Report - Assignment THREE

1. The challenges and tribulations of being a group assignment
Since we were in the same group from our last assignment, assumingly the same challenges and tribulations we encountered before would appear in this assignment. However, to some extent, our communication problem from our last assignment had improved which allowed for easier group work. This may be due to understanding this problem and resolving it during the practical lessons way before we started this assignment. Furthermore, we separated the assignment clearly into different sections this time so that there will be no unfair distribution of work. This clearly helped to resolve the unfair distribution of work that had occurred during the last assignment.

However, this time we had new problems and challenges which we encountered. We had trouble collaborating and taking each other’s ideas into account when deciding on what to do. There were a lot of disagreement of what the subject of the video should be, who would do what part, when things should be done, when to meet up and finally, after deciding the topic, we had trouble deciding what to film. We were put through a lot of frustration but after calmly looking at it and taking a step back; we managed to cooperate and set up a schedule and assigned roles that everyone was satisfied with.

During the process of filming and editing, the video editor realized that some of the videos were redundant, while others had really bad quality. This made it really hard to edit and thus in the end, the video editor had to do some re-filming and extra filming. This was obviously due to the lack of experience in filming and video editing (for the camera person) and lack of attention to detail. But this wasn’t too much of a problem for any group member, despite being a big part of the assessment as it was an understandable problem/mistake and it was easily resolved.

Another problem the video editor encountered was a lack of narration. This may have been a communication problem as there was a misunderstanding when drawing up the storyboard. However, it was easily solved by assigning a narrator and writing up a short script.

2. The process of creating the video
Our group generally took an ordered method in creating a video. We basically used the stages of planning, filming, editing and evaluating.

Planning: The topic was chosen through large amounts of discussion. We then drew up a storyboard where we clearly pointed out what we were going to film, who was going to feature in the video, who was going to film and who was going to edit. We basically ran through a brief idea what the script was going to be like, how the video was going to look, what background music was going to be used and what software and hardware we were going to use. During this stage we had also decided when things were going to be done and how they were going to be done.

Filming: During this process, one person went around the university to do some filming using a camera. Unfortunately some of the videos were unusable due to the poor video quality and thus another group member had to do some more filming. Another group member had to memorise her script and basically play her part featuring in the video. This step was really straightforward and was done really quickly.

Editing: This step was quite challenging because the video editor had a lot of problems finding enough footage to use (as the quality to poor). But basically the video was made using the storyboard. The video editor also added in a narration as the script wasn’t written clearly to suit the storyboard. The finished production was then uploaded on youtube (as a private video) and embedded onto a blog post.

Evaluation: In order to attain constructive criticism, we asked other people to look at the video. Most of the people liked it and found the video done well. The only problem we found was the quality of the videos that were used. Since the iphone had poor video recording technology, it resulted in videos that were quite blurry, pixilated and slow. This is clearly seen in the video.

Overall, the video was created using a very standard process.

3. How does the video relate to your blog?
Basically, our blog was about food and our video is about food. This already suggests that we decided to clearly make something related to our blog. Since we realized that we were spending most of our time on campus therefore we decided to make a video on food at campus. We thought this would be a great aid for students at MQ (well for some extent).

Furthermore, since most of our blog readers were ISYS100MQ students (our target audience) we thought it was relevant to create a video that would interest our target audience. This would greatly improve our blog readership.

Food at MQ - Assignment THREE

Enjoy~
Sorry about the quality. Iphone's don't have the best video recording technology, unfortunately.

Report

Get a hard copy here.

Explain why you chose the blog topic?
A task where we are required to establish and maintain a shared blog in western mainstream society was a real challenge for a group where the majority of the group members had language difficulties. Nevertheless, we managed to overcome this and after long consideration, eventually agreed to do a blog about food. Eating is a staple part in everyone’s lives. There are no language barriers, cultural barriers as in our global context; people are willing to experience new types of food. This is supported in a number of cook shows and reality TV shows such as Masterchef.

Another reason why food is an excellent topic for a group with our situation is that it allowed for easy communication. Since food appeals to the sense of taste and smell rather than solely on sight, we had the opportunity to utilize this and find ways to convey the taste of the food without just using words (in our case we established a rule where each post must be accompanied by a picture or something of the similar nature). Of course what is explained here can be applied to other topics, however, food was the easiest to work with within our timeframe.

