Thursday, November 12, 2009

Photograph Manipulation




I personally named this picture the paradigm of suppression. This powerful imagime portrays the cultivation of violence in the mind of children due to their ubiquitous interaction with agression and supression. The picture, according to the source, was taken at a "favela" (potuguese for slum) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Favelas are associated with crime, poverty and asssorted illegal activities. I chose this picture because it reflects one of the most controversial social and moral problems of society.
Although the manipulation was simple and limited, all changes were done with the purpose of enhancing the theme of disharmony. The brightness of the picture was increased to 150%. The input levels were increased to obtain a higher contrast between dark and light. The exposure and the saturation fo the colors were increased to drag it from normality. Moreover i increased the eye shadows for both the victim kid and the kid to the left of him. In the original photo the victim kid is looking straight at the camera which in my opinion takes away credibility.
As i final tough i modified the upper-corner to the left which had a different texture that the overall background and simply patched a regular part of the background.


My modification was not harmful at all. I simply wanted to highlight the themes of absurdism and disharmony and therefore changed the saturationa and contrast to make the colors be more flashy.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Power Point Presentation

The overarching purpose of the power point presentation assigment was to effectively incorporate information through different visual techniques and manage in a matter of four slides to expose a topic of interest. Few people were able to succesfuly accomplish this task while having a good overall presentation to the public.
Elle Cook gave a brief yet concrete presentation about the possible extintion of bees. Her presentation overall was simple yet extremely elegant. She had powerful pictures and her presentation overall was perfectly organized. The presentation was not only instructive but it was compelling.
Jessica in the othe hand had a stronger verbal presentation, but nonetheless her visuals were precise and her presentation was simple yet attractive. She used one image as a template to explain multiple concepts which was creative.
Both did excelent and exceled in different ways.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

PowerFULL Point Presentation

ll the articles seem to be extremely clear about the pupose of power point presentations: Power Point presentations reinforce arguments and not the other way around. Power Point is a tool to enhance communication. So clearly the speaker should never be dependent on the powerpoint presentation when trying to win over an audience.
Several ways to effectively incorporate power points in presentations:

1. Use images - Graphs, charts and powerful images expand your audience's sense spectrum.

2. Limit Words - Unless necessary stay away from words. The speaker has the power of argument.

3. Simple and Elegant - Do not overuse effects.

4. Use videos or audios if possible - Promotes active cognitive processing.

5. Use a common theme - The colors and layout should connect or be symbolic to the presentation's theme.

Every slide should trigger an emotional response from your audience.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

CLT


The center for learning and technology opened my eyes to a complete new dimension of services offered by Trinity University. Located in the first floor of the Library, this center produces and offers all type of multimedia materials needed for any lecturing or research.
In addition to training, consultancy and equipment distribution (cameras, projectors, screens, etc.), CLT offers a high-tech computer studio which offers multiple production capabilities not available in any other computer around campus. Moreover the CLT staff offers assistance for media projects, including audio-visual productions, graphic or photographic requests.
All these powerful tools place Trinity's tech. resources above and beyond several institutions in the country and it would be merely preposterous if us students do not take full advantage of all these services.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Excel


Exploring the wonders of Excel has been a remarkable experience. Although my familiarity with the application was decent, I managed to expand my knowledge of the program with the newly offered tools and features. Excel 2007 offers several features that I was simply not aware of. The excel themes and styles allow the user to quickly and easily format the data with a peculiar design that matches the purpose of the spreasheet. This feature allows users to personalize worksheets with professional or standard looks. The most practical feature I learned from class however was the rich conditional formatting. This feature enhances the analytical features that excel as an application offers. Relationships, trends and exceptions are easily recognized and can be visibly formatted to be more noticable. Beyond multiple analytical features this application offers, I was surprised to see a security function for cells and worksheets. Changes within a worksheet can be either set to be tracked or easily prevented by granting access to limited users.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The Power Of Google


We had Chris Nolan give us a lecture on searching the internet, specifically on Google as the number one search engine in popularity. He gave us a systematic notion on how the search engine arranges the sources available in order to match the search. Titles, validity of sources and frequency of views are amongst the most relevant features Google as a search engine uses to categorize a topic.
As one of Google’s pioneering strategies to adapt to the diverse world market, the search engine has endeavored to target specific audiences in order to be as useful to the different organizations as possible, by developing specific Google branches.
The most innovative feature launched by Google is in my opinion its scholar search section. Google scholar is a simple way to broadly search scholar sources. It provides a new spectrum of articles, theses, essays, papers and relevant books from diverse scholarly organizations such as Universities down to academic publishers. These have also been ranked according to the content of the article, the author, publication and how often the piece or author of the piece has been cited.
Google proves to be a revolutionizing enterprise to the world demands. You can prove it yourself.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Print Media Manipulation


I chose the digitally altered picture of OJ Simpson that appeared on the cover of the 1994 Time Magazine, because it epitomizes how aesthetics is a key factor of perception. This picture was taken in OJ's arrest judged for murder charges. As seen above, his skin tone was made darker and the contrast of the picture itseld was increased. Time Magazine evidently manipulated the picture to make OJ seem more menacing. The manipulation was indeed harmful no only to OJ Simpson but it was accused of having racist connotations. Bad move from Time Magazine.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Introduction

My following biography will be short due to opportunity cost issues. I believe simple is more precise and hence more efficient. I am Juan Pablo Villamarin born in Bogota, Colombia but raised all over South America. My family which is constituted of my two younger siblings and both living parents left the country in 2000. The late 90’s was a very conflictual era in the Colombian history, as violence escalated and assassination, kidnapping and intimidation became an everyday reality for Colombian citizens. Colombia’s insurgent group commonly known as FARC (Armed revolutionary forces of Colombia) started financing from illicit drug trade and multiple kidnaps. As a consequence we moved to Venezuela, our once stable neighbor. We lived in Venezuela for four years and then due to a job offer we ended up moving to Buenos Aires, the potent metropoli of Argentina. After Argentina, Ecuador a petit country south of Colombia followed. Although there are vast similarities within these countries, each and every one of them taught me different perspectives and prospects about life, all of which have become relevant in my development as a character. I have learned to value culture and diversity as a personal gain, since it has opened my spectrum of understanding about the world. For some absurd reason I ended up in San Antonio and I will be majoring in both economics and political science.
I love sports and have become obsessive about physical training. I play soccer and since very young I have played for various league teams in both Venezuela and Argentina. However, due to a knee injury in my junior year at high school I stopped training at a high level. Golf is another sport which I picked up at an early age and have been practicing ever since. I adore adrenaline, which is the reason why I seek either for a bungee-jumping facility or a skydive drop zone every country I visit. I personal highest jump was in Cusco, Peru out of a small box structure at 185 meters. Although I used to find blogs something futile and unproductive I am committed to give my best attitude in order to extract something positive about this activity. I hope all of you have a good year and remember to be patient.
Get better and good luck.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009