Advice for Future Pupils

My advice for future Belisle pupils would be to not wait until the last second to do the homework. If you get behind in this class it's almost impossible to catch up. Also, get outside as much as you can as you'll be in front of a screen a lot.

Class Websites

My three favorite websites were Luke's, Rory's, and Joel's. Luke's website looked professional and well put together and his presentation was funny and showed off his personality. I liked Rory's backgrounds on all five of his pages. The one with his face all over the background was really creative. I liked Joel's website because it focused on his basketball career and I got to know him better from it. His page about his favorite sports teams was original and interesting.

Website Evaluation

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~wblakele

Making a website was definitely harder than I thought it would be. I never realized how much time it takes to make all the little things work. I used Expression Web for my website. I'm most proud of my basketball page because I don't feel like I could have made that page before taking this class. I would have never known how to make the animated gif and thumbnails on that page or how to link pictures to hyperlinks. I would have changed my music page and added some music in the background of my favorite artists. My biggest technical challenge was linking the navigation bar to the appropriate pages, but it wasn't too hard. My biggest design challenge was getting the text and images to align up the way I wanted them to once I viewed them on the web. I will show my site to friends and family. I will definitely consider making another site for another class or maybe even run a little business and charge a small fee to make some sites for some friends.

Importance of HTML Code

Knowing HTML code can give you a big advantage in the world of web designing. It can help you resolve technical issues with your site tremendously quicker than if you had no knowledge of HTML coding. Also, the most unique and compelling websites are those that use complex HTML codes that are not default with web-authoring software. One more thing HTML coding can do for web designers is it can give them a leg up in the competition when it comes to the popularity of their website. Search engines such as google and bing display the most relevant sites according to deep HTML coding. Web designers can use this to their advantage and write HTML coding that these search engines find much quicker than websites designed by web-authoring software.

Pictures That Lie

For my manipulated picture project, I chose the cover of the next Tiger Woods video game. I chose this picture because Woods has been in a lot of controversial news lately, so I decided to comically infer that the next golf video game would involve Tiger's outside affairs. The picture originated from EA Sports release of their future cover art for Tiger Wood's annual video game on different video game related websites. I manipulated it by replacing the head of Tiger Wood's competitor with the head of Woods' wife and replacing the words "PGA TOUR" with "VS. WIFE". I believe from EA Sports' and Tiger Woods' perspective, the manipulations were very harmful and would easily destroy EA Sports' company along with Tiger Woods half-broken career. However, for the purpose of this assignment and for the pleasure of viewers who are aware of the alteration, it is enjoyable and comical. The article I read dealt with the false memories that are concocted when adults view altered photographs depicted false childhood memories. After seeing the images, "fifty percent of the subjects created complete or partial false memories." When people see fake images that they don't know are faked, their mind can trick them into creating new yet false memories that never occurred. If my manipulated image was shown to oblivious parents, they would undoubtedly be upset with the image the game is trying to send. But they might even go to the next level and remember hearing about this game coming out on the news or some other type of false memory. For this reason, photos such as the one I created usually don't leave the cyber world so that no one is actually harmed from them.

Wade, Kimberley A., and Maryanne Garry. "A Picture Is worth a Thousand Lies: Using False Photographs to Create False Childhood Memories." Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9.3 (2002): 597-603. EBSCO. Web. 11 Apr. 2010.

Favorite Presentations

My two favorite power point presentations were the ones on Geology and Sports Business Administration. The Geology presentation was very engaging because it was funny and interesting. The presenter really made it appear that cared for his topic and kept me interested by his presentation style and interesting video. The Sports Business Administration presentation was interesting to me because it covered a very specific profession in Sports agency. I learned about the top sports agents today and how much money they got their clients. I enjoyed it because I am really into sports as well and the professional look of the presentation had me hooked.

Power Point Guidelines

1) The most important tip for making a Power Point is keeping it simple. The slides should only serve as a visual supplement to your speech. They should not distract the audience with clutter and long text and should be able to convey an easy flow from one point to the next.

2) Making the presentation look professional yet conversational allows for the audience to remain engaged on what you have to say about each slide. Watching a poorly put together presentation makes it harder for the audience to follow your points easily.

3) Using charts and graphs can be absolutely necessary depending on the presentation's topic. If a chart or graph could be used, it most likely should be used. They are easy to understand and display a quick yet meaningful message. They are very good resources for conveying positive or negative future trends.

4) There are actually some strategies for using different colors and fonts. According to color theory, cool colors, such as blue and green, work well as background colors while warm colors, such as red and orange, work well in the foreground. As far as fonts go, san serif fonts are another way of displaying a professional yet conversational look to your words.

