Advice

Don't just watch Ms Belisle do stuff, work along with her on your computer.

Favorites

My three favorite websites belong to Pablo, Peter and Douglas.  Pablo's has a good layout and striking pictures.  Peter's was funny and creative.  Douglas' website seemed professional.  He obviously had to do some handcoding to get his website where it is now.  All the sites that are up are good.  It's interesting what you can learn about people from these things.

Website

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

Overall, making a website was much easier than I expected it to be, although I still never found a color scheme I like.  Handcoding was much simpler than it sounded and the wysiwyg programs sped up the process.  I mostly stuck to Expression Web because I am already familiar with the layout of microsoft programs, but I occasionally had to resort to handcoding when something wasn't turning out quite right.  I am proudest of my artists page because it took me forever to make the picture in photoshop and hotspot each artists face in expressionweb. This was my biggest technical challenge and if I could change one thing I would add more artists to the collage.  Although I don't see myself making another site soon, I might keep this one updated, and I've already shown it to a few people who like my music.

Hardware

I learned a lot today.  It was really interesting to hear about emerging hardware technology. It's hard to believe that LCD screens will soon be obsolete.  I learned of the importance of running down your battery every once in a while.   I learned that if I ever open up my mac I'll lose my warranty.  If I were to buy a computer today, I would be very tempted to look into Dell after learning of their extensive warranty.  The afternoon's most important message was to back up your computer.  As soon as I got home from class I plugged in my hard drive for the first time in months.  I'll be sure to do it regularly from now on.

Pics that lie

While it might look like someone is relaxing on the beach with their dog, in actuality, this picture was taken in large back yard in the hill country.  This manipulation is in no way dangerous; what's the difference between sitting on the beach or in a back yard?  I used the lasso tool to crop out the background and then adjusted the colors and lighting to make the scene dreamlike.  I like how the colors echo the gold color of the can.  According the the rules layed down in the PSAJournal, I would not be able to enter this photo into a PSA-sponsored photography contest because I combined elements of multiple photographs.  I agree with the Photographic Society of America's rules because photographs ought to represent reality in some way.  Thsi being said, ridiculously altered images are always fun.

Davis, Jr, John M. "The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth; PSA Nature Definitio..." PSA Journal 75.6 (2009): 30-33. Ebsco: Art and Architecture Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.



My Powerpoint Presentation

My powerpoint was on the Lost Generation, a group of expat American writers in Paris during the 1920s.  This was the first powerpoint I've had to make in quite a while; it brought back warm, fuzzy memories of working with the windows97 version of powerpoint in elementary school.  The program has become easier to use since then, though much of the novelty has worn off.  In doing this presentation, I realized that certain programs are just plain easier to use on a windows machine, powerpoint, excel and photoshop being among them.  My subject was entertaining to research, especially looking for pictures from the 20s.  I was unaware of the origin of the term "Lost Generation" and found it interesting that it was coined by a grumpy old mechanic.  In hindsight, I think I should have somehow made the text of my slides more interesting, perhaps by spacing them more irregularly.  Douglas and Lauren were my favorite presenters. I had never heard of circuit bending until Douglas presented, so I learned a lot and the slides were all very interesting.  My dad is a financial analyst, so I've been getting econ lessons since I was four.  Needless to say I'm tired of that stupid subject and would be fine with never hearing about marginal decisions or scarcity for the rest of my life.  Despite this, I was still drawn into Lauren's presentation and was impressed with her Seussian take on economics. 

Good ol' powerpoint97

Power Point

The worst of Power Point offenses occurs when the lecturer is ready to move onto the next slide but has to play through an extra thirty seconds of animation.  I also hate annoying animation sounds.  It's frustrating when there is either too much or too little information on a slide.  I don't know why people use light type as it's difficult to read, and I also hate it when pictures move around too much.  The best powerpoint I ever saw focused on Renaissance Art, with each slide devoted to one or two works.  It was an effective way to present such a large amount of material.

CLT

I am so glad I now know about the amazing resource I have in CLT. With its dozens of computers and 9 scanners, CLT makes having my own compuiter seem almost impractical. What reallystruck me was the conference room. That set-up is ridiculous and is appaerntly nice enough to warrant a teleconference with the secretary of state! I was excited to learn about CLT's making acquiring specially-requested software a priority. I want to go play on the video-editing software. Those computers will definitely come in handy in this class when we do more photo editing. Robert Chapman seemed like a really nice guy; his enthusiasm for technology was infectious. Below is a picture of our beloved Ms Belisle trying to contain her excitement for CLT.

This picture of Martha Stewart's head cropped onto a model's body appeared on the Newsweek cover.  I'm not sure why they chose to do this -- I didn't realize Martha was the object of mush ogling but I guess the editors wanted the cover to appeal to as wide a base as possible, from lonely housewives to lonely men. This type of photo editing is very harmful as it gives women an unrealistic projection of what they "should" look like.  At least this one isn't directed at young girls.  My video is of a picture of Angelina Jolie being altered.  I think it is more to show what kinds of cool thing can be done with photoshop than to show editing in a bad light.

Excel

I really like using Excel so far. I've learned about conditional formatting and how to use some new formulas. I use Excel to keep track of my spending; being able to so easily organize my data is very helpful. I like how intuitive Excel is, but sometimes entering large amounts of data can be difficult. Also, as with Word, I sometimes have difficulties with formatting.

Copyright and Creative Commons

I found yesterday's discussion of copyright laws very interesting.  I now know about fair use and what constitutes infringement.  I was especially interested by the lifespan of a copyright.  Copyrights have obviously become more important, as they originally only lasted fourteen years, but now last seventy years after the creator dies.  It's crazy that Disney was able to extend how long they owned the rights to their characters.  While I understand their wanting to make money off Walt’s characters for as long as possible, I disagree with their lobbying congress to extend copyright protection. (That Sonny Bono was their representative is pretty hilarious).  At some point those characters need to become public domain because they are an important part of American cultural history.  And besides, they make plenty of money off more recent characters and movies. I hope Disney is unable to make any more changes to copyright law. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The server room in Halsell was pretty intimidating: That's a lot of technology in one room. If something happened down there life at trinity would be very different.  Although I still don't have a very deep understanding of how the trinity network works, I at least have some appreciation for it now.  I had no idea how much went into simply connecting to the internet from my room!  I'm now pretty comfortable with making diagrams and word and taking screenshots.

My Secret Spot

While snooping around my church's basement a few years back I came across a box of pictures that had survived a flood.  They all had this cool faded look to them; I tried to recreate that in my edited picture.  I lightened the exposure, saturated the colors and made the picture cooler in addition to adding some graffiti. Where on campus was my picture taken?  A place where a little standing water would come as no surprise.

Best tech tip (6)

I was not aware that links could be hijacked.  This is pretty frightening considering the number of links I click on on a daily basis; it's almost a certainty that I've used a bad link before.  I'm nervous to know what bad things are on my computer as a result.  Now I'll be especially choosey of the links I use!

Bio

My name is Matthew Keath and I'm from Dallas, Texas.  I like indie movies and reading.  I wrestled all throughout high school, which was sometimes made difficult by my omphalophobia.  My computer skill consists of being able to turn on the computer to play on the internet (where I once enjoyed downloading music until TU put an end to that...).  My email is mkeath@trinity.edu.