Advice

This class is really easy if you go to class everyday, and if you ever get stuck don't be afraid to go to office hours because they can be very helpful.

Other Websites

I thought that everyone in my class had good websites but I had a few favorites.  I really liked Peter's web site.  I thought that it was very colorful and visually interesting.  I also really liked his background of this nature scene.  I also really liked Kailey's web site.  My favorite part of hers was her collage.  It is very elaborate and fun.  I know that she put a lot of work into that page.  I loved her Rocky Horror page! That was so much fun!  I also thought that Laura's web page was really good.  I love her purple and blue color theme.  I thought that her website was just overall very cute.

Webpage

I just made my first website!  I used Expression Web to do this.  Expression Web was fairly straight forward but I would get confused as to where the tools where that I wanted to use.  That might have been just because I have never used Expression Web before.  I think that with more practice it would have been easier.  I was able to really get the hang of being able to insert pictures in the table so they wouldn’t spread across all over the page.  I am most proud of my swing dance page because I think that one has the best combination of text and pictures.  My biggest design challenge was to pick the color theme for my web page.  I think that I will show this to my parents, my brother, and my sweet mate because she wants to make a website too.  I don’t know if I will make another website for myself but I will probably help my sweet mate make her website.

You can see my web page at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~lmercado/

Larry Hachler

Larry Hachler came to talk to my class today.  He is the hardware maintenance supervisor at Trinity.  I think the most important and useful thing that I learned is to back up your files, data, and pictures otherwise you run the risk of losing them.  He told us a story about a senior at trinity that was working on a paper for a final project and had put 200 hours of work into it.  She was sitting by the pool working on her computer when a bee stung her hand she dropped her computer into the pool.  She did not back up her paper and she lost almost all her work.  You can back up your stuff at trinity to the Y drive which has 500 megs of storage.  You can also save it onto a DVD or some other type of external hard drive. 

Another piece of advice that I am taking away from his talk is how to take care of your battery for your computer.  He told us that it is a good idea that when you unplug your computer to let the battery go all the way down before you plug it back in and to do this at least once a month.  This will give you batter a longer life when you need it.  For example if you take it on a plane like I will be doing over Thanksgiving it won’t die right away.

Pictures That Lie

 

The picture that I chose to manipulate was a picture from the first landing on the moon.  It is known that the US was the first to land on the moon.  Before we landed on the moon there was a space race to see if we could make it to the moon before the Soviet Union did.  For my picture I ultimately ended up replacing the American flag with the Soviet Union flag to make it seem like the Soviet Union landed on the moon first.  I found my picture of the man on the moon in Google images and the picture of the Soviet Union flag on Corbis.  The first thing that I did to alter the image was to change the brightness of the flag.  The image of the flag was better lit than the one of the man on the moon.  I made the flag less bright so the two pictures would match.  Then I had to flip the flag over the vertical axis.  This was because if I didn’t then I would have to do a better job erasing the American flag and because if I didn’t then the soviet flag might have covered up the man.  The next thing I did was black out the American flag because the Soviet flag is not the same shape as the American flag in the picture.  Then I laid the Soviet flag over the spot where the American flag was.  I think this image is harmful to people who aren’t educated about the space race.  They might believe that the Soviets were the first people to land on the moon when in fact they were not.  However, I don’t think that this image is terribly harmful because most people know who landed on the moon first.  I chose this picture because it is a classic example of someone rewriting history.  I think that is important to know how easy it is to alter history and that some images of history have been altered, so you should always be a little skeptical.

For part of this assignment we are supposed to find an article on line about altering photos like the one you see above, which I altered.  I found an interesting article about a girl after she won the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee.  She was celebrating and there was a sign around her neck with her number, hometown and sponsor (The Daily News).  The Posts is a rival with Daily News.  A picture was taken for the Post.  Someone in the Post altered the photo so it did not show her sponsor because they didn’t want anyone to know it was the Daily News who sponsored her.  The Post got caught changing the photo and it was all over the New York City dailies.  I chose this article because it is an example of people altering photos to tell a different story.  The fact that they were caught and had to pay the consequences of bad press made this article even better.  It’s good to know that people will be held responsible for their actions.  Both the article and my picture have changed events in the past to tell a new story.

Article Citation

Jones, Stacy. "Altered photo faux pas." Editor & Publisher 130.24 (1997): 11. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Nov. 2010.

