Advice

I have once main piece of advice for people taking this class:

Do your work, and read the assignments carefully.

It really is that simple. If you do the homework and in-class assignments on time, then you will be adequately prepared for the quizzes and exams, and there's absolutely no reason you shouldn't get an A. 

Favorite Websites

As I was looking through people's websites, there were a few that I particularly liked.

1. Autumn's Website by Autumn. I liked the consistent, somewhat symmetrical layout of the pages, and the pictures arranged around the swirly text box thing are visually pleasing. I really like the navbar, especially since the Austin "Hi, How are you?" frog is right in the middle, and I'm from Austin too. The consistent background pattern was also nice since, as I've stated before, one of my pet peeves is rainbow throw up of patterns and color. The background is visually interesting, without being TOO visually interesting. All in all, I thought it was very well done.
2. Riley's Website. I like the clean and fairly simple layout with solid color pages. The page of your favorite websites was probably my favorite - I definitely spend way too much time on those websites! And kudos for playing on the men's lacrosse team, that sounds like a lot of fun (and yes, when it comes to sports, contact makes everything better...).
3. The Cupcake Baker's Heaven by Katie. I have one word. YUM. I will definitely be trying some of these recipes (which is a little scary, cause I can't cook to save my life...). The navbar is really appealing, and makes me want to click. I also like the background and color coordinated text boxes, it looks really nice and professional. Very nice job!

I HAS A WEBSITE

Please visit my website, cause I'm super surprised it actually works... www.cs.trinity.edu/~cafflerb

While occasionally frustrating, making and publishing this website was easier than I would have imagined. I started with KompoZer, but I ended up liking Expression Web better, so I continued with that. In a lot of ways, Expression Web reminds me of an older version of Word (before the fancy new interface), so I was relatively familiar with how things worked. I'm not gonna lie, tables were kind of a pain in the neck (or other body part), but once I got them arranged correctly I think they improve the overall composition of the webpage. My favorite page is the Photo Gallery - I gave all the pictures borders, and I think that makes them look neater. However, I'm probably gonna play around with the "Recent News" cell, because it's way too long. Design-wise, I wanted something that looked fairly professional, and like a site the Trinity might publish. But I'm not entirely happy with the design, I feel like it might be a little plain, and the navbar might be a little cheesy. So I might go back and play around with those this weekend.
I am hoping my site can evolve to be the official Trinity Equestrian Team site, because we currently don't have one. If this is the case, then it would be seen by prospective students and their families, so I want it to look nice. I will probably maintain this site, and maybe use these skills to edit other sites, but I don't know if I'll ever publish another site for a class.

FYI: file://sol.cs.trinity.edu/cafflerb/local/

Apparently Sarah was right all along...

My friend Sarah used to yell at me every time I set my computer on the carpet, telling me it would overheat and terrible things would happen such as fiery death and destruction and mayhem. I figured she was overreacting. I mean, maybe her laptop was just old or defective or something. But nope. Turns out she was right. Huh.
I have a habit of leaving my computer on my bed, which I never thought twice about, but apparently this actually can cause your computer to overheat, since the cooling mechanism relies on movement of air, which is being drawn in from vents on the bottom of the computer. So, when you leave it on soft surfaces like carpet or bedding, this air flow is slowed and the computer cannot cool itself. Knowing this, I'm trying to make an effort to be careful now... I like my computer, and would ideally like it to last at least 4 years. So thanks to Larry Hechler for telling me this, and hopefully I can avoid any catastrophic damage to my computer!

I can't believe they... oh wait, nevermind.

