CS1300 TIP for NEW STUDENTS

For CS1300, make sure to go to all class lectures, do all the assignments, ask questions, be creative, if there's any problem, talk to the teacher and most importantly, have fun.
 ~ LP

THREE FAVORITE WEBSITES

The three sites that I liked the best were about art, cupcakes and the Trinity Equestrian Club. I liked these sites for different reasons. The art website was visually appealing and fun to look through. The cupcake website inspired me to start cooking again and I really liked the intruction page. The Trinity Equestrain Club website was very organized and I liked all the action shots of the riders with their horses.

My Website!

Please visit my site at www.cs.trinity.edu/~lneubaue
 Making a website was challenging but so much fun to do. I chose to use Expression Web to design my web page. I found that it was very easy to use this editor. I really like my "Things I'm Gonna Do" and "Places I'm Gonna Go" pages. I did a lot of hyperlinking to other websites that I found visually appealing and had current information. If I would change anything I would change my background on my pages to something a little more detailed verses just a color. My biggest tech problem would be editing my web page to look how I want it to look on the web. When I published my page the first time, some of my writing was out of alignment. My Biggest design challenge was placing pictures in a structured grid without them looking pixelated. I am really pumped about this web design thing and can't wait to show my family and friends. It's amature at best and I'm not computer savy, but I think I found a new interest. I look forward to designing another web page.

Computer Hardware with Larry Hechler

Last class period Larry Hechler, our Hardware Technician Supervisor for Trinity University, visited and lectured our class on something very relate able, computers. A couple things I took from this visit would include the proper care for my computer and also things to look for when buying a new computer. A clean computer, free of "dust bunnies", is a happy computer. However, cleaning your computer with just anything will not do. Stay away from sprays that contain ammonia and/or alcohol in its chemistry. These chemicals will harm verses benefit your computer. Also proper usage of the battery is of utmost importance in insuring a long and healthy life for your device. When your computer is running low on battery, plug in the extension cord and fully charge the battery. When the battery is fully charged make sure you then remove the chord. Do not leave the cord on or else your battery will develop a short life cycle that will depend on being connected to the charger verses on its own. This will insure that the battery will run at its full potential and will last longer too. Above all else BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE.  In regards for buying a computer, Mr. Hechler emphasized buying a computer with a warranty plan. One of his best recommendations goes to Dell. Dell offers a complete care package that covers the computer for four years. So if anything happens to it, it will be replaced; no questions asked :)
This is Mr. Hechler's email if you have any computer questions! Larry.Hechler@Trinity.edu

PHOTOs THAT LIE

In todays life, people are constantly surrounded by image manipulation. This could be in the form of a funny picture of a squirrel being a jedi knight in the park or a controversial picture of troops in Lebanon or even a picture of a celebrity being airbrushed to enhance the "idea" of beauty. Today, "Photoshop abuse is out of control at magazines, partly because celebrities demand protection from exposure to reality and partly because editors live and die by newsstand sales. An actually ugly Betty just wouldn't be good for anyone's business, even if it might represent something relatable" (Ives). As stated in this quote, a lot of image manipulation is done just to make a profit. This is obvious because a lot of times Before reading any article or magazine, the prescence of an eye catching photo,true or false, will grab the readers attention first. If the photo can catch the attention of people then it is more likely to bring a profit to the article or magazine. With this incentive, many people are more likely to alter photos in a false manner. Irregardless of profit though, people don't like being lied too. I think that as long as a photo isnt altered in a way that creates a harmful result or harmful impact on the viewer, then its ok. Here's my photo that lies:

 

I chose to make an avatar squirrel incountering woodsprites (the little jellyfish-like spirits in the movie). My first idea was to make jedi squirrels but that idea was done before so I did this one. This photo was originally two squirrles in a park jerring at each other. I made this photo for fun and I took the image of the squirrel and altered his eyes, hair and ears to resemble an avatar. I made him blue and added blue lines for his body art, then put him in his appropriate setting on Pandora. This image manipulation was not harmful because it is obviously not real. My photo serves as an extreme opposite example of what people do in magazines when they alter body images.

Ives, Nat. "Despite talk of ethics codes, airbrushing is here to stay." Advertising Age 79.16 (2008): 24. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

PPT Presentations

We had our first PPT presentations on Tuesday and I did mine on Entrepreneurship. My PPT was ok but I could have done some things different. For instance, I really don't have a focused academic interest. Right now I dont know what really interests me besides something with a business focus and my thoughts were all over the place. I liked the media that I used and the video. It helped with my presentation. I would change the fact that I didnt have any music at the beginning of my presentation. It was way too quiet and I bored people. I found a website called music for videos.com that allows you to down load music without words and next time I make a presentation Ill use some of those tunes. I learned that PPT is a very useful tool that can bring and idea to life, but in order to do this and be good at PPT, it takes PRACTICE! My two favorite presentations were neuroscience/the brain and the art/art galleries. Both presentations were well layed out. For instance, the neuroscience slides had a slide background that complimented brain synapes (Im not sure if thats the right wording) and the art gallery media was eye catching and made me interested in the subject. Both subjects had content that was well prepared.

