Advice

I think Woody Allen said that 80% of life is showing up, so go to class.

And if you have a Mac, I would suggest doing as much work as you can on the library computers (or on any PC) with Windows, just to make things simpler.  

Finally, consider yourself technologically semi-illiterate.  Once you cut through your computer-ego about what you know, need to know, etc., actually learning new or better ways of doing things will be a lot easier.

Favorite Websites

My top three would probably have to be Bianca's, Hannah's and David's.

I thought that Bianca's was very unique and creative. I also love the navbar design and her design in general.
I also thought that Hannah's design was very stylish and creative.  I like the variations in fonts and colors, and overall layout in general.
David Meeske did a really good job of giving an overview of his interests with a good layout.  I also enjoyed all of the the media he included.

Website

My Website

I thought creating my website on Wittgenstein using Expression Web was going to be much harder than it actually was.  And before I knew we were going to be using this progam I envisioned long lines of code, so I was very relieved in the end.  I'm probably most proud of my default page because it is simple and to the point, and most of the design features I wanted to incorporate fell into place fairly well.  I found a good background picture that matched the overall theme, which helped.  I think that this was the biggest design problem that I encountered, because I knew that a plain-colored background with a simple scheme would look redundant, but I also did not want the picture to overshadow the content.  I ended up searching for pictures of Wittgenstein's hometown, Vienna, and one of the first things that popped up was a detail from a glass and iron building there.  It matched my color scheme well and was subtle enough to put in the backgound.  If I could change one thing it would probably be to add more people that Wittgenstein influenced, like Stanley Cavell, W.V.O. Quine, Hilary Putnam, etc. (practically everyone in philosophy, and a lot in other disciplines), so if I have the time to do a little more research (which is looking very unlikely leading up to finals) I might.  I also need to proofread, since I did a lot more writing than I expected to do.  One thing that was simpler to change was that I eleminated the borders on my navbar to make it more streamlined and varied the font size to make it more appealing.  I thought this was as big an improvement as anything.  I'm not really sure who I will show my site to.  I haven't really taken any philosophy classes so far, and reading stuff like Wittgenstein is kind of a hobby.  I'd encourage any fellow students who are curious about Wittgenstein's philosophy to take a look at it, because it's very relevant to many different interests: he wrote about language, aesthetics, religion- you name it.  I'm not sure if I will make another site in the future (maybe for a presentation or something), but if I do at least I now know how.

Hardware Demystified

Larry Hechler was a very interesting guy.  I learned several things that will help me in future maintenance and purchases of computers.  Number one is that from this point on I will be very careful to not mess up anything on my Mac.  The fact that only apple keyboards will work on Macs, and that you have to buy the whole assembly to replace the touchpad, basically means that you're at the mercy of Apple if either of those should become damaged.  Also, I did not know that you could not clean computers with alcohol, ammonia, or bleach.  I figured before that it is probably not a good idea to clean an expensive machine with harsh chemicals, but did not know that, say, bleach causes them to basically melt.  Good to know.  So, I'll probably look into Techspray.  However, the most important thing would probably be to backup everything all the time.  I'm off the network a lot, so I have an external hard drive, but I do not back up as often as I probably should.  Since hearing Mr. Hechler I've been backing up every day, especially since I have end-of-the-semester essays that I definitely do not want to lose.  And as I'm thinking about doing a thesis in English, the whole computer/pool/thesis story scared the crap out of me.  From now on, I'll have anything as important as a thesis backed up either on an external hard drive, a flash drive, a CD-RW, the Y drive, or all of the above.  I probably need to cycle my battery more often also.
Regarding future purchases, I did not know that you can basically put any hard drive into a computer or buy more ram after you purchased it.  I might take those points into consideration later on in purchasing a computer, as it could save me quite a bit of money, I would think.

Powerpoint

I was really interested to see if I could pull together a coherent presentation on semiotics.  It's a subject that has been floating around some of the literary criticism stuff I've been reading.  I first noticed it Paul de Man's work The Resistance to Theory, which talked about the instability of transferring meaning by rhetorical language.  In his mind, rhetoric such as irony or certain tropes are signifiers which are firmly entrenched in the ephemeral realm of social use, and therefore inherently unstable and relative to the signified.  I didn't know at first that this was referencing semiotics until he named it.  I then did some reading around and noticed how many people in academia owe their work to this subject-- philosophers, linguists, cultural anthropologists, mythologists, etc.  And I then found out that it all went back to the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, who developed a theory of signs that became modern semiotics.  So, in reading some literature on him and some modern usages of the subject, I was able (I hope) to come up with a informational presentation.  I really liked Hannah's presentation on the Bechdel Test.  This was the first time I've heard about it, but it makes sense to analyze movies in this way, with us living in such a male dominated society and all (and movies being one of the main sources of cultural information).  I thought the use of imagery from those movies made it even more effective, especially the "pass/fail" portion.  I also liked Paige's on Sloths.  I just think that sloths are really interesting animals, and her use of information on how to help them combined with the good use of video and pictures made it a very effective and enjoyable presentation.

