Advice

Dear incoming CSCI 1300 students,

I have one little bit of information for you to rule your life by for this class:
Go
to
class.

It makes everything easier, and it's always harder to try and teach yourself something out of the book in your own room. Prof. Belisle is a super nice lady and is always willing to help you. If you push yourself you can even finish your homework in class, so just go there!
Have the class early in the morning? Deal with it. I had to. It's a class worth your time.

Heed my warning...

-Alex

Worthy Websites

We had some awesome websites presented the other day. Best layout and design was by far Moira's, with a very simplistic and chic approach. It was easy to navigate with the pictures and navbars. Most unique and nifty was Travis's, with all of his witty pop-ups and navigations that provided much humor. And finally I also enjoyed Allison's photo gallery, she had some really great shots from all over the world.

Bravo 830 class, keep up the good work for 2 more weeks...

New Website!

Check out my website at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~aholmes2

This wasn't my very first site that I have made, so the process was fairly simpler. Not to mention that the last time I coded anything I wasn't using a GUI program and was typing straight HTML, and I was in 7th grade...
For this specific site I used Microsoft Web Expression. My favorite part of the page is my hobbies section. It has a nifty little image map that takes you all over the place and has TONS (over 50) hyperlinks to various things.
If I go back to change anything it will be simply for aesthetics and rearranging things, I like the template of sorts that I've created by scanning in doodles that I drew for the nav bar and what not. Sometimes it was tough getting certain items centered, and at one point I had completely misplaced hyperlinks in a few sections, but they all got worked out. I plan on showing the site to the class soon, and who knows, maybe I'll make one for fun sometimes.

Pictures That Lie

Concluding our education of Photoshop and photo editing software, we have been practicing and studying manipulating and manipulative photos. And despite the entertainment and fun that can be provided through photo enhancement/manipulation, it can hurt and help a company.
In The Advertising Age Nat Ives talks about how magazines are relying more and more on photo editing in order to have more attractive articles, covers, etc. However at the same time they are losing their credibility as reliable sources of information by altering their photos beyond belief. Unfortunately (in my own opinion) these alterations are here to stay. For entertainment and humor purposes I believe that altering photos is ok, but for medical commercials (Proactive is the perfect example) they are completely wrong. They are portraying an extremist non realistic perspective.
Here is my own "Picture that lies":
Because I am not making a false claim or advertisement, I see no harm in my photo. As you can see, I combined a photograph of Mr. Fred Rogers (from the all too familiar Mr. Rogers Neighborhood), along with a picture of the earth from Planet Earth. I wanted to portray the idea of what a more perfect world could be like, and I think under Mr. Rogers' wisdom, Earth could be a better place. "We are all neighbors" is a simple yet meaningful quote that gets this idea across. The only manipulations in the photo were the color changes on the earth to make the land more green and the ocean more blue, along with placing the photos together with each other. If one pays close attention to the trolley under Mr. Rogers Arm has been changed to say "Planet Earth Trolley." It could be a vehicle to transport to a better, happier world.

Power Point Presentations (PPP)

In the past week our class has viewed some amazing PowerPoint presentations. We've gone from deadly biohazard zones and sea snakes to sun screen and air planes.
One of the most notable presentations was the Shake It, presented by Travis Halff. He presented to us the new and revolutionary Shake It, which allows its users to burn fat and get ripped with little to no cost, be it time or money. The presentation itself was humorous and well planned out. Travis successfully captured his audiences attention through humor and slick design.
Another impressive PowerPoint was Larissa Lozano's on Catholic Community service helping immigrants Americanize. It was a very moving powerpoint, and quite possibly had the smoothest transitions out of all of the slideshows we saw.

Collage

This digital collage masterpiece is dedicated to all those who attended the San Antonio Zoo one fateful, sunny day only to find that it was nap time at the zoo. Everyone knows it's important for the well-being of the animals that they get their beauty sleep and sun baths.

What a life to lead.

Picture Perfect (?)

Currently in the world of the CSCI1300 class, we begin to delve into images, and naturally accompanying such is photo editing software. Today we examine a picture that has been edited in order to create a more child-friendly picture.

This is a picture of Clement Hurd, who illustrated the child's book Goodnight Moon (thus the reason I chose this picture, as it was my favorite growing up). From the dust cover of the book itself, we can see that Hurd is awkwardly holding his right hand up to his chest in almost a "come here" motion. This is because before the photo was rendered he was holding a cigarette. The image was most likely changed to be more appealing to the parents who would buy this book for their children, as smoking is often considered a terrible habit. In the long run, I doubt this editing was harmful to anyone, but it could possibly help market the book better.