5) The slides should appeal to the right side of our brains, which is responsible for emotions and creativity, while the lecture should appeal to the left side, responsible for facts and hard data. The slide should make the audience wonder what the speaker is going to say about the intriguing image.

In a bad Power Point presentation, it is extremely sleep-inducing to see way too much text on the slides. Also, one of the more prominent signs of a lazy presentation is clashing colors of text and background. If the text is hard to read simply because the colors don't contrast each other the right way, the audience will most likely not try to read it at all. One more annoying thing about a bad presentation is the disruption of flow. If the presentation looks like it was put together last minute and is hard to follow because of bad organization, then the audience will not try to follow it and instead take a nap.

Trinity Triad

I feel that these three pictures are the three best examples of architecture on campus, thus the "Trinity Triad".

Chris Nolan's Presentation

From Chris Nolan's presentation, I learned a few things about search engines and the amount of content floating around on the World Wide Web. I learned that search engines rank results by the location of the keywords in the website, such as near the top of the page where a title may be. They also rank results by the frequency of the keywords in the web page. I also learned about Google Scholar, where your search results only display scholarly references. This will be very useful for assignments where primary research and sources are required. Another interesting tidbit Mr. Nolan mentioned was the “deep web”. The deep web is all the search results that you really have to dig for to find. I will start going to the 3rd page and beyond to find exactly what I am looking for.

Pictures That Lie

From , I chose the picture of O.J. Simpson because his infamous murder trial is so controversial and well known. The picture was originally Simpson's mug shot from when he was first arrested. It was manipulated by Time magazine to appear darker than the original photo. They did this to make Simpson appear more "menacing". I think it did make it look like Simpson was an evil criminal, and when I first saw the manipulated picture, I immediately gave Simpson no benefit of the doubt.

CLT

Traveling down to the CLT, a.k.a. "The Dungeon", I discovered many opportunities for me to utilize the tools given down there. For this Essential Computer Skills course, I could use any of the plethora of computers to write on my blogs, work on excel spreadsheets, and just about any other assignment our wonderful teacher decides to challenge us with. I know at some point in my Trinity career, I will need to make a power point presentation. The Digital Audio Lab would be perfect for adding custom sounds to those power points, and the Media Presentation Lab would allow for a group of people to evaluate the presentation before it is presented. As far as personal uses of the CLT go, my friends and I have been wanting to make a comic YouTube short film for quite some time now, but haven't had the necessary equipment to make it look and sound professional. I think the CLT would help solve our problem easily.

Copyright Issue

From Jason Hardin’s copyright lecture, I learned a new concept called Fair Use. Fair Use is the public’s rights to use a limited amount of copyrighted information for nonprofit/educational purposes. This helped clear up my question as to why so many small samples of credible information on the Internet are reproduced and displayed on many different sites. As long as the nature of work and purpose of reproduction are backed by good intentions, then people are allowed to fairly use the information.

One of the current copyright issues that is especially prevalent with the technology we possess today is the incorporation of snippets of music in other artist’s songs. Artists such as Girl Talk and Super Mash Bros. have based their whole music career off of literally copying and pasting bits and pieces of songs into one fully developed song. Other artist’s have gone through lawsuits over songs that have melodies that are not identical to their own but too similar for comfort (compare this super bowl ad's song to The White Stripes' Fell in Love with a Girl). In my opinion, I believe the innovative artists such as Girl Talk should be allowed to continue their work as long as they have permission from the artists they copy from. However, artists who produce melodies that are eerily similar to other songs should not receive any type of profit for their song, even if it was accidental. Unless the song was specifically made in tribute of another band, the artist should accept that another artist already designed the given melody before they did and move on.

This work by Chase Blakeley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

My Top Tech Tip

Joe Hatch's speech was a bit of a blur to me as it probably was to the other computer unsavvy students in class. Sorting through all the technical gibberish, I found that the cleaning agent could actually benefit my slow computer. The one he suggested doesn't work with Macs, but I can google products with similar function and hopefully clean up some junk on my MacBook. Thanks for the tip Mr. Hatch!

About Me

My name is William Blakeley, but I go by my middle name Chase. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I played basketball for J.J. Pearce High School in Richardson, which is just outside of Dallas. My interests include playing sports, especially basketball, watching sports, discussing sports, chilling with friends, and going to the movies. I walked on the basketball team here at Trinity which is pretty much my only campus activity.

I didn't participate in the scavenger hunt because I wasn't enrolled in the class at that point.

My computer skills are unlimited and unreal. I'm ranked the #1 computer skills person in the world, but not really. But in all seriousness, I am good enough with computers to complete the tasks assigned that require computers.

wblakele@trinity.edu