Possibly the final addition to this blog...

Well...the end of the year is basically here. Today is the second-last class I will take in this course this year and this will probably be the last post on my blog. Currently we don't have any work to do, but I am putting my portfolio together. The portfolio we are expected to create is meant to be a collection of our best work done throughout the year. We are to create a website to host all our collection of work, and the best ones will be chosen for our school website!

This will be the 65th and probably the last post of this blog. I will probably keep this blog for reference purposes though, there's quite a lot of valuable information on here that would benefit me in the future since I wish to continue with courses in information technology.

Now, I bid all my readers farewell...not like I had that many readers anyway.

DISCLAIMER: The future additions to this blog are still uncertain and further posts may be made.

Edit: My Portfolio has been uploaded to the school website! Click here to see the final product.

It's finally over! Or is it...

Today is the day that our Business Summatives are due!...Or at least they were until Mr. case gave us all an extension until Friday (That's FRIDAY not MONDAY, nothing is acceptable after Friday at 3:00 PM.) We have to present all our information in a professional manner and deliver it as a business proposal to the teacher. I've completed all my work to date and am ready to compile the work into one final presentation of the business.

From my knowledge the business package must include:

-Business Concept
-Registration Forms
-Domain Search
-Logo
-Letterhead
-Business Letter
-Mail Merge
-Business Cards
-Brochure
-Website

I'll be touching up everything tonight so that my business is presentable for Friday~.

Clarity In The Form Of PDF

Today we all learned how to download and install a free PDF writer so that we can use it to save our Mail merge files for our summative project. After creating the sources to complete a merge printing the document is necessary. A PDF writer allows you to print it to that, and have all your letters saved as PDF files. This is very useful information to me as I was having trouble saving the information in this format before today and it is needed for the final summative we have to hand in.

PDF writers can also be useful for creating a portfolio of the highlights of our work in this course, which is necessary to submit. Having a PDF writer will make it simple to compile all the work together and make it accessible to virtually anybody.

Sleep Deprevation Meets Malnutrition--You've got summatives!

This blog has been neglected lately due to the work I've been constantly doing on my business summative. The business is well on its way, which is a very pleasant thought considering how much work has gone into it. I have tackled stage 1 and have completed a logo and business cards for my business as well. Currently we have to be focusing on creating a brochure for our business and a website to go along with it. All my creativity seems to be needed to accomplish any of these tasks but it makes the job a lot better than having to do something dull.

There isn't much more that I can say right now as there is a lot of work to be done and a very small time frame to fit it all in. A taste of the life that awaits us? Oh well...it's always best to remember that all this effort will result in something beneficial!

Selling Ice to Eskimos...

Advertising is an important part of running a business. No matter what service or product your company is providing, it is effort wasted if the consumers don't hear about it. Getting the information to your consumers in an interesting and bold way is the goal of any advertisement. Creative ideas need to be put together, keeping in mind the audience that is being targetted.

Our job is to create a brochure for our businesses using Microsoft Publisher. Microsoft Publisher is part of Microsoft Office but needs to be bought separately from the other programs included in it. It is used predominantly for print documents (i.e. flyers, brochures, newsletters etc) but can be utilized for creating web sites as well.

This will be a good program to add to the ones I already have knowledge of and I hope I will be able to present a convincing advertisement. I'm currently unsure of what I'm going to usefor the assignment but I have to keep the consistency of my business all throughout.

Selling my business to people is very much like selling ice to eskimos...and it's time I gained that ability.

Dealing with Formal Matters

We've started looking at some rules and laws that will apply to us when we register our business with the province of Ontario. There are many regulations that a sole proprietorship is subject to, and we need to be aware of them. Below is a summary of some basic things to keep an eye out for.

The first issue is registration. We need to register a name for our business, unless the name of our business is just our legal name. This rule applies to all those creating a business in Ontario. In our case, we must think of an original business name and we are not allowed to use just our legal name.


Often a licence will be required for your business, it will be issued either from the municipal, provincial or federal government. It is most often required to serve as an operating permit and give you the right to run your business. Government permission will be compulsory for many small businesses and to find out whether this is the case for your business, you are to contact the SBEC or the Canada-Ontario Business Center.

After all this has been taken care of, it is time to consider property and where the business will be located. Thsi is where zoning comes in. There are all sorts of regulations about buildings and locations, it is the responsibility of the business owner to make sure that the chosen location abides by these rules and takes the actiosn necessary to legally operate their business at the chosen location. It is also important to have insurance for this property to protect yourself and professional advice should be sought out to resolve this matter.

The last matter to be concerned with is business communications and advertising. A good business needs to have avid communications so that it can connect with the right people in the right way and keep everything linked. Computers and computer software and people who have knowledge of these are crucial to your business. Fax machines, photocopiers and etc should also be present and accessible to your business. Advertising also needs to be done appropriately and to suit your business. If your service of product is unheard of, no matter how wonderful it may be, nobody will buy it!

That's a basic summary of what we need to know. Today we also looked over the registration process for our business.

Electricity Jolt

Now that my business concept is final, it's time to design a logo and a name for the company. A logo helps identify a company or business in a simple and recognizable way. Logos are very important for marketing because they are easily remembered and often make a more significant impact than just the name of the company. Logos also create a consistency as they are always the same, but may have some variation from time to time.

There are some points that should be remembered when creating a new logo. A logo should be simple, obvious but arranged in a way that appeals to the customers. It should be relevant to the company it is being created for; for example, a company selling cat food should not have a dog as their logo. The logo can consist of basic shapes however, since those do not direct the mind to any specific idea.

Once you have a design for your logo it is critical to pay attention to colour. Colour isn't restricted to rules but both colour and black and white copies of your logo should be kept in mind due to the nature that it might be advertised in. Depending on where and the amount of money that is spent the logo may be presented in black and white or colour.

