My Fave Webpages

Some of my favorite webpages are Rebecca's, Katy's and Riley's. All of these were very organized and simple, which made them stand out. I really enjoyed seeing Katy's art interests and her influences as well as seeing her actual art, which is beautiful. On Rebbeca's I truly enjoyed seeing the places shes lived and visited as well as where her next trips will hopefully be, I completely agree and one of my next trips is to Peru as well. Riley's was very well organized and she got it to be completely centered, unlike mine. It was interesting to see that she played lacross in highschool on a boys team.

My webpage

Please Visit my Webpage at www.cs.trinity.edu/~mbecerra

Making this website, was more of a challenge than I originally thought it would be. To be honest, I thought it would be much more simpler knowing that I was going to use Microsoft Expression Web. The page I am most proud of is the description page because it included many new thigns i learned such as the thumbnail, hyperlinks, background picture and the nav bar as well. If I could change something it would have been to fix the really cool collage I had made in photoshop for the pictures section but for some reason it refused to work so I had to insert each picture individually and it doesnt look nearly as good as it would have. The biggest design challenge was the nav bar, and the biggest technical one was making everything line up on the tables. Hopefully I can make this site better and make it the official Latino Exchange website, because ours is not updated. After learning this, there is definitely a possibility that someone will ask me to make a site for another class, and I would be up for it.

Larry Hechler Visit

During the last class we were honored to have Larry Hechler come and visit and explain to us a few things about computers. Something really interesting that I didnt know, and is useful for any computer or battery charged electronic is how to maintain a battery. For this Larry gave us four useful notes on computer batteries:

o   Don’t use it for 20 min and then plug it in

o   Run all the way down then charge it back up

o   Lithium ion batteries still get short cycle

o   Once a month run it all the way down and then charge it all the way up

After this talk I have already started to not charge my computer until the battery is run all the way down, not only for my computer but for my iphone as well. And i think it has actually helped!

Pictures that Lie

For this project I decided to use photographs i had previously taken to create a false image.These three photographs were taken this summer in various places. The background is of San Miguel de Allende, the llama is stuffed and was outside the Peru stand at a World's Fair in Mexico City, and the guy holding a fish was one I took of a friend's brother after he caught a fish this summer. In order to get this result I basically used the magic extractor to extract both the llama from the background and the guy from the boat and the ocean. I then placed them into the background image and continued editing from there. Other tools I used are the erase tool, the clone stamp tool and lighting and color saturation.
     This image was manipulated because I had this picture of the llama and I thought at first it would be interesting to put it in a setting where llamas don't usually roam around. After doing so I thought well this is too plain, I should add something to it to look even more false, so then the idea of a centurion came about. I looked around my photographs for the perfect image, and this is what I chose to add as the human part of the animal. In the end, I think it is quite comical, but it truly doesn't hurt anyone.
The article I researched was an interesting view on images from the Afghanistan and Iraq War, questioning whether they were real or fake in important publications such as the New York Times and Time. This article suggests that magazines and newspapers are not the only ones to falsify images, but terrorists themselves do so aswell. It is important that these images are not falsified because it truly gives a false sense of what is happening in the war and is so easy to believe since it is so far away from our reality.It is quite unfortunate to know that you can easily falsify a photograph solely by using photo shop. Although my photograph does not harm anyone and is obviously false, using photoshop and such programs to change a photograph can truly do much harm.

Munro, Neil. "Real or Fake?." National Journal 38.14 (2006): 26-32. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

My Presentation

As a Spanish major, and having lived in Mexico for the first half of my life I chose to do my presentation on 3 places to visit in Mexico. I liked the fact that I was able to upload a video, except that when it came time to do my presentation it stopped working. Not only did I learn this, but I learned how to put multiple pictures and order their entrance on a slide. If I could change something I would change the fact that my video didn't work and possibly have added music to the powerpoint. Two blogs I quite enjoyed were Katy's about being a curator and Kayvon's about being a multilingual doctor. I thought Katy's was really interesting because I feel that before it I knew very little about being a curator and what  you can do with an art major now a days. Also I really enjoyed her video that showed how you can use technology to put together an art show. I enjoyed Kayvon's because wanting to go into the medical field myself I know the importance of being at least bilingual, especially in the US and in Texas. I feel that the more languages  you learn the more you will truly be able to help your patients. Although his topic was a bit on the sad side, it was very informative and I appreciate the fact that he kept his graphics simple but tasteful. Overall, I believe I learned some new things not only from my two favorites, but from all who presented.

Chris Nolan Visit

When Chris came to class last week I truly had no idea of all the features Google had. I knew it had google scholar, because for my internship this past summer I used it in order to do research on my topic, and I knew about google books and earth. However, I did not know that you could refine your search by clicking advanced search and do so by so many different factors. Since I only knew the main differences between .edu, .org, and .com its nice to know that using advanced search I can refine my search as to where it only searches for one of these. Overall I think Chris' talk was quite benefitial, and I know I will be using advanced search from now on.