What were the largest challenges with a team assignment?
Like described in the previous question the major difficulty our group faced were communication and language barriers. Since the majority of students grew up using English as a secondary or a supplementary language, a task that involves writing is naturally a huge challenge. Thus relating to language and cultural barriers, choosing a topic also became a problem in our group. This is because the ranging number of interests each member has was not uniform and thus leading us to indecision.

Another challenge relating to indecision was choosing the layout of the blog. On assumption, this must be a common problem as it is inevitable that each group member would have differing views for the best layout. But after research and compromise our group agreed to use a premade free layout from blogskins.com. It was the easiest and the quickest solution which was an ideal answer to our problem.

Another problem our group faced was creating a gmail account. This didn’t hinder us, however, it provided us with a headache at the beginning. Since one is required to use a gmail account to create a blogger account therefore we had to create a new gmail account that we could all access. What we faced was choosing a username that hasn’t been used (hadn’t expected it to be that difficult), choosing a password that google agreed to and finally connecting everyone’s gmail accounts to our blogger account so that we could each blog separately. The latter was the hardest out of the three as regardless of the amount of emails and draft posts were used, there were members who didn’t understand the idea and didn’t comply with the group’s requirement. The main reason for this was due to language barriers. Nevertheless, after clarification in our practical lesson, we were able to overcome every challenge we were faced with.

How did you come up with the final design that you used?
Like mentioned previously, our final layout was one that our whole group could agree on after using vast amounts of time to discuss it. Despite being a premade layout, it suited our blog’s theme, focus and each member’s tastes. We had initially considered using one that was professional looking with earnest looking boxes and all, however, after realizing our level of blogging we decided to degrade our blog style to informal and casual thus resulting in an informal and casual looking blog.

Choosing a layout which utilizes vectors instead of photographs was the first step of being comfortable with our style. Secondly, the amount of colours used greatly contributes to the style – professional looking blogs use a consistent three colours at most, therefore we chose a blog that had a consistent colour scheme yet didn’t limit the number of colours used. Thirdly, we had to decide on where each widget was to go. Of course there were the basic task requirements that we had to satisfy such as having the “About me” on the right and blog roll but we had the freedom of putting other elements onto our sidebars. Since our task requires people to make comments, the first thing we decided to do was create a chatbox on the side. Of course there were a number of issues we had to consider such as foul language but since our task required us to blog regularly, therefore, it was easy to monitor the comments. We then agreed to use the standard widgets such as labels/tags, archive etc and place them on the sidebars in an organised fashion.

Compare a blog that has similar content to yourself, critically analyse your site comparing theirs

Site: http://thefoodblog.com.au/

The Food Blog is more or less the professional blog style we had initially thought of using. Since we downgraded our style from professional to casual, our blog appears to have a lot of blemishes compared to The Food Blog. One obvious difference is the style of writing. It uses a conversational and humourous tone which captivates the readers. This is something our blog will never reach.

Another thing appealing about The Food Blog is that its layout is clean, crisp and organized. To some extent, our two sidebar layout is neat yet navigational wise it is poor. Since all the widgets aren’t ordered in any importance, the readers will have to search for the widget they need e.g. tags rather than being guided to it. Design elements could improve this problem such as numbering, colours etc however this makes the blog appear more unprofessional than it already is. The Food Blog, on the other hand, is able to employ its only sidebar to provide information in order of importance which makes this blog really appealing.

Furthermore, The Food Blog provides high resolution photos thus, even without appealing to the sense of taste or smell, readers can already taste the dish from the sense of sight. This is something our blog could work on (i.e. SLRs or better camera pixels or editing photo on photoshop can be used to improve photo quality). In relation to this, The Food Blog’s writer also appears to have some knowledge of photography and design. This is seen through the ways the photographs are taken and presented. In order for us to reach that we would need some training.

Moreover, The Food Blog appears more credible than our blog. This is clearly based on the writing. Our blog uses too much slang, emoticons, capital letters, font colour and ellipses making the blog appear overly friendly and sometimes just plain silly. The Food Blog on the other hand appears reserved yet friendly through its tone.

Lastly, The Food Blog has more of a variety in its content while our blog, for some reason, has a tendency to promote Asian cuisine. This isn’t a bad thing yet since we claim to be a blog about food, not Asian food, there should be more variety in our food choices. What we admire about The Food Blog is the amount of detail the writer is able to go into about a certain dish or sauce etc which is something our blog has problems with (our post tend to be very short).