**I have chosen the name "Pin it" for my business after much thought, and search.

HTTP (Hyper Test Torture Protocol)

**Pssst, this is about our "surprise" test on Monday on Flash, Dreamweaver and HTML tags.

I'm going to take this time to review some basics on Flash, Dreamweaver and practice my HTML.

Flash
-Used for animation/encoding video files
- .FLA for Flash project
- .FLV for flash projects + you can view the video
- .SWF for final animations
- Keyframes mark movement in the animation
- Frame rate = the number of frames per second
- Standard frame rate for theatre 25/s, and for internet (Youtube) 12/s.
- Motion Tweens: Allow the user to move an object without filling in every specific frame.
- Shape Tweens: Allow the user to change the shape of an object gradually without filling in every specific frame.

Dreamweaver
- Used to create webpages
- Simple to use as HTML coding is created for you.
- Three views to remember: Code(Only HTML), Design(Only Webpage), Split(Half code, half design)

Since I haven't really gone over FTP in my blog yet, I'll take this chance to review it as well:

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

FTP is probably the simplest name out of all the protocols we've learned about recently. File transfer protocol has been named accurately and it does exactly what it's called. It transfers files over the internet and it can also be used to upload files onto the internet using a server. This is the most basic way to explain FTP and probably the easiest to understand as well.

Now to practice HTML tags!

Bold
Italic
Bold&Italic

Align Left

Align Centre

Align Right

TEST TEXT

Paragraph Spacing

Paragraph Spacing

Paragraph Spacing

Single/Line Break


Single/Line Break

That shall be the end of this very strange looking post of mine...

Making My Mark

Lately we've been smoothly moving through the process of creating our own business. Our first few tasks are to come up with a Business Concept and a Rough Budget for the Business. I have decided to work with the Customized buttons business. For the concept we'll have to include:
-The Main Idea of the business
-The Major Costs involved
- Income
- Obstacles and
- Viability

The Budget needs to go over the different types of expenses needed to start and run your business including:
-Capitol
-Consumable
-Operations

After all this has been taken care of, it is time to consider property and where the business will be located. This is where zoning comes in. There are all sorts of regulations about buildings and locations, it is the responsibility of the business owner to make sure that the chosen location abides by these rules and takes the actions necessary to legally operate their business at the chosen location. It is also important to have insurance for this property to protect yourself and professional advice should be sought out to resolve this matter.

The last matter to be concerned with is business communications and advertising. A good business needs to have avid communications so that it can connect with the right people in the right way and keep everything linked. Computers and computer software and people who have knowledge of these are crucial to your business. Fax machines, photocopiers and etc should also be present and accessible to your business. Advertising also needs to be done appropriately and to suit your business. If your service of product is unheard of, no matter how wonderful it may be, nobody will buy it!

That's a basic summary of what we need to know so far.

--Amna

Fasten your seatbelts, the ride has already begun...

To have a successful business, a lot of serious planning needs to be done. But before we get really technical we have to get our ideas straight and picture some real numbers. To be able to visualize what we have up in front of us, we've been asked to write a Main Concept and a Rough Budget to our summatives.

The main concept should go over:
- Briefly what the purpose of the business is
- Costs included
- Obstacles or problems you'll have to face
- Why the business is viable

The budget should help give us an idea of what kind of numbers we'll be dealing with, and if all that work is really worth it. In other words, is the business really going to be better than just working at a local fast food restaurant?

Terminology for Budgets:
- Gross: Total amount of money the business is bringing in.
- Net: The amount of money left after deducting expenses.
- Capital expenses: Expenses that you'll be able to benefit from in the long term.
- Consumable expenses: Things you'll need to be buying constantly, or things that won't last longer than their sole purpose.
(For example, a camera is a capital expense as it will be useful to you even after the business is done with, however the film in the camera is a consumable expense as it will be gone after it runs out.)

That's all for now

--Amna

Evolving into an Entrepreneur

Ahh...the time has come. We have finally received our major assignment for the end of year, otherwise known as the summative. This project is worth 30% of our final mark, it sounds like a lot but it's better than having the pressure of both a summative AND an exam!

It's time to put all the skills we've learned throughout the course to good use. For this last assingment we'll be applying all our knowledge gained from the course towards one product. This one aim will be a plan to start up our own small business in the form of a sole proprietorship. I'm actually glad that this is our goal for the end of the year; being able to use all our skills for a task such as this proves that this course is very useful!

Ideas do not come easily, and ideas that can be built on come even harder but I've already started to brainstorm some possibilities for this project. Keeping in mind that I have to be able to afford this and carry it out...these are the possibilities:

- Seniors Computer software use lessons
- Creating Flyers/Advertisements for other local businesses
- Customized Buttons Business

These are a few ideas but the one I'm probably sticking with for now is the customized button business. To start up this business I won't need much aside from my mind, my button machine and a computer. I already have these as my assets, so I have a start-up cost of $0. This sounds good, but as I factor in future issues as well as consumable purchases, this might not be the best idea to go with.

[Edit April 27th] This is why we have to get our ideas approved by 1 adult and 2 peers. If they can already see flaws, it's time to go back to the drawing board. Remember that a good final business is one that Mr. Case can see you starting the next day!

Well, all the best to everyone...
Ganbatte ne?

"Fresh Collaboration!"

The past week we've been working with Flash and Dreamweaver, and I've come to learn how the two can be really helpful to one another.

Today we learned how to create a slideshow or take an already existing movie in Flash, and then incorporate it into our websites. This could be one way of displaying our Portfolios!

Here are the details:

For Slideshows:
- In Flash, go to File>Import>Import To Library
- Convert all images imported to symbols.
**Remember to put each image on its own layer.
- Set your timing: Insert keyframes & Tweens
**Adjust the Alpha(transparency) percentage on the keyframes to create transitions from one picture to the next.

