Final Blog Entry

I was in Team Swagger and our presentation was on the Crystal Figuera Murder Case. In Computer Applications, I learned quite a few things that I was unfamiliar with before taking this class. Although, programs like Word and PowerPoint were things that I was already familiar with using. I also learned how learn how to use a Mac computer which really helped me as far as understanding how much better Macs are, compared to PC’s, for when I decided to buy my own. I really enjoyed working with Apple Garageband for the first time since I’m an Audio Major, and overall, that was my favorite part of the whole class. Excel, Publisher, and Access were totally new programs to me that I had never worked with before but since plenty of businesses use them it’s good that I know how to do at least basic operations in case there ever came a time in my career where I needed to use them. If anything, this class has taught me that being professional and being on time is the key to being successful in the working world, and I now take deadlines a bit more seriously.

Out of all the assignments and projects, the only one that I think could have gone better for me would be the final project. Besides that, I turned in everything on time and never missed a class and put some effort into every assignment I did. So overall, I think I deserve an A- for this class.

Team Swaggers

Team Leader-Rafaela Reyes-word, excel, powerpoint-information on statistics of children being murder, working on animations, set up the slides.
Bryan Jackson-Sound and video, Music playing have it ready to put on PowerPoint and have video ready to set up in PowerPoint presentation by Tomorrow.
Andy Rigney-Access and Photos ready to be set up in PowerPoint-have an idea of pictures and knows what information is going to go in Access.
Will put all information together and have time to view final presentation together

Video

Youtube is a very useful and entertaining website that I visit almost daily. Admittedly, there is a lot of junk that gets uploaded but for the most part, there are useful and entertaining videos for everyone. Most of the videos I look for on Youtube involve one of my favorite bands (The Mars Volta, Fugazi, Pearl Jam, etc.), football (go Raiders!), or something funny like Monty Python. I’ve never uploaded a video myself until today for this class. Overall, I think Youtube is a very useful website for people whether they are looking for rare concert footage of their favorite band or some random person’s own video blog.

experiences with viruses

I have had two experiences with viruses, both of which required me to lose everything and completely wipe my computers’ hard drives clean. The first time it happened was about three or four years ago when I had just discovered the peer-to-peer file sharing program Limewire. I was using Limewire just to download some music (I think the band was Mr. Bungle). I was not aware that I had downloaded an infected song file until I had clicked on it to play it in Itunes. The worst thing about it was that I was using my mom’s computer that had a whole bunch of her work documents on it. There were frequent, never-ending pop-ups and the computer would crash randomly. After about a week, my dad took it to a computer repair shop. In the end, my mom lost many documents that were important for her work. By the second time, I thought I had learned my lesson. This time, I was downloading torrent of a band’s entire discography from a torrent website. Unlike the first virus I had encountered, this one somehow changed my directories or paths (or something like that, I can’t remember exactly) so that whenever I tried to open a program like Photoshop or even Internet Explorer, a message would pop up saying something like “invalid path”. At that point I had no other option but to re-install Microsoft XP onto my computer from a disc. Fortunately, I had a back up of all my music and some other programs that I had installed before the incident happened. I have since purchased a Mac and am happy that there are virtually no viruses for Mac computers. But I have learned my lesson and will no longer download music from sites I do not trust.

Pictures

For today’s assignment, Alex, Rafaela, and I went outside to take some pictures of ourselves. The pictures that turned out best were the ones where no one was paying attention to the camera and just acting naturally. My favorite picture was either the one taken of my shadow or the one where I posed with a Porsche 911 Carrera (my favorite car!). Photography is one of my several hobbies, so I enjoyed taking pictures of the other people in my group. Overall, I think we took about one hundred pictures, and we all had fun. Although, I don’t really like having my picture taken, I felt a little bit more comfortable just acting naturally and not paying attention to the camera. Out of the whole process, uploading the pictures to my blog with Picasa was a bit more complicated than it should have been. It took me forever to figure out what was wrong with the slideshow gadget, but I finally got it done after closing out of Internet Explorer and logging in to my blogger account again. I think that it is great how convenient the integration is between Picasa, Blogger, and Google. Integration between different programs makes compatibility and other things so much easier (take the Adobe Creative Suite for example). I also think that it is pretty handy to be able to upload pictures taken by the camera on your cell phone directly on to your Picasa web album.

