Favorite Websites

I really liked all the websites in our class. They are really good! I especially like Shelby's because it has a great layout and is easy to navigate. I also really like Katie's website. It has a ton of information and a really pretty layout without being too overwhelming. Amanda Chan's website was also really cool. I loved the thumbnails on her page about her China trip and the pretty layout of the site.

Advice to Students

Don't miss class unless you absolutely have to, and do your homework ahead of time, especially the excel work.

My Website

Please visit my website.
Making my website was harder than I anticipated. I used Expression web, which was pretty straightforward and easy to use, but formatting pictures and text in the tables was very limiting. Also, resizing the pictures in photoshop was difficult. Overall it wasn't too hard but was very time consuming. My favorite page is very hard to pick. I really like the pictures in the Horse section, but I also really like the layout of the homepage, so its a tossup. I plan to go through my website and put a lot of the text into tables with sold backgrounds so it is easier to read. My biggest technical challenge was definitely getting all the pictures and text to line up correctly, and using photoshop to resize pictures, since it became a lot about guess and check. It was very frustrating and time consuming. I will probably show this sight to friends and family, since it is just a website about myself. I don't know of any specific classes I might make a website for, but I  have made them in the past for my senior project in high school and it was very helpful.

Hechler's Hardware

Thursday in class, Larry Hechler came to talk to us about computer hardware. I learned a lot of valuable information from this lecture. First, I learned I should never touch my computer's LCD, which I definitely do all the time. Now I know that I should not touch it or clean it with anything other than techspray specifically for computers. I also learned a lot of good information for purchasing computers. The Dell warranty, which I didn't know about before, sounds like a great deal, and although I currently have a Mac, if I ever need another computer I know to look around at other brands to compare warranties now. The most important part of the lecture was the advice on backing up computers. I heard a lot of horror stories about lost information due to some kind of accident, and I am now in the process of backing up all my photos, homework, etc. You can never be to careful, especially for me with my pictures, since they only exist on my computer and I would be really sad if I lost them! Thank, Mr. Hechler, for warning me before I lost all my information!

New Love for PowerPoint

I had a great time making my powerpoint presentation. I took a while to narrow down my topic, but once I had a topic that I really cared about it was easy to work with. The best part for me was that my topic was very visual, so I got to show a lot of pictures and talk instead of needing text and numbers. I think the best part of my powerpoint was the visuals and the way I could talk over them. If I could do it again I would have planned what I was going to say exactly, instead of improvising so much, but overall I think it went well. I really enjoyed showing my video and getting to share a sport that I enjoy so much. I really enjoyed Shelby's presentation on improv - her powerpoint was very well designed and she had enthusiasm for her topic. Her colors and visuals went well with her topic. I also really enjoyed Sarah's presentation about levitation photography. I liked the way she used her own levitation photos to show the process and the powerpoint design was well done overall.

Picture That Lies

For my Pic that Lies assignment, I chose a picture of the actress America Ferrera on the red carpet. I chose this picture because I wanted to alter the appearance of a person, and to make the alterations more noticeable and dramatic I chose an actress most people have seen before. I found the picture on Stock Exchange.
            To begin, I used the magic wand to select the hair and then changed the saturation and brightness, and hue to make it a different color. I then went back and used the stamp tool to fix any color changes to the rest of the picture. I repeated this process for the dress. I then used the liquidation filter to change the shape of the eyes, nose, mouth, and jaw line. I broadened the hairline with the liquidation filter and changed the hair style slightly. I changed the shape of the dress, and used the clone tool to get rid of frizzy hair.
            I manipulated this picture to show how easily a person’s appearance can be touched up, and how the slightest photo touch-ups can change a person’s appearance to something unrealistic. I think it is important for people to see how harmful these edits can be to the viewer, who will interpret an unrealistic photo as the standard for everyone.
            This manipulation was harmful, because it was a dishonest representation of the actress. Whether the changes were good or bad, they make the viewer believe something that is not true. I think this is very harmful to girls especially who try to measure up to the false representation.
            This is similar to my articles because it addressses the ethics of photo editing and the harm that false images can cause. Even though it is not a written lie, publishing a photo that has been harmfully edited is equally harmful and can give the wrong impression. Whether it is a political message or a picture in People magazine, my article's authors believed that all photos should be held to a standard of ethics.

Works Cited

Ricchiardi, Sherry. "DISTORTED PICTURE." American Journalism Review 29.4 (2007): 36-43. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Apr. 2011.

Search Engines

On Thursday, Mr. Nolan came and talked to us about search engines and how to receive good results when using a program like Google. I learned a lot during his presentation about the ways you can narrow your search on Google. I had never used the ‘scholar’ option on Google before. It is very helpful to know a way to skip over websites that are not good for citation. Of course, you should always check out sources yourself before using them. I also liked the option Mr. Nolan showed us to limit the domains that show up in your search.

