If you are ever so curious as to what
I've been up to all semester, this is the place to find out!
September 10, 2004
Website Crash Course offered today by Maria Shkolnik <pritmit@mit.edu>. She advised the class to use web design programs like Composer (which I am using), DreamWeaver, or something similar if we don't know code. Tips: Get SecureFx to put pages onto Athena from personal computer, use index to cover up multiple pages in folder - acts as homepage, all items in www folder are published and public.
September 13, 2004
The Team discussed our Definition of an A. What we finally decided on was sent to Kip Hodges. To view this, click the following link: Definition of an A!
September 13-19th, 2004
I did research on the Geology of the Galapagos and the Natural Resources available on San Cristobal. I thought this was kind of too specific for the first research assignment, even though I chose the topic, so I did a little background research as well. Mostly, I looked over tourist sites on the internet to get an idea what is going on in Galapagos and what type of issues might come up. Then, I turned to scientific articles through MIT library to find a few articles on various topics dealing with this. Nothing was very specific. You can see this at the following link.
September 21-24th, 2004
I started my individual website and have a few pages up. I had to download Composer, well, Netscape. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing and just making the homepage has taken me way too many hours!
September 24th, 2004
The very necessary thing the team is currently looking for is a map of San Cristobal. We have found many topographical and line maps that don't really have much information in them. I got the travel map offered at Lindgren for each team, but it is practically useless as far as learning anything about the cities or a feel for boundaries on each island. Our team website skeleton is due Oct. 1st, so Sasha and I were assigned as the organization committee. We split the research again and I took the impact of the Jessica Oil Spill.
September 27, 2004
We designed our skeleton on the chalk-board today. There will be a link for general info about the island, then a link describing our mission and the research we do, then info about our team and a page for links. I am working on the pages, as I am the only one who has done anything with my individual website.
October 1, 2004
So, there is stuff on our personal website. Fortunately I was able to maintain patience and we threw the last few pieces together in an Athena cluster today during class. I don't like web design at all!
October 4, 2004
Mariela scheduled a library training for us, because we are having a little trouble with finding stuff for our research. I learned about using cross searches with Biosis and Web of Science. It will be very useful, but I think research is still going to be hard.
Month of October, 2004
I worked on the team website for a long time! I absolutely hate web design. I think we finally pulled stuff together right at the end, but not until I had poked and prodded every person in my team for info and correct sourcing, and...... I'm just glad that is over. Only my own website left and the solutions to a very complex problem!
*"It could be worse, today could be tomorrow."
-Thanks Jordan!
November 1, 2004
My team devised a plan for the class to break up into for the next part of the class. We also made the last touches to our website (well, mostly eveyone looked at it and told me what was missing so I could add it before midnight). I think our plan for the class will work, so we'll present it on Wednesday. I realized that all of my effort had been going into the team website and my personal website was really lacking. Sorry for the info gap and update gap that occurred between Oct. 1 and mid-November.
November 3, 2004
The class divided into objective groups as presented to by my team in the large discussion group. After much debate our original plan was hardly altered. It went like this: the class will divide into 3 groups focusing on one objective, within these groups, 2 people will be picked for website design and 2 people will be picked to coordinate the presentation of the solutions. It turns out, only three people were interested in website design, so we let them have the job. Then, we split into groups by interest and kept a similar weekly schedule as what we had before.
November
The Village Group, referred to as the Totally Awesome Village People, have been working diligently on making a plan for the people of the Galapagos. Our main focuses have been Transportation, Agriculture, Water, Waste, Energy, Tourism, Immigration, Education, city structure, and Policies. A lot of switching of topics and a little more settling as people decide what they can and will do occurs during the month, but I think we will get it together. The last couple of weeks have had a few surprise presentations. The last of which was to the TA's from the Tortugas section. They grilled us! Oh well, we will try to focus on the new stuff to do. Thanksgiving break is for the last few things to patch over, and then we have one week before the final show!
November 28, 2004
I updated my personal website a lot today. I have been slacking on it the past few weeks. I have also been trying to find a lot of new info Agriculture. The last couple of weeks I have been focusing on what the building plans of the Galapagos cities is and then the water and waste systems in the Galapagos. I did a bit of research on septic systems, sewage systems, and other alternatives. For this, I conducted an interview with two different people on the topic. The first was an Civil and Environmental Engineer at MIT, the other a working Civil Engineer (you could say). Both gave differing answers, so it makes the decision difficult, but I think we will present both ideas because we are not the ones necessarily to choose, it is the people of the Galapagos that must choose. Then, I've been looking for info on Agriculture. A contact I made while working on the team website - Reink Smittenberg, gave me the name of a worker in the Ministry of Agriculture, so I've been emailing him questions. The first response was very helpful for perspectives and confirming the results of our research. I am still waiting for the second response. Hopefully he gets back to us before it is too late.