In summary, The Food Blog is a popular blog with a fairly big readership. This is credible to the whole make up of their blog and their regular updates. After comparing our blog to such a professional looking blog, there is clearly a lot of tweaking that our blog needs.

Down to reality

Most of us spend a majority of our time either at uni or at home. Since i haven't been doing any cooking, therefore, i can't provide you with a post about home food cooking. However, since i attend uni 4 days a week, eating at the uni food court is inevitable.

So let's see what i had?

Tacos - $4.95

Spud - $7.10

Fish and Chips - $7.50

Initially i thought uni food would be a rip off and taste ... well (i better be careful here) boring? However, i was wrong. It's even better value than what they offer at the foodcourt in MQ centre. I didn't have the taco, my friend did but she said it was worth it and quite filling. As for the spud, well i thought it was definitely worth it's value, they really top up the container with fillings. Okay the spud itself was quite small and i had expected them to put more cheese - melted cheese so it did disappoint me a bit, however, it still tasted nice. As for the fish and chips, generally i can't complain about the oil but the only thing that stops me from getting it daily is the oil. It really makes you feel sickening. Nevertheless, with chicken salt and tartare sauce the fish and chips really is worth it. Maybe they should give you more tartare sauce, i mean the little rectangular container is....well....little for five fish pieces. And yess... the whole meal is very filling. It even comes with a drink.

So yes, the next time you're at uni, instead of going to MQ centre you should try some of the meal values at the variety of stores MQ has to offer. LOL perhaps i'm not the person to recommend food as i'm not as qualified as Matt Moran but you know... since the competition for these food stores aren't exactly small therefore the ones that are left there must, at least have patrons (thus suggesting good food).

Breakfast on your iphone

When I first saw this video on one website, I said to myself - "How amazing it is!!" Can we really eat it? Or it is just faked food? But after I had finished watching this video. I made sure that i had it for tomorrow's breakfast :)

Although, I do not own an iphone, i found this a really creative idea and it brings me to the importance of having good breakfast. You can see from the topping for example egg, kiwi, salmon in olive and other vegetables are all really essential to our body.

According to multiple of reliable sources, this iSandwich 4G video is delicious. How Microsoft will eat lunch knowing that this new menu is on offer, I do not know... HAHAHA

I shall stop blabbering. Watch it for youself -

Noooodle.. or Ramen

After we had made several reviews on Asian Food, today I have come back with another A.S.I.A.N. dish again.The dish I am proud to present is Ramen!! I really love its pork soup with it's big pieces of meat, seaweed, half boiled egg in a bowl full of thick noodles..

Ramen comes in different flavours with different topping such as egg, pork belly, scallions, nori seaweed, onion and butter (how come?). When I first saw that butter in my Ramen, I was surprised but at the end the waitress told me that it makes the soup more "Creamy and Thicky..". HAHA Thicky??

When people eat their Ramen, it is best if you eat it loudly. It means you are paying respect to Ramen Chef. Many times I have noticed people eating, it is very very very noisily and i wondered why. So I didn't want to be different and started loudly slurping away. =D

You can find Ramen restaurants everywhere, especially on Asian Streets. The price is usually between $9.50- 35.00 according to your choice. Some restaurants might be so full that you may have to queue.

Cheers!

Italian Pizza

(Photo from Foodies)

Italian Pizzas are one of the most delicious food. The history of it and the way to cook it are also very interesting.

Many many people think that pizza was created by the Italians themselves, however, there is a funny story behind it. Long ago, a traveler, Marco Polo, came to China and ate a CongYou cookie. When he went back to Italy, he missed the taste of CongYou cookie so much that he tried to cook it. In China, people put filling inside the CongYou cookie, but Marco put all filling outside the cookie. Then he tasted that cookie, he thought it was yummy, though it was not CongYou cookie.
Later, this kind of cookie was spread and it was named the Pizza.

I like the pizza and enjoy it very much. I hope you like it too.

More chilli?

Yeah unfortunately. I guess, if you don't like chilli foods, then don't bother reading further. Well actually, this post isn't anything spectacular either. It's just a restaurant review. To give an overview... i've given this restaurant 2/10 BUTTTTT the catch to this is....it's only $10!!!

To add to the wonderfulness of this restaurant....i've forgotten it's name.

Let me give you an example of the food choices we were given:

It doesn't even look that appetising. *sigh*

Maybe my plate of rice cakes do...



Fine..yes i know...fail! I'm such a fail photographer!! I won't have a career in this industry anyways.

