Well, it's been fun!

Well folks, for anyone that even cared to read this (which i don't blame you at all for not), it's been real, it's been fun, it hasn't been real fun. So i think in the end we've learned some things, but also forgot some things as well. I hope you take care and who knows, maybe i'll start my own real blog sometime just for fun! Thanks again!

ArcGIS gets easier?!

Amazing! Today we actually learned that Arc can have some easy properties to it! We learned how to do a legend, north arrow, title, and scale! All of these things were actually kind of easy! The other cool things was that we also added correct colors. I'm still frustrated with the fact that i'm so far behind. I've never been this far behind in this class before so i don't know if i'll be able to catch up. I'll certainly try!
The last movie i saw in the theaters was Madagascar 2. It was alright. The penguins really made the movie worth it!

GIS and You

Today was much better as far as the learning aspect goes. We learned about GIS...well an extremely abbreviated version. What we did get to do was go around campus and take some measurements on some garbage cans and light posts so we could enter them into ArcGIS. Frustrations come from the fact that i wish we had more time to learn the material...but it is cool!
Now, what will be the toughest thing this week is everything. Not only do i have a physics test i have to take, but for this class i have an arcGis project assignment to finish, a poster to make, a presentation to come up with, and final draft of the paper to make all for this class. Then, for geomorphology i have a ten page research paper i have to write with a powerpoint presentation to give for it too. I don't know how i'm going to get through all of this. So there ya go!

labels in arc

Well, i think my blog posts keep getting more depressing and frantic as the days go by...and this one isn't much better. I'm getting so behind in everything and it doesn't help that i was deathly ill for the entire thanksgiving break and couldn't do anything to get caught up. It's a sick irony if you ask me...literally. So today we learned how to do labels in arcgis and it's cool but i think there is way too much too it than is necessary. It's pretty ridiculous. I don't even have my shapefiles drawn so i had to make a quick one in order to do anything today. So i'm probably going to forget everything i learned today which kills me because i want to learn this stuff...i just have huge research papers in every other class i have and don't have time for this assignment. I just don't. I'm sorry. Anyway, like i said, it was cool to learn how to do the labels and that it can do all of that.
As far as my favorite internet site goes...probably facebook...i dont' surf the internet hardly at all.

OH man...lots of arc

Today was pretty frustrating. I just kept getting behind. I don't know...there's just so much to do and to remember that i have a hard time with everything. However, what was cool was that we did make the dino quarry in 3-d and then we learned how soar as a bird over our creation. That was really cool!
As far as my thanksgiving plans go, me and my sister are going to my Grandma's house in Grace Idaho for a couple of days and we are bringing our friend from back home with us too because he doesn't have anywhere to go. Then, we are going to go to Lava Hot springs and sit in the hot pots and finally relax. That will be nice...then go home and and do papers....arrggh!

ArcGIS again

Well, we've been continuing to to work with Arc and it's a really tough program. I think it's a combination of everything hitting us at once it other classes that makes it hard to focus...at least for me. So, sadly, i've gotten behind in the Arc work. But, it is neat to learn the program as a whole, because once we got it down we'll be able to use it in the future for field camp and those kinds of things. I really think it's cool how you can make your own contacts on a mylar sheet, scan it in, and then overlay it on a topo map and georeference it! It was great. I'm just frustrated because i'm slow in these things. I need to go over it again and again. Oh well, i'll get it.
Now, as for the random questions, the best book i read recently was....oh wait....i haven't read for fun since before the mission. Oh my gosh...that's the saddest thing in the world. I've just read gospel related thins and text books!! I live a sad existence. However, i did start reading a fantasy book written by a professor here at BYU actually, called Elantris. It's good to read something for fun. But i haven't been able to pick it back up for at least a month *sniff*. Also, as far as Christmas music goes...i'm an after thanksgiving kind of a guy. People are just too crazy about it and i think you need to give thanksgiving a chance before you jump the gun and go onto Christmas.

The amazingly counterintuitive world ArcGIS!

