Starting Out

Day one of my internship as Campus Ambassador has gone and went and it's been smooth so far. Essentially, starting out is something like hitting a brick wall at a running pace, but after that thing should be smooth as water. It's not that anything is terribly difficult, but there is a ton of information, some of which I can't access yet, to learn, and a bunch to get to know before you can actually do anything. Of course there's a bunch of training for events, planning, guides to finding all the resources I need, and all that fun stuff - all of which I'll probably have to organization for myself, considering it's so spread out.

I'm rather excited alread, though. I've read some things showing I have access to resources that have made me pretty happy, and I've already started planning my first open source meeting. In the end, it's all good.

Busy Weekend

Hey all, I have a filled schedule for this weekend and it's pretty exciting. We're travelling to Kansas University for an overnight conference as part of my position of Associated Residence Halls Associations Director. That should hopefully be interesting and I could perhaps post useful information here from that.

During the drive I hope to be spending some time studying my Japanese vocabulary, while simultaneously practicing Katakana. Perhaps I'll even learn a little Kanji. I may spend a little time getting work done on my Mindbridge Foundation.

ACM Meeting Today

Today will be my first ACM meeting as Sun Campus Ambassador for Iowa. Hopefully I'll have a chance to briefly introduce myself to ACM members as a representative of Sun, and maybe even get a few points in about the benefits of Open Source software. Meanwhile, at home I've bene spending a little time learning about Project Darkstar, an open source game engine written in Java and backed by Sun. I may have a lot of fun learning about the project, and it could potentially be another one of the things I turn into an honors project down the line. I'm already using the Ruby on Rails database project as an honors project for next semester, which will be an excellent motivator to get me to work harder on the project, and spend time learning more about Rails.

Other than that, there is always plenty going on. I'm learning katakana in Japanese class, along with a bunch of new vocabulary. I have a long to do list ranging from learning more Java to buying Christmas gifts for everyone I can think of.

Open Source Software Day

I think I might organize an Open Source Software Day at the University of Iowa. Visit the Iowa Open Source Meetup. It might be interesting to recruit volunteers to sit at tables, give demonstrations of software (ie laptops running OpenSolaris, Ubuntu, PCs with Gimp, OpenOffice), and talk to people about Open Source software. I think this could be a very exciting thing for the University and could do a lot to increase the visibility of the open source community at the University of Iowa. I'll need: volunteers, balloons, tables, laptops for demonstration, two hundred OpenSolaris & Ubuntu CDs, and five hundred Gimp/OpenOffice/Firefox/etc CDs.

In the meantime, take a moment to go download these Open Source pieces of software:

OpenOffice.org
Just released version 3 of this great office suite.

The GIMP
Excellent program for image manipulation and editing.

Sun Campus Ambassador - University of Iowa

Good news, I've had a whole bunch of good things going on! So much has advanced that I've even needed new business cards. I'll start off simply, with a reintroduction of myself. This is me:

Ryan Kopf
Associations Director
Associated Residence Halls
Executive Board Member
Mindbridge Foundation
Sun Campus Ambassador
Sun Microsystems - University of Iowa

Isn't it great!? I am now, officially, the Sun Campus Ambassador in charge of the University of Iowa. Essentially, I'm sorta like a community organizer - I will be organizing people at the University of Iowa to get involved with and join the Open Source community. I'll be organizing lectures, workshops, and labs about Open Source software and products, giving demonstrations, and hopefully growing a community of like-minded students who appreciate Open Source.

Also, I'm a Board Member-elect of the Mindbridge Foundation. I will be continuing to work with Mindbridge to develop our events more fully, and to focus on implementing new technology and developing long-term efficiency creating and cost-saving strategies.

Free Virtualization Software From Sun

In case you haven't tried it, Sun has an awesome program for any tech guru to play around with. It's called VirtualBox, and it's an open source virtualization package developed to run on a wide array of host operating systems.

What is virtualization? The concept behind virtualization is rather simple: take an operating system and run it within your current operating system. This essentially gives you two computer systems to play around with, although the second (called the Guest) can only utilize resources allocated to it by the main operating system (the Host OS). A guest operating system can enable you to test software on a variety of operating systems, and do all sorts of bug testing without fear of damaging your host computer.

How does it work? The basic principals are easy. Your main operating system allocates file space on your hard drive (just a giant file, which acts like another hard drive to the guest), and it allocates virtual system resources, such as a software-based graphics card to render the guest OS onscreen. In addition, it gives the guest the ability to pass up commands to the host operating system, if specialized hardware calls are needed: for example writing to a floppy disk drive.

What can I do with it? If you don't have a specific need for software testing, there are still a myriad of great reasons to use VirtualBox. You can, for example, test different flavors of Linux/'Nix operating systems, to see which you prefer. You can try an operating system as advanced as Sun's OpenSolaris - and see how it compares with what you're used to. You can enhance your knowledge of computing overall through playing around with all sorts of things on a virtualized guest operating system.

University of Iowa Student Government President

I might be running for the position of Student Government President at the University of Iowa. I think I could do some good.