Epiphanie Bags!

Just found out that this great bag company is giving away a 5D mark II!!!

They make really cute camera bags that hold all your DSLR stuff on the inside, but on the outside it's a chic purse!

Check it out!!
http://www.haveanepiphanie.com/home/2010/2/28/epiphanie-give-away.html

Another Day in Paradise

Well, the weather was grand again today.
I worked quite the shift today, but tomorrow, I have a day off for the first time in quite a while.
Exciting stuff!
Now, I'm off to bed though.

Springtime!

It's been a while since I've blogged, dear readers, but here I am again.

Spring has sprung here in Madison, WI and it is surely beautiful.

The birds, sing, the sun glows, and the clouds hover gently across the sky.

Hard to believe it was snowing three days ago!

Enjoy the weather!!!

That's A Wrap!

Well, English 201 is officially over, as is this semester. I finished with finals yesterday, and boy, does it feel good to be officially entering summer. Even though this blog was started for this class, perhaps I'll continue to post on it. Only time will tell though.

Photoshop 2

Yesterday, I attended the software training workshop for Photoshop 2. I already have had a bit of experience with Photoshop, and I thought the second class would be best for me. In the class we first went over how to make different adjustments to photos. This included tinkering with brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, among other things. We then worked on making a composite document from separate pictures. We went over how to cut out different pictures and mess with the transparency of layers so multiple images could be seen. We also used the great new Photoshop tool that is the Healing Brush. It allows for blemishes or other unwanted details to be easily removed from a photo. I think Photoshop is a very useful skill. It will help me with the final project for creating my site header. Also, it will be useful for editing the photos that I plan to put on the site. Besides for this class, having Photoshop skill will be a great asset for my future. It would come in handy for personal projects, and I could also see myself doing graphic design work at some point in my future. This was definitely a helpful class, and I look forward to taking more of these training workshops in the future.

Bio Mapping and Mobile Landscapes

Today we read an online article discussing “Bio Mapping.” This involves the user to record their emotional arousal coming from their environment. It could be used to see how different environments affect people. I thought this idea was truly interesting. Could we possibly relate this to places and non-places. It would seem that a non-place would be much less stimulating than a place. For instance, I’m much less emotionally involved on the bus than I am say, at a concert. This article also made me think of another article I’d read concerning video games. A new company uses “biofeedback” to interpret brain waves of users. The users concentration is evident in the game. For example, only those people who showed much concentration, would be able to sink a put in a golf game. I find it amazing that our technology has progressed to the stage where we can pick up our own thoughts. Some day will we be able to install chips, which allow us to send thoughts to each other. Maybe we’ll even be able to move objects with our minds.

We also read an article titled “Mobile Landscape.” This article discussed being able to track all of the cell phones used in a city. Then, we’d be able to graphically represent every cell phone, and see the city as an almost pulsating life form. This idea is a bit scary to me. I don’t much like the idea that someone can know exactly where I am or what I’m doing at any time. It seems that as our technology becomes more advanced we give up more of our freedom. Today, we may be giving up our location because of our cell phones, and perhaps tomorrow, we’ll be giving up our thoughts.

Slime Mold

For this week, we read the first part of Emergence by Steven Johnson. In the book’s intro it discusses an experiment involving slime mold going through a maze and finding food at the end of it. I’d never heard of anything like this from an organism this simple, and found it pretty amazing. It’s actually sort of always impressed me how other animals can do this as well. It’s funny that many of these animals could find food better in a maze than a human most likely could. It seems different organisms have different strengths.

The book also discussed how the slime mold had “coordinated group” behavior. This made me think of how humans can behave in the same way many times. We behave one certain way by ourselves, and may act in a completely different manner when we’re around others. I’ve discussed the “sheep effect” before when talking about people following others across the street. While you may not cross the street before the light turns, for some reason, you’re more likely to cross it if someone else does it first. I also thought about how laughter seems to be part of a group behavior. It seems to be contagious some times. Many times I’ve watched a movie or TV show by myself and not laughed nearly as much as if I’m watching it with a group of laughing friends. It’s interesting how such a small, seemingly unimportant organisms, can be models for us, and teach us so much.