Embrace Capsule Wardrobes for Easier Back-to-School Packing

Look: a semester's worth of clothes! Image courtesy of Flickr user Ann-Christin Karlén Gramming. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.I'm about to start my least-favorite yearly process: packing all of my belongings into some somewhat abused luggage and hauling it to campus in order to move into campus housing. Because I am not as minimalist as Kelly, this is kind of a pain. My biggest packing issue is clothing--I like vintage clothing, which is difficult to pack well without planning. So, to cut down on the number of clothes that I'm hauling to campus, I've devised some capsule wardrobes.

For the uninitiated, capsule wardrobes are a set of clothes carefully planned to be worn for a maximum number of outfits with a minimal number of pieces. Generally, they're favored by travelers as a way to cut down when packing. However, with some adjustments, the capsule wardrobe mindset works really well for people with limited closet space who want to make packing easier (ie, college students--particularly those  thinking of going abroad). Here are the principles to keep in mind when packing:

Build for the life you actually have: This is the biggest downfall for a lot of college students who overpack--they stuff everything they own into their bag, on the off-chance that they might need to go to a black tie dinner at some point during freshman year. As a student, you will probably spend 90% of your time doing whatever it is that you normally do (presumably attending class and going out). Pack for that 90%. If you're not going to work out regularly, don't pack tons of tennis shoes and gym shorts. If you don't have an office job yet, minimize the number of suits you pack if you pack any at all. If there really is something that you didn't cover with your clothes, college is a uniquely good place to fix it: you will have friends whose clothes you can borrow. If in doubt, don't pack it.

Pick a color scheme: This is a tip for both packing and further wardrobe building. Really think about the colors that you're picking. If the one pair of dress shoes you take with you is brown, that will limit what color of formal shirts you can wear; keep that in mind when you pack. In my case, I buy almost exclusively red and brown shoes, cool-toned shirts, and brown or navy bottoms. I don't really own any black clothes, and it means that most of my clothes already match each other. Because I am phenomenally lazy, this is awesome! With a little bit of forethought, you can make it so all of your clothes go with the others. If you want to get an overview of what colors you mostly own, arrange your clothes by color in the closet or take photos of your items and look at the thumbnails in a group. It will become clear.

Avoid duplicates: Really think about what function individual pieces of clothing serve. If you have two shirts, both of which you only wear to church (which you attend twice a year), you probably only need to pack one of the shirts. If you have a lot of denim and want to save space, try packing only one pair of each kind of jean as is appropriate for your life--you probably only need one pair of going-out jeans. Some clothes will need duplicates (boot cut jeans, if you wear them a lot, are a likely candidate), but you want them to be intentionally done.

What your capsule wardrobe will look like will depend entirely on what your interests are and what your life at college is like. However, the principles of capsule packing can be applied to ollege wardrobes in order to structure a cohesive, and easy-to-manage collection of clothing. With this, dressing gets easier, freeing you up for more important things, like sleep.

For more good, basic clothing outfitting advice, check out this post from our friends at CollegeInfoGeek.

Do you have an intentionally-designed wardrobe? Let us know in the comments how you designed it and what your essential items are!

Amazon Student Launches iPhone App for Textbooks and More

Amazon Student - now on the iPhone. Image is licensed under fair use.Amazon Student - the student imprint of Amazon.com - has launched its iPhone application, separate from Amazon.com's own application and focusing specifically on Amazon Student's educational benefits like trading in and buying textbooks and creating wish lists to send to family and friends. 

There are similar features to Amazon.com's main application like barcode scanning and price checking. But the trade-in option, allowing students to use Amazon.com as a textbook buyback service separates it from the rest. Not only are used textbooks available for 90% off the retail listed price, Amazon will allow you to trade in your old books for an Amazon.com gift card, which is nearly as good as cash with Amazon's supply of nearly everything. I tested the app out on my iTouch and it ran smoothly, but us Android users are just going to have to wait for now.

This upcoming semester, Amazon has become my primary textbook retailer through Used Textbook retailers that fulfill shipping through Amazon Prime. Students are entitled to six free months of Amazon Prime through Amazon Student, which grants free two-day shipping and very cheap overnight shipping. Although I didn't buy many textbooks from Amazon last year, Prime saved me when I needed things as random as the magnetic back of a name tag or Adele's latest CD for my mom or an ethernet cable for XBox Live. Students who have used their free Amazon Student benefits can renew for $39/year, $50 cheaper than retail, with the added benefit of Prime Instant Videos. I sincerely recommend it, I know my family will be choosing to renew, and this app just makes my textbook shopping THAT much more convenient.

