Blog 6

MICROSOFT WORD & EXCEL.....

This weeks tutorial task was a bit of a refresher course for me. I found the Microsoft Word excersise very basic and easy, as I learnt all the aspects of Microsoft Word in High School. I also worked in Administration for a couple of years where I used all the features daily. The Excel excersise was fairly easy for me aswell, although I found the Macros task a little confusing. I had learnt about Macros before, although I did not use this feature frequently so I had forgotten some of the details. Overall, I thought this was a worthy little task, as it refreshed my memory on some of the features of these programs that I havent used in a long time.

THE VIDEO GAME.....

What is a video game?

• Arcade Games
• Consoles
• Computer Games
• MUDsMMOGs
  

We can then divide them into different genres: Hardware or Software. Then into sub-genres from first person shooters to advernture games.

Interesting facts about video games:

• Video games have been intertwined with the development of computing technology since the development of Spacewar! in the mid-1960s.
  
• People used 'home games consoles' (pretty much early computers) long before they used them for writing documents or keeping track of their finances or even browsing the web.
  
• The military have always shown particular interest in video games as training tools, which has driven development of hardware to power their training simulations.
  

3D WORLDS VS MSN......

So I took a bit of a field trip into the virtual worlds of Habbo Hotel and Active Worlds. Until a couple of months ago I had never heard of Habbo Hotel. That was until I saw my 15 year old sister on the computer interacting with her friends through Habbo. I was amazed at how behind the times I was, Im still using good old MSN.

The differences I noticed was Habbo looked more like a game than a chat room. My sister had created her own little 3D world. Her character and was going to parties with her friends, had her own house and pets, all while interacting with her friends from school. As for MSN, its more of just a chat room for friends. So I guess the main difference is Interactive worlds such as Habbo are more 'personalised' than MSN.

As for me? I think i'll stick to MSN, Mypace and Facebook...they take enough of my precious study time as it is.