Blog entry star date 526.04

This blog post should have been for Wednesday of last week, but I am slow and hadn’t finished my website review yet.

Wednesday’s class was shorter than normal, it was a nice change. We started the class by talking about thinking and tried to define it through examples. Very few people really had anything to say about it so we just kind of sat there for a while. Eventually some people had the right idea and we moved on to group work.

We were tasked with deducing the total number of toothbrushes in Kelowna. We had like 7 minutes to discuss it and then we had to tell the class about it. Our group came up with the lowest number around 200-300 thousand because we assumed that once a toothbrush goes in to the garbage it is then not a toothbrush but trash instead. Other groups had numbers in the millions.

After that we had a break and then a grammar test, I think I did very well. I haven’t checked my marks on it yet(if they are online some were) but I just think I know grammar. I have really enjoyed the long weekend, gave me lots of time to rent movies and look for new sites to review.

This week’s website review: PVPonline.com, this site is the online archive of PVP comics by Scott Kurtz. PVP is about the comical things that happen at PVP a computer game review magazine. Notable characters include: Cole the editor, Brent the creative director, Jade the lead writer, and skull the troll. Together with a few others these characters get into some wacky adventures and make jokes about the gaming industry. The site has a decent layout but it is hard to get to get to the more recent strips. All in all it gets 87 out of 95%.

Memo for English

Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2004
From: Robert Smith
To: Stan Chung
Re: Summary of Joanna Krotz’s article - Cell phone etiquette: 10 do’s and don'ts

Joanna Krotz, a columnist for bCentral wrote this article. The article focuses on cell phone use, or abuse. Cell phones ring in all the wrong places. Due to excessive ringing in Broadway shows New York laws restricting cell phone use at performances.

Ms. Krotz fears that people have no respect for what others hear of their conversation. According to Context's study most people dislike hearing others loud or personal calls but tend to have loud and personal calls of their own in public.

She then lists Mary Westheimer’s over the top story of how a presenter at a Publishers Marketing Association conference stopped his presentation to answer his cell phone. Many states considered banning cell phone use in cars because crashes continued to escalate even with the use of hands free devices.

There has been a decrease in the number of people using cell phones in public areas. Most people now consider it inappropriate to use cell phones in many places.

However, nearly half of Americans surveyed felt that using a cell phone in public rest rooms was acceptable. It seems more people own cell phones and feel comfortable using them. Krotz states that washrooms are no place for cell phone chatter.

Cell phone users must find a way to incorporate good manners into their phone use. Some people will need to take calls at all times but most people should be let voice mail get it and call back at a more appropriate time or set the phone to vibrate and go somewhere more private to start talking.

Joanna’s list of 10 do’s and don’ts of cell phone use can be found here http://www.bcentral.com/articles/krotz/165.asp

Part 2

This is the second post on my blog, It is a little late but better late then never right? Our last class we covered power sentences which help us turn normal speaking into powerful writing. The power sentence is a tool for revision, a way to avoid grammatical errors, and a standard tool used by professionals. The format for a power sentence is:

Specific subject + specific action + specific object

We went over some examples in class; I’m not going to post them here as they would take up way too much room. We got our first big assignment, we have to write a memo in power sentence form. It looks to be changing and fun. I think we got out a whole five minutes early, I was glad. I find the computer lab gets very hot after 3 hours with the computers on.

The reason this is being posted so late is I was confused as to when we would be posting on our blog, I though it would be a once a week type of thing and I guess it is, just the first one was extra. Well that’s all I have for the class related part, now on to my website review.

This week I reviewed the site www.sodaplay.com, sodaplay was made by soda creative ltd. this site was made mostly for fun and offers the cool sodaconstructor simulator. It is a fun java(?) application that one can build little walking robots in. it is really fun and I think every one should check it out. Once open the constructor lets you create springs and masses, the basic building blocks of a soda creature. Masses can be fixed or free and springs can be made into muscles. With these in hand you can create small walking creatures or funny scenes like the hangman one I saw. I give this site 3/5 bits.

The Start of Some Thing!

Hi and welcome to my first ever blog thing-a-ma-jig. My name is Robert Smith but you can call me Bob.

I am writing this for an English (business communication actually) class I am taking in the summer semester here at OUC (Okanagan University College) which is soon to become UBC-O (University of British Columbia Okanagan).

This whole OUC  UBC thing is really silly, it seems that no one at OUC saw it coming and from what I hear the head dude at north campus didn’t even get invited to the press release about the takeover!

Well back to English, I really dislike English courses but I am really going to try hard and get great marks in this class. This will be the second time I try this course, the first try was not that successful, I got like 39%, it was bad, but my teacher was new and she lost some of my assignments so I got that all sorted out and increased my mark to a whopping 42%!!! Well I still failed and now I have to retake this course.

From what I see so far I will like this class, I found the first class a little boring and dull, I hope that the next class will be a bit quicker. I met some interesting people today, I met Kevin and Henry. I didn’t however catch the name of the other member of our group. We talked about how to give good first impressions and to get noticed. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to more group work next class.

Well I am over my 300 work min. so this is the last paragraph. So in conclusion I would like to inform every one that I will make some use of this web space by posting interesting things, as judged by me.