Advice for New Students

The best advice for students taking this class next semester is to show up every class. There is always homework, and getting behind will be hard to catch up. If you do all of the assignments, you will learn a lot of very useful skills for the computer. They will help you for your other classes as well. If you do your homework you will get a good grade in the class. Good luck!

Favorite Websites

My three favorite websites were Morgan's, Erin's, and Hinna's. All three had excellent graphics, and I learned a lot of new information about them. Erin's had a video on it that was really cool. Hinna had a lot of personal pictures that showed her and her friends hanging out. Morgans was really good as well. She went above and beyond by adding 9 pages.

New Website!

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~jnathan. Making JNSA was easier in some aspects, but harder in others. Publishing the website and creating an outline were not hard. The hard part was trying to do the specifics like making sure your pictures and text do not float on the computer monitor. I only used Expression Web. I did not have to refer to HTML coding becasue I was not trying to add highly advanced schemes and effects to my site that I do not know how to do. I am most proud of my Dallas Cowboys page. I spent a large amount of time analyzing their team thoughtfully and accurately. The color scheme matches the Cowboys' team colors. I might have tried creating my pages in PHotoshop Elements first then inserting the pages as pictures onto Expression. I think this strategy could help with floating items, but if I were to have to change things after it was published it would hard. My biggest technical challenge was fixing the capitalized I that I left when I saved my index page. This caused some hyperlink problems, but they were fixed. My biggest design challenge was making my text not overlap on the background pictures making the words unreadable. It was hard to do this because of different sized monitors. I am going to show the site to parents and friends. I think they weill be impressed with the work I have done. Yes, now that I know how to make a website, I could see in the future that I could use a website in presenting information like a Powerpoint presentation.

Pictures that Lie

I chose a picture of President Obama inside of an elevator. To manipulate it, I used the magic wand, lasso, conversion to black and white, adjusted darkness levels, stamp tool, render tool, and the text tool. I chose to manipulate this picture to express my disapproval of President Obama, and to bring to light the similarities he shares with infamous leaders of history. The picture originated from Callie Shell, a digital journalist who was allowed to follow President Obama during personal times. The picture has had Kim Jong Il, Osama bin Laden, Darth Vader, and Hitler added to the photograph while President's Obama's wife and others were removed. I manipulated this picture to show my disapproval of President Obama, and make people see that he has similarities as the people in the picture with him. President Obama's new policy of universal health care is making America turn into a socialist country, when what America so great is its freedom. The picture can be harmful to President Obama, but because of the presence of radical terrorists, the picture is more of a satire than a picture being used to harm Obama's apprearance. The picture relates to the article because the addition of the extra men is clearly fake because of time, location, and ficitonal differences, if the men were more realistic, it might not be as easy to determine that the picture was doctored. The article discussed the growing difficulty in identifying altered pictures, and laws that need to be passed to stop it. I agree with the article. I think there needs to be laws passed that do not allow photos to be doctored in a negative or positive way to be published, unless that the author acknowledges that the photo has been changed from its original purpose.

Plummer, Daryl. "Give Counterfeit Reality a Closer Look." USA Today 24 July 2004: 13a. Web. 11 Apr 2010.

HTML

Even though there are Web design programs that allow you to design sites without using HTML coding, HTML is important because if there is something very advanced on another site, you can view the HTML code to see how they did it. HTML is also important because you can create your website even without having programs such as Kompozer. HTML is also important because you can refer to it when you see there is a problem in the website, you can view the source code and fix it manually.

Favorite Presentations

My 2 favorite presentations were Erin's and Steven's. Erin's had very clear and nice graphics. There was a personal touch added with photographs of herself and others that attend Trinity University. It was very clear that she wants to be in the television/broadcasting field. Steven's was really cool because he included a video that showed all the Walmarts across the U.S. and when they came into existence. His presentation also included some very interesting information about how large corporations such as Walmart are run.

Power Point Tips

Some good tips on creating power points that convey the message and keep audiences interested are: using clear images in your presentation, this allows the audience to stay focused without having to read much, this lead to the second tip, do NOT have a lot of writing on your slides, audiences can become detoured when they see a lot of words. Tip three is use backgrounds and layouts that flow and go together. Smooth transition between slides is best.

