The concept for the site revolved around a thought cloud to symbolize the free thinking and intellectual goals of the organization as requested by the coordinators Dr. Tapia and Dr. Ocker. The site’s minimalist design lays on top of a custom CMS system to make maintenance and updates to the site such as adding pictures, students, or forms easy for both myself and the two professors. I’ve had a great time working with both professors in reasarch and in the design process of this website. Below I’ve posted a few screen shots from the website along with a little tidbit about each.

The above page is used by the organization to list upcoming events as well as post pictures and information about events past.

The home page of the site, that also serves as the about page, draws information from the MySQL database that can be updated from the administration panel. There site administrators can manage page revisions and drafts to the site’s about page.

In the following steps, I’ll help you set up your iPhone or iPod Touch that has the 2.0+ software update with the ‘pennstate’ wireless network on the Cisco VPN system.

1. Open the ‘Settings’ app from the home screen of your device. Once you get here, then select the ‘Network’ option.

2. Next, select the ‘VPN’ option on this menu.

3. Now just select ‘Add VPN Configuration’, and note that this is also the screen where you will turn the VPN on and off (it can also be done on main Settings screen once you add an option).

4. On the next screen, simply tap the IPSec button, and you should see the Cisco logo.

5. On this screen enter all the VPN credentials as listed, replacing the Account value with your Penn State Access Account ID (also your email address without the @psu.edu) and Password with the password for this account. The Group Name and Secret value are both ‘pennstate’, as shown below.

6. Once you have entered all the values, hit save and it will begin conneting to the VPN network. However, this will only work when you are connected to the ‘pennstate’ wireless networks around the University Park campus.

I’m a sucker for a good snow, and today it came down in big, beautifully fluffly flakes. Naturally, I grabbed my camera and ran outside of my dorm to take some pictures of the scenery.

I liked how these came out. The snow flakes were big and the precipitation was dense, but I think the pictures do a better job of telling:

There’s a few more over in the set at Flickr if you’re interested in checking out the rest.