Photo Manipulation

 

I chose to combine a picture of a pool at Trinity with a picture of someone walking on the beach.  I basically just wanted to make something unusual that would look interesting, so having someone walking on water seemed like an appropriate thing to create.  To make it, I used three layers: the background with the water, the normal unretouched person walking taken from Stock Exchange, and a duplicate image of that person set at an angle to create a reflection.  I mainly focused on manipulating the reflection.  I first dialed down the opacity to give it a blended quality with the water, and then used Liquefy to distort it into something like a reflection.  I then blurred the image to soften the edges a bit.  The last thing I used was the eraser tool to help both overlaid images blend with the background.  It doesn't look that realistic, but in creating it I noticed that it looks kind of like a melted trail that the walker leaves behind, which I thought was cool in its own way.  I wouldn't say that this is harmful because it was done just to create something unreal and absurd, and things that are that far from reality usually aren't too harmful.  Plus, my skills are such that even if I wanted to harm anyone by trying to fool them it probably wouldn't work too well.  I just see it as some absurd, (obviously) fabricated picture of some person walking on water created because I thought it would look nice (or at least strange).

What's interesting is that a picture like this is a much more lowbrow version of the same basic spirit in an art movement: Futurism.  My article looked at the "photodynamism" of Futurist photography in Italy in the early 20th century.  The futurists used photographic manipulation ("dynamism") to "suggest a reality that was different from the one represented" (361).  The earliest form of dynamism started with multiple exposures of motion (hence the name), but this technique was extended into portraiture (361).  Here is an example from the article:

Multiple exposures are used to create the illusion of the subject merging with a cat, which recorded not "a kinetic event, but a varied and differentiated recapturing of a subject almost as if it were possible to render the faceting of the Ego" and therefore gives "a total suggestion of all aspects of the subject represented, variously assumed allegorical, narrative, psychological, or characterological dimensions" (361).  It is obviously a constructed photograph, but it is one not done not out of a wish to fool someone.  Rather it uses its obvious "fakery" to comment on a subject and the surrounding connotations created by such a juxtaposition.

So, in this sort of tradition, I'm definitely not trying to fool anyone.  I guess I could now ask: what are the connotations of a person walking/melting on water in a pool at Trinity?  I have no idea.

Works Cited:

Lista, Giovanni. "Futurist Photography." Art Journal 41.4 (1981): 358-364. Print.

Google

 There were a couple of new and useful things I learned about Google last class.  I had no idea there existed a thing as the Deep Web, which Google cannot access.  I also did not know about the Page-rank algorithm and how sites use Page-rank Optimization to try to exploit it, or that Google has a death penalty.  The most interesting stuff, however, was on the practical side.  For instance, now I know that I can use "-" or "+" to force Google to exclude or include phrases.  This will be helpful in future searches.  Another useful tool is the Advanced Search, where you can restrict searches by domain among other things.  Also, I thought it was very interesting that Google caches sites, so that if the site is down for some reason you can still access a version of it; or that you could use it check information from a much older version of the site.  I just wonder how long it will be before people start having it surgically implanted.

Powerpoint

The worst powerpoint I've had to sit through was probably by a professor I took not too long ago who I'll keep anonymous.  They basically lectured from a powerpoint with black letters on a white background which they created a few hours before class.  I know professors are strapped for time, but color would have been nice.  Really, I didn't really care too much because they didn't really use it very often;  it just sort of added to the ambient light of the room.  So, I guess my first two things that I hate would be: black text on white background and not using the actually using the powerpoint.  When they did actually use it it tended to be overly long: say, by about 30 or 40 slides, so that to get through it all they would have to go so fast that I couldn't really write much down.  There would also be a lot of skipping slides due to the time factor.  So, numbers 3 and 4 would be: overly long, and long to the point of having to skip slides to finish.  To add insult to injury, most of the stuff in the presentations wouldn't end up on the test, so number 5 would be irrelevance.  I hope I never do this to anyone.

Computer Lab

I didn't even know this place existed, so I found out a lot.  If I ever have to use a digital camera or video camera for a class project I'll now know where to go.  For this class, it would be a nice alternative to the upstairs portion of the library.  I do most of my homework in the library anyway, so it's good to know of an alternative spot to get this stuff done.  I did not know we even had an HD video conferencing system and that students can use it, or that even the lights in the classroom were controlled by touchscreen systems that this center has set up. I guess I don't pay much attention... I knew they were pushing some button.  Anyway, I haven't used this place before and this is my first time here.  All in all it seems like a very helpful place.

