Incoming Computer Skills Students!

Hey everyone! So today is my last day of Computer Skills taught by the legendary Ms. Belisle. It was a great class and I learned a vast amount of information and skills about computers, photo editing and design, and making a website. I'm sure some of you taking this class are thinking..."psh, I know computers. This class will be a breeze." For some of you this may be true, but for most, I want to give a few pointers:
Listen to everything Ms. Belisle says, it's all important.
Do your homework carefully and on time. There is a lot of it.
Don't miss class. Each class has info you don't want to miss

It's not many pointers but it's really all you need. I hope everyone enjoys the class and gets as much out of it as I did.

...Hunter out...

Pics that Lie

This is a picture of the San Antonio skyline that I doctored to include the image of two F-22 Raptors that went rogue and bombed downtown. I even included an explosion near the center of the image. It's small in the blog so you will have to click on it. I chose this picture because I wanted to make a scene that depicted a disaster. I wanted to pick a scene that everyone recognized. Since we all live in San Antonio I figured it would be a good starting point. I found this image on Google. I liked it because it was during the day and you could have a clear visual of any disaster that happened during the day. Then I started thinking of disasters and I remembered San Antonio houses an Air Force base. So I came up with the idea of a rogue squadron bombing downtown.

I manipulated the imaged by first taking the F-22 raptor image and taking the jets from it and put them into the skyline with a separate layer. Because they are moving I added a motion blur to them to add an aspect of realism. Then I found the explosion on Google and cropped the image from the original and put it into the skyline as well. I lightened up the explosion a little bit and added a bit of a blur to it because it is a far away explosion and adds the effect of movement.

The manipulation that I created could certainly be harmful. It's a picture of an explosion in downtown San Antonio. If someone, perhaps a journalist, saw the image and thought that it was real, could create a completely artificial story around the image whether it is true or not. Then, people in San Antonio would read the article and think that the Air Force base near the city was unsafe and their lives were in danger. So yes, I would say that this type of manipulation is certainly harmful because this sort of thing does not happen.

Quote From The Article
"One new check on science images, though, is the blogosphere. As more papers are published in open-access journals, an informal group of watchdogs has emerged online."

This is completely true. Not only for science images but any doctored image that is thrown around on the internet like a baseball. Billions of people use the internet and there's a good chance someone has seen the original image of a doctored image and there is also a good chance that those same people have seen the doctored image itself. The problem is that they will notice this and post about it on a blog just like this one. One website I frequent is Digg.com which houses serious and humorous news articles, images, videos, etc. I can click on a funny image, then go to the comment section, and more often than not there will be a comment posted by a random person showing that the image is fake with a link to the original. Thanks to the internet, if you doctor an image and throw it on public domain, someone will figure it out and point it out.

Favorite Presentations

My favorite presentations on Tuesday were Michael's presentation and Monica's presentation. Michael's presentation was very informative and I was very surprised to learn about all the endocrine inhibitors that are present in our very water supply. What bother's me is that even the EPA doesn't bother to report about it. The other thing that bothers me is that he mentioned Houston as one of the cities with high endocrine inhibitor water supplies. Really makes you wonder if we're taking any steps to improve this little problem? My other favorite presentation was Monica's. She had some amazing photo's in there and I learned quite a bit about lining up that perfect shot. Her animations pertaining to the photo's she showed worked really well in showing us the "rule of three" and the "hotspots."

PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

So PowerPoint is the greatest thing since sliced bread, for some people at least. It's a great tool for organizing your ideas into a presentation and sharing it with others. But what makes a successful PowerPoint presentation? Everyone likes pretty colors and funny pictures, but you don't want that in a PowerPoint presentation. You want your presentation to be simple yet informative enough to grab your viewers attention. You also want to avoid wordy slides because then your viewers will only be reading what is on the slide and not listening to a word you are saying. Another good thing to remember is to lay off the flashy slide transitions and how text is introduced to the slide. People love graphics. Period. Throw in some charts and graphs showing change over time and progress and you're golden, only if the chart is easy to understand. Along with the idea of not using flashy things, avoid flashy fonts such as cursive fonts that are too hard to read, people don't like that. I think that a solid combination including all of these elements should make for an intriguing PowerPoint presentation.

CLT

The Center For Learning and Technology is a great tool for every student at Trinity. If you’re looking for equipment for advanced photo editing or video manipulation, this is the place for you. Each computer is fitted with the best video and photo editing software available. CLT has a help desk for those who need assistance with any of the programs. To be honest, I have only used CLT to rent a camera and watch the occasional football game on those boring Sunday nights in the library on their nice high definition TV. CLT is a great spot for our class because it’s so highly devoted to image editing and the artistic side of computing which is what we are working on now.

Excel thoughts...

Excel is by far my favorite program to use out of my self proclaimed "extensive" knowledge of computer programs. It has so many features and its capabilities are endless. I knew a bit about excel coming into the class but that was only with the older version of excel. I was so surprised to learn all of the new features in the new version of excel and how much easier it is to navigate and perform simple tasks such as chart making. One thing I was really surprised to see is actually how many different functions there really were. I always thought that there were maybe fifteen different functions but there are well over that number. Each one does something unique and different. I think that learning how to use excel is incredibly crucial when going into the business world. Pretty much all business plans are driven from excel spreadsheets and knowledge of how to manipulate excel to get a number you want is invaluable. I know that my new knowledge of excel will truly come in handy when I graduate and find myself sitting behind a desk taking orders from the man in charge.

