Creating my Avatar

This is my AVATAR. His name is James.

As you can see I have created myself an Avatar. I have experience creating avatars, I have one on my Yahoo email account. I was not sure if we were aloud to use websites other than ones listed on the CreatinganAvatar document. Anyways, I went to http://www.meez.com/ and created myself an avatar. It did not take me long, I created a profile and began to adjust the avatar. I shopped for clothes, shoes, accesories, got his hair done. Come to find out almost everything actually cost real money. I had to drop all my custom outifts and start fresh. I went to the free section and picked some clothes out. It took me alot longer than expected. But eventually, boom I finished. And there you have it. My avatar.

Tutorial 2: The world of .MP3 and .WAV

MP3 or WAV

MPEG layer 3 file or MP3, A widely used term to describe the use of downloading audio files to any electronic device, such as portable media player, computer, smart phones, and CD’s. Waveform audio file format or WAV, is another computer acronym that is for the most part is unknown to the average computer user. WAV is a standard way computers store audio bistream. These two download files are very similar, but are made up of different component. The question is which one of these would you use to download your audio files. Let me explain the two file types.

MP3-  In 1995 the Moving Pictures Expert Group develops MPEG layer 3 to compress reduce the amount of data to represent audio files downloaded to computers of other media equipment. The way MP3 works is it takes the audio file and compresses it to one tenth of the size, and loses very little of the original quality of the file.  The audio file cuts out the extra sounds that the human ear cannot pick up, such as low static. The MP3 is on a setting of 128 kbit/s, which is very fast.  MP3 are known today as the most effective way for storing audio files on any electronic device. Since its wide spread popularity, MP3 players have taken their name from the fast downloading and smaller data files that are stored on the device.  

WAV- In 1991, IBM and Microsoft developed the waveform audio file (WAV). The original creation was developed to store audio bit stream on computers, mainly PC’s. The WAV stores audio files in chunks, and is downloaded through linear pulse-code modulation (wave lengths). The WAV files downloaded slower compared to MPEG layer 3. The WAV is on setting of 16 kbit/s, which is very slow. The files are not compressed and therefore have large amounts of data. There is a benefit to not compressing the files; with more data the sound quality would be significantly better than the leading competitor, MP3. More professional sound artists use WAV, because the better quality and ability to manipulate the data more easily since the file is not compressed.

So let’s compare the two:

                                                       
THE GOOD

      Waveform Audio Files                                                               MPEG layer 3

Better Quality	Small size files
Easier to EDIT	Compressed Files
None compressed files	Faster download
	Files transfer to more devices

                                                           
THE BAD

      Waveform Audio Files                                                           MPEG layer 3       

Slow download	Cant edit easily
Bigger file size	Not as good quality
Cant work on all electronics’

   To determine which of the audio file is right for you, you have to know what you want. If you are professional looking to edit and manipulate audio files, then WAV would be the best choice for you. If you are an average Joe or Jane and only download music for your Ipod or CD’s, your best choice is the MP3. The MP3 files don’t take a toll on the computer memory and leaves the consumer happy and satisfied by the product and service received. The WAV is a huge chunk of memory, but has the better quality.The bottom line is, what the consumer is looking for determines which audio file he or she will use." If the shoe fits, then wear it"

SOURCES:

http://www.computerhope.com/mp3.htm

Computing in 2010- Shelly Cashman Series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV

         For my blog post, I am going to depict the events of the Excel Project. This has been an interesting project; I am have common sensewhen it comes to computer programs. After this assignment I became well informed about the keys and process and use of microsoft excel.  I have taken a computer course in high school, but it never dealt with excel before. I shocked when I saw all the data in the columns and rows. In the following paragraphs I am going to tell you the excel difficulties I have to deal with and the new information I acquired.

        After watching the videos on the windows program, I started immediately with the project. It was very easy at first, but when getting into formulae and pivot tables the program became very difficult. I learned a lot through the process of this project. I learned how to adjust rows and columns; I learned how to adjust print preview setting and to make the spreadsheet visually appealing. I learned how to name cells, group cells, and add new columns with cells. The video in the Sakai website helped me through this project. I was able to learn about simple functions that organized the spreadsheet. 

        Excel formulae and pivot tables are very usual tools to calculate individual cells or information as a whole. I have learned to write formulae’s that figure mathematical equations or possibility statistics. Pivot tables are used to compute large amounts of information to figure statistics on information. There are many types of formulae functions: (If) function is used to compute probabilities, (Max, Min and Average) are used to sort through information to configure the data. These formulae are great to know, but if hard to remember, excel has a help functions that walks you through different excels functions. It goes step by step to thoroughly explain the issue. Below is a example of my pivot table. You can see how the rows, columns, and how the pivot table was able to find the average heart rate of selected age group and gender.The columns are the age groups, while the rows are the gender.