For college students it is sometimes hard to find software for free that doesn't require a credit card. It seems like you get on the internet and you look up something for free and you find at the end of registering for a service that it tells you that it is free, it asks you for a credit card and tells you that it costs for the service to get all the freebies.

As a college student with little time to spare, it can bring a lot of frustration. Instead of hitting your head against a brick wall, I would like to assuage some of your grief by giving you some tips on finding free things that are really for free.

Sourceforge.net is a service that helps people find a free alternative to software. This kind of software is often called freeware or open source software. This kind of software is made by developers that are average-joe-citizens like you and I that wanted to hit our heads against a brick wall, but didn't and so created a loop-hole and made the software available to everyone.

Another great place to look for free software is download.com which offers a range of software that ranges from freeware, shareware (which is trial-based) or pay-for software. You can find the freeware option by refining your search in the search options and getting it that way. Tucows.com is another great website that also follows this trend. Both of these website also carry with them a user and editor rating so you can judge for yourself how well the software has been rated.

From games, to picture editors, to graphic design programs, and on down the list, these sites offer a plethora of software that can both be used for relaxation or to get a paper done for college. There is a lot of software to be found at a great price. The price being free.

When it comes to newspaper design and formatting “It’s all about marketing the paper," says Lisa Cowan, the A1 (front-page) designer of the Oregonian.

Facebook is one of the fastest growing social networks for college students since it's inception in 2004. To this day it a useful tool for students to get connected to friends and other like-minded individuals who have a desire to become socially interactive on the go or while at home.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and a couple roommates of his while he was attending Harvard University. It eventually branched out into Boston Mass., and spread outwards until its membership has now reached outwards of 200 million world-wide. Originally intended for college students, with over 30,000 recognized colleges, universities, organizations it's growth has spawned to make it comparable to MySpace now, which in large part has been the social networks world leader.

One of the many great things for college students that make Facebook appealing is that weeds out a lot of the teens and stalkers that you may have heard about on MySpace. They are more rigourous in their approving an account, in many places they ask that you have an college email address or ask you what college, or university that you have attended and assert you in that group of people.

Another thing that makes Facebook appealing to a larger audience is that it is more adult orientated in its eye-appeal, it's not teeny bopperish, or flirty, it seems in its own way more adult-like. A lot of business professionals are using Facebook and are connecting to more people through Facebook than MySpace because of the professional-like shell.

Overall in this day and age of new gadgets and saviness in this author's opinion, I think it is a necessary tool in networking and moving on in this great world wide web.

So far for this year there have been no poster and no invitations to this year's Graphic Design Art Show at Linn-Benton Community College. This is the first time in 28 years that they haven't sent out posters and invitations to the show.

Dressed in a yellow tank top and black running shorts and with his gps watch ready to go, Bill Thallemer gets ready for his six-mile run from the Linn-Benton Community College Activity Center. "Today it is six-miles, tomorrow it'll be 17 miles. I'm getting ready to run in a marathon in Seattle."

Bill Thallemer has been the vice-president for LBCC since June 2, 2008. Since taking his position here he hasn't lost his zeal for running and staying active. According to Thallemer on an average day he arises in the morning and generally runs anywhere from eight to 13 miles. As to date he has has run 34 marathons in 24 states. He also lifts weights on a regular basis as well.

Thallemer grew up in South Bend home of Notre Dame. Some of the influences in his life were his grandpa, who wrote the alma mater that Notre Dame still uses to this day, and a group that he joined, called the Budlight Daredevils. The Budlight Daredevils were a group of young acrobats that performed half-time shows for professional and college basketball as well as such hits in the 80's, the Miami Sound Machine with Gloria Estefan. Along with these influencing factors he has met a lot of olympic athletes and people like Mike Tyson and Michael Jordan, in the which he has a photo of him and them in his office.

