Vacations

By Susie Rempfer

Vacations are the perfect time to sit back, relax, and smell the roses. While vacations can be soothing to the senses, they can also be damaging to the checkbook, credit cards, and wallet.

Vacations don’t have to be expensive. Whether its spending a day at Six Flags or the Baltimore Aquarium, spending a few days visiting loved ones in California, or spending a week in Europe or Mexico there are simple ways to eliminate the amount of money spent.

When planning a vacation, research is essential to cutting back on cost. Researching things such as the locations of the cheapest gas stations and the airlines with the cheapest airfare can start saving you money right away. Another quick trick to budgeting for a vacation is to go on the Internet and look up prices for hotels and restaurants you want to visit. By doing so you will be able to estimate how much money to set aside each day for meals, and you will be able to relax about finding a four-star hotel without ridiculous pricing.

 Another key thing to remember when planning a vacation is to spend what money you do bring wisely.

Although it may be the kids’ first trip to Disneyland, spending hundreds of dollars on souvenirs that will soon be forgotten at the bottom of a toy box is unnecessary. And although you may see something and say to yourself, “I have to buy this,” remember to shop around first. Some stores offer the same merchandise for less, or may offer something else that will make the first spontaneous purchase seem asinine. One tip for shopping for souvenirs is to pick an amount you’re willing to spend in total on every souvenir you buy. After each purchase of a shot glass or stuffed animal subtract that from the initial souvenir fund and budgeting money for trinkets will be worry free for the remainder of the vacation.

Another thing to think about when buying souvenirs is to stop buying something for everyone. Although a co-worker might have sent you a post card and key-chain from Hawaii, that doesn’t mean you have to buy him a twenty-dollar Mickey Mouse paperweight. Buy souvenirs for yourself and forget about everyone else; let pictures show off all the places you visited to interested friends and family members.

 VacationBy considering these few things, planning that dream vacation is no longer out of reach. Spend an evening researching where you want to go, and get estimates on everything you can think of; it may surprise you to realize that you could already have enough money saved up for that trip to Bermuda you’ve been dying to go on.

Vineland’s very own Bring the Music festival ’09

By AARON RILEY

Staff Writer

The music is being brought on June 24th, 2009 at Vineland, New Jersey, courtesy of the 2nd Annual Bring the Music festival. Boasting moderately unknown bands, many from the tri-state area, infixed into the smaller and more intimate (at least relative to most venues) setting of the U-Sell Flea Market, the Bring the Music festival has been a successful new concert. Beginning in 2008, the Bring the Music festival has spotlighted lesser-known bands with strong local and online followings, many of which you wouldn’t see at Coachella or the Pitchfork Music festival.

These bands’ vital lifelines of fan support have been achieved primarily though the Internet. In the age of Myspace and Facebook, a striking portion of the problems facing local and regional bands has been thankfully eradicated, leading, for many of them, to record deals. There are still however, bands that continue to be independent, either by choice or by as of yet remaining undiscovered. With that information in mind, festivals like this are important for establishing fanbases for many unrecognized talents.

Bands performing at the festival this year are You, Me, and Everyone We Know, The Morning Of, Go Crash Audio, The Lives of Famous Men, Raccoon Fighter, Where the Ocean Meets the Sky, Losing Ground, A’s Rage, Liam and Me, Eyes on the Prize, Van Atta High, I Know the Struggle, The Crosstown Rivalry, Cheezy and the Crackers, and Cassonova Brown. Expect to see more bands perform that will be announced in the coming weeks. Last year’s Bring the Music festival was held on June 25th, 2008, and included headliners Houston Calls, Person L, and Socratic.

The Bring the Music festival is being held on June 24th, 12:00 PM Noon, at the U-Sell Flea Market, 2896 S. Delsea Dr., Vineland, N.J. 08360. The tickets cost $15 presale and $20 at the door.

What’s the tweet about Twitter

By MELISSA PILEIRO

Editor-in-Chief

A few years ago, the Internet buzzword was “Myspace.” Not long after, it seemed like every college kid in America was getting a Facebook page. Today, the website of the moment is Twitter, and it’s spreading faster than many of its competitors. The secret might be that while social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook tend to attract only young students, Twitter is intriguing just about everyone. Huge media corporations like the BBC and CNN have it, as do many popular celebrities and even politicians.

The sudden incredible popularity of Twitter has left many people on the outside asking one question: what is it, anyway? Put simply, Twitter’s purpose is to answer the simple question “what are you doing?” in 140 characters or less, about the same amount of space allowed for text messages.

Yup, that’s all there is to it.

So what’s the appeal? For most, it’s a way to keep in touch with family, friends, or colleagues without the clutter and busyness of other social networking sites. The length of individual messages, called “tweets,” is short enough for readers to get all the information they need without having to dig through photos, quizzes, and other friends.

For the media, Twitter adds an interesting new dimension to the way news is exchanged. When the Internet first started to gain momentum in the 90s, journalism was revolutionized as the day’s news no longer needed to wait for evening. Twitter is a step up from this almost-immediate gratification that news websites provide. Twitter can be used to post breaking news headlines long before a story is written.

Naysayers believe that Twitter does little more than support personal narcissism. Using the site might leave your friends wondering why you felt the need to tweet “having my morning cup of coffee” or “going to class.” However, those that use it typically have very specific reasons for tweeting, and are thankful that they can keep others informed in a quick, concise way.

You can follow The Voice on Twitter, too! Check us out at http://www.twitter.com/cccvoice. 

Rowan innovates use of robots for programming

By AARON RILEY

Staff Writer

Rowan University offers an Introduction to Programming Using Robots course taught by Dr. Jennifer Kay. She also teaches various other classes concerning programming.

Essentially, the class begins with students receiving a functional robot known as the Scribbler. The Scribbler can be controlled with the Python programming language via a Bluetooth connection between the computer, where the user is inputting the commands with a keyboard, and the robot.

 According to student Stephen Smith, some of the projects they’ve done include using special conditions to make the robots exhibit certain behaviors over time such as following a light and crossing a specific number of black lines drawn on the floor.

The goal of the class is to gain a better understanding of how robots can be programmed in order to achieve certain physical goals; through this process, the student learns how to program in the Python language. Students are not responsible for learning anything more technical about the robot than its basic functions and what commands it responds to using Python, and they are not required to learn the schematic of the Scribbler. The class is not about building, maintaining, or designing robots, though a brief history of robotics is explained in the introduction of the course. The robots’ response to the code students run gives the students the ability to see how their programs work in a very tangible manner as opposed to simply seeing data output on a computer screen.

Once a basic understanding of the robot and the Python syntax is gained, students are encouraged to experiment with the various functions of the robot. However, there are some weeks when the robot is not used in the classroom. During these weeks, the lessons focus only on specific Python capabilities and functions. The students take the robots home for the entire semester, and so they are free to work with the robots whenever they want until the end of the semester.

Discussing the highlights of the course, Smith said, “I created a dance video with six robots running identical code (which can be found HERE). It’s my code, choreography and music selection…simplistic yet cool. The robots aren’t in complete unison because the code was executed by six different people on six different computers attempting to press Enter at the same time. I also designed a tic-tac-toe game that can be played by two robots. That project hasn’t been completed as of this time, and it’s finals week, so it’s not going to be finished as an assignment.”