WEB207 - Media Diary Part 1 - Today's Diary

You are asked to keep a diary of your media consumption for a single 24 hour period (ie one day) once during the first two weeks of this unit. At the end of the day, please do a summary of how much time you've spent engaging with different media platforms.

Diary of Monday 6^th December 2010

7.00am           Woken up in the usual manner, via "4yo boy alarm clock".
7.20am           Get up, turn on PC.  Check HTC Desire Android smartphone for any urgent overnight email (I only have 2 of my email accounts configured on this, for sanity reasons) or Tweets (I have 3 Twitter accounts, one each for personal interests, my web development business and for school).  Nothing important.  Log into PC and fire up email and Facebook (but no time to check anything yet).  Start getting myself and kids ready.
8.30am           Quick check of email - I have approximately 8 email accounts all downloading into Microsoft Outlook and filtering to various folders, for various interests and business.  Quick churn through Twitter using Yoono, a Firefox plug-in.  Click on a few interesting links for later reading.  Go through eBay searches (for Christmas shopping).  Quick scan of tech newsletters.
8.50am           Rush out the door to deposit kids at school and childcare and pick up mail from PO Box.
9.20am           Head to local shopping centre to attempt to finish Christmas shopping.
9.30am           Arrive at shopping centre.  Tackle David Jones and Big W, looking for a particular Zhu Zhu Pet for my daughter (after failed attempt at different shopping centre yesterday).  Both stores advertised these as being available on their websites at 11pm last night.  As expected, not a Zhu Zhu Pet to be found in either of these stores or in fact anywhere else in the entire shopping centre (not that I walked the entire centre, but another mother I met in Toys R Us had).  Googled "Zhu Zhu Hamster" on my HTC and discovered it was available online, but couldn't complete purchase due to non-mobile website and weird popup window.  Abandoned online shopping attempts, completed several other purchases in stores and gave up on the bricks and mortar "Great Zhu Zhu Pet Search of 2010", and went home.
11.35am         Arrived home.  Google searched "Zhu Zhu Hamster" on PC and immediately found what I was looking for on Fishpond.com.au.  Add to Cart, Checkout and paid for in 3 minutes.  Wonder yet again why I bother shopping in shopping centres when online shopping is so much simpler.  Mixed feelings - happy that I've finally found the thing, but irritated that I wasted 2 hours wandering around a shopping centre (no, I do not love shopping).
11.40am         Checked email while boiling the kettle.  Scanned through Facebook and The Age.  Posted a link about Melbourne's impending locust invasion on Facebook.  Gross.
11.50am         Caught up on Tweets.  Most of the accounts I follow contain links to articles.  Scanned through previously opened articles (from 8.30am), and read a few new ones.  Mostly about Wikileaks and Julian Assange, which has turned into a minor obsession. :>  Posted interesting ABC article about Wikileaks to Facebook.
12.30pm         Stopped for lunch.  Rang my Dad while eating.  Read through a few more emailed techy newsletters.
1.00pm           Continued with WEB207 coursework, which wasn't completed last week due to (a) website rebuild and (b) waiting for brand-new reading glasses to arrive so I could actually read the readings.
1.58pm           Posted outraged link to Twitter and Facebook - "What a load of Mc-Bullsh*t, Mc-paid for and Mc-sponsored by... guess who?" (http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/The-Australian-Way-Video).  Feeling slightly nauseated.
2.00pm           WEB207 coursework.
2.15pm           Corrected one of Tama's typos via Blackboard.
3.15pm           Downed tools to go and pick up my daughter from school.
3.45pm           Back home, checked email, Facebook and Twitter.  Got afternoon snack for my daughter and did a bit more WEB207 reading.
4.45pm           Downed tools to go and pick up my son from childcare.  Then home, dinner, kids, etc.
7.15pm until 11.00pm   Back home, checked email, Facebook and Twitter a couple more times.  Continued with WEB207 readings yet again.  Posted a few things to Blackboard.  Showed husband nauseating Oprah McVideo.
11.00pm          Half an hour of "Angry Birds" on my HTC before bed.
11.30pm          Bedtime.

Summary
Via the combined use of my PC and smartphone, I was online all day!  I probably spent about half an hour reading email, about 2 hours reading news, links from Tweets and on Facebook, 3 minutes shopping online, approximately 5 hours on WEB207 work, about an hour on the phone and the rest of the time on Christmas shopping and with my husband and kids.  This is a fairly typical Monday for me, I either work or study or both, but if I'd chosen a different day then it would be very different as my son only goes to childcare a couple of days a week this year.