Ryan's CS 1300 Blog

Favorite Websites

2009-04-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

My two favorite websites were Marilou's and Jordan's. I thought Marilou's was the most professional of the bunch and Jordan had the best photographs. Marilou kept it simple but the layout of the website coordinated excellently. I thought it was cool how she changed the picture in the upper left corner every webpage in relation to the page. I didn't even think to use a template for the background on my slide, but it was definitely a great idea. What I liked about Jordan's website was how she described all of the pictures she had on her site. She definitely used pictures to tell her story but explained them for us. The pictures were also high quality and sized well enough that you could see everything clearly. Overall, I liked most of the websites but these two stood out to me.

Words of Wisdom

2009-04-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

In once sentence, you can do your best in this class as long as you go to class and pay attention. If you can do that, the homework is very clear and will not be stressful. Two times a week for an hour and 15 minutes...you should be able to attend everytime.

PowerPoint Presentations

2009-03-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

My two favorite presentations were Roxi's and Brandon's. I liked their presentations mainly because both of them are good speakers. The actual speaking part is more important to me than what is on the slides. A good speaker can make a bad presentation good and bad speaker can make a good one bad. The information on the slides and the overall layout of the slides was excellent in each of these presentations. The topics, vesicles and planetary geology, were interesting and quite original. These ones stood out to me the most, but the every other presenation had its strength. I would like to say that I remember each presentation in detail, but when you hear 13 of them in an hour, it's hard to remember the specifics. I think this adds to the strenght of these two presenations, considering the way they presented and not what they presented stood out to me. When I did the evalution form, I said that each presentaion was simple yet effective. I think people get in trouble when they have too much going on in their presentations. Brandon and Roxi definately used a good balance of clear facts and animation.

Power Point Advice

2009-03-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

I truly am tired of power point presentations. When the person just reads the slides it's hard to stay awake. The articles discussing power point presentations had some really interesting things to say. A main theme was to keep the presentation as simple as possible. When a person puts ten points on a slide, I might remember one of them. However, if there is one point on a slide with a graph or chart to go along with it, I will probably learn the facts. The links also talked alot about using the right color schemes. Choosing "cool" and "warm" colors is important depending on what kind of information is being presented. I really liked the link that discussed the importance of going beyond the words in the power point. One of the tips was to turn off the presentation for a little and just talk to the audience. That way the people are more likely to listen because they can't just copy the slide. I think Power Point is a good tool, but it is highly overused. If a presentation is required, people will use it because it is the easiest thing, but it is not always the best. Here's a list what I find most important...

1. Memorize the information. Don't ever read the slides because I can read too.

2. Keep the information simple and clear. Clarify everything on the presentation and a good way to do that is to put small amounts of info per slide.

3. Be enthusiastic. If you aren't, I don't care what you have to say.

4. Add some special effects. Anyone can make a simple power point. Go above and beyond.

5. Use color to your advantage. Don't make every slide the same background or color.

Excel Experience

2009-03-18T17:36:00.000-07:00

We definately spent a lot of time with Excel. I have always known that Excel is very useful, however I didn't know how to use it. I have gained a lot of confidence and now I'll try to do as much as I can with my new knowledge. The excel goes along well my business statistics class because there are some important excel projects. I would have never known about the color cordination tools or the "If" function. The "If" function would have helped alot in my previous stats assignment. I can now use Excel for future presentations because it is a great way to organize information. I am glad for this class because Excel skills are important to have. Basically, everything we did in class was new too me so I can't really say one application imparticular was more interesting. I know I can learn more about excel and the background I now have will make that easier.

CLT Lab

2009-03-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

I was amazed at how extensive the lab was and how much space is down there. Too be honest, I haven't had any classes yet that would I could use the lab for. The most interesting part of the lab was definatly the recording studio. There is so much technology in that room. I think its cool that anyone can go down there and get help on there project. If I take any sort of film or music class that area will definatly come in handy.

Pictures That Lie

2009-03-02T16:30:00.000-08:00

I chose the picture of the British solider among the Iraqi civilians. I think this topic is very relative to what is going on in the world as of now. The picture originated in the Los Angeles Times and was "improved" by veteran photographer Brian Walski. Mr. Walski combined one of his previous pictures with a current one. He took a picture of a British soldier and stuck it into a picture of Iraqi civilians. It clearly shows the soldier helping out the civilians which could sway public opinion on the war. I think this manipulation raises up a lot of suspicion about previous photos. The photo seems so real and I have seen many photos with soldiers assisting the civilians. I'm glad the photographer was fired because this kind of stuff is unacceptable. This newspaper is read by so many people and to lie like that is morally wrong. This is a sad thing in today's society that is very difficult to stop.

Diane Graves Copyright Discussion

2009-02-04T22:06:00.000-08:00

I found the topic of fair use to be quite interesting. All of the rules and regulations that have been passed as law seem very trivial to me. I feel like these companies have gone too far in order to squeeze out a few extra dollars. People are getting sued for thousands of dollars for illegally downloading music yet the musicians suing them are showing up to court in their Bentley's. I have used limewire all of my life but now that I am on a college campus I refrain because the consequences are not worth risking it. I can't believe that people sit at a computer all day trying to find these "pirates." The world has always been full of greed and there are no signs of it slowing down.

