#blog task

Hey there, cats and kittens!  Another Tip Tuesday.  You are probably looking at the title and thinking, JTH, Tumblr doesn’t do maintenance.  They just let things stay broken.  Very true reader.  Very true.  I am talking about your own Tumblr blog maintenance.  Or admin work.  It is the not fun, not creative part of Tumblr.  Here are some of the things I do (or should do) and how often I do it.  Take it and make it your own.

Weekly | Update Masterlists:  I try, try so hard to update my lists as I post throughout the week but I get busy, I get lazy.  Linking stories on masterlists is boring.  Worst case scenario, I will do my best to update on Sundays, which is my unofficial admin day.  Why is updating them so important?  So people can find my fics easier.  

Weekly | Draft Posts:  Sunday is also the day I use to draft my posts for the coming week.  So my Tip Tuesday, Fic Teasers and my story posts are drafted.  If I really on the ball, I might have Weekend Reading drafted, but that is rare these days.  The only thing I don’t do is tag my taglist, it seems Tumblr hates that. 

Daily | Clean out my Inbox:  I don’t like my inbox to be full.  So I do my best to answer all asks daily.  I know some people keep requests in there until they write them.  So this may change for you depending on what you do.

Monthly | Check Taglists:  I kind of do this each time I do my taglist.  But I do my best to check for those broken tags, duplicate tags, etc.  

Quarterly | Organize Masterlists, etc.: I just finished doing this and I really need to do it more often.  But a few times a year, I check in with how my masterlist, especially my story masterlist, is looking.  Perhaps it is getting long, cluttered, broken links.  Maybe you haven’t updated in like a few weeks.  Or you need to make a sub list.  This is also when I take stock of my bio and links.  And check for any flagged posts. 

As Needed | Followers:   I check to make sure all my new followers are not under 18.  I try and do it as I get the notification but I am often lazy.  

Anchorage - Describes the relay between words and images

Arbritrary - No connections to anything else

Codes - Signs that are organised into groups

Connotations - Ideas that stem from a sign

Diachronic - Evolution of linguistic signs through time

Iconic Sign - Where the signifier resembles the referent sign

Indexical - A sound/thing that gains attention and alerts presence to a sign e.g. smoke to a fire

Intermediality -  The emphasis of an image

Langue - The whole system of a language

Metaphor - One signifier seeming similar to a different signified

Metonymy - Replacing one signified with another

Myth - Thinking about things which are structured to send particular messages

Paradigms - Different choices of words when constructing a sentence (vertical lists)

Referents - Actual things that signs refer to 

Hebdige starts off this book by explaining that a main purpose of subcultures is to distract society from their natural order. They are meant to disrupt the way that things are usually done.

He makes it clear that the people making up these subcultures are stronger as a group, and it is harder for them to get their ideas across as individuals. He also comments on how subcultures adopt their own rules and traditions, within those that society expects of them. 

My chosen comic book artist is Tom Gauld, who is best known for his Mooncop comic. 

He studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Royal College of Art. 

I will be conducting a semiotic analysis of the above ad for Nike. 

To start with, the lighting is very dark which makes the advert seem ominous. The face that the shoe itself is lit up instantly draws the viewer’s attention to the shoe. The text is also light in colour which makes it stand out against the ad’s dark background.

The figure behind the text is not instantly observable to most viewers, but once seen it cannot be unseen. The figure is unmistakeable the Marvel superhero, Iron Man. The shoe is also coloured in traditional Iron Man colours, which strengthen the subtle connotations - as Iron Man himself isn’t even seen in his trademark red and gold.

Using a ‘hardcore’ superhero to promote a shoe brand provides obvious associations with the shoes being tough, and perhaps giving the wearer some of the special abilities of the Iron Man suit. 

The Nike logo at the bottom of the ad, and the Nike logo on the shoe mean that the brand is still the main focus of the advert.

The text ‘The Sneaker Makes The Man’ signifies that the advert is definitely aimed at men. The associations with the bold, masculine font also support this implication.