MSU Black Poet Society

Ralph Paulk, the BPS President, reciting at Sundays meeting:

MSU Black Poet Society

I recorded a couple poets performing at today’s meeting and have embedded them below for your viewing pleasure.

Our meetings are held every Sunday at 6:30pm in the basement of the MSU Student Union inside of the Multi-Cultural Center.

Another semester begins

January 11th marked the beginning of my third of five semesters for my Masters in Computer Science. This semester, as in previous semesters, I am taking two courses:

• CSE 820: Advanced Computer Architecture
• CSE 891: Selected Topics in Natural Language Processing: Language and Interaction

Along with the coursework, I will continue my role as the Graduate Representative to the Computer Science & Engineering Advisory Committee as well as the Graduate Advisor for the Black Poet Society.

If you have anything that you would like me to bring up to either group, you can send me an email. I will also be attending the Computer Science and Engineering Graduate Student Association (CSEGA) meetings.

A Moment Of Silence

I wrote this poem in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday. Today marks 30 years of Michigan State University recognizing Dr. King and his legacy. We’ve made a lot of victories in those thirty years, but we have a lot more victories to come. The road ahead doesn’t have an end, but many victorious victories lie along it’s route.

A moment of silence
A moment of silence
With one camera flash,
the picture reminded us
of
A fist clenched tight
Eyes wide open
Attention is focused
Barriers were broken
So much love
Replaced so much hate
A dream stopped short,
We lose another great
A moment of silence
A moment of silence
With one gun blast
Fills the world with violence
Rest in peace Dr. MLK Jr.
We can't sit idle, your dream is our future

Google Charts API and E. E. Cummings

Today I was working on some charts using the Google Charts API and I decided to take a look at some of the documentation. Many of the X-axis labels on the chart I have are overlapping and I’m trying to fix it:

So in the process, I started looking at the data scaling section of their documentation, and they had a nice graph with a lot of data points but only a couple labels:

I wanted to see exactly how this was done and so I viewed the source of the image, which when using the Google Charts API tells exactly how the chart is being rendered.

That’s when I came across E. E. Cumming‘s poem “i thank You God for most this amazing” embedded in the URL.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=lc&chs=200x100&chd=s:ithankYouGodformostthisamazingdayforthel&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:|Apr|May|June|1:||50+Kb

You can read the poem in its entirety at poetry-chaikhana.com.