Final project and paper proposals

FINAL PROJECT:

One thing I found very interesting about fast food chains, especially McDonalds, is that wherever you go in the world, McDonalds offers different menu items based on the general demographics, the laws, and what resources they have available. My idea is to create a poster/infographic of the earth, showing the different availability of menu items they have throughout the world. I plan on using this wikipedia article to get my information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_availability_of_McDonald's_products

FINAL PAPER:

Location based gaming is always something i've found very interesting ever since the first time I tried it. For my final paper, i'd like to research a few different location based games, and find out the different ways people have used technology/smart phones to create location based games. To pick a few games I might research, I will start with this article on location-based gaming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_gaming

Wandering

After coming to a better understanding of the wandering assignment, I completely changed my entire idea of what to do when I would wander. One route that I am very familiar with is either coming home from the Castro area on the L-Taraval Muni, which drops off only a few blocks away from my house, or driving home. When taking the L, it goes underground and takes me through West Portal station. When driving, I take Market to Portola, and kind of pass Forest Hill Station on the way home. We all know also, that Muni is a joke, and sometimes I just want to get home, so I will take whatever Muni comes first and get to West Portal station, and sometimes walk home from there.

To make this route a new experience, I decided I would walk from Forest Hill station to my house. Below is a link to a map of the three different routes, 2 of which I would be used to, and one which is the route of my wandering.

Wandering

After taking this walk from Forest Hill to my house, there were some cool things I had never noticed before. Mainly the things I would notice are the houses. Most of the houses in San Francisco I find very interesting to look at, and I was surprised that I had never seen some of these houses before. Also, behind the Forest Hill station, there is a whole grassy area and some stairs, and it's kind of like a park, which I had never noticed before. Another thing I noticed was a staircase that seemed as if it might have led to a park, which I definitely will be going back soon to check out.

Videos:

Wandering

I have yet to come up with an idea for what I will do for my wandering project, but here is a link from my previous wandering project I did last time in this class.

http://shakosrsexylm.blogspot.com/2010/02/wandering.html

What I most likely will do is come up with a set of rules, maybe while listening to music, to interact to while driving around San Francisco, starting at my work. There will be different directions based on things you might see, or things you might hear in the music. These directions will tell me when to turn or when to stop and look around or even turn around. I plan to follow these directions for 30-60 mins, and see where in San Francisco I end up.

Velociraptors

Here's a screen shot of the velociraptors I posted on layar.

Layar

For my first try with layar, there were two different I wanted use to place around campus.

The first image is a velociraptor, that I decided to place several randomly around the lawn by Caesar Chavez. The other is an image that says smoking is prohibited in certain areas, and I placed each of those at the 3 smoking sections on SFSU's campus. The first map shows where the velociraptors are, and the second map shows where the permitted smoking sections are.

Go Cars 2010

Since I unfortunately had to deal with some miscommunications and some complications, I was unable to attend the field trip to Go Cars this time for the Locative Studio class. I decided to share my blog post from last time, which includes a few videos from my trip and experience last time I went on the Go Cars field trip.

Hope everyone had fun!


http://shakosrsexylm.blogspot.com/2010/03/go-cars-videos.html

First Project- Dead Drop

www.deaddrops.com

After learning about dead drops, I found them extremely interesting, and decided that what I wanted to do for my first project is install a dead drop of my own. Installing a dead drop now would allow me to check on it later on this semester and see if anybody had accessed it.

The first thing I did was check the database to see if there were any dead drops in San Francisco.
http://deaddrops.com/db/?page=view&id=45
I found this one dead drop, over by the New Montgomery BART station. I wanted to go check it out and see what kind of files people had put on it. When I got there, I found that the wall had been repainted, and the dead drop being painted over.

This wasn't going to stop me from installing my own. After reading the instructions on how to create your own dead drop, I went looking for all the materials. There were two ways to install dead drops: using fast setting concrete or using epoxy glue/putty. I purchased two flash drives, and then went to home depot looking for the rest of the supplies. Unfortunately you could only purchase fast setting concrete in 60 pound bags, so I decided my best bet would be to trying using the epoxy glue.

Since I've lived all over the Sunset these past 3-4 years, I decided to install a dead drop in the Sunset near one of my old places. There is a parking lot on the corner of 33rd and Taraval which is right next to a building. The building had some of the wall "out denting" so I decided to glue the dead drop to the bottom of this wall part, and then I got some silicone sealant to try and reinforce the flash drive a bit more.

The next step would be to post where my dead drop is to the dead drop database. The database asks for three different pictures of your dead drop: one up close, one far away, and a picture of the general area. Before reporting my dead drop though, I wanted to give it a few days and see if the dead drop stuck to it's location, and would be there for awhile.

Unfortunately, after going back to check on my dead drop after a few days, someone had already removed it. All that was left was the remnants of the epoxy putty and silicone sealant.

I'm hoping to be able to find a smaller amount of fast setting concrete somewhere (probably online), and then find a better location to install another dead drop, and use a more permanent technique to install it.

Here is a link to download a zip file of what I put on the dead drop:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~evana/LocativeMedia/deaddrop/deaddrop.zip

The Read Me file comes from the dead drop website, and is suppose to be put on all dead drops before installing them. I also put my own folder of random interesting and funny images on there to contribute my own files.

The entry below this one shows pictures of the dead drop near the New Montgomery BART station, as well as the three pictures I took in hopes of posting my dead drop to the dead drop database.