CSCI 1300 ABE BLOG

Good Advice...

2008-12-08T15:58:00.000-08:00

If you're going to take this class and want to do fairly well, turn in everything on time and remember that there's something you can get out of every assignment.

3 favorite websites

2008-12-08T15:46:00.000-08:00

1. My favorite website in our class was, of course, Joy's. She clearly put a lot of effort and design into her image maps and they turned out really well considering her experience level. I liked the pumpkins and learning about the country the person who sits next to me hails from.
2. I also liked Casey Kay's website. Because of his goals of opening up a business in china, working on a website for his own ends seemed to be a great benefit of experience. I'd like to visit his website in the future and find clothing designs and what-not.
3. Andrew Moritz made a great site complete with an odd motif: his own face. He Photoshopped it onto numerous pictures with humorous results. I most certainly enjoyed this ridiculous, but quite amusing website.

My own website is available here: http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~aentsmin

html: why not knowing how to use it could put you and your family at risk

2008-11-19T21:53:00.000-08:00

In the general sense it's important to know how to use and write html code because sometimes the program will do something that you don't want it to and in that instance you can go into the code and do exactly what you want. Not to mention being able to figure out how to get that awesome color #ffa188 onto your website by going to the source, and having the ability to have more control in customizing templates for your blog. However, there is a much more pressing reason why we should learn html. What if people just used programs to make cars? And what if said programs happened to malfunction one day but all the people who knew how to make cars were dead and gone? It is critical for us as a generation to learn how to operate the software that was created by the preceding generations... otherwise we may be left stranded in a sea of unintelligible code.

PowerPoint! Evaluation

2008-11-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite presentations was Stephen's presentation on the Dell Science Fiction Award. He didn't seem very comfortable with presenting in front of a class, but his slide had a lot of good attention grabbers and a range of information about the subject. He had very striking images that kept the attention of the viewers and some familiar music (x-files theme music). He obviously had great personal interest in the subject, having submitted work of his own for the award, and because of having learned about it, I'm curious to read his work.
Another presentation that piqued my interest was Katy's presentation on the art of Raku. I learned about a type of firing used in potter to create a unique glaze outcome in each work of pottery. Her design was simple and interesting and her .gif that she made for the project was especially appropriate. She clearly chose a subject of great personal interest to her and made a very professional presentation on that subject.
My presentation can be found here.

So, about the interweb...

2008-11-05T22:49:00.000-08:00

Chris Nolan was kind enough to warn us of the three dangers of the internet: untruthiness. For the most part we learned about Google, the search engine. First people tried to catalogue the internets, but that turned out not to be such a great idea, so they (yahoo) developed an automated way to search for sites on the web. Google puts sites that are linked a lot at the top of your search results, as well as those sites that also have the phrase you searched for occuring several times on th page. Unfortunately this means that popular sites rather than scolarly ones are more likely to be at the top of your search results. The new thing that I learned was about Google Scholar which is an advanced search of google (go to more, google scholar) which allows your results to appear in order of scholarlyness. The thing I learned that most surprised me was that information on Wikipedia.org is not always reliable. No way! ... No, i'm kidding. Wikipedia is great in theory but because anyone can edit it you really can't trust the information to be accurate all the time. I was surprised to learn about the Google books project, though. Apparently Google is scanning numerous volumes into the internet. How exciting! So many books will be available to all of the people on the internet.

Power to the Points

2008-10-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

1. PowerPoint is for people who are giving presentations. Presentations imply some sort of communication from the presenter. Therefore the slide is a visual aid to the communications being imbibed to the listener from the presenter. Therefore the slide should be simple and easy to read from the back of a classroom. Keep slides to-the-point and use bullet-points for extra simple simplicity.
2. In modern culture we are bombarded with images pretty much constantly. Audiences have come to expect images as aids in presentations, and it's a pretty good idea to give it to them. Images can anchor meaning and facilitate connotations in your power point. Take advantage of the associations that images have with meanings, use images that will add to the effect of your presentation.
3. Similar to images, charts are extremely helpful in a presentation, especially if one is presenting statistics or some sort of trend over time. A series of charts, or those interactive charts they have now on Office 2007, can show the audience succinctly what's going on with your information. However, don't over-do it, your graph should also be simple and easy to understand.
4. Forget about clip-art, that was for middle-school kids in the nineties who couldn't go to flickr or corbis.com for all the real images they need. Clip-art will make your PowerPoint presentation silly and flat. If you must use them, use them sparingly.
5. PowerPoint is communication according to Seth Godin, and Seth Godin is very correct. In order to get a point across and make it worth presenting in PP, you should sell the point, and make sure you don't assume that people will understand what you're trying to say or be entertained by it or listen to you just because it's on a slide. Make sure that what you're saying is clear.

However Many Uses for a Computerized Spreadsheet

2008-10-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

1. The most helpful and important thing about going over Excel for the past few days in CSCI 1300 has been sheer practice and review that will help me to remember how to get around and use Excel competently. Something new that I have learned is how to link a graph or information from Excel to PowerPoint and still be able to manipulate it on Excel. I also learned some new formulas that may be very applicable, and that f4 is the absolute reference key.
2. I might use it to calculate revenue for a fundraiser for a club or organization, and that in the near future.
3. This program could be highly useful to fields that involve putting on shows and events because they would be able to easily calculate what equipment purchases could be supported by their budget and what revenue could be expected from the gig.

