BDPA & College visits

On Wednesday eve, 10/17 I attended the BDPA Black Data Processing Association Fall Banquet. My son was being recognized for his participation in their High School Computer Competition this summer. Some interesting information was shared. The number of students going to college and majoring in computer science is actually decreasing, especially among young women. While the demand for persons with computer science and IT skills is increasing. After the conference we went to Winona State University and University of Wisconsin LaCrosse for college tours for my son and we were there specially checking out their computer science programs. Both colleges are totally wired, but at Winona there is a fee included in your cost and you get a lap top as a freshman, and then it is replaced with a new one in your junior year, and for a minimal 50 bucks you get to keep it when you graduate. Every student is expected to use the lap top through out their time in school there. My son is really interested in computer security and information security. We discovered that the government has identified schools that they now call centers for academic excellence in information assurance and security. Seems like a post 9/11 thing. BDPA has been great for my son. If you know of any young African American men or women interested in computers and web page development, let me know and I will get them in contact with the BDPA program.

mars, venus, and alchemy

I was helping a student look for an African chemist and found this interesting information on alchemy for Egypt. In the manuscript (from the 1600s) which I copied to the left, metals were linked to planets. Mars is linked to iron, and Venus is linked to copper. In the discussion about this topic it also talked about the planets being linked to male and female, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. It then also linked all three by pointing out that men have a much higher concentration of iron in their blood stream than women, thus Men/Mars/Iron and women have a much higher concentration of copper in their blood than do men and hence Women/Venus/copper. Fascinating the stuff you find while helping students with projects.

some "Thing"

I made a cartoon in comic life, but couldn't upload it to my blog because it wasn't a JPEG or GIF file. So I had to settle for this little electron cloud model. That's ok, my cartoon was actually a bit of a snoozer.

Thing 5 - my web page

I think I got my web page linked to my blog. My web page is pretty crude right now, keeping it up to date will obviously be an ongoing process.

Thing 3

I set up my account on bloglines. One of the problems I am having is that my school email blocks a lot of things, so setting up a google account on my school email was problematic. So for some things I have switched to my home email account. Anyway I have my feeds on bloglines and they seem to come up readily when I hit feeds. So I am up and reading enmass, I also finally got my blogline account registered using my home address and can now respond to blogs I have read. Its ok reading this stuff, but I would rather talk to people in person.

hyperlinked in power point

Wow, I was doing a power point and found these cool little flash shows on the internet that fit right in with my topic. I couldn't figure out how to import them, but I was able to create a hyperlink so I can go to the website during my powerpoint. It is a little slow getting to the website, but it is pretty cool once it gets there. I was proud of myself for using the "help" section and actually getting my hyperlink to work. Yahoo!!!!