Blogging

Our last assignment was our blog's. I guess at first I thought it was pretty odd but it got to be a bit more fun as it went on and people wrote stupid comments on other people's blogs. Yes, that was my favourite part, the stupid comments that I got. What we had to do was choose a topic for our blog and then write a post everyday that follows that topic. Then we had to comment on fellow classmates blogs. I also learned a lot about video games and how obsessed people are with them, video games and youtube. That's the cool thing now a days.
Here is a link to my blog:
Julia's Ranting

Access

I hated this assignment. I am not going to lie, it was boring and I hated it. Least favourite assignment the whole semester. Basically what we had to do was pick up our little access booklets and work our way through them. In the booklets there were a bunch of assignments we had to do. We had to start off by entering a ton of data into a table, and then create query's, reports and forms from the table.

Here is a form from access about student marks:

Flash Website

This is my flash website. It was made in Flash, obviously. Once again this was another way that I never thought you could use Flash before. I didn't know what to type in the actions frame or how to make it an interactive thing rather than a movie before making this website. I learned a lot about how to work flash and what to key in to make it do what I want. I also learned that motion tweens are annoying sometimes and difficult to work. I learned you can't make add more stuff onto the same frame the motion tween ends if you want it to work properly. As far as liking this assignment? Well it was not my favourite thing to do, but once I got going at it it was alright, but I wouldn't want to have to do something like it again.



[Upload your own video]

Choose Your Own Adventure

This by far was my favourite assignment this semester. I also think it is the assignment that I learned the most doing. For example, I learned buttons can actually do stuff. I also learned you can use flash for more than just movies, that it can be an interactive program. I had only ever used it for movies, I didn't know about gotoAndStop functions that made you actually have to click stuff so it would work. I also never knew about items. That you can pick them up, and if you haven't done that well you can't click on some buttons. That's pretty cool stuff. Anyway, this is my really sweet choose your own adventure game that is pretty much hilarious, and unlike William's, mine makes sense.

Technology Website

For this assignment we had to use the Dreamweaver program to make a technology based website. It took me awhile to decide what to do but once I figured it out I actually loved this assignment. I chose to do Internet Trends and I think that I had some really good points put in there. Basically we had to use all of the elements we had learned from the Dreamweaver book and put it into this website. I would say I learned how to bring it all together and actually make something look good while created in Dreamweaver, and that takes a lot of work. So, because I loved this website so much I will put in some screen shots of my favourite pages.This is my home page for the website. Basically it consists of four buttons.

This is my Facebook page. It is an image map and you can click different areas to learn more about that elements of Facebook.

This is what you get to when you click the profile link of the Facebook image map. Underneath the picture of the Facebook Profile is a brief description of what it is and how you set it up.
This is my statistics table from my Internet Dangers section of my website. Basically it is a table of statistics about what children are accessing on the Internet that their parents don't know about.

Flash Book

Simillar to the Dreamweaver book except an entirely different program. Does that make sense? No probably not but really the Flash book is the same concept. Start at chapter one and work your way through the book to learn to do the simple things and then do big assignments which you will be seeing later in this blog. I once again had already done this before so I knew how to do most of it. I would say I learned how to draw aliens better because the ones that I did in grade 10 looked more like blobs of green then aliens. I like Flash a lot more than I like Dreamweaver but once again I had already done all of this, so doing the same thing twice can get to be a little bit boring.

Here are the aliens that I learned to draw better this year:

These are the full aliens. I think they're pretty cute this year. I'd say I like their gigantic eyes. I'm not really sure why.

This is a picture of the Alien Eyes assignment. I put it in here because it's actually the coolest thing I will ever draw, and it was so simple. I bet you wish you could draw a super cool alien like me. Yeah, thats right, be jealous.

Dreamweaver Book

For this assignment we had to work through the Dreamweaver Book. This was pretty simple considering I had done this already in a previous class, but not in years. So it was a good memory refresher. I can't really say that I learned all that much however, because like I said I had already done all of this. I would say that the week of Dreamweaver was deathly boring and that after this exam coming up I hope to never see the dreadful green of the book again. :)

Here is the image map of canada that we had to do:

Basically what we did was take the Polygon Hotspot tool to highlight certain areas and link them to another page when you clicked them. Yay image maps.

Mutual Fund

The "We Are Now Broke" Mutual Fund

This assignment was done over a two week period. We had to choose stocks and record how they were doing everyday by using a stock website. We were put in groups of four and each had to choose a strand of stocks to choose from. The options were Technology, Financial, Manufacturing and Energy. After we recorded them we had to go into our groups and make graphs in excel based on the results. Basically what I learned from this assignment is that the stock market can change at any time, and that choosing stocks based on three funny initials (sti,std,hiv) was in no way helpful. I also learned that having to do all the graphs at the end because the rest of your group wouldn't do them was annoying. So, I liked the actual stock part of the assingment, but the graphs and presentations was not my favourite.



