CS 1300 Advice

After spending a semester in Ms. Belisle's CS 1300 class I think I can give some good advice about doing a good job. The best thing you can do is to make it to every class. It is very hard to get caught up after missing a class. Another very important thing is to do all of your homework. Even though each assignment is only worth a small amount of points, they all start to add up and small amounts of points can make a difference. Just make sure you do your best and i'm sure you will do great!

Other Students' Websites

I enjoyed all of the websites that were presented in class. They were all well designed and very interesting. I especially liked Erin's because it was very professional. She did a great job of layout and color scheme, and she was able to embed a video, which no one else did. I also like Morgan's because she had many interesting ideas. her navbar was by far my favorite and she had many creative backgrounds that made her page very unique. Finally, I enjoyed John's page because he themed in in a very interesting way instead of just making a personal webpage. He made his webpage from the point of view of a sports analyst. He had many interesting ideas and made his page very professional.

My Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~eroberso. Making my website as easier than I thought it would be because I didn't realize how helpful the software could be. I used Microsoft Expression Web to create my website. The page I am most proud of is my Gammas page because I was able to make the whole page hippy themed. If I could change one thing I might go back and make all of the pages consistent in color. My biggest technical challenge was getting layouts to work in expression web, and m y biggest design challenge was with colors because that is not my strong point. I may show my website to my family and my friends. In the future I may not make another site for class but I may have to for my job this summer.

Reading HTML

Although it is no longer necessary to hand code webpages, because of software like expression web, it is still very important that web designers know how to use and read HTML code. A reason for this might be that if something ever goes wrong with the webpage it might be hard to diagnose and fix by just looking at the actual page. Instead, the web designer would be able to open up the HTML code and find the precise source of the problem.

My Photo That Lies

For my pictures that lie assignment I chose to alter a picture of a criminal lineup. I found the picture while searching on google. The ppicture was manipulated by replacing the heads of some of the criminals in the lineup with items that are harmful to the environment. Then everything but the manipulated men was reduced in saturation to a black and white image. The caption environmental enemies was then placed under the men. I did this to make a point about pollution. I believe that polluting the environment is a crime and that environmental enemies are public enemies. By making the environmentl enemies colored I meant to show them standing out from just other average criminals in the lineup. I do not believe that my changes were harmful because I used it for a completely different purpose than the origonal image."The Photographic Society of America defines creative photography as the use of altered reality. in an image. The PSA Exhibition Standards require that the photographic content of the image must predominate." I believe that my picture upholds this idea of creative photaography because a large percentage of the altered photograph is still from the origonal.

McTighe, Elena. "Thinking Creatively." PSA Journal 75.9 (2009): 23-25. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 13 Apr. 2010.

Inside Internet Search Engines

On Tuesday we had the honor of having Chris Nolan, the Assistant University Librarian, come and talk to us about search engines and the web. He was able to teach me so many things that I did not know about the web. One thing that I had never heard before was that there is free program called Google Desktop that can be downloaded from the web. This program can be used to search the desktop of your computer and even all of your email. We also learned about how search engines such as Google operate and how they sort search results. One thing that surprised me was that one of the criteria for organizing top sites is how many links from other sites lead to the site, and ranks them higher for having links from authoritative sites.

The Dark Side

The June 1994 cover of Time Magazine features the mug shot of OJ Simpson from his arrest on murder charges. I chose to analyze this picture because is it a perfect example of the media manipulating the public to make them have a certain opinion. Time Magazine manipulated the mug shot by darkening the picture both the surroundings and OJ. They did this to make him seem more threatening and to draw in the attention of readers. If they wrote a story about the dark side of OJ Simpson this was a way to show their readers what their side of the story is about. I believe that this is a harmful manipulation because by making OJ look more menacing and dark than he actually is can change the opinions the population has about him under false pretenses. It is wrong for the media to manipulate any picture of a person without getting permission from the person in the picture.

CLT! Who Knew?

When I bought my new MacBook Pro in August I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever worked with! So it came as a shock to me that at Trinity we have an entire center on the bottom floor of the library full of technology and equipment that put my laptop to shame. In CLT there are PCs and Macs filled with amazing multimedia editing software at the disposal of Trinity students. Along with these there are laser printers and scanners that can be used as well. There is an Innovation studio in CLT that is dedicated to teaching faculty about programs such as TLEARN and a video conference center that contains a satellite system that allows two way video conferencing. Along with these facilities there is also a digital audio lab where students can create and edit digital projects, and a Media Presentation Lab with projection equipment a a screen to make presentations on. Not only are all of these facilities at the disposal of the students but there are also people down there that can help students wishing to use the equipment. Now that I know CLT is there I will be able to use the software and equipment to do work and make presentations that are very unique and interesting for all of my classes.

Copyright

While listening to Jason Hardin talk about copyright I learned many interesting facts about copyright. The most interesting and controversial piece of information I learned was that copyright covers the author's life plus 70 years. This means that the copyrighted work doesn't enter the public domain for 70 years after the death of the person benefiting from the work. I also learned that the law used to only cover the author's life plus 50 years until the Disney corporation fought to have irt extended so that they could keep making money off of Walt Disney's work. Proponents of this law believe that relatives of the author should be able to benefit from the copyrighted works after the death of the author becauise it is just like any other property that can be inherited. I, however, believe that this amount of time is overdoing it. I think that once the author is dead the revenue from their creation should only serve to pay for the author's existing expenses and the work should then go into the public domain. The family did not create the work and should therefore not be able to benefit from someone elses work for 70 years after the death of the true creator.

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

This is my diagram of the Trinty Network. The tour we recieved of the Server Room in Halsell was very interesting and helpfull in making this diagram. My favorite part of the tour was learning about how connections to the internet are made on the Trinty campus.

Tech Tip

The tech tip I found most helpful had to do with clearing junk out of my computor. Joe Hatch said to clear my recyle bin and reset the browser on my mac as often as possible to keep my computer running faster.

Scavenger Hunt

I enjoyed reading the blogs of all of my classmates and especially learning som many interesting things about their lives. I comment on Nicole's blog and Tori's blog because i found things in common with them.

Introduction

Hi my name is Emily and i'm from Nacogdoches, Texas. Most of my life has been spent at the swimming pool mainly as a 12 year competitive swimmer and also as a lifeguard, swim lesson instructor, and swim coach. Most of my other time has been spent in the kitchen, baking. During high school i ran a business out of my kitchen making desserts and specialty cakes for peoples events. Now that I am at Trinity I am a full time student with an intended biology major and a biomathematics minor. I have been using computers my whole life and in high school i took a basic computer skills class to fulfill requirements, however, I am still not especially skilled with computers. You can email me here.