Thursday, December 21, 2006

flickr, photos, images


In college I took a great class called "Educational Media" and it was one of the first places that introduced me to using a digital camera, using photoshop, making movies, basic html and stuff like that. My final exam included making a power point presentation about anything I wanted -- what could be better than that? Since taking that class I have been interested in photography and using tools to manipulate images. In the past I have used Flickr to "Warholize" photos as gifts or created celebrity mash-up photos by using photoshop to put one person's head on another's body to make funny cards and the like so this area isn't completely foreign to me.


I had never heard of Mappr, but found it to be a pretty neat idea. I was disappointed that some of the towns and landmarks I have lived in or visited were absent or had only one or two photos attached, but that only makes me want to upload my own photos. My biggest complaint is that it took a very long time for this site to load images, I don't know if that's because the network here is slow or what, but it took several minutes to just load the most basic searches. Flickr Color Pickr was kinda cool because it allowed you some amazing photos - I made my search use really vibrant colors. Montagr was neat too, but I wasn't as impressed with that one because I guess I couldn't see myself using it.


I did use the Trading Card maker though and made one of our dog!






Tuesday, December 19, 2006

7 & 1/2 Habits of learning

I think that the hardest habit for me is number 4: viewing problems as challenges. Lately, I've allowed set backs ranging from my work schedule to financial reasons to personal problems get in the way of one of my long time goals - getting my Master's degree. I often view these "challenges" as major obstancles that end up getting me down when I should try harder to work around the problem. I get irritated with the idea that if I had already started I'd be finished by now, but this is something to work on.
The easiest habit is using technology. I think because I grew up around computers it's easier for me to seek out solutions to my problems on the internet. From doing research on a certain subject to converting my old records to music files for my new ipod, I like having technology ready at my fingertips.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

first post

Growing up as part of the first generation with computers in the classrooms, I usually consider myself pretty computer savvy. I've maintained a blog (on another server) for several years now in addition to having my own personal site, but I'm always interested in learning something new so we'll see where this goes.

The library is very quiet today. The masses are shopping.