I asked Thallemer what he thought it takes to motivate ourselves because we all have big ideas, and he said, “People is a big one, some people don’t let you dream big and this brings on frustration. It takes partnerships, energy and somebody willing to drive.” He went on to tell me a story about being a dean in Alabama where he had heard of a local family whose baby was having some real health problems. He put together a running event that would end up by raising over $30,000 for the family. A 50 mile run from their campus to another campus. He went on, “There are two sayings that I live by, It’s your job to make a positive difference in people’s lives every day and people don’t’ care how much you know until they know how much you care. Education is about helping people. It’s the driving force for me.”

Marilyn Hale, Thallemer's secretary said, "He is the big picture man and I am the detail person. Mr. Thallemer is a multi-tasker, with high-energy." She went on to tell about how involved Thallemer is in his community and in the state legislature for the school.

Currently Bill Thallemer teaches 10 classes a year for the Doctoral Leadership program for the University of Phoenix, works with the Governance Affairs Council for the city of Albany and is in the Greater Albany Rotary Club. Thallemer also owns his own business as a Process Improvement Specialist.

Nearly 30  students from Linn Benton Community College, and head of the art depart-ment Gary Westford, headed up to Portland, Ore., Friday to the Portland Art Museum. 

Westford had encouraged students from three of his classes, two Understanding Art classes and one Art History class, to attend the function, so that they could get a better understanding of different art from different periods of time as well as visit a once in a lifetime exhibit called the “La voluptė de go ȗt,” which would end on May 17.

One of the great experiences of college life is taking advantage of once in a lifetime experiences. I felt fortunate, as did others to have the chance to visit the “La volupte de go ut,” before the exhibit was over. 

There were a lot of great paintings that were presented at the museum that I had never even thought existed. Works by Leonardo DaVinci, Vincent Van Gogh and other great artists such as Andy Warhol were also located at the museum. The museum also had a plethora of ancient artifacts from China, Korea, Japan and many other cultures and times.

One of the newest additions to the Portland Art Museum was an 11th-century artifact from India called Ganesha. It is in the figure of a man with the head of an elephant. A lot of history goes into this artifact, both in it's religious and cultural aspects making this piece very unique.

History and art can both found at this great museum that is currently ranked one of the greatest museums in the world.  For me it was a great place to understand art all over again.

Gary Westford explains some artistic facts about Portland.

With cranes, forklifts and two big semis, two mammoth wind turbine blades made their journey to Linn Benton Community College, May 14, to lay at rest behind the industrial buildings at LBCC.

 

The wind turbine blades, which are made out of a composite overlaid by fiberglass with wood on the inside and also weather resistant, weigh 18,000 pounds and are 138 feet long. The blades would be part of a structure that would reach the height of over 200 feet. 

 

Both blades were donated by Suzlon Energy Limited, whose headquarters is in India and is ranked fifth leading supplier of wind turbine technology in the world.  The blades made their trek from Utah where the blades are no longer in service.

 

The reason that these blades were donated is because of a new program starting at LBCC starting this fall called the Mechatronics Technician program.  Students of this program will learn about electric and mechanical engineering, with an emphasis in green technology. The blades at LBCC will be used to study the technology of blades by the Mechatronics students, and by Physics, Engineering, and Engineering Drafting/CAD students.

 

Denis Green who will head up the Mechatronics Technician program here at LBCC said, “At this point they will just be opened and looked into and not really worked on, these are just to give students an idea of what they look like.”

 

With an arrangement between Columbia Gorge Community College and LBCC, students can get a degree after completing the Mechatronics program at LBCC and moving on to CGCC, to become a Wind Turbine Technician.

 

Fred Haynes an instructor at LBCC said, “We want to connect our students to as many highly technical fields as possible.”

 

Photos Courtesy of Fred Haynes

There are some really cool things you can do to really make a good blog work for you. Depending on what you are in the blogging business for, whether it be for money, recognition, news writing, journaling; there are a lot of features that can help you understand your blog and make it work for you. Some of the cool features I think are pretty cool are as follows:

Add Google Analytics to your blog. If you are wanting to track your visitors and to find your target audience this is a must. Andy Wibbels has a simple walk through to help you to understand how to add code to your blog for Google Analytics and to see if it works. Very simple.

