Advice!

The only advice that I could give to the future students of CS1300 would be to have fun. I really enjoyed this course because I was creative with the things I did. Therefore, the more creative you are with your work, the more fun you have!

Other Websites I Enjoyed!

I really enjoyed Cody and Sophie's websites. I'm a huge sports fan, so I really enjoyed Cody's website about some of the things he enjoyed about basketball. He listed some of his favorite players, and a couple of reasons why he enjoys playing basketball. Sophie's website was really interesting, also. Her website was about a trip that she took to Italy. She used great pictures and her website was very well put together. Looking at her website makes me want to go to ITALY!

My Website!

Please visit my website, www.cs.trinity.edu/~nmckissi I really enjoyed making my website! This was a great project to do before going on Thanksgiving break. Making my "Diner's" website was something that was very fun and it allowed me to use my imagination. I also really enjoyed trying to think of something to make a website about. My favorite part about my website was trying to figure out what my menu was going to be. If I could change one thing, I would attempt to make my webpage a little more "eye-catching". Unfortunately, I'm not a very artistic person. Also, I wish my website was just a little bit more interactive for the visitors that come to my "Diner's" website.

Larry Heckler Computer Tips

Last Thursday, we had a visitor by the name of Larry Heckler visit our class! He gave us useful information regarding what makes up the inside of computers. One thing that I found interesting was all the different parts of both a Mac and PC. Larry informed us that most of the parts are basically the same essentially. One tip that Larry informed us about was not putting any thing less than six inches close to the system unit vents. By doing this, your system unit won't overheat. Also, another helpful tip that I received was in regards to powering your battery. Larry told us that it isn't good for the batter if you leave it plugged in to the charger all the time. This makes the amount of time for your computer to stay charged on its own shorter. Larry told us that it's better that you allow your battery to go all the way to dead before you charge it. This explains why my laptop will only stay charged for less than 2 hrs!

Pictures that Lie

The picture that I decided to alter was a picture of a sitting bear. In this photo, I inserted two babies, one crying and one happy, by using the magic wand tool and the magnetic lasso. I also imported a sign that says Yellow Stone National park to give the impression that it was a vacation photo. I altered the saturation, hue, brightness and contrast of the photo.

One article that I read was "Changing History: Doctored Photos Affect Past Public Events". In this article a group of people altered photos and allowed them to be seen by the public. These pictures were events were significant public events that happened in the past in Beijing and Rome. The interesting thing about this was that once people saw the pictures their perception of the events that took place were different. For example, people in Rome saw a public protest as more violent and negative.

Applied Cognitive Psychology; Dec2007, Vol. 21 Issue 8, p1005-1022, 18p, 2 Black and White Photographs, 4 Charts, 3 Graphs

My Powerpoint Presentation!

     I felt that my powerpoint presentation on African American Heros of the American Revolution went well. I felt that the audience was engaged with the information that I was providing and they also seemed to be interested. One thing I wish i could have done differently was speak more clearly during my presentation. I felt that I stuttered a bit, which could have made it seem to the audience that I was nervous. I learned that presenting a new topic to an audience can be quite challenging. The main challenge comes from trying to make a topic interesting that might not be of great importance to people. Also, making sure that all the parts of your presentation are in the same folder is something that was important. For example, I forgot to put sound files in my folder, and I had no music when I first tried to present.
     Two presentations that I thought were well done were Lauren's and Sophie's. I could really appreciate Lauren's topic because I'm an athlete and the issue of athletic health is something that affects me primarily. Also, here presentation was very smooth and she knew what she was talking about. Sophie's choice of transition slides and background pictures were awesome! Also, the fact that she has experienced event planning firsthand is something that caught my attention.

Chris Nolan Tips

Chris Nolan came to the class Thursday and gave great tips on how to get good scholarly information. However, due to not feeling well I wasn't in attendence. However, another CS 1300 student, Leslie Green, filled me in on what Chris shared with the class. One tip that Leslie relayed to me was the importance of looking at domain names when searching for information, and that you can also control the type of domain  names that come up during a search. Also, I was informed that Chris Nolan told us about a way to limit your search results to scholarly material when searching on Google by using a subset called "Google Scholar". Another fun fact that Leslie relayed to me from Chris was that more than 60% of people use Google as their main search engine!