            I didn’t realize that Google makes so much money off of the ads on their search engine. I personally never give ads on Google any of my time, so I was surprised there is so much money invested in them. I appreciate the way Google tries to make its search engine a truthful one, and not allow websites to pay their way to the top of the list, or to stop companies like JC Penny from tricking the search engine into showing their web at the top. 

How To Survive PowerPoint

Powerpoint sets you up for failure. Everything about it tempts you to make bad decisions. Its too easy to just type away and fill your slide with block paragraphs of text. Not to mention that 'add slide' button. It's easy to get carried away with the slides. Before your know it you have fifty slides. And why bother making your slides colored when they automatically show up in white? When you're in a hurry or you can't think of a good way to put together your presentation, your presentation can turn into the most boring event of the day. Here is a list of the top ten things you should avoid doing with powerpoint to ensure your presentation isn't awful.

1. Paragraphs: when you write a short novel on each slide, nobody bothers to read anymore. 
2. White slides: nothing makes your audience go crazy faster than plain white slides. Dress them up.
3. Ridiculous graphs: if the graphs are overly complicated, nobody will know what you're talking about. 
4. Tiny text: use large fonts and graphics so everyone in the room can see. 
5. Animation frenzy: if every slide has three of four animations that eat up time, you look unprofessional and you waste time. 
6. Neon colors: use color, but don't give your audience a headache. Use easy-to-read colors. 
7. Too many slides: you should talk more than you switch slides. The maximum is usually 1 slide for every 5 minutes of talking, at least. 
8. No pictures: just a small clipart in the slide that relates to your topic will dress up the slide and reinforce your message. 
9. Nothing but YouTube: once you learn how to embed videos, it's tempting to go video crazy. Don't.
10. Be professional: don't try to be funny when you shouldn't, keep everything on topic, and don't throw in personal tidbits unrelated to your presentation. 

CLT Visit

I have used the CLT center in the library before, but only to use the computers to view movies on TriniTV.  I did not know about the conference room that had video conferencing capabilities. The video conference can support up to twelve people at a time, which is impressive. It would be really fun to see a meeting take place using the video conference system. I was also surprised at how many different jobs the CLT provides. There are many jobs just for students. There are also a lot of different services provided. They can help you use media software to edit a video on a computer, or record and edit audio. I did not know there was a studio down there that students were allowed to use. In the future I may take advantage of that to make a project for a class. I have already visited CLT a few times for computer help and to use the awesome computers there. There are both Macs and PCs in CLT and there are 26 computers total. I didn't know about the scanners, which I think will be very helpful in the future. I know from experience that the people in CLT are very helpful and knowledgeable about any issue I may have and can help me.
Below is my self portrait I made while at CLT. I'm not the best artist, but here it is!

Excel So Far

I haven't used excel very much in the past, so almost everything we've learned in class so far has been new and useful information. I was really surprised that the program is so smart and can predict what you want in columns from one small piece of information. I was also surprised how much editing you can do to make an excel document look nicer, with borders and colors. The coolest part of excel so far is the way you can use it to put information into a word document, like we did in class to make party invitations. I think that in the future when I do research or statistics class, being able to use the formulas in excel will be very helpful. It is a very easy program to use once you know some of the basics, and I'm glad I have this knowledge under my belt for the future.

I chose this picture of Martha Stewart (her head at least) because I didn't realize that magazines actually switched out people's entire bodies to make them look better. This photo appeared on the cover of Newsweek in 2006. Instead of the usual touch up of most magazine photos, Newsweek switched out Martha Stewarts entire body and replaced it with a model's. I think this is very harmful because it misrepresents what Stewart really looks like. Most models are skinnier than 98% of the population, according to a survey done by the U.S. in 2008. If magazines like Newsweek make everyone look like a model, the rest of the population will get the impression that the impossibly thin figures of a model are expected from everyone, even someone like Martha Stewart.



This video is really surprising becuase it shows how much a photo can be changed on a computer. I also like that it starts out looking unfamiliar and becomes an image we've all seen before. The message of this video is that anyone can look a certain way no matter how unrealistic it is...if you have good photoshop skills.