Working with the video:
- Size: Width- 320, Height-260
- Import the video into library
- Video Options Dialogue should open
- Select your player/size and skin
-Publish your video
** This part is important, make sure to save the video in all the correct formats as well as in the right folder.

Open in Dreamweaver
- Correct HTML code from "False" to "True" in all the areas needed to allow fullscreen options.
**Make sure you've selected a template for the video that enables this option
- Save and check to see the results

Until next time,
--Amna

Flash in a Flash!

Our custom animations are really coming together. I decided to create a toaster as my custom animation. So far it's working really well, and I'm looking forward to the final product. I'm just going to use this post to report on some minor details/problems I've learned or come across during this process.

Concerning tweens:
- If you see a white circle it indicates the absence of a tween.
- A dotted line shows that an object is missing, or that Flash can not locate anything to tween
- While, a White square marks the end of the tween.
- Sometimes the more keyframs there are the more precise the movements will be.

Getting to know Flash, important parts to remember:
- Toolbar
- Menubar
- Timeline
- Palettes/Panels
- Properties Inspector
- Stage

That's all for this unusually short post.

Now, Back to work!

--Amna

A Step Beyond Stop-Motion

For the past two classes we have been concentrating on creating animations using Adobe Flash CS3. The software has all the functions available to even create a full-length animation feature. A few simple techniques can produce a very good quality result that manipulates the eyes in certain ways. We've only taken a brief look at flash and below are listed a few of the things we learned how to do.

Motion Tweening: Allows you to move an object without filling in every specific frame. All you have to do is insert a new frame after however many number of frames from the initial frame where the object appears or currently is and move the object to where you would like it in the new frame. The frames in the middle will be filled in by the program!

Shape Tweening: Works basically the same way as Motion Tweening but instead of moving the object, it alters the proportions.

Importing Files: Across your toolbar, if you go to File>Import, you can import files from anywhere else on your computer to work with in your flash animation.

Symbols: We also learned how to convert pictures into symbols. Right-clicking an object and clicking 'convert to symbol' changes the object or picture to symbol format. This means that the object is saved only once individually throughout the entire animation, which in turn lowers the file size.

That's all for now, but I'll be playing around with flash at home for sure. I do have a few interesting ideas....

One Frame at a Time

We'll be starting to work with Adobe Flash now in BTT. This is a program I've been looking forward to learning about as it can be used as a simple yet impressive way to display information.

What is Flash?
Flash is basically a program used for creating animations, however it's also good with encoding video files.

Some Common File Formats:
- .FLA: This is the Flash Project file, or the format you save in while still working on an animation. (Much like .PSD used in Photoshop)

- .FLV: This is a Flash *Video Project File. This format allows you to view your video.

- .SWF: Shockwave file. This format is used to save your final product.

Frame rate?
The frame rate is how many frames you see per second. The standard fram rate for Theatre in 25 Frames/second and for digital cameras it's 20 frames/second. Other videos, like the ones on Youtube usually have 12 frames/second.

Key Frames:
A Key Frame marks key movement. Or simply put, just used to mark where something actually happens. A tween is used in between key frames to shape movements to look more realistic. ( To move into one to the next)

We used this new knowledge to play pool! Or at least reinact the movement occuring on a pool table using Physics.

Signed, Sealed Delivered!

Continuing with the Dreamweaver, today we went over the basics of creating a webpage. Since dreamweaver automatically creates the HTML codes for you, we focussed more on how to create a well-designed website.

Firstly, like everything else we've worked on through out the year, remember to keep things original. Anyone can use a pre-made template and call it their website, to really achieve more with your site custom pages, backgrounds etc will show your true abilities. Also remember to keep all the images used on your website in the folder you have your webfiles! The actual webapge doesn't hold your images or links, for them to still show up on the website you'll have to make sure that pictures are accessible from anywhere. Embedding the pictures into the folder along with your webpages works best.

As for HTML, we were given a website that is to help us with quickly grabbing hold of important text tags etc: http://www.webmonkey.com/reference/HTML_Cheatsheet

This site is helpful for us to study from, and get used to working with HTML, however Dreamweaver makes working with HTML very simple because it allows users to create their sites without actually having to write out the HTML coding. It has three views, one that allows you to write out HTML codes, another in which you can only see your webpage, and a third one with a split between the two.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, we can use the website we create to host our Portfolio, which is basically just a collection of all our best work this year in BTT. I'm still not too sure of what I'll be putting up in my portfolio, but I'm going to work on creating the website first.

That's all for now

--Amna

Graphics Knowledge Exam

Today was the day we wrote our test on "Adobe Photoshop Elements". The test itself was pretty straight forward and I believe if you paid attention in class and did all the work you probably did fine. Even saying that, I'm still nervous about my own mark but that is inevitable. Below are a few things that were either on the test, mentioned in class, or are in some other way significant and related to our work on Photoshop Elements.

Aspects:
-Resolution: This is the pixel to inch ratio, or how many dots per inch are in your image. 300 for print images, 72 for internet purposes
-Canvas Size: This refers to the width and height of your canvas, the most common print size is 4 x 6 (inches).
-Hexadecimal Codes: The values used to represent all of the 16.7 million hues available to work with.

