DTC 356

The project I have decided to write on is the Privacy on the Web project.

With Open Access software the world can get a better idea of how to use media and technology. By having programs such as Gimp, Open Office, or Twitter, people get a chance to understand the digital web and computer programs, with out having to paying money for it. These different programs can lead to improvement in knowledge with school, work, and just everyday life for most people surrounding us by giving us the availability of software to further the information we know and can use. All of the Open Access programs that I have on my computer are listed below.

For my major of Digital Technology and Culture, and multiple other computer science or technological majors in college, we need open software in order to get our work done. With this, instead of having to pay a monthly fee of Software, we can just download free open software versions of other programs in order to complete our work. One of these programs is Gimp. Gimp, being along the lines of Adobe Photoshop, can show us the basic knowledge we need to know in order to fulfill our classes and projects.

One other open access software used on Mac computers is Text Edit or what used to be known as Open Office. With this, unlike Microsoft Word, it comes on the computer ready to write notes or papers with. This also can be used for coding for websites and web design as well. This is just another example of how people can use open access programs with everyday life. When you really think about it, you don’t realize how helpful they are.

Another open access program is Prezi. This program lets you design different visible presentations in the form of such things like a program or digital poster for one to present. You can share it with a link, with a PDF document or even just by logging onto the website and clicking present for it to show off your ending product of a presentation.

By using Prezi multiple times to make a presentations, I have done one on the evolution of IPhones, as well as refrigerators for a separate class. By using the software Prezi I was able to show the timeline of the first apple iPhone up to the latest and greatest phone that they have out. By using this program I got a better understanding of this software and the best part about it was that it was free for me. Just another example of how open access programs can lead to knowledge and guidance for school and classes.

Overall, open access software and programs can further a lot of knowledge when it comes to the accessibility of it. Definitely can put your mind and your pocket at ease knowing that you can access these programs for free. I like to think that these programs are stepping out and becoming bigger that way people can afford to learn to use programs at a better cost.

I designed a book cover for James Clavell’s “King Rat”. The novel is about a black market salesmen in a prison camp during the Vietnam war, the envy of the camp. The rat placed upside-down works as an analogy to the constant efforts of the camp leaders and his fellow prisoners looking to knock him off of his “throne”. It was fairly challenging to condense the plot and action of an interesting novel into a simple logo and to fit that with text appropriately.

http://i.imgur.com/FSo9l6G.png

I chose to go with the traveling pinterest board blog. Above is a screenshot of my traveling board. (https://www.pinterest.com/agonzalez6639/my-dream-is-to-travel/) The reason I chose this blog was because I love traveling. Pinterest has a lot of great and beautiful pictures, this was my first time repinning photos. I recently went to Las Vegas for my sister’s 21st birthday, it was my first time going and I will never forget the great experience I had. Traveling to cities and states makes me wonder why I live in Washington sometimes. There is so much beauty to explore and I feel like sometimes we don’t realize that. I have traveled to Mexico, New York, California, Oregon, Arizona, Idaho, and those are the only ones I can remember as of right now. However, my dream is to travel to Europe, hopefully Spain. I’m fluent in Spanish so I know I’d easily communicate with spaniards. My dream isn’t just necessarily to travel to Spain, I’d like to see other parts of the world as well. I don’t think anything is more exciting than traveling. I love learning about different cultures, food, meeting different people and seeing how different cities and my surroundings can be. Hopefully I can get the opportunity to travel more often in the future, as of right now I’m focused on being able to graduate this May and saving up to move out into Portland.

This assignment was basically to take an image and edit it to change the mood using whatever methods you wanted. I took some pictures of my friend this weekend so I decided to incorporate that into this week’s blog post. Depending on the look I am going for I can heavily edit my photos and I figured that would work perfectly for this Switch up the Mood assignment. I don’t have any fancy lighting equipment, just one light, a reflector and a blank wall and I used all these to create this image straight out of the camera.

I went through a heavy editing process in Photoshop where I changed the lighting, saturation, contrast, hue/saturation, coloring, blurring, sharpening, etc. I did a lot to get this finished product:

I feel like all of my edits switched up the mood which I was going for. My model was sick the day I took these pictures and I was still trying to figure out where I wanted my lighting, but I liked this picture and wanted to use it. There is a greenish orange cast in the original image that doesn’t look very good and I knew that I wanted to change that. I wanted to make it look like there was more of a grey studio background (not the apartment wall I was using). I did a lot of color changing using several adjustment layers, edited her skin/lips, and dodged and burned her body to give it more depth. I added a purplish color at the end as well as a motion blur to give it a more styled look. Overall, I think the tone dramatically changed from one image to another, showing you just how powerful Photoshop can be.