Ethics of Facebook

In today’s world, one in five relationships start online, college students have hundreds of ‘friends’ on facebook, and google is the go-to source for information. We live in the age of the internet. There are many benefits to this online lifestyle. Faster acccess to information, and easier communication between you and your long distance friends, to name a few. What people don’t realize, however, is that unlike Las Vegas, what happens on the internet does not stay there. For example, pictures, chats, and status updates that a person puts on their facebook may disappear, but facebook saves everything you ever do on facebook. Not only that, but facebook has a right to look at that information at any time1. What seems like a private chat with your friends may not actually be so private. Taking it at step further, consider your pictures you put online. Even after you delete a picture from facebook, a quick search on a search engine can find that picture of you years later. It can be described as a ‘internet tattoo’ that you cannot hide. In past years, this has become a big issue for employers, employees, and job huntering students1. Consider how often you look someone up on facebook you’re curious about. You want to know more about a new friend you made, so you look them up on facebook and try to determine their favorite type of movie, what high school they went to, and what sports they play. Why can’t your employers do the same? It is very common for many employers to look up their candidates on facebook or online in general and snoop around for information. If you’ve ever put an inappropriate or less than professional picture online, count on it being seen. This is true whether or not you have strict privacy settings on your social networking site. There are programs that businesses pay a fine to use that can get past security settings on your facebook or myspace (does anyone have myspace anymore?). So when you think you are protecting yourself by making your profile private, you are mistaken. Furthermore, facebook is allowed to pull up years of history and find deleted pictures that you thought you got rid of1.
In the case study I looked at for class, a student lost a potential job because the business he applied to looked him up on facebook and found pictures the student did not know existed. Although he himself did not make the mistake of posting the pictures of himself, his friend did without asking permission. Here is the catch: as long as you are at someone else’s house or in public, you’re picture can be taken for non commerical uses (like a facebook). Although it was unthoughtful and most definitely unethical of his friend to post those pictures without asking, it is not illegal. However, it is an issue of ethics. When you take a picture of someone else that is not flattering, it may be rude to post it, but not unethical. However, posting a picture of a friend doing something either illegal or at least unprofessional, something that could get them in trouble and damage their image, it is unethical.
Can the student do anythin about it? No. Should he have been drinking with a bad friend in a public place in a way that was obviously not impressive to the business he applied to? No. A picture of someone holding an alcoholic drink is one thing, but these pictures obviously captured more than a small drink with friends if they were enough to persuade the business not to hire the student. In that case, the student has to own up to his own actions. He was drinking and partying in a bad way, and whether or not the actions that got him caught were ethical, he still has to be responsible for his own choice to drink in the first place. What we do in front of a camera is what gets us in trouble, not where the pictures end up later.
Clark, Amy. "Employers Look at Facebook, Too." CBS n. pag. Web. 15 Feb 2011. .

Copyright

On Tuesday, we learned about copyright laws in the United States from Jason Hardin. He started his discussion by talking about the history of copyright. The copyright law goes all the way back to the U.S. constitution, and it is mentioned in Article 17 of the U.S. Code. This was added to encourage entrepreneurship and creativity among citizens. This way, someone is motivated to invent their own product because they know they will be a able to profit off of it. Over the years, there has been surprisingly little change to the copyright laws. Around the 1930's to 40's (he didn't say which exactly) the law was changed to increase the time of copyright so it applied for the life of the author plus 70 years. This amendment has been called the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act' because it allowed Disney to hold on to its copyrights for a little longer. Nowadays, if a student at Trinity is caught illegally downloading something, most companies are nice enough to send a takedown notice, pinpointing the exact act of copyright infringement and politely asking for the student to take any violating software off their computer. However, the company is not obligated to do this. They could sue the student without any warning. From their perspective, I'm sure it seems fair to sue a student right away, as Jason Hardin told us has happened before. For students, however, it would seem very harsh to get sued for a large amount of money for songs that may have been worth very little to begin with (like old Gene Autry songs). I believe that making an example of a student is unnecessary and is actually just a way for these companies to get money. Nobody who is illegally downloading is going to think about a case that was settled out of court and decide against downloading whatever it is they wanted. I believe that take down notices are fair and all that is necessary to control the problem. Suing a student for their first offense seems, in my opinion, unfair.


Technology Blog by Alli DeMonico is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My Trinity Network Diagram

Here is my diagram of the Trinity network, illustrating the buildlings, types of cables, and helpful info about AT&T and the firewall.

Best Tech Tips

Joe Hatch came to speak with us yesterday, and I learned a lot about the useful ways students can keep their computers running smoothly. I didn't realize there were so many ways a computer can get slowed down. The most well known is a virus getting into your computer, but Mr. Hatch explained that every time you browse, useless info takes up space in your computer and your computer can get slowed down when you accumulate too much in your files. Mr. Hatch explained programs like CClear can help clear out unnecessary info on your computer to help it run correctly. I didn't even realize a program like that existed. I will also be using the help center in Winn 103 and the help line. I will definitely remember these tips for the future if I ever begin to experience a slow computer problem.

Mysterious Picture

Does anyone know how to rotate this picture? 

I used a picture of a place I spend a lot of time on campus. I used the sketch and sepia effects, and added stickers to the photo. I wanted something that looked more like a drawing than a photo, and also had some humor. 

Network Server Diagram

Here is my Network Drives Assignment!

The network drive system is an easy way to store files privately in your own Y drive, to receive assignments  in a class folder (N drive), and to submit assignments in a Groups folder.

All About Me

My name is Alli DeMonico. I am from Portland, Oregon.  I've ridden horses my whole life and I love the Portland Trail Blazers. I haven't been in many computer classes but I consider myself fairly computer savvy, especially with making websites and enhancing powerpoint presentations. I have the least experience with excel. My first pet was a chicken.

Please email me at:

ademonic@trinity.edu