The mouse named Bob!
By Nancy M.

One day in Mrs. Knudsen's fourth block Family and Consumer Science class in the second quarter, sixth grader Kelsey B. spotted a mouse. Kelsey said, "Look!" Everyone turned and looked. Renee W. saw the mouse and asked if he could be named Bob. He was thereafter called Mr. Bob.

Mr. Bob was a brown mouse. Special mouse expert Karina D., who has had many mice (because she kept snakes), thought that Mr. Bob was a common field mouse. She said there were a lot of them around the nature center. It probably got in through a door when someone opened it or through a hole.

Over the weekend, Mr. Bob set off the burglar alarms. The following Monday, the students of the fourth block Family and Consumer Science class heard that he was either poisoned or caught in a trap. It was a tragic weekend. As Mrs. Knudsen would say, now he is in the "Great Mouse Hole in the Sky."

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FTP - What is it and how can you use it?
By Amar P.

Do you ever want to send files to another person or download large files from an Internet site? Then you need to know about FTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol - a way to send files from one place to another.

When using FTP, you can both download files such as software, text, pictures, graphics, or anything else you can imagine and/or upload files to computers to which you have access. FTP is one of the most basic tools used on the Internet.

Early users of the Internet developed FTP so that people such as researchers could copy files from one computer to another through the World Wide Web (WWW), another part of the Internet.

Today, private users often employ FTP. Software, MP3's, programs, or anything else can be copied from an FTP site. Some of the most popular files downloaded from FTP sites are MP3's.

To download a MP3 or anything else, you need an FTP download program. One is "cuteftp". There are other FTP programs out there, but this will get the job done.

Finding an FTP site to download from is tricky. FTP sites aren't written out in bold letters "come to this FTP site." You have to find them. Try searching on http://www.yahoo.com, http://www.lycos.com or http://www.hotbot.com or any other search engine.

If you are an AOL user, it's easy. Go to ftp.aol.com or just go to keyword: Software. AOL connected their download manager with FTP so graphics can be displayed as they are downloaded. For other folks go to http://www.softseek.com for the latest programs and software.

Be careful if you are downloading a movie. Remember that they are BIG. Some can be as large as two or three gigabytes per movie. A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes, which is about 730 floppy disks.

Another fact to remember when downloading movies or programs is that you need a fast connection to the Internet. A regular modem speed of 28800 BPS (bytes per second) will not help. You can easily get download times of 200 hours per one gigabyte. Remember, it usually takes one hour to download 5 megabytes or so.

Also, don't think of saving multiple movies on your computer. Filling up your hard drive space can make even a fast computer run slowly.

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