My Website

You can find my website at http://www.cs.trinit.edu/~nlyford.

Building the website came with some challenges, one was simply understanding how to use the software. Also choosing which program to use was difficult, both offered good and bad things. I found Seamonkey more user friendly and easy to use but Dreamweaver offered more options and I thought made the website look better. Not knowing a lot of the tools was hard to surpass, a lot of the time when I wanted to change something, I wouldn't know how and would have to look it up. Im happy with how the website turned out in the end, I think it has good information and looks somewhat professional.

Advice for future students

Be sure to take the class seriously, there is a tendency to think you already know everything you are learning. This is true for a lot of things covered but I learned things about programs that I thought I knew. Also, be sure to watch the Lynda.com videos, they are very helpful and informational. They are a great tool to have when you are confused on any topic, I know I will be using them whenever I get lost.

Good Luck!

PowerPoint Presentations

The subject of my PPT presentation was "Puppy Fashion." I really enjoyed making the PPT because it evolved a lot of my own photos. I learned a lot about animations because I was only given four slides for the entire PPT. I wish i had understood more about how to add videos into my PPT because my videos ended up not working while presenting. One of the only frustrating parts about my PPT was how long some of the transitions were, I didn't realize how long some of them were, it left some awkward pauses in my PPT. I really enjoyed Jake's presentation because it was very interactive and funny. His presentation kept the audience interested while still making a good point. His use of the PPT as well as personal presentation was great. I also enjoyed Meredith's presentation, her's was funny and topical. The transitions between slides were impressive and she had a good use of videos.  

Pics That Lie

I chose a picture of a light house and the coast, I chose this picture because of the potential devastating impact of environmental change would have on the coast. I found the image on Google images after searching "lighthouse." I edited the photo in a few ways, the most obvious is the removal of color from the sea and the changing of the hue of the sky. I changed these to give the photo an apocalyptic feel and dramatize the effect that environmental change can have. Another change was the liquefying of the lighthouse, I did this to give the feel of a candle burning. I then added a wick and flame, this again emphasizes the candle feel, showing that time is running out to change our ways. I don't think the manipulation really harms the photo, instead the manipulation adds more meaning to the photo. The article I researched was about the detection of manipulated photos. The article discussed a program developed by the former vice president of product management, this program can immediately detect if a photo has been manipulated. The article only related to my  photo because my photo was edited, however I found the article interesting because of the link between the former vice president and his new line of work. I ended up choosing this article because most people are unaware of how many photos that they see are edited. Although I think that most photos that are edited are done so to emphasize the effect of the photo, its still reasonable for people to understand what they are looking at, and that that photo may not be completely "real."

Fourandsix Technologies, Inc. Fourandsix Unites Photoshop Team Veteran with Renowned Dartmouth Scientist to Fight Photo Fakery. Business Wire (English). 09/18/2012.

Chris Nolan Presentation

Chris Nolan is the Assistant University Librarian. He came to our class to inform us on many of our favorite search engines, and specifically, Google. Mister Nolan gave the statistic that an astounding, 66.4% of internet users primarily use Google as their search engine of choice. Google brings in an astounding 40 billion dollars a year as a company, 90% of that revenue comes from ads alone. Despite its popularity, it turns out that not everything exists on Google, the search engine doesn't have access to all databases, so just because something can't be found on Google, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In a surprising revelation we learned that each users individual search results go through what can be called a "filter bubble." Essentially the "filter bubble" has remembered other items that you have been interested in and shows you results that it thinks are going to to interest you. Google has a very complex algorithm to give you the results that end up appearing on the screen, and sometimes doesn't work perfectly, for example, scholarly items are listed later which might give the impression that they might not exist. Chris showed us a really interesting video on the search bubble we encounter everyday, the link is http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html.

PowerPoint

When I think back to the worst presentations I have been forced to sit through. Everyone one of them had PowerPoint in common. There is almost no way to make PPT presentations interesting. By far the worst thing about PPT is that when people present using it, they usually have made little to know preparations on what they will say in their presentation and instead rely on the PowerPoint to do the work for them. Probably 90% of PPT presentations feature the presenter reading their slides to the audience. Often presenters insist on putting way to much information in each slide, the slides are meant to show bullet points, not essays. My AP US GOV teacher was a huge fan of PPT, everyday we did the same thing, sit down, turn off the lights and look at slides. Needless to say, there was a large amount of sleeping in that class. I'm sure there are some people that can use PPT effectively, I am yet to meet them, overall I wholeheartedly believe PPT to be the most useless and least interesting tool for presenting.

True Lies

Ms. Salvo makes some very valid arguments about photo manipulation and how image editing software has changed how much people can really trust what they are seeing. Her argument about the tulip field is an interesting contradiction to how most people view image editing. When I personally think of photo editing I image someone using Photoshop to literally change what is seen. However, her tulip argument is that just by changing what the beholder focuses on, the photo has been edited. This is an interesting thought because by just changing the focus, the photos impact is completely changed. I find ethics in general to be an almost impossible subject to address since they can be different for every person. I have mixed feelings regarding photo manipulation, it does seem dishonest to edit a photo but at the same time if a photographer wants to give a photo a "feel" that the true image just doesn't show, than I understand how editing the photo is useful.

CLT visit

Our visit to the CLT was really interesting. I could definitely see myself using for classes or even for a job interview. The CLT would be really useful for making video projects or really for any class that uses visuals. I had never been there before and was actually looking for a place where I could scan papers. I had heard the acronym "CLT" before didn't know what it meant. The 3D printer was cool, i hope to have something printed in my four years here. The programs that were presented to us were interesting, I didn't know we had access to that many programs just for being students. Really useful trip!!

