A Little Piece of Advice

A word of advice for next semester's incoming students from me would be to make sure you keep up with your homework because everything build on everything else so if you get behind on a homework assignment, you're sure to be behind in the next class. Coming from someone who registered, late for this class, catching up is not fun! But mostly, use your creative abilities to make each creative assignment your own and you will have so much fun seeing what you can do with your new computer skills!

Favorite Websites

Three of my favorite websites were Lisa's, Leslie's, and Peter's. I thought Lisa's was very well organized and infromative and they style she chose was very cute and made you want to keep looking at her pictures and what she had to say. Leslie's was very colorful and therefore intriguing because there was so much to look it, but it was also very simple and easy to navigate at the same time. I thought Peter's was the most creative because he took a different approach than anyone else and you can tell he spent a lot of time on it.

Visit My Website

Please visit my website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~ssteven1
To create this website, I used Expression Web because for some reason, it felt easier than Kompozer to me. I am most proud of my "Favorite Books" page because it is something I'm really passionate about and just generally excited to be able to share with the class and whoever looks at my website. I also think it's visually itneresting that I put the book covers on there because even though the old saying tells us not to, most people do judge books by their cover. If I could change something, I probably would have included more information about myself on my "Home" page becaue it seems a little too concise and perhaps doesn't give a good overall summary of my life. My biggest technical challenge was figuring out how to publish my website and few of the step by stepg problems to get my website to be visually organized exactly how I wanted it to be. I will show my site to my friends and family because most of their beautiful faces are on there in one picture or another and definitely my little brother because I know he will think it's very cool that there's a picture of him on the Internet. I think it might be beneficial to create a resume site in the future for easy access to a visually pleasing composure of my achievements and prerequisites.

Back It Up

In Larry Hechler's talk, I could not believe the story about the girl that paid 5500 dollars just to find out her harddrive was not recoverable! "If you want to keep it, back it up" might be the best computer advice I have ever heard as I have all of my pictures and all of my papers and on the same computer and the idea of losing all of that terrifies me. I also did not know that cleaning a computer with alcohol or amonia would eventually ruin the LCD monitor. As I have a Dell PC and a Mac laptop, I very much appreciated that Larry discussed the pros and cons of PC's and Mac's in a blunt and honest manner. I was also very happy to learn about how helpful Dell is to their customers when accidents happen. I was glad to learn that you should run the battery all the way down before you charge it because I do that unintentionally anyway since I lose my charger so much!  

EPISODE VII: BATTLE OF THE SIDEKICKS

I chose to create a fake movie poster for a Star Wars movie featuring R2D2 and a made up character, the King of the Monkey-Penguins because I feel that photo alteration is most common in the media. I tried to make something ridiculous that no one would believe is true so that the motive behind the manipulation is comical rather than harmful so I selected R2D2 as he is considered a "sideick" in the Star Wars episodes and created the fictional character, the Monkey-Penguin King. I selected three pictures to create my poster, a picture of a penguin, a monkey, and R2D2 that I combined on a gradient background to create the effect illusion that they are in space. I moved the monkey's head to the penguin's body and transformed R2D2 to be facing the Monkey-Penguin. After increasing the saturation and altering the hues of the characters to create a futuristic space effect, I smudged R2D2's light projection and cleaned up the Monkey-Penguin's stomach feathers and created a neon green and black gradient background. This manipulation is more comical than harmful and it could be considered a "spoof" on Star Wars as people would probably not believe there is an actual Episode VII involving something so out of place as a Monkey-Penguin King. In the article I chose, it discusses a picture of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie walking on a beach that was on the cover of a magazine that was a fabrciated photo, leading the public to belive something existed that did not, similar to my Star Wars poster. The article continued to discuss how photos are altered and keys clues for recognizing altered photos. As we have discussed in class and as is discussed in the article, photo manipulation in the media is exceedingly common as celebrities are often pohtoshopped to look "more attractive" than they actually do and people are taken out of the context of the actual to give the public false ideas. I incoroporated this idea in my photograph by creating a false movie poster that could potentially be printed in a magazine and give someone the idea that this movie actually exists.