Tools:
-Marquee Tool: Either retangular or elliptical, used for selection.
-Paintbrush: Used to paint directly on to the canvas with varying brush sizes.
-Lasso: Freeform selection tool.
-Dodge/Burn: Used to darken or lighten an image, name comes from actual chemical processes that were used in the past.
-Sharpen/Blur: Used to blur or sharpen an image.
-Crop: Cut or clip your image to the desired part and discard the rest of the image.
-Gradient: Used to spread from the background colour to the foreground colour. (Acheives a faded effect with one colour blending into the next.)
-Smudge: Does exactly what it's called, smudges.
-Eraser: Again, no brainer, erases.
-Clone Stamp: Clones from a source. Takes one part of an image and duplicates to another part of the image.
-Horizontal/Vertical Type Tool: Adds text either flowing horizontally or vertically to the image.
-Eyedropper: Selects a colour in the image and sets it to the foreground colour. Handy when identifying or narrowing down colours in an image.
-Magic Wand: Used to select parts of a picture, determined by the hexadecimal code fo a colour and controlled by the tolerance setting.

Palettes:
-Layers: Displays all your layers, their visibility and all the effects that have been applied to them.
-Navigator: Shows you an overview of your picture, the percentage your viewing it at and allows you to move around the image.
-History: Records and shows you previous actions that have been taken.
-Layer Styles: Lists and allows you to apply the different layer styles available.
-Swatches: Shows you different basic colours you can use.
-File Browser: Allows you to navigate through your files and open them.

Touch the Internet

So, go ahead? Touch the internet. What? You don't think you can?

Most people do not consider the internet as an actual physical part of our world but the truth is it's just as physical as the hands I'm using to type up this entry. The first step to understanding this concept is not confusing your browser with the internet. The internet is a lot of computers connected together in various ways. Your browser is a program like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox that you can use to browse the internet.

There are many purposes for the internet, more than just the everyday websites you visit. These include things like FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and more. The most common use however for the internet is made possible by hyper text which is used in operating the world wide web. Hyper text is text that allows us to link data to other data. Without hyper text nothing else on the world wide web could exist. Hyper text explains the use of the "HTTP" at the beginning of web addresses. HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol.

That's how hyper text works but creating web pages and creating hyper text is done through using HTML. HTML is the Hyper Text Markup Language. It's a code that is made up of a series of tags that allows us to create, alter and tweak web pages to our liking. Knowledge of HTML is key to creating your own website or publishing your work onto the internet. The thing to remember out HTML is that it is just long lines of text and nothing more until it is translated and displayed properly.

In the past everything had to be done using HTML and typing up long series of tags to complete a webpage but today we have much better tools. An example of our development is the graphical interface we have now instead of just a text-based one before. Our browser translates HTML and displays what the tags are basically commanding the computer to take action as.

Now we have programs that have made creating the actual content easier, just like we've made viewing it much more enjoyable. One of these programs is Adobe Dreamweaver, which automatically creates code for any action you take on a certain area on the screen. Or you can directly create code and the box will display what your code is actually going to look like on a browser. Dreamweaver is the most popular program for creating websites and doing HTML related work.

We'll be using Dreamweaver for the next couple of days to create a website of our own. We can use this website to put up our Portfolios for the end of the year, but more about that later.

Creative Manipulation...or so they say...

Predictably, we've been given another assignment to work on. This time we're using Adobe Photoshop to manipulate a picture 'creatively'. The pictures we've been given to work with are of teachers we know. Now it' s up to us and our limitless creativity. Of course our creativity is to our liking...which means we've just been handed the faces of our teachers wtih the ability and the order to do whatever we want!

Well...perhaps I've made this sound more like a maniacal plan than an assignment but I can guarantee that those thoughts went through the heads of many of my classmates. We've been asked to be respectful and I suppose that's what we'll do, but it doesn't meen we can't have a little bit of fun.

There are three rules we are to follow when manipulating teachers' photos:

1) Permission: We must receive permission to perform any manipulations to other people's photos.

2) Know the line of respect: If we are given permission we should know to respect that, and remember to keep our limits.

3) All work must be in Class, and stay there: The images are not to be taken out of our BTT classes, because someone else may not understand our intentions.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do as of yet, but there are so many possibilites that I may not limit myself to just one picture. Whether it be comical, disturbing or a piece of art that will change the world...I can't wait to see my final result and those of others as well!

And like that, it's gone!

Today is the last day of March Break! Of course we all wish that the break would last a bit longer than it has, but the end was inevitable anyway. I don't have much to talk about that would be curriculum related but my March Break was quite enjoyable. I'll just mention some of the technology-related discoveries and parts of my March Break.

I experimented with a few things in Adobe Photoshop over the break. I focussed on one specific tool to create different images. During the break, I also realized that studying Adobe Photoshop is beneficial even if you don't plan to use it often. Being familiar with the tools in Adobe Photoshop can really help you understand tools and operations in other programs as well.

Other than that I have taken a sudden and most probably a short lived interest in pocket PC's. A Pocket PC is basically like a smaller computer, small enough to fit in your hand to be exact. Pocket PC's are continuously being improved and they can do many things that a normal Desktop PC could do. They also can be used as mobile phones in some cases. The functions of a Pocket PC, I have found, are very similar to those of a BlackBerry. However, the Pocket PC is a trademark of Microsoft and the BlackBerry was developped by a Canadian company known as RIM (Research In Motion). They are both classified as a PDA(Personal Digital Assistant). The new iPhone also uses similar technology.

Close to last, another part of my vacation that involved technology was expanding my knowledge of file extensions. I have listed this close to last as it gave me the most trouble! I had to ask around and even do a little bit of research myself to find out what file formats some files were in. Eventually I realized what they could all do and what program would be used to run them all, but it wasn't easy. It was also quite frustrating since I wasn't feeling very patient when I experienced this problem. At least it worked out in the end.

Now lastly, this is about the dangers of not saving your work, or backing up your files! I learned this the hard way a long with the other members of my family as the main computer had to be restored and we thought we had lost all of the files on there. Luckily, they were able to be recovered with a little help from some friendly technicians. This taught me to make sure I have backed up important files somewhere other than the hard drive but also to save frequently!

