News Archive

Tuesday, June 17, 2003 Red Colony Road Trip(s) Awww... Florida. Credit: Unknown Well, it's that time of year when school ends and people make big plans: I told myself I would work on Red Colony more this summer. I said I would write an article every week, work on the MER and Express sections, and answer all those I had been putting off. However... a crazy thing about summer is all those plans that you make somehow get pushed further and further into the months ahead, to the point where you're doing somehow less than you did during school! At any rate, Brian, Jim, and I are all leaving this week. Brian is traveling to sunny California to speak with Chris McKay, terraforming-head-honcho and Mars god, to ask him about Red Colony's role in the global terraforming scene. This is a great experience for Brian and for Red Colony. Hopefully Dr. McKay and (Dr.) Rudo will hit if off. I am leaving tomorrow morning to drive down to Florida with my family. We're visiting my grandparents near the Everglades on the Gulf side. That's a week of boating, fishing, water-skiing, swimming, sight-seeing, and relaxation in the last un-commercialized part of Florida. Ahhh... Oh, and Jim is flying down on the 25th to meet with me in Cape Canaveral to watch the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity launch. Expect a video of the launch and lots of pictures to be posted on Red Colony when we get back. After the launch, Jim and I are going to Orlando to visit Disneyworld (!!!) and to compete in the Natonal Technology Student Association conference. We are competing in a website design competition with paparman from the forum. You can see our somewhat lazy attempt at an entry here. Anyway, it was good enough to win first place at the Pennsylvania state competition. So by about July 1st Brian, Jim, and I will be back firmly in Pittsburgh... kind of. Why am I telling you all this? Because Brian has written a fantastic program that allows us to update Red Colony from any computer in the world. Well, I guess we could do that before, but now we don't have to create the files on the computer and upload them by hand. All of our updating can be done within an internet browser, and the program will upload everything for us. Brian deserves some serious praise. In the future, this will allow us to include other people to make updates on the front page... So anyway, even if we're on a beach in Florida, Brian has made it possible for Red Colony to follow us there. :-( Happy Summer! @ 9:29 EST