9th of May 2012.

Today in class, since Mr Cavill was absent, we continued to experiment on Audacity Portable. While experimenting with this application, I have developed a basic understanding on how to use the application properly.

Below is a few of the skills I have learnt during the duration of the lesson.

Skill 1: How to record using Audacity Portable

Basically, by pressing the button with a red circle in a centre on the toolbar, you can easily record whatever you like. After recording your piece, click on the button with a gold-ish square also on the toolbar to stop recording activity. Click the start of the piece and press the play button to hear your final recorded piece.

Skill 2: How to import audio files using Audacity Portable
Importing audio files in Audacity Portable can be very challenging, but it can be done in a small amount of easy steps. Firstly, you have to click on the file option on the top bar of the window. Once you have clicked on this, you should have many options avaliable to you. The option you have to press however, is the link that says import. When this is pressed, you can import files from your documents, USB etc. When you have located the file you want to import, select it and press the open button located near it.

Skill 3: Editing sound
Audacity is a software that provides many different tools to edit sound. These tools can be found in the toolbar beside the record, play and stop buttons.

These are the tools and their functions:

Selection Tool
This tool can be used easily and effectively for highlighting any part of the sound that you wish to edit or delete.

Envelope Tool
This tool is one that is able to adjust and change the volume of any part of the audio, just by dragging the blue lines that appear in and out.

Zoom Tool
This tool is useful as it helps to zoom into your track, therefore making it easier to edit your piece of audio.

Drawing Tool
Using this tool gives you the ability to move the individual handles in your audio piece.

Timeshift Tool
This tool can only be used when you are using more than one track and gives you the ability to move the track to wherever you want to.

Multi Tool
This tool gives you acess all of tools at once.

Skill 4: Deleting sound
You can do this by selecting the part of the sound you want to delete. Afterward, just press the delete button on your keyboard.

Skill 5: Adding effects to the sound
You can add effects by pressing the effect button in the menu. Then, select the effect that you want to add from the drop-down menu. You can then experiment with the effects on your sound.

Here are three effects I experimented with and how they alter the sound file when used.

BassBoost
This effect basically allows the audio to increase the bass frequency.

Change Pitch
This effect allows you to change the pitch of your audio without changing the tempo of the audio. The pitch change can be altered in four different ways. The first is by musical note, the second by semitones, the third by frequency and lastly by percent change.

Reverse
This effect reverses the audio so that the end of the audio will be heard first and the beginning of the song will be heard last.

30th of April 2012.

Today in class we discussed about an application that we will be using quite a number of times during this unit called Audacity. I finally have installed it onto my USB with ease.

Questions
What is a portable application?
A portable applcation is an application that can be carried around on a portable device, such as a USB and can be used on any computer.

The advantages of portable applications.

• You can take your applications anywhere with you, as long as you have a portable device.
• You can set it up in any way you like.
• You don't need to worry about the computer losing files or setting up differently.
• They are free so you don't have to worry about paying for your application.
• There are a variety of applications that are avaliable as portable.
• Portable applications clean your registry.
• They are secure in computers and thumbdrives. 

The types of software avaliable as portable applications.
There are many types of software avaliable on the internet as portable applications. They can be put into many different categories. Some examples are stated below.

Accesibility

• Firefox Accesibility Extension
• On-screen Keyboard Portable
• Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable

Development

• AkelPad Portable
• Database Browser Portable
• Frhed Portable
• Geany Portable
• Notepad ++ Portable

Education

• BPBible Portable
• Celestia Portable
• Gramps Portable
• Marble Portable
• TypeFaster Portable

Games

• Big Solitaires 3D Portable
• Brutal Chess Portable
• Cube Portable
• Frets on Fire Portable
• Get Sudoku Portable
• Puzzle Collection Portable

Graphics

• Blender Portable
• Dia Portable
• GIMP Portable
• Inkscape Portable

Internet

• DamnVid Portable
• Google Chrome Portable
• Juice Portable
• Maxthon Portable
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
• Skype Portable

27th of April 2012.

Today, in our first lesson of IST for Term 2, we began our new unit on sound. We were allocated to do the activity Audio Sampling Rate and Sample Size for this lesson, as well as Installing  Audacity Sound Editor.

Task One:

Making Sound- Questions

1. Sound moves through what medium? Sound moves through the pressure waves of air.
2. Briefly describe how a microphone works, in particular what does it gather and what does it produce? A microphone works through vibrations and electrical signals. This process occurs as microphones consist of small membranes that vibrate, as well as a mechanism that gathers the vibrations of the membrane and produce them into electrical signals.
3. What unit is used to measure sample size? The unit used to measure sample size is bits or decimal digits.
4. What unit is used to measure sampling rate? The unit used to measure sampling rate is Hertz (Hz) or samples per second.

Audio Bit Depth Sample Size and Sampling Rate- Questions

1. How does sound quality vary with sample size and sample rate? Sound quality varies with sample size and sample rate as the quality of the sound is dependent through the sample size and sample rate.
2. What is another name for sample size? Another name for sample size is sample format.
3. From the above information which offers better quality sound, FM radio or AM radio? As evident above, the better quality sound can be produced by FM radio is at 96 kbits. This because it's bitrate value is higher than AM radio's, which is at 32 kbits and it is the closest to the Standard Bit Rate quality which is at 128-160 kbits.
4. Why not record all sound in extremely high sample sizes and sample rates? The reason why not all sound can not be recorded in extremely high sample sizes and sample rates is because large files can not be transferred as easily as small files can.

Describe the creation process you followed. (PART 2)

29th of March 2012
With only one more day until the assessment is due, I have decided that I will erase some of the ideas I had planned for my assignment. I have decided that I will remove both sections of my animation where storm clouds will appear and also that I will not add a girl into my animation, as I think that creating these sections of my animation will be time consuming not only for me, but also for my animation. Even though I had no IST lesson today, I managed to get a few frames and a post on my blog done at home.


Here are some frames I managed to get done today:

30th of March 2012
Today, our assignment is due at the end of the day. I managed to get all of my animation done today, as well as all my posts on my blog. I wish I could have managed my time better, but I am relieved that I have completed it satisfactorily. 

Final Product.

Here is my animation to submit for the assignment:

Overall, I'm proud of my final product, but I wish I could change some things such as managing my time better so that I was able to add more detail and frames to my animation.

What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

During this assignment I did not encounter any major difficulties, but mainly minor ones.


Some of the problems I encountered included not being able to open Inkscape at times, difficulties in erasing bits of the animation that weren't needed any more, learning to find the locations of some functions that were needed, managing time, choosing the proper tools to suit the part of the animation I was creating, deciding what format to save my frames in, difficulty in drawing objects, moving objects equally so that they flowed smoothly when they were animated, changing the position of objects so that they suited, etc.


I solved these problems by trying my best to manage my time, asking the teacher when I am troubled, asking for the help of my peers, spending time at home to try and fix these problems and also by referring to the internet's sources for assistance.


I managed to solve most of these problems, and I'm overall proud of my working skills and finished product.

What is the final size of your animation in MB?

The final size of my animation in MB is 1.89MB.