Category: Technology/Multimedia

In this modern era, technology becomes a major part of everyone lives. This is a class that we learn different parts of technology skills that is crucial for our future.

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Stepping Out of Comfort Zone (Learning Adobe Photoshop)

From: Youth Employment Decade

Technology Revolution is one big change that made huge impacts on humanity that will leave tracks on this world forever. Technology is so powerful and broad, with so many sectors and fields that we can study and master. In Technology, there is a whole range of editing, from editing videos, photos, artworks, abstract concepts, digital painting to editing movies, soundtracks and more. Furthermore, there are hundreds of other skill, including programming language, building or developing the application, programming robots. Technology has a huge range of different activities for us to learn, depending on our own passions and type of creativity. However, you can also get more creative by stepping outside of your comfort zone to work on the skills that you are not familiar with. That is what I did for an independent project in my Technology and Multimedia class.

From: PCMag.com

After learning about the Python programming language, premium-pro, and video editing skills and some more skills, I want to try out new fields of technology that can allow me to learn something new and to build new types of creativity. Therefore, I chose to work on digital arts, especially drawing and painting in adobe photoshop. Learning a new skill is challenging, but since there are many helpful resources on the internet that can help a new-learner like me. Although the platform (adobe photoshop) is quite complex and advanced, there are great tutorials that I used to study the tools. I find digital art really interesting and it is fun to be able to learn something new and to create a product using a skill you never thought you would be able to have. I used to fear of learning new things, especially technology lessons that seem complex and advance. However, this course of digital art completely changed my mindset towards technology lessons. The challenges that await you when you learn something new are the resources to help you grow, to build your knowledge, expand your creativity and innovation. It opens up your mind to new concepts, ideas that you would have never imagined, it takes you to the other side of the world, not the ordinary one you are living in.

I understand why people would prefer things that are comfortable, easy and safe for them. However, I see a whole new world of opportunities and growth awaiting for people to enter, where people can grow and learn more about the world around them, what they are actually capable of when they open up their minds to new innovative ideas and lessons. There is nothing that you can’t learn, it is just the boundary of your mindset. Therefore, I would love to encourage everyone to try new things, think outside the box and try to learn different lessons, even though it is not the one you are most passionate about. You can always find something you enjoy in a new activity, a new light, a new hope, a new perspective, a whole different world of opportunities.

Here is my first digital painting that I made:

Despite this digital painting, I also learned how to edit photos that involved story-telling skill. Here is one of several art projects I have created:

 

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The Use of the Python Programming Language

This is our last round learning the Python programming language. After we have studied all of the rules and technical writing of the programming language, we have set our hands on real practice projects that are both fun, interactive and helpful for our studies.

We have been learning about lists in python for weeks, as a result, students get the opportunity to practice it in a project. For example, I have worked on a program that can randomly appoint random names and put them into different teams. This project can be used for users who want random groups when they insert the names of all the players in. As an example, I insert the name of the students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the program can divide them into different teams randomly.

Credit: Pen Installations

This is just a simple example of a small program that the programming language can help us to create, but there are a million of ideas and solutions that programmers can invent and program to help solve global issues in an eco-friendly way which can result in a better place to live for all of us. Our civilizations will be much more developed with advanced-technology and applications that are made from different programming languages. Technology and programming teach us how to be more innovative to create creative solutions for our world.

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Introduction to Python Programming Language

Image result for python programming language

Steemit.com

Python is a computer language that is designed by Guido van Rossum who is a Dutch programmer.

There are a lot of different parts of Python that we need to learn. These are some of them:

Boolean: a datatype that can have the value of True and False:

Example: 1 > 6  (False)

    6 >= 9 = (False)

    1 = 1 (True)

Comparision: the statements used to compare different numbers

Example:

==  (equals)

!= (not equals)

< (less than)

<= (less than or equal to)

If statement: if the statement sets a condition, if the condition is true then do something.

Example:

If input > 100:

Print ‘You are the first customers!’

(Note: Indentation is really important in python, Every space and character should be structured in the required form)

Elif Statement: the statement that lets you set a lot more conditions than the If statement

Else Statement: the last statement in a condition

(Lessons about Loops)

For Loop: (Loop is to repeat something again and again) For loop allows you to repeat a thing over and again for a certain amount of times.

Break Statement: Just like the word sounds, Break Statements break the loops and stop it from running.

Continue: Continue stops one repetition and continues to the next one. It skips a loop when it meets a certain condition.

Range Function: Range function allows us to count in a huge range of numbers.