Well it seems like I've covered a lot of my vacation in this post, just goes to show what a big part technology is of our world!

First addition: Image Galleries

After a lot of work, and time in front of a my "Workspace" I'm happy to say that I'm finally finished with my ."..From scratch" assignment for Photoshop. Although it's not perfect, I think I learned a lot from the assignment. The purpose of the whole thing was to apply problem solving skills to Photoshop and I think I came across quite a few of those.

For starters, the Ferris wheel consisted of many lines. To keep things simple, and organized I used the duplicate, merge and group features in Photoshop. This taught me how an organized workspace can really be helpful.

The background clouds weren't supposed to look as I planned them to be. But after playing with the filters, burn and dodge and gradient tools, the clouds turned out looking as they do. Actually my picture was going to have a digital camera on the side instead of the balloons, but because of the change in the angle/perspective I thought it wouldn't be realistic to have a camera there. So the balloons were a final addition to my image.

Drawing the balloons took thought too, even though it doesn't seem like much I had to make sure to draw them leading to the Ferris wheel to keep it as the main focus of the work.

The final product can be found at the Wiki, where we have the opportunity to create our own File Galleries and upload images we create.

Here's just a thumbnail of what it looks like:



That's all for now
--Amna

Current Status: Stable

Lately we've all been concentrating on completing our digital paintings. I've started mine off, but there's a lot I still need to do with it. If you would like to take a look please refer to my previous post "...From Scratch!" We haven't had a new assignment since then aside from working on that Wordbook and I have already completed parts of the editing for it, and hope to do more.

I'm also going to take the time now to review some basics that I haven't mentioned about Photoshop in the past.

Terms to know:
Dock
Workspace
Tabs
Histogram
Pixel

Resolutions:
300 DPI - Printing
72 DPI - Web images

Size:
Standard: 6" by 4"


That's all for now, now it's time for me to get back to work!

...From Scratch!

Lately in class we've been working with Adobe Photoshop Elements as I have mentioned in my previous posts. We've already learned how to correct and edit existing images. The next step in our Photoshop Path Of Wisdom is creating our very own image...from scratch!

The kind of work we're doing, by creating our own image on Photoshop, is considered and known as 'digital painting'. This term makes good sense if you think about it. Digital because of the use of technology and painting because we are, just like an artist, painting on our own blank canvas (just that ours is on a monitor and not a wooden stand!). The idea is pretty simple but composing an image can be quite tough when you're not familiar with the program you are using! I strongly suggest for everyone to try out their techniques before they work on their final product! Using a lot of layers is a very beneficial idea, that way you can just delete parts of your picture that you aren't happy with without affecting the rest of your work.

We'll be posting our work on our very own Image Galleries found at our Wiki.

That's all for now!

--Amna

Every Pixel Counts!

Lately in class we've been working with Adobe Photoshop Elements as I have mentioned in my previous posts. Today we went over the general icon toolbar, and how we can use the features to enhance our own images.

**The letters in brackets are keyboard shortcuts

Marquee tool (M): Allows you to select a certain part of the image. The marquee tool can be selected to be rectangular or elliptical. When active, other parts of the picture won't be affected with the changes you make. To deselect either press ctrl +D or right click>deselect.

Move Tool (V): Used to move individual layers around.

Lasso Tool (L): Like the marquee tool, allows the user to select a part of the image, except the user decides the shape given to the marquee. The Polygonal Lasso Tool allows you to create various selections in the shape of polygons, and the Magnetic Lasso Tool grabs on to certain or similar pixels of the image so it is easier to select parts of the image.

Feather: The feather feature gives a soft edge to the selections made either by using a Marquee, Magic wand, or Lasso.

Magic Wand Tool (W): Selects fractions of the image, such as areas with the same colours or contrast ratios. You can change how many pixels will be selected by tolerance level. (If the tolerance level is higher, the Magic wand will select colours that aren't as close to each other.)

Crop tool (C): Used to select an area in the image, which is all you want to keep. You can choose from more options such as resolution, width and length before actually cropping the image.

Type tool (T): Allows you to insert text into the image. Can be horizontal or vertical.

Polygon tool (U): Allows you to draw a selected shape.

Gradient tool: Creates an overlaying layer with a blend of two or more colours.

Airbrush tool: Allows you to draw on the image with a brush that works and looks much like an airbrush.

Paintbrush tool (B): Also lets the user draw, but there are more options to what kind of paintbrush you would like to use.

Paint Bucket Tool (K): Fills a selected area with a chosen colour.

Pencil Tool: Also used to draw, works like a pencil.

Eraser Tool (E): Removes part of the image. Background eraser tool allows you to remove the background of an image. Magic Eraser tool works much like the magic wand by removing colours of similar contrast ratios.

Impressionist Brush: Gives the paintbrush an impressionist effect.

Blur Tool (R): Used to make parts of the image blurry.

Sharpen Tool: Sharpens the image by increasing contrast between individual pixels.

Sponge Tool: Softens the image, and blends the colours much like sponging a wet painting.

Smudge Tool: Like the sponge tool, it blends the colours. However, the smudge tool works more like using your finger to blend oil pastels.

Red Eye Brush Tool: Gets rid of red eyes in pictures.

Dodge/Burn Tool (O): Burn darkens parts of the image, Dodge makes the image brighter. Used for making pictures more realistic, shadows/highlights etc.

Clone Stamp: Clones a selected area. To select the area hold Alt+Click.

Eye Dropper (I): Picks up colours found in the image.

Hand tool (H): Used to move things around

Zoom tool (Z): Allows you to zoom in or out. This can be done with the Navigation tab as well.

Playful Customization

In today's class we looked at different things we can add or change about an existing picture. We've already learned how to make a picture look better so this class was focussed on making a picture look like something it actually wasn't!

