Book Review-Wait Until Next Year

August and September should be a time of energy and excitement. The weather is warm, the sound of kids playing on a slip and slide, and being riveted to the baseball games and standings. This year has not lived up to those standards. We did have a couple of weeks of hot weather in August, but it was rainy and 58 today as I made my way to work. The kids are all inside playing the last video games of the summer before they head back to school next week. And baseball is anything but riveting here in the Northwest. Read my News and Views for my rant on the Mariners.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is an historian that I got to know originally from her appearances on PBS documentaries by Ken Burns. A couple of years ago I read her book, Team of Rivals about Lincoln and his cabinet. Before that book, she wrote Wait Till Next Year about her growing up in New York in the 1950's. Her dad would head off to work each day in the city and she would wait until he came home at night to discuss the Brooklyn Dodger game. The book looks at life in suburbia in a more innocent time. Community was extremely important in her development. Her growth as a story teller and later an historian stems from the closeness shared by the local shop keepers, friends and family. Memories of baseball are not so much about the final score or the accomplishments of a player, but the feel of the crowd, the images of the ballpark and the excitement generated by hope of a better outcome tomorrow. This is my memory of the 50's and baseball still gives me the feeling of hope. Not much of a story. Not really captivating. The book is about America and what we can do even under adversity.
Enjoy!
Dennis

Intel Developer Forum

The Intel Developer Forum is going on now. There were a few developments that I wanted to pass along.

First, it was announced that there has been significant improvement in a technology first developed at MIT to wirelessly power devices. You would be able to place your device like a laptop or cell phone on a special counter for instance, and have the electricity power the unit without being plugged in. Intel was able to demonstrate lighting a 60 watt light bulb from 2-3 feet away from the source. This will be incorporated into devices in the future.
The other area of interest to me was the Intel Roadmap. Here are a couple of highlights from there.

Next month Intel will ship its six-core Dunnington server processor, the last of the chip giant’s Penryn family of processors. According to Wachovia analyst David Wong Dunnington will offer a big performance improvement over Intel’s 2-chip, quad core Tigerton chip. “We think this should allow Intel to pull significantly ahead of AMD’s Barcelona chip on most applications, especially integer based applications, and equal or perhaps exceed Barcelona’s performance on floating point benchmarks,” said Wong in a research note.

Details of Nehalem are emerging. The biggest news was Nehalem’s turbo mode, which can turn cores on and off depending on the workload. John Morris notes:

To make turbo mode work, Intel said it designed “new transistors and silicon technology” so that a power gate at each core can shut down power completely, and added a Power Control Unit–a separate microcontroller with more than 1 million transistors of its own–to control the gates. In a not-so-subtle knock at competitor AMD and its “asset-smart” plans, Rajesh Kumar, an Intel fellow, said the new power management features showed why close cooperation between process technology engineers and chip designers was so important in advanced microprocessors.

And Intel is launching a wide range of solid state drives with various form factors.

Look for Atom based low energy desktop computers soon.

Grant Opportunity

Welcome to the
Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation
Website

TO APPLY FOR A GRANT
Our Mission Statement
Our Programs

Welcome to the Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation Website TO APPLY FOR A GRANT Our Mission Statement Our Programs Our mission is to support educators in developing environmental curricula that integrate field activities and classroom teaching and that incorporate basic ecological principles and problem solving. Read Our 2005 Newsletter! PDF The Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation was founded in April 1996 to continue the work of Melinda Gray Ardia. Melinda Ardia, a middle school science teacher in Newark, NY and a biologist and environmental activist, died in an automobile accident in January 1996. Melinda's dedication, creativity and enthusiasm inspired her family and colleagues to create the Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation to continue her work. How the Foundation Works: We are a Private Operating Foundation, run by a Board of Directors made up of family members and environmental professionals that set both financial and program policy. We have taken a conservative strategy on both fronts. Financially, we have tried to grow our endowment (currently about $75,000) so that we can continue to impact environmental education for longer than any of our lifetimes. Our disbursements to programs have been made from interest and income generated from our investments and the sale of note cards and t-shirts. Programmatically, we have tried to grow slowly so that we make each decision thoughtfully with Melinda's ideals and the ability to make a difference in mind. Through this conservative strategy we have ensured that your donations build our endowment and will provide lasting impacts beyond the face value of your gift. Mission Statement: To facilitate learning and student empowerment, environmental curricula should be holistic and strive to synthesize multiple levels of learning (facts, concepts, principles), often including experiential integrated learning and problem solving. We believe the strongest curricula are founded on basic scientific principles, including hypothesis testing and experimental design. A solid foundation of ecology promotes thoughtful and appropriate analysis and understanding of the natural world. Controversial issues should be presented objectively stressing the development of individual student opinions. In summary, the Foundation supports curricula that empower and encourage students to become involved in solving environmental and social problems as informed decision makers through the emphasis and application of basic ecological principles. The Foundation seeks to facilitate the development and implementation of holistic environmental curricula that incorporate basic ecological principles and field environmental activities within a primary or secondary school setting. Accordingly, the Foundation is interested in contributing to the development, implementation and/or field testing of curricula that are consistent with the mission of the Foundation. For more information about the foundation, and to learn how to apply for a grant. Practice resurrection.. Find work if you can that does not damage... Wendell Berry

How to Use Your Projector

Top Ten Mistakes Made by Presenters

1. No Presentation Objectives
   If you don't know what your audience should do at the end of your presentation, there is no need for you to present. Knowing your objectives is the key to developing an effective presentation.



