Community Service

Items 

• garbage
• soup
• clothes
• beds
• good deeds
• sense of community
• giving back

All great things, and I encourage people to give back. Unfortunately, personally I don't have a large heart to give up my time. 

Its not that I don't care. I do care, and i am deeply vested in Erie, and the surrounding communities. 

I think i have earned the right to say no. 

Let me explain before people get the wrong idea. On September 26, 2001, days after September 11th, I joined the Navy. Not because of problems in my own life but because I already felt a requirement to serve. As a high school student I talked about service in the military as something that every able bodied man should do. My patriotism is exceptional. I am proud of all the great things we have accomplished in our 200+ years of freedom, recently we have made some stupid decisions but thats not the point. 

Fast forward (a phrase that will soon have no relevance) to 2013, July 23 to be precise, my contract with the Navy ended much to my disappointment. After almost 12 years in the Navy learning what is is to be a sailor, man, husband, and father the end had come. The Navy in their wisdom decided that I was no longer needed (downsizing is everywhere). 

That greater than a decade of time spend defending peoples right to judge, loathe, believe, and do whatever they want was worth it. I have a sense of entitlement regarding my time. I am going to spend it in the manner in which i have been unable for so long. I know that I will be judged by some but I KNOW what I have contributed to this great nation. 

Stingy some may say, but I have my satisfaction and thats enough for me to know that I have served my community, and that box has been checked more then mosts.

Target Audience, Color Pallet, and Sociological Response

Target Audience

Identifying a target audience is vitally important to determine that basis of content on a web page. A target audience might be children 2-10 and parents, in the case of DisneyJunior. A broad target audience might be United States Veterans of all ages and genders as in the case of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Target audiences can be extremely specific as in the case of Olay as they are marketing to the demographic of women 15-40, with their anti-aging products and beauty skin care lines.  My target audience is the governing body for acceptance into the Penn State Graduate Program, and to capture the attention of potential future employers.

Color Pallet and Sociological Responce

Personally the color of deep ocean water before a storm is one of my all time favorite colors. It is impossible to capture in photographs and hard to describe without first hand experience.  The color is a deep royal blue with this rich gray hue to it and my recollection of it always manifests with thoughts of all the other mariners that have seen those waters and kept their course knowing that trouble could be over the next wave. It speaks depths to me about character, fortitude, and heritage.

However, without an understanding of how people are emotionally connected to colors using my favorite color could be damaging to the traffic on my site. Because human thought is not simple nor linear, there are many aspects to social engineering and sociology that have to be taken into account when designing a multimedia product.  The first connection to emotion and color that needs to be discussed is how culture in a whole may view a color. For example, in his autobiography Chuck Yeager tells a story about being stationed in Pakistan and working to help with issues regarding reducing STD’s in the area. He attempted to address the issue by trying to give out condoms to the local population.  All of the condoms were white, to some this is no big deal, however to the Muslims and other Pakistanis in the area, white is the color of purity. To use a white condom during pre-marital sex is a  social taboo.  To remedy this issue Yeager and his wife got colored condoms shipped in country and the local population began using them. Listed below is a chart of common colors and their associations taken from aboutsociology.com

Color	Positives	Negatives
Red	Passion, strength, energy, fire, love, sex, excitement, speed, heat, leadership, masculinity, power	Danger, fire, blood, war, anger, revolution, radicalism, aggression, stop
Blue	Seas, skies, stability, peace, unity, harmony, tranquility, calmness, coolness, confidence, water, ice, loyalty, conservatism, dependability, cleanliness, technology, winter	Depression, coldness, obscenity, conservatism, technology, ice, winter
Green	Nature, spring, fertility, youth, environment, wealth, money (US), good luck, vigor, generosity, go, grass	Inexperience, envy, misfortune, jealousy, money, illness, greed
Yellow	Sunlight, joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, wealth (gold), summer, hope, air	Cowardice, illness (quarantine), hazards, dishonesty, avarice
Purple	Elegance, sensuality, spirituality, creativity, wealth, royalty, nobility, ceremony, mystery, wisdom, enlightenment	Cruelty, arrogance, mourning, profanity, exaggeration, confusion
Orange	Energy, balance, heat, fire, enthusiasm, flamboyance, playfulness	Warning, danger, fire
White	Reverence, purity, snow, peace, innocence, cleanliness, simplicity, security, humility, marriage, sterility, winter	Coldness, sterility, clinical, surrender, cowardice, fearfulness, winter
Black	Power, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery, style	Evil, death, fear, anonymity, anger, sadness, remorse, mourning, unhappiness, mystery

Various cultures see color differently. In India, blue is associated with Krishna (a very positive association), green with Islam, red with purity (used as a wedding color) and brown with mourning. In most Asian cultures, yellow is the imperial color with many of the same cultural associations as purple has in the west. In China, red is symbolic of celebration, luck and prosperity; white is symbolic of mourning and death, while green hats mean a man’s wife is cheating on him. In Europe colors are more strongly associated with political parties than they are in the U.S. In many countries black is synonymous with conservatism, red with socialism, while brown is still immediately associated with the Nazis. Many believe that blue is universally the best color as it has the most positive and fewest negative cultural associations across various cultures…

Another interesting part to color is that not only do cultures see representations of color meanings differently but they also have a different perspective on color completely.

“…cultures have different terms for colors, and may also assign some color names to slightly different parts of the spectrum, or have a different color ontology: for instance, the Japanese color aoi can be interpreted as meaning something between the Western color terms of "blue" and "green": green is regarded as a shade of aoi. more…”

With all of this in mind we are able to take a good look at what we should actually do with color in our websites. Fortunately, there is a good accepted practice that applies to a lot of things in life: everything in moderation. Ways that I could incorporate my favorite color in my site could include within my logo, in the font of my pages, or as an accent to some part of the interface. In reality, the possibilities are endless as long as you are consistent and subtle with your color pallet.