Our PowerPoint Presentations

In class the other day we were assigned to give a presentation on one aspect of our intended major. I still am trying to figure out what I want to major in but for the presentation I choose to focus on economics. I told the class what the eight principles of economics were and then read them a Dr. Seuss poem and we found the economics in the poem. I liked the way my presentation was laid out and the idea of looking at a fun poem because I think that helped keep the audience’s attention better. However I think that I went a little fast towards the end when I was finding the economics in the poem because I thought I was running out of time. Now that I look back on it I think it would have been better to go a little over to allow everyone to think about the economics and ask them what they thought before I just told them. So I have learned from that mistake I if I were to do it over I would have taken more time to make the ending more thoughtful.

There were a lot of great presentation that my classmates did but I think my two favorites were Tommie’s and Leslie’s presentations. Leslie’s was about visual communication. I liked how well the presentation was organized and by the time she finished a slide and had all of her information up the slide look very nicely organized while still having a lot of information and color on it. I could also tell how passionate she was about her chosen field. Tommie’s presentation was on non-verbal communication. I liked how she had images of good and bad examples of non-verbal communication and then explained why each of them was a good or bad example. She thought us things that are important for example an interview which most of us will have to do in the future so the information applied to us. For example she told us how to dress and act in an interview so people take you seriously and consider you for the position. I learned a ton from her presentation.

Searching for Information on the Internet

Chris Nolan came to talk to us about how to search for information and how to tell which of your results are to best to use. I didn’t know that when searching on Google that you could find the definition of a word by typing “definition:” in front of the word. I also didn’t know that there was a specific search that you can do to find scholarly souses. I’m going to use that information on a paper that I have to write later today. He also told us a list of things to look for when we are evaluation whether a source is reliable and these are to look at the author, publisher, intended audience, bias, substantiation of claims, reverences and the information being presented.

PowerPoint, Good, Bad, and Ugly

PowerPoints when done well can be very effective and people can learn a lot from them. Unfortunately, there are some PowerPoints that have just gone all wrong. The thing that bugs me the most is when there is too much text on a given slide. I do not want to sit there and read a slide full of text. That makes them extremely boring! I also don’t like it when the person who is presenting the PowerPoint just reads off the slides. The slide is supposed to just have the main points and the presenter is supposed to elaborate on them. PowerPoints are not effective when the thoughts are unorganized because when they jump around it is difficult to follow. Also, because I’m a visual learner, when the PowerPoint lacks visuals it is harder for me to see what is going on in the PowerPoint. Visuals, if used effectively can make the PowerPoint very strong. Lastly, I don’t like it when there isn’t any color in the PowerPoint. Color helps to keep the audience’s attention.

Some of the best PowerPoints I have seen have minimal text with a lot of visuals. The presenter then explains the significant of the visuals and how it relates to the text. My environmental geology professor does a great job of this. They can communicate a lot of information with very few words and it can do it very efficiently. They are appropriate for a classroom or professional setting so it is important that we know how to use PowerPoint effectively.

Center for Learning and Technology

Robert Chapman spoke to us about what the center for learning and technology is and what services they provide for students at Trinity. Before this presentation I had no idea that CLT even existed. This center is equipped with 14 Macs, 12 PCs, and 11 scanners. They also have cameras that you can borrow there. The CLT is in charge of managing the Tlearn site and the technology that is in each of the class rooms. I think that its most useful assets are the people that are there to help you. It makes the process easier when you have someone to help you there who know the ropes. There are people there that know how to edit videos, use photo shop, and are willing to work with you to solve any problem that you might have. I think the thing that I will find most useful at TLC is the scanners. I think that I will end up using them for my drama class. It would have been useful the other day to know how to use them when I was asked to make a copy of a script. Because I did not know how to use them I had to ask someone else to make the copy. After the presentation I think that I will become more independent and if I do need help, I know where to find it.

I chose a picture of O.J. Simpson on the cover of Newsweek and Time magazine on June of 1994.  I chose this picture because I thought that it was a clear example of the photo alteration because you can see the before and after.  I also chose it because it shows the magazines opinion of O.J. Simpson by how they display his picture.  The picture on the cover of Newsweek I do not see any really obvious alterations, they might have touched up his picture a little bit but not enough to really notice.  However, the picture on the cover of Newsweek was altered a lot.  The image is much darker and they use shadows to give the appearance of evil.  The audience associates the darkness as a sign of “this is a bad person”.  I think of the manipulation of the photo as helpful.  Because the photo was altered this way, the audience doesn’t have to read any text to get the main idea of what the article will be about.