All the same I'd read it to my kids, cigarrete or not.

Copyright

I am pretty well-versed in the laws of copyright due to a previous multimedia course I was enrolled in, but there a few pointers that Mr. Hardin brought up that made me re-evaluate my thoughts on copyrights.

For starters, I did not think of the process that Disney and other companies could use in order to re-copyright a character. So even though the expiration for Disney's Mickey Mouse might be coming up within the next decade or so, as long as they keep making new shows and/or movies with him in it, it is still their property.

Another interesting topic that was brought up was how copyright allows creativity to flourish. Without copyright laws anyone could claim rights to any given work that was already produced. Granted some people might still do that if they're tricky enough and the other party is stupid enough, but copyrights nowadays at least let people feel secure that their work is safe.

And in support of copyright I now publish the blog... COPYRIGHTED'D'D



CSCI1300 blog by Alex Holmes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Trinity University LAN

Here's the final product of a diagram of Trinity's local area network! Hopefully it makes sense...

Top Tech Tip

This past week our class was paid a very special visit from Mr. Joe Hatch, a network administrator and resident coordinator here on Trinity. A very nice man, Mr. Hatch explain to us some helpful tips on how to keep our PCs (and Macs) in tip top shape and out of harm's way. He explained how to keep your system up to date and that virus definitions are renewed. This provides your computer with a more stable security as it is protected from the most recent virus and means of virtual terrorism. However, I think that THE Top Tech Tip that Joe brought to us was about defragmenting your computer hard drive and getting rid of pesky temporary folders and cookies. People really do not know how much space gets eaten up by these files, and they can really drag down your computer. Having worked on computers for awhile I know how to access the temp folders and defrag my own computer, but Mr. Hatch brought up a program that seems to make everything a lot easier called CCleaner. It's free to download and you can set what exactly you want it to do, which is pretty nifty. You can have it defragment, delete temporary folders, internet history, and much more. I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't given their PC a good cleaning in awhile (myself included).

Interactive Blogging

Just wrapped up commenting on other people's blogs from the class earlier. Well not really just wrapped up, there was a paper written in between then, but who's really counting down the minutes?

I learned some neat tid bits about Moira and Larissa who join me in the arduous task of waking up before 830am to head over to the computer science building, which is oh so conveniently placed on the complete opposite side of campus. Moira (who happens to be a very graceful roller skater) shares a favorite author with my, Mr. Chuck Palahniuk. Perhaps I'll dedicate a blog to him someday and write horribly humorous and morbid tales. And there's a mutual jealousy appearing between Larissa and I. I envy her for living in New Mexico, and her me for participating in snow sports (specifically snowboarding).

It's been a long night/transition into morning, my backs killing me, and I'm worried about this first paper I'm turning in for my seminar, so in conclusion I will leave you with this picture as I enter a wonderful world of surrealities that I call dreams.

Le Intro

My name is Alexander Holmes, but you can just call me Alex. I come from Flower Mound, Texas, a relatively small suburb of the DFW area where there really isn't all that much to do. As far as interests go, I like to consider my self as a jack of all trades, I try to pick up a little bit of everything and am willing to give anything a shot. I like to go snowboarding, and recently returned from a trip to Santa Fe, and try to get out a few times each season. I picked up longboarding when I got on campus here at Trinity, and have been trying to make the best of that. I do the stereotypical male college student thing, video games, exercising, studying, etc. I'm also excited to (hopefully) be helping start up the Quidditch team here at Trinity, but we'll see how that goes.

Unfortunately as far as a major goes I have no idea what I want to do. I'm following the business path right now, but the way I see it I still have plenty of time to figure out what exactly I want to do. Part of me wants to start my own business doing something enjoyable, like a graphic tee/clothing company. God knows I don't need more though (I have more clothes and shoes than my closet can hold). But a company like Threadless is really inspiring to me, and I think if I could do something along those lines I would be a very happy man.

I am pretty well versed when it comes to technology and computers, and actually forgot to take the test to be exempt from this course. I built my own computer, and know very (note: VERY) basic programming in Java and HTML, but can hold my ground on most software, including Photoshop. I've also been known to pursue... juvenile flash animations; they're nothing special. But if you ever need help with anything or have questions you can get in touch with me at:
aholmes2@trinity.edu (it rhymes!)

Thanks for following,

Alex

Update: And now a Wordle!