Halloween AI

Ok, so today we learned how to manipulate the swatches, use the pen tool, and use the pathfinder with the add/divide tool. This stuff is really cool. My a ha moment was how to make a strat column by using the swatch libraries and dividing the column using the pen tool. We did so much today and i'm just frustrated that i don't ever have enough time to practice using the tools. I wish i had a one on one instructor to help me out and remember all the things we learn. We learn so many cool things but half of them at least we don't use frequently so i forget them. It's ok though...i'm doing the best i can!
Ok, my Halloween plans are crazy. I am in charge of the ward activity so we are all going trick or treating in the ward, then there is a costume contest, then bobbing for apples, then eating donuts on strings, then watching scary movies in some apartments with popcorn. then i'll probably do something else later tonight, we'll see...hopefully night games...that will be fun! Alright, take care!

More AI

I think i'm having more trouble with illustrator than i did with photoshop. It's weird because i've actually had some experience with illustrator before and i'm still not quite getting it. I had trouble with the duplicate option for some reason. I think because i don't quite get the fill options with the boxes. But other than that i thought it was way cool that it has lithologic patterns that you can fill shapes with, especially if you are doing a strat column. My a ha moment was using the crystallize tool...that was fun! I need to stop worrying, i'll get it. It's just been a stressful week since i broke my arm.
Anyway, my favorite costume that i ever wore was a captain hook costume when i was little. I had everything for it and it looked great! I also really liked my teenage mutant ninja turtle costume. That was really sweet too!

AI

So we learned about how to use adobe illustrator. my a ha moment was learning more specifically about how to make a correct scientific figures. That means how to make them look better. But learning how to use the basics of adobe illustrator was good too. i'm not really frustrared with anything yet but i just hope that i can find a good figure to use.
Now if i could know anything about the future it would be when the second coming is.

Here is the picture i was talking about before. We were having technical difficulties before and couldn't get the colors right for the web. Well, that has been fixed so now here it is! Ta Da!

Merge the Pictures!

This was a fun lecture to learn how to do. We learned how to merge two or more photos into a panorama of one big picture. The tools i used to doctor up this panorama was obviously, merge the photos. I also used a combination of the dodge and burn tools to lighten and darken around the seam lines where i put the pictures together as well as the eraser tool to make it look more realistic. I also changed the sky to get rid of all the clouds. Furthermore, i adjusted to levels to make the colors a little bit more defined as well as played around with the color levels themselves to make the colors a little more realistic too. Finally, i used to transform tool to make the pictures fit together more perfectly. So here ya have it. My two photos are now merged and they look like they were always one! My only frustrations are that i found out later that there is a wicked easy way to merge them automatically. You can put any images that you want into one panorama and the computer will do it for you almost perfectly. It's amazing. So, naturally, I found that out after i spent an hour and a half on this one. But that's just the way things go. My a ha moment today, however, was learning how to use the clone tool. That was wicked sweet how you can add or take away parts of the image to how you like. So i leaned that you are just replacing it is that you want to replace, with something else. So that's cool!
Now, my superstition is... ... ...I don't really know. I honestly can't think right now if i have a superstition or not. I probably have one that i just don't realize at the moment. So, next time if i think about it i'll post it up. Now, enjoy the photo.

Mini Assignment 2 is now up!

Ok, so i got a little behind in my homework schedule and missed the deadline for mini assignment 2 which was due Friday, October 17. Well, it's now Tuesday the 21, but i'm finally getting it up on here. (that's not too bad right?). Anyway, so with this assignment we were to find an image and, again, doctor it up a bit using photoshop, but with some specific guidlines. So, i found a picture of this shoe and this is how i changed it. I first, corrected the levels and made the color a bit better. Then, because the picture was tilted in a way so the bottom of the box didn't appear to run horizontal across the bottom of the screen, i used to ruler tool to correct that. So now the bottom of the box is horizontal with the bottom of the screen. Then, i cropped the image to give us what we see here. After i cropped it, there was some unpleasant black areas in three of the four corners so i tried to correct them using the paint bucket and eye dropper tools. I tried to get the corners to match the color of the table that the shoe is on, but i couldn't quite get it right. So in an effort to make it a little more normal, i used a combination of the dodge and burn tools to lighten and darken around the seams of where i filled in the new color to make it a bit more natural. It still didn't turn out the greatest, but i was definitely giving it a shot. So there ya have it! More practice will hopefully mean better editing to my photos. I really want this to be a skill that i can continue to use in the future. I'm just still frustrated that i'm a slow learner and that these things take a little more time for me than usual.

