My New Website!

Making the site was easier than I thought, inserting pictures was really easy. I used Microsoft Web Expressions to create my web page. I am most proud of the About Me section of my web page. If I could change anything I would make my web page more interactive, it is a little static right now. My biggest technical challange was creating the tables, this was also my biggest design challange since getting the tables just right for my pictures. I will show my website to my parents and a few ofmy friends. I will probably end up making another website somewhere in the future. If you want to visit my web site go to:
www.cs.trinity.edu./~kgarza

Hardware

I learned from Larry Hechler that hand cream ruins a laptop screen and that you shorten the life of a battery by only letting it run for a couple of minutes and then connecting it back to the power supply. Next time I buy a laptop I will consider buying one with more RAM mine has a decent amount but more wouldn't hurt.

Photoshop and Cats

For my pictures that lie photograph I chose to create the above photograph. To create this photograph I used three photographs, one of two cats, one black and one gray, a photo of a blue sky and a photo of the night sky, all of them from stock exchange. i used the magic wand to separate the cats from their background  and copied them onto a transparent layer. I then changed the opacity on the cats to make them translucent. I then used inverse select to copy the background from the cat photo and pasted it onto another layer. I then aligned the cats on the background so that it looked like the original photo but with the cats now translucent. I then cut out a section of a picture of the night sky and placed it behind the black cat so that the stars could be seen as well as the cats features. I used the same technique for the gray cat except I used a blue sky photograph instead of a night sky one. I also changed the hue and saturation on the blue sky layer to make it blend in better. I ended up changing the brightness and contrast on the night sky layer to make the stars more prominent. I also changed the hue and saturation on the cats background to make the cats stand out more. I add the a text box with the caption "As diffrente as night & day". Lastly I used the clone tool to remove some roots the looked awkward under the text.

The photograph was edited to look cute and fun. The manipulation isn't harmful since it is clearly stated that it has been manipulated and in no way claims to be true.The article I looked up talked about a new program the could detect most altered photographs, odds are mine would be picked up as an altered photograph.

Baker, Monya. "Photoshop Sleuths." Technology Review 108.2 (2005): 82. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Nov. 2010.

Power Points

There are five things you can do to ruin a power point presentaion and they are:
1. To much text in one slide
2. No picture in the slides
3. A text color that is hard to read
4. A plain white background with black letters
5. Distracting animations

Will the five things listed above my detract from a power point presentaion, they are still a fun and dimamic way to present information to others. Especialy in situations where you need to present a lot of data.

CLT

I learned a lot from our vist. I learned that Trinity has a video confrencing room and sevral comupters equiped with photoshop and Final Cut Pro as well as scanners.I also learned that there are people who will help us use this resources. I will be using the CLT for projects involving photoshop for this class and for projects invloving video editing for otherb classes such as an upcoming project in my first year se4minar, Enterpenuerial and Creative behavior. The trip was really useful since I learned a lot about where I can go for help and resources.

Photoshopped Pictures

This is a photo of Katie Couric which was printed in the magazine Watch. The photo was altered so that Katie's skin would look lighter as well as sliming her body. This was done in order to create a more attractive image to the viewers. This is completely wrong because the motive behind this photoshopped image is to make people believe that what they are seeing is real, there is no other motive other than to make the audiance have a more favorable opinion of Katie Couric.

Excel

I have worked with Excel in the past and it has been very useful. I have used it in my math class and to create schedules. During the class I learned conditional formating, as well as, how to save time through several shortcuts, for example dragging down to copy a formula. The one thing I dislike about Excel is the fact that selecting a cell dose not mean you select the text. Excel will be useful in the future for several of my classes.