Shopping for a New Job

2008-10-21T00:35:00.000-07:00

This image, garnered from cnet news site depicts the illustrator of "Goodnight Moon", Clement Hurd, only not. Some upstanding member of some publishing company decided it would be a good idea to shop out the cigarette from his hand. For this blog post, the meaning of "shop" will be the use of photo-editing software or darkroom tools to alter an image or print. I chose this photo for the seemingly subtle nature, seemingly harmless nature of the shop so that i could prove how horribly distorting it is to remove any part of an original image. For an artist to crop his photo, to change the image in any way takes experience and intent, because to alter an image in any way will risk a loss of any and all meaning. Composition, codes, meanings, expressions, shapes, lines, colors, things all working together within the usually rectangular frame of a photographic image must work in a delicate, complicated world in which the end result is hopefully a passing of meaning on from the artist or journalist to the viewer. This man may seem less immoral when the cigarette is removed, which is the only comprehensible reason a publisher would remove it, but it certainly wouldn't hurt the composition of the photo for Hurd to be holding something, with his hand at such an odd angle. The hand lends an odd and unnecessary confusion to an image that is simply meant to capture the visage of this illustrator, and ruins the natural, casual feeling that seems to be intended. Aesthetic problems aside, the problem with this image is that it is a lie. This manipulation was most certainly harmful. The image has one purpose: to convey within one glance a slight sliver of the artist's personality and form. All this photo had to do in order to complete that objective is be a photo of the artist, untouched. Because the cigarette is removed, there is an element of falsehood, and that means that any notion of the artist is left in doubt. The meaning and associations connected to the cigarette are entirely lost. Imagine, for a moment, if this small and relatively minuscule change can alter the viewer's perception of an image irreparably, then it can be concluded that all the other alterations such as shopping an old fogey's head onto a model's body, or adding another plume of smoke (incompetently) for affect, or even touching up an actor's face to make him less "ugly" completely destroy the integrity of an image's structure. Photographic truth may be a myth, but the least we can do is attempt to retain the reality inherent in an untouched image.

The Joy of Conveniently Accessible Synthesizers:

2008-10-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

The joy of conveniently accessible synthesizers is that they are conveniently accessible. Redundant though that sentance may be, conveniently accessible synthesizers can be what causes a person to go to one college or university over the other. Some person, whose heart lights up for music might want desperately to start a band, and they might spend hours hogging that synthesizer. They might make it big in a synth band. The point of this Gertrude Steinesque paragraph is that having those resources can be a student's make or break. The Trinity University Center for and Technology has this synthesizer, it has scanners and printers and hight-end Microsoft workstations, and it has video and audio editing software. A student that knows what they are doing, and has a clear purpose in mind could use these resources to better themselves, to make a grade, to make a piece of art, to make a step in the path of creativity. It's located on the first floor of the Coates Library, and it's waiting for some use.

Copyright Laws and Librarians

2008-10-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

One of the many unnoticed, aberrant behaviors of our lawmaking system should become apparent to any observer of the current copyright standards in the U.S. It seems that the length of time chosen by lawmakers as the length of time before an object of information becomes accessible to the public domain is inordinately long. If a single author publishes a book the span of time before this print, no matter the money making value, become accessible is the span of the author's life and another 75 years. As our head librarian at Trinity argued, the original 14 year limit (originating in 1760) would be more than sufficient for most texts produced today. For a corporation, such as Disney, the length of time before the copyright is lost is 95 years past the date of publication, and only that long because of the Sonny Bono act. The Sonny Bono act was an act proposed entirely by the Disney corporation in anticipation of losing their rights to Steam Boat Willie (Mickey Mouse) that somehow became extended to all corporations' publications. Instead of the ridiculous 75 years it is now a ridiculous 95 years. It is understandable for the creaters of works to wish to make money from their product, however, 50 years after the author is dead and gone, the publisher has gone out of business, and there is no money to be made, a student somewhere is unable to get the knowledge they require simply because ink on a page in congress states that there's 15 years to go. 15 years later that book will have lost it's use completely.

Wireless Action

2008-09-27T18:21:00.001-07:00

My experience with the wireless label of this campus has been very freeing. No clumsy cables that tie me to my desk, working in a cramped chair for hours. I can sit on my bed and type! Right now i'm in a study room using wireless internet to access this very website. It's obvious how much more convenient things can be as computers and laptops break the bonds of cables that hold them down. Students can study outside on the grass, by the fountain, on a bench. The freedom of movement lends to a greater area of possible study spots, and of experiences on campus.

About the blogger of CSCI 1300 ABE BLOG

2008-08-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

My name is Abigail Beth Entsminger. I prefer for people to use my full name (Abigail) when addressing me, but I understand that Abby is quick and easy. Either name will be alright. I have come to Trinity from Houston, Texas, but before that I lived in New Orleans, and before that I lived in a few other places. While living in New Orleans i once ran into Anne Rice at Cucos, mexican restaurant, and obtained her autogragh. I love to read. To read is my escape, and also the fastest way to expand my vocabulary, or anyone's vocabulary for that matter. They make those SAT vocabulary prep books for a reason. Swimming sounds appealing for a campus activity. My computer background includes classroom experience with Acces, Excel, Word, Database, PowerPoint, and some experience with Photoshop. Apparently not enough experience, though.

If you have any questions, email me at aentsmin@trinity.edu