Mini assignment 3!

So i have been practicing my photshop skills (which have a long way to go don't get me wrong) and have come up with something. I found this scanned image of this sweet heavy weight lifter kid online and decided to doctor it up a bit. This is what i did. I adjusted the level of the picture to make the colors more real. Before it was really light. I set the white as the guys shirt, the black as the black type on the top, and the grey tone as the handle bar of the weights. Then, i used the dodge tool to do some lightening up. At the top of the page i lightened up the top part of "weightlifting" to give it a cooler affect and i also touched up the "Rover" symbol to make it lighter. Then, i made the kids shoes, socks, and bandages and his shins lighter with the dodge tool. Finally, the white letters behind him were touched up as well. Then, with the burn tool, i made his skin darker, especially his face to look like he had been working a lot harder! I also darkened up the gym floor. Then, using the paint and brush tools i made the words and symbols behind him more yellow and pronounced. Oh, and i forgot to say that i also made the weights themselves darker. So yeah, there ya have it. I'm pretty sure that's all i did to that picture, but it looks a lot better, trust me!
Now, as far as a sports fan goes I do like sports. But, there was never that one sport that i was crazy over. I can pretty much play any sport but i am not necessarily really good at any. I love to play but i'm not a fanatic about any in particular. Unless you are talking about ultimate frisbee. I love that sport, but it's not really an official sport with a huge following. I do love to play though.

Dodge!! or Burn!!

We are still in photoshop which is sweet. It is a lot more fun and interesting than all the word and excel stuff. We learned how to doctor up photo's even more. Specifically, we used the burn and dodge tools a lot, as well as the gaussian blur and eraser. The a ha moment for me was how to use the burn and dodge tools. That was so cool and how you can even make a shape look 3-D. This stuff is really awesome. The only thing is that it is still a lot for me to take in. I think i will just need lots of practice to get the hang of everything. But it's cool anyway.
Now, my favorite fall activity is mainly eating...i'm not going to lie. Specifically pumpkin pie and drinking hot apple cider. Also, i love the fall leaves. I just love the fall. It's awesome!

Photshop Galore!

Whoa! Today was more amazing photo shop stuff. It's all new and exciting to me. Today went a little bit better as far as comprehension goes. One of the coolest things, i thought, was learning how to change the colors on images. I love that stuff. What i'm still frustrated with, though, has to just do with myself and not being able to keep up all the time. But, i'll get it eventually. I'm also posting the first mini assignment here too.
Now, my worst injury....hmmmm. To tell you the truth, nothing terribly bad has happened to me. I think one of the worst things that happened to me was just throwing my back out one time. I could hardly walk for at least a month. It was so painful. But it was nothing exciting. Anyway, there ya go!

Photoshop plus!

Well, today we learned about the joyous world of photoshop! Now, there is so much to these programs that it is really hard for me to follow along. What frustrated me today was that we went over a whole bunch of things that didn't really seem relevant to what our assignment was. It seemed extremely rushed and i wasn't really able to grasp what was going on. Not to mention that Nicole didn't have to time to really teach us what we were supposed to do for our homework. I'm really dumb when it comes to programs like this so it's hard for me to just catch on. So yeah, today was just rushed which i know happens. But, my a-ha moment came when i realized you can find a picture online and just drag it into photoshop. I thought that was awesome.
Alright, my favorite season is probably the fall. At least it was back home in NY. This is because when the leaves change back east it is beautiful. The whole country side changes and you are engulfed in a glowing brilliance all around of red, orange, yellow, purple, and it's just awesome! So yeah, i love it! I miss it too because i haven't seen those leaves since 2003 (my senior year) *sniff*

Upcoming Test?!