Mrs. Graves mentioned how if a teacher uses a piece of copyrighted material for class use, he or she has to pay a certain amount per student. Even if the author of the material died 50 years ago, they would still have to pay. Seriously people, it's for class use intended for learning. No one is trying to "steal" this material and claim they wrote. No one is selling this material for a lower price in order to make money. Yes, give credit to the author, but paying money to someone that is dead is pure insanity.

The proponents of the current copyright laws will claim they are protecting the authors. They are protecting them by lining their pockets. They are not motivated by making sure plagiarism is not going on, but they are motivated by greed. I believe that instead of creating further laws to either increase protection or decrease protection, we should look back to when this country was created. They had simple laws for a simple time. They wouldn't put up with people downloading a ton of illegal information and selling it for money, but they wouldn't crack down on kids getting a few songs off limewire. I realize that there are many ways that people can violate copyright laws these days, but the current laws will never be able to stop it from going on. The laws only further corporate America's dominance over society.

Facebook: What do I think?

2009-02-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

Facebook is something that that everyone I am friends with uses. It's something we use to talk to each other and look at one another's pictures. But people use it for other things too. There are a ton of groups in Facebook that have gained a lot more followers than if the group was started through a paper or website. After reading the Facebook article on The Christian Science Montitor's website (link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1213/p13s01-legn.html), I was not surprised at all. I know there is a lot of controversy over the ways people use Facebook, but we all knew that would happen.

Yes, I agree that some people can take things too far with hate groups and a lot of kids are just stupid when they put pictures up of themselves doing drugs. However, banning Facebook altogether on a college campus is not logical as most kids use Facebook in a mature fashion. I also think that firing someone because of their facebook is not valid. On the other hand, if an employer sees that the person has irresponsible pictures up, then firing would be valid, just because the person is an idiot not to have taken the pictures down. I think pictures with drinking involved are acceptable, and if someone was fired because of that then I think that would be a problem. All in all, just be smart about using Facebook.

I've been using Facebook for about two years now and to be honest, I wish it was never created. It is just another way for me to procrastinate. Instead of chatting with someone over Facebook I would call them and wouldn't think twice. Now that it is here, it's here to stay. I truly believe that Facebook further dehumanizes us because it actually pushes us farther apart. We are so caught up in technology that face to face conversations have lost their value. Anyways, that's another topic. Thanks for reading my post!

My Experience with Word

2009-01-26T18:46:00.000-08:00

I have been using Microsoft Word for nearly all of my life. I have become very familiar with it over the years, in terms of using it to write essays, but other than that I know very little. I would like to learn all of the capabilities Word offers. We talked in class the other day about how Word can be used to create images and edit pictures; I thinking learning these techniques could be very helpful in the future.
One other thing that I need to improve upon are my troubleshooting skills. Whenever something goes wrong or won't work, I usually just get frustrated at the computer instead of trying to diagnose the problem. If I can increase my general understanding of Word, I think I can get better at this too. For example, sometimes Word will automatically format the document and I can never figure out to stop it from doing so. If I knew why this happens, writing essays would be much less stessful.

Joe Hatch's Discussion

2009-01-21T18:44:00.000-08:00

Joe talked about how many pop-up windows are used by hackers to make money. He said that everytime a pop-up ocurrs, the hacker makes a nickel or dime. Sometimes, the pop-up won't go away because the hacker has set it to keep ocurring. I can see why people do it; it's an easy way to make a good amount without having to put in any effort. If I knew how to do this, it would definatly be tempting.

2009-01-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

I am from San Diego, California and have lived there my whole life. It's an awesome place and I wouldn't live anywhere else. I grew up playing a number of sports but when I got injured playing baseball, I started to focus on golf. Lucky for me, I live five minutes down the road from Torrey Pines Golf Course and I have spent a lot of time down there. The U.S. Open was recently played there and it was really cool to see the best players in the world hitting the same shots I have hit so many times. I couldn't help but think that with a little luck I could be playing in a U.S. Open a couple years down the road.

Athletics have had a huge impact on my life, and I could never go without them. Even though I have committed to golf, I still love to play basketball and football. I love to work out and feel it's important for everyone to live an active lifestyle. Another awesome thing about where I live is the beach. I practically live there during the summer. If there's nothing else to do, my friends and I will go down there and chill all day. I don't surf, but I love to boogey-board and just lay out in the sun.

I play on the golf team here at Trinity and after a dissapointing first semester, I am looking forward to playing lights out this semester. Concerning my computer experience, I have pretty much learned everything on my own. I took a class in 7th grade once, but I don't remember any of it. However, I feel I am good with computers and I think I'll enjoy this class. One more thing, my email address is rbarry@trinity.edu. Please email me if you have any questions.

Here's a link to the bird's eye view of Torrey Pines GC.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Torrey+Pines+Golf+Course&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.077336,56.25&ie=UTF8&ll=32.900921,-117.248325&spn=0.008125,0.013733&t=h&z=16

2009-01-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

Hey whats up? My name is Ryan Barry.

My secret fact-I played golf in Scotland last summer.