Wickelgren, Ingrid. "TRUE LIES. (Cover story)." Current Science 92.4 (2006): 10-12. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

For my Powerpoint Presentation, I decided to narrow down the field of English to the Modern Novel because it is one of my favorite eras of literature and something I have learned a lot about in my lit classes recently. I think I should have given a more definite time frame for the genre, although the list of authors adequately depicts the era if you have any previous knowledge of them and most people have read something by at least one of them. I also might have spent a bit more time explaining the drastic changes that take place in the Modern Novel. Overall though, I think I adequately expressed everything that I wanted to about the subject. One of my favorite PowerPoints was Leslie's because it was incredibly visually interesting and that coincided well with her topic. All of her visuals were incredibly well integrated and interesting in their arrangement on the slide. My other favorite powerpoint was Matthew Keath's not only because of the subject matter that I greatly enjoyed and appreciated, but also because in contrast to Leslie's, his was visually neutral and simplistic. I feel that both of these extremes function very well in Powerpoints as long as they are well organized and integrated.

CHRIS NOLAN

Although I was absent for Chris Nolan's presentation, after reading everyone else's blogs, I suspect there was a lot I did not know about Google. I would find the ".countrycode" extremely relevant and useful because often, when I am researching for an English class, I come across sources by French or Italian critics that are completely unuseful to me. I was also unaware that the links on the side of the page were sponsored links, I always dismissed them as unuseful ads, just like you see on any other webpage. Searching through the Internet for a credible source can often be tedious and frustrating so I think all of the tactics useful for narrowing search results will be incredibly helpful in all aspects of academia.

Powerful Points

I have never been a fan of PowerPoint presentations as I had awful experiences with them in seventh grade biology when our teacher created a PowerPoint for every class and all we did was copy exactly what it said until our hands hurt and the bell finally rang. Since I have been in college, however, I have discovered that PowerPoints can be helpful in classes such as my Intro to Psych class because unfortunately I went through a phase of poor studentry in regards to the class and our professor posted his PowerPoints on Tlearn so I was able to view the PowerPoints in conjunction with reading the book and get all of the information that I missed in class. Additionally, when I did go to class, it was always very full and since I had a class directly before it on another part of campus, it was difficult to find a seat other than in the back where I couldn't always necessarily hear and therefore having a PowerPoint projected at the front of the room was very helpful, especially when videos or pictures or graphs were involved. Five things I dislike about PowerPoints however are: 1) When the person presenting them simply reads what is on the PowerPoint which they could have either done without the PowerPoint or gone without presenting.2) When the Poweroint is overly artistic and distracts from the information being presented. 3)When there are unnecessary sounds that accompany the heading spinning each individual letter from the background so that it takes 30 seconds just to see what the slide is about. 4) When the slides do not go in a natural order or are difficult to follow. 5) When the appropriate amount of time is not spent on a slide.

CLT VISIT

Although I had been to CLT before, I knew very little about it. I was very surprised to discover that here are rooms available for students that I think would be incredibly useful if working on a large group project that requires different medias. CLT provides a friendly and helpful environment for students to learn how to do anything from uploading a video to editing sound clips and checking out digital cameras. Since the computers are the newest on campus and can handle the largest files, I can see how they would be very helpful to anyone working on a computer science project or otherwise creating a portfolio of some kind. I thought it was interesting to discover that if a teacher needs a certain program for a class or a certain kind of computer, scanner, or anything else is needed, CLT is the place to go. Overall, I think CLT provides a unique and interactive experience as there are both PC And Mac computers and anything you would need to be successful on a task as well as friendly and nowledgeable people to help you.

