“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out alive.”
-Elbert Hubbard
I’m a much bigger fan of Omeka this time around than I was last week. Not that metadata blew me away or anything, but the fact that I get to show off photos and videos is cool enough.
You can find my new Omeka files at the button below. It will bring you to a collection labelled “week 3”.
A few more photos of a trip some friends and I took to Muskeg River Falls, 55km down the Muskeg Forest Service Road outside of Bear Lake, BC.
As I stated, I enjoy the ability to choose what I upload and show off some personal files. The first files I chose were my audio files, of which I converted some songs I enjoy into MP3 from YouTube. I made sure to cite my metadata properly as they were not my files.
The next two files I chose were my videos. I chose one of Muskeg River Falls because it was a fun trip, a hidden gem way in the middle of the bush in this beautiful part of the country we call home. The other video was one I took at work, where I was clearly following WorkSafeBC rules by using a forklift and a pallet as a scissor lift after the battery in mine died. I titled this video “coal mines” as I was framing in some doors that some homeless had set on fire the night prior; I had black soot all over my face, as seen in the clip. Lastly, I chose my photo, one of my cat and I, solely because I didn’t know what else to put.
I think metadata is super useful to helping my site viewers understand the content I am sharing with them. For example, without the paragraph above, a visitor wouldn’t know anything about the waterfalls other than the fact that they have water. With metadata, the user can easily understand that it is a waterfall located outside of Bear Lake, the video is taken by someone by the name of Corbin Jarabek, and the video is published by Michael Chester. These small pieces of information expand the users understanding of what they are looking at and / or listening to. Metadata is also helpful for giving credit; If I had posted the two songs and claimed them as my own, that would be plagarism. Instead, I can share full information about the artist, contributors, record labels, release date, and much, much more, ensuring that credit goes where credit is due.
The only issues I encountered this week existed within my own house in the form of my god awful wifi speed. I live 20 minutes out of the Hart and trying to upload videos on a upload speed of less than 2mb/s for 20 minutes made me question my very existence. Other than that terrible experience, I didn’t run into any problems; it seems like a very simple concept that greatly increases user interaction.
I’d like to close out this week by providing you with one more song. The WordPress theme I picked to start my site two weeks ago is very minimalistic and clean; however, that means if I don’t include any content it looks like a bloody penguin (black and white and read all over). I’m not even sure it matters but it drives me absolutely nuts.
