My Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~crichar3

Making a website was not as difficult as I thought it would be. It did take some time but with the help of Expressionweb it was a lot easier. I am most proud of my future travels page because I like the pictures used and it also features a hyperlink and three hotspots. If I could change one thing about my site I would have tried to make it a little fancier by adding a giff. My biggest technical challenge was probably figuring out the navbar and putting in the hotspots. My biggest design challenge was probably trying to put the pictures in the right place. I eventually figured this out by using a table. I will probably show my site to my family and friends. Knowing how to make a website is very useful information and I would love to use it in another class.

Presentation by Larry Helcher

Last class period, Mr. Larry Helcher came in to talk to our class about Hardware. He taught us about memory and even opened up some computers to allow us to see the inside. I learned that the more memory you have, the faster your computer will run. Mr. Helcher also explained to us the importance of backing up your data. He gave us some tips for charging our laptops, such as always let the battery run down completely before recharging it. Finally, he gave us some maintenance tips for our personal laptops. I learned that in order to properly clean the screen of your laptop, you should use water with a little bit of dishwashing soap and a lint free cloth. It is important that you do not use acetone, ammonia or alcohol because these will destroy the finish of the screen.

Photoshopped image

I chose to photoshop a picture of some maple leaves. I chose this picture because it was simple but still a pretty scene. I manipulated the picture in several ways. First, I used the lasso tool to photoshop a ladybug onto one of the leaves. I then changed the hue of the ladybug so that it would be a more brilliant red. I used the cloning tool to fix some of the blemishes on the leaves so that there were no longer large brown spots. I also used the shadows/highlights tool to try and decrease the shadows in the picture to give it a less dark look. Finally, I lowered the saturation of the background so that the scene is almost in black and white. However, I did not change the color of the ladybug because I wanted it to be the main focus of the scene and I thought lessening the intensity of the background would help me achieve this. I manipulated this photo in many ways, however the manipulations I created were not particularly harmful. The article I researched was called "Smile and Say 'No Photoshop'" by Eric Wilson. This article discussed the way celebrities today are so dramatically photoshopped in magazines that it is obvious that their appearance in this picture is not even close to their natural appearance. I do not think my photoshopped image was harmful. The only things that might have been harmful was the retouching of the leaves because it is similar to the way that people are retouched in magazines to look more perfect. I removed the blemishes from the maple leaves the same way magazine editors photoshop blemishes off of their models. I do agree that photoshop may be harmful especially when referring to the standards of beauty in today's society. In the article mentioned above a man named Phil Poynter stated "The big discussion in the fashion business has always been about should we retouch girls, should we create a portrait of a girl that is not achievable by a real girl." This quote sums up the reason why people are worried about the overuse of photoshop. They do not want a society where the standards of beauty are unrealistic.

WILSON, ERIC. "Smile and Say 'No Photoshop'." New York Times 28 May 2009: 1. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Nov. 2010.

Class Powerpoint Presentations

I chose to do my powerpoint presentation on Katie Couric. I want to be a communications here at Trinity and I am interested in broadcasting which is why Katie Couric seemed like a fitting topic. She is a very successful news anchor, and has done a lot of interesting things so there would be plenty to talk about. I liked having her as a topic and I learned some very interesting things about her life. If I were to do it again, I would probably try to create smoother graphics and transitions. There were some very good presentations in our class. I really enjoyed Hannah's powerpoint about the Stanford prison experiment. It was such an interesting topic and I was excited to hear about it. I also enjoyed Lynn's powerpoint about underwater photography. It was a unique topic and had some awesome pictures. Overall I think the class did a great job and I really enjoyed all the presentations.

Presentation by Chris Nolan

Last class period, Chris Nolan came to our class to speak about finding high quality information on the web. It was a very helpful presentation, and we learned a lot of new information. We learned that google is by far the most popular search engine, and learned some new things about the site. We learned that in order to choose the order in which the links appear on the site, google uses the collective wisdom of people who use the web.Google ranks the number of links that the website has from other pages, to figure out how high up the link should appear on your search. It also gives priority to certain types of websites such as CNN, that would be more of an authority on a certain subject. We also learned about another valuable academic source called google scholar which may help you find better sites for academic purposes. Mr. Nolan also taught us about the different domains such as .org and .edu, and how to narrow our searches down so that only certain domains appear. Lastly, we learned some skills to help us decide whether the sight we are viewing contains legitimate information.