If you like CS 1300 and getting caught in the rain

The most important piece of advice that I can give an in coming student to Ms. Belise's Essential Computer Skills class is: come to class. I know, it sounds too obvious--just trust me on this one. You see, Ms. Belisle assigns a lot of homework--a great, heaping, steaming pile of homework--which is almost always due by the next class. Even though all of the assignments are listed on the class website, along with descriptions and tutorials, it is still quite possible that you will not really understand exactly what it is she expects or how to go about doing it if you are not there for her in-class explanations and demonstrations. This is particularly true when an assignment is added to, deleted from, or changed from what is posted on the class website. Also, there are many times when much or even all of a particular homework assignment will be done in class. This has the added advantage of available immediate help from Ms. Belisle and the the teacher's aid*. Good luck and have fun! You'll learn a lot.

*I want to take advantage of this opportunity to thank and give credit to our incredible, wonderful teacher's aid: Amy Braid. You're awesome!

Celebrate websites, come on!

My three favorite websites, in no particular order, were those of Angel Dominguez, Anna Kern, and Chiara Ferrari. In this blog, I will only address the positive aspects of their sites. My primary reason for choosing these was that they are visually very appealing. Angel's background is of a beautiful design with a matching title that nearly blends in with it. Her image map looks great and, of course, all of her links work. Anna's site is very simple, artsy, and avant garde. I really appreciate the attention to little details such as the seeing name of the page you're on in bold in the menu at the top and the links to the albums on the gallery page changing pictures when you hover over them. Chiara's site looks great because of her own artwork, which continues to impress me. It looks as if she drew her pictures right on the screen. She uses a fun, bright theme that is consistent throughout the site. By the way, you are cordially invited to check out the Jordan Enloe Webpage. It's not too bad, if I do say so myself.

I'm on a Highway to HTML

Website creation programs like Expression Web and Dreamweaver are fantastic. They allow one to quickly and easily design web pages and publish them on a website. A major advantage of such software is the ability to immediately view the effects of design changes on the page being created or edited. However, the greatest advantage of these programs is clearly the ability to design, create, and edit websites without having to write lines of code for each visual element one wants to present. No one wants to type line after line after line of HTML, repeatedly saving and refreshing to see how each line of command changes the look of the page.

While it is a great idea to utilize technology to our advantage, sometimes it is beneficial to retain the ability to accomplish tasks the "old fashioned" way. This is one of those instances. There are times when a design element cannot be created or edited correctly using these easier programs. In these cases, the ability to program using HTML code is essential. There are many times that the color, size, spacing, etc... of a line or body of text, background color, pcitures, links, and other visual elements will not appear as programmed in web creation software because the underlying HTML code dictates different formatting. These issues can only be resolved by altering the actual lines of HTML code associated with those elements.

I've got the PowerPoint

In analyzing the PowerPoint presentations, I was a bit picky. I was looking for good information, a well-spoken presentation, and, of course, a nice-looking slide show with appropriate pictures and animations. There were two in particular that impressed me as very well-done and complete presentations: those of Ian Smith and Chiara Ferrari. My own presentation, of course, was my very favorite.

Ian's was great in part because of his attention to detail. He found and used the exact Star Wars font and had a consistent visual theme to match. His animations were well-timed and fluid. He gave a fantastic concise summary of George Lucas' career, including the stuff that only geeks (and I) know about, such as THX 1138. Ian gave an excellent oral presentation as well, a necessary component that many unfortunately forget.

I really didn't know what to make of Chiara's presentation at first--her visuals seemed so childish. It didn't take me too long to determine that she had a consistent theme and the visuals were absolutely appropriate for her subject, which was a lot of fun. Her animations fit quite well within the overall theme, look, and feel of the slide show. The highlight, by far, was the inclusion of her own original art--that was a great touch! She also gave a lot of great information for anyone interested in drawing, and her verbal presentation was a solid asset to the presentation as a whole.

Both Ian and Chiara obviously put a lot of hard work into their projects, and the finished product in each case was a classy, interesting, enjoyable presentation. They both proved that they really know what they're doing with PowerPoint, they really knew about their chosen subject, and that they have the ability to effectively communicate--a valuable asset in many areas of life and in most fields of employment.