Photoshop

Life under the Sea

The Internet

Chris Nolan informed our class on many interesting things about the internet. Anybody can post just about anything onto the internet. Websites such as Wikipedia have information that has been added by people that are not experts just voicing their opinion on a certain topic. This can be very misleading when doing research. When doing important research, Databases that peer reviewed can be very reliable. Usually papers that use multiple resources are the most reliable. People can also post propaganda on the internet and not have it taken off. One example of this was the MArtin Luther King Jr. website that was run by a white supremacy group. There were all types of lies on the website, yet it looked legitimate. You can never be too careful when deciding if a website is not backed by facts.

O.J. Simpson

I chose the mug shot of O.J. Simpson. At one point in his life he was a star football player in college and the NFL. I also chose the picture because it is an important trial case that I have some knowledge of. The picture was on the cover of the June 1994 Time magazine. It was of the mug shot he took in jail. In the picture, Simpson is made to look darker, and the lighting is a lot darker than the original. It was manipulated to make Simpson seem like a bad and evil person. The change in the picture was harmful to Simpson's perception to the public. It makes the public view Simpson as an evil person.

CLT

We visited the Center for Learning and Technology. It is on the bottom floor of the library. There they have all of the updated versions of software that you will pretty much need throughout college. You can go there to get help on basically any technology problem or question you have. The lab is about half Mac and PC. There is also all types of equipment for video and audio editing. I might need to use the lab for classes when I need to make a video project. I can go down there and edit video and have help right there when I need it. I can also go down there if I want to use the computer in a quiet place. Robert said they the computers are open to us if he is not using them to teach other professors about updated software.

Copyright Infringement

Jason Hardin talked to us about Copyright laws. I really found it interesting that Trinity University is bound by the law to give out personal information to the companies that detect IP addresses that are illegally downloading. Trinity has to give the person’s name and address if they catch you downloading their content illegally. Industries such as the MPP and RIAA can come after a student. They can ask for a lot more money than what the illegal downloads is worth. Since students tend to download more content than others, the HEOA requires the university to provide websites where legal downloading can take place. These websites will help with some of the downloading, but a lot of the content being downloaded by students must be paid for or illegally downloaded from programs such as Napster, Limewire, and Bittorrent. People in the music industry go after people for more money than the content is worth because they feel that by it being downloaded, there music has spread illegally, and they are getting ripped off. I feel that the music industry should not be able to claim more money than the amount illegally downloaded. The music industry is being greedy in asking for more.


Copyright Infringement by John Nathan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My Trinity Network Diagram

Last class took a class fieldtrip down to the data room. There were lots of computers, and it was hot, however the room had it's own air conditioning to cool the computers. We learned that our Y drives, group folder, and N drive are down there. After learning about the Trinity Network, I made my own diagram explaining briefly how the network works.

Computer Tip

Mr. Joe Hatch came to class, and spoke to us about how to keep your computer running fast and different functions it has. The most important tip I feel he taught us was to remove old cache and check for updates on a regular basis. This keeps your computer from keeping old useless data that can fill up your hard-drive. I am going to follow these tips on a regular basis, so my computer will run well.

Friends

All of my classmates seem pretty interesting so far by what they have put on their blogs. Hopefully I can make some new friends from this class. I commented on Hunter's and Erin's blogs.


http://hunnaramsey.blogspot.com/2010/01/im-james-ramsey.html#comments

http://www.emdooley.blogspot.com/ (Erin has to approve of the comments first)

Me

Hi I'm John, I'm from Southlake, Texas. You can email me here. I have lived and grown up in Southlake my entire life. I have an older sister named Jessica who is a 2nd year in law school in Minnesota. I've played football since the 3rd grade. I played for the Carroll Dragons, and I was a captain of the team my senior year. In my spare time, I enjoy playing video games such as Call of Duty, going fishing, listening to music, and playing Farmville. I listen to all types of music ranging from Lil Wayne to Vampire Weekend to Radiohead. Currently I am playing on the Trinity football team. I did Taekwondo for 7 years, and I am a 2nd degree black belt. In high school, I took a multi media class that taught the basic skills for Power Point, Excel, and Photo shop. I only know the basic functions of these programs. I want to learn more about all of these programs and more.