Final!

Final #1

Final #2

Final #3 (coming soon!)

Final #4

Final #5

Final #6

Course Evaluation

I completed the course evaluation but there was no confirmation screen that said I did so.

After clicking on the link again I got this message:

The course evaluation is complete!

The Future of Immersive Education

In ten years, Immersive Education will have taken over the educational world. Today, many people laugh at the idea of online college classes. I believe that in ten years, online classes will no longer be a joke but a serious way to get a degree. There will be competitive students applying to online colleges that will have the same kind of clout that major universities do.

This will not be an email or chat room based class, though. The class will take place in a virtual world like Second Life, but since the technology will be much more powerful, the virtual world will look much more realistic and be much more fluid. You will be able to take a picture of yourself and have that picture made into a lifelike 3D model, much like what Gizmoz does on their website but on a much bigger scale.

There are many benefits to this new technology. Students from around the world will be able to meet up in a virtual world and learn the same things. This will open up the world of education to people whom it would not have been possible for in our current generation. Access to these virtual colleges will be much cheaper than going to a university. All that one needs to access to a computer and the possibilities will be endless.

Gizmo!

Building in Second Life

Get ready for my adventure building stuff in Second Life with help from Marc and Stewart.

We came up with the idea of making a club.  Here are the three of us after we made some walls, a dance floor with some fun poles to dance on.  Also, check out the bar on the right:

Next up we colored in the dance floor and experimented with backgrounds for the wall:

What's a bar without seats? We added some.  We also added some wallpaper to make our club a bit classier:

We expanded the walls and built a couch so you can look at people dancing:

More floors and more seats.  By the way...what's the deal with people moving stuff on our building site???

Wood grain floor? Check, please!

Here's a close up of the seats.  Leopard skin seemed a fitting choice:

Yup, we have a ceiling:

Here it is in all its glory: The Club

Rollcall November 13, 2008

Here are a couple of pics from Wonderland. This program rules!

Wonderland Rollcall Part 2!

Here I am again in Wonderland, this time with Stewart!

Faneuil Hall Virtual Tour

For this assignment we went to this website and took a virtual tour of Faneuil Hall! Pressing shift would zoom in and control would zoom out. Holding the left mouse key and moving the mouse would go in that direction. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Wonderland Rollcall (Oct. 30 2008)

Here I am next to my buddy Marc LeBlanc in the Wonderland virtual world. We had to use Wonderland tonight because Second Life needed an update and we could not do that in class :(

My experience in Wonderland was not really a good one. The frame rate was extremely low which caused me some frustration. I could not find anyone to get in my picture for a bit, too. Luckily Marc and myself joined a new server and we met up.

I hope we can go back to Second Life for our next class!

If anyone is interested in Wonderland, visit this website for more info.

Flash!

Here is a quick flash presentation involving my name. Since it is around Halloween, I wanted my named to sneak onto the page and spook you!

To do this, I used Powerbullet. Once in there, I inserted text (my name) and increased the font. Then I clicked the 'set background color' button and used purple. Next, I changed the color of my text by clicking on the 'set text or line color' button.

To animate the text, I clicked Selection > Animation and Effects. Once in this menu, I selected "sneak in from the left". I went to export settings and selected "auto advance". I exported my file and here it is!

The next thing I did in Powerbullet was experiment using an object. I did everything the same as the text based project except instead of entering text, I inserted a rectangle. I played around with the size and filled in the color. I animated it the same way I did with the previous assignment. You can check this out here.

Now we did the same deal using an image. Everything was the same, we just inserted an image instead of text or an object. Check this awesome flash design out.

For the final part of this flash exercise, we put all three exercises together. I made the text page and animated it, then went to Page > Add. By adding a page, Powerbullet brings up a blank page using the same background. I proceeded to add an object page and an image page. I exported the file and here is the result.

Midterm!!!

Here are links to all of the midterm questions!

Midterm #1

Midterm #2

Midterm #3

Midterm #4

Midterm #5

Midterm #6

Midterm #7

Midterm #8

Midterm #9

Midterm #10

I hope you enjoy this midterm as much as I did.  It was a blast to make!

Rollcalls 4-1, 4-2, 4-3

This was our first online class.  It was very exciting!

I was the first person to make it to the chairs at the end of class.  It was a personal accomplishment for me.

Rollcalls 3-1, 3-2, 3-3

Here are screenshots from our third class.  We were in a castle that had a nice art museum.

Rollcall 2-1, 2-2, 2-3

Here are screenshots from our second class.  It was a lot of fun! We were hanging out in the Splenda room and we were still getting familiar with Second Life.

In Class Gold Piece Exercise

The circle was much easier to make in Word.  Click on view > toolbars >drawing to access the drawing toolbar in Word.  Shift clicking while using the circle tool made a perfect circle.  By right clicking and choosing format autoshape, you can change the color and size. 

