The Best Websites in the Known Universe.

Green is one of my favorite colors along with Red. That may seem like I'm going to talk about Christmas, but Christmas isn't the topic though it is awesome. The topic is the Best Websites in the Known Universe and the first I'm going to address is Jenny Zeberlein's because it's well organized, fun to look, and the page has a lot of green and it concerns Ireland.

With traveling in mind, I have to say that I enjoyed Taylor's site with all the information and journal he posted from his journey to Britain. Had he not put that there, I would never have known that he'd gone across the pond. I'm not sure if he took some of the trippy photos while he was there or not, but the work he did editing photos is pretty cool.

Finally, Katie's site tells an interesting story that captured my heart and made me want to listen to Kitsch once their fearless leader is back from Japanland. Having put up their lyrics and soon-to-be discography, I can't wait to see more on the band's progress should she put more.

If you'd like to visit my site, which doesn't quite compare to those I've listed, click the spell below:

Accio His Erratik Majesti's Website

Carmel's Cupcake Endeavor For Kids Who Can't Cook Good

I favored my dear colleague's presentation on Tuesday because I hate pink but it made me want cupcakes and she spoke well about something she was actually passionate about. Many of my close friends have been into cooking and though I've never really gotten into it, I can see how it's easy to be passionate about it.

Onto topic #2... This picture I revamped:



I had actually done it a while back, but with the help of Adobe Photoshop I made it look a little better.

I hope you all enjoy it ey.
Au revoir.
- Adain

My Two Favorite Blogs Thus Far

I thoroughly enjoyed Katie's presentation on the history of being a DJ because the music business is fascinating to me and the history is interesting as well. My second favorite had to be Taylor's presentation on Chinese, since I'm actually taking it with him and everything he said made sense to me despite how I was starving towards the end of class. Basically, since it stuck with me even though I was hungry, it was really interesting. When I'm hungry, I'm usually as attentive as a termite.

Anyway, I'm going to see what presentations there'll be today and pick two from there, and then they all enter a coliseum for battle royale to see who gave the best presentation. My money might be on Taylor. Stay tuned.
- Adain

5 Important Guidelines for Using PowerPoint

I'm going to open this blog with Seth Godin's words.

"The point of PowerPoint is to communicate with your audience."

On this note, it's important to consider that if you were really just giving the audience a surplus of facts on whatever you're talking about, you should've just printed out a report for them. Depending on the topic, this could be more appropriate but consider it's a presentation that you're using Powerpoint to make. So,

Guideline #1 : Put a bit of yourself into the slides so you can better present yourself and your topic.

When you put yourself into the presentation, it's easier to hold the attention of your audience because they'll sense your genuity if you do so. Presentations are about trust because they are hardly ever about just the facts. Presentations consist of a number of ideas that you're trying to sell to the audience. If you want them to read it for themselves, they can, but after the presentation.

Guideline #2: If you want the audience to pay attention, type out everything you're going to explain, and give them a copy of that after the presentation.

Think about it. Would you pay attention to someone talking in front of a room if they gave you a hard copy of everything they were going to say beforehand? No. You'd be reading. I know I'd be reading if they were either a) talking about something I didn't care for or b) I didn't like their voice or their face. That could just as easily happen to me if I was giving a presentation,

so I wouldn't give a hard copy beforehand because if you want someone to listen to what you're saying, they have to first like how you hold their attention.

On the note of holding attention is the third guideline:

Guideline #3: Don't type everything you're saying on the slide. It's not a teleprompter.

I like these two examples from the Garr Reynolds webpage :

The one to the right is the good example, and the one to the left is even better. Something simple like that will not only stick with the audience, but it'll be easier for you to remember as well or see out of your peripheral vision in case, whatever cue cards you have are mixed up.

The last two guidelines I have are about showing that you know what's going on.

Guideline #4 : Know when to use what types of charts.

Knowing what kind of chart to use will help all kinds of learners, be they visual or auditory because explaining the visual graphs is easiest when everyone knows why they're being used.

The Garr Reynolds website explained it very well:

Pie Charts

Used to show percentages. Limit the slices to 4-6 and contrast the most important slice either with color or by exploding the slice.
Vertical Bar Charts

Used to show changes in quantity over time. Best if you limit the bars to 4-8
Horizontal Bar Charts

Used to compare quantities. For example, comparing sales figures among the four regions of the company.
Line Charts

Used to demonstrate trends. For example, here is a simple line chart showing that our sales have gone up every year. The trend is good. The arrow comes in later to underscore the point: Our future looks good!

Guideline # 5 : Use the master slide view or slide sorter to go over your presentation beforehand.

If you go over your slide and know what part comes after what in your presentation, people will likely be more attentive due to the coherency or flow of the presentation from one topic to another. Having cue cards with both information and transitions is the last thing I recommend for using Powerpoint. What you say to the audience will click with whatever it is you're showing them in your presentation.

Au revoir.

- Adain

MS Excel

So by far the most interesting thing I've learned to do with Excel is the Special paste technique. It seriously blows my mind to Narnia and back when the data changes as soon as the original source is changed in someway. Once you've copied a graph or a chart, you look under the Home tab, click the arrow under Paste, and click 'Paste Special' and pick the option to paste it as a link in a Powerpoint presentation.

So, no matter where you place it, as long as you have the source there, you can alter it. This would come in handy if say you were giving a presentation that involved charts and someone asks you at the end how a change in the data would affect the numbers. If you have both the Excel file and the Powerpoint presentation on a pen drive, you could load the Excel with the PowerPoint still open, change the data the question is referring to, and talk about what differences there may be.

I have laid awake many a night wondering how the scientists of Microsoft dreamed of making such things or if they even dreamed it all. Or if they're just machines.

If you'd like to see more of my views and work, I've got another blog hurr :
http://erratikinertia.blogspot.com/

Enjoy. Thanks for reading.
- Adain

In case anyone's interested,

My other blog's got more stuff :
http://erratikinertia.blogspot.com/

CLT : ProTools

I had visited CLT before with a friend who showed me how to record music using the lab that we were shown in the 2nd part of our tour. I learned that they actually have a studio-quality USB microphone available for recording.

I'm not sure if I have any ideas using the recording for anything in this class aside from the podcasts which we might do. However, when we were there and our tour guide Rob Chapman was explaining how the technology we have is beyond anything that students will use it for, I got to thinking about how ProTools and microphones could be used to start a club or group that makes professional recordings of for example, the school symphonies or concerts to have on record. It's just an idea but if it went along well enough, perhaps there could even be a branch of Technology, A/V majors or minors that are taught by people to make professional videos, recordings and whatnot.

Nowadays, pretty much anyone can have a great recording with a MacBook and a good microphone, but with the resources to that and more, there should be some sort of club or class for people more interested in learning about technology along with the liberal arts education offered by Trinity.