I had a lot of trouble sleeping last quarter. I would skip morning class sometimes because I was way too tired to get out of bed, then be unable to go to sleep until 2 or 3 AM. Now that I’m at home on winter break, my sleep schedule has returned to a more normal state. My increased energy and well-being during this time piqued my curiosity as to how sleep relates to performance. Here are some tips for optimizing your sleep habits to boost productivity and well-being in college. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week ACE held a joint workshop with the AMA and the University Sales Club. Jeff Lehman, author of The Frugal Millionaires, came and spoke about money management. He wanted to know how millionaires used (or didn’t use) their money. He did a lot of research and interviewing before he wrote the book, which he shared with us.

Quick Background

Mr. Lehman asked millionaires (with a net worth of $1 million or more not including their home) 50 questions to understand their spending habits and what they do differently from an average person that sets them apart and makes them successful. He summarized what he found and shared the important and relevant pieces of information.

How millionaires think differently

• Delayed gratification: If there is something they want, they wait a few months before buying it. If they still want it after waiting, then they know it’s worth buying. The price may have also dropped, like the initial price drop on the first iPhone.
• Live below your means: Just because you can make monthly payments on a Ferrari doesn’t mean you should. Buying less than you are able to allows you to save money and build your wealth.
• Buy appreciating assets: People blow a lot of money on goods that lose value quickly. The example Mr. Lehman mentioned multiple times was purchasing new cars, which lose 40% of their value once you drive them off the lot.

How does this apply to me?

As a college student, I don’t have millions of dollars to mismanage. However, learning good money management principles early will pave the way for financial success. As Mr. Lehman pointed out, many of the millionaires he interviewed were pretty normal people with somewhat but not overly successful jobs who had just been wise with their investments and spending.

The other day I was reading a blog entry from David Cole on the Britannica Blog called Why I Ban Laptops in My Classroom. This article illustrated a point that I comment on constantly. Anytime I have a discussion about studying and learning methods, I always say that students should NEVER bring their laptops to lectures.

Typing on a laptop isn’t nearly as effective as writing information down by hand. Students go into “stenographic mode,” as Cole says, when they type notes. Most college students can type deftly without processing the information they are recording. Think about this comparison: If someone watches a film adaptation of Phantom of the Opera and is asked the name of Phantom a week later, that person may or may be able to recall that fact. However if the same person takes a lead role in a play of the same story, they will instantly tell you that the Phantom’s name is Erik and they will probably remember that fact for the rest of their life. Handwriting notes versus typing them is similar. Physical writing requires that a student think about the topic at hand.

Also, a laptop is a huge distraction. A student with a laptop is tempted to surf the Internet, play Solitaire, chat on IM, play with Photoshop, watch TV and movies, etc. You name it. A piece of paper, on the other hand, offers no entertaining alternative to writing. You can doodle if you want, but even that only serves as a reminder that you should be taking notes. Students have a hard enough time paying attention and trying not to fall asleep without a large, bright screen begging them to do anything but pay attention.

Finally, a laptop is a distraction to the people around the user. If a person is using their laptop below me or next to me, the brightness of the screen encourages me to look at whatever they’re doing, which usually isn’t taking notes. Once I am pulled in, I stop paying attention to confidence intervals and start wondering if anyone left me comments on my Facebook. Even if I can’t directly see a laptop, the sound of typing above and around me is enough to be distracting.

Because of these reasons, I recommend leaving your laptop at home. Your productivity will increase dramatically and you will have to study less because you will remember more from lecture.

Do you bring your laptop to lectures?

I was doing some styling in CSS for a project recently and had an idea for changing the way I write CSS. I have been learning and using CSS for about 2 years. Up until now, I have written CSS in a very straightforward way, only indenting declarations, but never selectors. The end result looks something like this:

p {
  attribute: value;
  attribute: value;
  ...
}

p span {
  attribute: value;
  attribute: value;
  ...
}

Very plain and simple CSS. But I noticed that as my projects become larger and larger, it becomes hard to determine which elements are at the top level and which elements are descendants and if so, what elements they are descendants of. Well-structured HTML (as well as Java, Python, PHP and pretty much every other language) makes use of indenting to easily identify the order of elements.

I wondered if applying these indenting rules to CSS would make it any easier to read. The new CSS file would read like this:

p {
  attribute: value;
  attribute: value;
  ...
}
  p img {
      attribute: value;
      attribute: value;
      ...
  }

  p span {
    attribute: value;
    attribute: value;
    ...
  }

    p span em{
      attribute: value;
      attribute: value;
      ...
    }

Applied to a large file, I think this method makes reading CSS much easier, especially for an outside person looking at the code for the first time.

