A bit of Advice

The best thing to do during the beginning of the year is to be neurotic about the details for completing and turning in each assignment. As the year progresses, this becomes easier and less careless mistakes are made. Have fun with the photoshop assignments by starting them early! This is a great class, I learned a lot! It can be very applicable to life if you want it to be.

Photoshop self-analysis

Because I think that most college students, including myself, do not get enough sleep, I chose to manipulate a picture of a face in order to make it look sleep-deprived. Since I could not find any decent portraits on the internet that were not copyrighted, I chose to use a picture that I took of my mom. I manipulated the picture by painting semi-transparent black around the eyes, lips, and some of the wrinkles. I adjusted the face manually to have higher contrast, to be darker, and to have less saturation. In addition, I used some of the smart tools for color variation to lighten the skin tone and darker the background. To make the face looked washed out, I used the smart blur tool with extra strength around the eyes. I chose to add color to the background with the grandient tool to contrast with the paleness of the skin. I darkened and romoved color from her shirt so that it fit with the rest of the image. Finally, I added text.

The manipulation was done to make my mother look paler, have darker eyes, and appear more sickly in general. This was done to emphasize the effects of sleep deprivation on appearance (do not judge how I look tomorrow!). The manipulation in this context is not really harmful although my mother might not appreciate her new look. If this was an advertizement for a sleeping pill or some other sleep-related product, I would not find the manipulation harmful since it is for purely emotional effect- not scientific or factual conclusions are meant to be drawn form the photograph. I do, however, think that there should be a note next the photograph that says that it was manipulated. While I hate the idea of enforcing a law or becoming technical (so much so that I allow this feeling to override my opinion), I think that all manipulated photographs should be followed by disclaimers. They can and should be short in most instances.

PPT Evaluations

I really enjoyed the PowerPoint presentations given by everyone. I thought all of them interesting, well-designed, well-presented. There were two presentations, however, that really impressed me. Baylie Bunn made the use of geothermal energy seem both intriguing and relevant while Elizabeth Lyon showed in a most professional manner how colorful the retina could be.

Some highlights of Baylie's presentation related to her geology major included her excellent background picture and overall design and consistency. Her use of arrows during her narration was professional and helpful. The font choice was appropriate. The rest of the pictures were inspirational. She even had a picture from Sonoma County which is where I am from. Finally, with global climate change under way and energy consumption increasing, her presentation was extremely relevant.

Elizabeth demonstrated her maturity in her presentation about Neuroscience. The background was pleasing and not distracting. Since the topic was on Optometry, the area she plans to continue studying, it was personal. Also, she included an excellent photo her her own retina. Humor was added with the cloud bubble "Wow those are big blood vessels!" I also learned a lot from her presentation.

A Powerful Powerpoint

I thought that all three articles had useful information regarding PowerPoint. The Garr Reynolds article was the most informative, the Seth Godin article left the strongest message (ironically about emotion impact), and the educause.edu article was the most concise. The worst PowerPoint presentation I had to sit through was to become a Point Reyes National Park volunteer. The slides, dull to begin with, were read aloud. Any of the three articles would have helped the presentation, especially since the audience, being volunteers, was not going to cling to every word. This brings me to my main dispute with the articles, the audience and purpose of the powerful may need to override some of the tips. For example, Biology I is taught almost exclusively through PowerPoint presentations. If the words on the page were limited as recommended, the slides would be inefficient and possibly chaotic. I learn more by a combination of writing or copying and listening than just listening alone. While most of the Biology slides do in fact follow the guidelines quite well, exceptions are made for slides that detail complicated concepts or processes. However, if the function of the PowerPoint is to make an influential presentation for the public or to make a business proposal, then emotional impact of the slides should generally predominate technical information. The slides should also be aesthetically pleasing as opposed to the Biology slides in which any superfluous design could cause confusion. All in all, here are five tips that I would suggest to someone planning a PowerPoint presentation:

1) Chose a theme for the slides that relates to the topic. The theme should help connect the ideas in the presentation without being distracting. Create a guiding style that encompasses the purpose of the PowerPoint in relation to the audience.

