Well year two didn't go so well from the point of view of blogging. It wasn't a requirement and the way things dragged on I wasn't sure how I'd post anyway. Year 2 had ups and downs, mostly downs, so I'm starting fresh with year 3 and I'm doing this for my own learning. I'll revamp the look of the blog at some point but that will be a time-consuming and it's rather low-priority.

In year 2, the 6 papers I did were:

Studio 3: A semester-long project called species recognition. My team was to build a magic box that could identify species roaming the forest floor for the Department of Conservation. We built *something* despite the internal issues we faced (team dynamics, we should probably have split apart early in the piece in hindsight).

Theories and Philosophies of Technology: A series of lectures looking through the ages and how technology and our view of it has evolved. It culminated in an essay of sorts, a discussion between two people about technology.

Smart Systems: Was basically arduino-based with an end project to build a smart system. I teamed up with one other to build a system that monitored so aquaponic plants and adjust lighting, temperature and water pumping based on timers.

Studio 4: I pitched a project of my own, a security system that utilised social networking, creating a virtual neighbourhood watch. We had grand plans but were tripped up by the two other papers taking more than their fair share of time and equipment that didn't work because it was cheap (a knock off android tablet was the worst). Also our team was pushed into delving too deep into the conceptual side when all we really wanted to do was create a working product.

Intellectual Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management: This was sort of a business paper, we learned what an Entrepreneur is and looked into creative innovation. We had 3 projects, one a presentation as a group on a theory of group dynamics, another was a personal 3 minute video selling ourselves as an entrepreneur, and the last in the same groups, come up with a technical innovation, turn it into a product and try to sell the idea to a Dragon's Den. Real funding was up for grabs if the idea was good. However, once again we had group issues, and a couple of us (me included) felt flat and disappointed and didn't believe in what we were selling. A couple others were passengers. It also took WAY more time than it should have and helped kill Studio. I'm still mad about that.

Simulated, Immersive and Interactive Environments: We looked into the idea of using patterns to create a computer game. It seems that's how we'd have probably done it anyway to a large degree but the goal was to explore pattern design as written about by Christopher Alexander, an Architect. At the end we had a mostly working game. This was also a painful paper. We made the game in C++ Visual Studio using the SDL library (an api for sound and graphics). However no one had ever really done much C++ programming. I was fortunate enough to have started teaching myself C earlier in the year but that mostly just made me aware of how little I knew. I have no idea what other class members made of concepts like pointers when they weren't really aware of them.

So... pretty blah year, and I was glad when the holidays started.

This year I'm doing 2 external papers and 2 new internal ones. Studio 5 and 6 are one project but with different milestones. I'll explain it all in upcoming posts, but for reference, my papers are:

• Digital Cinema Studies (External)
• Animation and Moving Images
• Studio 5
• Digital Audio Production (External)
• Emerging Practices
• Studio 6