Some Words of Wisdom

Hello, new computer skills people! Here's a little advice for this class. Make sure you do all your assignments. They're not very hard and don't take up too much time, but not doing them will really hurt your grade. Also try to show up for every class. You go over everything you need for the homework. Good luck and have a great semester!

My Favorite Websites

Everyone's websites were really impressive! My three favorites were Moira Allen's, Alex Holmes', and Larrisa Lozano's. I really liked Moira's unique pictures she used for her navebar as well as all her other pictures . Alex's navebar and cartoons were amazing! Larrisa's design was very nice and looked quite professional. Everyone did a fantastic job on their website and I enjoyed seeing everyone present theirs.

My Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~akelso. I enjoyed making this site and am excited to have a website of my own. I mainly used Kompozer to create my web page, but I would sometimes use Microsoft Expression Web when I didn't know how to do something on Kompozer. I'm really proud of my travel section and my friend section because I like all the pictures I chose and I think I set them up nicely. I would have liked to have a few more pages, but I just didn't have time to add them. I think my biggest technical challenge was trying to do some of the things in Kompozer that I only knew how to do in Expression Web. My biggest design challenge was creating my navbar at the top of the page. I edited it a lot over the course of creating the website. I've already shown my site to some of my friends and am planning to show it to more of them as well as my family. I don't know if I'll ever make a site for another class, but I know that I'm prepared in case the need should ever arise.

My Picture that Lies

I chose to use a picture I took on my trip to London last summer. I chose it because when I went to London, there was was scaffolding on Big Ben and on many of my pictures of it, it was easy to see. I wanted to have a picture without the construction work and decided to use that as a beginning for my picture that lies. I decided to use my picture of one of the most well-known symbols of London and create an advertisement for tourism in London. I chose to do so because advertising is almost always photoshopped and manipulated and I wanted to demonstrate how just a few tools and adjustments could make on a regular picture. I wanted to make the scene more attractive by brightening it up and getting rid of the construction obstructing some of the view of Big Ben. I used the clone stamp tool to get rid of the scaffolding and replace it with clouds and sky. I also decided to increase the saturation of the picture and make it a bit brighter to make the picture less dark and more happy. I also decided to add another symbol of England, the British Guard. I used the magic wand to remove the guard from another picture and moved him to mine. I added text as well. I don't believe the manipulation was too harmful. The scaffolding would be taken down at some point and people would not be too upset to not see a British guard where I had put one. I chose to read an article about digital imagery and photography. The focus was not on altered images, but it did speak a bit about it. I agree with the article that it is very hard to determine whether an article or advertisement contains an altered image, and nowadays we can not completely trust the pictures we see. I agree with him and that's why I chose to manipulate something for advertisement. I really enjoyed creating this image and am looking forward to experimenting more with Photoshop on my own.

Citation for my article
Savedoff, Barbara E. "Escaping Reality: Digital Imagery and the Resources of Photography." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55.2 (1997): 210-14.

HTML

I believe knowing how to use at least some aspects of HTML code is very important even when other software is available. If there is a problem on the website you can easily examine it and check for spelling errors or other little mistakes. It's also useful to have if you need to edit your website, but your usual program is having trouble working. HTML code is an important part of creating and updating a website, and it is very useful to know how to use it.

Powerpoint Presentation

I really enjoyed watching everyone's powerpoint presentations about their area of interest. Every one of the power points was well done. One presentation I thought was quite good was Tomas Bartanusz's about flying. It was very informative and interesting. The pictures were very nice and the color scheme matched very well. I learned a lot about becoming a pilot and wish him luck in his endeavor to become one. I also enjoyed Alex Holmes' presentation about the increasing role of technology in education. LIke Tomas', it was very informative and interesting. He also chose some good music to play during his presentation as well. I was impressed by the work he had put into his presentation and learned a lot. Watching all the presentations was very educational and all of them were fantastic!