Creating a Webpage

Welcome to Vanessa's Webpage!

I'm pretty sure I was a sophomore in high school when I was taking a digital design class. I started learning how to code and use HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) as a class assignment, and it was pretty fascinating to me. It was like learning a foreign language. But just how I forgot most of what I learned during my two years of Spanish class, I definitely forgot about how to use HTML and CSS as well. Luckily, there’s a great site that was extremely helpful for refreshing that knowledge called codecademy.com. This site provides step-by-step interactive tutorials to help you practice and familiarize yourself with the concepts. Hooray for the Internet! (there's no way in heck I could have made this if I didn't have that site to refer to!!)

So for this blog post, I am using the HTML option to create my “web page”. I know you can't tell that I used the HTML option as opposed to the regular option, but that means I did it correctly! Because of that, I will include a picture of what it actually looks like/how I typed it out:

I know I didn’t make a fancy page with music, memes, and GIFs, but this is just for the basics!

Overall, I believe that anyone has the ability to learn how to make their own webpage! All it takes is a little practice and memorization. I think it is interesting to learn about how webpages and sites are created because they are such a monumental part of our everyday life. Thanks for reading!

E-mails vs. Postal Mail

You may think about electronic mail being very different from physical mail, but they surprisingly have some important similarities!

Both e-mail and physical mail are delivered to an address, whether its a house or if its yourname@gmail.com. They both have a post office, the e-mail's could be Gmail and the physical mail could be FedEx. You can send greeting cards, bills, invitations, advertisements and scams through both kinds of mail.

However there are some undeniable differences between the kinds of mail. The obvious one is that you can’t physically hold your e-mail in your hand like a letter or receive and open packages through your computer screen. E-mails are a faster way of communication than having mail delivered physically, and it is also free to send off an e-mail. You can also access your mail anywhere if you have an electronic device, but you have to be at the address of your physical mailbox to receive real mail. Also, using e-mail gives you the option to send the mail to multiple addresses at the same time, whereas you would have to make physical copies for each recipient for physical mail. With physical mail, you’re less likely to be inundated with spam than electronic mail, but at least you can filter through your e-mails and search for the important/relevant ones by using keywords and categories. E-mail may be a better option for business and school related tasks but physical mail seems more thoughtful, especially for birthdays and special occasions. Overall, both types of mail have their pros and cons.

Hopes For TINST 207

Hello!

My name is Vanessa Crisostomo, and the purpose of this post is to address why I decided to take "Living and Working in a Virtual World."

Ever since I was little I have been using computers and electronics, and I am quite impressed with their progression over the years. Systems became more functional and convenient to use, which lead to people utilizing them more often. Computers became a significant part of my life as I started to use them consistently when I became obsessed with a virtual world game called Club Penguin around the age of 7 or 8, and later I would end up using other virtual worlds and then eventually going into video chat rooms. Depressingly enough, I nearly lived online for most of my life. But at least that lifestyle disintegrated once my Wi-Fi became unreliable and I became occupied with a job and a boyfriend. But even though I’m no longer glued to my laptop talking to people I don’t know, that doesn’t mean I don’t use electronic social platforms anymore. Like many people, I can often be found on my phone using Snapchat (now Snap Inc.?), Instagram, and Facebook/Messenger. Whether I form unhealthy habits or not, I have accepted and embraced that I am a part of the age of the Internet.

While this course may not (or may) help me decide what I want to do with my life, I hope that it will give me a better understanding of technology and how it has evolved over the years, as well as how some of it works. I also enjoy the idea of discussing newly emerging products on the market such as virtual reality headsets­– just yesterday my boyfriend bought Gear VR. In addition I’m interested in exploring future concepts and possibilities of technology such as time travel and robot development. I believe this class will interesting and informative and the topic is great because it is relevant to our society and our everyday lives in these times.