Working with Excel

Before starting this class, I had a pathological fear of Excel.  Maybe it was because of this horrible computer class I took my freshman year of high school, where the teacher expected us to have some innate knowledge of functions and graphs.  So, basically what I've learned so far is how to actually use Excel, which before was this giant blank in my mind (thank you, Professor Belisle).  I'm not sure exactly how it would be useful within the areas I want to study (Literature), but if it ever is needed it's nice knowing how to use the parts we've learned.  I could definitely use it to calculate grades or my GPA, if I ever get obsessed enough.  I really find the finance part of it helpful, so I think it will be most useful for me with accounting, because, most likely, if I end up a teacher I'll never be able to afford to pay someone else to do it (sadly).  All in all, I'm glad I'm learning it and that all my panic is gone.

Public Image Ltd.

Image and marketing seem to go hand in hand, and I chose this picture of illustrator Clement Hurd and his vanished cigarette because I think it's subtle enough to be overlooked among the other glaringly obvious examples floating around.  This photo comes from a newer edition of Goodnight Moon, the kids classic, where the cigarette has been removed most likely due to the modern (I think justifiable) angst over smoking, plus the children's book context.  I think this is harmful in one specific way: if a kid notices that the illustrator of a book they love smoked, this could open up a dialogue about the issue of smoking.  It could be an opportunity for a good segue into a discussion about it, why it's bad, how it used to be perceived and now isn't, etc.  This reminds me of the recent issue of replacing one very prominent and offensive racial slur in Huckleberry Finn with "Slave."  Reading it from our modern context, with this bigotry still in it it can open up a useful dialogue about race.  I think the same goes with smoking here.  It seems like we're sacrificing these dialogues for being untroubled as consumers, as being untroubled makes things easier when casting your monetary vote.  That's obviously what the people in the boardrooms, at least in these two cases, counted on.  Anyway, would you really believe some eighteen year old who's about to light up tell you their doing it because of Clement Hurd?

Related to consumerism and image manipulation: the video.  I felt this one was a good example of image manipulation via make-up and photoshop of a middle-aged woman, which was something I was searching for.  I think there is a big problem in this country of how to deal image-wise with aging, especially with women.  Think of all the consumption this drives: botox, plastic surgery, wrinkle reducers, etc, which are all signs of how pervasive this anxiety is.  I know part of it is biology and being hardwired to like youth, but can't we accept intellectually the fact of growing old and not cover it up like this?:

The Grey Area

    Regarding the law and the internet, there is bound to be a very large grey area that exists between the laws on the books and the practice of enforcing those laws.  In the case of suicide and medical ethics, which already has substantial preexisting confusion, this zone is bound to be rendered even more ambiguous.  In the situation where a person diagnosed with major depression reads a personal blog of a medical student providing information for mentally competent, terminally ill people on how to commit suicide, who then commits suicide herself citing such information as useful to her carrying-out of the act, certain specifics need to be addressed.
    Regarding medical ethics, the most likely area that would have any relevance to this situation is the act of physician-assisted suicide, although this in itself is a stretch because, by definition, neither is the medical student a physician nor the suicide a patient even if that student was indeed a physician.  The former point negates the entire argument, and would leave it up to the medical school to decide disciplinary action.  But, lets say, the physician’s oath extended into the pre-M.D. ethics as well, or, that the medical student is considered a practicing physician. The question then becomes “Does this person count as a patient?”  This seems to be the relationship that current medical ethics regarding this issue is predicated on; that, in the doctor-patient relationship, assisted suicide relates to four specific areas of intervention:

1. active, involuntary: the physician intentionally kills a patient contrary to the wishes of the patient
2. active, voluntary: the physician intentionally kills the patient in accordance with the wishes of the patient
3. passive, involuntary: the physician lets the patient die by refraining from interventions, contrary to the wishes of the patient
4. passive, voluntary: the physician lets the patient die by refraining from interventions which would be useless in any case, in accordance with the wishes of the patient  (University of Illinois)

