WELCOME TO LORI'S WORLD: Week 6

Beauty is its own excuse.

Take a guess.

How difficult was this week's task (lumping all the sub-tasks together)? Circle one.
Very Easy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very hard
This week's rating= 1

How much negative emotions did it cost you, in all?
Very Little 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very much
This week's rating=1

How valuable for later use is this knowledge or skill going to be for you?
Not useful 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very useful
This week's rating=10

How likely is it that you'll be getting good at this week's tasks?
Not likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Quite likely
This week's rating=10

How satisfied are you with the computer and Internet systems?
Not satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Very satisfied
This week's rating=10

How hard did you try to get through this week's tasks?
Gave up easily 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Refused to give up
This week's rating=10

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This week was relaxing...as much as it can be. The task was finally what I had been itching to do (and had in fact, been doing as extra-curricular activities): a week to wallow in graphics and codes and all the extras that make a home page home.

FINALLY, a chance to use those 8 billion addresses scribbled in my notebook. The neat places, the funny places, the places I wanted to show people but didn't really know how without sounding like a missing cast member from "Dweebs". People get frightened over the strangest things, you know? At any rate, I brought some of my favourite sites with me. One of my most frequently visited places to look for graphics, for browsing: The WebMuseum, where I find Matisse and Gaugin, and Cezanne...The paintings are all downloadable, if you've got the time.

Another site to check for graphics on call (actually, this is a search engine folks; I'm a part of Team Search Engine...Hey! Who threw that?!"), is Yahoo Icons Search, where you call the graphics. If you call them, they will come. Yes, they will come.

There's a clickable listing of icon sites, for those of you who are overwhelmed by a search engine's nebulous and limitless boundaries. Space...the final frontier... Myself, I'm an X-Phile, and I reveled, I wallowed, I lounged in the UFO Landing Site, with its downloadable files. (No, not downloadable X-Files, for those of you who miss "The Thinker" and fear similar fates. Just the graphics, Ma'am. Just the graphics.)

And then there's the Kid with the Overactive Imagination and A Winnie the Pooh Fixation, which is always good for a few laughs. Someone needs to give the boy either counseling or a new toy. He's getting scary; reminds me of my brother.

I found a great editor for pictures. Check out L View, in every computer (well, at least those I've found so far) on campus, under Accessories. If you can't find it there, check out the y drive, and it might look like this: y:\netapps\lview\lview... You can put any picture you want there, and modify it to your suiting. If you want a square world, copy a round one and adjust everything. Hey, I don't discriminate against Flat Earth Society members.

This week was negative-emotion free, and left me completely satisfied with the computer systems. I believe this score is attributable to being able to use the computer any way I chose; and encountering almost no frustration. Looking for ways to make my home page more than just pablum is something I have experience in (although you might not be able to tell, from my home page), and this makes all the difference in the world for me. It is the feeling of competency that positively correlates with my feeling of satisfaction. I feel this is the way with most people, and although I could be wrong, I have not seen any real evidence to the contrary.

Getting through the week's task was not actually a "getting through". It was not truly a task in my eyes. Perhaps this is progress, perhaps this is merely recognizing a break for what it is. One cannot spend 30+ hours on the Internet and not find wonderful bits worthy of saving, at the least noting. In a way, this week's assignment was a justification for all my little side excursions during these past six weeks. Ah, to feel the guilt from not being able to work exculsively on the scheduled assignment melt away into fluffing up all the other files.

There is a VERY good chance I will be proficient at this week's lesson. And this is valuable in more ways than simply satisfaction in my files' appearance. When I am surfing through the Net, (and I don't wait for the wave to come to me; I hit the stop button when the graphics take eternity and I make the wave come to me), I have found I will stop at pages, at information that is presented in a aesthetically pleasing manner. In an ideal world, information in its plain, ungilded text would be all that counted. We would look at these nuggets and become completely absorbed in 45 pages of text. However, for those of us who were raised with Scooby Doo, it is so much more interesting with visual help. Even for those of us who spent childhood in the public library, we will pay attention quicker, longer, and better to something that is "eye-catching". I may have the most interesting information in the solar system; it may contain an explanation of dark matter and quarks, but if it looks technical and requires too much explanation of MY explanation, then it's not going to be disseminated. Heck, it's not even going to cross the Net once. Icons, home page arrangement, all the "fluff" that hard-core VI guys think unnecessary, I find bait. I believe people want the substance, but need the presentation. Hence, this week's assignment is going to be useful for the future, especially if one decides to disperse huge, tough, technical information.

By the way, for those of you who find your life revolving around the Internet, a friend of mine, Super Kui, my Fearless Leader, has something just for you 409 students. Believe it or not, there is sympathy out there, guys!

lmorita@hawaii.edu