Search like an Egyptian

I learned quite a few things from Mr. Nolan's lecture. I knew Google was popular, but i was surprised to find out that 59.8% of all Internet searches are done on Google. I've always been a Yahoo man, myself. It was good to find out that advertising dollars do not determine which sites get highest placement on Google's search results--well, according to Google, anyway. it was very helpful to learn what a url can tell you about a site and that one can often find more specific information about a website at the bottom of the page. I particularly appreciated the detailed information about the powerful "Advanced Search" option on Google. A new piece of information for me was the difference between a directory and a search engine (while a directory is a small collection of sources gathered by a small, connected group, a search engine is a very large collection of sources gathered by thoroughly combing through a multitude of websites, computers, and servers). The web search exercises we did in class were interesting and even fun. Thank you, Mr. Nolan!

Runnin' with the Excel

Excel is really cool, and I'm not just saying that. I mean it because I am a nerd. I have had previous experience with Excel. When I was in the Air Force, I ran a clinic's budget using an Excel file that I created myself. I even made graphs and charts to give to the Officer In Charge along with a printout every month. However, that was Excel 95, I believe; roughly the equivalent of cave paintings by my fellow students' standards ("Excel 95? Didn't you have to keep that running by shoveling coal into the computer?"). Even then, I thought Excel was cool.

Now, of course, Excel 07 is the programme du jour (that means "complicated geek stuff" in French), and it's much cooler than any previous version. I am just getting to know it through this class, but I am very impressed with how intuitive it is relative to its ancestors. I knew a few formulas before, but I am now a lot more efficient with them. I can use them in conjunction with conditional cell formatting and other tools to do a lot more, which allows me to more effectively communicate a lot more. I have just created a home budget for my wife and I. We are able to keep track of bills, expenses and spending very quickly and easily, as well as quickly and easily adjust certain elements of our budget throughout the month as it becomes necessary.

Obviously, there are uses for Excel in the work place as well (besides budgeting). If I were a History professor (a future possibility), I could keep a beautiful record of my students' grades. Not only could I see instantly what had been completed and what hadn't, the effect of each grade on their overall average could be noted immediately. I could also demonstrate hypothetical scenarios to students, letting them know what they need to do to get the grade they want. I wish my professors were that cool to me...

With or Without You

I chose this pair of pictures which exhibit the amazing disappearing Leon Trotsky because of its political and historical poignancy. Trotsky was a key figure in the Russian Communist Revolution of 1917, second only to Vladimir Lenin, and founder and commander of the Red Army. In the 1920s, however, Trotsky became an outspoken opponent of Josef Stalin's increasingly bureaucratic brand of totalitarian Communism (as opposed to the less bureaucratic Marxist-Leninist brand of totalitarian Communism). He was exiled from the Soviet Union at the end of that decade, and was later assassinated by a Soviet agent in Mexico.

In the photo on the left, Trotsky is seen hobnobbing with other Soviet officials. In the picture on the right, Trotsky is not seen hobnobbing with other Soviet officials, probably because he isn't seen at all. This type of photo manipulation was an extremely common practice in Stalin's workers' paradise. When anyone crossed Stalin, they were either killed or sent to work camps/prisons known as gulags (where they died gradually by intense labor and malnutrition instead of by a bullet to the back of the head). But Stalin was a thorough man--when you were gone, you were way gone. It was as if you never existed. Stalin killed countless officials, Party members, friends, and even family members, but he didn't stop there. Anyone known to the public, especially known to have been in his good graces, was erased from photographs as well as documents, books, news archives, or anything else that mentioned them at all. His enemies were not just removed from this world, but from history altogether, especially if they were once his allies.

Of course, this manipulation is harmful. To deny any relationship with a man who was instrumental in your rise to power (ahem, Barrack Obama, ahem) is to not only dangerously distort history, but to cause a massive cognitive dissonance on the society as a whole. George Orwell brilliantly demonstrates this in 1984: the ever-present socialist regime would not only reverse its positions and claim that the current position was the position it had held all along (ahem, Barrack Obama, ahem), it would claims things that the people could plainly see were not true. Doing this repeatedly caused the aforementioned cognitive dissonance, both in 1984 and in the all-too-real Soviet Union, subjecting those trapped behind the Iron Curtain to a sort of nationwide psychological trauma by creating massive disconnect with reality.