Blog posts I commented on:

Naomi Reyes (rysxn.blogspot.com) - "Feel Like A Criminal"

Mariah Llanes (llanesm.blogspot.com) - "Re: Is the media to blame for Britney Spears's troubles?"
- "A Footprint Marks the spot"

Justin Buenaflor (juicetiin.blogspot.com) - "Facebook and Education"

Mark Roque - (academikz.blogspot.com) - "Mac vs. PC"

Junelle Casalan - (junelle.blogspot.com) - "When Graphic Artists get Bored"

E(cho)

Once again another brilliant Mary Ward Artshow.
The Art Show last year, Recollect inspired me to participate this year. Fortunately for me, I was able to due to this course.

The theme, this year, was about an issue that has become a hot topic for discussion in the past few years with contributions made by leaders such as Al Gore. Raising awareness about global issues is growing in importance as the Earth is getting worse in shape. Polar bears are drowning due to global warming, natural disasters are increasing in number, and more people are dying. The sale of bamboo "eco-friendly" shirts this year was a great idea, although unfortunately I was unable to purchase any.

My favourite parts of the Art Show, are always the senior directed movies. Like last year, I was very impressed, and inspired by many of the movies that were shown. I must give praise towards "A Walk In the Park" and "Wild Card" which in my opinion were the best films in the art show.

A Walk in the Park was one of those movies that really make you ponder about life, and whether there can be a "perfect moment" or several of them. With a little comedy, it definitely made a touching impact.

Wild Card was another touching film, but more tear jerking. It was about how the lives of three teenagers intertwined. At the end of the film where Leah played by Victoria Macaraig finally gets a chance to hear her boyfriends message where he tells her that he will always be there for her, provoked tears, including mine.

Next year, I hope to be part of the Art Show again, hopefully with something more to contribute.

I guess this is goodbye since its my last blog for this school year. BAAAIII :)

ps. those revolving doors were awesome.

Mac or PC?

A 1996 Ad of Mac vs. PC
(To view full visit this link http://www.pbmai.com/pbmai_blog/uploaded_images/1996-macaddict-mac-vs-pc-700766.jpg"

Mac or PC?

Honestly I'm not much of a technology savvy person, let alone computers.
Although my father is a computer engineer, I never was interested in how computers worked and the different between them. I also had never heard of Mac until it was introduced to me by my friends earlier this year. To me, actually it was all the same.

However, after doing some research and discussing this topic with my friends, I have found that the Mac is actually quite interesting. It's integrated webcam, I heard was one of the best. The resolution, I heard is also quite impressive.

One of the things I heard was that Mac's never freeze, or slow down even though they can have bigger hard drives than a PC. Another recent fact I heard about Mac is that now it is able to run Windows.

There are many opinions that are for and against a Mac and a PC. Some people prefer Macs because they have more to offer, and others prefer a PC because it's simple. It all just depends on the person and their interests.

Another factor is pricing, often people say that Macs are more expensive that PCs, but if you actually compare a $1,200 Macbook to a similar priced HP laptop, the Mac is more attractive.

In my case, I personally take interest in photography, movie making, and music, all of which could benefit me more if I had a Mac. However, I am hardly PC savvy, how would I be able to fair with a Mac? Sometimes I like it simple.

In this battle between Mac and PC, I will have to conclude that I have joined the ranks of Mac.

Woah Ko!

After watching that video, I was absolutely amazed by the creativity of some, no all of them. I was awestruck by the detail and the obvious dedication that was put into creating such beautifully entertaining pieces of work.

The piece that I found was the most interesting was the orange peel tree frog. It probably caught my attention with its bright orange colour, however after looking at it for a while longer, things other than its bright colour captured my interest.


At first glance, It seemed like an impossible task to create such an image on something as simple (in comparison to the image, in my opinion) Photoshop. However, after doing a little bit more research on the many things that can be done on Photoshop, I realized that it wasn't as impossible as I thought.

There must have been a lot of effort put into that image because wow, it sure looked incredibly real. Every single detail in both the frog and the orange peel part of the image was carefully put into the final image. The shadows that create the hollow effect of the orange peel, and the textures were all kept and used accordingly. Both the texture of the orange and frog were put together. I found it ingenious.

I do not have an extensive knowledge of Photoshop and, however I think the artist started off by first finding a clear image of a frog and a clear image of an orange, not specifically the peel, but the orange. Then, the artist must have started cutting off pieces off the frog to allow its body to be molded into a spiraling shape, similar to one of an orange peel. The artist might have used the pen tool or the magnetic lasso. Then the colour of the whole frog was changed to a bright orange using the colour replacement tool. The texture of the orange was then transfered onto the skin of the frog, however it was still not complete, because the insides needed to be given colour and its seperate texture. To give the orange peel frog depth, shadows were then created and colours were increased in brightness to imitate light. To finalize it, the blur tool was used around the edges of the frog to make it look cleaner.

