Advice

Do your homework! You get a little every day and it may not seem like it is worth a lot of points, but they add up, so take 30 minutes out of your day and do it.

Student websites

My three favorite were Zach Wright's, Zack Claar's, and Paige Patrick's. Zach Wright's gave a good overview of Trinity. Zack Claar's was about bikes and it was very informative. I actually learned something. Paige's was about Art with a Heart and Camp Cavett. It was very colorful and appealing to the eye, and it was very informative about the charities she is involved with.

Website

Please visit my website at www.cs.trinity.edu/~zlambert

Making my website wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Microsoft Expression Web made it a lot easier than hand coding. It did end up turning into a lot more work than I thought, but it was not too hard. I am most proud of my Basketball section. I thought it looked the best. I did make a few changes to it including making the text larger in the nav bar and editing the margins on my future plans page. My biggest technical and design challenge was the title page. I had to edit the pictures in photoshop and create the whole thing there and then make hotspots to link to other pages. I will show my site to my friends and family. I will definately use these skills if I ever make another website.

Larry Hechler

Larry Hechler came to visit us last class period. Our maintenance people, which there are only four total, are charged with the repair of all computer equipment on campus. They maintain around 4000 peices of equipment! He also gave us some tips. For example, when cleaning your computer, keep your hands off the LCD screen. Never spray or put anything on the screen or keyboard that contains alcohol, ammonia, chlorine bleach, or acetone. Larry recommends a solution called Techspray. Also, when buying a computer, consider this. Dell has a 4 year complete warranty package. They will give you an entirely new computer should something happen to yours. Apple's warranty only lasts 2 years and only covers hardware failure. This tip is for Mac users. You can get windows on your Mac. Lastly,remember to back up everything on your computer. It would be a shame to lose everything you have or lose a term paper. Back it up.

Power Point Presentations

I didn't have to think too long about what I wanted to do in my presentation. Michael Jordan is by far my favorite player and I decided to do a biography on his career. My favorite part was the highlight tape I got from YouTube. I did not have to do anything and I got to watch Michael Jordan play. The one thing I would of changed was the background. I should of done a cool wallpaper instead of just colors. My other 2 favorite presentations were Zach Claar's and Zach Wright's. They were over biking and polevaulting. Zach Claar had a cool video that showed what heppens when the biker in the front falls. Zach Wright had a good animated GIF of him clearing 13 feet.

Pictures that Lie

I chose this picture to show how great the Trinity Basketball team is. I made this picture from 2 pictures off of the Trinity website of our in game photos and I got the other 3 pictures off of google. I cut all of them out and placed them in front of the crowd. It is manipulated because Trinity would never play the Lakers. It is not a harmful manipulation because everybody knows that we would beat the Lakers if we had the chance to play them..... It relates to the article I chose because it could be a example of a news organization manipulating a photo.

Citation
Lowrey, Wilson. "Normative Conflict in the Newsroom: The Case of Digital Photo Manipulation." Journal of Mass Media Ethics 18.2 (2003): 123. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 5 Apr. 2011.

"Digital photo manipulation is often treated in the literature as a problem that occurs when individuals stray from a single set of ethical standards."

Chris Nolan

Mr. Christopher Nolan came and talked to us about surfing the web. He gave us valuble information such as the uses of search engines, how to manipulate your search criteria, and why you get the results that you do. While there are many different search engines, Google is by far the most popular with a search engine market share of 66%. The next closest is Yahoo with only 16%. Search engines, such as Google, use algorithms to determine what websites to pull up. They also keep track of the number of hits a website obtains and give more weight to websites that are deemed as credible sources. Search Engine Optimization is a huge business now. Advertizers are all over the internet. Just how big is it? Well, Google is considering changing its search algorithms and that could cost businesses one BILLION dollars.

Power Point

Power Point can be a very useful application to present a large amount of information in a condensed form. While it is a great tool, many people cannot properly convey the information in a way that is not boring to the audience. Ever have to sit through a powerpoint that's not interactive, the person is reading every slide (like we can't do it ourselves...), and every slide is white with black text? Yeah, I've sat through a few of those. Another thing that is annoying are the text, flashing photos, and sounds. They can completeley trash a good presentation and distract the audience. Power Points need variety, but it should be done in moderation. Also, why do people give handouts of the presentation before giving it? Why would we even pay attention to it when we can flip through the handout and finish it 30 minutes quicker? Just a thought...

Excel

I have had a pretty good experience with excel so far. I had some basic skills and knowledge of excel before coming into this class but there have been a few things that I learned. I plan on majoring in Bussiness Administration with a concentration in Finance and excel will be very useful. The calculations it can perform along with the chart making will be extremely helpful. I also plan to use the amortization chart we learned how to use in class. This will be good to use when I buy a house. I will also use excel to keep track of my finances and budgets. The only thing I dislike about the program is it gets pretty repetitive.

Internet Ethics

I chose the picture of the Lebanese city full of smoke after an Israeli air raid. This photograph came from Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj. The picture was manipulated by the photographer adding more smoke rising from the buildings. I think he did this to make the Israeli bombings appear more severe than what they really were. The manipulation had the potential to be very harmful. With the photographer creating more smoke, it makes the destruction look worse, making Israel look like it is bombing everything in Lebanon. This could have sparked more anti-Israel feelings in the Middle East and cause war to break out.