Powerpoint Slides: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly!

Powerpoint presentations can be very effective in distributing information to a large group of people, in a very fashionable way. However, there are things that can make a powerpoint turn into something that is boring and excessive. These are a few things that really bother me when it comes to powerpoint presentations.

1. The powerpoint presentation needs to have a nice background or colors that can catch the eye of the audience. There is nothing that I detest more than a powerpoint presentation that has white slides! However, the presenter needs to find a happy medium and not make the background of the powerpoint too flamboyant. This could cause the audience to be distracted from the information that is being displayed.
2. Another important aspect of the powerpoint is that the presenter doesn't overload the audience with too much information. This is essential because every presenter wants their audience to stay interested in the powerpoint, and too much information on one slide could cause the viewers to get bored!
3. Another mistake that most people make while doing powerpoint slides is using the excessive sound effects. A couple of these are alright in my opinion, but when used on every slide the audience gets very agitated.
4. Every speaker should know his information well! The presenter shouldn't read straight from the powerpoint and not be engaged with the audience that he/she is presenting to. Therefore it is important for the presenter to know his/her information well!
5. It's also important to make sure that the powerpoint isn't too long, either. This relates to the point of not having too much information on one slide. It is important to keep your presentation short, sweet, and to the point, so the audience won't lose interest!

Powerpoints are great ways to give information and do it in a fun and interesting way. Powerpoints allows a specific audience to see the main points and ideas of a broad topic, also. The most important thing to remember, however, is that a powerpoint is only as good as the presenter!

AT&T Center for Learning and Technology

Today, we visited the AT&T Center for Learning and Technology on the first floor of the Coates Library. We learned that the CLT has 26 computers that include both Macs and PCs. There are 14 Macs, 12 PCs, and 11 scanners that I counted in the CLT. The CLT is primarily geared for faculty and students to assist them in any matter for academic learning. The CLT is a great place for studying because it allows students to get away from the noise that might occur on the 3rd floor of the library, but also have access to a computer. CLT is great for video and multimedia projects. You are also able to convert things into different formats and convert movies to DVDs in CLT. CLT also has a video conferencing room, where the person using it can talk to up to 20 people at simultaneously, at any given time. I was also able to scan a neat little drawing of myself at CLT also!

Photo Manipulation

The photo that I chose was a picture of Martha Stewart on the cover of "Newsweek". The picture was manipulated by placing the head of Martha Stewart on the slimmer body of a model. Martha's head was placed on this body, to make Martha have a more slimming, attractive body figure. This manipulation is a positive influence because it could possibly make women insecure about their body and also, make them take extreme measures to have this type of body, which in turn could cause serious health problems.







Also, I found this short video that talks about the manipulation of photos in the media. This is an important issue because media is very influential in today's society. This video talks about whether or not photo manipulation should be banned in the media because it can cause problems for both men and women in today's society. Photo manipulation can mess with a female's confidence level and make her have a unattainable idea of what beauty and perfection is. Therefore, the female might take extreme measures such as: eating disorders or plastic surgery, to achieve this goal. Also, this can affect men as well. Men might start to have higher expectations of women, which could cause problems for couples.

Excel is Exceptional!

I've really enjoyed working with Excel the last few class periods. In high school, most of my effort was put into Photoshop projects for class so I was never able to fully appreciate the use of Excel until now. In class we have learned how to use "Running Balances" so we know how to keep track of budges of all kinds. This is essential because it's a real life problem that everyone has. Also, Excel is neat because it allows you to store and calculate information that of all kinds using different functions and formulas. It has been great so far, and I look forward to learing more about Excel.

Copyright Laws: Illegal Downloading?

