ADVICE!

Dearest New Computer Skills Students,
Hello! A quick word of advice to make you as successful as possible this semester in your computer class.

1. PAY ATTENTION- you're going to learn so much more than ever thought you would for a common cric class. This stuff (PowerPoint, Photoshop, Webpage Designing) is really helpful, and I've already used a bunch of what we learned this semester in my other classes at Trinity.
2. Get Notes- If you miss class, or if you're an athlete and you know you're going to miss class a lot, figure out what you're going to miss beforehand. It makes life so much easier in the long run!
3. Don't Blow Off Homework Assignments- 10 point assignments add up. Quickly. And if you are going to do the homework, take the time to actually do it right, because if you just BS it, you'll get docked a ton!

Hope this helps, and good luck with everything!

My Favorite Websites

After looking at everyone's blog in the 8:30 class, my three favorites turned out to be Luke's page about Zombies,  Tess' page about Francesca's, and Sophies page about her trip to Italy. I really thought Luke's was well done because it had a perfect combination of images, video, and text, and the color scheme was also appropriate for the topic of the site.You could tell that a lot of time and effort was put into creating this website! Tess's page about Francesca's was both aesthetically pleasing and informative. The different pages of her website were well chosen.  I also loved seeing Sophies website because after hearing about for trip for the last few months, I finally could see the amazing photos! Again, I thought Sophie's was also well organized, with a fitting color scheme, and easy to navigate. Overall, I enjoyed looking through all the websites, but these two were my favorite!

Website!

Please visit my website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~lhender1/!


Making this website was significantly easier than I thought it would be! I really enjoyed using Expression Web, because it was pretty simplistic and straight forward. The only time it was necessary to hand code was to insert the YouTube videos, and even that wasn't difficult. The section that I am most proud of is the Team Photo page because even though it took forever, I hyperlinked each individual face on the team picture to each player's personal page. If I had more time, I would have added more pictures from the season, and probably tried to make different albums from the various games played.
My biggest technical challenge in creating this website was inserting the YouTube videos, but after some instructions, it turned out to be not very difficult at all. The biggest design challenge was probably figuring out how to delete the border from auto thumbnail images, but once again, with instruction it was really easy. I'll probably show this site to a few of my teammates, and my parents back home. I do hope I have to make another website for a class in the future, even though it is time consuming, because it ended up being way more fun than I anticipated!

Larry Hechler's Lecture

Today during Larry Hechler's lecture, I learned a ton about the differences in different types of lap tops, as well as the different sections and functions of each part of a laptop. The piece of information I found most valuable from the lecture was the emphasis on the importance on backing up you computer. I’ve had plenty of laptop problems already, but have been fortunate enough not to lose any memory so far. After hearing the horror stories of studdents losing all of their work, pictures, music, and other information, I’ve finally realized the importance of spending the time and money on purchasing an external hard drive so I can back up everything that’s important to me!

Photoshop

In the article "PSA definition of Creative Photography: Altered Reality," the question is posed as to what makes the difference between a creative photo, and an altered photo as defined by the Photographic Society of American. The idea that stuck me most in the article was that "There has been much discussion about what should be judged to belong to the category of a Creative photograph." Modern technology has changed the way we look at photography, and for this reason our perspective on photography is ever changing. Is altered photography still considered photography?

"PSA Definition of Creative Photography: Altered Reality." PSA Journal 75.9 (2009): 35-9. Print.

The picture that I chose to manipulate was that of a flying V of geese, because after being in Indiana for the weekend and seeing these birds everywhere, I started to think about how odd it would look to have a different species of bird with the group, and that thought blossomed into having a completely different animal, like a cow with the group. The picture originated from Google Images, and I manipulated it by flipping the picture horizontally to make the V face the opposite direction, used the magnetic tool to crop and placed the cow in line with the geese, and altered the hue and saturation of picture to make the sky appear more vibrant. The manipulation was not in any way harmful, and merely meant to entertain whoever happened to be looking at it. This picture did relate to the article I researched because it is unclear what exactly it is defined as, and whether or not it is considered a "creative photograph."

PowerPoint Presetations

I thought the PowerPoint presentations were a lot more fun than I anticipated. Going into the project, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but after completing the presentation, I feel more sure about what I want to do with my life after college than ever before. The concept of sports medicine, specifically overuse injury in young athletes, hadn't really been brought to my attention until this presentation was due. I was encouraged to seek out the specifics of my career choice, which turned out to be very eye opening so I really enjoyed that aspect of the presentation. I also feel like after practicing, through trial and error, to get the presentation exactly the way I wanted, I learned a lot about slide animation (how much is too much?!), and how little things like color and background can add to the presentation.

Personally, my two favorite presentations were those by Katie Garrett and Luke Tibbits. Yes, I am biased because they're both good friends, but I did legitimately enjoy both of their presentations. With Katie's presentation, I felt like the topic "Malaria No More" was not only crucial for everyone to hear, but presented in way so as to appeal to everyone in the room as well. She was very successful at making a complicated topic seem simplistic d easy to handle with only a little help. On the other hand, I enjoyed Luke's presentation
because it brought some life to the class. His PowerPoint was educational in talking about chemical warfare in the past, but also kept this serious topic light hearted with his use of zombies and such later in the powerpoint. Overall, I though both of these presentations were great!

Chris Nolan's Presentation

Even though I missed being able to personally hear Chris Nolan speak, just looking over the notes from his presentation was enlightening. Although this may sound absurd, up then I had never even heard of Google Scholar, and now look forward to having such a reliable search engine to pull up scholarly documents. Similarly, the information on what makes a website reliable is also interesting. Too often is it too easy to read something and believe it, but going over Mr. Nolan's notes reminded me of the importance of analyzing the credibility of the author and checking for the references used in an article. These hints may seem small, but they are applicable to everyday life!