December 3, 2004
So, it's over. Today was the last day of class. I'm still trying to decide if I'm actually going to miss Mission. This is probably because I can count the number of hours I slept this week on one hand (unhealthy, yes, I realize this). Once this is remedied, I am sure all the value of me not sleeping will become apparent. To give a little update of the past week, I guess I should start where I left off during Thanksgiving break. The team got together on Sunday as people were arriving back in town from the vacation. We made sure we had all of our information compiled and worked on editing the last few pages of info. Then, as we had a dry-run presentation on Monday, whipped together a powerpoint. Presentations were practiced and last minute stuff was added to the website. Monday each group gave a dry run and our presentation lasted almost 70 minutes. Not too bad, I suppose. Monday night, teams met to go over the presentation material and compile the powerpoint into one cohesive unit. I somehow found myself volunteering for this. I made sure all the village information had been properly funneled to Sean for the website. Most of it was put on correctly, though some of our last minute updates were not updated. Small details. Then, our entirely too large powerpoint presentation was looked over. Each group had a different powerpoint style and the presentations weren't very unified. After many hours of powerpoint and proposals, Monday finished with us only a little closer to our goal. Tuesday night at Midnight the Website had to be completely finished. I think we made it :)! The Presentation was still a work in progress. Each person submitting to me, the newly appointed Powerpoint Girl, the revised slides for their part of the presentation. After many sessions of going through the powerpoint with onlooking UTF's and the million emails I received about powerpoint suggestions, I had a tentative presentation. Presenters kept on practicing and it was beginning to look promising. Wednesday night we another dry run getting ready for the final presentation last minute. Started at 7 pm with powerpoint critique, finished the edits by nine, moved to Stata for practice runs by 10. After our partial attendance of presenters finished, another powerpoint critique with Mariela and George. The final powerpoint was ready! With only 15 hours to presentation time, I think the nerves were pretty frazzled for everyone. The plan was to meet at 5 for dinner provided by Maria and Mission funds and the last minute briefing. At 7 Las Tortugas presented and then Las Iguanas (totally awesome Las Iguanas!) presented. Expecting the worst, I was on the questioners panel. The panel of experts didn't ask hardly any questions at all. I was a little relieved, but also a little disappointed. At about 11 the iguanas returned to 16-168 and celebrated in the only way we could - consuming lots of sugary foods and congratulating even a million times. I am so relieved that I'm done.
And we got t-shirts...that are AWESOME!
September 10, 2004
Website Crash Course offered today by Maria Shkolnik <pritmit@mit.edu>. She advised the class to use web design programs like Composer (which I am using), DreamWeaver, or something similar if we don't know code. Tips: Get SecureFx to put pages onto Athena from personal computer, use index to cover up multiple pages in folder - acts as homepage, all items in www folder are published and public.
September 13, 2004
The Team discussed our Definition of an A. What we finally decided on was sent to Kip Hodges. To view this, click the following link: Definition of an A!
September 13-19th, 2004
I did research on the Geology of the Galapagos and the Natural Resources available on San Cristobal. I thought this was kind of too specific for the first research assignment, even though I chose the topic, so I did a little background research as well. Mostly, I looked over tourist sites on the internet to get an idea what is going on in Galapagos and what type of issues might come up. Then, I turned to scientific articles through MIT library to find a few articles on various topics dealing with this. Nothing was very specific. You can see this at the following link.
September 21-24th, 2004
I started my individual website and have a few pages up. I had to download Composer, well, Netscape. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing and just making the homepage has taken me way too many hours!
September 24th, 2004
The very necessary thing the team is currently looking for is a map of San Cristobal. We have found many topographical and line maps that don't really have much information in them. I got the travel map offered at Lindgren for each team, but it is practically useless as far as learning anything about the cities or a feel for boundaries on each island. Our team website skeleton is due Oct. 1st, so Sasha and I were assigned as the organization committee. We split the research again and I took the impact of the Jessica Oil Spill.
September 27, 2004
We designed our skeleton on the chalk-board today. There will be a link for general info about the island, then a link describing our mission and the research we do, then info about our team and a page for links. I am working on the pages, as I am the only one who has done anything with my individual website.
October 1, 2004
So, there is stuff on our personal website. Fortunately I was able to maintain patience and we threw the last few pieces together in an Athena cluster today during class. I don't like web design at all!
October 4, 2004
Mariela scheduled a library training for us, because we are having a little trouble with finding stuff for our research. I learned about using cross searches with Biosis and Web of Science. It will be very useful, but I think research is still going to be hard.
Month of October, 2004
I worked on the team website for a long time! I absolutely hate web design. I think we finally pulled stuff together right at the end, but not until I had poked and prodded every person in my team for info and correct sourcing, and...... I'm just glad that is over. Only my own website left and the solutions to a very complex problem!