What about you? What methods, if any, do you use while writing CSS (or other code)?

GetHundos is a startup that has recently gone into beta. GetHundos is a social networking site for college students. Right now it is open exclusively to University of Washington students and their friends. Today, I signed up for this fun service and tested it out. So far it has been pretty humorous and very engaging.

To sign up for the service, you must have a valid University of Washington email address. Registration was quick and painless. No unnecessary data is required, just basic registration information. The interface is easy, intuitive, and looks great.

The main idea of the site is to pit users against each other and see who can come up with the wittiest answer to a question posed by GetHundos in 160 characters or less. An example of a contest is: “How do you know when you are obsessed with Husky football?” Users come up with responses and other users vote up the ones they like and vote down the responses they think are lame. A picture can be uploaded with the response to enhance the message and make it funnier. Whichever entry garners the most votes at the end of the time period nets $100 dollars (hence the name GetHundos). Users also have the options of SuperVoting and Bombing entries, which count as +10 and -10 votes, respectively.

Users can earn “hundos” for entering and winning contests as well. Hundos are like currency and are used to buy more SuperVotes and Bombs at the GetHundos store. They also determine your rank in the GetHundos community. Like any other social network, users can befriend others and grow their network. In addition, users can become Fans or Haters of other people and establish alliances.

GetHundos is a simple but extremely entertaining site for college students. Once it gets bigger and looks beyond the UW campus, GetHundos should be very popular. If you are a UW student you should sign up right now. If you already have, what do you think of the site? What contests have you entered so far? What contests should be posted there?

Find me on GetHundos using the name cyruskazemi

Howcast is a startup company founded by ex-Googlers Jason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Raman. All three worked on Google Video and YouTube before creating Howcast. The site launched on February 6th, 2008 along with an announcement of an $8 million series A funding led by Tudor Investment Group. Howcast provides instructional how-to videos on everything from How To Paint A Wall to How To Pretend You’re A Real New Yorker.

One might wonder why someone would try to create a site based solely on how-to guides when thousands of such videos can be found on YouTube. What sets apart Howcast from the competition (which includes Instructables, Expert Village and 5min in addition to other people YouTube) is the quality of the videos. The majority of the videos on the site so far are actually produced by Howcast’s own studio. Once users register they can suggest new topics and even write up and edit instructions for those topics.

The site also includes a wiki section. I find this especially helpful for instructions that are easier to visualize in my head than to watch in a video (such as How To Do A Kickflip). The wiki section is where users can submit their write ups. If Howcast chooses to make a video out of a certain wiki, they either shoot it in their own studio in New York or pay film students to shoot the footage then Howcast voices it over and makes it pretty.

Revenue is driven by embedded ads in the instructional videos. These ads are much more effective in my opinion. When I watch a video online, I don’t want to wait 15, 30 or 60 seconds to start the video. Placing a small ad at the bottom of the video grabs the user’s attention without being too annoying. It’s similar to driving a car: for some reason it feels more efficient to be moving slowly than to be stuck at a red light before driving off quickly.

Howcast looks promising. It offers a broad range of topics with the potential user involvement of a wiki with the entertainment of online video.

What are some your favorite Howcast how-tos? Do you think Howcast seems like a service you would want to use?

I was working on a project recently and needed to resize a lot of pictures to make them suitable for a standard DV video (720×480). I found a way that Photoshop can resize all the pictures in a certain folder with one command. Granted, this probably isn’t the most time-efficient way to resize a lot of pictures, but I didn’t want to use a second program. Here are the steps:

1. Open the first picture you want to resize
2. Open the Actions palette by clicking Window -> Actions
3. Click the page-turning button left of the garbage can button in the Actions palette
4. Give the new action a name (like Resize Picture)
5. Press the Record button, which is the red circle.
6. Resize the image by clicking Image -> Image Size or Alt + Ctrl + I
7. Save the newly resized image
8. Press the Stop button in the Actions palette

Now you have a new action for resizing pictures. To use it follow these steps:

1. File -> Automate -> Batch
2. Leave Set at Default Actions, set Action to whatever you called your action (mine is Resize Pics)
3. Set Source to Folder, press Choose… and navigate to the folder where your pictures are then check Include All Subfolders
4. Set Destination to Folder, press Choose… to pick where you want the resized pictures to be stored
5. Press OK

You will see Photoshop automatically open and resize each picture. Once no more pictures appear, it is finished. Enjoy!
The original article can be found here.