Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Water, a substance necessary for a person to live. Yet, as many as "one in eight" people in the world today don't have access to clean water. It might be hard for some people to imagine given the ubiquity of water in developed nations. Let's say you turned on your tap and thick, brown water with a strong stench came out. This might happen for a number of reasons, but you would only have to deal with it for typically less than a few hours. Water like this is a fact of life for many people living in Africa. Some people even walk for miles to retrieve water like this.

The easiest, and most beneficial solution to this is to build a well within close walking distance of the locales that need water. Wells provide a source of water that is close where it is put to use. This reduces time spent transporting water allowing that time to be spent on more beneficial activities, like education and healthcare. It also provides naturally filtered water as opposed to water that may come from a contaminated pool or stream.

Unfortunately, many villages are unable to afford the building of a well. Digging a well requires time, effort, and money. The process involves large equipment which small villages cannot even rent due to cost.

This is where you can help. Many charities like water.org allow you to donate money to help build wells. Donating is easy and it takes only a few minutes. Your donation can help provide a person with safe water for life.

If donating money is not enough for you, take another step. Do what this Slippery Rock Professor did. (Regular readers should have seen this coming)



Dr. Wukich, an art professor at Slippery Rock University, makes water filters from clay and straw or sawdust. He then takes these water filters to developing countries to demonstrate the effectiveness of them to the locals. Then he does what any professor would do and teaches them how to make these water filters. The raw materials, clay and straw, are easy for anybody to obtain cheaply or even freely. The clay and straw are then mixed and pressed into a bowl shape. Once dry, the filter can be used again and again to filter water. You can see more about the process documented by the Braddock Library Water Filter Project.

Through even a little work you can help people around the world gain access to water like that seen at the beginning of the post.

http://www.charitywater.org/whywater/
http://water.org/solutions/digging/

Almost Moved

Back in August I said goodbye to the place I've called home for the past five years. Slippery Rock is a wonderful place and I would love to call it home again in the future. But for now, home is Pittsburgh.

I'm now living in a two apartment house in the Dormont neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The house formerly belonged to my grandmother who lived there for almost 60 years. During that time, her and my grandfather performed minor repairs but never major renovations. The only exception is the garage which they built. Because of this, the house (construction, furnishings, etc.) is in almost exactly the same state it was when my grandparents moved into it. Most of the construction is still the original from whenever it was built. The wiring is mostly original, which makes three prong outlets scarce. Living rooms are organized so that a fireplace is the focus as opposed to the modern custom of a TV. The cellar is leaky and contains no ventilation whatsoever. And the internet is a far far away place which requires substantial travel to venture even remotely close to it.

Some of these issues have been resolved. Communication utilities (i.e. TV, phone, and internet) have been combined into one, cheaper provider. Accessible wiring has been updated to follow modern building codes. Fireplaces are difficult to change so those will remain the same. All these changes got me thinking about what the house would be like if it were not split into two apartments. Either I have a really good imagination or it's damn nice. It has a master bedroom, 2 regular bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, full kitchen, dining room, living room, entrance, bonus room, cellar, and attic. The bonus room has a wonderful view with ample natural light making it perfect for a reading room or study.

In between all this fixing of the house my time has been spent working on programming challenges. At the moment I am working on Packing Your Dropbox. I was very eager to try this one because of how well I can pack things efficiently. The thing is I never really analyzed what algorithm I was using. Upon thinking about it I found the crucial part is finding the largest sides which fit together perfectly. However the challenge is different as it does not provide the boundaries, instead asking that they be calculated. More on this when I have a final working solution.

The other challenge is finding a new host for my Facebook app, My Nickname. Since I first created the app I have been able to use free hosting providers. Facebook recently updated its developer platform to have more features and be more secure. Unfortunately, my current provider doesn't support Facebook's new API at my current cost of free. I had a hard enough time finding any provider which supported the old API. There don't seem to be any providers which freely support the new API. Now I'm faced with a choice: host it myself or pay for hosting.

Problem Solved

Shortly after my last post something interesting happened that has not happened to me before. The hard drive to my only computer filled up. The culprit: Porn Photos. This is an issue I've been dealing with for a few years now by removing something else whenever I took pictures. Well, I finally ran out of things which can be removed. All that remained other than my pictures was Windows itself, Office, Picasa, iTunes, Dropbox, and Firefox. Typically, I take it as a good sign whenever I must make room for pictures. However, it reached a point where my computer stopped functioning.

Fixing it was simple once I got started. After sorting out the hardware, I used GParted to copy the entire contents of the old drive to the new one. That only took an hour to complete. Upon rebooting I disabled the old one with the intention of enabling it soon to use as a backup location.

My bicycle was also fixed and to commemorate the occasion I decided to go out and take photos. My favorite way to take photos is to go for a ride on my bike so it getting fixed worked out nicely. I went on a short ride from my apartment in Slippery Rock to the point where the road leading to the outlets is blocked off and back again. (which is about 12 miles if you're curious) Here is a shot from campus on my way back.



Also I finally was able to fit Team Fortress 2 on my computer again. If you ever feel like playing my Steam ID is steakPinball.

Almost Done

For the past few weeks I have been working on a website for a Sport Management class on Facilities & Planning. Today is the day of the event, and the conclusion of it will bring relief to many people including me. The primary focus of the class is to plan a charity banquet. The charity is Charlie Batch's Best of the Batch program which benefits youth in disadvantaged communities in Pittsburgh and the US. Even though I am not in the class, I was responsible for the event website http://www.banquentintheburgh.com/. I was honored when they asked me to make it, and will be forever grateful to the members of the class.

I learned a lot from making this website. It is the first time I used Lightbox and IPTC data embedded into photos in the wild. PHP handled generating the code which Lightbox requires quite well. The content of the gallery page is being entirely generated from the folder hierarchy which means adding to the page is as simple as putting a folder in a specific location. Through making it, I ran into the curious caption bug of Lightbox for which there is no perfect fix. You can check the source for my fix.

This is the first time the end of the semester feels no different from the rest of the semester. It is quite strange to be so close to graduation and yet feel like things will be no different a month from now even when I know they will. First of all, I will no longer be a student. Second, and closely related to the first, I will lose my part time job working for the university. Third, I will be living in my own house. In the past, all this real world stuff seemed like it was such a big deal. However, now it doesn't seem that way anymore.

Oh, and when my work from the video game programming class is ready for release it definitely will show up here.

System Error

It won't stop snowing here in Slippery Rock.

A little over a month ago I began working at SRU's Web Services. Over the past few months they have been working on migrating the current website to a new system. The current system, Site Builder Toolkit, has reached its limit and is no longer effectively managing the site. The new system, Microsoft SharePoint, promises to be much more scalable. However, it does not seem to be very stable. Everyday there is a different problem requiring a different solution. Yesterday, all the users received 'access denied' messages. Today's problem is that some people, including me, are not able to create new pages in the site. Being a student worker, I have no ability to resolve these problems myself and must wait for somebody else to handle it. Here's hoping these problems don't persist through the launch of the site.

Last week was the due date for proposals in my video game programming course. Today, I find out if my proposal was accepted or not. If it was I will begin work as soon as I get home and will report all progress here. Working on this project will nicely make up for the lack of video games I've been playing.

As I stare out the window

And there goes another car through the stop sign. Since it has been so long since my last post I have a ton I want to say, but that's not going to happen all at once.
First off, I successfully finished Project 365. It is such an accomplishment that it needs mentioning even two months after completing it.

This is my last photo from the whole series. Someday they will be made into an arrangement.

Volkswagen stole my idea when they made this video: