!
"Thank you for teaching my son English," says the father. "I know he's very good at it and I'm so proud of his progress."
The teacher looked at the boy for a second and then started pointing at things.
"What's this?" she asked, pointing at the chicken (pollo).
"Chicken!" said the boy.
"And this?" she asked, pointing at an apple (manzana).
"Apple!"
"And this?"
"Juice!"
"And now what's this?" the teacher asked, pointing at some cabbage (repollo).
"Rechicken!" said the boy.

Vital Ionengenerator - Ionisator

zentrumleben — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:16:29 +0000

Die High Technologie des Tepperwein Vital-Ionengenerators, in dem genau wie in der Natur, der Sauerstoff, wie auch der Stickstoff in der Atemluft ionisiert wird, hilft dem gesunden, wie auch dem gestressten Menschen, seine Lebenskraft zu erhalten bzw. wiederzuerlangen, damit er ein vitales und aktives Leben führen kann.

Der Tepperwen Vital-Ionengenerator bietet Ihnen einen Mehrfachnutzen:

* Weltweit einzigartiges Gerät, das 250.000 Ionen pro Sekunde erzeugt
* Spürbare Verbesserung der Konzentrations- und Gedächtniskraft
* Mehr Arbeitsfreude und Wohlbefinden
* Optimale Leistungssteigerung und Kreativität
* Harmonisierung in Büro-, Praxen und Wohnräumen
* Vorbeugung gegen eine Vielzahl von Beschwerden
* Steigerung und Verbesserung des körperlichen Immunsystems
* Beseitigung bzw. Verminderung von Stressfolgen
* Verminderung von Kopfschmerzen und Migräne
* Steigerung der geistigen Aktivität beim Arbeiten

Leistung:
Herstellung biologischer, gesunder Luft in Wohn- und Arbeitsräumen. Abbau hoher positiver Ionisation (statische Aufladung). Wiederherstellung elektrischer Felder im ausgeglichenen Verhältnis negativer zu positiver Ionisation. Erhaltung der relativen Feuchte im Raum.

Lesen Sie mehr...

Google Chrome: Erste Erfahrungsberichte (Updates)

Cem Basman — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:45:07 +0000

Eine kleine Liste der praktischen Erfahrungen mit der Installation und dem Einsatz von Google Chrome aus den ersten drei Tagen:

Blogoscoped: Browsing With Google Chrome
Spreeblick: Google-Browser Chrome: Der Browser-Krieg ist vorbei
MEEDIA: Googles "Chrome" im MEEDIA-Test
Basic Thinking Blog: Google Chrome: Browserkurztest
Golem: Angetestet: Google Chrome - Betaversion des Browsers ist da
#chrome Tag bei identi.ca

Liste wird in den nächsten zwei Tagen fortgeführt.

Wer ebenfalls Chrome installiert hat, seine praktischen Erfahrungen gebloggt hat und diese mit anderen teilen möchte, bitte hier in den Kommentaren vermerken. Ich liste es hier auf. Ich möchte halbwegs (technisch) sicher sein, bevor ich wechseln würde.

...und als Add-on zwei konträre Artikel:

PRO: Mattias Schlenker, Das Rootserver-Experiment: Warum das Web Google Chrome braucht
CONTRA: Roland Kühl-v.Puttkamer, Werbeblogger: Google Chrome - Suchen und Besuchen

Bild der Woche (13) - Wartezimmer der Orthopäden Dr. Kavermann/ Dr. Arlt in Düsseldorf-

lindaberendes — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:30:09 +0000

Mein Bild der ersten Septemberwoche ist ein Diptychon, das ich für das Wartezimmer der renommierten Düsseldorfer Orthopäden Dr. Gereon Kavermann und Dr. Gerrit Arlt gemalt habe. Es hängt in einem der Wartezimmer der rund 850 qm großen Gemeinschaftspraxis ... und auch wenn es in Deutschlands Wartezimmern meist anders zugeht - denn jeder sitzt stumm vor sich hin und wartet nur darauf, dass er endlich aufgerufen wird - finde ich die Vorstellung von vielen, miteinander kommunizierenden Menschen echt gut. Es würde die Wartezeit erheblich unterhaltsamer gestalten und verkürzen.

Praxis 2008 - Inter Collegiate Technical Fest

Mohamed Sanaulla — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:30:11 +0000

Suggested by Smita Shridharan

Event: Praxis 2008 (Website)

Organised By: VESIT, Chembur, Mumbai

Key Dates:
Fest: September 10-11, 2008

Praxis is an intercollegiate technical festical conducted by VESIT, Mumbai. Events include Software Events, Hardware Events, Paper and Project Idea Events , Robotics Events, Quiz events and Fun Events.

Detailed Scheduled is put up on the site. One can have a look here.

For more details on the events, visit here.

Homepage of the TechFest

Subscribe to Tech-Fests RSS Feed here.
Subscribe to Let Me Know RSS Feed here.

Back to School. 2 new sites!

MP:me — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:52:57 +0000

Sad but true. Hard to muster, yes. But I can't fairly complain; it's not really decent.

Boo hoo. I must return to work after 8 months on sabbatical.

I'll be teaching two digital/media classes starting next week. Learning from YouTube, again, but not so strangely. This time we'll have actual books to read! (Critical Cyber-Culture Studies, Silver, ed.; Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins; Serious Leisure, Robert Stebbins; Mining the Home Movie, Ishizuka, ed.; and Common Culture, Paul Willis), and pre-determined themes to follow (using my six tours, discussed in length here). Here's the syllabus. I'm building on the contributions of last year's class, using my work and my students' as original research. Artificially constrained within its pages, we learned last year what YouTube can't do and won't let its users do, the question this time around is whether we can delve more deeply into what it is and how it relates to other media practices and histories (see books above). I'll be sure to blog on the proceedings here, and do follow along as we build a semester's content on our new class YouTube page. Here's an interview with me on thismediamoment where Elia Powers catches up with me a year after his first interview with me for Chronicle of HIgher Education.

I've also created (with talented designer, Michael Wilson) an on-line version (or preliminary "publication") of my Media Praxis class/site: a course that studies the history and ethics of political media through the films and theoretical writings of committed mediamakers. The site and class are based upon the idea of what I've named "integrations": that media theory, practice and politics are holistically linked and can be informative across time, place, and practice. The students will be building the site's archives, but you all are invited to do so as well. It's currently a shell awaiting participation...

My students will also be building a blog for Claremont's Teen Green group (their ethical media praxis), a youth group with a variety of green projects that is sponsored by Uncommon Good. I'll provide the link to that blog as soon as we make it.

Next week's post will be from the land of the gainfully employed and usefully (I hope) laboring. Alas.

8/28/2008

suenosalvadoreno — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:56:44 +0000

We started classes today.
Economics, in Spanish, at 7:00 am.
I want to kiss the feet of every Spanish teacher I've ever had right now. I might not be able to carry on a deep conversation with the Salvadorans living in our house, but I can understand a two hour lecture on El Salvador's current economic state at a macroeconomic level. And take notes in Spanish. And ask almost intelligent questions.
I'm doing really well.

The heart of this program, though, is not the class time. It is the praxis. "Praxis," in a Latin American liberation theology context, means putting theory into action and actually working for justice, rather than theorizing. For the program, it means spending two days a week learning from different communities in the area.
The group is split up into nine different sites, and as part of orientation, we've been visiting each one as a large group before we split up and go to our own sites with our partners on Monday.
The people are amazing.

I'll be praxis-ing in Canton El Cedro, which is about 25km outside of San Salvador, up a dirt road. The community itself is very spread out, all over this mountain side. I'm at the community center, which is sponsored by the St. Vincent dePaul Society and run by the sweetest little nun I've ever seen in my life. They have a few rooms there, including two classrooms, a sewing workshop, a meeting room, a computer lab, a multi-purpose room, and a small kitchen outside of the main building. They also have a brand new garden initiative, a view of the ocean, mud everywhere, and a small playground.
Mostly, though, they have children. Everywhere.
These kids (all young, mostly under age 11) come from all over to the center to get lunch. If they have class in the afternoon, they come before school, otherwise, they come straight from school. For a lot of these kids, this will be their biggest meal, maybe their only meal of the day. The youngest kids, 4 and 5, have their preschool at the center as well. I'm so excited to be spending 15 weeks with these children. They're joyful and loud and beautiful. I'm going to lose my heart to them, I know it. I think I already have.

My favorite moment of the semester thus far happened at a different praxis site, San Ramon. They, too, have tons of children, and when we got there the 5-year-olds were having recess. The smallest boy on the playground, Francisco, walked up to me and put his hands in the air for me to pick him up. He couldn't have weighed more than 20 pounds, really. And as soon as I picked him up, he just melted into my shoulder and stayed there. I got a couple of kisses on the cheek, and he looked at me as if I were an angel. He just looked so lovestruck, with this big dopey grin slapped across his face and his eyelashes all aflutter. So happy just to be held. I wish I could have held him for longer, but soon recess was over and I had to put him down and send him on to his class.
Later at that same site, we went up the mountain to Los Nubes, a small collection of houses up the mountain where people live without running water, health care, or many visitors. We stopped briefly at the house of a woman named Mercedes. She's 79, missing most of her teeth, and due to her age, she doesn't really get out at all any more. She lives alone, with a battery-powered radio for company, and she's horribly lonely. As we were leaving, she asked us why we had to leave so soon, and to not forget her. I don't think I could forget her if I tried.

I know this semester will probably be full of moments like this, and I don't know how I'll be able to handle it. So much hunger, for food and love and justice...and all I have to give is my time and my hands. I can't fix it. I can only walk with these people for awhile, in solidarity, and learn their stories.
I pray I'm up to the challenge.

jQuery: $()-Operator Bug im Internet Explorer 7

oliver — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:39:46 +0000

Ich setze bei der Entwicklung browser-basierter Anwendungen zur DOM-Manipulation auf das JavaScript-Framework jQuery, das eigentlich auch mit dem Internet Explorer 7 kompatibel sein soll. Offenbar leidet aber auch jQuery an den Eigenheiten des IE.

Führt man eine DOM-Manipulation mit einem Element aus, dass mit dem $()-Operator selektiert wurde (z.B. $('div').show()), erhält man im Internet Explorer 7 einen Runtime-Fehler, der mit null ist Null oder kein Objekt beschrieben wird. Offenbar kann das Element mit dem $()-Operator nicht geladen oder gefunden werden. Eine tiefergehende Beschreibung habe ich bisher (bei einer zugegebenermaßen nicht besonders intensiven Recherche) nicht gefunden.

Das Problem kann einfach gelöst werden, indem man statt des $()-Operators den jQuery()-Operator verwendet, der die gleiche Funktionalität besitzt. Man schreibt also jQuery('div').show().

Labaké en Praxis: Cuando ya no importe... . Pinturas.

chulavistadigital — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:17:02 +0000

Filtering a list of items with the PropertyFilterGroupView control

Josh Smith — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:16:27 +0000

I have been working on a new component that allows you to filter any list of items shown in a WPF user interface. My new PropertyFilterGroupView is definitely still a work-in-progress, so please do not drop this control into a production WPF application just yet! If you are interested in this, please leave me a comment with constructive criticism, feature requests, bug reports, etc. I'm interested to see what people have to say about it. The source code is available at the end of this blog post.

Binding to a collection of objects really means binding to an ICollectionView implementation that wraps the underlying collection. One property exposed by ICollectionView is Filter, of type Predicate<object>. When a filter is applied, all controls bound to the view will display only the items that passed through the filter, or were "filtered in." PropertyFilterGroupView is a very fancy and elaborate way to assign the Filter property of an ICollectionView.

Below is a screenshot of the demo application when it first loads up. The control in the Expander up top is the PropertyFilterGroupView control. The ListBox and ListView seen beneath it are bound to the ICollectionView that the PropertyFilterGroupView affects. When the app first loads up all items in both lists are visible, as seen below:

After applying a few filters, the two lists display a subset of the original set of items. The items still seen in the lists are the ones that satisfy all of the filters applied. The modified UI looks like this:

In this demo app, the list of items shown in the UI is a collection of Person objects. The Person class exposes some properties, as seen below:

Now that you know what shape the data objects have, let's see how to configure the PropertyFilterGroupView control so that it allows the user to filter a list of Person objects. The following XAML is from the Window1.xaml file in the demo project:

Each property on the Person object that the user should be able to filter on has a PropertyFilter object added to the filter group. PropertyFilter is a class I made which represents a filter that determines whether a certain property on an object satisfies a criterion. The user can select the filter's criterion via a ComboBox in the PropertyFilterViewGroup control.

When you create a PropertyFilter, you must set the PropertyName and PropertyType properties to valid values. If you do not set them, or set them to invalid values, an exception will be thrown when that filter is used. The PropertyName property allows you to indicate which property to filter on, and PropertyType must be set to the data type of that property. If you want the property's name to be more user-friendly, set the DisplayName property to a more readable name.

Look at the last PropertyFilter object again, which filters on the MaritalStatusID property. That filter has two additional properties set on it: PropertyConverter and DisplayType. The former is set to the IValueConverter used by the ListView to translate an integer to a value from the MaritalStatus enum. The ListView uses that converter in this column:

The PropertyFilter that filters the MaritalStatusID property needs access to that value converter so that it, too, can transform the integer value into the corresponding enum value. Without that in place, the user would not be able to filter on the text in the Marital Status column, but only the underlying numeric identifiers.

The DisplayType property is set on that PropertyFilter so that it can intelligently decide what the available filtering criteria are for that property, such as ‘Starts With' and ‘Is Less Than'. The list of filtering criteria for, say, a numeric type is not the same as for text, which is not the same for Booleans. To ensure that the filtering criteria makes sense for a property whose value is passed through a value converter, you must indicate what type the output value should be treated as for filtering purposes. I chose String as the DisplayType for the MaritalStatusID filter, because enum values are easy to compare via their textual representations.

The PropertyFilterGroupView control also has its CollectionView property set. It is bound to the inherited DataContext. To ensure that this property is able to pick up a reference to a CollectionView, I created a CollectionViewSource as the Window's DataContext. That XAML is below:

As I mentioned before, this project is a work-in-progress. There are some big pieces of the puzzle missing. For example, I do not yet support filtering on properties of type DateTime. However, with that said, I encourage you to try this component out and see what you think. I'm open for suggestions...

Download the source code here: PropertyFiltering Source Code . Be sure to change the file extension from .DOC to .ZIP and then decompress the file.

Removing the value applied by an animation

Josh Smith — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:09:47 +0000

By default, the final value of an animation will indefinitely apply to the property it is animating. This is because the default value of an animation's FillBehavior property is ‘HoldEnd.' Since only a dependency property (DP) can be animated in WPF, and the DP value resolution algorithm treats an animation's value as a higher priority source than a local value, if you try to set an animated property to a certain value in code, your value will be ignored.

For example, suppose I want to animate the Height property of a Rectangle element to 200. I could create the following XAML to accomplish that task:

When that Rectangle is loaded into the UI, it would grow in height from 10 to 200 logical pixels over the course of two seconds. Since the DoubleAnimation applied to the Height property is using the default FillBehavior, which continues to apply the value 200 to Height after the animation finishes running, setting the element's Height in code would have no effect. What I would need to do is remove that animation from the property, so that the value resolution mechanism built into the DP system would use my locally set value.

The trick to removing an animation's value from a DP is to begin a "null animation" against that property. This is quite simple to do, as it only requires one method call:

After running those two lines of code, the Rectangle would immediately become 100 logical pixels tall. UIElement and ContentElement both define the BeginAnimation method, so all elements in WPF have this ability built in.

Beyond Visibility/Learning from Ghana

MP:me — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:21:09 +0000

I am recently returned from the OurMedia7 conference in Ghana, a loose network of international academics, activists, and professionals working in social justice/development/NGOs who have met seven times, annually, to share and discuss their varied community-based, citizen's media practices (ourmedia not their media). Beyond healing from the extreme side effects I endured from my should-be-banned anti-malarial, LARIUM (drug-induced bad dreams were just the beginning), I am still reeling from the many profound encounters I experienced in Ghana and at the conference. While I do not believe this is the place where I want to play out the scope of cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, cross-technological challenges that I encountered during my first trip to Africa, I do want to raise one issue--visibility--that might serve to crystalize many of these more discrete (if life-changing) incidents.

I've been here writing for a year, critically, about the paltry offerings on display on YouTube. I've been trying to name and theorize my dissatisfaction, coming as I did from a commitment to community-based media and a belief in its capacities for world and self-changing. All along, I've been not only critical of YouTube's serious inabilities to deliver what I believe in, but self-critical. I've wondered: am I snob (above the offerings of real people), a gad-fly (buzzing around the giddy claims of the techno-euphorics), a bore (unwilling to enjoy the fun of it all). However, I believe that I gained some insight about my position from the very tensions exhibited between my high-end YouTube work (which I presented) and that of the low-bandwidth work of media activists who presented in Ghana.

As I watched (or listened to, or about) Modilbo Coulibaly from Cameroon, present on the community-based media projects of farmers in remote African villages, or Norbert Salty speak on battery operated radio programs, in their language, about environment, health, school, and culture for the Makushi in Guyana, my first thought was that my findings about YouTube (a set of programs, on high-end computers, through broadband, all unavailable to the people served by the projects mentioned above) were both elitist and irrelevant. The very fact of speaking, beyond their remote village, to each other and the world, through technology was, without question, a revolution that I could not ignore. And yet, as I thought it through some more, attempting to get beyond my embarrassment over my crass assumption that everyone at the conference would have seen YouTube, yet alone been able to use it with their communities, I became more firm in my convictions.

Media justice movements have always struggled for visibility. When it arrived via YouTube (for many, and yet really just for some), it became clear that this condition, in itself, although better than invisibility or voicelessness, can be neither the term, nor the actual end-goal for emancipatory media. Media justice, media empowerment, media community are a result of PROCESSES, not an effect of technology, nor an end-product contained in a piece of media. This is to say, that the radical and emancipatory nature of the projects I've mentioned above, and countless others like them around the world, occur in their making and in what is done with them.

Visibility is a neutral condition.

For visibility to have meaning, impact, or power (beyond the indisputable pleasures of self-recognition), it needs to be connected to specific social change goals and to a real community, it needs to do more than provide information or images.

In her talk on the videos that flooded YouTube during the "Safron Rebellion" in Burma (several of these were the most-viewed for days), Melissa Brough, while certain that the visibility of their protest was enhanced due to YouTube popularity, cautioned that this also resulted in extreme censorship (closing down the internet in the country), greater endangerment for vulnerable groups (violent crackdowns against protesters seen in the videos), a loss of control of the videos (where they went, in what context) as they did what everyone wants, and went viral, and a resulting, corporate-driven viewing of this visibility as reduced to spectacle, which itself raises my largest concern.

Once visible: how are you seen, what do you say, to whom, why, and with what results? To make visibility work you have to organize, educate, interact. You have to link that image to ideas, people, and actions.

Kofi Anyidoho, a renowned Ghanaian poet, gave the conference's invocation. He more succinctly explains the causality I attempt to explain above. "Mother: They have caught our voice and given it over to people of the night. Mother: There are stories waiting for voices. Mother: There are visions waiting for cloudless skies."

Es geht weiter

christ4na — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:51:35 +0000

So, leider hat es nicht geklappt mit der HdM Stuttgart, aber wie heißt es: nicht aufgeben!

Meine nächste Bewerbung ist auch schon raus. Sie ging an die Staatliche Kunsthalle. Die suchen eine Fachkraft für Marketing mit Kunstinteresse, Engagement, Teamfähigkeit und sehr gute kommunikative Fähigkeiten. Die perfekte Stelle für mich oder vielleicht sollte ich lieber sagen, ich bin die ideale Besetzung für diese Stelle. Ich bin nämlich engagiert, arbeite gerne und gut in Teams, Kommunikation ist eine meiner Stärken und Kunst wollte ich sogar mal studieren.