2) Vary the content of the slides. Even slightly superfluous video clips or photographs, if used well, can create comic energy that alerts the mind.

3) Avoid too much animation between slides (fade-in and out) and distracting icons. Annoying and cheesy.

4) Make all text as concise as possible. Use large and clear fonts.

5) Provide a narrative to the slides. Avoid reading the slide. If the information is important enough to say it word for word, memorize it.

CLT visit

My excitement steadily rose throughout the visit to the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology (CLT). At first, I thought it was going to be about technological information that I would neither understand nor be interested in learning, but I soon learned that there are a bounty of artistic opportunities in CLT. My excitement aside, CLT is the home of TLearn, TrinTV, and the new lecture capture system. It has a full time videographer, a help desk, training lab, video/audio editing computers, and production/photoshop computers. Room 101V has a protools rig and should soon be open for audio recording with a keyboard. Documents can also be brought it for OSR scanning. Digital cameras, video recordings, and mp3 recorders are also available for checkout by permission. The best part about everything is that it is open when the library is open and it is free to use! Obviously, use of material supplies will cost money, but I would feel like I was stealing if it did not.

I know I will check out a digital camera for use in Computer Skills Class, but I plan to use CLT more. I have already played with Photoshop and created a multi-layered picture combining two Egon Schiele gouache paintings. I cannot wait to do more projects like that, especially with my own artwork. I plan to use the printing machines in the art building to print digital images on high quality paper. I have seen this done before and it gives the images a professional look with warn-in character. I hope that I have the inspiration to/my life becomes organized enough so that I have the time to take advantage of the music recording options in CLT. I have always wanted to write/produce songs. I want to make both an acoustic sounding piano song as well as a funky dance type song. This may be out of my talent range but it would be fun to try.

Excelling in Excel

The section on Microsoft Excel came just in time for my academic career at Trinity. Prior to this year, I had never been required to use Excel. Now I have used in multiple times in both Biology and Chemistry lab. We have had to make graphs, charts, histograms as well as use functions and data analyses. Without Computer Skills, I really would have floundered. Saying that, I found learning how to type and look for functions most helpful. This is followed by making a chart and learning how to select what data belongs to the X and Y axes. Little things about how to format the page helped me make my presentations clear and to the point without fiddling with every option on the tool bar.

I do not doubt that I will use excel in the future. My mom uses Excel and a program called Quickbooks to do the billing for my father's practice. Since she swears by Excel, and I trust her, being my mother, I will probably end up doing my personal finances on Excel once I am forced into being responsibile. I think Excel is particullary useful since it does not miscalculate (as far as I know) numbers that are inputted, so the numbers only have to be typed once correctly and referred back correctly for the calculations to be on target. Using a calculator lends to many more errors in my experience. Excel should then be helpful for any professions that utilize simple math.

Response to Chris Nolan's Presentation

I learned several good bits of information from Chris Nolan’s presentation and a few interesting facts as well. In the future, I will probably benefit from learning about Google Scholar and INFOMINE the most. Prior to the presentation, I did not even know what directories were and how they granted access to good academic databases. The fact that Google can be operated in Piglatin surprised me, but then again, I am sure that there are some people out there that would use Google over another search engine solely because they can read “Searrrrch in Pirate language instead of the regular “Search”. For fun, I will probably choose a Google language, especially when I am not doing homework. The Instructions on how to search with custom specifications was helpful too. For example, typing “define” before a word in a search brings up websites that define that term. As usual, I like to know how systems function, so it was interesting to know that Google gives high placement to websites that have been linked to by many other websites. It is logical in the sense that websites visited the most are not necessarily the most credible, but if other websites have set up links to it, then there is a good chance for there to be verifiable information on the site. I was also unaware that Google contains a cached image of websites in its database and that the cached page can be viewed if the website is down.