Good Advice

The major piece of good advice I can give is to do all of your work. The class is not too difficult, but some of the homework is time consuming, so don't wait!! Other than that, have a great year and good luck in the course!

Favorite Websites

My three favorite websites were CJ's, John's, and Erin's. I like how CJ put the pictures of tigers as a steady theme throughout his website, and the hotspots on those tigers were a nice touch as well. I loved John's for one reason in particular, that I love sports; therefore I had a special attachment to his website, as it was a sports analysis website. Erin's website was also wonderful, she used a solid color scheme and the importation of the video was fantastic and relevant. Great Job guys!!

My website

Please visit my website at : www.cs.trinity.edu/~bturner1.

To make my website, I used expression web. Inserting pictures and the simplicity of a navigation bar was surprisingly easy. I really like my Sports section, just because it explains alot of who I am. I am a huge sports fanatic, therefore its my favorite. My biggest technical challenge was with hotspots, because they kept messing up on me. I will show my website to anyone I feel appropriate, including employers, friends and family. My biggest design challenge consisted with inserting a picture as a background, it was difficult to find a neutral enough picture to make colors go well with. And I may indeed make another website for another class. Only time will tell.

My Pic That Lies

I chose a picture of Tiger Woods hitting a bunker shot while wearing his traditional Sunday red shirt. I chose this picture because I am a golf fan and Tiger's personal life has been among scrutiny as of late, so I wanted to create a picture to depict that. My picture originated from the Los Angeles Times website, latimes.com. I manipulated it by duplicating the background layer, then adjusting all of the saturation so that the top layer was completely black and white. Then took the background eraser tool and erased all of the parts where I wanted color to show, like his shirt to show the red. I then added two text layers, one of a large letter A on his shirt, and another above him saying "Scarlet Letter?". I manipulated the photo in this way, to make the connection between Tiger's traditional Sunday red shirt and the novel The Scarlet Letter, by saying that Tiger Woods is an adulterer. Yes this manipulation is harmful because it adds a negative aspect to Tiger Woods' life that the picture did not depict before hand. The article I researched was about how fake pictures effect the way the general public recieves certain images that lie. My picture fits in with this because the picture did not originally call Tiger Woods an adulterer and now that it is altered the general public will recieve this pictures in a different way.

MLA Citation: Hamblin, T. J. "Fake!" British Medical Journal. BMJ Publishing Group: 1981. Web.

HTML

It is important for website designers to be able to use HTML codes because it is the essential code that the whole website is based upon. While using HTML codes, it is sometimes easier to make small designing changes and if something does not turn out how the designer wanted it to, the designer can then go back and look at the HTML code to figure out where the mistake is.

PowerPoint Presentaions

My two favorite presentations were Hunter's on Marine Biology and sharks, and Tori's on teaching children. Both used useful pictures and data. Tori's in particular had a very funny video that was effective in making me realize that teaching little children actually could be fun. It made me not think about all of the negative aspects that could come along with that profession. Hunter used the Jaws theme song in his presentation that was very useful and he did not clutter his slides with too many words, which made his slides clear and easy to understand.

PowerPoint

I think that some keys points to a good and effective powerpoint are: 1. Keeping it simple. Don't try and jam slides full of words, simple text is more effective 2. Don't read the slides!! Have your slides with pictures and describe what your are trying to say with the pictures in the presentation. Use note cards to help spur presentation do not just read the slides. 3. Use relevant pictures and relevant sounds. Avoid clip art if possible. 4. Use effective transitions. Do not just throw in a spin if it does not benefit the presentation. That is annoying!!! 5. Use good body language, and show emotion in the presentation. Your audience will benefit from this.

Photoshop Architecture Collage

This Image means in a sort of joking way Walt Disney's influence on architecture as the image is meant to look like Mickey Mouse.

Chris Nolan

I learned alot from Chris Nolan about using search engines. It surprised me at how major the percentage is of people who use Google as their search engine. A cool note was how google gets paid to put websites in the site bar for advertisement. Also, I did not realize how complicated and how much effort the people of Google put into their search engine. It's fascinating that Google ranks its sites based on key words searched, how many hits the site gets, and how many links the website has. I learned about what websites to look for when looking for certain information. Just like I would access a .com website for maybe a fan website, or less substantial material, but if I was searching for something more scholarly I would visit a .gov, or .edu site and if I was searching for a non-profit organization I would look for .org sites.

Pictures That Lie

I chose the shark attack photo because I found it suspenseful and interesting. The picture is of a helicopter hovering above water, as military personnel are climbing up a ladder attach to the helicopter. The tainted image adds in a shark attacking the men, which adds intensity to the photo. It was easily added in by copying the shark so that it is coming out of the water. The picture is by Museum of Hoaxes. The image could be slightly harmful, but not much. It could be harmful to the friends and family of military members, pictures like these could make them worry that their friends and family could be getting eaten by sharks. Other than this example, do not see how this image is harmful.

Visit to CLT

Visiting CLT was a neat experience. It serves as a cool place to study and I am looking forward to play around with some of the abundant software they have. I plan to tinker with some of the video editing software and Photoshop, as I am certain it will come in handy as we progress through Photoshop in this course. The study room model classroom, seems kinda cool as well. I can rent one of those and practice my presentation in them before I present projects for other classes.

Copyright

I learned many things from Jason Hardin about copyright. One of which i had not realized, is that everything produced in a concrete form is automatically copyrighted. I like that because it makes people give credit where credit is due, and it inspires intuitiveness in works. This automation in copyright is important because producers of work do not have to go through the hassle of manually copyrighting their works. One thing that I disagree with concerning copyright that i learned about, is that it is a felony if the value of the copyright infringement is worth more that $2500 or 10 counts of copyright are recorded. I think that is a bit extreme; the fact that a person could face 5 years in prison for simply downloading a CD is a bit harsh. I understand that it takes away originality and income from an artist, but a fine could be assessed, and then if the problem is reccuring a larger penalty can be pursued.

Copyright is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My Trinity Network Diagram

Here is my version of the trinity network. It took a little while to understand what exactly went on in each building, but with a little bit of research it was manageable. The tour was really nice, it gave a sense of what exactly goes on and makes me appreciate what they do in there now. Man I wish I had those floors in my room, those were nice!

Top-Tech Tip

My top-tech tip from Joe Hatch is without a doubt that a good cleaning system is a necessity to keeping your computer running most efficiently. A program like ccleaner not only cleans up junk files on your computer, but in the process it protects and rids your computer from harmful files and software while maintaining the important information you need.

Classmates

I enjoyed all of the blogs by the class. So much so that I commented on three blogs: Nicole's, Chelsea's, and Ana's. The two that had less than two comments were Nicole's and Chelsea's. You can click here to view my comment on Chelsea's blog. And here to view my comment on Nicole's.

About Me

Hello, my name is Blake Turner and I am a Freshman (First year) at Trinity University. I was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in the suburbs of Houston in Katy, Texas. I am on the Men's golf team here at Trinity and enjoy all other types of sports. I also enjoy a good video game, I will challenge all to a game of Madden or Call of Duty; however prepare to lose. A couple of things about me that not many people know is that I am extremely competitive and I come from two families as my parents are divorced. I would consider my computer skills pretty average, although i have taken a course in high school mainly dealing with Adobe Photoshop CS3. I hope to eventually become an international business and marketing major here at Trinity and would love to market for sports and entertainment industries some day. You can reach me here with any questions or concerns.