Sprout

From time to time we all look for some kind of gentle distraction to procrastinate doing work. This morning I found an excellent one - the flash game "Sprout." The artwork is all hand-drawn, which gives the game a kind of storybook feel. It's a relatively simple plot - you're a seed who wants to travel across the world in order to reach its home forest. You can grow into different plants like an apple tree, a dandilion, and a palm tree, each of which has different abilities to help you attain your goal.

Check it out the next time you need a few minutes' distraction.

Bold New Look, Same Great Taste!

If you've gotten this far, congratulations on finding the new location. Don't forget to update your RSS feed by dragging the giant orange RSS symbol to your Bookmarks toolbar or feed reader.

For those who have been following SGA-Students over the past week or so, you are ware that it has been heavily transformed. One of the final additions to this chaos was the change of name to something I think everybody will find a bit more interesting.

I will probably continue to play with the layout over the next few weeks as I try to wrest the Minyx template code to my will - a task that has proved rather challenging given my general ineptitude and the necessity of translating everything from Spanish. I've been counting my victories - I have some very competent friends who have generously donated their time toward helping me get this going, and it could have been written in French.

At the recent SGA Spring Retreat, we decided to open the blog space up to anybody in the SGA who was interested in posting things. While myself and the First-Year Ambassadors will continue to take responsibility for providing new content on a regular basis, I'm excited to see the new perspectives that will soon be appearing alongside ours. Additionally, we will be accepting submissions from anybody who would like to see something posted in this space. For now, you can do so by contacting me directly: com2@umbc.edu. If it turns out a lot of people want to use this I might try to get a genuine "@umbc.edu" address set up for us.

We should be fed into myUMBC at some point this coming week, so if you want to throw us a few "paws" I'm sure the authors will love you.

Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions, and above enjoy the Zwybak ride.

Men's Basketball vs. Stony Brook

Come to the RAC and support the Men's Basketball team tonight February 6th, at 7pm! The first 1000 people to show up will receive free t-shirts. They have been really successful this year and could use the support and a crowd of people cheering them on. There will be an intriguing half time show, filled with talented routines. So come out tonight and show your support, and lead the Men's basketball team to hopefully another victory!!!

More on Food Services

While I can't really say anything about the actual proceedings, the food services recontracting process has been positive so far. I want to assure people, especially the students whom I represent, that no matter which provider is ultimately selected, we are going to see some radical change in food services at our university. Students who return for the Fall 2008 semester are going to be pleasantly surprised.

the (book) re-triever

over the past 3 years i have made a habit of avoiding the bookstore at all costs. for one reason or another their merchandise is obscenely overpriced and in light of that fact most people (justifiably) moan and groan. as a junior in the fall of 06 i got into the habit of trading text books with my friends in order to save money. since then the loft idea of making a website with the tag line 'book swap' or 'college supply trader' has often crossed my mind.

this afternoon steelwolf and i were conversing about the student activities fee increase and whether it should be voted on by the student body in this upcoming election. my stance in the conversation was that the average joe will not support the increase because he does not feel the first hand effects of this increase and really doesnt grasp what the sga, seb, etc. does for him (pardon the sexism in the sentence). i asked ssw, 'what will the average, uninvolved person say when asked 'what does the sga do for you?'' he responded with the expected answer, 'hell probably say 'i dont know' or 'nothing.''

then it hit me. my ambitious and seemingly impossible thought could be applied to a local community such as umbc when a team of sga members and oit personnel became involved. 'what a way for the sga to work for students' i thought. 'if we can get 100 people to each swap one book a piece, we have saved 15,000 dollars for a group of students!' (i did some gwbush math and calculated an average savings of 150 dollars when using this system). ssw and i brainstormed for another 30 minutes, presented the idea to jay lagorio and david hoffman and were pointed to the ever positive and tech savvy collier jones.

though this project is in the first trimester, i am ever excited that it may make a huge difference in the lives of students to come.

i keep on thinking about the numbers- 100 books traded- save students 15,000 dollars; 1,000 books traded- save students 150,000 dollars. i know i probably wont see it get to that level before my graduation in may, but boy this could be awesome...

