The Modern Hippy Male

I’ve never been a fan of reading. I can count on one hand the number of books I’ve read in my life. Most of those fingers would be accounting for books that were required reading for a class. You see, it’s not that I don’t like books. In fact, I don’t particularly dislike reading. However, I was diagnosed with ADD at an early age. ADD, for those of you that don’t know stands for Attention Deficit Disorder. Feel free to wiki the term to gain a broader knowledge. In my experience ADD is a vicious and extremely annoying. Essentially my mind wanders, especially while reading. I can be reading a book that I have a lot of interest in, or one that I don’t particularly care for and it will happen all the same. My mind will start to think of some random event or thing and that will dominate my attention. I will continue to read, in that the words will continue to be processed by everything but my brain. It is only after this has gone on for a good paragraph, a few sentences at least that I realize what is happening and have to refocus, and start the paragraph over.

This can make it very difficult to get through a book, or even a chapter. I’m currently reading a chapter in a book for my speech class and I’m having a bear of a time. Along with the fact that I have ADD, this has caused me to avoid books in general. As I stated, having read around 5 books total in my life, I haven’t had much practice. This equates to me being a slow reader. In fact, I just took two reading tests and one told me I was reading around 154 wpm and another rated me as between 150-200 wpm. That’s only double what I can type (74 wpm typing). So, this chapter I have been reading for over 2 hours and I have 17 of the 34 pages completed.

If there is one thing I could say to parents regarding their children, encourage them to read. At this point in time, it is one of the best ways to procure knowledge. Sure people can be taught information, but this requires another individual with the knowledge, and commonly costs quite a bit of money (college courses). A truly affordable way to gain knowledge of any subject is to be able to read well. And as they say, practice makes perfect.

Good reading skills are important! There is a wealth of knowledge in books.

And now I’m off to continue my battles and finish my reading. Only 2:54 am, maybe I can finish before the sun comes up!

What is Adobe Illustrator?
For those of you who may not be aware, Adobe Illustrator is a vector based drawing program that has been developed by Adobe.

What is a Vector Graphic?
Vector Graphics are defined on wikipedia.org as:
“Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical equations, to represent images in computer graphics.”

Adobe Illustrator is to Vector Graphics as Adobe Photoshop is to Raster Graphics.

What is a Raster, or Bitmap Graphic?
A Raster Graphic, or Bitmap Graphic, is one that uses individual pictures to define colors.

The best example can be seen here. On the right hand side of this page, at the time of this posting, is an image which briefly outlines the differences between the two, Vector Graphics from programs like Adobe Illustrator, and Raster or Bitmap Graphics from programs like Adobe Photoshop.

My Intention:
As you may be aware, I’m seeking my Associate in Technical Arts in Multimedia and Interactive Technology as a Web / Graphics Designer. One of my many requirements for this degree is a course on Adobe Illustrator. This quarter, I’m enrolled in this class and will be attempting (as long as the amount of work doesn’t prevent it) to share with you the lessons that I learn so that you may better grasp the Adobe Illustrator program. For your information, I will be using Adobe Illustrator CS3. This should be in many ways compatible with past, and even future versions of the program as only subtle features are tweaked between releases. I have no reason to believe that you would not be able to perform these lessons in Adobe Illustrator CS4.

If you are following along as I write these lessons, please be aware that I will edit each of the posts to include links to the other posts, but this will only be done after each of the other posts have been created and submitted.

If you have any questions or comments in regard to this tutorial, either now or in the future, please feel free to submit them and I will reply to the best of my ability.

Good luck, and have fun!

I started reading the syllabus for a new class today. This thing is arranged in 21 pages of pure chaotic randomness. It is a word document with links to the different sections. And the document itself does not have headings for each section, making looking through the document without using the links very difficult. Oh yeah, and not all of the links work. The deadline dates are listed as “04/04/09 – Wed.”.. that’s not a Wednesday. It also makes reference to a Quiz #1 which should be listed under the blackboard under the “Quizzes” section, only it is not.

I joined this class off of the wait list, which means I’m getting about a 4 day late start. According to the syllabus I was supposed to get an email containing the syllabus and a welcome letter. My assumption is that I never received this email because of the manner in which I joined the class, from the wait list. The only possible way that this email would have been helpful is if it had told me to read the welcome letter BEFORE reading the syllabus.

You see, the problem is, as it appears to me, that the syllabus was written originally and then amended many, MANY times in an attempt to help answer the myriad of questions that undoubtedly followed each time it was released. This is evident by the lengthy “Examples” that are given under the explanation for each section. Many of these examples are just as confusing as the section itself. The syllabus introduces procedures for doing things, prior to defining why or when we need to perform them.

One of the basic rules for giving information and direction is to consider the order in which they are given.

If you’re told to submit a document which outlines the reason for the fall of Roman society, many of you would do just that. However, If there were a specification that said, “All submissions must be in Times New Roman, Font Size 12″ in a different document, not all of you may have seen this extra information to format the document as requested. This is just a subtle hint of what this syllabus is like.

Complaints:

1. Believe it or not, the 21 page syllabus does not contain all of the necessary information.
2. The syllabus makes use of a link structure which is broken.
3. Adding to the complication of the broken link structure is the lack of headings for the sections.
4. The syllabus does not properly define each topic or subject that is introduced. In some cases the syllabus refers to other documents, or makes no referral or mention of further information or specifications that are missing.
5. The 14 other documents listed, including the 8 documents in the FAQ section, for this class sometimes modify or change the information that the syllabus gives.
6. Some documents are titled with a completely different course number than the one specific for this class. This makes me wonder if they were listed incorrectly, and if the information they contain is even valid to this course.
7. The deadlines listed do not match up with the day of the week that was stated. The deadlines that are posted on blackboard itself appear to be correct, but the only mention to this is an announcement by the teacher saying that the Syllabus Quiz had been taken down and re-written to represent the correct due dates and that the students that had previously taken the quiz must now retake it. It does not make mention however to which of the lists, the one in the syllabus or the one on blackboard is correct.
8. There is information listed in the syllabus pertaining to the assignments including: how to submit them, how to save them on your computer, naming conventions.. and so on. But there is no mention to where to obtain the specifics for each assignment.

There is so much information, in so many different locations, it is astounding to me that it is allowed to be presented in this manner. In my opinion, just because you able to teach, does not make you able to teach on-line classes. I also wonder if there are any further requirements for a teacher that teaches on-line classes.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that if you have to have 14 documents (8 of which are FAQs) that are external from your 21 PAGE SYLLABUS that you may be time to rewrite the course material? This wouldn’t be as bad if all of the information was in one place. Or if there was one location that would act as an index for the information.

UGH!