Re: [school-discuss] Worldwide Interferometry Array

[Dave Prentice <dprentice@uno.edu>]

Mike Eschman wrote:
Date: Thursday, May 09, 2002 6:31 AM
Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Worldwide Interferometry Array

>On Wednesday 08 May 2002 03:39 pm, you wrote:
>count us in.
>we have a rocketry program and want to put a radio telescope
application
>up at warren easton high school (dave prentiss is at warren
easton).
>we'll get ramped up over the weekend.
>mike eschman, etc...
>"Not just an afterthought ...
>http://www.engima.com

    One correction: the spelling is Prentice. Now, as far as what
Mike is talking about: he has been a real godsend. I had never
thought about doing rocketry or astronomy because I didn't have the
resources. Mike has donated quite a few things to get us started.
Things are now in their infancy stages.

    Here's the part that I'm really excited about: for 2 years I
have been trying to get the attention of any decision makers in New
Orleans as to what you can do with Linux at low cost. Nobody was
interested, until Mike was somehow able to persuade the head of
technology for the whole school district to have breakfast with him
the other day. He has agreed to come with Mike to see my little
(math) classroom network. If things go well, we might get a foot in
the door toward migrating 15,000+ machines citywide to Linux. Can
you say "happy camper"?

    The clients are just P1's with RH 6.2 and 32 meg of RAM.
Nevertheless, I hope to plan a nice dog and pony show for him. There
are web browsers, gnuplot, spreadsheet, word processor, etc. The
server is a dual 350 mhz P3 (compliments of Mike's company) that has
several of the seul.org/edu science programs loaded. Since it's RH
7.2, the clients can't use all these programs until they get
upgraded. I can still demo them on the server, though.

    Any other suggestions for what to show him?

Dave Prentice

>> Hi all,
>> I have recently subscribed to the schoolforge list.  Although I
have
>> been a lawyer for the past eight years, I will begin teaching
secondary
>> mathematics in Massachusetts this fall.  I
>> have a project that I hope may be of interest to some of the
members of
>> schoolforge.  I am trying to develop an education-oriented design
for a
>> networked array of
>> inexpensive radio telescopes using Linux and other free software.

>> I have posted more details and have an, as yet, inactive mailing
list
>> at:
>> http://www.ginkwunk.net/~sbt/Worldwide_Array/index.html
>> Keep up the good work.
>> Yours,
>> Streph