Here are my groups graphs compared to the other stuff we had to compare them to: (NASDAQ & DJIA):

Business Assignment

The Hudson’s Bay Company:
Four Centuries of Business

The Hudson’s Bay Company, which was started in 1670, is still operating strong four centuries later. Starting out small with the fur trade, HBC has expanded into 5 different branches including The Bay, Zellers, Designer Depot, Home Outfitters and Fields. HBC has over 500 stores in Canada and employees 70,000 Canadians.

The Hudson’s Bay Company was started two centuries before Confederation, meaning that this company is older than Canada itself. Two Frenchmen named Radisson and des Groseilliers, who found some money in fur located north and West of the Great Lakes, started it. In 1821 the company merged with their most successful rival the North West Company. This was an important merge for the company because now they didn’t have too much competition, and they got all the business the North West Company was taking away from them.

In 1912 HBC went through an aggressive modernization program. They created the 6 original Hudson’s Bay Company stores that are still around today.

Unfortunately, in 1921 fur was losing its importance. The Gold Rush however, brought in many new clients. After the Gold Rush people with money started to bring business to HBC, so rather than trading fur, they brought in real money. Because HBC now had wealth in money and not just fur, they began to open up saleshops instead of fur trading posts.

Now, HBC started to go commercial, and selling everything that was in high demand. Best sellers for the company were liquor, canned salmon, coffee, tea and tobacco. In the 1980’s there was a large economic downturn however, and this forced the company to go back to its original roots, and return to prior business plans, such as clothing and other things that you would find in an HBC outlet today.

After finding their original roots, The Hudson’s Bay Company started to expand. All of the non-retail businesses that they owned were being sold off. Also, many of their commercial stores (the ones that carried liquor and other substances that were in demand at the time) were sold too. They did this so that they could take over other small businesses and open up many new stores.

The Hudson’s Bay Company has always had pretty good business and business strategies, but there are always going to be some unexpected factors that affect every business. In 2001 HBC went through a profit plunge. There had been a recent ice storm and it was stated that they were suffering from difficult retail climate. HBC however was not the only company to falter from this ice storm. Many retailing businesses suffered simply because customers were not out shopping. This profit plunge did not last long however, causing the company to be once again back on track and doing fine.

HBC is an importing company. At the present time our Canadian Dollar is very strong, and as a result of this HBC is doing quite well as are most importing businesses.

Other factors affecting HBC’s sales are their public image. HBC works hard to make sure that they keep a good public image, as they do not want to hurt the business that has been so strong for such a long period of time.

To keep up with their strong public image the Hudson’s Bay Company puts out Corporate Social Responsibility Reports (CSR) that they have posted on their website. In these reports they include things like what they are doing with their business that is environmentally safe, information about their human resources policies, a community investment, Ethical Sourcing, and Global Reporting Initiative.

HBC takes pride in being environmentally safe. They do this by starting programs such as the Green program. This means that they are working hard to control their energy consumption in factories, as well as making all their packaging safe for the environment and recycling.
Another factor of their yearly CSR include A Community Investment. What this means is that the Hudson’s Bay Company supports many charities and other ways of giving back to the community. All their associates and other employees are all involved in their Community Investment and are constantly looking for new ways to help support Canadians.

A negative factor affecting HBC is some labour issues. The Hudson’s Bay Company is currently considering selling their Designer Depot division, which means that some employees of the store may lose their jobs.

Designer Depot did not get the sales over the holidays that they hoped it would get, and the company is trying to decide if it is worth it to keep it. HBC had to lay off about 100 employees when they did not get the business they needed, and that has affected the company. Now with the decision to possibly sell it coming forward, HBC has to decide what will happen to all the employees currently working in Designer Depot. Trying to keep this as a light situation, H BC is saying that they will find the current employees other jobs in other divisions, but will they really?

Although HBC is currently going through this employee cut, the future looks very bright. After surviving over 300 years of business, nobody thinks that HBC is going down anytime soon.

This is my In-Depth business report, that is very in depth. My original plan was to do the 600 word option and put in a timeline, but then I realized that this company is way to old and has way to much stuff to write about. So the first thing I learned is, the Bay = Old. Very old. I also learned they have a huge website that is easy to find information. Basically what we had to do was research a company and write a report on it, based like a magazine or something. It was to be formatted in coloumns, full justification, and in Georgia font, which, I will agree with Mr. Smith, looked pretty sweet. Another thing I learned in this assignment: Georgia font is my favourite, and full justification is cool. Hmm.. what else did I learn? I learned the fur trade was important, and that french people started the Bay. This assignment took a long time. It probably shouldn't have taken so long, but in the beginning I was bored and didn't want to do a lot of research, but once I eventually decided I should actually finish this assignment, it wasn't so bad, so I guess I kind of liked it.