What I Think of Twitter

Twitter, although having been around since 2006, has recently gained major popularity in the last few months thanks to celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey. Twitter is essentially a mini-blog site that allows users to type short 140-character “blog” updates which are sent to all of the people that are currently “following” that user; it’s almost like sending all your friends a text message every time you do something, whether it is interesting or not. Like most blog sites, Twitter is free and able to be viewed by anyone who is not a member. Like most things, there are definite advantages and disadvantages to a site like Twitter. One excellent example I can think of that shows how useful twitter can be, would be David White’s (Oakland Raiders beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle) twitter. During the Raider’s optional Mini-Camp that was held last weekend, he was able to use his Twitter account on his phone to update followers on what was going on, play by play, at the camp. This is interesting because before Twitter, a reporter could only observe and take notes during the camps and then later write the story that would appear in the newspaper. Now, everything happens in real-time, allowing Raider fans to get an instant inside scoop of what’s going, without having to wait the next day for the newspaper story. As for disadvantages, I think it would feel somewhat strange to have potentially thousands of people I never met before, reading my updates; but then again, that could be one of the reasons someone would sign up for Twitter in the first place. Overall, I think that the positives outweigh the negatives for mini-blog sites such as Twitter. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think that maybe Twitter could become the next Myspace.

Windows Lab

I am not quite sure what else I would want to cover in the Windows lab because I am pretty familiar with most of the programs on that operating system. Although, I might need to learn a little bit more about Power Point since I haven’t used the new version of it yet. I know this wont be three hundred words but I just can’t think of anything else that I would want to know in the windows lab.

Challenges in Computer Applications

I think the biggest challenge in Computer Applications, so far, was learning how to work in Microsoft Excel. Before this class, I had never even opened up Excel and had absolutely no idea of how to do anything in it. Although it might be useful to know how to operate programs such as Excel, I don’t think I will ever be using it in my line of work as a Sound Engineer. However, I can see how useful it can be to people involved in businesses, as it makes complicated or long equations, that would be very time consuming, be done with ease. Also, just the entirely new look of Microsoft Office made it a bit harder for me to find certain commands or formatting tools that I had known how to use before. In my opinion, the new look and style just over complicates things, making it especially difficult for anyone who has never worked with any type of word processing or spreadsheet program. Out of Word, Excel, and Power Point, I think that Power Point is still the easiest program to operate. So far, the most fun and enjoyable program I’ve worked with in this class is Apple Garage Band. Garage Band is extremely easy to operate for the average person who doesn’t know anything about music. It’s a shame that Apple hasn’t yet made Garage Band available for Windows users, because if they did, it would probably one of the most bought programs. I am lucky that I already had some computer knowledge before coming into this class because, if not, I would be completely lost now.

Music I Create

I enjoy listening to many different genres of music. The type of music that I like to create can be pretty much anything besides Country. One of my favorite types of music is Punk and I find that it is the most fun for me to play. Although, experimenting with new and different styles always keep things fresh and interesting. The instruments I can play are the guitar (my main instrument), bass, and drums. I don’t really have a preference between the electric or acoustic guitar but being able to have different effect pedals for electric guitars is always fun to play around with. My main influences when writing music are usually the type of music I’m listening to at the time and the mood I am in when creating the music. For the past couple years, Fugazi, Pearl Jam, The Pixies, At The Drive-In, and The Mars Volta have been my main musical influences. Most of the time when I am creating music, it involves someone else on a different instrument. In my opinion, it seems more difficult to write music by myself than with another person. Programs like Apple’s Garage Band make it extremely easy for a single musician to create an entire composition with multiple instruments through its extensive loops library. Another cool feature in Garage Band ’09 is the Magic Garage Band Jam, where you can “audition” different songs of styles of music to play along with, and you can also change the instruments being played. I also like the ability to connect a digital MIDI keyboard, enabling you to record an extensive list of different kinds of real instruments. I haven’t played around with Garage Band long enough to be able to compare it with Digidesign’s Pro Tools software, but I’m sure it is a viable alternative to other expensive digital audio recording programs.

