Powerpoint

Although throughout my education and any jobs or internships powerpoint has been very useful to me, it does have its annoying parts. These annoying parts are not from the technology itself, I wouldn't touch on these since I myself don't know any more than the next person. I believe the people who use powerpoint sometimes are what cause such annoyances. I believe that powerpoints should look professional and be to the point. For this reason I dislike when professors clump too much information into little parts of a slide. I would much rather have, say a topic, be divided into two well organized slides than crunched all into one. Another pet peeve of mine is when people use pictures as they're background, I truly believe this is an abuse of our ability to do so. I feel as if pictures are there for when you need to show something specific, not have writing all over it.  When showing the slideshow itself I like things to be presented to me straight forward, not flying in or disappearing, this way you can write down whats needed instead of getting confused on graphics and designs. It truly bothers me when people write down everything they're going to say on their powerpoint, this just makes them seem disorganized and as if they truly did not research the subject well enough. Along with this is people who just use up space on the slides to make it look like they have more information, I believe a narrow summary on a bulletpoint followed by explanation has a much better affect. With all these dislikes about powerpoint there is one thing I truly have come to appreciate. Being a scientist and working in research labs, the ability to use powerpoint to create a professional poster for a conference is an amazing ability, and it is pretty easy to use also. You can fit all your work into this nicely organized poster and have it designed the way you want it, including the sizing. Having done two of these myself, I find this a great incentive to use powerpoint.

A trip to CLT

Until our fieldtrip to the CLT last week I had never even heard of, much less know where or what amazing things one can find there. Being a transfer student, this isn't appalling since I still dont know where most things are located. I guess it's an advantage to me that I can always respond, eh I dont know I'm a transfer. Robert Chapman was very helpful in describing and showing to us all the neat things that we can find and use there. I found it very cool that we had a room set up to do video conferences. Although cameras and all that type of technology is quite over my head, it is nice to know that If i ever need to do something such as have a conference for an interview we have the resources to do so. Its also pretty sweet that we not only have PCs down there, but for the Mac users a good number of those are available as well. Using the scanner was pretty easy as well. I know I have a scanner in my room, and its a pretty nice one If I must say so myself, but if I am ever in the library and in need for one its good to know I can just pop down to CLT on the first floor and use theirs.Overall it was a good trip, and I am glad I now know the resources available, that I will for sure be using in the future.

The effect of manipulating pictures and society

I chose this picture because it precisely prooves how people in magazines are not exactly what they seem. The use of photoshop has allowed magazines and newspapers to be able to manipulate the way people look in order to make them look more attractive and thus to sell more. By doing this they don't realize how it affects those who see these images, for it is the little girls that see these pictures in magazines that want to be skinny and pretty just like the model in the pictures. This picture of the news anchorwoman, Katie Curic, shows how the original photo, in the left, and the edited photo that appeared in Watch magazine on the right. Not only does photoshop change the quality of the photo, but it whitens Katie's teeth and reduces her weight by a significant 10 pounds. This manipulation is done to make her look better and so she better appeals to her fans, but by doing so it gives a false impression of what and who she really is and raises the standards on what women should look like. On YouTube i found a video that demonstrates this sort of manipulation of a model using photoshop, showing us that models truly do not look like this and to appreciate our own beauty.