One day away from Obama’s Inauguration! I’m excited! Watching the coverage on CNN made me think of the people who he couldn’t have done it without. His family, other politicians, campaign volunteers, $$$, me, you, us and web developers? WHAT?

There were so many people involved with Barack Obama’s campaign that it is hard to say who helped him the most with the victory. But one group of people that we all generally give little or no credit to are the web developers and his campaign technology consultants/advisers. I really want to focus on that because as a web developer, we almost never get the credit for making things possible. The credit always goes to the people who plans it out but on our end we think to ourselves, “duh of course you need a website”. Creating a website isn’t a marvel or a great idea by some guy with money, it’s already second nature to us who understand that it is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to mass communication these days. Technology Specialists the brains behind Obama’s victory, no doubt about it.

From the people who designed Obama’s campaign logo to the web 2.0 social network website barackobama.com that web developers setup. They were all crucial parts to his success. This election more than ever really took advantage of the web and it’s users. I could have easily told Barack myself that this is what you need to be President, many of us could. Next time you need help to get a business off the ground or a way to mobilize people, ask a technology expert. They are your go to guy, not the guy who knows a tech guy, skip the middleman!

Anyway, watch the Inauguration LIVE on CNN at http://www.cnn.com/live. Yet another product of our genius!

I went out and purchased a video game today, I haven’t done that since buying Counter Strike for PC years ago. Game Stop had a deal on Bad Company for Xbox 360 for $19.99 New, funny because the used was $26.00. Whatever, corporations have weird business practices, found the game URL on Game Stop and found the closest location to me with the game. Great so I drove there, went into the store and started browsing around. I found the game on the shelf, there were 2 empty boxes for the game for what I thought was for store demo purposes. I went up to the counter and asked for it, they guy just went to the shelf, picked up a box and inserted the game back into it from behind the counter and attempted to put a plastic seal on it.

Wow, did they just try to sell me a opened boxed game, as new? I didn’t care because it was cheap and I was bored in need of a game to play and it was less than the USED game but this is an outrage! You buy a new game, you expect a new game, not an open boxed game that no one has bought. Besides that display box that I now own has been manhandled by who knows how many people! That’s the last time I’ll buy anything from Game Stop ever again! I also purchased a used Xbox 360 from them, only to find the RROD in less than 2 days playing it, and they wouldn’t take it back!

I got home yesterday evening after coming from a long hard day of work, on my way in, my roommate was walking out the door to go see a presentation at Stony Brook Southampton about Ocean Surges in New York. It sounded like an interesting topic and something I would enjoy so I tagged along.

When I got there, Dr. Brian Colle of Stony Brook’s Marine Science Department talked about “Climatology and Modeling of Storm Surges in New York’s Coastal Waters”. Here is a brief synopsis of his lecture.

A large fraction of the New York metropolitan region and Long Island is vulnerable to coastal flooding during tropical and extra-tropical cyclones. This talk will explore our understanding of cyclone position, track and strength, and how that favors flooding in the New York region.

There have also been advances in high resolution atmospheric and storm-surge modeling of land-falling cyclones in our region. A few historic storms will be discussed, such as hurricane Gloria (1985), which will highlight the modern difficulties in forecasting storm surges and the implications for emergency response.

This was something really cool to see, he presented computer models of storm path predictions and storm surge levels. Most of the time, the models we see on TV are great but I never truly understood the significance of every single mark on the models, Dr. Colle explained all of that and more. What was the most interesting to me was that in a Category 1 hurricane, the southern coast of Long Island would be experiencing flooding of a couple of meters of water. That is CRAZY!

It’s technically Tuesday morning here, still up studying for my two coming midterms tomorrow. Tired from study fatigue; I decide to take a little break. I was just browsing around the internet and stumbled upon Stony Brook’s new website!! As a freelance web designer myself, I really appreciate the awesome new look and the ease of acquiring information! Take a look!

By just clicking through the pages, I was able to think like a perspective student and wonder where I might find answers to what I wanted to know, sure enough the information is there and clear! I hope this new site offers less confusion and more APPLICANTS!