Vindication

A while back I went with representatives from UMBC and EDUCAUSE to discuss ongoing legislation concerning college campuses and filesharing (Student Government Meets Federal Government). This recent article from Ars Technica vindicates my contentions to fellow students, campus administrators, and on Capitol Hill that the music business is changing. The solution to the "problem" is not to ask colleges to "develop a plan" to fight filesharing, nor is it to force colleges to "encourage the use of legal alternatives" by sinking money into abominable startups like Ruckus. Rather, it is the music industry's responsibility to embrace the digital era and eliminate filesharing not through force, but by providing a quality product.

This article is an excellent read and contains the numbers to back it up - numbers I am inclined to believe as opposed to some of the outrageous claims being haphazardly slung around by some.


A brave new world: the music biz at the dawn of 2008

Webmail (@UMBC.edu) - Follow Up

In response to my recent post about UMBC's webmail system, SGA President Jay Lagorio sent a copy to Collier Jones.

At the end of the correspondence I found out that it is, in fact, possible to enable HTML display by default for the webmail interface. From the main webmail page, follow these steps:

Options -> Display Preferences -> Show HTML Version by
Default

Thanks to those who helped give me this answer and I hope this information will be useful to others in the future.

Webmail (@UMBC.edu)

While on my own computer I have all of my email accounts configured through Outlook, I often find the need to access my UMBC.edu email account via the web-based interface. While for the most part this system works relatively well, one of my ongoing dissatisfactions with the setup is its lack of HTML support. Many of the newsletters UMBC sends out, along with mass emails from several organizations and newsletters to which I subscribe. While many emails do contain links to HTML versions that can be viewed in a browser, I have noticed that some of UMBC's emails do not include this feature, instead rendering only as a mass of links and bracketed HTML code.

This prompts me to ask the question, is it possible to add HTML support to our web-based email client? That being impossible, could we instead promote in-house the sending of plaintext option emails with links to view the formatted version outside of the webmail client?

Men's Basketball Wins 86-85

I finally made it out to a UMBC Athletics game tonight in a similar way that I made it to a UMBC Theater production - I wasn't doing anything else and just decided to go. UMBC students get to stroll right in for free, which started the experience off on the right foot. The game went neck and neck the entire way, and even though I'm not that much of a sports fan, I found myself on the edge of my seat, holding my breath, and numerous other cliches that suggest I was excited about it.

I was happy to see a respectably-sized crowd mostly comprised of UMBC fans, who did a wonderful job making lots of noise during Hartford's free throws while silencing the room during UMBC's. I wasn't able to spot True or Trudy Grit, although that may have been because I was a bit late into the arena.

Just into the one-minute mark, Hartford brought the score 83-85, and a few timeouts and some running around later, there was no change but only about 3 seconds left to play. Suddenly, the heavily guarded Brian Hodges made a 3-point shot, winning the game for UMBC 86-85 in the final second. What wonderful way to end my first game experience!

While by now I'm relatively certain that folks who read this space are also familiar with some of the other UMBC-related outlets, and have heard their urgings to support UMBC athletics, I feel compelled to add my voice to theirs. Even if you're not especially into sports, it's a great way to hang out with a few friends and get a healthy dose of school spirit. In addition, there are some rousing music numbers from the UMBC Pep band (aka the Down and Dirty Dawg Band), performances from the lovely ladies (and one guy; I loved the handsprings) of the Cheerleading Squad and Dance Team, and some first-rate baton-twirling from Stacy Kabalevsky (?), who, while she appears to share a name with the famed composer, is fantastic in her own right.

As a side note: Athletics, please put more information on your website about your spirit personnel - they deserve just as much recognition in that space as the athletes.

Undergraduate Research - Follow Up

A while back I posted a rather frustrated entry about my experiance pursing an undergraduate research opportunity. As a result of that post, I was contacted directly by Mrs. Janet McGlynn, who was able to offer me a number of encouraging suggestions. Since them, I have secured an excellent position at the University of Maryland School of Medicine - here's what I learned:

• Being persistant means to try a number of different options, not banging your head against the same few places again and again. Spreading your net wide increases the chances of getting a response.
• Start early. A lot of people take forever to respond to emails and you don't want to be stressed out while you wonder if they've seen your message or not. By starting mid-fall semester I was able to secure a position starting in January without much trouble, but that was a considerably advanced start.
• Don't be afraid to go to the top. I contacted directors of several programs in subjects I was interested in, and often they were able to direct me to others within their departments whom I could contact.

If you have additional suggestions, feel free to add them in the comments section!