*"It could be worse, today could be tomorrow."
-Thanks Jordan!
November 1, 2004
My team devised a plan for the class to break up into for the next part of the class. We also made the last touches to our website (well, mostly eveyone looked at it and told me what was missing so I could add it before midnight). I think our plan for the class will work, so we'll present it on Wednesday. I realized that all of my effort had been going into the team website and my personal website was really lacking. Sorry for the info gap and update gap that occurred between Oct. 1 and mid-November.
November 3, 2004
The class divided into objective groups as presented to by my team in the large discussion group. After much debate our original plan was hardly altered. It went like this: the class will divide into 3 groups focusing on one objective, within these groups, 2 people will be picked for website design and 2 people will be picked to coordinate the presentation of the solutions. It turns out, only three people were interested in website design, so we let them have the job. Then, we split into groups by interest and kept a similar weekly schedule as what we had before.
November
The Village Group, referred to as the Totally Awesome Village People, have been working diligently on making a plan for the people of the Galapagos. Our main focuses have been Transportation, Agriculture, Water, Waste, Energy, Tourism, Immigration, Education, city structure, and Policies. A lot of switching of topics and a little more settling as people decide what they can and will do occurs during the month, but I think we will get it together. The last couple of weeks have had a few surprise presentations. The last of which was to the TA's from the Tortugas section. They grilled us! Oh well, we will try to focus on the new stuff to do. Thanksgiving break is for the last few things to patch over, and then we have one week before the final show!
November 28, 2004
I updated my personal website a lot today. I have been slacking on it the past few weeks. I have also been trying to find a lot of new info Agriculture. The last couple of weeks I have been focusing on what the building plans of the Galapagos cities is and then the water and waste systems in the Galapagos. I did a bit of research on septic systems, sewage systems, and other alternatives. For this, I conducted an interview with two different people on the topic. The first was an Civil and Environmental Engineer at MIT, the other a working Civil Engineer (you could say). Both gave differing answers, so it makes the decision difficult, but I think we will present both ideas because we are not the ones necessarily to choose, it is the people of the Galapagos that must choose. Then, I've been looking for info on Agriculture. A contact I made while working on the team website - Reink Smittenberg, gave me the name of a worker in the Ministry of Agriculture, so I've been emailing him questions. The first response was very helpful for perspectives and confirming the results of our research. I am still waiting for the second response. Hopefully he gets back to us before it is too late.
December 3, 2004
So, it's over. Today was the last day of class. I'm still trying to decide if I'm actually going to miss Mission. This is probably because I can count the number of hours I slept this week on one hand (unhealthy, yes, I realize this). Once this is remedied, I am sure all the value of me not sleeping will become apparent. To give a little update of the past week, I guess I should start where I left off during Thanksgiving break. The team got together on Sunday as people were arriving back in town from the vacation. We made sure we had all of our information compiled and worked on editing the last few pages of info. Then, as we had a dry-run presentation on Monday, whipped together a powerpoint. Presentations were practiced and last minute stuff was added to the website. Monday each group gave a dry run and our presentation lasted almost 70 minutes. Not too bad, I suppose. Monday night, teams met to go over the presentation material and compile the powerpoint into one cohesive unit. I somehow found myself volunteering for this. I made sure all the village information had been properly funneled to Sean for the website. Most of it was put on correctly, though some of our last minute updates were not updated. Small details. Then, our entirely too large powerpoint presentation was looked over. Each group had a different powerpoint style and the presentations weren't very unified. After many hours of powerpoint and proposals, Monday finished with us only a little closer to our goal. Tuesday night at Midnight the Website had to be completely finished. I think we made it :)! The Presentation was still a work in progress. Each person submitting to me, the newly appointed Powerpoint Girl, the revised slides for their part of the presentation. After many sessions of going through the powerpoint with onlooking UTF's and the million emails I received about powerpoint suggestions, I had a tentative presentation. Presenters kept on practicing and it was beginning to look promising. Wednesday night we another dry run getting ready for the final presentation last minute. Started at 7 pm with powerpoint critique, finished the edits by nine, moved to Stata for practice runs by 10. After our partial attendance of presenters finished, another powerpoint critique with Mariela and George. The final powerpoint was ready! With only 15 hours to presentation time, I think the nerves were pretty frazzled for everyone. The plan was to meet at 5 for dinner provided by Maria and Mission funds and the last minute briefing. At 7 Las Tortugas presented and then Las Iguanas (totally awesome Las Iguanas!) presented. Expecting the worst, I was on the questioners panel. The panel of experts didn't ask hardly any questions at all. I was a little relieved, but also a little disappointed. At about 11 the iguanas returned to 16-168 and celebrated in the only way we could - consuming lots of sugary foods and congratulating even a million times. I am so relieved that I'm done.
And we got t-shirts...that are AWESOME!