Advice for next semester!

My advise for next semester is to follow instructions! A few times when I did the homework I wouldn't follow the directions fully, so I got a few points off.  Make sure you read every step that way you won't miss any details!!!

Favorite Websites

Our class had very interesting and creative websites; however, these are a few of my favorites...

• Katy Silva-This website was extremely artistic.  I can definitely see Katy's personality throughout the website.  I really enjoyed the backgrounds.  She had a very nice navbar.  My favorite page on her website was her portfolio.  She is very creative and will go very far in life.
• Taylor Watkin-Her website was very interesting.  I really enjoyed her pictures.  They were very clear and made her pages very interesting.  I loved her travel pages! She did a really good job!
• Marianna Becerra-She also had a very good website.  Her website was about Latino Exchange so it was very informative.  I really enjoyed the pictures page.  This looks like a very fun club to be a part of! 

My Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~agoodin!!!

The process of building my website was a great learning experience.  I have never done anything close to building a website so this was all new to me.  Making my website was a little easier than I thought.  I used kompozer when I worked on my mac and expression web when I worked on the school computers.  I'm most proud of the page on my family.  Family is very important to me and I made this website for my parents.  As soon as I published it, I sent them a link to visit my site.  I would have made the design lay out a little more interesting.  I had some problems with the pictures, so I wasn't able to put that much time into the design.  My biggest technical challenge is when I saved all my picture on a file on my desktop, but when I moved that file to my y-drive all my pictures wouldn't work, so I had to reinsert every picture. My biggest design challenge was working with the table I inserted.  I could figure out how to change the size and layout moving from kompozer to expressionweb.  I will show my site to anyone interested in seeing it!  If another classes allows for me to build a site, I would definitely make another site.

Larry's Lecture

Larry Hechler's lecture was an extremely insightful presentation on computer hardware devices.  I learned much about taking care of my computer.  After this lecture I realize the importance of taking care of my computer.  It is interesting the Larry's sons have all destroyed their computers, however Larry understands his sons don't take care of their computers, so he bought all his sons dells, because they have the complete care. This Dell care system had made it easy for him to replace them.  Larry asserted the importance of backing up your harddrive.  My dad always tell me to back up my harddrive; however, I always forget and tell him I will do it later.  Larry's stories about past Trinity students losing all their information definitely spooked me.  The first thing I did when I got back to my room after the lecture was backed up my harddrive.  My computer is getting a little slow, so it might be a harddrive problem. I'm very glad I decided to back up my harddrive.  I also learned a lot for Larry's talk about battery life.  I previously did some of the things he said you should avoid.  I used to use my computer for 15 minutes then plug it back in.  Now I know your not suppose to, I will use my battery completely before I plug it back in.  I really enjoyed learning the different aspects of the computer hardware.  Larry is extremely tech-savy, yet he spoke in terms that I could understand.  I really appreciated his lecture.  Now I definitely have a better understanding of my computer and how to take care of it!

I choose this photo from stock exchange of the Luxor hotel building from Las Vegas, Nevada, because I lived in Las Vegas for a good majority of my life, and I've always thought this building was very interesting. I manipulated this photo by inserting my face in place of the sphinx face.  I manipulated this aspect of the my photo by adjusting the hue and staturation as well as the brightness and contrast.  I also altered the color by using the dropper and paint brush tool.  I was able to smudge the lines of my face to blend in more.  Another transformation of the photo is I painted the nails of the sphinx by adding shapes and painting them pink.  They last touch which I feel was very vital was the text.  This shows that my alteration were only made in fun.  These alterations were not harmful because they were only made in jest.  I was not trying to harm anyone by creating this, and there is nothing really too controversial about it.  Recently, it has become quiet a controversy about manipulating pictures.  Mike Rossner's article "The Journal of Cell Biology" discusses image manipulation a bit.  It discusses in different terms than I have though of before though.  He identifies image manipulation as a form of "scientific misconduct."  It is not   a lot easier for anyone to manipulate images.  Because of this fact, people don't realize the impact of transforming a picture.  This is a very tricky subject and as our technology increases this image manipulation will seem to be more of a problem.  We just need to educate people on the impact of image manipulation and as long as they are aware hopefully they wont use image manipulation in harmful ways.

Citation

Mike Rossner, Kenneth M. Yamada "The journal of Cell Biology"Vol. 166, No. 1 (Jul. 5, 2004), pp. 11-15. Published by: The Rockefeller University Press

powerpoint presentation

My presentation was about Linguist in China.  I learned more about specific information and statistic about the language situation in the world and more specifically in China.  I like to see how the tool I learned in class could really be put into use to make a profession presentation.  I definitely will use the skills I learned for future assignments.  If I could change something, I would talk more about my personal experience.  I said a lot of facts, but I would have made my presentation more personal.  I would also try to add some of my own effects and animation.
My two favorite presentations would definitely have to be Kayvon's and Taylor's presentations.  Kayvon's presentation about being a multilingual doctor was really good, because this topic he choose was obviously something he was passionate about.  He used a very interesting color scheme.  His striking images also helped to make his presentation very intriguing.  Taylor's was also quite impressive.  I learned a lot about her and her topic of eyes from her presentation.  Her video she choose of the lazor eye surgery was very interesting.  I went away from her presentation wanting to learn more about the eye.

Chris Nolan Lecture

Chris Nolan gave an extremely insightful lecture on the usage of search engines.  Going into this lecture I felt that the usage of search engines was a topic that is common knowledge to most people; however I learned a myriad of new ways to better utilize search engines.  I learned how to better search through google by using the advanced search tool to refine what I am looking for.  Also, I thought it was very interesting how you can preview books that have been scanned online.  This will be useful to me whether I am doing research or just trying to find an enjoyable leisure book to read.  Something that surprised me was how easily a faulty or bad article can be spread to the public.  Not only is it easily spread, but when people don’t use a critical analysis of their sources they can easily believe these articles to be true.  This makes me realize how careful I need to be when locating sources.  Although sources like Wikipedia are fast and easy, and sometimes have good information, a lot of the time it could be faulty.  I know this to be true because I one time altered a Wikipedia article by a few words just to see how easy it was to change.  I’m very glad Chris Nolan came to our class to broaden our understanding of search engines and how to best use them.