Chris Nolan part I

Chris Nolan came and spoke to our class today about using Google search, among other things. I always thought I was pretty versed with using Google. I could just type pretty much anything my heart desired into the search box and then I would be instantly gratified with bountiful information ripe for my picking. But according to Chris, there is so much more than that! You can throw in all sorts of different types of symbols and even use something called "advanced search"...spooky I know. But it all truly was incredibly helpful. One thing he mentioned was that when you search for something, Google displays the item based on popularity. So the popular articles are going to be on top, which include Wikipedia and the like. As you scroll down the search options, the articles become more scholarly. I had no idea about this! This new tid-bit of information just made my researching for papers just that much more easy. No longer and I going to have to use Wikipedia for my research papers...not that I do anyway. Another really handy trick that I learned was using the minus sign (-). If you put the minus sign after what you are searching for, you can exclude certain items. For example, if you are looking for facts about Mexico, you can use the minus sign trick to get rid of words such as "New Mexico". Also, he showed us that Google can find movie times!

Jackalope

I chose this picture of the fabled “jackalope”. It’s clearly a fake picture of a rabbit with what looks like deer antlers on its head. I like this picture because I see it everywhere in every gas station in Texas that has postcards. It’s meant to be a comical image and that’s what it conveys to its viewers. Everyone knows that it is doctored unless you’re really detached from the world. The picture is from Colorado so I would assume that it originated in the South; maybe in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, or Arizona. The image itself was photoshopped by putting deer antlers on top of the rabbits head to make it look like it has antlers. It was manipulated because it is hilarious. Just imagine a furry and friendly little rabbit with antlers. Not so friendly now, huh? I don’t think that the manipulation was harmful at all. It’s made to be funny and it doesn’t hurt anyone by creating a false image of a rabbit. The rabbit isn’t going to file a lawsuit against the creator so it’s safe.

Copy(wrong)right....

Copyright has become a very touchy subject following the dawn of this new age of computers and whiz-kids. Before, copyright was something to be admired because as an author you knew your work was safe from fidgety hands and prying eyes, but not anymore. All the new technology out there has made it increasingly simple for anyone to find a copyrighted book online without paying for it or downloading thousands of dollars worth of music, games, and software for free using file-sharing programs. The most popular file-sharing program that started it all was Napster. And we all remember how that went. Countless file-sharing programs and thousands upon thousands of lawsuits later, people are still brave enough to illegally download music. I'm not going to be a hypocrite, I've done it, who hasn't? A way to get awesome songs for free?? Count me in. (don't tell me that's not what goes through your head.) But seriously, pirating music has gotten to a point when if you are found culpable of downloading music, you will be dealt with and chances are it will involve more more than you've made in your lifetime thus far. Is that fair? Can record labels really charge thousands of dollars for a song? Of course they can. You are committing a felony, and paying a fine is the obvious choice when it comes between that and jail-time. The next point, is where do they get these heinous numbers from anyway? Lets take a second to look at the time and money put into making the album. It's not cheap. First the artist makes the songs, etc. Then a record company is hired. If they are a big name then lawyers and guys with a big-name get hired on too. Basically, it's a costly process to create a good album and when you find out your songs are being pirated, you're going to get mad and want to take immediate action. Anyway, that's enough for now.

Network Diagram of Trinity's LAN

Joe Hatch is a Handy Man

We had the opportunity to have Joe Hatch come and speak to our class the other day. He touched on many basic computer functions as well as some interesting tidbits on computer safety and keeping it clean. One such example is CCleaner.
I've always been skeptical about those online ads for "make your computer run faster with this!". Then they throw a name at you and you download it and it does nothing but waste space. Joe told us about CCleaner from CCleaner.com and it basically cleans up your computer getting rid of unused files and gives you back a lot of space. I cleaned my computer with it and I was able to get 4 gigabytes back.
Some of the things it does is go through internet files and deletes old files that have been cached, which means your computer stored the page so it doesn't take long to load up, which we don't need anymore with fast new and improved internet browsing speed and capability.
All in all, I took a good bit of information out of class that day thanks to Joe!

Entry numero dos

Hey guys, I'm James but I go by Hunter. I'm not really sure why my parents named me Hunter but it's an awesome name. None of them hunt, anything. I was born and raised in Houston, Texas where you can drive in a straight line for an hour and still be in the city. Here's an interesting factoid...I'm actually the only person in my whole family born in Texas. Everyone else is from the East. My major is business with a concentration in finance and I'm a Senior, which means I know everything, period. I love sports and my favorite football team is the Washington Redskins. I also love everything that has to do with the ocean, except para-sailing because that's just terrifying. I have this weird phobia of bees and wasps. So if you ever see some random kid sprinting across campus...it's probably me and I probably saw a bee.

I'm living off campus this semester behind the Quarry. I have to say that living off campus definitely has it's perks, but not as many as on campus. My only regret is that I am probably going to miss a lot more classes now that I have to drive to campus. But never our Computer Skills class.

As for computer skills, I'm fairly practiced. But as the video showed us, I'm sure there is much more that I can learn from this class.

That's about all I have to say. So thanks for reading! Hunter out.

My Trinity e-mail is: jrobins5@trinity.edu

Hi, my name is Hunter

I'm a Senior at Trinity from Houston and my major is $Finance$.