~ Journal ~

The following page contains Journal entries written during the process of

creating this website, and gives an insight into the things involved during

both the writing of content, and web constructing

27-9-04

INTRO JOURNAL ENTRY

I have decided to do my project on White/Christian Metal, because I believe it will be interesting. It shouldn’t be difficult because I already have a few Living Sacrifice and Demon Hunter CD’s in my collection, and have access to any needed resources, for example lyric sites and internet forums. The topic is also something I’m interested in, and so it should be enjoyable to do, and easier to motivate myself. The main aim will be to analyse the lyrics of different groups in order to see what they were thinking when they wrote them, and overall get a greater understanding of the genre. I originally was thinking of doing the project on Marilyn Manson, in order to gain an understanding on why people think he (the vocalist not the group) is a Satan worshiping maniac, and how he can get people to believe what they are told about him even when the rumours are in many cases un-true. Then I was thinking of writing a short story, but in the end I decided to do the project on White Metal, after realising it will be a more interesting topic. I then thought it would be more fun to present the content as a website, for in that way I can do two things I enjoy in one. It has an advantage because when the writing gets tedious, I can do some more on the graphics. I can get easy web space at Angelfire; it’s just a matter of finding a good computer to unload it with, since my home internet isn’t so great. I may be able to get some proper webspace at uni, rather than a sub-domain, but the moderator hasn’t replied, and probably won’t.

29-9-04

FIRST JOURNAL ENTRY

During a double period in the computer lab I copied the album art of the 4 bands, and then all the lyrics, as well as some band biographies I can summarize. I’ve decided to do the project using the lyrics of Living Sacrifice, Demon Hunter, Soulfly, and Iron Maiden. Two of the bands are definite Christian groups, but I also have two groups who I’m unsure of their beliefs. This should enable me to compare them easier, and finding out what they believe should be a good way to study their lyrics. I copied and pasted all of Iron Maidens lyrics into a word document, which ended up being 106 pages with a total of 28,000 words. I’ve obviously decided only to do their most popular or interesting songs.

I wrote up some short biographies of the bands, except Soulfly and Iron Maiden, and short descriptions of all the metal genres. I’ve began making some banners and graphics for the site to, but allot of the graphic stuff was done the weekend before we started. I also wrote this journal entry.

5-10-04

SECOND JOURNAL ENTRY

Over the weekend I wrote analysis for most of the Demon Hunter songs. I had to re-do the graphics as well, because I originally had paint shop pictures as the background, and was going to add the content over the top with text boxes. Although this was good for creating good looking pages, it would have taken too long to load, I would have had to have make links for every page, I couldn’t use shared borders, and the layout would be difficult to get right. Next I’m planning to do the lyrics for Living Sacrifice, and by the end of the week I want to have finished them all, so that I can finish creating the graphics, proof read it all, and then sort out all the content and pages. I also set up an angelfire account.

10-10-04

THIRD JOURNAL ENTRY

This week was spent doing the lyric analysis of Living Sacrifice, which I managed to do on Wednesday, then on Saturday I did all of Iron Maidens. I’ve changed the focus a little again, for I’m no longer going to include Soulfly in the project, because I won’t have time. This means the bio I wrote for Soulfy will be useless, though it doesn’t matter too much. Now that I’ve finished the content, I can spend the last few days putting it together on the site, and then proofreading it and then doing the bibliography, which may take a while because I haven’t taken note of all the info I’ve used, so I’m going to have to go through the content to remember where and what I did to get the information. I could do that tomorrow during the lesson in the computer lab, since it’s difficult to do graphics and such on computers without Photo Impact, which I’m used to.  

12-10-04

FINAL JOURNAL ENTRY

The project is finished now; at least most of it, I only have to upload it to an FTP site. I’m pleased with the result, for it’s fairly close to how I planned. The only major change was the exclusion of Soulfly. It ended up being a more words than expected, and the graphics took longer than I thought they would, because I’ve had to change them quite a bit.

The project was easier than I thought, especially once I’d started. I didn’t get much of the typing stuff done in class though, but I did get allot of information.