Appearance, some have said, is everything. If you are going to want to get traffic to your blog it is important to have a good eye appeal. Though there are many websites out there for free blog templates , some of them want to add things to your blog that take away its appeal like their own adsense. Final Sense has a plethora of templates that are sure to fit into your lifestyle.

Some might argue against AdSense, but I think overall it depends on what you are trying to do with your blog. Do you want to generate money on themes that have to do with your topic or product. It can also bring some amount of credibility, if for instance you are a computer maintenance man and you have some ads by NewEgg and Tigerdirect, or Best Buy. Within blogger itself you can ad AdSense and it doesn't cost you a dime and if you are bringing in traffic, the money will come with the traffic.

Another tool that you can use to find out what will attract people to your website is to check out what they are searching for and put the kind of content that people are searching for onto your blog. Google Trends is one way to find out what people are searching for and to bring traffic to your blog.

One of the things that some people may not realize is how these search engines put you at the top of their search engine. By using keywords and key phrases throughout your blog that are relevant to a certain topic, this will put Google, or other search engines that work by the amount of keywords or key phrases that are put into your blog or website. Even when you change the name of an image that you upload to your blog by adding the same keyword or phrase to the image, this will cause you to stand out on a search engine. It is important to be specific here, because the more specific you become, the more of a unique slant that you have in these phrases the more traffic you will have. If you put a word in there like free downloads, you will only hit major sites, that have major downloads or those that have paid for that service. It's important to put something down about your specific subject. An example of this might be: free business software downloads Microsoft, or something along those lines.

Blogs are constantly being made and any tips and tricks that you can glean from any source can be valuable. An important key also I think is to check out as many blogs as you can and see what they are doing. Looking for ways to improve your blog will cause you to have a better blog and a blog to remember.

There are very few websites that I have found on the web that really help you to learn and offer resources to learn for free. For those that want to learn a great trade for design it is even that much harder. Six Revisions, is a rare and powerful resource for graphic and web-designers that seek to excel in design.

Six Revisions, is a very beautiful website in itself, offering titles such as, "Six Questions: Tony Chester on Running a Design Firm", or "30 Examples of Watercolor Effects and Brush Strokes in Web Design.". With many new titles and subjects added everyday. Another thing I like about this website is that it offers great tutorials, resources, Adobe Photoshop brushes, fonts and pictures that you can download for free. They also offer helpful information that walk you through such processes as starting in a web-based business, marketing, or just playing around with Photoshop, web-design, or other programs to do with design. All for free.

If you are looking for inspiration this site also offers lots of pictures and screenshots of websites that help spawn an assortment of ideas for those that just like to browse around and get some good ideas. With few advertisements (and even the advertisements look dazzling and inspiring), this is definetly a website worth following and bookmarking.

Homeless people are everywhere at the Saturday Market in Portland, Oregon and are showing their own kind of creativity there. The Saturday Market has been going on since 1974 and is a place that is full of crafts, arts, and food. The Portland Mission, a church based organization, which is only a couple blocks from the market, gives homeless people a chance to find a living at the Saturday Market.

With over 200 booths at the Saturday Market and people galore, there is what seems to be, an air of creativity and excitement. People are dressed in a wide variety of costumes, from cows to a Jimi Hendrix lookalike. The booths are filled with such things as the Spoon-man (a gentleman that makes his living by transforming household silver), or the booth the promises to make a wallet, for a price, out of ducktape; it’s all here. Things that you would never imagine to be done, find a place in your heart to be attainable to make and to conjure up as sellable.

The homeless are no exception to the rule here. With witty sayings and outrageous signs they cause you to step back and consider that they may have a thing or two to remark on. The homeless here fit in and seem to be well accepted as a part of the attraction that draws people here in the first place.

One gentleman that I came across had a sign that said, “Need parts for spaceship, trying to get home, anything helps.” I interviewed Chuck; he didn’t give me his last name. He seemed outgoing and contagious in his conversation and was glad to be interviewed by me for a few extra dollars. He said, “I do this every weekend to get people to help me out, but for the most part I sell the Street Roots (a newspaper that is about the homeless plight) during the weekdays. This is just a weekend thing for me.”

