Cell phones for soldiers

Published
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Matt
on June 27, 2008
in UTMB web stuff
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I received a package from Amazon.com the other day; along with my purchase I found a plastic envelope from the Cell Phones for Soldiers phone recycling program. I had never heard of it before, so I looked it up.

From their site:”…Cell Phones for Soldiers hopes to turn old cell phones into more than 12 million minutes of prepaid calling cards for U.S. troops stationed overseas in 2007. To do so, Cell Phones for Soldiers expects to collect 15,000 cell phones each month through a network of more than 3,000 collection sites across the country.

The phones are sent to ReCellular, which pays Cell Phones for Soldiers for each donated phone – enough to provide an hour of talk time to soldiers abroad.”

Take advantage of free stuff, have more fun

Published
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Matt
on June 19, 2008
in Day To Day, Out in the World, Process and UTMB web stuff
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Two things I think we should do more of around here: find ways to take advantage of free online resources like Google Maps or Flickr, and do more to promote individual creativity.

A potential client was asking about a user-friendly photo gallery, where folks in his department could easily post photos of award winners, picnics and the like. Flickr serves that need perfectly, and it’s free! Why re-invent the wheel?

In IS Enterprise, we’ve instituted “10% Time,” where folks have the option to use 4 hours per week on some personal project, as long as their supervisor is in the loop. (We were inspired by Google.)

My colleagues Anthony Hernandez and Patrick Dunnigan are collaborating on a Google Maps/UTMB mashup. It’s not finished, but we see it as eventually augmenting the current ‘official’ online map. When it’s about done, we’ll prolly request a link from the campus map page. It’s much easier to utilize Google’s tools and resources than to write something ourselves. And it’s free! (Nice job, guys.)

If you search the user-generated content on Google Maps for ‘UTMB,‘ you’ll find Anthony and Patrick’s map and several other entries from potential students, current students and Galveston locals. Very interesting. Those entries led me to a UTMB Flickr pool with some great shots of campus.

All this stuff helps to paint the picture of UTMB, and what we are all about. That could be good or bad, but that’s for another post. The point here is that these apps and resources can be leveraged to work smarter. And have fun doing it.

Email unmanageable? You are not alone

Published
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Matt
on June 16, 2008
in Process
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Ralph Farr announced recently that UTMB  is increasing Exchange Inbox size by 400%, to 250MB. He ended by saying something like, “Good luck managing that.” (I’m paraphrasing here.)

He has a point.

For a lot of people, dealing with email has become a major part of their day, cutting into the amount of work they actually get done. NPR had a great story this morning on the problem, how it effects some people and what companies are doing to try and deal with it.

Some folks are fanatical about the Getting Things Done system, but I find it too Byzantine for the way my mind works. (That’s not hard, balancing a checkbook is too Byzantine for me, too.) The concept makes sense, but putting it into practice never seems to work out. NPR again. I somehow muddle through, using a combination of mail folders, electronic and paper lists and my ever-failing memory.

What about you? How do you deal with your daily email load? Any tips for the rest of us?

Firefox 3 available June 17

Published
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Matt
on June 16, 2008
in Out in the World and UTMB web stuff
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Firefox logoI read recently that Firefox now has 20% of the browser market. Mozilla is all set to release version 3 of its Firefox browser tomorrow, and they are hoping to set a world record for the number of downloads during a 24-hour period. Here’s a nice overview of Firefox 3’s new features.

Internet Explorer 7 has been out for a year, maybe, and IE 8 is just around the corner. Microsoft is moving at lightning speeds compared to past releases. Could we be seeing the beginnings of a new browser war?

Roger’s memorial service

Published
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Matt
on June 13, 2008
in Personal
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There were about 700 people at Roger’s memorial service. Many of them were UTMB folks, current or retired. There were several people from our old Biocomm days there, people I haven’t seen in years. The outpouring of love for Roger and support for his family was really amazing.

We spent some time at the Stone house after the service, telling stories and helping each other. I came home last night feeling pretty much at peace with Roger’s death. I played Tom Waits’ song Shiver Me Timbers, just for Roger.

So long…

Published
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Matt
on June 10, 2008
in Personal
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Roger Stone, who lost his life while saving his crew last Friday in a sailing accident, was a good friend of mine. We worked together for ten years in the photo unit of Biocommunications, and stayed in touch as we each moved on to other careers at UTMB. Many of you may know Roger through his vanpooling efforts on campus; he has been a van driver and go-to guy for years.

Roger was a great person, a good friend and an asset to UTMB. He will be missed.

UPDATE:
The memorial service for Roger will be:

Thursday, June 12th, 5 p.m.
Clear Lake United Methodist Church
16335 El Camino Real
Houston (Clear Lake)
Near the intersection of Bay Area Blvd and El Camino Real

In lieu of flowers a children’s education fund will be established at the Bank of America in Clear Lake.

New SQL injection attacks on campus

Published
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Matt
on May 23, 2008
in Out in the World and UTMB web stuff
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For the past week or so, I’ve watched my Enterprise colleagues scramble to identify and deal with a new type of SQL injection attack that’s making the rounds. They have had to mitigate a couple of incidents, and rewrite code to prevent other sites from being affected.

There will be a campus meeting to discuss site vulnerabilities and how to fix them on Tuesday, May 27, from 10-11 am., in Levin Hall’s South Auditorium. Any SQL-driven site, internal or external, is at risk. Please plan to attend and join the discussion… it’s important to get the word out. More info here.

Wordpress update goes awry…

Published
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Matt
on May 23, 2008
in Behind the Scenes
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I tried to update to WordPress 2.5, but had some issues. I got as far as the usual upgrade.php page, but it bombed at that point. I restored from a backup, but I was scared that the MySQL database–shared by all the blogs on this server–had been affected. Evidently not.

UTMB directory improvements in the works…

Published
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Matt
on May 23, 2008
in Behind the Scenes
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Anirban Chakrabarty, the developer of the current version of the UTMB directory, is working on some improvements. Specifically, he’ll be adding the ability to create and save groups of contacts, and share them with others. There are some kinks yet to be worked out, but he’ll get there.

This will allow for the creation of online departmental lists, and even better, cross-departmental lists. In my area, we share the office and kitchen space with folks from Finance/Contract Administration, yet we don’t know them all that well. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to create and have available an online collection of everyone’s contact info?

surveillancesaver is mesmerizing

Published
by
Matt
on May 15, 2008
in Out in the World
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view from security camera of an empty roomI recently ran across SurveillanceSaver, an open-source screensaver for Windows and Macs. It’s pretty dang fascinating. When your PC kicks in to screensaver mode, SurveillanceSaver randomly selects an image from one of about a thousand surveillance cameras around the world. In some cases, you get video. The developer has a great page that details how it works and why he created it (dissertation project). “…It is an addictive live soap opera for more than 30,000 people that downloaded it and watching it since november 2007. ”

AJAXed with AWP