Alright then, today we started to learn about the amazing program of ArcGIS!  This is a great program in which you can pretty much do just about anything you would ever want to do with a geological picture.  My a ha moment today was that you can actually type in specific coordinates of an area you want and it will take you directly to that spot.  Also, that pyramids are good!  Click "yes" for pyramids!!!  The only thing I'm still frustrated with is how counterintuitive it really is.  All the bugs don't really help things either but luckily we are in this class so we can learn all about it.  

Now, as far as my favorite places to eat are i would most definitely have to say Tucanos.  I love that place because seriously, not only is there an all you can eat salad bar, fruit, pasta, etc.  but you get all you can eat meat of any kind you want!  I mean come on, it doesn't get much better than that!  

Review!

Today was a full and exciting day of review! We basically just reviewed today for the test. There wasn't any a ha moments and i really don't feel frustrated at this point. However, that paper kind of makes me nervous. Anyway, that's all there is to it.
As far as a good joke goes... What is green and invisible?

Hold out your hand with your palm facing up like your holding something and say "this head of lettuce!" I love it! See ya!

The glory of PowerPoint!

PowerPoint is a wonderful tool that i. honestly, don't know how we would get through college without it. In all regards the possibilities are endless. My a ha moment was that when you add a picture you can totally change the angle and all these different styles come up. I thought that was really cool. Other than that though, there wasn't anything too new and exciting because we have all used powerpoint at least a little bit i think. The one thing that frustrated me though was the slide master. I still don't really get how to use that.
As far as Adam's presentation goes, i thought it was fine but there were way too many sounds. Sounds are fun, but too many just kind of gets annoying. But this was all in good fun so it's ok!

Poster Post

Hey, alright! Well, things are really starting to pick up. With papers and tests and projects and homework it's amazing i get anything done at all. However, despite it all, we are still plugging away in this ol' 230 class. Today we learned about how to properly make posters in illustrator. This was really neat for me because i never knew how to do this before. I have always seen the geologic posters around before, but never knew how people made them. I really thought that this whole concept was my a ha moment so i really enjoyed this. what i am still frustrated with is just how much work i have to do. Not just for this class but all of it combined. I am actually understanding what we are learning and catching on, but i am starting to get overwhelmed. Note to self; never procrastinate your work!
On a lighter note...my favorite class i have taken so far has got to be my astronomy class i took freshman year here at BYU. It was the physics 127 class and i absolutely loved it! That along with geology 109, geology of the planets was wicked awesome too. I loved those classes!

Once upon an AI

Ok, what i thought was really cool and was my a ha moment was actually a lot of things. I really thought it was neat how the eraser tool actually just separated the object you erased into two different objects. I also really liked how you could drag the color you wanted into the gradient to change what gradient you wanted. Most of all though, the reflect tool was wicked awesome. It was sweet to be able to draw one thing and then just reflect it. Those were my favorite a ha moments. What i'm still frustrated with is that not only can i not draw on a regular piece of paper, but i still stink at drawing regular objects on illustrator. I am definitely not an artistic person. Everyone seems to be able to draw cool things but i'm just like, what can i draw, and then i try to draw something and it sucks. But anyway, that's what i'm frustrated with.
Now, as far as where i have lived. Aside from the college life i haven't lived too many places. I grew up in NY and then for one year we lived in south east Washington, but then we moved back to the same house in NY. Then i lived in Ogden on my mission for two years, and then good ol' Provo. I loved growing up in upstate NY though. I love the east.

making a crossection in AI

Today was really cool. I felt like i was right on task, i followed everything Nicole was teaching, and i felt i understood the material. We learned how to use the eyedropper tool as well as the transparency tool. With those tools we practiced making a cross section, and amazingly, i understood it all. My a ha moment came also, with learning how to make the stroke a dashed line. More specifically though, I really thought it was cool to use the multiplicity transparency option. That was my favorite part. I'm only frustrated with the fact that i have procrastinated too much and now i have a huge load on my hands. Hopefully i survive this week. Here goes nothing.
As far as my random question/statement, i'm going to a metallica concert tonight with an old mission companion which should be fun even though i'm not a huge heavy metal guy. Its just for the fact that i can say, i went to a metallica concert. My favorite band, though, is Jimmy Eat World!

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!