The picture we were experimenting with can be considered a landscape picture (deliberately not a good one, since we wanted to 'fix' it!). We were shown how to change and add things to the sky (e.g.: moon, lightning etc.). We messed around with a few other aspects of the picture but the possibilities are left quite broad. Now it is up to our imaginations and our knowledge of photoshop to create a more interesting image out of our boring piles of snow!

Sliding into Perfection

When you take pictures you often only judge the content of the picture. We usually only evaluate the colours, quality and such only sparingly in the pictures we take. They are, however, an important aspect of any photograph or image. Sadly, a lot of pictures and images you may find on the internet, or just pictures you've taken yourself, might be very poor in these areas. Fortunately for us we can easily fix or edit these parts of our pictures using proper knowledge of Adobe Photoshop Elements. So let's look at a few common problems in images and how to fix them.

Colours:
Often a pictures colours may not have come out right, or look strange to you. To fix this problem using Photoshop Elements you alter the levels of RGB in your picture. You can do this by going to enhace>brightness/contrast>levels. From there you will be directed to a pop up screen. That will show a graphic representation of the over all RGB levels in your image and sliders that can help you alter them. You can move those around to lighten or darken your image to your heart's content, but there is also a drop down menu that let's you control the individual levels of the colours red, green and blue in your picture. Just move around some sliders and there you have it!

Image Quality:
Image quality is an entirely different issue. The quality of an image depends on its resolution. The resolution determines how many pixels there are per inch of the image. Pixel is short for picture element. Each pixel is like one dot of colour in an image, the more of these dots there are per inch the sharper, better quality you get in a picture. So when you're creating an image to print remember to always keep your resolution at 300, to get the best results. If you're just putting an image on the internet 72 is the suggested resolution so it doesn't take as much time to load and use up large amounts of bandwidth. It's hard to increase the resolution of an image once it has already been taken. Since the computer sees everything as a mathematical equation, it can only see the number of dots per inch and their hexadecimal codes. If you ask it to add more information (add more pixels), it can only stretch o ut the information it already has. The computer can only make a guess for you and thus the resolution can only be fixed slightly.

If your picture, for some reason, is too dull, bright or blurry, you can use the dodge, burn and sharpen tools to help you out.

Sharpen: The sharpen tool can sharpen parts of an image, but don't expect great results. If you have a blurry picture, sorry, you should just hold the camera still!

Dodge/Burn: The dodge and burn tools affect how light or dark the colours in your image are. If you use the dodge tool over an area the colours become brighter. If you use the burn tool the colours become darker, as if they had become "burnt", thus the name of the tool. Both of these were originally techniques used by manual developpers in the past.

So these are some ways to make your pictures look better using Adobe Photoshop Elements. Similar tools can be found in other photo-editing software so it's always good to know some basics. Now everything can look picture perfect!

lamicedaxeH?

Now...you're probably wondering what I'm talking about if you've read the title. Well the truth is that even I'm not quite sure what I'm talking about. Here let me fix that

lamicedaxeH-------->Hexadecimal

Yes, we're learning about Hexadecimal, the base 16 number system. As you all know we follow the base 10 number system and we have already explored binary the base 2 number system (Refer to "Computers? Those are ancient!" for more information.

This is how Hexadecimal works:

-Place values increase by multiplying by 16 (E.G. 1, 16, 32, etc.)
-We can place numbers up to "9" in place value columns
-Letters (A-F) are used after 9

A=10
B=11
C=12
D=13
E=14
F=15

And after F(15) you would naturally move to the next column, since Hexadecimal is the base 16 number system. To understand this concept better lets look at an example. Let's say you want to represent the number 17 using Hexadecimal, it would be done like so:



So the number 17 would be represented as "11" using Hexadecimal. Since we have 16(x1) and 1(x1).

The most common use of Hexadecimal, which we discussed in class is used to define values of RGB(Red, Green, Blue). Different values of the colours red, green and blue are what allow our computer monitors to display the wide range of colours that they do today. Different values of red, green and blue are applied to make these colours and Hexadecimal is what defines these values. The most vital piece of information that you need to know is that there are 255 levels of each colour, red, green and blue.

Another example can be used here to make this idea clear. If you want the colour pure red you would use the Hexadecimal code:

FF0000

The FF symbolizes all 255 levels of red. The first two zeros symbolize zero values of green and the last two zeros symbolize 0 values of blue. Leaving you with pure red. Using Hexadecimal you can go from 00 to FF for red green and blue. You need the right amount of each colour to create the right shade.

Since we have 255 levels of each colour. In total we have the possibility of 16.7 million colours, that's a lot to work with. Hexadecimal codes help us assign a specific code to each one of these colours making them much easier to use.

To sum all that up...Hexadecimal is just another thing that makes our already complicated lives slightly simpler!

Mail Merge

This week we started to learn about creating form letters and how to use the mail merge tool in Microsoft Word. First of all a form letter is a letter that has pretty much the same text body but some aspects of it are changed. Usually this would be the name of the person etc.

Example Form Letters:

Dear Riku,
You are invited to the Stars Banquet on Thursday night. We would really appreciate it if you would attend. Please let us know if you will be coming ASAP.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi



Dear Kyoko,
You are invited to the VIP Dance on Friday night. We would really appreciate it if you would attend. Please let us know if you will be coming ASAP.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi

As you can see the two letters here are very similar and only the name of the recipent, the occasion and date have been changed.

Form letters make it much easier for us to get people the same message without having to write or type out all the information each time. So let's say you have thank you letters, or invitations to send out you can easily send out the same letter with just a few things changed quite easily using Microsoft Word and this is how to do it!

Mail Merging Instructions:

1) First of all open up a word document and click tools>mail merge.