Well here it comes folks, the first exam. Today was mainly a review of everything we have done since day 1. Luckily, nothing came as a huge surprise, but i did figure out again how to do the dot leader. So that was good to know. Frustrations today just have to do with the fact that i am really tired and should really get to bed earlier...but that's my fault huh? I love Fridays!
Also, as far as my pet goes, i had a little dog growing up named (you'll laugh) Skippy. He was a miniature toy poodle, so yeah, just a little guy. But he lived till he was 15 i think. We loved that little dog but he would lick everything thing. Kinda weird. I do like dogs though.

Charting it up!

Today was an amazing day of chart making using excel. Not only that, but we learned how to use, more in depth, the formula functions and how, basically, to do things more quickly. My a ha moment came when we learned how to use the chart functions. This is because when I took English 316 I had horrible formatting problems when trying to make my charts for that class. What is still fairly frustrating for me is how much there is on one program. I can follow along really well and learn how to do each step, but then its remembering everything we go over. I think it might be helpful if we could have practice assignments. I know no one likes more homework, but something like this would be really helpful i think if we had a chart with instructions on what we need to do to fix it. This would give more practice and help ingrain the concepts so we won't forget them. Just an idea, but that's what i have trouble with...just remembering everything.
On a lighter note, the big high adventure i would take if money wasn't an option would probably have to be something to do with New Zealand. Either that or Australia. I would just do everything i could! Scuba Diving, Sky Diving, Hiking, Camping, and the works. Just everything i could do. That would be a sweet adventure, and money isn't an option! Heck Yeah!

Excelling!

Wow! Today was pretty intense. We learned things that i have never learned before with using excel so everything was an a-ha moment. Specifically, we learned how to use and type in formulas in a spreadsheet. My greatest difference in my numbers was 8592.8 meters. My greatest frustration was when it comes to computers i am pretty slow at catching on to new concepts. I need to have things repeated a lot and gone over again. This is because i will see the new concept and then i will try and do it a couple times and by the time i finish they have already moved onto the next item. So i just need things repeated a lot. Otherwise this is a really good learning experience which i am really happy to learn. The coolest thing was learning about the fill box tool.
I think my favorite breakfast food is crepes. My mom would make homemade crepes with great fruit topping stuff. Oh man, it's awesome. So yeah, that's my favorite!

A day of Excelling!

Alright! Today was a great day of learning. We mainly went over how to submit our assignment 5. However, after we discussed that we briefly went over how to use Microsoft Excel. This is where my "A Ha" moment came into play. I haven't used Excel too much so this was a great review for me. I learned how to merge cells and how to change their widths and heighths. This was really cool. My frustration still comes into effect with how much there is in Excel. I never know how to do the little things so a more in depth training would be really good.
Ok, now, my favorite musical instrument is the saxophone which i have played since i was in fourth grade! More specifically, the Baritone Saxophone. I love that instrument and wish i could continue playing, but sadly, my alto is left at home in NY. I do love to play though. Unfortunately I haven't really played since before my mission. I'll pick it up again one day!

Weird Relative!

First of all, we learned how to use Adobe Acrobat professional today which was my A HA moment. The entire class period today was new to me which was actually really cool! We learned how to make PDF's of our word documents and how to edit and completely customize the tool bars and all that good stuff. The only thing i was a little frustrated with was the pace is still a little fast. It's a lot to take in for me so i'm still trying to get the hang of it all. But it's all good. I'm really glad i'm learning all of this!
Now, as far as my weird relative goes i don't have anyone that is too out of the ordinary or off the wall. Granted, everyone has their little quirks, but there is nothing too extraordinary. But, if i had to pick, i would say my Grandpa on my dad's side. He used to be a member of the church but completely left after his sister told him she was a prophet. They started their own church and she wrote down all her prophecies and they follow them. Well, she later died and their following has slowly died away, but he's still convinced they need to build a temple somewhere. Also, he broke his hip, but he won't get it fixed because her last prophecy before she died was that if he did that he would die. So he's been running on a broken hip for a couple of years. Who knows how he does it. Anyway, that's my weird relative.