Yesterday in class, Jason Hardin went over a presentation on copyright laws. A piece of work can only be copyrighted if it is considered to be in tangible form. Copyright allows the owner to take full responsibility of the distribution of the piece of work. One thing that I didn’t fully understand until yesterday is that copyright deals completely with financial aspect of an artist’s work, which basically ensures that the owner of the piece can benefit from whatever it is they produced. Some people, like myself, might make the mistake to consider plagiarism to be a copyright infringement. However this isn’t the case because as I stated before copyright deals with the financial institution, whereas, plagiarism is considered a moral and academic issue.  Copyright was introduced in 1790 when it was drafted into the Constitution of the United States. One issue that has become very controversial is the issue of illegal downloading. The reason for the controversy is that the artist of the download experiences financial loss when people download illegally. This is the reason that illegal downloading is considered to be a copyright infringement because the downloader receives the artist’s work without getting the permission of the artist and without compensating the owner of the work. This is ethically immoral because if everyone downloads illegally then the owner  will experience a significant financial loss.

Copyright Laws: Illegal Downloading is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

My Network Diagram!

In this diagram, I illustrated how the Trinity Network works. In this diagram, I showed how the flow of the Trinity Network goes from your dorm, to Ruth Taylor, and also to Halsell if you need to access any student service folders. On Thursday, we were able to see how the whole Halsell system works! It was pretty neat to see how the whole thing works. Also, we were given alot of helpful information by Mr. Jared which explained more in depth how the Trinity Network is able to run smoothly and efficiently.

Trinity University Mystery Post!

This particular location isn't very discreet. Most students should recognize this place with ease. I selected this area because I see it every time I walk to my friends dorm room, and it always seems to look pretty to me. I changed the picture by going to the website "Picnik". Here I was able to alter the photo by taking the color out and setting it to a "sepia" coloring scheme. Also, if you couldn't tell I applied pretty little flowers as a frame, and added text saying "Can you say gorgeous!?!". This was primarily to emphasize my love for this certain walkway on campus. Do you know where this is?

Joe Hatch's Computer Tips!

Yesterday, Mr. Hatch came in and gave us a few pointers on how to keep our computer safe. I knew I didn't know very much about computers before this class, but in two class periods I've learned alot. I didn't know that whenever you visit websites that your computer stores excess material, which results in your computer running slower! One of the interesting things he talked about to help this the was CCleaner! This program fascinated me, not only because I'm a Windows user but also, because it's so efficient in cleaning the excess material from your computer. Another thing that was really cool was the fact that it has a file that can log the websites you've visited. This is extremely helpful to those who do online banking! We were also informed that there are a couple of other things that you can do to ensure that you don't allow spyware, adware, trojans, or "Crackers" to get on your computer. These tips were: Be aware of what you're clicking on, look for the "https" in the in the address bar and look for a lock symbol at the bottom of a page to make sure that the website is secure, and also be cautious of any type of free download!

I'll see you guys next time!
Nyk

Hello, I'm Nykolas

       Hey Guys, I'm Nykolas McKissic, but I prefer just Nyk because it's short and sweet. I'm from Round Rock, Texas, but I originally hail from Paris, Texas. I lived in Paris until the age of 14, and moved to Round Rock because my mother was assigned to another positiion in Austin. I'm a sophmore, however, this is my first year at Trinity University, and I'm very excited to be here. I transferred to Trinity University from Jackson State in Mississippi. I haven't had the opportunity to join many organizations on campus, however, I am apart of the football team. I enjoy all sports and anything that has to do with the outdoors, and I also am a huge fan of music. Whether it's Pat Green, Drake, Miley Cyrus, or Fleetwood Mac, I'll probably be able to sing along word for word.

       Besides going to practice and preparing for school, I really enjoy hanging out and enjoying the company of my friends and family. I don't think there's anything greater in the world than spending quality time with the people that you care the most about in the world. I'm lucky enough to have my mother as my best friend.
      As far as computer skills, I'm not very technology savvy. I have basic skills in Photoshop, Word, and Powerpoint. I learned how to use these tools during high school when I took a computer class my senior year. My hope is that I will be able to use this course to enhance my skills in technology. If you need to reach me you can contact me by email

nmckissi@trinity.edu