18/01/08 - 24/01/08

The topic for this weeks lecture was basic operations, we basically looked at display features such as pixels / colour / size of images or graphics. The different area's covered in the lecture included; models, display, applications program, graphics library, colour depths etc. I found this helpful as it isn't something I have previously taken interest in and didn't really understand, however I have to admit I found it boring as I simply didn't find the topic particularly interesting. Although I did take notes, because of the lack of interest I felt in the lecture I looked up pixels and colour depth and found the two websites shown below:

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/p/pixel.html
http://hankfiles.pcvsconsole.com/answer.php?file=459

The tutorial was interesting as we got to use photoshop again, but we got edit a piece of text so that it had an image used for the colour of it rather than just using the usual text colours. I used the same text and image as the one's used in the tutorial sheet, using "hello" for the text and a picture of a rose for the image. I also managed to do a bit more of last weeks tutorial as I didn't get round to finishing it. It was as usual straightforward to follow the tutorial notes and was overall easy enough to understand.

I didn't find the lecture interesting this week, not because of the lecturer but simply because I found the topic extrememly boring, however I still found it wasn't a particularly difficult topic to understand. The tutorial was a lot more interesting, however still may not have been as benefitial as the lecture simply because I had less understanding of the lecture topic this week. I found both the lecture and the tutorial helpful, I just hope the topic for the next lecture is a bit more interesting.

11/01/08 - 17/01/08

This week's lecture was focused on multimedia with particular focus on graphics for now. Decision making considering graphics was discussed under topics such as client requirements and target audiences. Graphics sources was also mentioned to help for an understanding of where graphics can come from and how they are created / used. I think that defining what a graphic is will be easier after this as although I already knew what graphics were and where they come from, I wouldn't have been as in-depth if asked to explain it to someone else and therefore found the lecture very useful. For a bit of further reading this week I just looked up "multimedia" online and found the following:

www.herts.ac.uk/ltdu/technology/what_is_multimedia.html


I didn't actually finish the tutorial notes this week, but am definately going to try and finish before next weeks tutorial. We used Photoshop again but this week we had to use the layers application to edit / combine different graphics to make one. When it came to selecting / removing the opaque area around the clock I couldn't seem to stop removing the legs of the clock so gave up in the end and just left it without any. I'll probably try it all again at some point to see if I can do it without cutting the legs out. I got as far as linking the layers so I'm going to attempt the "adding a gradient" etc sections at some point before the next tutorial. For my extra reading for the tutorial I'm going to use the Photoshop tutorial I have previously used to read up / get help with the topics I hadn't got round to doing.

I found the tutorial more challenging than the lecture this week, however neither were difficult to follow, it just simply took me more time to understand what I was doing in the tutorial. The lecture was, as usual, straight forward to follow and helpful and again added to the knowledge I already had of the topic previously. The tutorial was equally as helpful and I'm finding using Photoshop a lot easier than the attempt I made at it alone.

14/12/07 - 11/01/08

In last lecture of term we looked at jobs.ac.uk and the job opportunities available specific to module titles etc such as computer forensecs. It was quite interesting to find out what jobs were available to us when we leave uni (obviously depending on how well we all actually do at the end of the 3 years). We also went back to looking at Project Management and various topics involved in it such as concept development, pre-production and production and testing. Even though the lecture was straightforward enough to understand I decided to do a bit more reading on Project Management and found the following website:


http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_PPM.htm



The first tutorial this year was based on using Photoshop software, which is actually something I've previously attempted but not in any depth and without much effort (probably just because of boredom, but I can't really remember), so I found this tutorial helpful and interesting. Basically we had to attempt to make a face out of various pictures of vegetables. It was simple enough, but I looked for a tutorial on Photoshop online, so if it gets more complicated I'll have something to read for a bit of extra help:

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Photoshop/1

I think I left the blog untill a bit late this time round for the lecture and it was a bit of a blur, even though we were told to do it earlier. But anyway, the lecture was useful for an understanding of what jobs are available to us and what project management is and what it involves. I think I prefered the tutorial this time just because I was using something vaguely familiar and enjoyed using, so hopefully we'll get to use Photoshop a bit more.