With the hustle and bustle of people moving around from all walks of life, it is easy to get distracted from the booths and to consider the plight of such people as Chuck.

As I am walking through the Saturday Market, I am lead away with thoughts of a time before this, when in Old England, people peddled their wares to people.

Patricia, who was worried that her last name not be mentioned was also helping the homeless situation. Patricia belongs to the Hare-Krsna (also known as the Hare-Krishna) and sells stickers of the American flag and a peace sticker. She told me that she comes out here every weekend to help make sure the homeless get vegetarian food through a vegetarian program that they provide for the homeless. She said, “We mostly get donations from people as they come by, or we sell stickers for a donation price of $10 for both stickers.”

Another man that I talked to, Frank Cobb, age 27, sells a newspaper that is made by homeless people and volunteers in the community that is called Street Roots. According to the website www.streetroots.org, some of their over 50 vendors buy the newspaper for 25 cents and sell it for $1. He has been homeless for a while and now has moved up into the realm of being poor. He has been doing this for several years now. Talking to the man I realize he shouldn’t have to do this stuff, he is one of those guys that jumps out on the page at you, really intelligent, like he should be at M.I.T.

Concerning the homeless of Portland that work at the Saturday Market I am left to wonder, where could these people be if they only had a hope and if they only had help. If you are ever at the SM, you’ll have to come check out the creativity of those that some have deemed the off-scouring of society. You may be impressed, some of them are just as creative as you and I.

Photo courtesy of http://www.portlandrescuemission.org/about/

In the works right now and getting readied for the legislation are cuts of 30% of the Oregon Youth Authority budget. The Oregon Youth Authority is a part of our state government that tries to hold youth offenders accountable for their actions; it covers foster care, mental health and facilities for youth that have committed crimes.
Some of the things that have been proposed are the closure of 225 out of 925 of close custody beds; reduce community capacity by 120 community beds (50 residential and 70 foster care), reduce payments to counties by 17 percent (JCP Basic and Diversion) and a reduction of 27% for Multnomah gang funding.
What’s going to happen to these kids once these cuts take place is something that we all must ponder.

Who: The Oregon Youth Authority.
What: OYA is looking at doing budget cuts.
Where: OYA at the legislation committee
When: Soon
Why: Budget cuts are reaching far and wide and there is a need to cut spending.
How: The OYA is coming up with a plan to cut spending.

The effects that child abuse can have on kids that go into foster care are tremendous. Having been in foster care system since the age of four, and then again at the age of 15, I got to see, and experience, firsthand the hardships that kids have to face.

According to http://www.allgodschildren.org there are an estimated 10,000 kids in the foster care system in Oregon. In Linn County there are three homes, (nine foster beds) that are dedicated to the Oregon Youth Authority, and over 356 beds for the Department of Human Services. A lot of these kids have either been abused or have committed a crime.
Donna Brubaker, a foster parent for over 30 years said, “A lot of kids when they come into foster care have major trust issues, it usually takes about 5 or 6 months for the foster parent to earn the kid’s trust. A lot of kids don’t have a sense of right and wrong, because they may have been disciplined when they shouldn’t have been or not been discipline when they should have.”
Troy Hopper, a teacher in Sweet Home that works with special needs and foster children said, “a lot of these kids are loners, they don’t trust people, or they have been hurt and so either they are loners are in trouble. Foster kids have a hard time talking with others.”
The foster care system over the last 18 years has changed a great deal, with more programs and tools that weren’t available before this time. In February Linn-Benton went to the House of Representatives, to see how they can work with foster kids and help them get into college, and find the resources that they need to better their college experience. There are also moves, within the state to try and get legislation passed to help them to become aware of the resources like Oregon healthcare, once they are out of foster care. With budget cuts on their way it will be interesting to see if these resources evaporate.

Who: Foster youth.
What: Foster youth are facing numerous problems when coming from abused homes.
Why: Because of the previous abuse that they faced.
When. At the present time
Where. In Oregon, and in Linn County
Quotes: Troy Hopper, Donna Brubaker and OYA, and DHS