4 things to do before starting University

So you have sorted out all the paper work, got yourself some digs and enrolled with the University of your Choice “I know right lol”. And your nervous and your worried that your other class chums will know more then you, they undoubtedly will, but don’t worry you are all there to learn.

You have been using the web now for years, you think you know how to use it that you have learnt everything there is to know, but the world wide web is a lot bigger than that, there are so many resources out there that you may have even heard of but never understood, for this blog post I will focus on them with what you probably didn’t know about.

Google Advanced Operators, you have used Google before but there are things you don’t know Advanced Operators is probably one of them. They allow you to refine your searching among other things, read all about it hear. And remember Google before you speak.

Join a forum, you may be in a casual user forum, but there are better ones for instance I’m studying computer science, so I found an old school hacker site not one of them full of skids but full of UNIX hackers and coders “underground-systems.org”. Find one for yourself they are in all topics.

Get Stumbleupon, Stumbleupon is a social recommendation engine it is the best tool for casual research into any topic, other social bookmarking tools exist but Stumbleupon allows you to Stumble through all sorts of topics vary fast, I have probably learnt a lot form this tool.

Get organized use Thunderbird with a calendar extension Lightning it keeps all emails and events in one place and helps a lot, if you haven’t already got Firefox “Get Firefox” not IE ,Opera or Google chrome get Firefox there are so many user extensions that will help you like reed it later and bookmark organisers that you will not know what you did without it.

And have a look at this for more thing to do.

http://kevins-uni.blogspot.com/2010/09/free-text-books-for-university.html

Tips for freshman

I have been asked what tips I could give to new undergrads at university, with more and more muggings and attacks on students what precautions should be taken, so I’m going to use the post to spread some good old fear uncertainty and doubt.

Students are perceived buy some as rich and elites, money is spent on student flats that was intended to be spend on regenerating the area and local economy, In short they all hate you.

Never wear an ID card under any circumstances, the ID card is like a beacon attracting the assailant to you. Lots of universities are enforcing the use of lanyards it is a government led initiative, it’s intended to protect the more vulnerable students, and it is a shame that it has the opposite effect of protecting students.

Get a muggers wallet, a mugger’s wallet is a wallet that you don’t mind losing, it should contain some change, some old reseats an ID card that you don’t mind losing library card etc. or perhaps an out of date credit card.

Make a Mugger's Wallet

Tell no one you are a student, student areas are usually quite deprived areas, the local counsel usually use the students to regenerate a deprived area, how they think students with their complete lack of funds and general hygiene issues could regenerate an area, Either way they all hate you.

Do what a mugger says, there are ways of you getting the money back from the university and hole department set up to help you don’t risk your life over noting.

An Eventful Weekend

Well it’s been an eventful Weekend, not only have I had the most popular blog post so far on the hack o blog with over 16,000 unique visitors my two posts about 4Chan, one basically about a piece of cardboard, I have found my new favorite social bookmarking site, at the moment I mostly just used Stumbleupon, but I’m trying to find in to more social venues.

Reddit is my new favorite, the open source geek community driven web site, what I like about it, the community is engaging and bring good quality discussion to the table about a wide range of topics, most are liberal IT Geeks, but you do have the Geeket and the crazed nut job, I’m not 100% sure what I like about Reddit but I know I do. From the simple design to the developers speaking frank and telling the community exactly what is going on , and not fishing for moronic hart warming stores ( I’m looking at you Stumbleupon FaceBook) It’s a no frills approach to social bookmarking , I may be late in this game but I love it. My user-name is TheSkyNet so send me a message on Reddit.