Pictures from the party & raffle prize winners!

Wednesday evening was the big event at the Peppermill Fireside Lounge in Las Vegas. Here's a photo stream of pictures Keith and I took. I will be updating soon with photos from anyone else that sends them to me. If the slide show doesn't appear below, try clicking HERE.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

To top off our fundraising, we put together a raffle of 8 mystery items.

The first winner was Chris Wosniok, visiting scholar from the University of Muenster. He is Martin Raubal's masters student. He won a XL 2006 gray Dept. of Geography t-shirt compliments of Theta Nu Chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon (International Geographical Honors Society). Unfortunately I wasn't able to snap a photo of him at the party, but he was kind enough to email me this one:


Next up: Edward Pultar won a swag iPhone case compliments of Dom Sagolla. Dom is most well known for his Twitter contribution, DollarApp, & iPhoneDevCamp.

Next up: Keith Clarke won a vintage TV Guide from 1973 with a spatial theme to go along with the '70's theme of our party, compliments of me and my super Internet search skills. Can you tell which projection they used for the cover map?













Next up: Ryan Perroy won a 1 year student license for ArcGIS Desktop and all associated extensions, along with an ESRI pen and sticker compliments of Angie Lee from ESRI.

Next up: Nate Royal won a VerySpatial t-shirt compliments of the VerySpatial hosts that just happened to drop by our party right as Nate was tearing into his prize.













Next up: Xinyue Ye, joint SDSU/UCSB doctoral student, won a XL 2007 blue Dept. of Geography t-shirt compliments of Theta Nu Chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon (International Geographical Honors Society). Notice how well it matches the shirt he has on!

Next up: Karl Grossner also won a vintage TV Guide from 1973 with a spatial theme to compliment the theme of our party, compliments of me and my super Internet search skills.













And Finally: Sarah Battersby won the Waldo Tobler "mystery disks". As the story goes, I was in Dylan Parenti's office a few weeks ago and he had a few 5.25 inch floppy disks on his desk. He mentioned that they were from Reg Gollege who speculated that they contained something from Waldo. In keeping with the 70's theme of our event in Vegas, I had to have those disks as a raffle prize because 5.25 inch disks were invented in 1976 (according to wikipedia anyway). Luckily Dylan was able to retrieve a copy of the content from the disks, and Waldo agreed to allow me to raffle them off. The following message is from Dylan:

The 5.25" floppys contain a modeling program called proScal. Evidently, Waldo borrowed it from Reg back in '88. The program still exists as a DOS command line executable program, so I downloaded that and put it on an enclosed 3.5" floppy disk as well, spanning 21 years of that program. A print-out description is attached to all of it. It's a bit of a stretch to have that as a "Waldo Tobler vintage geography item", but I'll let you make that call as to raffle it off or not!

Overall, it was a great night and as promised, "unforgettable". I want to thank everyone that made this event a success. Special thank to the Peppermill Fireside Lounge staff for taking such great care of us. Feel free to leave comments on this post, particularly if you missed the party and want to leave a message here for all the alumni and faculty from our department. Additionally, if you took photos and want to add them to the slide show above, please email them to me. My email address is up on the right in the sidebar.

Thanks again!
Indy

Planning is in full swing...

Hello geographers and friends of the UCSB Geography Department!

I'm happy to report that planning is in full swing for a special gathering to commemorate all of our achievements this year. We'll be celebrating in Las Vegas on Wednesday March 25th from 5:30 to 8:30 at the "sure to be unforgettable" Peppermill Fireside Lounge.


This truly unique venue is located in the parking lot adjacent to the Riviera Hotel. This year's event will have a 70's theme: Polyester expected, but not required.

Due to the budget crunch, we're exploring creative ideas to generate the funds we need to successfully pull off this event. If you've noticed the nifty donate button in the sidebar to the right; feel free to click and submit a few dollars to our cause. You'll also find us conducting bake sales and auctions. We'll be auctioning a hike with Mike Goodchild to the highest bidder among other things we've managed to collect. More information below....

Introducing "Hike with Mike" auction winner Marlowe Durousseau

Mike Goodchild and I met up with Marlowe Durousseau at UCSB early Saturday morning to depart on a hike up to the top of Tangerine Falls in Santa Barbara. I was prepared to provide a parking pass, take a few photos, and then head off to Camino Cielo for a litter removal hike, but got invited to tag along for the bargain basement price of "free".

Marlowe won the auction with a winning bid of $21, yet doubled his donation in support of the Geography Department and our efforts to bring everyone together at AAG this month.

Marlowe has quite an interesting background. He was a transfer student from Santa Monica College where his interests were in meteorology. He came to UCSB to play football (Div III non-scholarship) in '89, and chose the Geography Department for his studies. Unfortunately, he had a knee injury in the off season and had to take time off from school to recover. Interestingly, knee injuries among current geography students are quite common. Just ask Micah, Brett, and Nate who have incorporated surgeries, braces, and physical therapy into their daily lives.

Supporting yourself through school in an expensive city without any financial aid is never an easy task, but Marlowe was resourceful and determined to finish his degree. He took courses part time and worked several jobs on top of an internship with the City of Santa Barbara to make ends meet. Campus jobs included working at Central Stores, the (haunted) Faculty Club, campus event staffing, and with the Phelps Hall night cleaning crew.

Many of these jobs seem like a far cry from the typical work study program jobs most undergrads engage in today, but Marlowe passed up jobs at the UCen in exchange for university employee positions offering partial tuition remission benefits.

Marlowe also worked as a bouncer at many local haunts and recounts the heyday of Isla Vista when Embarcadero Hall was home to The Graduate night club, serving up 4 for 1 priced 32oz drinks which dropped in price as the night wore on. The Graduate was replaced by The Anaconda which hosted concerts several times a week; taking advantage of big names traveling between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of course, this was all long after the building was home to the Bank of America that was burned down in the 1970 riots.

Marlowe's UCSB days were filled with adventures living in Santa Rosa, San Miguel and perfecting the sport of couch surfing in Isla Vista long before Edward Pultar's couch surfing GIS research interests.

He certainly remembers his professors. He took the History of Cartography with Waldo Tobler, Meteorology with Joel Michaelson, GIS with Mike Goodchild and Keith Clarke after his first GIS course at Santa Barbara City college during a hiatus from UCSB, and various other course with Sara Fabrikant, Dan Montello, and Jack Estes to name a few.

Marlowe's GIS internship with the City of Santa Barbara resulted in a full time position after he graduated. He has opportunities to interact with multiple departments utilizing GIS at the city and at the county. He also interacts with the Channel Islands Regional Geographic Information Systems (CIRGIS), including other UCSB Geography alumni Paul Van Zuyle and Steve Palladino. Marlowe has an extensive background in GIS and expects to complete the requirements for the GISP certification this year.

With several departments at the city working with GIS, internships for students are a real possibility. There are even opportunities for community members to get involved. The transportation department utilizes GIS to manage graffiti. The Adopt A Block program partners city staff and residents interested in committing to keep one block clear of graffitti and litter for a year. All supplies are provided by the "Looking Good Santa Barbara" environmental services program.

We all extend our sincere gratitude to UCSB Geography alumnus Marlowe Durousseau, class of 2003, for his generous donation. Congratulations on your success!