On the first full day of my fundraising efforts, I received a donation from a family friend! Thank you very much!
I’m anxious to see how this campaign pans out. I am trying to go to Ghana in June, so I could have less than two months to meet my fundraising goals. It’s a lot of pressure, but a challenge I’ll enjoy! I hope you consider helping out my cause! Any amount puts me that much closer to my goal!
With my upcoming trip to Ghana with Worldreader, it’s best to do some research about the country, region, and people to familiarize myself with their culture, and history. I’ve found in past experiences that when traveling somewhere (domestic or internationally), doing your homework first can really pay its dividends to reduce culture shock and to absorb more of your surroundings. Many of you that know me are familiar with my affinity for history—I love it! I’ve particularly enjoyed reading about Ghana because in America, the teaching of African history is relatively nonexistent. I’ve compiled some quick fun-and-useful facts below. Before the other week all I knew about Ghana was that they beat the U.S. in the World Cup last summer.
The Flag of Ghana
Map of Ghana located in Western Africa
Ghana's President John Evans Atta Mills
The currency of Ghana known as the New Cedi
Most facts from the CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gh.html) and Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana)
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In my case, a journey of 5,000 miles begins with a single dollar! As many of you may know by now, I entered a contest with Worldreader to go to Ghana for a week to work with them. I didn’t win 1st place, but I was the runner-up. However, they liked my entry enough that they still want me to come! They have been great so far at helping me find sponsors and ways to generate funds so that I can go to Ghana this summer. The prospect of being able to work with Worldreader is very exciting; they’re a great organization attacking the root of poor public education in Ghana by providing Amazon Kindles to schoolchildren, essentially giving every child their own personal library.
I’m specifically writing this blog post to generate interest among friends and family in my trip and with Worldreader. When I first found out that I was the runner-up and so close too, I was a little bummed. But I now see it as a blessing in disguise. Not only can I still go to Ghana, but I’ll have to fundraise my adventure too. By having to fundraise, my supporters will have a greater interest in my trip and in Worldreader. I also think it is a more sustainable model for developing a long-term relationship with Worldreader.
I will keep this up-to-date with events related to Worldreader and Ghana and hopefully I’ll have some videos and good news to post over the next several months! If you haven’t seen it yet, here is my video entry below!
Have A Taste of This’ most adventurous project yet—in fact, I’d call it adventurous for any sort of YouTube production. Currently we are only in the testing stages to see if our limited time, equipment, and knowledge will make this possible. So far, all systems go! Are you ready for the idea…ready? Drumroll please! A 3-D movie! Now, I know, many of you naysayers will be saying, 3-D, okay, I’ve seen a million 3-D movies. Aha, alas, I like to outdo myself and we’re going to add 3-D sound as well (brains explode)! Now, you may not know what 3-D sound is; just trust me, it’s cool!
Now, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself and explain how all of this works, because we will tweak how it’s done and I’m a huge fan of open source so I’ll be sure to detail how it was made once we’re done! Also, we don’t have much of a story to fully utilize 3-D capabilities, so we’re working on that too. Basically, I just want to provide a heads-up that we’re going to infinity and beyond and by infinity, I really just mean 3. Be sure to check back to follow our progress and see where we go with this!
Highs – Without a doubt the Boise State game was one of the most emotional and crazy games ever. No one in that stadium was ever bored and I don’t think Boise fans ever had enough time to become complacent in their 17-0 lead. Tyrod was hot, you can’t deny that. He oozed leadership and poise throughout the game, he’s a real winner and he gets my MVP award for the game. I also liked how 2 small TV markets (Blacksburg and Boise) enabled ESPN to have such a highly watched and rated game.
Lows – Besides the obvious loss, it was the bitter taste left in my mouth that hinted at victory and what would have been one of the most amazing (comeback) wins in Hokie history. Also, FedEx field is a frustrating venue. Crowd and traffic management skills were non-existent and I have hesitations about attending a game there again. There is no good reason it should take an hour and fifteen minutes just to pull out of your parking spot after the game when all you want to do is sleep. FedEx field management, specifically Dan Snyder, gets the LVP award for the game.
Midlands – Potential. But potential doesn’t win you games.
Thoughts, comments? Who gets your MVP and LVP of the game and what are your highs, lows, and midlands for the game?
The past three seasons have been nothing short of interesting for the Hokies with highs like being ranked #3 to lows such as the Hokies unranked status for much of the 2008 season. We’ve seen records as well as dreams broken, like Darren Evan’s 253 yard performance against Maryland in 2008 and conversely when Georgia Tech ousted the Hokies in 2009. However, Hokie fans wouldn’t be displeased with an average ranking of #10 over the past 41 games. I will recap some of the most interesting and exciting moments of these past 41 games in Hokie football history!
