Piece of Advice

Future Students- Don't let work pile up! If you do every assignment on time you will have an easy time in the course but if you forget just one assignment you'll see how hard it's to catch up. If you pay attention and do the assignments when they are assigned you'll be surprised by how much you'll learn. Take my advice and you'll be fine. I never thought I would've learned how to manipulate pictures or make a website. Overall it is a really fun class. GOOD LUCK!

Favorite Websites

All of my classmate’s websites were amazing but my three favorite would have to be Peter's, Leslie's, and Tommie's. It was very hard to choose favorites because everyone did such a good job but these three really stuck out to me. I enjoyed Leslie's website because of how professional the layout appeared and the attention to design. It truly looks like a website people would pay to have made. I enjoyed Peter's website because of how funny it is. Every single page had me laughing and I was happy to learn more about Petoria, it's a great place. I enjoyed Tommie's website because of the great visuals and the very impressive navbar. I found myself constantly looking back at her navbar because of how good it looked. Overall I think everyone did a truly amazing job with their website and I still can’t believe we were given the opportunity to have them published.

My Website!

PLEASE VISIT MY WEBSITE AT www.cs.trinity.edu/~jbonacci
At the beginning of the year when I first heard I was going to make my own website I couldn't believe it. Coming into this class I didn't know one thing about hand coding or even the process of publishing a website. Now looking upon my finished website I'm proud to say that I, Danny Bonacci, made a website. Making the website was easier than I thought but took more time than expected. It took a long time to find and fix just one little error. I decided to use Expression Web when making my website because it felt the most natural to me. I'm most proud of my hotspot navbar on every page because it looks very professional and makes navigating about the site very simple. If I had to change something I would've added video critic's over each movie on my list. My biggest design challenge was fitting the pictures on the WebPages without letting them take over the majority of the page or look awkward. My biggest technical challenge was arranging my WebPages in consistent tables so the website as a whole looked somewhat uniform. I will most definitely show my website to all my closest friends and family. I also think that I will make a website for another class in the future because I now realize how easy and truly simple making a website really is.

Hardware Technician SuperStar

Larry Heckler, the Hardware Technician Supervisor, came to talk to our class the other day. He taught me so many things and also told many funny stories. The most important thing I took from the lecture was to always and frequently back up my files whether it is on an external hard drive, DVD, thumb drive, or a cloud resource like our Y: drive. Mr. Heckler told us multiple stories of students who had their entire lives on their laptops and just one accidental drop or drink spill could cause you to lose everything and most likely never get it back. Most times when the information gets lost its irretrievable and gone forever! Apparently even if you take your crashed computer to a company that specializes in  retrieving lost information there is a good chance they'll charge you hundreds of dollars and not even end up retrieving the lost files. It's also very important to never clean your computer with alcohol, which was news to me because that's the way I've been cleaning my laptops and computers for years. Without a doubt the most interesting bit of information I learned from Larry heckler was that it's actually good to run your laptop battery completely down at least once a month. By consistently charging your laptop after just 10 minutes of use your computer gets a short memory cycle, which explains why the battery will only last 10 minutes on a road trip because that is what the battery has become accustomed to. Larry Heckler taught me so much in his lecture and I will definitely apply all my new knowledge of computer maintenance to my current and future computers and laptops.

Picture That Lies

For my picture that lies I decided to incorporate two things I really enjoy and that is cats and watching COPS. I've always owned cats and have always watched COPS. Sometimes I may even watch COPS with my cats!!! The cat picture I received from Stock Exchange and the drug bust picture I received from an online article in The Yukon News. The picture was manipulated by adding a cute cat into the drug bust background. Since the resolution for the cat was much higher than the background I had to resize and distort the brightness, opacity, and saturation of the cat to make him blend in. After the initial changes the cat still stuck out just a little too much so I added a drop shadow behind him and also changed the contrast and hue of the background. Then I added the text just to clarify that the kitty was the one who found the drugs and that they weren't his own. I manipulated this picture because I believe if other animals such as dogs and horses can help officers prevent crime why can't cats? Understandably cats aren't much for training and do exhibit mood swings quite often but I still believe they can be of some assistance to the law. This manipulation wasn’t harmful even though it’s technically deceiving because it's obviously a joke and in no way attacking an audience, well except for the drug dogs. Photo manipulation is usually done to take fat off of a celebrity’s stomach for a tabloid but it has been done by governments to deceive the public to gain support for a cause. According to the article "Plots to rankle Castro--from fake photos to airfare" During the cold war American militarty strategisits tried to fake photos of Fidel Castro in an attempt to get him overthrown in Cuba. This is just one example of how bad intentions behind photo manipulation can lead to awful results, even the U.S. government has participated in harmful photo fakery. While manipulating photos is usually done to achieve harmful results or to deceive the public I believe my photo of DRUG BUST KITTY is an example of a fake photo, with good intentions, meant to entertain people instead of tricking them.

EBSCOhost: Plots to Rankle Castro--from Fake Photos to Airfares." EBSCO Publishing Service Selection Page. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail

PowerPoint Presentations

My PowerPoint presentation covered the new and surging trend of Social Media Marketing. I choose this subject because Marketing is my intended major and social media is the newest stage marketers around the world are trying to conquer. I liked my subject because I learned a lot about how Marketers have to adapt to changes in technology and how they have to be on top of the new popular trends. The one thing I learned the most about while researching for my presentation was the introduction of Web 2.0 and its effects on the business world. Web2.0 makes the internet a collaborative medium that allows people to create and share online. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and various blogs are examples of Web 2.0’s increasing popularity. If there was one thing I would’ve changed about my presentation it would have to be the amount of notes I took beforehand because it caused me not to make as much eye contact as I would’ve liked to during my presentation. Overall I really enjoyed making a PowerPoint presentation which focused on a specific subject related to my Major.
            My two favorite presentations in the class were Heath’s presentation over Geology and Leslie’s presentation over Graphic Design. I really enjoyed the humor Heath put in his presentation and I felt his design was very fitting towards his topic. Leslie’s presentation was very nice because it was very informative but most of all because its design, transitions, and visuals were very professional. Heath and Leslie both had very interesting and well done presentations. This assignment showed me that even though PowerPoint presentations are commonly boring and unprofessional, if done right PowerPoint can be a very effective tool for a presentation.

Chris Nolan - Goggle Connoisseur

Chris Nolan, Assistant University Librarian, spoke to our class about Google and the many features it beholds which most people aren’t aware of. I always thought Google could just perform simple searches but Chris Nolan explained that with the proper knowledge Google could perform very detailed and advanced searches. One thing I found out about Google is that you can perform advanced searches and there is even a Google scholar for exclusively academic works. The thing that surprised me the most about Google is that by simply using symbols like quotation marks, parenthesis, and even a subtraction symbol you can narrow your search down and make finding what you need much easier. I will without a doubt use all the information Chris Nolan taught me about Google to make my future searches painless and more effective.