Ethnographic research

 This is a floor plan of Goggin Ice Center, which is startling because even though I'm fairly familiar with Goggin, I never realized that 11, 10, 9, or 8 existed or how small the walkway around Steve Cady Arena is compared to everything else.

 This is a CGI representation of the main hockey rink from an opera suite. This is also the section of the ice that the student section is located in, facing the scoreboard. Aside from the general admission seat there are also 102 club level seats, 6 opera suites and 4 private boxes.

This is a post game ritual after the handshake where the players circle up and hit their sticks against the ice faster and faster, then point them up in the air, and finally come together and congratulate each other

Steve Cady Arena has 2,800 general admission seats which are divided in half at center ice. one half is for students, the other half is for ticketed entry. The student section faces the scoreboard and is located on the side of the ice where the visiting teams goalie spends 2 out of the 3 periods. This allows students to be closest when goals are scored and allows for 40 minutes of heckling. People tend to line up hours before the game starts so they can get seats on the glass and it's usually the same people every time. Other people filter in closer to game time and some people get there right when the game starts. The Band of Brotherhood takes up one entire section of seats and plays a vital role in crowd behavior. They always play Love and Honor at the beginning of the game as well as the national anthem. They are also responsible for various cheers throughout the game, and if the crowd gets too rowdy, they play a certain  song or cheer to distract the crowd from whatever just happened in the game.

Arcade Fire Knows Where You Live

When I go the Pine Point site, I can't help but think of Foucalt's piece when she talked about places reflected in a mirror and how they aren't really places at all, rather they exist in a separate reality. That's what Pine Point is. Sure, it was a real place and it existed in this reality at some point, but that's not how it is represented today. Now, the only surviving representations of Pine Point exist in its' residents memories, and on that blog site. Maybe that's for the better, after all "recollection will always be the most accurate version of that place and time." as the author says. So perhaps it is better for the former residents of Pine Point that their only interaction with their old town resides in their mind, because if it still existed, they may not look upon as fondly as they do now. Every slide has music and graphics that are on a loop, so maybe the authors sense of nostalgia comes from the idea that one day, Pine Point will become a new town for new people to call their own, and he just doesn't want to see that day come... Or maybe he just had nothing better to do with his life than make an interactive website dedicated to a town that doesn't exist anymore, who am I to say?

As for the wilderness downtown site, that was just kinda weird to see aerial views of my neighborhood spliced with a child running and computer generated trees growing on the picture. I feel the same way about this site as I do about the Pine Point one. It's not a real place, it's a representation of a real place and it exists in another reality. It is not a real place because it is displayed on my computer screen, it is merely a compilation of pixels arranged by a series of code. it lacks all of the things that make it the place it is, the feel, the smell of the air, the ambient sounds of the neighborhood etc. all those things contribute to making my street unique from other streets. Instead, it is represented with a soundtrack placed over the images, and all kinds of additional images and forces are added to this foreign representation of the street I knew as a child.

Sixth Graders in India Have Done More for the World Than I EVER Will

These videos always make me depressed because it just reminds me that some child in Bangladesh had an idea and now he has had a more profound affect on the world than I ever will. Big data is making everyone and everything in the world more connected, which is a good thing because as this video shows, with an rapidly growing population, comes a lot of people who are really bored and want to make a video. So some people put GPS trackers on pizza delivery bicyclists and watched them. Some other people actually had good ideas and were able to do many things from reducing medical costs to putting a small village on the map. Big data is making it easier and easier for people to make a difference without having to start a massive movement. In the age of connectivity, an idea doesn't just have to be an idea anymore, it can quickly turn into something tangible.