Left: A 2005 photo of the ambassador.
Source: BBC News profile
Right: K-State President Jon Wefald welcomes the Saudi ambassador to the USA, HRH Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud (click on photo to enlarge)
Source: Kansas State Collegian, photo by Christopher Hanewinckel

Today, K-State hosted a visit by the ambassador from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the USA, Prince Turki Al-Faisal. The K-State Collegian covered the talk in this article.

( Biographical info )

( Prince Turki during his talk )
( Some fine antiques from the Saudi embassy, at the K-State Union exhibit )
( Banazir at the K-State Union exhibit )

I was invited to the talk by Waleed Al-Jandal, one of my Ph.D. students and a member of the Saudi student association; the president of the association (Mohammed Al-Anazi) is also a Ph.D. student in computer science.

( The prologue: Images of Saudi Arabia )
( The talk: History of Arabia. )
( Follow-up Q&A )

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Banazir

A fun day, a Saturday, a massforge day!

At 10:00, my dad and I picked zurich31 up from the hotel and took him to Seaton Hall. (Nice visit, Sire, and have a good rest of your trip!) Within a few minutes, darana and phawkwood arrived, and we were joined by dextertech, Moises, pvntejaswi, and Andrew. (Good to see you again, D&P!) neonpainter arrived at about 10:30 and gave us an extensive tour of the 3-meter Elumens VisionDome and the heliodon facility that houses it. Meanwhile, I spent about half an hour on the phone with sui_degeneris, going over the barest essentials of our organization chart, our development and animation plan, and my plans for documenting massforge and its original components.

A small group of us went to lunch at the Gold Fork, where a 1:1 ratio of mistakes to dishes appears to be the norm. :-P The food was decent, though, and I got my quarterly lesson in IT acronyms from darana. We talked about potential projects ranging from intelligent systems, HCI, and CG to the information security applications that seem to be the interest of everyone at the table, especially Andrew. I won't tell you whom we all agree seems to be most in need of a functional an security-related overhaul, but if you work at or attend k_state, you may have guessed. (Hint: it isn't CIS. Well, web-wise it is, but you knew that, too.)

Note: masteralida, see how I'm listening to the best band ever?

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Banazir