Excel

I started off the year not knowing anything about Excel. I had only used it once prior to coming into this class. I think it is really useful to know how to enter formulas into Excel and then to be able to copy them so I can make a bunch of calculations at once. I probable will end up using that in the future. That is much more efficient and by far the most useful thing I have learned in Excel. I have also learned how to make themes, organize my layout, and change the colors of the background. So now I can make my Excel sheets look appealing too. The only thing that makes me frustrated about this program is trying to center things that use up two cells. For some reason I can’t figure out how to do that.

Copy Right

Jason Hardin came in and talked to my class about everything copy right.  These laws date back all the way until the 1790s when the constitution was written.  There are a wide range of things that can be copy righted and they range from writings to art work to photos and basically anything that an individual creates.  He explained that the creator has the right to do what he or she wants to do with their work.  When a work is copy righted that means that no one can make a copy of the work without the creator’s consent.  That makes since but what I didn’t know is that copy right infringement is a criminal offence.

Jason make me thinks about how copy right can encourage people to be creative and innovative.  Because of people know that they can copy right something they are more likely to create knowing that their ideas cannot be taken.  They will get the credit for their work.  Something else I did not know is that the copy right lasts the entire person’s life that came up with the idea plus 70 years after they die.  This is because there can still be benefits to the work that their family or friends could capitalize on.  An interesting example that Jason gave us was about Walt Disney.  Copy rights used to have a limit of 50 years after the persons death.  After Walter died the Disney Company wrote a proposal to change the law to be 70 years because they didn’t want other people making money off of the Disney characters.  This proposal went through and the law was changed.

There are a few exceptions to copy rights.  They are called fair use and these are context based usage.  There are four provisions.  The first deals with the nature of the work you are reproducing meaning if their work exists in order to make money.  The second is why you are making a copy.  The third is how much of the work you are copying.  The last on is how it hurts the right’s holder.

Copy Right by Lauren Mercado is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Trinity's Server Room

I decided to lay out the diagram this way so that the Ruth Taylor building will be in the center of the page and make it a heart since it represents the heart of the technology system.  I chose to put the text in shapes because I think that this gives the whole page a very clean look that is easy to follow. Then in the arrows I chose to put which type of cable is used for the connection.

Trinity's Mystery Spot

I chose this location because I think that it is one of the prettiest spots on campus. It was also the first spot that my RM took my hall. I altered this photo by adding a small mouse and a duck.  I also changed the exposure and contrast of this image.  In addition, I also made the picture have more red tones.  I changed it the way that I did because I felt that this gives the photo a more distinguished look but you can still see the image.

Heplful Computer Tips

Joe Hatch, a computer whiz at Trinity, came into my class the other day and gave me and all my classmates a number of useful tips on how to use and protect their computer. When I first came to Trinity I was not able to go onto TU secure. Instead I was using TU guess to access the internet. It wasn't until Joe pointed out that TU Guess is much slower and less safe, did I realize how bad of an idea it would have been to stay on TU guess throughout my entire time her at Trinity. I found that tip the most helpful for me. I also didn't realize how cleaver people are who try to hack on to your computer. I learned that if a "bank" asks you to confirm your user name and password it is not the bank asking. It is probably someone trying to hack into your bank account. This way they will have your username and password and will be able to access you account. These were the two most helpful pointers to me. These pointers could have prevented hackers from using my bank account. Thank you Joe Hatch for coming and sharing you knowledge with my class.

About Me

Hello! My name is Lauren Mercado and I am a first year student at Trinity.  I was born and raised in Alameda, California. Alameda is a small island located in the San Francisco Bay Area.  All four years in high school I was involved in theatre.  I did a little acting but I mainly enjoy stage managing and working back stage.  I have been the stage manager for four shows in high school.  I also helped build the sets of three shows in high school.  This summer I started kung fu and really enjoyed it.  I earned my yellow-black belt.  I also started taking spring board diving class at Stanford this summer too.  I find diving to be very fun and rewarding.  I was a gymnast for about ten years so that made learning how to dive much easier.  I am doing spring board diving as a PE class this year and I am hoping to join the team here at Trinity next year.  This past summer I was also able to get a job at my local theatre.  I worked on props for a show called Steel Magnolias.

As far as my skills with computers go, I have basically none.  In high school I was able to get by using Power Point and Word but I have not mastered them.  I hoping that this class will teach me skills on how to use my computer so I will feel comfortable using it in my other classes.

P.S.
I sprained both my ankles at the same time last year.


You can email me at lmercado@trinity.edu