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May 01, 2006
this has been opinios
opinios is now closed.
What started as a place to express my ideas, explore my creativity in a new medium and learn a bit about web design has reached its natural ending point, and I no longer feel the drive to keep updating it. I'm now contributing semi-regularly to the SitePoint blogs with my more techy posts, so keep an eye out over there if you're into that sort of thing.
Thankyou to everyone for your comments, emails, links, submissions and general support over the past 5 years.
The archives are all there for the browsing, but the blog will no longer be updated.
I may return one day in some form or another to pontificate about politics, music and life, but for now it's over and out, scout.
April 24, 2006
Mouthful of a Meme
Just when I'm stretched for content, I go and get meme'd again. And this one is a real mouthful, and a bit more personal than others past. "I hate these things, but I'll do it to humour my husband," she cries. And then goes and invents one of her own... Pah, love em or hate em. It's better than nothing!
- First town you ever lived in: Adelaide, Australia. First 21 years of my life. Nowadays I get back there a couple of times a year to visit family.
- First album owned: Ghostbusters soundtrack. On vinyl.
- First pub gig seen: The Cruel Sea as part of the final party of O'Week at Adelaide University. Until then my sheltered nightlife experience was bad dance music at a dodgy meat-market called The Big Ticket (see later).
- First Celebrity Crush: Alison Brahe on the kids TV show Guess What?
- First film you remember seeing: Superman II when I was 5 or 6. Apparently I cried in the cinema when he gave up his superpowers to marry Lois Lane. My cousin still teases me about it.
- First time you drank alcohol: Tequila slammers at Roh's house while his parents were away. We made prank phone calls at 3am and I made an absolute goose out of myself.
- First paying job: Offloading boxes from the back of a delivery truck at John Martins department store. It was great because I didn't have to deal with customers and got to flirt my 16 year old ass off with the ladies on the floor as I made my deliveries.
- First Kiss: A girl from school named Meryn, on the balcony of The Big Ticket while I was drunk off my arse. I broke from the throng of passion to (does it get any classier) lean over and hurl my guts up over the edge of the balcony. She then proceeded to continue kissing me. I remember thinking this was odd at the time. But she was an odd girl.
8 people I'm tagging:
- Cam
- Maxine
- Cam
- Hammy
- Matt
- Tim
- Martine (so she's got two from me to get through one day :-)
- and Kev (coz I know he hates em)
April 01, 2006
RealityPatterns.org
Inspired by John Allsopp's webpatterns.org, I thought it was high time somebody invested some effort into categorizing the different patterns of reality television programs that were forming in our media landscape.
Feel free to add to this list in order to help TV creatives push the envelope of this important medium.
- Pattern Name:
- Internal Elimination
- Description
- Participants are eliminated purely based on decisions and voting by other participants. The audience has only a passive involvement.
- Examples:
- Survivor, The Amazing Race, The Biggest Loser
- Pattern Name:
- External Elimination
- Description:
- Participants are eliminated based in part or wholly on votes from viewers. While the Web is the obvious medium of choice for viewers to cast this vote, telephone voting reigns supreme because of the large amounts of revenue it generates for the show.
- Examples:
- Australian Idol (American, Canadian etc), X-Factor, Big Brother, My Restaurant Rules, Dancing with the Stars
- Pattern Name:
- Sole Determinant
- Description:
- Participants are eliminated by the decision of one person, rather than by each other or by the audience.
- Examples:
- Outback Jack, The Bachelor, Australian Princess, I Want To Be A Hilton, The Apprentice, Temptation Island
- Pattern Name:
- Rinse and Repeat Education
- Description:
- No elimination occurs, but a message on how to do something is reinforced until the participants change their behaviour. The message is hit over the viewers head over, and over, and over again.
- Examples:
- Nanny 911, Super Nanny, You Are What You Eat, Extreme Makeover, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
- Pattern Name:
- Along For The Ride
- Description:
- No elimination occurs, but cameras are placed on participants as they go about their regular day, often oblivious to the fact that they are being filmed, and certainly without their permission.
- Examples:
- The Simple Life, Newlyweds, Cops, Border Security, Airline, Airport, Hot Property
- Pattern Name:
- Performance-Based
- Description:
- Participants are eliminated purely based on how they perform in a certain task or tasks.
- Examples:
- The Block, Beat The Chef, Iron Chef, The Mole
- Pattern Name:
- Satire
- Also known as:
- Mockumentary
- Description:
- While filmed as if capturing real life, in fact all events are fictitious.
- Examples:
- Series 9: The Contenders, Battle Royale, Russell's Coit's Outback Adventures
- Pattern Name:
- Feature Length
- Description:
- Reality TV hits the big screen!
- Examples:
- Super Size Me
Tags: aprilfools, webpatterns, reality, TV