Good Advice

For the students taking CS1300 next semester, here is some advice.
Read the notes before and after class to make sure you've got all the homework done and get homework done before class, Ms. Belisle provides a lot of resources on the class notes page so use them, this class gave me skills that I used outside of the classroom, so pay attention, it may come in handy.

Beautiful Websites!

In Computer Skills Class, everyone created websites on a subject of their choice, many people chose to make the website about themselves and it was very interesting learning about my classmates. Three of my favorite websites included: Nicole McCarter's, Teka Nicholas' and Rory Davidson's.
I liked Nicole's website, her explanations of her pictures were very good and gave good insight. Her addition of her personal poetry was a nice touch to the website.
Teka's website was amazing. It was obvious that she worked very hard on it and it looked very professional. Her nav bar was very nice and her pictures se ction was very good.
I liked the backgrounds in Rory's website, they were funny and his section on his background/culture was very enjoyable.
I really enjoyed seeing all the pictures on each website, it was very interesting seeing everyone's family and friends.

My Website!!!

Please Visit My Website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~asoto

When going through the process of making my website, it was not as easy as I had anticipated it would be. Using Microsoft Expression Web was a huge help though, I cannot imagine trying to hand code my entire website. Within my website, I am most proud of my music page, it is not one of my main pages but I think the content is fun and interesting. However, I would liked to have made my backgrounds more decorative. i think my biggest technical challenge was editing and adding pictures to the website and my biggest design challenge was trying to get my tables to line up correctly and center. I think I would like to show my website to a few of my family members once I have it perfect. I will probably make another site in the future for a class project or perhaps my own enjoyment.

My Pic that Lies

My picture is of a dinosaur in front of Northrup, with a backpack in its mouth, going to class. The picture originated as a picture taken of Northrup, and I added the pictures of the dinosaur and backpack from the web.I manipulated this because i thought it would be funny. This picture is not harmful, it is not political or controversial in any way. This picture did not really relate to the article I read.

Citation: Lu, Wei1, Chung, Fu-Lai, Lu, Hongtao, Choi, Kup-Sze. "Detecting fake images using watermarks and support vector machines".Computer Standards & Interfaces30.3. Web. 13 April 2010.

HTML Code

When creating a website, knowing HTML code is essential. There are programs available to web creators to make the process of making a web site easier like Dream Weaver or Kompozer. But a basic knowledge of the way HTML works allows web designers to fix likely problems quickly and understand the process behind the way a website is built. These programs may also have glitches from time to time and knowing HTML would avoid many headaches over not being able to access these time savers.

PowerPoint Presentations!

In class we presented the PowerPoint projects over our desired field of study and a few really stood out to me. One that was very well made and informative was over the preservation of Terra Cotta Warriors. The background music worked very well with the content and the themes and colors used for each slide were very nice. One other presentation that I liked was a presentation on Philosophy. The speaker seemed very passionate about his field, the video within the presentation was enjoyable and interesting the layout was also very nice. The pictures used were well graphed and the layout was lively and bright.

PowerPoint Tips

PowerPoint is very useful tool when presenting information, but if the presentation is poorly structured and designed, the presentation may not be received very well by your audience. Here are some tips for a good presentation:
1) Keep your presentation simple. Too much text in slides can confuse the audience give focus to a non focal subject.
2) Use appropriate colors. If the subject is business related then avoid using bright, loud colors. Stick to a color theme, bouncing around from color to color is not ideal.
3) Use appropriate fonts. It is very annoying when reading material in an awkward font, the audience may be put off by this.
4) Use graphics and animations. The audience can get bored with only reading, adding pictures provides visual aid and a break from reading.
5) Try to avoid using too many animations. Waiting for a slide to fade in can get bothersome.

Color Optional?

My picture composition alludes to the choices in life, one can stay in the normal middle ground and an average colored life, work hard for the unknown high ground with many colors or waste their lives in the low ground with no color at all.