Peripheral Assignment

Drawing Tablets

A drawing tablet is a device that can be used instead of a mouse, used mostly for graphic design. Most tablets have a USB interface. Bluetooth can connect tablets without the use of wires, and for older computers a serial interface is needed to connect a drawing tablet. A drawing tablet has two parts, the drawing surface, and the utensil needed to draw. Drawing tablets can come with a pen, stylus or puck. Also, many models of drawing tablets come with a penholder and others come with a cordless mouse.
Tablets come in different sizes. It really depends on what the tablet will be used for to choose the appropriate size, but the biggest size isn’t necessarily the best. Some artists prefer a smaller tablet so they do not have to move their arm as much, while others prefer a large surface because it feels more naturally. The cost of drawing tablets increases with size of them.
Some of the pens for a drawing tablet require batteries while others do not. The pens containing batteries are heavier, and the battery will need to be replaced. Also, some pens will have a connecter, so they are not lost, but some come lose from the tablet. Some pens need to be programmed to erase, while others have an eraser on them that does a delete in one quick motion. Tablets are also pressure sensitive. This means when you press harder, the line you’ve just drawn will be thicker; it can also control the colour of the line. The first drawing tablets worked by having a grid of wires underneath the surface of the tablet, the grid had horizontal and vertical coordinates and using a magnetic signal, the coordinates would be sent to the computer monitor, creating the image that was drawn on the tablet. The first drawing tablet was the RAND tablet, which was also known as the Grafacon. This was introduced to on the marketplace in the year of 1964.

This is our External Computer Hardware Research Assignment. AKA. Peripheral Assignment. For this assignment we had to research an optional computer component. In case you couldn't tell from the beginning of this blog I chose to research drawing tablets. This turned out to be really annoying to research, because when making the chart almost every single drawing tablet I found to include was from the same company. But once again, the main thing I learned from this assignment was the brilliance of Google. I figured out that clicking the sponsored links was the easiest way to get information about buying stuff... who knew? I also remembered how to use the pen and line tool in flash when drawing the diagram of a drawing tablet. My personal opinion of the assignment was that it was boring. I dislike researching, especially when the information is a lot harder to find than you would think.

Business Card

This is my business card. For this assignment we had to design a business card for some kind of business. Although I already knew how to do this the main thing that I learned was about google. I learned that when you are looking for an image with a white background, type in clipart and you will find one. For example, to get the image of the flower I typed "Flower Clipart" into the search engine and this is one that I found. Also I learned that Times New Roman Font is ugly. And that when you make other ones, your result is much prettier. I don't really have an opinion on this assignment however. I guess I liked it because it was an easy way to get marks, but it only took about 5 minutes and I had forgotten about it completely until now.

Complaint Letter

Julia Rae Herring
1379 Balsam Ave
Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7E5
Phone: (705) 876-6898

February 5, 2008



Rogers Wireless Customer Care
40 Weber Street East 3rd Floor
Kitchener, Ontario N2H 6R3
Attn: Customer Service

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to inform you of my dissatisfaction with a Motorola V360 cell phone that I have recently purchased. After only a few times of use I could not hear anything from the cell phone and anybody who I was speaking with could not hear me as something was malfunctioning.

I was quite frustrated when my cell phone stopped working, as I am generally very pleased with the performance of all products I have ever purchased from Rogers. Also, other people who I know who have the same cell phone of me have also had this problem, so I feel that it may be a problem with all Motorola V360’s and not just mine.

Please take the time to consider this suggestion that all Motorola V360’s may have this problem because I would not want for Rogers to lose valued customers as myself over one defective phone. I am incredibly fond of your wireless service and I believe it is a problem with Motorola and not your service.

Thank you for taking the time to consider these suggestions.

Sincerely,


Julia Herring

This is my complaint letter. I would first like to add that I actually have no problem with my Motorola Phone. Pretty much all I did was follow a format given to make the paragraphs that ramble on about a complaint that I do not actually have.

This was a very basic assignment, it was a good refresher for Microsoft Word skills. One other thing I learned was how to properly place an address for a letter. The way to do it is to simply look at one line of the page you are on, and to know what line you need to be on to fit the address in the window of the envelope. I also learned how to fold a letter, a good skill.

I liked this assignment. It was an easy 30 marks and there is nothing wrong with that :)