Das ist also mein Plan B und wenn das nicht hinhaut, dann kommt Plan C zum Einsatz...

Es ist da... mein CZ 16-80

derscheuch — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:38:53 +0000

Es ist da! Endlich. Nach zwei Tagen daueraktualisien der UPS - Versandinformationen zu meinem Paket ist mein neues Objektiv angekommen.

Mein neues Objektiv ist ein

SAL-1680Z DT 16-80 mm F3,5-4.5 ZA Carl Zeiss® Vario-Sonnar T* Zoom-Objektiv

ein schöner toller langer Name.

Als Übersetzungshilfe für Nichtfotografierer: Es ist ein Standardzoom für den Brennweitenbereich 16-80 für digitale Speigelreflexkameras mit einem kleinen Sensor, d.h. der Brennweitenbereich enspricht dem Kleinbildäquivalent von 24mm-120mm. Die Lichtstärke des Obejktivs liegt bei Blende 3,5 bis 4,5. Es ist ein Vario-Sonnar Objektiv (ist eine Bauweise aus den Anfängen des letzten Jahrhunderts) die Linsen sind ausgestattet mit einer T* Vergütung (ist toll!)

Jetzt alles klar?

Der Listenpreis liegt bei €800.-, im Netz ist es ein wenig billiger zu finden.

Als alter Minoltaner stört mich das "Sony" im Namen natürlich ein wenig, aber Minolta macht ja nichts mehr in Sachen Objektiven, da ist es schön, dass Sony das alte A-Bajonett weiterführt. Das Carl Zeiss im Namen gefällt mir dagegen recht gut, der Name bürgt an sich für Qualität. Das T* ist auch schön...

Nun aber zum Objektiv selber. Geliefert wird das CZ in einer Pappschachtel mit Gegenlichtblende, beiden Objektivdeckeln und einem schmucken Täschchen. Auf einem beiliegenden Kärtchen werde ich noch darüber informiert, dass ein Herr H. Hirano das Objektiv mit der Seriennummer xxx geprüft und für gut befunden hat.

Das erste Anbringen an die Kamera ist normal, das minoltatypische Klacken ist geblieben. Erster optischer Check: Sieht gut aus. das ein wenig retro angehauchte Design sieht edel aus, das blaue Zeiss-Zeichen macht sich auch hervorragend.

Ein Dreh am Zoomring, der Objetivtubus fährt langsam aus dem Körper ....hssss.... da gibts hübscheres. Naja... zum Posen muss das Ding also bei Brennweite 16mm benutzt werden :-)

Auch ein wenig ungewohnt: Der kleine Gnubbel, der anzeigt, wie man das Objektiv ansetzt ist nicht mehr rot wie früher, sondern sony-orange ; aber vielleicht hilft ja Nagellack :-)

Haptisch ist mein Gefühl auch eher zwiegespalten. Es ist halt Plastik, kein Metall, da verspricht der Name Zeiss mehr, als es hält - da wünscht man sich ein wenig mehr an Wertigkeit.Versuchsweise wackel ich mal am ausgezogenen Tubus. Ja... da ist ein wenig Spiel, aber nach allem was man so im Netz darüber liest, soll das wohl so sein.

An sich soll man mit so einem Objetiv ja auch Fotos machen - also mach ich doch mal eins. Sucher ans Auge, Auslöser andrücken, der Autofokus springt an... zack... scharf. Nicht schlecht, Für eine Dynax D7 ist die AF Geschwindigkeit echt schnell. Kein Vergleich z.B. mit meinem KoMi 17-35, eher ähnlich meiner 50mm Festbrennweite.

Ein schneller sporadischer Fokussiertest erbringt auch keine gravierenden Back- oider Frontfokusprobleme, also gehts los auf die erste Photosession.