2) Now a pop-up window should be present on your screen. Under 'main document' click 'create and click 'form letters'.

3) After you have done that another pop-up window will open and it will ask you if you would like to create your form letter using the already active window (the one that you have opened) or a new document. Choose the one that you are most comfortable with, I myself find the active window option easier.

4) Now as you can see you have unlocked the next part of creating a form letter. Under 'data source' click 'get data' and click 'create data source.

5) Another pop-up window should be open now. This pop-up window will allow you to create the options for the changing parts of the text in your form letter. These changing parts are called 'fields'. As you can probably see in your pop-up window you are allowed to enter a field name or choose one of the existing ones. I suggest creating your own. You can make fields for the name of the person, an address or anything else that you would like to change in your text. Type in your field name and click ok to create as many fields as you wish.
*Note: Remember to remove the existing field names by selecting them and clicking 'remove field name' and then create your own!

6) After you have done that another pop-up window will open up, which you will use to save your document. Type in a name for your file that you will easily remember and press okay.

7) For this step...yes another pop-up window! What a surprise! Click 'edit data source' on this pop-up window. Now you can enter in the specifics for the fields! Each time you fill out all the fields for one letter, this one set of data will be known as a record.

Example:

Name: Cherry
Favourite food: cherries

Name: Candy
Favourite food: candy

This is an example of what you would do when you enter in specifics for the fields. Note that my fields are the name and favourite food and not the information I have entered. Above I have created two different recordsl

8) Once you have created as many of these as you want, click ok. Now you can type in your message, but wait! It isn't like any other message. You type your message but everytime you want to put down one of the things that will vary in your form letter click 'insert merge field' (this should be displayed right below all the other toolbars as an extra tool bar at this stage). You choose the field you want and click and then continue with your message placing the fields where necessary.
*Note: If you ever wish to edit your data source you can always go into tools>mail merge>edit.

9) When you're all done with that the last thing to do is click tools>mail merge>merge. A new document with all the different letters with different specifics should open up. Now you can do whatever you want with them! Wasn't that much easier than typing them all out?

--Amna

Phase 2: "Word Tootorials for Newbirds"

Our Word tutorial book is coming along quite well. We already have our Layout team finalizing the construction of the book so that the editors can start their jobs. We looked at our options for publishing, and decided that we'd use Lulu, a self-publishing website that will publish our book on demand. We also decided on the size and cover of our book. Since we don't want to waste time re-sizing and fixing the layout we decided to go with 8.5 by 11 for the page size and a paper-back cover, in black and white. This combination seemed to fit our budgets well.

All that was left to decide was the cover and the title for our Wordbook. Anyone was allowed to make a cover and bring it to class on Friday, when the best cover would be voted for. I decided to make a cover too and here's what I came up with:



Let the Best Cover Win~

That's all for now,
--Amna

We are going...where no BTT class has been before!

It's a big break for our whole class! As you know if you've read my previous posts; lately we've been working with Microsoft Word. Also, we found 10 things we didn't know about Microsoft Word, well we turned one of those into a tutorial. For those of you who don't know what a tutorial is, it's basically an instructional guide to perform something. Mr. Case told us about how he wanted to take our tutorials and perhaps turn them into a sort of instructional manual for Microsoft Word. He's tried this year after year and yet it always fails due to some fault in the procedure. So we're going at it again this year and I really hope we can achieve what nobody else has! I've always wanted more of my work to be published and being able to do it with everybody else will be even more fun! I've also been voted to be editor along with one other people (Yes, I'm so excited about it that I just had to tell everybody!) If we work together I'm sure we can produce a great end result, so let's do our best!

Microsoft is good, you can have my Word!

Microsoft Word is known to be the most widely used word processor in the world. Just about anybody who has used a computer knows what Microsoft Word is. The question is whether you really know as much as you think you know about Microsoft word and that's what we've been told to investigate today. So I've got a lot of poking around to do in Microsoft Word, let's see what I can find out!

Findings:

1) Frames: Frames act like dividers in the document and help you separate different parts of your document. A function that I found a frame would be useful for is if you'd like your table of contents to be displayed on the side as a frame. To insert a frame into your document you simply click format>frames and from there you can choose what you would like to do with your frame.

2) Macros: A macro is a feature that allows you to record a series of actions made on Microsoft Word that you can save and have repeated just by running your macro! This makes things a lot easier, especially if this is a specific format you use for your work all the time, a macro would save you the time of having to set it up. To create a new macro you go to tools>macro>record new macro. After you have done that you assign your macro either to the keyboard or to the toolbar, depending on which you will be using to perform your actions. A small toolbar should pop up in the corner that has controls for stopping and pausing your macro. Once you're done press stop and save your macro!

3) Auto Summarize: The Auto-Summarize tool allows Word to find sentences or phrases in a Word Document most relevant to the main concept of the document. To access this tool you go to tools> auto summarize. You can choose different ways of using the Auto Summarize tool: Highlight important information, 2)Summarize the document in the same document or in a new document, 3) Or insert the summary of the document as an introduction to the document. It also allows you to select what percent of your complete document you want Word to summarize your document to. You can do this by choosing the number of words, sentences or the actual percentage. It's a great tool if you need to understand a long passage or if you want to see if your document concentrates on the points you want to get across most. Also, it can help create a great introduction/conluding paragraph to an Essay.

4) Page Numbers: You can save the time of having to number all your pages using this feature, because Microsoft Word will do it for you! It's actually quite simple you go to insert>page numbers. Even though this does seem like a very obvious function that we should all be aware of, I just didn't bother trying to use it before. It can be useful if you're preparing something that requires page numbers and Microsoft Word will place the number where you want it on the pages.

5) Date and Time: This feature is accessible from insert> date and time. Though it is a quite simple feature, and you could easily type out the date yourself, I suppose this could come in handy if you were in a rush.