2. Poor Visual Aids
   Visual aids are designed to reinforce the main points of your presentation. Without effective visuals, you are missing a key opportunity to communicate with your audience.



3. Ineffective Close
   Closing your presentation is extremely important. The close allows you to tie up the presentation and spell out what you want your audience "to do". A weak close can kill a presentation.



4. Mediocre First Impression
   Audiences evaluate a presenter within the first 120 seconds of the presentation. Presenters who make a bad first impression can lose credibility and diminish their ability to effectively communicate.



5. No Preparation
   The best presenters prepare for every presentation. Those who prepare and practice are more successful in presenting their information and anticipating audience reaction. Practice does make perfect!



6. Lack of Enthusiasm
   If you aren't excited about the presentation, why should your audience be? Enthusiastic presenters are the most effective ones around!



7. Weak Eye Contact
   As a presenter, you are trying to communicate effectively with your audience. If you don't make eye contact with the audience, they will not take you or your message seriously.



8. No Audience Involvement
   The easiest way to turn off an audience is by allowing them to remain uninvolved. Use audience involvement to gain "buy-in".



9. Lack of Facial Expressions
   Effective speakers use facial expressions to help reinforce their messages.



10. Sticky Floor Syndrome
    There is nothing worse than a speaker who is glued to the floor. While there is no need to wander about aimlessly, natural movement helps hold an audience's attention.

from Presenters University

Dennis' News and Views

As promised, here is a picture of my house with the new paint. As you can see we have one heck of a time determining if this is gray or blue. The good news is that the job is almost finished. I plan on painting the last of the trim and doing some touch up this weekend. I think the paint job came out pretty good.

Here is a picture of a house across the lake from us. We didn't know that there was a zoo break out until we saw these animals roaming around the yard. Not only are there giraffes and elephants, but we've spotted a tiger, gorilla and a lion on the grounds. The palm trees and grasses have been good cover for these convicts.

I have started a new collection. Not very far along at this point. I was cruising the Internet and came across a baseball All-Star game bat from Toronto at the Sky Dome in 1991. It was fairly inexpensive so I got it. Since then I have added a bat from 1990 in Chicago at Wrigley Field. I just got a bat from Camden Yard, home of the Orioles that hosted the All-Star game in 1993. These bats are all from the Rawlings company with their Adirondacks label. I believe these were all limited edition bats. Adirondacks bats were first popularized after WWII. The Rawlings company set up a mobile bat making truck and took it to Spring Training camps in the 1950's. Many of the stars of the day were impressed with the bats and signed up to endorse them. The bats were a major part of baseball in the 50's and 60's. Pictures to follow soon of my bats.

Green Computing

This is going to be the topic that we hear more about in the coming months. Schools and businesses are in dire need to cut energy costs. One approach is reducing the cost of operating computers and hardware items.

There are more than 1 billion computers in the world. Each is responsible for 1000 pounds of carbon emission annually on the average. According to Allison Cornia, Verdiem's vice president of marketing, "Most people are really unaware how much energy PCs are wasting, and we want to draw a lot of attention to that."
A new product to help with this awareness is Edison by Verdiem. This is a software program you download for free. Download and register the program, and a window pops up. A series of tabs helps you customize your settings. Choose your peak work and non-work hours, and when you want Edison to save more or less power.
The software allows you to adjust your computer settings. Using the "save more" setting while you're working will power down your display and hard drive after 5 minutes, and suspend your PC after 10. "Save less" means your display will be powered down after 30, your hard drive after 45, and never suspends your computer. There are several settings between those extremes as well.

I installed this program on one of my computers. It took less than 5 minutes to adjust the shut off time of the monitor, hard drive shut down and when to suspend the computer from working. Also, you need to set a schedule of when you use the computer normally. After a few minutes, the program gives you an assessment of how much money you will save annually and how much carbon emissions have been reduced. In my case the numbers are an estimated $61.65, 692.66 kWh, and 944.02 pounds of CO2. That is a surprising set of numbers. Here is the link to start saving money: http://www.verdiem.com/edison/

Off-Lease Special-Dell GX520 for $335!

Dell Optiplex - GX520DT Off-Lease

Processor: Pentium D 3.0Ghz (800Mhz FSB - Intel EM64T)
Memory: 1GB RAM (2 x 512MB DDR2 533Mhz)
Hard Disk: 80GB HDD (3.0GB/s)
Optical Device: DVD-ROM/CD-RW
Network: On-board: 10/100/1000 NIC
Graphics: On-board: Graphics
Sound: On-board: Sound
Operating System: Windows XP-Professional
Monitor: None
Keyboard/mouse

$335