Understanding the Vocabulary

Last week I attended an educational seminar at work on graphics. The first thing I realized was how little I know about the topic. Sure I know what a pixel is and how to draw pretty pictures but the seminar dove into a very technical topic on graphics and how it is related to video games.

Later in the week a few of us gathered one evening and I remarked about how little I knew about the topic discussed at the seminar. One of my coworkers admitted that the presenter dove right into the topic and didn't provide some rudimentary definitions related to the topic. It turns out there was a previous seminar that I was unable to attend that gave a base foundation that this later seminar built upon.

The field of computer science is rather large. While I have a very strong understanding of database technologies, there are a number of others about which I know very little. Whenever I try to learn something new, it is important to understand the basic concepts and vocabulary to build upon them. Otherwise I just end up getting frustrated. Should you find yourself in a similar situation, don't get frustrated. Use your favorite Internet search engine to help you discover those things you don't understand. Ask your trusted coworker that seems to have all the answers. If that fails, then ask your kids. They probably have it all figured out.

Creating a PowerPoint Template

I have to give a presentation in about 6 weeks and needed to create a new PowerPoint template. Normally a company will have a standard set of templates to use, but my presentation will be given to numerous organizations and other presenters will have the option of using the template that I created today. So none of our existing templates seemed like a good choice.

At first I thought creating a PowerPoint template was going to be easy. I looked at a few of the standard ones I have used but quickly realized none of them were going to work for me. So I started with the blank white template that comes with every version of Microsoft Office. There was a company logo I wanted to use and so I added it from one of my other templates. Then there were some graphics that I copied over from others. Finally I pulled in a background that I like as it does a good job of representing large amounts of data, which is what my presentation is all about. Unfortunately the graphic was just too colorful and nobody could read any text placed on top of it regardless of the color or font. PowerPoint provides a few tools to lighten up the graphic and so I did to the point where black text was easily recognized and actually looked good.

I was pretty happy with the few sample slides I put together and called over one of my coworkers to let me know his thoughts. He thought it looked pretty good except for the font. Naturally I listened to his advice changed the font to something I have liked in the past. It was amazing how the presentation popped off the page with such a subtle change.

I must say that I am pretty happy with the presentation so far. It took me about five times as long to put together the template as I expected and probably am not finished. Remember that if you have to put together any presentations and want to create your own template. There were a lot of trips between "Master Slide" view and my presentation, but in the end it turned out pretty good.