So down to the details, this restaurant is located across the road from Haymarket and a few minutes away from UTS (and central station). It's in the same building as Menya (if you have heard of this popular Japanese restuarant) and Cho's dumpling king. (This does suggest something right? I remember the names of the restaurants around the one i went...that's just plain SAD)

The choice of dishes there was tiny! They weren't particularly tasty either, some dishes were too bland while others were too salty or oily. I just enjoyed the ricecakes as they were chilli and thus not salty or oily or sweet etc etc etc.

Ermmm... there's this funny rule where u can only use ONE plate! Yes ONE! And you're meant to reuse the plate. =/ To us buffet goers we thought it was unusual and plain disgusting! We seriously had no idea what to do with our bones so we decided to ignore the rule and just get another plate. Muahah...

For dessert we were only given oranges. Yep JUST oranges. And remember the one plate rule...we had no idea where to put them. So we had oranges with chilli sauce. Fail isn't it?

So yes a 2/10 is pretty generous. Don't you think? Oh well hopefully i can bring you a better review next time.

Sushi

Hi! The food I proudly present today is (tick tock tick tock).. not spicy, not fat.. Sushi! Sushi is the most famous Japanese dish outside of Japan, and one of the most popular dishes among the Japanese themselves. In Japan, sushi is usually enjoyed on special occasions, such as birthday or celebration. But in Sydney, sushi is easy to find everywhere and the price isn't expensive. Some well-known sushi restaurants are 'sushi king' and 'sushi train'.

The restaurant where I am taking you to is located in Chatswood, 5-minute walking from Chatswood train station, the restaurant's name is "Makoto".

When you are entering to the restaurant, you can hear waitress saying welcome in Japanese (haha, I can't remember what they actually said- forgive me! ), then they will take you to the seat that located around the sushi train.

I have picked a lot of sushi, but the best of all I can show is.. this one

How does it look? This is the roasted salmon roll with avocado and scallop on top. It goes very well if putting a little but of Japanese soy sauce and wasabi (green spicy paste), taste is heaven :D and when people have sushi, they normally eat it with hot green tea as it would not destroy sushi taste like other soft drink or alcohol.

I think today you have another place for dinner, next time I will take you to a different place to taste different thing.

Cheers!

Family dinners

My family and i were in Auburn the other day, choosing a restaurant to eat at, we saw this ad:



A world class Chinese cultural show from New York, portraying difference aspects of Chinese culture through dancing and music. We watched it last year when their tour group came to Sydney. They were truly astounding. We learnt so much more about the Chinese heritage just by enjoying the show. I recommend this to anyone any day, especially those interested in Chinese foods. XD

Therefore, we ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant (which mainly specialised cooking dishes from the South) called Yum Yum Brasserie across from the station. One of the dishes i liked in particular was this:



Combination bean curd hot pot~

It basically consists a combination of ingredients ranging from veges, meat and seafood cooked in a pretty salty sauce. Served with rice, it was truly divine! Well of course we ordered other dishes such as fish, seasonal vegetables and chicken but i couldn't help but choose from that hot pot. I guess the sauce really captured me.

Generally, the service was average. We had to go to a table to collect our utensils and cutlery. Waiting time was pretty short, which was surprising since the restaurant was pretty full.

Pancakes on the rocks

Happy Easter!

I went to Cockle Bay taking my friends with me. We went to Pancakes on the rocks. Since i remembered I had to blog on this blog so i thought it was a good chance to share about pancakes with you.

The food we ordered are "Fisherman's Catch" and "Seafood Crepes"

Fisherman's Catch : crumbed fillets of flathead served with chips, tartare sauce and mixed lettuce.

Seafood Crepes : fillets of fish, prawns, scallops, mushrooms, and spring onions in a creamy white wine sauce. Served with lemon wedge, hollandaise sauce and seafood sauce.

But if you are there, you can see other dishes like gourmet pizza, salad and dessert. They come in really big serves. And if you can't finish it, you can it take away.

One thing that might be useful to you, if you're there in the holidays, there is a 10% surcharge (which is a bad thing) and the queue is really long (which is equally as bad). So you can phone in to reserve the table before hand.

See you again next time. I bet you can't guess what my next destination is....

Hello, everyone!