We did this same exercise in GIMPshop, however the result was not nearly as nice as the drawing done in Word.  We had to hand draw the circle and then fill the color in and change the detail on the outline...BY HAND!! (or mouse)

Using vector graphics in Word was much easier.

Midterm Question #10

This is a house with the sun shining on it.  The house has some nice grass and a person holding balloons with American colors.  This was all down in Microsoft Word!

To access the drawing tools, you need to select view > toolbars > drawing.

The house was made using the rectangle tool, except the roof, which was a triangle autoshape.  The person was made using the circle tool and lines.  The sun is an autoshape.

Here is a link to the Word document: https://wfs.bc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/fieldsjd/midterm10.doc

Midterm Question #9

In this exercise, we played around with the rectangle tool, the arrow tool, and AutoShapes. We gave each shape a different outline and color. The best part was turning a shape 3D with the 3D tool!

Here is a link to the word document that has this image in it: https://wfs.bc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/fieldsjd/midterm9.doc

Midterm Question #8

Here is a picture of me with short hair and no beard.  That's my cat Snowy.  I guess I have a few imperfections, so I used the blur/sharpen tool and the smudge tool to fix myself up.  Here is the result!

The tools seemed to give my face a bit more depth.  The blur/sharpen tool got rid of bright spots on my face (like excess light shining on me).  The smudge tool was handy in getting rid of wrinkles.

Midterm Question #7

This assignment involved taking a logo and putting it over a celebrity's eyes.  Then I had to black out some of the bottom of the image and add text.  Here is what I came up with:

This is hip hop recording artist Kool Keith.  The logo over his eyes was supplied by the online text book.  Since it was rectangular, I used the elliptical region tool to select a circular portion.  I cut that out and saved it as a jpg since my original image of Kool Keith was a jpg.  I copied and pasted the resulting image into Kool Keith's image.  I then used the scale layer tool to get that logo down to size.  I made a duplicate of that smaller logo and moved them over Kool Keith's eyes.

To make the black region, I used the rectangular region tool and filled it in black.  I added three separate lines of text, each smaller than the last.

Here is a link to the GIMPshop file so you can see my work: https://wfs.bc.edu/xythoswfs/webui/fieldsjd/midterm7.xcf

Midterm Question #6

Here is a simple animated gif that I made in GIMPshop!  To make this amazing file, I used the text tool.  Each time you click to add more text, it will create another layer.  The four letters used in my first name each have their own layer.  My last name has its own layer, as does the white background.  This is a total of six layers.

To animate the gif, I went to filter > animation > optimize for gif.  This added time, represented in milliseconds, to the layer window.  Each layer, by default, is spaced out by 100ms.  On the layer window, I double clicked each layer which enabled me to change the speed.  I spaced each letter out by 500ms, with the exception of my last name.  That only comes on for 300ms.

I saved the image as a gif and GIMPshop gave me the option of saving it as animated.  I chose to do just that and the result is up top!

Midterm Question #5

Here are two of the same pictures, but saved as different file types:

This first image is a jpeg, but not an ordinary jpeg!  It is a progressive jpeg which means that the image loads different scans - that is, while the image is first loading, it will show a bad quality image.  As the image keeps loading, the quality keeps getting better.

I was able to save it as progressive in GIMPshop by saving as a jpeg and going to the advanced options and selecting "progressive".

Here is the png image as an interlaced png.  This means that the image is loaded by small bits at a time.  As with the jpeg image, I saved the file as a png and went into the advanced options and selected "interlaced".

Midterm Question #4

Here is a greeting card I made.  To make this lovely card, I took a screen shot of my fat self in Second Life by pressing control+print screen.  I pasted the shot into GIMPshop.  I took the crop tool and cut out all the distractions around my avatar.  I then used the text tool to add a caption above my avatar.

Midterm Question #3

The above image is a gif.
The above image is a jpg.
And this image above is a png.

To do all of this was quite simple!  I took the tif image supplied and opened it up in GIMPshop.  After opening it, I saved it with either .gif, .jpg, or .png as the file extension.

Midterm Question #2

Here is a picture of a normal baby dressed up as a normal burger.  How delicious!  In the second picture I added text.  To do this, I went into GIMPshop and used the rectangular selection tool.  I filled in my selection with white and used the text tool to write the caption.

Midterm Question #1

Here are two images.  One is a child with scary red eyes, the other the same child but with normal eyes.  I fixed his monstrous eyes by using GIMPshop.  In GIMPshop, I magnified the image until one of his eyes was taking up my whole screen.  I took the brush tool and painted the red pixels black, giving his pupil a normal color.  I could have used the paint bucket tool to take his original pupil color and use that to cover up the red, but there was not much original color to work with.