While I realize most of you (I hope) weren't actually fooled into believing that Ben and I would torture Jillian in such a manner, it isn't always this easy to detect and dismiss fake photos. However, this may not always be true. Alin Popescu and Hany Farid from Dartmouth University have recently developed a computer algorithm that aids in the detection of altered photos by looking for places in the image that have been distorted, resized, or rotated. Even when these changes are not detectable by the naked eye, this new computer algorithm can pick them out (Baker 2005). What this means for the future of photo fakery is hard to say, but I'm confident it won't stop photoshop amateurs like me from manipulating images for fun.
In choosing an image to manipulate, I thought it would be fun to make something to submit to our annual family calendar. I have two younger siblings, Ben and Jillian, so I was thinking about choosing some famous group of three to photoshop our heads onto. When I came across the three Stooges, I thought "Perfect!". I think this image basically describes my childhood - Ben and I teamed up to make likkle Jilly-kin's life as 'fun' as possible. I find this image particularly appropriate since Jillian (in the picture) has braces. To do this, I cut our heads out of other pictures with the lasso tool, and then used the eraser tool to clean up the image. I rotated, shrunk, and then changed the heads to black and white in order to make them fit. In order to make my 'hands' appear to be in front of Jillian's head I made her head partially see-through, and then erased where the hands were so they'd show through. I put the border on using Picnik. The background picture I got through an image search, the pictures of Ben and Jillian came off my camera, and the picture of me came off Facebook. I don't consider this image harmful, and my brother likes it, but I've yet to hear what Jillian thinks, so she may disagree.

Article:

Baker, Monya. "Photoshop Sleuths." Technology Review 108.2 (2005): 82. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 10 Nov. 2010.

PowerPoint Presentations

I did my presentation on James Herriot, pen name of James Alfred Wight, who is arguably one of the most famous veterinarians of all time. He worked as a vet in England during the 1940s, and then wrote a series of books known collectively as "All Creatures Great and Small" loosely based on the people he worked with. These were some of my favorite books when I was younger, and I still enjoy them even now. While they didn't make me want to be a vet, they were definitely very encouraging. Most people would read his descriptions of freezing half to death in some isolated, drafty barn while aiding in the birth of a calf and say "Who the heck would want to do that?!" But I had the exact opposite reaction - while it doesn't sound fun, it does sound... rewarding, exciting, and a whole lot more useful, important, and necessary than many other jobs out there. Maybe its just his writing style, but there was always something romantic about it, in a way. I think these books were rather influential in making me want to work with large animals, even though ironically he only worked with large animals because there weren't enough small animals at the time for a vet to make a living off of.

In making my PowerPoint, I tried to keep it relatively simple, because themes that are too busy make me a little crazy. I know many people will disagree, but in  most cases I actually prefer black and white (or some other conservative colors), which is why I left the slides mostly white, and stuck with black text and one font, except for the title. I do like the look of the nature scenes taking up about 1/3 of the slide, and I think it really fits well with my topic since as a country vet Herriot spends most of his time outdoors. Overall, I like the theme I ended up with, with the dominant colors being consistently black, white, and green. When it comes to animations I am usually of the opinion that less is more, so I tried to keep them consistent and subtle. I did learn something interesting about myself by doing this presentation - having notes doesn't help. I can't both read something and present it, and so when I try to look at notes, I tend to lose my place and train of thought. I'm better off just knowing what I'm presenting without having to rely on notes.

One of my favorite presentations was on the Blood-Brain Barrier. I really liked the graphics showing the neurons in action, and I thought she did a good job explaining in an understandable way. The graphics were particularly effective since she explained them so well. Another presentation I liked was about Chemistry. I really liked the video of the reaction, and think it was a very good way to get everyone's attention before going into more serious subject matter. Even though I choose those two, all the presentations were really good.

Chris Nolan - Searching with Google

Google can be a very useful tool for searching the Internet, as long as the user is careful to evaluate the results, and can distinguish good sources from bad. In his presentation, Chris Nolan gave us some good tips for finding results that have academic value. One that I found particularly useful and didn't already know about was the ability to limit results based on what kind of site they are. So, if your looking for academic results, you could try limiting the results to .edu sites or if you want government sites, limit to .gov. This is only an example of the things you can do with Google advanced search options, which can definitely improve your searches. Another thing to consider when looking for academic sources are blogs. While I would never have assumed a blog could be a legitimate academic sources, apparently it is becoming more and more common for researchers and experts in the field to blog about their findings, in which case the blog may actually have academic value. I was surprised by this, but I suppose it makes sense. However, I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable citing a blog as a source in a major paper...