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.