My Website!!!

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~ajalan
Initially it was a little complicated to understand how the hyperlink's worked for the nab bar but then with all of Dr. Belisle's help, it became easier. I thought it would be much harder to make a whole website but it was an easy and fun exercise. Initially I started with using Kompozer because you could use it on a mac but then I had to switch to Expression Web for all the hyperlinking. My favourite page of my website is the one on the Grey-Crowned Crane. I like the layout and colors of the page and am proud of it. I really like my website but I would have probably used better or custom made backgrounds. Even the layout could have been a little simpler. My biggest technical challenge was to understand the hyperlinking. Specially because I could just not do it with Kompozer and it worried me. My biggest design challenge was making the pictures, layout and background all coordinated. So that it would look all in sync. I would obviously show my website to my parents and family. Also, my friends at Trinity and high school friends. Even bird-lovers would be interested in my website. Yes, definitely. I would love to make another website for another class or for my own personal experience or something. This was a really fun and useful exercise and hopefully I will be able to make use of it some time later.

Larry Hechler's Visit

Larry was a guest lecturer in our class today. He works in the Hardware Department at Trinity. Also, he's been working in this field for the past 30 years.
He started with emphasising the importance of back-up specially for a college student. We should back-up almost every week. He gave us examples of how students at Trinity had lost either their complete photographic history or 200 hours of thesis work due to an accident and without a back-up everything is lost.
After he told us that the monitor or the touch pad of a computer must never be cleaned with alcohol, acetone or ammonia. They would ruin the finish on the screen and maybe make the LCD stop working.
Only a lint-free cloth with a dab of water must be used for cleaning purposes.
He pointed out that the laptop must not be kept directly on  the carpet or on the bed because it blocks the wind intake point. And the computer needs to take in air for cooling purposes.
For the battery's health and long life, he suggested to run down the battery to the warning level and then full charge it. This way the battery remembers that it has to work for the full amount.
He also explained the complete care packages of dell and apple.

His visit was really helpful for all of us.

Image Manipulation!

I chose this image of a tiger and lion and made them into one picture. Because I always believed that both are really royal and grand animals and there amalgamation would be the King of the Jungle.
Also, a bird serving the tigion food was also very amusing to me. And the food that the tigion is eating is also just a simple worm.
I adjusted the Color, Brightness and Gradient fill of all the layers.
Also used the eye-dropper tool and the magnetic lasso.
This was a really fun exercise.

Powerpoint Presentations

I am studying Economics and Marketing here at Trinity. Thus, I decided to make my presentation an amalgamation of both my majors. My presentation was a marketing technique for Economics Majors.
It talked about the importance of Economics and how it is essential in almost every field today.
Also, I included a video of the Economics Breakdown Song. We had watched this video in my Economics class and I thought that it would bring a good laugh to the audience.

All the other presentations were really good too. I really liked Danny's presentation style and her different ideas. She had a lot of audience interaction and everything in her presentation was very easy to relate with. Thus, she definitely was my favorite. All her animations and pictures were really interesting too.

Chris Nolan's Presentation

I really enjoyed his presentation. It was very informative and also interesting. He explained us how all the various search engines worked. Why Google has 66% of the market share wheras Yahoo, Bing etc. barely even get 10%. This is because of all the various types of algorithms and techniques google uses to give the best results as per everyone's needs. He also explained us how we can better use the "Advanced Search" option and narrow our search results. This has been very helpful.

Powerpoint! Useful or not?

Powerpoint presentations are an essential part of any business or venture. But sometimes presentations can be really boring and slow. The five things that I dislike about a powerpoint presentation are- 1. When the alphabets come out one by one and it just keeps going. 2. When all the slides have a different theme or background color to it. 3. If there is too much word art and pictures al clustered in one slide. 4. When all the colors are differently matched so you cannot read anything properly. 5. If there is too much excel data or too many clustered charts that you can barely even read the data, let alone even understanding it. 

But even with all the negatives of a powerpoint presentation, it is definitely a very handy tool. If we have to present an idea in class or a business is presenting its contract to a large group of investors, powerpoints are definitely the way to go. Instead of using the standard white board, powerpoint gives you a chance to add different kinds of themes/backgrounds, there can be custom music, custom animation, any kind of data whether basic excel sheets or charts can be added, even pictures can be used. Pretty much everything is possible to be presented by a powerpoint. And thus it makes for a good presentation. And as I mentioned earlier, specially for a business idea presentation, powerpoint is definitely the best bet. Because it covers all the aspects of a presentation. 

Pictures that lie!

This is a picture of a University of Wisconsin magazine cover. They not only specifically used a black students picture to show diversity on campus but also used a 1993 football game picture, 1994 snapshot of a black student and used it in 2000 to show the diversity. 

I chose this picture because it was related to University and since this was for a class project, I thought it may be a good match. 

So, the 1993 football game picture was taken, then the black student's picture was added and mixed into it so that it looked like one picture. And to give it the final touchups, the 2001-02 line was added. 

This manipulation was not exactly harmful but i was definitely misleading. Because the university may not actually be that diverse anymore but anyone who read that magazine would believe so. Thus, it was not exactly very ethical of the University to do that.

I chose this video because it very simply explains the basic starting tools of Photoshop. From a simple picture, how you can create a very different and artistic picture. The steps were all explained very well and even the background music was well-suited.