Finding High Quality Info on the Web with Chris Nolan

Last Thursday CSCI 1300 was graced with a lecture by Chris Nolan, the information Guru.

In his discussion, we learned about searching for academic level info. on google,  google tips and some very useful search directories. Many times when someone is searching for specific information on google a lot of the same information links come up everytime. This is because google has programmed it's search engines to sort by relevancy, words found in the title/text and how often the site is used, cited by other links and its ownership. Overall, we learned that there are over 250 characteristics used to rank relevancy. For google tips, there is a smaller link beneath the big search that says advanced search. Here, one can do specific searches controlling what domain they want to see along with using specific phrasing. Also, there is a down arrow beside the word more that can be used to specify scholarly sources. Other tips included using Cached sites (sites that are no longer visible but if searched and found on google they are still viewable in the original form) and using the word Define ...  in the search engine (gives specific definitions). For the directory information, we learned that the directories like ipl.org, Internet Index, InfoMine and the Trinity Library, especially LibGuides, are all useful search sites.

IF YOU GIVE A BULLET, YOU SHOULD TAKE A BULLET!

I once had a brilliant speech teacher who put it this way, "If you give a bullet, you should take a bullet!" Before this epic discussion on PowerPoint, I was taught, in the past, that when giving a presentation its ok to load up each slide with tons of facts, clip art, sound effects, graphs and bullet points; the more, the better!  However, after my teacher broke it down, I realized how ineffective and boring I was really being. I felt bad for what I put some of my fellow peers and teachers through in my past presentations. So I came to this personal conclusion:
 "MY FIVE PET PEEV'S OF POWERPOINT"

1. Bullet points
2. Ugly/Unnecessary Clip Art
3. Too Much Text for ONE Slide
4. Bizarre Sound Effects
5. Un-readable Graphs/Charts

Bullet points are a distraction and they pull away the attention of the audience from the speaker. Yes, they help organize the slide a little better, but let's be honest, when a PowerPoint is going are you really listening to the teacher or are you trying to scramble and write everything down before the timer switches slides?

Using Ugly/Unnecessary Clip Art is a crime. Most of the clip art available is ugly, weird and distracting. If someone is giving a presentation on a dog adoption business they should use real pictures of man's best friend. The real pictures will evoke a more positive emotional response to the presentation. Using a clip art dog that's purple and oddly disfigured will not make someone WANT to adopt; possibly run over..

Too Much Text for ONE Slide is a major no no! When an audience sees a slide like this, automatically the brain goes into auto pilot and distractions are easily to succumb too.. like that oddly shaped purple dog. Plus if the speaker is reading DIRECTLY off the slide, it unprofessional.

Bizarre Sound Effects are retarded. They are fun to play around with but in a presentation they are again distracting, boring and in many cases irrelevant to the presentation. Nothing worse than when someone ends a presentation with a flushing toilet sound or clapping. It's amateur.

Finally, Un-readable Graphs/Charts are the worst visual aids anyone can put in a presentation. I am all for having visual aids but they must be organized, comprehensible and depicted in an appropriate graph/chart choice. Having a poorly depicted set of information will confuse the audience, discourage/lose their attention and cripple the presentation.

PowerPoint is a very useful tool and needs to be thought out before it is made. The speaker must make the audience depend on them for all the information they are going to learn. Having the major topics on the PowerPoint will help guide the presentation but the speaker must know their material to make it all work. PowerPoint can be used in just about any situation. For instance, people who help develop athletic teams and strengthen team relationships, all geared towards winning national championships, can use PowerPoint. The women's soccer team went through one of these team building work shops yesterday and it was very effective. The speaker didn't use bullet points, clip art, huge amounts of text, bizarre sound effects or un-readable graphs/charts. She used relative material like a video clip form  The Blindside and all her PowerPoint information was simple. We had to listen to learn. I believe that if these five pet peev's are left out of PowerPoint, a speaker can give a presentation that is effective and professional. How they choose to present it is their choice.

CLT

This past Thursday the class paid a visit to the first floor of Coates Library to receive an introduction to CLT by Robert Chapman. CLT stands for the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology and provides faculty and students access to high-end computer work stations, scanners, audio/video digitizers and other high-tech developmental tools. In the innovation studio there are 26 computers total, 14 Macintosh and 12 PCs, and 10 scanners, which gives everyone the ability to work with familiar technology. With all of these resources, faculty and students are able to develop multimedia presentations, reports and projects. Other facilities included in the CLT, other than the studio, include a digital audio lab, media presentation lab, video conference center and an innovation studio. After our brief chat with Mr. Chapman, we had time left in the class period to play with some of the technology. In our in-class assignment we were to draw a self-portrait of ourselves and using the scanner upload the drawing to our computer. Being a beginner with this it was a little tricky to do. However, once completed it was exciting to see what new things I could learn to do with technology. I can see myself using the studio for an upcoming Italian presentation and also for several photo albums for my family. This is my self-portrait I scanned for class.. It's hard to see but I'm in my soccer uniform.

