Creating an Avatar

Above is my avatar (or mangatar) from FaceYourManga.com.

It was fun making this image of me and reminded me of when I play games where you are allowed to customize the look of your character.

I think something like this could be very useful if you have a presence online (such as a blog or your own site) and you want to put a creative image of yourself to represent your profile - especially if you don't want to show a picture of your actual self.

And since I am a movie lover, I had to go with the popcorn and theater background. ;]

Database Project

I basically learned how to us a database. Having never used a database program before, and never opening Microsoft Access before in my life, it was a totally new of organizing data for me. I learned about creating tables in databases and while creating relationships between tables was not a part of the project, I can see how that is immediately useful when needing to organize lots of data with lots of redundancy.

One thing that could enhance the database for the project would be to have another set of data for age. Age was not used in the data except for a birth date. So maybe there could be a formula put in that would calculate what the member's age would be based upon their birth date and what the current date is.This could be important information for personal trainers who needs to work with these members as knowing their age can greatly affect how they will evaluate the fitness levels and goals for the members.

This was a very challenging project, though in the scheme of professional database projects, probably simple. Hopefully more experience with Access and other database programs will help me increase my skills and knowledge with databases.

Week 11: Muddy

Having never used Microsoft Access (or any kind of database program) before, I found it extremely difficult and hard to do.

In fact, I have yet to finish the project because of its difficulty and my lack of finding help/answers.

But I will continue to learn and will impart what little knowledge I have of Access here.

Microsoft Access creates a database, a way to store data to make it into information. It does what a spreadsheet can do but even more. It works on the basis of relationships between multiple tables and can create queries, forms and reports all based on the data given in one table.

It is very effective and efficient, but not simple. Knowing the basics is necessary to start with and knowing advanced tricks couldn't hurt as well.

Heading online you can find tons of tutorials to help you expand your knowledge of Access, such as About.com, Yevol.com and Microsoft.com.

Whether you find the right tutorial to suit what you need to get down is the tricky part.

Once working with a database program, you might find it being very useful for a certain situation when you are working with lots of data and want to organize it to make better use of time (and thus funds as well). Access is a useful program to learn and master as it will no doubt become handy in any business environment.

Week 10: Muddy

According to the International Engineering Consortium's Web site, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is defined as Internet telephony, which refers to communications services that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

The Web site also describes the basic steps involved in starting an Internet telephone call, which begins with the conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and then the compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet.

Many popular VoIP technologies include Skype and Vonage. The best thing about VoIP is that it is becoming easier to use and is becoming less expensive than regular phone calls.

Having not tried this technology myself, I decided to check out Skype to see what all the hub-bub was about VoIP. Below is a video tutorial detailing how to download, install and run Skype on your computer.


Making a phone call on your computer is definitely neat and should be tried out by anyone who has a good-working computer because there may be some difficulties in the program taking up space and memory on your computer while it is running.

Check out the International Engineering Consortium's Web site to learn more about the expanding use of VoIP in today's society.

Excel Project

Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely used spreadsheet programs in business and is used for many personal reasons as well (such as workings with finances and taxes).

This Excel project was extremely useful since knowing how to use Excel is a very big requirement in the business world. Knowing how to work with formulas and various other aspects of the program will definitely help out in any work environment.

I've watched my father use the program to deal with his job as an engineer and I've used it myself a few times to work with my profession as a journalist.

Learning how to use pivot tables is extremely useful to organize the data presented in very large worksheets. In the project we used it to compare different ages and genders for the workout program. When working with other worksheets it can be used to help compare different parts of a spreadsheet just like in the project.

The formulas and pivot tables are a lot of work at first, but with practice they can become extremely useful tools when working with Excel and I plan on working with them more often in the future.

Below is a screen capture taken from the AvgIncrease pivot table used in the project. You can click on it to view it in a larger size.

Week 9: Muddy

I am still learning how to work with many of the functions of Microsoft Excel, the spreadsheet application of the Microsoft Office suite.

Word has been a constant companion through my education and PowerPoint has helped me out on many occasions as well.

But this is really the first time I have actually opened Excel and used it.

Since I am a Journalism major, I find it necessary to learn how Excel can help me function in that type of employment and it turns out journalists use Excel all the time.

Pivot tables are especially helpful during election time to help cover campaign finances for all the candidates - who can sometimes get money donations from several thousand different people/companies.

It is up to the journalist to play watchdog on campaign finances so there isn't any corruption or bribery and Excel helps to maintain a simple order of who gave to who and how much.

To learn more about what other computer skills are great for journalists, head to the Poynter Institute.