Well back to my studying! By the way, I’m available on AIM all the time. Drop me a line!

Finals week was last week and I think I did pretty well. I spent the weekend moving into my new place on Long Island! I found a house for a really sweet deal. I still can’t believe it and the place is fully furnished with plenty of space to run around. The crib is in Selden, LI. Below are some pictures of the new place.

It’s soo sweet! Muhahahaha

Hey all! I just got back from Kentucky yesterday and whoO, that was a great experience. The trip was made possible by the Undergraduate Geology Club here at Stony Brook University. We were on the road for 40 hours this weekend and spent like 12 in the largest cave system in the world, Mammoth Cave. It was an amazing site to see, we all agree that it was the best adventure ever! We also camped out for a night at the national park camp grounds which is directly right on top of the cave system.

What I liked most about it was the extensive history of the caves, discovered somewhere back in the late 1700’s. It was so much fun! I wish I could go again, but I will, probably this summer. The overall experience was unforgettable!

Getting involved with clubs and organizations on campus can open up free perks like this all the time! Yeah, the trip was free! hehe

Customizing phpBB3 is actually pretty easy. phpBB has poor documentation on how to change the forum engine template to look like your current website easily. I customized the style “prosilver”, the default theme that comes with phpBB3 to look like a project website I’m doing. If you are looking to just remove the existing header and put your own header, then this article is for you.

To get started, make sure that your current design uses a <div> wrapper. This serves useful because it contains the forum template within your current template. The widths of the forum is determined by the wrapper.

Navigate to your style folder, find and edit “overall_header.html & overall_footer.html“.

Those are the only two files that you truly have to care about, leave the other ones alone. For SBUGuide, the picture above, I used the default ProSilver design that came with phpBB3. What you have to do is use a wrapper design to contain the forum category. You can now add your own header and footer, but forget to include a class and id in you body tag.

id="phpbb" class="section-index ltr"

That’s all you have to do, to make the forums your own!

The next couple of months will be a challenge for me as I get myself into many new ventures. I aim at going forward with a positive state of mind. First of all, I’ve been planning to update my blog to WordPress 2.5 but I don’t know how that will affect my website. Plugin compatibility, etc..

Now to the busy part of my life, I just got back from a NYPIRG conference at Albany. It was a great learning experience and it was lots of fun! It was great to see old friends and meet new ones. I’m in a dilemma of weather to return to canvassing or work at school as an orientation leader and canvass at NYPIRG’s Huntington branch. But I really want to do it in NYC.

For those of you who know me, you know that I’m very much involved in enrollment of new students for SUNY Stony Brook. I do the IM’s chats, blogs, podcasts and more. I also founded SBUGuide which is the greatest unofficial Stony Brook website aimed at helping Stony Brook become a better unversity all around. SBUGuide has just gotten off the ground strong with new rules of organization that is much more effective than what it was.

I’m getting a new car!! Well not new, but it would be my first car. A Nissan Sentra 1.8L GXE. I’m so excited about that. I’ve been calling up different insurance companies all day to the most accurate quote. I’m also moving off campus next semester which is why I need one.

My roommate and I is possibly starting a music promotion/production company. This will be a good way for us to keep in contact with each other after we move off campus next semester. Creating media and promoting bands across the tri-state area with our skill set.

So there’s a lot of important decisions I have to make in the next couple of months.

I just got back home from an unforgettable day in the city. Union Square was filled with thousands of people just whacking each other with light feathered pillows. It was great because it’s truly a stress reliever from everyday life, and it was a great way to meet new people! My spring break couldn’t have ended better. I’ll have to return to school tomorrow or today if you want to get technical, it’s after 12.

However I was surprised to see some people bitch about doing this in a public place. They were saying that the mess left behind was wasting our tax dollars for cleanup. Lighten up and have fun, those people probably are stuck in their dead end jobs anyway.

Anyway, I’m can’t wait for Pillow Fight 2009. Will anyone care to join!? Oh and I had world famous Junior’s Cheesecake for the first time, it was delicious but not after the first slice. I got full FAST!