Google Expert

I learned so many new things about Google and searching for items on the internet. Google is the number one used search engine and made searching easier by making more relevant results show first. Google is known for it's 'I'm feeling lucky button which brings up the first page result in your search, the creators were so confident in their new relevancy searching that they added this button to prove themselves. Some new things I learned were that Page rank was created by a man named Page and it allows the pages with the most links to that page come up first, ultimately bringing up the most popular sources. This however, does make more scholarly sources harder to find, but Google has tools to get around this, refining your search to only show scholarly results is possible. I also learned how to refine your search to only show results from specific types of website .gov and .org for example. Something that surprised me about Google was the ability to change the language to show things like Pirate and Elmer Fudd.

Pictures that Lie: Sharks Attack!

The picture I chose was the picture of a U.S Air Force helicopter photoshopped to show a shark attacking the soldier climbing up the helicopter's ladder. The photo originated on the internet in 2001, it was manipulated by adding a picture of a shark into the bottom of the original picture of the helicopter. i am not exactly sure why the picture was manipulated this way but I think its purpose was to dramatize the situation or merely as a joke. i do not think the manipulation was particularly harmful because if anything, it made the Air Force seem more heroic.

The CLT

On my visit to Trinity's CLT, I found some very useful resources like scanners and video editing equipment. Certain computers were equipped with software for web and graphic design others were for editing and some had scanners, anything that might be required for any project for school. All this equipment can be useful for any class. When preparing for a presentation, one can edit videos or perfect a website. I have only used the CLT once before to perfect my project for the music class I was taking. I had no idea it was here before the other members of my group showed it to me.

Copyright is Serious business

In order to keep a clear conscience and a clean record, one must know what can and cannot be done under copyright law.

Copyright was established in 1790 (the same year as the United States Constitution). The original law was actually written in the Constitution and predates the Bill of Rights. The original law however was significantly shorter than the one today; copyright when the Constitution was written only lasted 14 years, but today it is lasts for the lifetime of the author plus seventy years.

Creators want to see the benefits of creating their work and in order to protect their ability to reap these benefits, copyright is used.The creator of a piece of work is automatically the owner of that work and does not need any special license to obtain the rights to that work, but one can be used if desired. Various licenses exist for works that creators wish to be used in more lenient ways.

I feel that copyright law is necessary to have in this society in order to protect a creators ideas and money, it would be unfair for another person to reap the benefits they do not deserve. But I also think that copyright laws can be too harsh and corporations can take advantage of the law.

Copyright is Serious Business by Alexa Soto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

My Word Cloud

My Trinity Network Diagram

On tour in Trinity's network was very interesting and cold. I had no idea housing a network was so complicated.I learned a lot about how a network works and the equipment involved.

Top Tech Tip

Today in class I learned about CCleaner. This program cleans out all the things that are downloaded and saved to your computer while surfing the web. I plan to use this very soon because my computer seems to be running a little slow. I would like to thank Joe Hatch for informing me of all these new computer survival tips.

Commenting

I commented on Nicole McCarter and Kayleigh Overman's blogs.

Intro to Alexa

Hello,
My name is Alexa Soto. I am from San Antonio, Texas. I have lived in San Antonio for the entirety of my life and have never been out of the country but I would love to travel as soon as I am able. I attend Trinity University full time and I love it. The campus is beautiful and the friends I have made are all very nice. I am currently leaning toward a major in History and a minor in either Psychology or English but nothing is set in stone. I am not involved in any clubs or organizations for fear I will not have enough time for my studies but I plan to be in a few later on. I enjoy biking and spending time with friends and family. My time at Trinity has been very rewarding and I have learned many new things. I do however miss my family sometimes.
My secret fact is that I have five siblings, three brothers and two sisters who are all wonderful, beautiful people.
My computer background is bleak, I took a webmastering class during my sophomore year in high school but nothing stuck. Anything that goes wrong with my computer does not get fixed by me because I would only make it worse. I must have my brother or an ITS person look at it. For the longest time I had no idea how to change my internet homepage but on the first day in Computer Skills I learned how. I am really hoping I will be computer literate by the end of this course.
Feel free to email me here.