I chose this video because it shows the many ways a photo can be redone. Tim Lynch, a professional photographer/retoucher, gives an inside look at what really happens. According to him, 99.9% of all photographs of celebrities are retouched or altered in some way. They want to be viewed as perfect, which in reality, is impossible.

Facebook can be Dangerous

Many teens and young adults today have a profile on some sort of social networking site, whether it’s MySpace, Facebook, etc. These are making it easier to connect to large amounts of people faster and faster through the internet. In a way, people can get to know us through social networking sites without even meeting us in person. Think of how many times you go to look up people on Facebook. You may have never seen them before, but you can already gain an idea about what type of person they are based on their profile. Businesses do routine background checks on applicants today, and with social networking being so popular, you can guarantee that they will look at your profile. We, unknowingly, are forfeiting some professionalism to express ourselves in a good social climate. I personally keep a very close watch on my Facebook pictures, friends, likes, and statuses, but more needs to be done. You have to control your actions outside of school. I also try and make sure that none of my friends post pictures on Facebook that could hurt my future. There are many cases where pictures are posted on the internet without a person’s knowledge, and once they are out there, they are there to stay. What makes it worse is that EVERYONE has access to it.
I think that the applicant should have been turned down, although it was not ethical of his friend to post those pictures without his knowledge. The whole situation could have been avoided if the applicant had not partaken in any illegal activities. While it was taken in his junior year of college, once the picture was posted on the internet it is forever there. He was breaking the law, plain and simple. He may not have gotten in trouble for it then, but justice was served. The applicant’s friend should have known better than to post a picture that would hurt his so called “friend”. Why would you ever post pictures like that on facebook? While it was extremely unethical to do this and detrimental to the applicant, the fault still lies with the applicant for participating in illegal activities. The law firm was not in the wrong at all and I believe it was perfectly legal to look at the applicants Facebook. Facebook is a public forum where everyone has the freedom to express themselves in any way that they choose to. Since it is public, you have to be careful of how you portray yourself. The information of the photograph should probably not have been shared with the applicant as it may be against company policy. Then again, I would want to know why I didn’t get the job. Even more, I would want to know if there were such pictures of me on the internet.
“The ''self-image'' is the key to human personality and human behavior. Change the self image and you change the personality and the behavior.” – Maxwell Maltz (Thinkexist.com)
This couldn’t be more true. What image we put on Facebook and other social networking sites is often the image seen by others. Be careful.

Copyright and Creative Commons

This past class Jason L. Hardin, the Manager of Access Services here at Trinity, came to talk to us about copyright laws. So what exactly is copyright? A copyright protects someone’s intellectual property. It is a government protection and is a crime for copyright infringement. A copyright kicks in when a thought is put into a tangible, fixed medium. One issue that is a concern for many colleges across the country is file sharing. Students often use file sharing to attain free music, movies, TV shows, etc. Now there is nothing wrong with file sharing, it is perfectly legal, but using file sharing to access stuff that is not yours (i.e. free music) and you have not paid for is illegal. There are people today whose sole job is to seek out copyright infringement and illegal file sharing. They can look at a computer’s IP address, which is an eleven to twelve digit number that uniquely identifies a computer, and track down the person committing the crime. You can then get slapped with a lawsuit, and those are not cheap. They can cost thousands of dollars and around $750 per song. Bottom line is it is not worth it. You may get away with it for awhile, but if you are caught it could cost thousands of dollars.

Copyright and Creative Commons by Zach Lambert is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My Trinity Network Diagram

This shows the Trinity Network located on campus. It provides a basic layout and explains the function of each building involved on campus.

Where is the Mystery Spot?



I chose this location because it is very close to where I live, and some freshman may have seen this when walking to class. It is a nice place to relax outside and enjoy the outdoors on a nice day. To alter the picture, I used Picnik to crop it a little bit and made it black and white. The outer parts of the picture are also blurred a little bit. Where do you think it is? Answer with a comment.

Best Tech Tip

Joe Hatch's lecture was very informative, I learned a lot. Is your computer slow? If so there may be several reasons for that. There may be malware, which is virus or spyware programs, software on your computer that is poorly written, there may be too much software installed, and there may be defective hardware. Fortunately, you can install a program called CCleaner which will remove junk files and improve your computers' performance and security. Defragmenting the hard drive can also improve the computer's performance.

I also found out that Internet Explorer 9 is by far the most secure browser!

Network Folder Diagram

Here is my Network Folder Diagram.

The Y drive is great for storing your personal files, the Class Folder is good for getting class assignments, and the Groups Folder is great for submitting assignments to be graded.

Introduction

My name is Zach Lambert and I am 19 years old. I am from Frisco, Texas which is a suburb of Dallas, about 30 minutes north of it. I have one younger brother who is 16 years old. Some things I enjoy doing are hanging out with friends, playing video games, working out, watching TV, and playing sports. I enjoy playing many sports, but basketball is definitely my favorite. Having said that, I do play basketball here at Trinity University. I have taken a couple computer classes before and I know how to work Word, Excel, Publisher, and PowerPoint fairly well. My computer skills are pretty basic, but I think they are enough to get by. I also have no secret question because I was traveling with the basketball team and could not make it to class. You can email me anytime at zlambert@trinity.edu.