IMAGE MANIPULTION & PHOTOSHOP

I chose the eleventh picture that displays Oprah Winfrey on the August 1989 edition of TV Guide magazine. It is a pretty accurate display of Oprah's wealth and influence, but I chose this picture because I liked the purple dress. The original picture was actually a 1979 publicity shot of the famous Swedish actress, Ann-Margret. The picture was created by splicing Oprah Winfrey's face onto the body of Ann-Margret. Oprah Winfrey is a full figured woman and this image was created to show Oprah in a more slender fashion. However, this image manipulation was done without either the consent of Oprah or Ann-Margret. The picture has positive and negative effects on its intended audience. It's attractive, especially to male viewers, but it also has a negative vibe due to the social pressures against women associated with body image. In today's media, shows like The Biggest Loser, Dance Your Ass Off and Extreme Makeover all put people under a lot of pressure to succumb to what Hollywood views as beautiful. Being healthy and taking care of yourself mentally, physically and spiritually should be a priority on every one's well-being list. However, mainstream media has a tendency of taking this subject and pushing it too far; making goals and expectations unhealthy and unrealistic to achieve. Photo shop and image manipulation technology is amazing, but how far is too far?

I chose this youtube video to give an idea of how much photo shop manipulation is being used in the media and how detrimental it can and will be by influencing an unattainable perfection.

EXCEL

The new program for Excel used to be a mystery for me. The last Computer class I had was in the older version and when this new version came out I was right back where I started, clueless. However, now I am very comfortable with the program and I enjoyed learning new ways to manipulate my data, format it in a professional manner and overall make things make sense on a spreadsheet. This technology will be very helpful in assignments for my other classes and especially later in life with my business career. I know there will be some dislikes about the program but everything I have worked with has changed my outlook on excel. I just haven't found anything I disagree with yet.

Copyright Laws

Before Jason Hardin came to talk, I only had a general view of copyright laws. In some of my business classes, we had several discussions about the topic but not to the depth of which our guest speaker spoke. For instance, I had no idea that U.S. Copyright Laws date back to 1790 and are mentioned in the Constitution. Copyright laws were established to encourage people to be creative and develop new ideas, inventions and technologies. They were made as an incentive for creators which allowed people to protect their work and make a profit.  As a business/management major, this totally makes sense on an economic level. With the encouragement of the copyright laws, when established, new technologies encourage growth and development; creating more jobs and reducing unemployment. Now looking at it from the legal stand point the law states that The term of copyright for U.S. published works is the Author’s life + 70 years. We can thank Disney and Sonny Bono for extending this period to 20 years extra. When looking at Disney’s case it makes sense that they would want to extend the copyright laws. Disney’s products are a major source of income, provide a lot of jobs and to be honest, it would be weird to purchase Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse from anyone else. However, Disney’s additional 20 years are almost up. What are they going to do next? If Disney no longer wins out in court, Walt Disney’s products can and will be produced by other companies and sold at lower prices, which is a huge competitive problem. Many disapprove of Disney’s actions, mainly those who would like to make a profit off of Goofy, yet from a business management view point, I would have hired Sonny too. I have more thoughts about the subject, but I think that was enough Macro, MGMT and BLaw for one blog.

Copyright Laws by Lindsey Neubauer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at lindseyneubauersblog-lindsey.blogspot.com.

Trinity Network

This is my TU Network Diagram. It shows the major building that is responsible for the campus Internet Network and also the service provider and other campus buildings that provide support. There are also facts about connective ability on/off/through out the campus.

This photo was taken in a location that probably isn't noticed much. I chose it because I liked the angle and little details it held. I cropped the original picture and then used the HSL filter to disguise the location. I also used the museum matte to concentrate the focus on the photo.

Joe Hatch

On Tuesday August 31st, Joe Hatch came and visited our class! He gave us helpful information on Clean House Software, a security program.He also gave us helpful tips for when our compurters start getting slow, how to practice smart banking and also to beware of identity theft. Overall the class lecture was very insightful!

My First Day of CS1300!

My name is Lindsey Neubauer. I am from Keams Canyon, Arizona/Farmington, New Mexico. I love being active yet relaxed in life. So things like snowboarding, traveling, sports, four wheeling, shopping, dancing and a lot more interest me. I am a transfer student heading into my junior year of college and this semester, my major "campus activity" is also my "secret fact". I play soccer for TUWS 2010! My teammates call me LP and this season is going to be epic. I encourage everyone to come out and rock the school colors! Back to CS1300, I have had computer courses before but nothing with the updated software for windows or excel. So this course will be helpful.
If you want to contact me, you can email me at lneubaue@trinity.edu