None of these covers the kind of indirect relationship noted above in the girl’s suicide in the strictest sense of the ethical code, even if the student was counted as a practicing physician.
    An extension of this argument could be put forth for the parents. The pertinent question for them would be “Did they directly cause their daughter to commit suicide?”  The specifics of this question depends upon the state criminal laws cited, so lets look at a specific state, say, Oregon (which has been in the news for assisted suicide, at least in the medical context).  Aiding or causing a suicide falls under the law for manslaughter in the second degree, which is a felony, so the criminal sentencing for this offense in fact extends across the county.  According to the state of Oregon, this felony offense is defined as such if a “person intentionally causes or aids another person to commit suicide” ("OregonLaws.org).  Here, again, the emphasis is on intention.  If the family did not intentionally act to promote the girl’s suicide, they cannot be convicted of the crime under which aiding suicide falls.  Now, are they bad parents for allowing her to have unrestricted web access?  This is another very large grey zone, with individual and off-the-books morals coming into play.  If she was thirteen, you would probably say they had some responsibility as parents, but if she was nineteen and just happened to be living with them you would probably say their responsibility was far less.  In any case, although you could perhaps reproach them, you could not convict them.
    As for the girl, was it her responsibility?  Suicide by definition does mean killing oneself, but responsibility implies knowledge of right and wrong, which are themselves unstable concepts.  The rightness or wrongness of suicide is something up in the air these days.  However, lets assume for the sake of argument it is undoubtedly wrong.  If she was suffering from depression severe enough to drive her to suicide, is she a person capable of deciding if she should do the right thing?  If so, and if she is in such despair, why should the wrong thing hurt her more than the disease?  I don’t have the answers to this, and most people would probably admit the same.

Works Cited:

"Topics: Physician-Assisted Suicide." University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. University of Illinois, n.d. Web. 13 Feb 2011. <http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/ethics/suicide.htm>.

"Manslaughter in the Second Degree." OregonLaws.org. Robb Shecter, n.d. Web. 13 Feb 2011. <https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/163.125>.

Copyright and Fair Use

The most useful thing I took from the lecture on copyright was that anyone can sue you for anything.  I knew civil law regarding copyright could be stringent, but I didn't think it was that stringent.  However, it's good to know there are a few protections for people who want to work with copyrighted material, such as Fair Use.  If classrooms want to stay relevant, I think such a policy that protects the teachers from legal action when using media is essential.  I guess you could say that if a work is disseminated among students (such as a copy of a film being discussed, or something), those students would have no reason to pay for the work; but I think this position overlooks the fact that in an educational setting not everyone has equal access to a copy for whatever reason, especially if it is a public secondary school.  In such a setting, it makes more sense for the school or teacher providing the education to also provide the material (like textbooks in public school).  Infringing on education seems to me more like a nuisance than a protection of property.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Trinity Network

This is my diagram of the trinity LAN.  I tried to show the relationships between the different buildings, what the network contains, and how it functions.  I don't live on campus, so I don't have a dorm to take pictures of, but I did my best to describe the layout for someone who'll be living in a dorm.  After making the diagram all the technical jargon makes a lot more sense.

Mystery Spot

I chose this spot because this is a building where I spend most of my time, and if you've taken any English classes you've probably been here.  I altered it by changing it to black and white, messing with the contrast and sharpness, adding a generic guy sitting by a clock and two other generic people (I could only find bathroom insignia in black and white, so sorry for any unintended negative connotations-- the building and faculty in fact are very nice and clean), and a no smoking sign.  It has sort of an Art Deco design, so I thought the generic minimalistic effects were appropriate (and there really is a no smoking sign off-frame). 

Best Tech Tip

The best tip for me was to hear about Onyx for Macs.  I knew about repairing disk permissions and verifying the disk, but didn't know there was a program equivalent for CCleaner on the Mac platform that will perform similar tasks.  With everything being done online now, and being a student who relies heavily on my computer, anything to make it secure seems a good investment.  I'll definitely be checking it out in the near future.

Network Server Diagram

This system works well because it balances a level of stability and security with public access. This allows feedback on and grading of submitted files by having a group folder, while at the same time allowing files to be kept stable and safe in either the student's Y drive or the instructor's Network drive.

Introduction

My name is Zach Sharp and I'm from San Antonio, Texas, where I've lived my whole life.

I transferred to Trinity from San Antonio College during the Fall 2010 semester.  I'm majoring in English and thinking about minoring in Philosophy.  Academically, I'm interested in literary theory and criticism, and hope to go to graduate school and eventually teach and do research in something along those lines.  Other than that, I'm interested in music (I play bass and guitar, and played the cello for a long time before becoming bored with it), collecting old vinyl, documentaries, reading and writing.  I'm a big fan of Krautrock (German rock from the 70's), among other things.  I guess that I'm moderately adequate with computers.  I haven't used Excel in years, but I can navigate Word and PowerPoint (at least in the past).  I'm more familiar with the Mac program equivalents Pages and Keynote, so it might be a bit of an adjustment to using the others regularly.  I have never used HTML, so that would probably be the most difficult thing for me to learn about.  If you go into academia you have to be tech savvy, so I look forward to learning more about the stuff I need to know.

zsharp@trinity.edu