Summer seminars

Our seminars this summer seem to be tailored to me.  The INSY faculty is taking turns giving an hour lecture on a topic that they think will be useful to graduate students, but is not explicitly taught in a course.  The first one was "How to Give a GOOD talk" and it was a good talk.  The take-away from that program was a top ten list of things to do or not to do in any talk.  The next one was on writing proposals.  I haven't done that yet, but, hopefully, that will be helpful to my future.  Last week the program was "Collaboration using Technology."  After a disclaimer that he was not specifically endorsing a particular software, he demonstrated some technology that he has found useful over the years.  Today I downloaded Evernote, a free application that collects documents, pictures, notes, web references, voice memos and other items in folders.  I can tag each item and search for it among the folders.  The program synchronizes everything to the web, my laptop and my iphone.  I can enter items from any of those sources.  It is not for collaboration, but it is certainly useful technology for a graduate student.   The other application cited that I need is a version manager.  I'm writing software in my Cloud Computing class as well as in my research and trying to keep track of versions and changes is mind-boggling.  This app will help in any writing effort (like a dissertation or journal submission).  I don't have a list of the topics for the rest of the summer, but I look forward to the next topic and to exposure to the department's faculty.

I heard this morning on The New York Times, that there's a town in Nigeria that has been experiencing oil spills and leaks on a regular basis for the last 50 years and can't understand why the world is so focused on the Gulf Coast.  We (the world, not just the USA) really need to figure out how to get out of our dependence on oil.