View of My Flash Drive

This is a view of my flash drive.

3's About Me

Three Names I have been called: Andy, Andrew, Rigney

Three Jobs I have had in my life (include unpaid if you have to): IT Tech Lab Monitor at Nevada State College, Facilities Assistant at Nevada State College, Backroom Team Member at Target

Three Places I Have Lived: Vacaville, CA; Conchord, CA; Henderson, NV.

Three TV Shows that I watch: The Office, South Park, Anything on NFL Network

Three places I have been: Lake Tahoe, Valley of Fire, Mesa Verde

People that e-mail me regularly: My grandma, My Mom, Ian Mackaye

Three of my favorite foods: Tacos, Pizza, Rice Pilaf

Three cars I have driven: Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Altima, Dodge Ram

Three things I am looking forward to: Summer, Lake Tahoe, Mars Volta/Pearl Jam/Beastie Boys Concert

What Scares Me About The Internet

What scares me about the Internet? Not much, really. Having taken several computer classes over the years, I know what I’m doing when it comes to what websites I shouldn’t visit and not clicking on random pop-up ad’s or spam emails. My only real concern at the moment is for the security of my laptop, since it currently has no anti-virus or Internet security software; so for right now, I only visit the websites that I need to. I’ve had my fair share of viruses in the past, mainly from downloading music off of a peer-to-peer file-sharing program Limewire. For further security, I now exclusively use Opera Internet browser as the only browser on all of my computers. Aside from being somewhat faster, it has better encryption and a better pop-up blocker than most browsers. I am also planning on getting a new iMac because of the lack of viruses and the increased security of its operating system.



To solve the whole malicious software problem, people just need to be more aware of what they’re doing while surfing the Internet. If everyone could wake up and realize that ad’s advertising a free computer or free iPod would be too good to be true, none of these companies would have any way to make money. Also, I have come to find that most of the victims in the stories involving these fake ad’s or malicious programs are older people, usually above the age of thirty-five. Quite a few people in my family have fallen for these scams; every single one of them were forty years or older. If Internet providers or email clients could offer some sort of guide for people new to technology, I believe that Internet fraud would be less likely to occur. Until then, people will just have to learn from their mistakes.

A One-Man Operation

Ever since the first time I played a guitar, I knew that my future was in music. Growing up in Vacaville, California, I was always involved in something musical (whether it be the school jazz band, school marching band, or jamming in the garage together with my friends.) I moved to Henderson about three years ago. The past four years of my life would not have been the same if it wasn’t for my favorite band Fugazi, of Washington, D.C. They totally changed what I thought good music could be and also introduced me to the whole punk ethos, where I instantly found myself at home. East Bay Productions is a record label/recording studio that focuses specifically on the Punk and Indie music scenes of the California Bay Area. As a fellow musician, I can understand how important it is for artists to have access to high quality recording facilities at a reasonable low price. As for the record label aspect of East Bay, it will be modeled almost directly after the great Indie label Dischord Records, which is owned by punk legend Ian Mackaye (who happens to be one of the guitarists/singers of Fugazi.) Dischord Records has been one of the most prominent and successful record labels of the Punk/Indie scene, having been around for almost thirty years. Future prospective artists/bands for East Bay Productions include Lauren Lavin, Find Me Fighting Them, and possibly some of my own musical projects, involving various musicians from around the Bay Area.