If you flat out want an action movie without any fluff in it, this is your movie. This is one of the few movies in recent memory where I can say that I was greatly satisfied with an action movie. I will go as far as to say that this is one of the best action movies to be released in the past decade. The reason for all this praise is because of how simple the movie really is. John Wick is proof positive of why sometimes simpler is better. The plot of John Wick is a simple one that actually has a lot of hidden depth. The title character, John Wick, is a retired hitman who recently lost his wife to disease. Choosing to live a quiet life, he is surprised by one final gift from his wife, a puppy. John’s wife gave John a puppy so that he may mourn in peace and live a worthwhile life. This does not happen as some Russian gangsters decide to kill his dog and steal his car. Enraged at this, John goes and does what he does best. The premise is so simple that it should have made this movie laughable. But the fact is that the plot allows the action to grow and move along at a brisk pace. The action is of course the star of the show. John Wick is directed by two stunt coordinators and it really shows that these two know where to point a camera in an action scene. You will not see any sort of quick cuts in this movie. Every seen is framed to show all of the action and it is amazing to be able to comprehend what is going on. I compare this movie to the terrible Taken 3 that came out not too long ago. There are scenes in Taken 3 where I couldn’t even tell where the main character was. That’s not the case with John Wick. You will see all of the action in its brutal glory. I also thoroughly enjoyed the fighting styles that John Wick possessed. He is very calculated and raw. One simple word can describe the gunplay in this movie: headshots. John shows how much of a professional he is by making every shot count and making sure that the target is dead. He also breaks the greatest sin in action movies: reloading. John reloads in weapon every time he is out, so there is no question whether is out of ammo or not. John Wick will go down in history in reviving the action genre and taking it back to its roots. Hopefully this will also jumpstart Keanu Reeves to have better roles. When you get a chance, go watch it please.

Create Your Own Business Card

For this post I decided to make my own business card after some debating. I designed it the way I did because I wanted it to match up with a website I am making in another class. The color scheme I am planning for that site is silvers and grays, so I wanted a clean-cut card to reflect that. I decided on the fonts by taking into account aspects of myself. I used a crisp sans serif font to reflect my professional nature and to contrast it, I used a fun script to reflect that I am fun and playful. I wanted this card to show both sides of my persona, and I feel I managed that through a simple, elegant card.

Assignment found here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/create-your-own-business-card/

For this weeks post I decided to take three pictures of my roommate who looks stressed. She has multiple tests and papers due this week. The reason I choose this particular roommate is because of the different facial expressions as well as mannerism while having this particular feeling. Check out the poses:

In each of these picture my roommate Sam expresses a different feeling that she has while stressing about school. Sam is a little anxious of a person to begin with so when she becomes stressed it turns into the different phases of stress. The first picture describes her stage of ” you have to be kidding me this is added to my week load”. The second one starts the “I am going to hurt someone if this is real life”. The final one is ” I guess I suck it up and follow through”. All of these different phases make up a stressed Sam.

The reason I chose to do this assignment was because it looked interesting as well as I wanted to see what people’s actual stressed faces looked like when documented. I am not one who holds on to stress for a long period of time, so to see my roommate in this state it was a little surprising. My roommate didn’t think it was that funny to document her in a state of being stressed, but once I showed her what she looked like she thought she would start to look a different when feeling stressed.

 

When looking through my backpack everyday, I never noticed the items I always use. It never occurred to me that these items were a big necessity to my everyday routine until taking them out to write about them.

In the picture you see my planner, folder, pencil case, wallet, flash drive, earphones, gum, hand sanitizer and oil blotting sheets for my face. Many may think this is a random assortment of things, but they all have a purpose. The most valuable item that I carry in my backpack everyday is my planner. Surprisingly not my wallet since obviously there are credit/debit cards inside. My planner is what keeps me organized every day and without it my school year for the every semester would be chaos. I rely on my planner for everything I do, even down to making time to eat lunch, dinner or when to do laundry. Being a college student can get hectic because lets be honest we may dose in and out during class but study and homework takes up most of our days.

Second most important item is my flash drive. It is my second back up storage for all of my DTC courses. Since it is my junior year, I am mainly in DTC courses and it is filled with projects. Bringing it to class everyday is a must because I would probably be a lost cause during class time.

All the other items in my backpack are necessities I like to have in my backpack to have for a sense of security. I never know when I will need them, but it is good to have it with me. I guess you can say I like to be prepared.

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/word/

 

Pick one word and use only test to create a image that represents that word

I chose the visual assignment Splash of Color because back in the day I used to love doing this to my photos. The assignment asked to take a photo and take out all of the color except for one aspect of the picture. After I started editing this picture I realized that I probably could have made things easier for myself if I picked a picture with a more defined object to color. Although this didn’t end up being that much more difficult than I thought. I used Photoshop and made a new adjustment layer to black and white, then I used the magic wand and the selection brush to highlight the heart in the picture. After I had everything selected I deleted it and this was the result!