Now You See It, Now You Don't

I chose this picture because I thought it gave a prime example of how people have been altering pictures to make them more interesting for years, such as people that claim to have pictures of the Loch Ness Monster of Big Foot and the pictures are almost always proven to be fabricated. A shark was added to this simple picture of a U.S. Air Force helicopter solely in attempt to make something already challenging and picture worthy seem over the top. This manipulation was harmful not only because it took away from the integrity of the picture but also was manipulated to take away from the patriotic image of the helicopter in order to make the event seen more perilous and exceedingly more unrealistic.



I chose this YouTube video because I think it gives an accurate portrayl of celebrities being photoshopped to such extents that they become unrealistic and therefore present an ideal that is not only incredibly modified from reality, but also that sets ridiculous standards of appearance for the general American public.

Excelling at Excel

Although I have minimal Excel experience, my mother is a CPA and uses it endlessly and therefore encourages me to use it in order to manage my finances, keep lists, grades, etc. Thus far in my experience with Excel, I have found the ormulas to be most helpful as I am exceedingly bad at math and keeping track of numbers. I was unaware of all of the charts and headers and footers, I always just assumed Excel was simply rows and columns and there wasn't much you could do about it. I have already started using Excel to keep track of my grades in other classes and I'm sure I will only continue to like it as I continue to learn more about it and the plethora of things it can be used for.

CopyWRITTEN

Being an English major with aspirations of being published in some field for something I have written someday, I was very interested in the Copywritting discussion. I was surprised to find that the copyright laws have been in place since 1790 and are even included in the Constitution, thus reinforcing the cultural diversity and development of our country's artists and innovators that we still embrace today. It made me more aware of music dowloading as my music library isnt exactly entirely purchased. I also thought it was interesting that Trinity has made deals with companies such as Microsoft to make their software available to the entire campus to download legally, thus reinforcing the economic incentives upon which the laws were founded!


CopyWritten by Spenser Stevens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Trinity Networking

Although I was once again not here for the tour of the Halsell Networking System, after careful review of the diagrams of my peers, I have created my diagram of the Trinity Internet Network. I was amazed how complex the system is and now fully understand how much organization and protection is required to maintain a successful and easily accesible network for students to navigate. To create my diagram, I used Word BasicShapes, screen shots from the Internet, text boxes, and CipArt.

Joe Hatch

Although I was not in class for Joe Hatch's adivce on computer security and maintenance so that you can be sure and maximize your computer's ability and stay organized. Because I wasn't here, I don't know all of the advice that he gave but after reading everyone's blogs postings, I think I wouldve found the CCleaner to be the most helpful considering I am bombarded by ads of all kinds that often slow down my computer, my picture imports, or even cause my computer to shut down. In fear of eventual self-destruction, I think I would've immediately gone back to my room and used CCleaner to rid myself of all things unnecessary on my PC and hopefully relieve some of it's pain.

Where In The World Is This View

I chose this location because it's somewhere that I enjoy spending a lot of time reading for lit classes or chatting with friends or watching football games or yelling at people in the parking lot. To edit the picture, I chose a focal point which you can see is downtown and blurred the remaining edges.I then added various effects such as "Airbrush" and "60's" an increased the saturation and contrast to give the sky it's pinkish hue. I also added the polaroid frame to match the "60's" effect. This picture was obviously taken from a very high location and I liked it because it has such a contrasting foeground and background. It also might be a great place to stop by and see any of your sophomore friends (hint hint).

About Me

Hello computer class. I'm Spenser Stevens and I'm a sophomore. I'm from Fort Worth and I have a seven year-old little brother who loves to make fun of me for not being able to whistle and a dog named Lucky that I miss dearly. I'm doubling majoring in English and Latin and minoring in either Classics or Creative Writing in hopes of being able to write for a travel company or freelance writing. I'm planning on travelling abroad in Rome my junior year. In my spare time I enjoying running, playing piano, and attending the occasional social gathering with my friends. I also enjoy avocaodes with almost every meal. Last spring, I pledged Gamma Chi Delta. My only computer experience is from a typing class that was required in high school and I hope to gain immense knowledge from this class.

ssteven1@trinity.edu