The Ethics of Photojournalism

This is a photo of a British soldier in Basra. This photo appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times in April 2003. The photographer used a composite of two photos to make the photo better. The photographer was fired after the news that the photo was manipulated surfaced. 

I chose this video because it really exemplified how quickly photos can be edited. The ending product is really cool looking as well.

Legal? Ethical? Who knows.

In my opinion the problem with this situation is not who should be blamed for the tragedy. Obviously the loss of a life is horrible but I don’t think anyone needs to be blamed for it. The medical student’s intent for his article was to help elderly citizens make a difficult decision, not assist a teenager in suicide. The weblog cannot be to be blame because a blog is supposed to be a way for individuals to express their opinions and should not be monitored by the blog.  Blaming the teenager would also be unreasonable because teenagers are some of the most unstable and irrational people. If the teenager was predisposed to committing suicide than I doubt the medical student’s article did anything to advance that decision. If anything I would place the most blame on the parents of the teenager. This story does not give enough information regarding how informed the parents were of how emotionally unstable their child was. If the parents had a vast knowledge of how ill their child was then they should have sought help for him/her immediately. This help may have included restricting his/her internet access, I am no expert on dealing with emotionally unstable teens but it would seem that not allowing them access to a page talking about suicide would be valid. I would never charge a parent who has lost a child as being negligent or even bad parents unless the circumstances directly pointed to that, which doesn’t seem to be the case in this situation.

            I don’t feel it is necessary to charge anyone with a crime in this situation, however if the parents felt that someone was at fault then it would not be ridiculous for them to charge someone since they are in such an unfortunate and probably emotional state.

Addressing the ethics of the medical student’s blog post in another situation entirely from the criminal aspects of this case. Again, I don’t claim to be an ethics expert but perhaps the student should have thought a little more about who could access his blog. The medical students should have understood that the world is filled with unstable people who are considering suicide, in fact the Nation Institute of Mental Health estimates that “26.2%”[1] of Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness. I don’t wish to make any statements about the ethics of the student, he surely regrets that the information he provided was used in the suicide of a teenager. The student was attempting to provide a service to a certain group and the information unfortunately fell into the dangerous hands of an unstable teen. We cannot fault the student for his intent, his execution could have been better.

The tragedy does not require that someone get blamed. Instead we all need to understand that there are sick people in the world and that anything that is posted to the internet can be accessed by these people. Everyone involved in the case probably feels some sort of responsibility for the suicide, whether it be the student, the weblog, or the parents, but no one can be, or should be fully blamed. I would hope a real court would find something similar. My view is that it is extremely unfortunate that there is some belief in our country that when a tragedy like this one occurs that someone is financially responsible and the first choice is to go to court and have the court decide who’s fault it is. A better view would be to reflect on how we can ensure that this doesn’t happen again or at least happens less frequently. 

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[1] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml#Intro

Lynda Excel

I thought learning excel from Lynda was challenging but a very good introduction. I really like that they spend a lot of time on each topic, it makes the tasks easy to understand. However, at the same time it is a little difficult to learn a program like Excel in a none, hands-on way. Easily the best thing about the Lynda.com learning is that the videos are always there to watch, definitely a huge plus!

Copyright Presentation

One thing a new college student definitely doesn't think about when they first enter school is how copyright law will affect the coming years of their lives. I know that wasn't the first thing on my mind when I entered school. In high school, the idea was sometimes mentioned but never really talked about seriously and the discussion usually ended with “as long as you sight your sources, you’re fine.” I never know how much students actually infringe on copyright laws, even though most of it is completely fine because of Fair Use Policies. One thing that does often come up is plagiarism, often students who plagiarize don’t mean to plagiarize, however the consequences are disastrous. Another major issue with especially college students is torrents, either for movies, music or other types of media. Unfortunately for the students the excuse “I’m just a poor college student” won’t work if you’re caught using a torrent, the consequences are severe. 

After taking the copyright quiz, I was less than surprised by most of the answers. However, the third question was surprising. It regarded a video of Richard Nixon leaving the white house after he resigned. I would think this would fall under fair use since the teacher uses the video every year, apparently not. 

Copyright Presentation by Noah Carr Lyford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My Selfie

My photo shows two half, a light and a dark side, like most people I believe this describes me. I could not get the photo to turn right side up...

Using Lynda.com

Lynda.com was very easy to use. The presenter moved quickly between items and kept a seemingly boring task interesting. The videos were organized well and easy to find. The presenter had a very soothing voice. I didn't really encounter any problems, I was very impressed with Lynda.com. I found the videos comparable to learning in class, I still prefer learning in class as a group because of the ability to ask questions. 

One thing I learned from the online tutorial was how to crop images. 

Trinity LAN Diagram

Network Server Diagram

These three folders are all accessible by students from anywhere on campus and allow easy access to files which may be required for different class, including our ITS class.

Introductions

I'm Noah Lyford. I'm from Anchorage, Alaska. I went to West Anchorage High School, I played baseball in high school and still enjoy the sport. I enjoy fishing and camping as well. I have three brothers, none of us were born in Alaska but all three of us identify with Alaska. I would describe my computer ability as limited, I cannot think of any special skills I have concerning computers. Some concerns I have about the class are my limited ability with computers and that others might be more capable than me. My secret fact is that I've never ridden roller coaster. My Trinity email address is nlyford@trinity.edu.