Weaving a Website!

I really enjoyed putting together my website and I was so excited to share my art with my classmates that I exceeded the size limit! Oh no! I managed to par it down with the help of my excellent art critic friend, Kendra, thank goodness! The only problem was that the system wouldn't let me publish my website alone, and I couldn't get it to publish without the home directory! Oh well, I learned a lot and I was so excited to see my classmates' websites as well, what a talented class I'm in! I especially enjoyed Natalie's and Katie's websites. Natalie's was so informative and incredibly detailed, I feel like I've learned so much about her! She spent a lot of time on her site, and it definitely paid off! Katie's site was enjoyable and I loved her pages! I especially liked how her text in her navigation bar tilted diagonally to give it a funky and cute but professional looking style, way to go! I feel that by learning from my own experiences and looking through my classmate's websites I will be ready in the future to tackle any website that comes my way!!!
Would you like to see my website? Click here!

The Boo-tiful Ballroom

I really enjoyed Stephanie Hill's presentation over homelessness. Her presentation was informative and very emotionally touching while also being clean and streamlined. I was also really impressed with her transitions on each slide!
On a different note, I had a lot of fun creating my own pictures that lie! for mine, I looked up the ballroom in a hotel and pictures of dancing couples from the 20's. By creating layers and cutting out the background in the photo of the couples and making them transparent, while also editing the ballroom to make it look more subdued, I came up with this result! Hope you enjoy it!

Feel the Power...Of A Powerpoint Presentation!

In my last Computer Skills class we gave power point presentations over a topic of personal interest. Mine was over Art Therapy and I really enjoyed learning how to add music to my presentation, animating a gif image, and learning how to give an object a motion path! My classmates had INCREDIBLE presentations! Two I really enjoyed would be Katie Leonard's presentation over International Development and Kendra Doshier's presentation over majoring in Communication. Katie Leonard presented a very clean, easy to read presentation over a topic she was obviously very passionate about! I admired her spunk and her desire to help the poorest of poor! What a sweet girl! Kendra had a complex topic, but managed to make her presentation easy to read and very interesting! I loved how she animated that reel of film! My classmates are really talented at making power points!

Excelling at Excel!

I was so excited to learn how to use a paste special in my powerpoints in order to create a link to an existing document. This is really useful to me for my art portfolio power points. Whenever I edit one of my photos that has been paste special into my power point, the photo on my slide will automatically change! I can see how this would be beneficial to a firm of Architects. Whenever they update building plans on an Excel spreadsheet, the changes will automatically be made on the power point!!!

Scanners and Video Cameras and a Digital Audio Recording Lab, Oh My!

When we visited the CLT I discovered a nook of computers that had scanners and Adobe Photoshop! This is really exciting for me, as I am an art major and Adobe Photoshop is a useful art making tool! Another thing that made me really happy was the discovery of the Digital Audio Lab, where students can record monologues, songs, presentations, you nme it! My sister is visiting on March 20th and now that I've found the Audio Lab, My sister and I can play a song together (she plays the violin and I play the flute) while she's here and send it to our parents back home!

Now You See It, Now You Don't!

I chose to talk about the picture of the illustrator of "Goodnight Moon", Clement Hurd. Originally, the illustrator's picture on the dust jacket of the book showed him smoking a cigarette, but apparently Harper Collins thought his cigarette was inappropriate and PRESTO! The cigarette is gone from newer copies of the popular children's book. Now, I understand covering up sexually explicit, racy imagery, like the bare bottom on a bicycle on a Queen poster in 1974, but I feel that covering up a cigarette seems like overkill. Does Harper Collins really think that kids are going to start smoking because of the illustrator of "Goodnight Moon" does? It was an awkward edit as well, since Mr.Hurd now looks like he's awkwardly groping the air! While this wasn't a harmful change, it seems really unnecessary! In fact, this reminds me of when American poster companies removed Paul McCartney's cigarette from his hand from the famous Abbey Road picture. Here's the edited version.http://www.allposters.com/View_HighZoomResPop.asp?apn=2687971&imgloc=7-791-ATCI000Z.jpg&imgwidth=949&imgheight=632&sc=False&ct=%20Aquarius%20Images&cw=20&ch=20
And here's the original! http://www.usageorge.com/Jokes/Jokes/Beatles_Abbey-Road.jpg
For more information on this Abbey Road touch up, see this article! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2681219.stm

Oh The Tangled Websites We Weave! Thank Goodness We Have Search Engines!

I really enjoyed Christopher Nolan's presentation on search engines, I never knew what the word "cached" meant on a search result, and clicking a link for a cached website can be really handy if the original site is down or has been recently edited. Cached means that website has been saved on the search engine server. So if you can’t go to the original website because the server is down or too many people are on it, etc. you can see the website as it was when it was last saved!