Applying Coding to Real Life Examples:

One of the challenges that our teacher gave us to work on is:  Give the user 3 tries to guess a number between 1 and 10 (includes 1 and 10) that the computer created randomly.

If they guess correctly within 3 tries, they win. If they don’t, they lose.

This is what my code looks like to give the user 3 tries to guess the random number from the computers:

random_number = randint(1, 10)

attempt = 0

while attempt < 3:

   guess = input(“Guess a number between 1 and 10 (included):”)

   if guess == random_number:

       print ‘You are correct! You win!’

       break

   else:

       print ‘You are wrong. Sorry’

   attempt += 1

print “Game Over”

(By running this code, the user can put 3 inputs, and the program will tell them if it is right or wrong. If they could not get in after 3 tries, they loses)

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Photography Basics

Photography is one of my favorite hobbies. In our multimedia class, I have learned about the different features of our cameras and the exposure triangle.

We learn about two of the three types of the camera which are DSLRs (Digital Single Lens Reflect) and Mirrorless cameras. This two camera processes the light that comes through the lens in different ways. DSLRs have a mirror and sensor to reflect and then capture the light while mirrorless just captures the light that comes with the shutter without traveling through the mirror and the sensor.

Exposure is the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor and there are three things that affect the exposure in photography which we call the exposure triangle, consist of Shutter Speed, Aperture & ISO.

(Photo from lightroompresets.com) 

Shutter Speed is the amount of time the shutter is open to permit light in. It is measured in a fraction of second (1/20, 1/500) The longer the shutter speed, the more light can come in through the lens. Besides affecting the light, Shutter Speed also is used to capture the different type of motions well including sports, etc.

Aperture is the size of the lens that let light into the camera. Adjusting Aperture will affect the depth of field (how blurry or clear your background is) Wide aperture has a shallow depth of field (causes the background to be blurry) whereas narrow aperture has a deep depth of field (clear background).  

(Photo from mynomadiclens.com)

ISO is the control over how sensitive is your camera to the light (the higher the ISO, the more sensitive it is to light which makes the photo brighter). However, increasing too much ISO can cause the photo to be noisy so we should increase it only when adjusting shutter speed and aperture is not enough.

In addition to that, I have learned about the different types of photos including long shot, full shot, medium shot, close up, extreme close up, low angle, high angle, eye level, dutch angle/tilt, over the shoulder and bird’s eye view.

Here is the slide presentation of this lesson (from teacher Cindy) 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UHovX2GQ6lKqH9Zj0wr0QhAcgqFfZc93gt6TAEXaGZo/edit#slide=id.g35f391192_00

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Deeper into Algorithm

Algorithm is one of the most interesting lessons for me because it involves a lot of problem-solving concepts but we solve those problems by using smart and efficient formulas. During the course of algorithm, I am introduced to two new types of algorithm.

Our teacher (Cindy) gave us an extremely hard task which requires us to find the sum between 1 and 200 (1+2+3+4+5……200) with a limited time. As a result, all of us got the answers wrong in the first time; however after we are introduced to the formula to solve this problem which is (n+1) x (n/2), we could solve other problems that have the same goals so easily. We can take 200 which indicates n + 1 which is 201 to multiply with 100 which gives us the result of 20100.

Another algorithm that we have learned is divide and conquer. It is an algorithm used to solve problems by breaking it down into smaller pieces until we can manage to find the exact answers by following the same patterns of dividing over and over again. This is one example of a problem that can be solved using the divide and conquer algorithm:

In a museum, there is an ancient sculpture that has lasted since the very first centuries of human existence. Since it is a really important sculpture, there is a camera that takes a picture of the sculpture once every five minutes. One day, the security guard found it was missing during 8 am off Monday and 8 pm on Tuesday. Find out the exact time that the sculpture was stolen.

If I am not introduced to algorithm yet, I would find this problem as a days-long riddle in order to be solved. However, by using the divide and conquer algorithm, we can easily solve the riddle by using a simple pattern. First of all, we would divide all of the possible time for stealing the ancient sculpture into two. Then, we will ask for a photo from the camera that has taken during 8 pm on Monday which is right in the middle of 8 am on Monday and 8 pm on Tuesday. The next steps depend on what the photo shows; if it shows that the sculpture is still there at the time that the photo has taken, then it means the stealing happened later after that and if the photo does not show the sculpture, it obviously means that the sculpture was already stolen before this photo is taken. Then we can ask for a photo in the middle of each possible moments and continue the dividing until we find the exact moment that the sculpture has been stolen.