SCHÄRFE

Die ersten schnellen Bilder zeigen, das Objektiv ist knackenscharf. Wirklich der Hammer.

Dieses Bild ist bei 80mm bei Blende f9,5 gemacht worden. Ohne Stativ, Abstand zur Blume beträgt ca. 50cm, Belichtungszeit 1/30. Zum Glück wehte gerade mal kaum Wind.

Dazu geb ich jetzt mal zwei kleine Ausschnitte aus dem Bild. Die sind 100% Crops, also nicht verkleinert oder vergrößert. Das eine ist ziemlich aus der Mitte des Bildes, das andere ganz unten rechts am Bildrand.

Alle Bilder, die ich heute abend gemacht habe, egal ob Offenblende oder nicht, zeichnen sich durch diese Schärfe aus und Detailreichtum aus.

Hier nochmal zwei Crops bei Offenblende, die sind an sich sogar noch besser, weil ich da bei einer 1/250 abdrücken konnte. Eine 1/30 bei 80mm kann trotz Antishake zu lang sein, wenn da auch noch ein wenig Wind ist. Bei der Offenblende zeigt sich natrugemäß am Rand eine deutliche Verringerung der Bildqualität, das kann aber auch daran liegen, dass die Fasern da nicht mehr in der Schärfenebene lagen.

Fazit: Die Schärfe des Objektivs ist klasse!

Knipsen, Immerdrauf

Die folgenden Bilder sollen einfach mal demonstrieren, was für ein Spektrum an Einsatzmöglichkeiten das Objektiv bietet. Jetzt kommen keine tollen Bilder, nur das, was mir in einer Viertelstunde vor die Linse kam, um mal jeden Brennweitenbereich mal durchzutesten.

45mm, f16, 1/90
70mm f9,5 1/200
80mm f13 1/125
16mm f16 1/30
Blumen fotografier ich sonst nie, aber zur Demo... 80mm f13, 1/15

Den Alltagstauglichkeitstest hat das Objektiv meines Erachtens bestanden. In Verbindung mit meinem 70-210er brauch ich nicht mehr an Obejktiven, um einen großen Brenweitenbereich abzudecken und auch so, als einziges "immer-drauf" ist da fast alles dabei! Durch die Naheinstellgrenze von 35cm kann man auch mal näher an ein Objekt ran.

Einziges Manko ist da die Lichtstärke, die um die Blende 4 liegt. Da man das Objektiv aber fast durchgängig auch mit Offenblende nutzen kann, relativiert sich das ein wenig, Zusammen mit den Antishake der Dynax ist das durchaus praktikabel. Wenn man wirklich in extreme Lichtsituationen kommt, muss dann halt doch mal die 50mm oder die 28mm Festbrennweite ran.

Bokeh, Unschärfe

Neben der Schärfe ist die Unschärfe eines Objektivs ein weiteres wichtiges Kriterium. Hier mal zwei Bilder, die ein wie ich finde nettes Bokeh zeigen. Einmal als "hinten"-unscharf und einmal als "vorne" unscharf.

Mir gefällts!

Nachtrag: Hier noch einige Bilder, die das Bokeh bei verschiedenen Blenden zeigt.

Mit dem zweiten Teil des Praxistests geht es morgen weiter...

Dan Witz. Ugly building series.

tragasaliva — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:27:23 +0000

Me ha gustado mucho el trabajo hecho por Dan Witz. En el se proyecta un concepto que me ha dado vueltas en estos dias: la interfase. La intervencion de Witz, de cierta forma, actua como un dispositivo entre el conocimiento, el arte y tod@s nosotr@s. El espacio se activa, a mi parecer, no por el hecho de ingresar un espacio de realidad no preexistente, o por lo menos no solamente, sino que su activacion se otorga por el caracter de interfaz (o extension entre realidad y persona) que el autor le otorga al uso de la imagen. Las personas nos tocamos, nos sentimos, escuchamos, miramos, etc. La imagen de Witz es una visibilizacion de nuestro caracter humano, y de la necesidad de nuestras extensiones (biologicas o creadas) para comunicarnos.