I was really surprised to learn that Google can also work as a dictionary. When you type in define colon and then a word or phrase, it gives you a quick definition as well as the link to the site! Christopher Nolan's presentation has really changed the way I search now!

I was really interested in Mr.Hardin's lecture concerning the Sonny Bono Act(Mickey Mouse Protection Act), which extended the term of copyright an additional 20 years. Disney told Bono that since it was almost 50 years since Walt Disney's death, their characters were about to go into public domain, which would mean that Disney would lose their rights to their characters. He helped out by extending copyright 20 years. In 2018 Disney's characters will run the risk of becoming public domain again.
I can see the benefits of these characters becoming public domain as well as the harm. In support of these characters becoming public domain, I can see why the American people would want these beloved cartoon characters to use as their own. And by 2018, Mr.Disney will have been dead for 70 years! On the flip side, Disney's characters have become icons, and losing control over the use of these icons could be very damaging to the company, especially monetarily, since people would be allowed to use their characters on merchandise!
I am curious to see the outcome of this unusual copyright dilemma in the year 2018!

Figuring Out Facebook In an Academic Setting

I am a regular Facebook user and I feel that it really helps me stay connected with what's happening on campus. While Facebook can eat up study time and become a purgatory for procrastinators, Facebook can also be a useful tool for college students. For example, recently I lost my notes for my Italian class and was able to post a message on a classmate's wall asking if I could look over her notes. Last semester, as a HUMA student, I received messages from my peer tutors informing me of study sessions and times when they would be available. Facebook serves to help socially as well as academically. For example, last night I received a message on Facebook from my Intramural soccer team informing me of a practice at 10! With Facebook, my team captain was able to inform the team of a practice through a post to our soccer group much more rapidly than by calling us all up individually. I am really pleased with Facebook as a networking tool. I believe it enables me to stay connected both academically and socially at Trinity!

The Word on Microsoft Word!
I am familiar with some basic concepts of Microsoft Word, like adding a header or a footer and the proper format for citations. I would really like to learn how to use Excel, especially since, as a Psych major, I will need to take statistics courses that use Excel!

Salutations from Lindsay!

Hello, my name is Lindsay and I am quite happy with my moniker, given that at birth my dad wanted to name me either Edge (after the guitarist in U2) or Sacagawea (yes, after the navigator of the Lewis and Clark expedition and no, I am not Native American at all, my dad just wanted to shout "Hey Sac, get ova' heyuh" in a thick New York accent). I am an Art and Psychology double major from Edmond, Oklahoma, the state "where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain", usually in the form of an F5 tornado. My town's slogan is "Edmond, a great place to grow" and I would say that, living in Oklahoma for a decade and a half, I agree. My home town is the perfect size, small enough that you run into people you know at Target, but large enough to have at least one Starbucks located within a mile of home. To me, nothing is better than curling up with a good book or working on art, and I guess that's rare among my age group. On the first week of school, my male neighbors across the hall were horrified to discover I had never played a video game before, and promptly made it their mission to "fix" me. I swear, one of them almost cried whenever I didn't know the name for the joystick and referred to it as the "blobby thing".
I'm known among my friends in Oklahoma and my friends in Trinity as having unusual hobbies, and the most recent skill I've acquired is glassblowing. I made my first vase two weeks ago, which is a major improvement from my second lesson, when I set the floor on fire (My teacher was completely calm during this incident, and, as he adjusted his rose-colored glasses and leisurely put out the flames, he commented that "this sort of thing happens all the time.")! Unfortunately it's not only the floor that gets burned from my hobby. My arms have been covered in raised red welts and blisters and blackened by scorch marks from the flame. Secretly I'm proud of looking like I've been through the ringer for my art because I believe it gives me a closer connection to what I create. For the time I've spent and the lessons I've learned, The Blue Sage Glass Studio in Oklahoma City is one of my favorite places. Check it out!

http://s21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/artzyteen/?action=view&current=glassstudiopaint.jpg

Here's my first vase, I hope you like it!


My secret fact is that I am a belly dancer and I'm currently teaching my friends how to belly dance, including the boys!


I haven't had a computer course before, so admittedly I am unfamiliar with programs like Microsoft Excel. On the positive side, as an artist I am familiar with Adobe Photoshop, and my dad is an IT Director who has taught me a lot about solving computer problems. In fact, he laughed hysterically when he learned I didn't pass the computer course requirement exam. My mother, however, was sympathetic, though she also believes if you click the refresh button harder her page will load more quickly than using a light click of her mouse! I'm really looking forward to expanding my knowledge about computers, and I'm already having a blast blogging!

Questions? Comments? Happy Thoughts? Email me at lmarotta@trinity.edu