Hi readers! I'm one of the three, Lynn. It's my first time to build up a blog with a group. The topic of our blog is food and it's one of my favourite. Lol.I'm a girl from China. China has a different system of food and its food tradition is historical. So, it's no doubt that I love food! Every time when I just think about my meal, I even feel wonderful. Haha... Now let me introduce the food I like most.In China, the most spicy food is not in Sichuan as people usually thought, it's in Hu Nan. However, we have a system of food called ChuanCai which includes almost all kinds of spicy food.
Are you hungry now? It's a torment as I just can see them without having them. In China, restaurants serve Chuancai can be found in every city and they are usually very crowed, some even need to book in advance. It's not difficult to find that spicy food is very popular in China.But after I came to Australia, it's hard to find these authetic restaurants. So I changed my taste. I also like cheese now especially lasagna. It has several levels and enough ingredients. It tastes yummy!It's my first post, just a try. Then, I will post other interesting images and texts. Thx for reading!

Tom Yum Gung- Thai spicy food

Do you follow me? Come in.. have a seat :)

I remember when mama cooked me her special Thai food, I was always the last person left dining at the table. Right now, if possible I would ask her to cook me something because I'm too hungry.

In fact living life alone in a foreign country isn't easy to have a nice meal everyday. You won't get what you feel when you are sitting in front of your mama's food, eating with your family and telling them what you have done today. I really miss my mama's foods, Thai spicy food- Tom Yum Gung, with very big fresh prawns and several kinds of herb in it. Luckily, I know how to cook it.

So "Tom Yum Gung" is my dinner today. I bought the fresh ingredients from Thai Town at George Street and big prawns from the fish market and this is it:

Thank you to my cooking class in high school that taught me this delicious and spicy soup, although not every student got an A from this class but I did....honestly!

Omg! I can't live without the chillisssss.

halo

Hello, Salut, Ni Hao, Xin Chao, Sawasdee and what else you can think of?

I would like to say "welcome to our group's blog!" Wherever you come from or what language is your mother tongue, FOOD makes every culture as one (sound's good, ha?)

I'm Num, thx to Jkylk for her first post and her marinated spicy squid makes me soooo... hungry

I am going to look at my food I cook for dinner..

Now follow me!!!

Hai

I still can't get over the fact that we're using blogger for this assignment. I specifically deleted my blogspot four years ago because of all the blogger updates. Seriously, when it comes to user-friendliness nothing beats LJ!

However, since it's unavoidable, i'm back using blogger to ..well, blog (but with a different purpose this time).

Wait did i even introduce myself yet? Eurgh....but judging from my tone, you can tell i'm some crazy blogger from a decade ago (since i owned a blogspot before the updates).

Well I'm one of the three contributors on Food 4 Three. This blog is solely used to post about food, food and more food. There will be tonnes of commentaries and reviews on different restaurants in Syd and generally different dishes.

My taste buds tell me that i'm a seafood lover. I just love seafood (despite it being really expensive and hard to clean) - okay maybe not all seafood, fish isn't really in my liking but everything else is fine to me. Korean restaurants are my excuse to order......dun dun dun

I love marinated/spicy squid. It's the best!!! XPPPP

I also love cheese - mmm melted cheese. Curry, potato, broccoli, carrots also fall within my list of favourites. (yeah i know ... what a weirdo??) So my dislikes - i have a few. Licquorice, tomatoes, bitter melon, weird herbal stuff, chicken breast...the list just goes on. (yeah i know ...what a picky eater??)

Anyways, thanks for even reading this. I thought uni students don't have lives, but with this assignment we're going to be proved wrong. HAHA ^_~

welcome

Accidentally or intentionally, you have made it to the shared blog of jkylk, Lynn and Num . We hope your stay (however long it may be) is one that is worthwhile of your extremely tight and precious time.

After contemplating for hours (don't mind the exaggeration) we decided to publish a blog about.... *drumroll* Food. Yes our beloved and inseparable food (i know how original?!?).

I know, according to the ISYS100 textbook we're not meant to say "We're under construction" but unfortunately that's currently our very state - "Under construction".

To contact us (or rather to fulfill your part of the assignment i.e. adding a blogroll) please email: grpthree3@gmail.com (i know you're laughing but gmail isn't the friendliest when it comes to name availability)

Layout Change

Here here! We've found a layout that suits our blog. Cute yet earnest-looking. *shifty eyes* Serene yet exciting. It's good enough for now (well until we find a better layout that we're all satisfied with).

This was our initial design (the storyboard above ie). We found something very similar.

Enjoy!