Powerpoint

Although powerpoint is an incredibly useful tool it does have some rather annoying features.  Most of these annoyances stem from people just taking the features over board.  I would not really say that anything about the program or how it functions is particualrly annoy though my experience is not extensive enough to really say that with any authority.  That being said some annoying things include when people using the typewriter effect where the text of every word comes in individually and it uses that loud typewriter tapping noise.  Also excessive use of entry animations from every which way is rather annoying like when every word or the bullet points all fly in from a different direction.  Its cute and what not but really distracts from a good presentation.  Icluding too much information on a a slide also detracts from a presetations effectivness.  Power point slides really should provide bullet notes or a kind of outline of the presentation with perhaps very important details written out so noe one misses them.  This one may just be me but I like to see all the information on the slide at once.  I dont like it when professors go bullet by bullet only showing the next point when they have finished the last.  I understand that it helps focus on the topic at hand but I just like to see the direction a lecture is going and kind of anticipate the next topic.  Finally pictures are great in a power point slide but organization is essential. I am of the opinion that simple is good when it comes to powerpoint.  Lots of different pictures on one slide can make it very difficult to understand or follow. In the end if used effectivly and kept rather simple and elegant power point is really an essential tool in education and just the general presentation of information. It certainly beats using an overhead projector like teachers used to years ago.

CLT

I had been down to the CLT before to watch movies for my Spanish classes but I did not know the extent of the services available down there. I do find it a bit difficult to navigate down there. For some reason I get really turned around as soon as I step off those stairs. Interestingly though in my wandering around trying to get out the other day I stumbled upon a rather extensive collection of Jazz and Classical albums that were pretty cool. Anyway the computing capability down there is rather impressive. I like that they not only have several very nice PCs but also a fleet of cool Macs as well. The number of scanners is nice too. I have a scanner on my printer in my room but 1) I never hook up my printer and 2) that scanner is hard to use. Its difficult to center the thing your trying to scan and to get it to scan exactly what you want it to at the proper size. The scanners down in the CLT were very easy to use and produced exaclty what I wanted them to without any hassel. On top of all this I thought that the video conference room was quite cool as well. All those HD tvs and cameras in there would produce a fine video conferencing experience im sure. Its cool that we have access to those services should we ever need to have a video conference job interview. Im not sure I quite understood the whole Trinity network video chat system, something about it being like skype, but it sounded cool. It would be really cool if Trinity could provide lectures over this system. Not so much like classes over the internet but lectures from distinguished proffesors at other schools that we could watch instead of just the few that come to speak here on campus.

Image Manipulation

I chose this image that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 2003 because it really frustrates me when news organizations spin news and images to make them more profitable or interesting.  To be fair The LA times did not know this photo was doctored when they published it and subsequently fired the photographer but the idea is still there.  The photographer compiled an image of a British soldier and some Iraqi civilians to create this one image.  This manipulation was of course harmful.  These organizations have a job to report the truth and this image is not the truth.  All too often these days news organizations create substance to make their product more marketable.  They all do it but I can think of instances in which Fox news in particular has used stock footage of a rally to depict something that was supposed to have happened that day.

I chose this video because it describes how two images can be combined into something that looks like originally one image. This example of putting Natalie Portman's face into a painting is innocent of course.  This video is just informative in nature, not any kind of commentary on the good and bad of image manipulation.  It is valuable though to see just how easy image manipulation can be and that we should be wary when looking at images that seem implausible or just a bit off.