Video

Video that I made about Nordies in the fall and spring and a little bit of the winter

Coffee Cup Ad

Chipotle Ad

winery poster

illustrator

color pop and backgrounds

Analytics Update

I have had Google Analytics installed on my blog for a couple weeks now and things are looking up a little bit for the future and viewing of my blog. There have been 55 visits, but a number of them have just been internet robots looking at it, so those don't really can't. I know when it is a robot because it says the time they viewed the site is 00:00:00. My most distance view is from San Francisco, California, which I suspect is my cousin after I told her she should check out my blog. I had one hit from New Mexico, but it was a robot. I have had numerous views from Vermont, but most are from Massachusetts, as that is where the internet thinks the school's internet originates from. The average view time on my blog is 3:01. One day, May 6, I had a record number of visits at 21. There were also numerous days where I got zero views. My most viewed page/ post is 'The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side.'

Merging boat, Buddha, temple

This was a rather frustrating assignment. We had to merge picture of temples, boats, and Buddha's together to look like one. My boat picture would not cooperate and made it very difficult. It was hard to get it so there was no brown or gray space in between the pictures. I eventually just stretched the boat out behind the other pictures, so I have a mega sized boat. Being able to do this could be useful when trying to make a college of pictures. Also, learning how to use the gradient tool was useful. Also, using the eraser at not full strength will be helpful in the future.

Filter Gallery Fun

Rainforest Photoshop

In class the last couple of days, we did a photoshop assignment involving a rainforest scene and animal skin. The goal was to cover trees in tiger and leopard print patterns and blend it into the background so it looks somewhat natural. We blended the bottom of the trees than covered the roots of the tree with plants from another part of the picture. We also added a green box than wrote "You never kill just the tree." We recreated a World Wildlife Foundation ad, which tried to stress the awareness that cutting down trees hurts more than just the tree. In the bottom right corner, we added the WWF panda bear. The hardest part was making the trees look more lifelike. Also, getting the text to fit well in the box took a couple of tries. Although I can't think of a specific time when I will need to do this again, I'm sure it will be useful in Digital Media class.

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side

exploding carrots!

The exploding carrot lab was supposed to be a lesson in photoshop but instead was a lesson in patience. We learned how to make place in image within another image, erase parts of it, and change the brightness and color. It turned into a lesson in patience for me because my computer get blinking and getting crazy, so I had to stop, so my dynamite carrots don't look perfect at all. We also learned how to zoom in, in order to more accurately delete. Also, we learned how to burn and dodge to darken and lighten parts of images.

pink cow

Disappearing Cows

Google

I always thought Google was simply something to search for websites with: type in skiing and get 2o3492398 results all somehow related to skiing. I also knew you could look for pictures, but thought that was all. Google is so much more extensive than this. I think you could spend hours looking at all the things Google can do! Pictures, new, videos, shopping and more.

I learned Google can be very helpful in an academic sense. I can type in a subject and not only will there be website links but also many other resources. One very interesting capability is the "wonder wheel." This puts your search in the middle of the page, than branches out with eight subtopics, which you can click on to find out more. Another tool is the timeline. This will organize information in a sequential manner. All the information show for dates has websites to back it up, as well as to learn more about the subject.

Google can also be used in a more social way. I can type in 'nordic skiing vermont' and find different places to ski in Vermont. If I needed to buy new ski equipment, I could click the shopping link, and have numerous outdoor stores show up. Perhaps I wanted to find a large and good quality picture, with mainly purple, I could do this with the 'options' tab.

Google is an awesome tool for all sorts of things. Whether I need to do more work on my American Progressivism research project or find a good local place to buy clothes www.google.com will get me there!

Google Analytics

I recently installed a program to track my blog views called Google Analytics. It took a day to set up and now it will give me information about various things on my blog, like the city where people view it from and how long they view it for. Hopefully, and in not too long, it won’t say only one visitor. It would be nice also to not have the map only shaded for the US, meaning people from other parts of the world are reading my blog. Amazingly, I am pretty sure, the one person who looked at it was on my blog for 5 minutes and 41 seconds! I didn’t know reading one post could be so time consuming or interesting!

This tool where be more useful once my blog gets going more. It will be interesting to see if people look for more than the first page. Also, to see how people get linked to my blog will be fascinating.

Twitter Response

Since I heard about Twitter, probably a year ago, I thought it was some useless, half effort, copy of Facebook. I thought it was stupid and only something celebrities did. I was completely unaware of even its basic intentions and certainly not its full spectrum of uses. I thought it was people in Hollywood’s manger’s way to tell people about what expensive outfit they bought today, or where they are jetting off to currently. I was completely unaware of the intellect Twitter took to create and the geniuses, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, who created it.

With the onset of our Digital Media class, Twitter has taken on a whole new meaning. Twitter has saved lives, one time being a terrorist attack in Mumbay. This social networking tool is the way to spread information quickly. When the airplane landed in the Hudson River, Twitter was the first place to spread the picture. This site can also be used for convenience; a Peet’s Coffee chop is going tweet when a table is free.

Yes, Twitter can still be a considered a bit of a time waster sometimes, but is also a powerful tool to inform the world of important happenings.