The End. :)

Grrr! Music Mania!

Well, first and foremost, I believe that music is meant to be shared. People want music, people want to hear music, to listen to the lyrics, to be able to connect to the melody and the lyrics that accompany it. In my opinion, listening to music should be free, however, I understand that people need to make a living to feed themselves and their families.

I, myself, am an occasional music "downloader". Accessing websites such as imeem.com and Youtube are part of my daily routine. I don't always feel guilty or suddenly have my conscience screaming at the back of my everytime I listen to music, or download on programs such as Limewire, but on rare occasions I do have that tingly feeling of guilt. I choose to stick to my belief that music is meant to be shared, and that musicians often earn plenty of money already.
This does not mean, however, that I completely stop buying CDs or going to concerts (not that I've ever been to one). I respect musicians enough to contribute to their music. I know how hard it is to do well in this industry.

Besides, just because Limewire or Bearshare is available at my fingertips, it doesn't mean that will provide me with all the songs that I want.

In the case of movies and videos, I have ethical qualms by which I set a boundary for. I do not attempt to download movies and TV shows off the internet, but I do watch them when others do all the downloading unfortunately :(. This does not mean that I don't feel as guilty, because I still feel guilty. I also have certain specifications that I base my actions upon. As silly as it may sound, when it comes to big time movies and blockbuster hits, I don't feel as bad when I perform such actions. In my perspective, they make enough money already, losing a few hundred couldn't be that bad, but then again, I don't know everything.

Another factor that influences my ethical principals towards this matter, are my parents, who I must also admit, feel little guilt about these sort of actions.

Well, I have nothing else to say. Until the next blog.

4.28 Earths?

So, according to myfootprint.org, if everyone lived my lifestyle, we would need 4.28 earths. Wow. Honestly, at first I felt extremely bad that my family had such a lifestyle because comparing mine to other people, mine seemed a lot bigger than others. After thinking it through, I realized that one of the reasons my footprint was so high was because I lived with many people in my house. I was honest in all my answers and as precise as I could be. However, this is still not an excuse for my family and I to not do anything about this situation. I feel that this footprint has made me realize how much of a difference my family makes to the Earth's future. I feel now that I should pay more attention to how much my family throws away, how many km we travel each year, and take more responsibility in educating the rest of my family about our large ecological footprint.

As a member of my family, if I could change anything about our lifestyle so that it wouldn't have such a large footprint, I would ask my parents to buy more eco-friendly and energy saving appliances, especially now that we can afford them. I would ask my mom to buy from more local grocery stores and start using her garden a bit more. As an individual, things I could do could be to walk to school more often since I live only a few km away, or when doing the laundry I could hang my clothes. However, the most energy draining appliance I believe my family uses, is the air conditioning system. During most summers, my family uses up to THREE a/c'z, something I am not particularly proud of. :S So this summer, I think I will ask my family to use less air conditioners and think of other ways to keep cool and spend less energy.

I believe that this interactive website will definitely bring about response to global because it is involves people putting a little effort in finding out what their footprint is. People are curious about their effect on the world. But what I think will get the most response out of people is the fact that their footprint isn't the size they expected it to be and often feel guilty about their footprint. In my case, I definitely felt that way.

Facebook and Education

Being a student, I must admit to having some bias towards Chris Avenir. I find that his punishment was not so deserved and is still a bit severe for his offence.

Chris Avenir established a facebook study group to help students in a certain course. When school officials discovered this, they made claims that students were exchaning answers and solutions to the assignments given in that course and it was against the code. Chris was charged with 146 misdemeanors, the number of students he was helping.

According to CTV News, Chris is supposed to recieve a ZERO for every assignment that was discussed in the Facebook study group he established. This means that his running average will end up being a 20 percent! Although its definitely better than expulsion or being kicked out of the course completely, I still find it irrational. I disagree with their decision and say that this online tutoring program is exactly the same as a tutoring program that would take place in the library. It is more likely that students would pass off assignments to each other and cheat off each other when they are studying together in person than it would be on a website where activities can easily be tracked.

We don't know Chris Avenir's intentions when he made the study group. Maybe he WAS trying to cheat and get answers from other students, but if this was the case, I don't think there's enough evidence to support the idea of plagiarism. I think that the Ryerson officials should take into consideration that this student was only trying to help other students by making it more accesible to them to find help. It's not like they WANT their students to fail, or do they?

And on the topic of Facebook being used as an educational tool, as much as I'd like help to be more accesible, I think Facebook is meant to be a place for social matters. It just seems really odd and silly to try to have study groups on Facebook where messages can often be misintrepreted, take Chris Avenirs situation for example. People already find that Facebook consumes their time as they try to keep up with their social life, but now it offers help in school? What's up with that?

But, I guess that's just in my opinion :)