A new start

I will be using this blog to map out the progress I make on my research project, using this as a research diary, required by the uni besides the actual research.

What are the recent changes about my project? After meeting with my project supervisor, Gavin Stewart, I started thinking about certain changes in the subject. Where the initial idea was to find out how people use groups within the greater network of Facebook it's now developing in a different direction. The big question, the one that surrounds the whole theme, is if social networking software makes people more social...

Personally I think that social software's main reason for existence is to strengthen existing bounds between people, making it easier for persons to stay in contact. Sites like Facebook make your network more visible, with for example pictures and updates from your friends, so that you are constantly updated on the current situation of your network. This is a big difference between the old 'technologies' of the adress book and the phone book. Now all information is in one place, easily accessible at any moment, if you have an internet connection.

The most important aspects of my research that I have to adress at the current time are:

- Methodologies: How am I going to do the research, what are the appropriate methods to find out the answers for my research question? The current ideas are doing a questionnaire with the option of follow-up questions to get more details out of certain answers people might give.

- Sampling: Contacting people on Facebook, using the site's search engine to look for people within one network, London, and within the age limits of 18 and 25. I will then have to use a sequence of numbers to decide who will be contacted or not. This sequence will have to be random and will come from the internet site random.org.

- Refinement: "Does social software make people more social" is a question with a very wide focus. What is 'social' exactly. The question will probably evolve in something more specific along the lines of "How do the available tools on Facebook influence the relations with your friends?"

- Tools: Facebook features different tools for people to explore and use to contact their friends. Examples of this are the walls, poking, presents, tagging of pictures, commenting on pictures, and then there are the multitude of applications developed by third parties. All of these provide a way of communicating with your friends, directly or indirectly.

- To do:
Refine research question, create pilot questionnaire, drawbacks and advantages of the used research methods, background reading.

Spanish Classes are for Cool People ...

That's right. Only cool people spend their days from 8.30 till 17.00 in a hot, warm, sizzling, overheated and scorching class room. The only thing missing is the bacon and a nice egg to start a great day.

Anyway, it's great. It is amazing how much you learn by doing things really intensive like that. I mean, I can say my name now, my aga, my last name, where I'm going, where I come from, what kind of work I do and ask all kinds of personal information from 'You'. Isn't that fantastic? Now I can ask you all kinds of stuff and you can't understand any of it. That's communication for you. =)

Also, this evening we did some cool activities after class. At 18.00 we ate tappaz and then at 19.00 we did ... (drum roll) ... a 2-hour salsa/merengue initiation class in Spanish. It was even outside, so we could take advantage of the great weather and the cooling shadow of the trees in the setting sun. I loved it. Wish I could do it more. Where are my dancing classes when I need them =( .... Too busy I suppose.

Ok, I'm going to take a shower to get this nice sweaty smell off of me. So, talk to you laters!

Legacy

Greg Bear - Legacy:

In Legacy's predecessor, Eon (1985), part of Earth's population escaped a nuclear war by traveling through time along a path called the Way. As the sequel commences, the Way has been in use for some time, and dissidents have found ways to drop out more thoroughly than any 1960s hippie ever did. One such dropped-out group consists of 4,000 antitechnological Naderites, to whom a troubleshooter named Olmy is dispatched. He finds them on a settled, Earthlike world and their society taking a host of radically different directions, all of which Bear works out with his accustomed literacy, scientific accuracy, and deft characterization. As much an exercise in world building and social experimentation as a conventional story, the novel will not disappoint Eon's fans and, since Bear really keeps it moving, stands well enough to be read on its own.

Link here

That it's too warm ....

I've been starting to read a lot these past couple of days, going through books like it's nothing. Ofcourse the weather is helping me quite a bit because the high temperatures keep me from sleeping at night. Sometimes I would like rain to fall out of the sky since it cools down everything ... but only if the next day it's going to be good again.

It is strange to be home again and for some reason I can't settle down. I can't wait to get my life going again. Seeing friends again is great but ... since I've been in Groningen it's hard for me to adapt back to the situation like it was before, because I'm different.

We'll see, at the end of july I have my Spanish course to attend to. Let's hope that by that time I have my new laptop (which I ordered last week) and some Spanish education software I ordered to be able to do a little bit of interactive stuff besides the classes. And theeeeen ... a whole month of working in august doing 2 jobs ...

So even when my agenda is pretty full it feels kind of emtpy. Miss the container peeps. =(

Anyway, I've got some more reading to do. Laters!

Shadow of the Hegemon

Orson Scott Card - Shadow of the Hegemon:

Orson Scott Card finally explores what happened on earth after the war with the Buggers in the sixth book of his Ender series, Shadow of the Hegemon. This novel is the continuation of the story of Bean, which began with Ender's Shadow, a parallel novel to Card's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Ender's Game.
While Ender heads off to a faraway planet, Bean and the other brilliant children who helped Ender save the earth from alien invaders have become war heroes and have finally been sent home to live with their parents. While the children try to fit back in with the family and friends they haven't known for nearly a decade, someone's worried about their safety. Peter Wiggins, Ender's brother, has foreseen that the talented children are in danger of being killed or kidnapped. His fears are quickly realized, and only Bean manages to escape. Bean knows he must save the others and protect humanity from a new evil that has arisen, an evil from his past. But just as he played second to Ender during the Bugger war, Bean must again step into the shadow of another, the one who will be Hegemon.
In Shadow of the Hegemon, Card can't help but fall back into old patterns. But while the theme is the same as in previous books--brilliant, tragic children with the fate of the human race resting on their shoulders--Shadow of the Hegemon does a wonderful job of continuing Bean's tale against a backdrop of the politics and intrigue of a fragile earth. While the novel is accessible, new readers to the series would be wise to begin with Ender's Game or Ender's Shadow.

Link here.