#5. Missing Jerseys against Georgia Tech (2007)
Four players’ jerseys went missing before this Thursday night game. It’s still a mystery as to what happened to Tyrod Taylor’s, Sean Glennon’s, Kam Chancellor’s and Brandon Flower’s jersey at the start of the game. So what did they do? They wore Georgia Tech’s old practice jerseys and took a Sharpie to them to write in their names and add a backwards Nike swoosh on the front. You can see one of these jerseys on display at the Merryman Athletic Center.
#4. Tyrod Taylor’s Hit Against Ras-I Dowling (2008)
Remember the wild turkey? Tech was big into it during the 2008 ACC Championship season. On this play Tyrod Taylor lined up as a wide receiver with Greg Boone behind center. Boone attempted a 30+ yard pass to Taylor. Ras-I Dowling should have intercepted Boone’s pass if it weren’t for Taylor’s upending hit on Dowling.
#3. The Comeback Against Nebraska (2009)
The Hokies were quaking in their boots when our offense struggled to outdo Nebraska’s five field goals. With just 1:23 left in the 4th, Tech had 84 yards to go to gain a one point lead. That’s not an easy task against any team, especially one with Ndamukong Suh starring down the offense at every snap. But a cool Tyrod Taylor and a wide open Danny Coale make anything possible. In one play, Danny Coale made up for 81 of those 84 yards. And after a few more nail biting moments Tyrod completed a slick 11 yard pass to #11 Dyrell Roberts to give the Hokies a one point advantage and the win. Lane Stadium erupted and was louder than ever.
#2. Boston College’s Last Minute Undoing of the Hokies (2007)
This is an article of exciting and interesting moments, not the best moments in recent Hokie history. It was pouring rain and the Hokies were shutting out Matt Ryan and the rest of the #2 ranked Boston College Eagles with a 10-0 lead with under three minutes left to play. Tech had it in the bag and many had started celebrating already. These emotions quickly turned as Boston College upset the Hokies in what may be the most disheartening loss in all of Hokie history. Matt Ryan snuck in two touchdowns causing the Eagles to win 14-10.
#1. Pregame of ECU at Virginia Tech (2007)
Chris Fowler of ESPN Gameday spoke directly to the Hokie Nation telling us it was our time to “cut loose.” It was the first football game following the shootings at Virginia Tech and it was a time to start celebrating and getting Virginia Tech back on track. Anyone who was human understood the significance of this day to the Hokie Nation. This was the first Virginia Tech game I had ever attended. I had just moved into my dorm and scalped a ticket and sat with fellow ECU fans that were nothing less than respectful and compassionate. I had always had an affinity for ECU given my legacy status.
Leno and O’Brien are both fuming mad at NBC over the scheduling shakeup, but they’re taking their spotlight out on NBC on their respective shows and O’Brien is even selling his spot on Craigslist for a best offer or Cold Play tickets.
Wow, what an upgrade from 2.0! I have been a Mozilla fan boy for six good years now and this is one update I have been very excited for. Off the bat I am thrilled with Thunderbird 3.0 so far; it has finally caught up to Firefox in basic functionality. Below I’ve outlined the good and the bad about Mozilla’s latest release.
One of the big reasons why Firefox has become so popular is because they have revolutionized the way we interact with our browsers with the integration of tabbed browsing. Mozilla first started using tabbed browsing in 2001 and Thunderbird users have wanted this basic feature for years. Tabs are finally a standard feature in Thunderbird. Open one window and have your inbox and as many emails as you want opened at the same time, all in the same window, brilliant! This has been the best new feature added to this latest release of Thunderbird. However, there is one feature with the tabbed browsing that I would still like added. When I want to compose a new message, I would like the window that opens up to become a tab.
Another cool feature added to Thunderbird is how they overhauled the ability to search your inboxes. If you’re like me, you have more than one email address to manage; I have four that I use. I can search a specific inbox or all of them. There is also a cool statistics feature at the top of all your search results that is a bar graph of the emails you’ve received matching a search term through time. You can click a certain week to get more detailed information about your search results and even down to the day. This can be useful when monitoring your messaging patterns. The new search also gives you the ability to narrow your search results by selecting a specific person, a mailing list, emails with attachments along with several other options to help you find that email from last year more efficiently. The one thing I would like to change about the new search is the way the information is displayed. The search results all run together. I wish each result was in its own little bubble with a background to make it stand out from the other results. Despite this minor lack of detail, I am very pleased with the new search feature; it looks like Mozilla took a page from Google’s book.
Thunderbird was also nice enough to include some neat little bonus features. For instance when you’re writing an email you may say something like; “Please read the attachment closely.” Once you’re done typing the word ‘attachment,’ Thunderbird will politely remind you to include that attachment so you don’t look like an idiot if you forget to attach it. I really like this feature because I have forgotten to include an attachment before. That’s not the only keyword it works with, but definitely the most useful.