6) Bookmarks: Sometimes when we're revising or editting our work on Word and only complete half way it would be useful to know your place the next time you opened you document. Well, we don't have to wish anymore because the Bookmark tool does exactly that. It allows you to pick a certain area in the document that you want word to mark for you. To use this tool go to insert>Bookmark...

7) Theme: I wasn't quite sure if it was possible to have a theme for Microsoft Word but it is! You can have a theme for your document just like a Powerpoint slide. I'm not sure if this feature would be useful to the average person but it is something I didn't know. To apply a theme you go to format>theme and then choose the one you wish to use!

8) Objects: I always noticed the insert object option on my toolbar whenever I was using Microsoft Word but I never realized what exactly it could do. I previously thought it was probably just the same as putting in a picture into the word document, however, it can do a lot more! This feature allows you to insert a file from another program such as WordPad right into your Microsoft Word document. Or you can create a new file using that program right that instant, working in your Microsoft Word window. You can insert powerpoint slides and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files, the possibilities are pretty wide. Basically this option expands what exactly you can have present in your word document. To use this feature you go to insert>object.

9) Captions: As you all know we often need to put captions below diagrams or pictures when using Microsoft Word. The caption feature is very helpful with this as it saves you the trouble of having to move the text around manually. I've passed by this function before but never tried using it, I think you may have more control if you performed this task manually, however. To add a caption, you first select what you would like to add the caption to then go to insert>caption and set it up from there.


10) Subscript and Superscript: Subscript and Superscript are the smaller characters that are placed above (superscript) or below (subscript) the normal levelled text. An example of superscript is the 'nd' in 2nd or the 'rd' in 3rd. Something similar would be used in the case of subscript but it may be numbers, such as the subscripts we used in chemical formulas in Chemistry. I myself have always wondered how to do this manually and today I found out. To put something in subscript or superscript you can add the button to your formatting toolbar. If you don't already have the formatting toolbar displayed with your other toolbars go to tools>customize>toolbars and check the box for the formatting toolbar. After you have done that click the little arrow on the toolbar, which should open up a pull down menu. You click add or remove buttons on this and simply add the subscript and superscript buttons. Now whenever you want anything to be in subscript or superscript you click the button first and then type.

Retreat to Academia

After a very relaxing Winter Break we're back to school and that means more work! We're going to be looking at Microsoft Word over the next period of time. We'll be exploring things that we've never looked at before in this program we consider to be so familiar with.

In other events...Happy New Year to everyone! I don't really have any resolutions this year, but I really enjoyed the vacation. Now it's time to return to working hard and doing our best!

''Because...You Have Not Been Payin' Attention''

So you were assigned a 300-word essay to write out over a couple of days. Now, you had to make the decision of just how you would go about working on it. Well, your parents had told you to work hard and get it done beforehand, however 'things' have come up and you haven't been able to follow through. This paper is due tomorrow! Alright, so you sit down at your computer open a word document and start writing. By the time you get to word 50, the MSN messenger icon on your desktop seems very appealing. You think discussing your opinions with some of your friends might be helpful. You now also decide to to check your mail and while your at it why not quickly sign on to Facebook? Before you know it time is running out, and what you considered hard work has really just become a multi-tasking mess.

All our lives we've been told to work hard, to put all our efforts in all that we do. However, times have changed, and with time, people have changed as well. Working hard isn't the key to success anymore. Instead to achieve true success we should pay attention to paying attention! This idea is expressed in the article, Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control by Mike Elgan, and is the article I will be reflecting upon in this blog entry.

We've all heard of multi-tasking and as well those who can multi-task. Ever since I learned the term, I considered being able to multi-task as a real advantage. It makes sense, being able to do more than one thing in the same amount of time that it takes to complete one task. But does this really give you an advantage over people who don't? Well, yes if you can manage to do all your tasks efficiently, but this is very hard to do. As the article states, "A person who works with total focus has an enormous advantage over a workaholic who's "multi-tasking" all day."

With today's technology, we are able to do almost everything using our computers and the Internet. As much as a convenience this may be for us, it's also a great distraction. From socializing to shopping, the internet allows us to access the world at our fingertips! However, we're almost taking all this great technology given to us for granted. We get carried away from task to task because of the millions of possibilities the internet gives us. This means that there is no limit to distractions when it comes to 'working hard' at something.

The worst part is, things are just going down from here. Another point that Mike Elgan makes is that today's generation has been placed infront of some kind of a screen from the very start. From the TV to the Computer and back to a video game. They're distraction addicts even before they're old enough to understand the damages being made. They have a constant need for amusement and can't sit still for very long. As mike Elgan puts it, "Their attention spans have been whittled down to seconds, and their expectations for constant amusement are highly developed." So how do we learn to focus on anything if we've become so used to being distracted?

The decision to make is almost like distinguishing between Eating and Eating Desert. Eating being something you need to do to survive, your focus, and eating desert being something you can live without, your distractions. To survive we need to eat well, but if we don't have desert after every meal it won't kill us right? On the other hand, if we forget to eat well and replace all our meals with sweet sugary delights, we won't make it very far. In other words we can't get distracted for even a second, or it just might throw everything we've worked for right into the garbage can.

Unfortunately no one else can do this for you. It's up to you to use your abilities to their extreme. Push yourself to focus. As Columnist David Brooks says, "Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them." It's our task now to free ourselves from the attractions of the distractions!

No matter how much we sugar-coat it, the truth remains the truth. Working hard alone isn't working for us so we have to combine that with learning to focus, while fighting the urge to amuse ourselves. If we can master this, we might just have that 300-word essay done on time!

That's all for now,
--Amna

**The Title for this post comes from the song "2 + 2 = 5" By Radiohead.