Thunderbird also created a nice handy integrated inbox as I’ve grown to call it. Thunderbird now gives you a master inbox with the ability to micromanage all of your separate email accounts. This makes my inbox more organized and it is easier to see all the information from all of my email accounts simultaneously.
One feature I would still like to see added (although I’m sure possible through plug-ins) is to have the address book become integrated with social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin. This would just make getting in touch with your contacts a little bit easier.
All in all, I give Thunderbird 3.0 a big thumb up. It included some more basic features like the tabs and powerful search along with some wow features like the word recognition and search statistics. Mozilla executed this upgrade well too; I haven’t noticed any bugs or crashes. Thunderbird is known for the quality and security of Mozilla products along with the intuitive, clutter free interface that’s synonymous to all Mozilla products. If you are a Thunderbird 2.0 user, I highly recommend the upgrade and if you’re still using Microsoft’s archaic and confusing Outlook, please switch to Thunderbird and give it a week; I’ll guarantee you will not want to switch back.
CES 2010 in Las Vegas is all but over now and the convention center floor is being prepped for its next event. There was a lot of buzz at CES this year and toys on display at CES were more exciting this year than last, mainly as an effect of the economy. What was the theme of CES 2010? With out a doubt it seems to be small.
Small laptops like netbooks and UMBCs have skyrocketed in sales this past year and at the thought of Intel’s newly remolded Atom processors coming out soon, it will only booster sales. Intel plans on making a better processors by incorporating both the graphics and the CPU into a single chip.
Netbooks have also taken another interesting turn with the introduction of MSI’s dual screen e-reader.
Let me preface by saying that I am an Apple fan boy. I love what they do and their ingenuity is amazing. I write this article in hopes to bring about some change to Apple products. The first computer I ever owned was an Apple II GS and I credit that computer with sparking my interest in technology. Since then we have owned a few other Apple computers but no new ones in the past decade. I have owned 2 iPods (the mini and a 5th generation video) and now own an iPhone 3GS which I am a huge fan off, AT&T is a different story all together.
As a computer science major, I am exposed to a lot of people using Macs, mainly MacBook Pros. They’re great computers, well made, solid OS and great usability while becoming more affordable all the time. This does not mean that Macs are the savior of the computer world like some people treat them to be. I will outline several of the things I don’t like about Macs in hopes they will be changed so I too will want to buy a Mac someday.
Currently, my main computer is a Fujitsu T4220 tablet PC running Windows 7. I am pretty happy with this laptop and I like Windows 7. As a student I always have my computer with me when I go to class, it’s essential for me to take notes and follow Power Points. Then at the end of the day I set it back up in my apartment connected to my 22″ HP w2207 monitor, my printer, speakers and all the other peripherals that I have, but I do this all via a docking station. When I’m running late to class, I don’t want to have to spend time to unhook every device and have the cables all over my desk, or falling behind it for that matter. I just want to pick it up and go. The same is true when I return home, I don’t want to waste time reconnecting everything and crawling under my desk to find the USB cable for my printer. Currently, no Mac’s come with a docking station and all the 3rd party substitutes for a docking station are a pretty lame excuse for a docking station. Until Apple develops it’s laptops to come with a docking station, I’ll never own one, it’s too essential for the way I use my laptop.
Another thing I wish Apple would change is their magnetic power cable connection. This is fine when the laptop is on a table or a desk, but I often use my laptop…on my lap and my knee always knocks it out. It becomes annoying to be constantly plugging it back in and finding a position where it will stay put. Some people love this feature, and I can see how it can be cool, but I think it’s rather unnecessary and an example of how Apple tries too hard sometimes to reinvent the wheel. Maybe try making the magnetic part closer to where it connects to the wall, this way when someone trips on the cord it still doesn’t rip the plug out of the computer while it can still be firmly connected on my lap like a more traditional plug. This feature isn’t a deal breaker though if I were considering buying a MacBook.
The battery. I understand where Apple is going with the design of their battery. By making it impossible for a user to exchange batteries when one becomes old or breaks, the user gains impressive battery life of 7-8 hours. However, for high end users like myself who often use their laptop on battery power, that battery starts to lose its charge quickly. There will come a time when the battery life just isn’t sufficient anymore but the rest of the computer is perfectly fine. Getting your battery replaced will cost money and time away from your laptop, and for people like me who don’t have access to an Apple Retail store, sacrificing a week without my laptop is no easy feat.
These are my three biggest reasons as to why I’m not interested in buying a MacBook yet. This doesn’t mean they don’t have great attributes, they have plenty of them. But some of MacBook’s biggest flaws are some of my biggest buying points. Until the MacBook addresses the issues of a docking station, power connection and battery replacement, I’ll stick with my Windows based laptops.
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