[TechCrunch]

Not Everyone's a Cheater: How Professors Deal with Plagiarism

How does your school handle allegations of plagiarism? Image courtesy of Flickr user Hazel Owen. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.This week, the Chronicle published an article by an English professor on how he handles plagiarism in his classes. None of the strategies are groundbreaking--he requires multiple drafts of papers so he sees progress, addresses plagiarism on the first day of class and in his syllabus, and tries to craft assignments which are difficult to cheat on (such as essays on more obscure texts). 

The author has also altered his outlook on cheating as a systematic problem: though he has students who cheat, the author tries not to punish those who are honest in his attempt to find the plagiarists, and he doesn't stress unduly about plagiarist he did not catch. He does not use anti-plagiarism software, because he feels it makes students all feel like cheaters, and it isn't particularly effective.

There's a lot of good points in the article, but the one that I want to talk about here is the idea of crafting assignments that cannot be cheated on or plagiarized. Obviously, students shouldn't cheat--it's unfair for everyone else involved, and dishonest and annoying. And here we are making a distinction between unintentional plagiarists (for whom there needs to be a better-written and better-explained honor code than currently exists at most institutions) and intentional ones (cheaters). That being said, in my experience, the assignments that are potentially the easiest to cheat on are also those that require the least amount of critical thinking fromt the student. The assignments exist in the worst case in order to provide busywork, and in the best case as an unfortunately easy-to-game way for professors to teach more students at any one time than can be given in-depth assignments.

Assignments which require demonstrated critical thinking, long-term work (like multiple drafts), and independent analysis (like essay exams) are the hardest to cheat on or plagiarize without a large monetary investment. Those are also the assignments that are the hardest for professors teaching large lecture sections to craft because of the amount of time it takes to grade. I know personally that as soon as I moved from a school where classes averaged about 20 people to a summer class of 50, I was suddenly presented with many more multiple choice questions, and those lend themselves to cheating far more than free response does. Though students shouldn't cheat regardless of class size, it does seem like institutions that are focused on cramming as many students into a room as possible are going to have worse problems with cheating and plagiarism because the exams and assignments that work in those settings are the easiest for students to cheat on.

Plagiarism is a frustrating problem in part because it has roots in many places: badly-written honor codes, a K-12 system that doesn't teach citation skills well, and courses structured to make cheating easy for those who are so inclined--in addition to some people just wanting to cheat. However, a reasonable approach that doesn't treat all students like cheaters has perhaps been left behind in an anti-plagiarism fervor, and the author's article presents a refreshing take on the problem.

Do you have any experiences with well- or poorly-applied institutional plagarism policies? Let us know in the comments!

Finally! How to Fold a Fitted Sheet

Fitted sheets suck. A lot. Photo courtesy of cogdogblog. Licensed under CC BY-2.0.Let's face the facts. Folding laundry is a drag enough, but man, when it comes to those fitted sheets. They really, really suck. They aren't even a proper shape. They're a blah shape. A non-shape. How can you fold something that is non-shaped?

The answer is by watching this video. It lists and visually demonstrates the steps that you'll need to fold a fitted sheet. Check out the full video over at Lifehacker. Here are the steps as listed: 

1. Take the sheet out of the dryer and shake it.
2. Lay the sheet down with the long side facing you (across your body).
3. Stick your finers into the botton left corner.
4. Take the opposite corner right above it and pull it over the corner in your hand
5. Repeat on the right side. Place your right hand in the bottom right corner, then pull the opposite corner over it. You'll now be holding the corners in each hand.
6. Turn the corners in your left hand over the corners you're holding in the right. Now all four corners will be on your right hand.
7. Lay down this new square and smooth it out.
8. Square off the corners as best you can.
9. Fold into rectangles

 And voila! You have a fitted folded sheet!

[via Lifehacker]

OS Tips - Easily Control your Windows Laptop Hardware with Windows Mobility Center

Easily control all of your Windows laptop's hardware functions with Windows Mobility Center.

Most students spend innumerable hours on their computer, whether getting work done or simply going on Facebook to try to scope out cute classmates. To make that experience more productive and enjoyable, we’re starting a new feature called OS Tips all about tips and tricks to help make your computing lives easier. We’re going to cover all three major operating systems – Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (most likely Ubuntu), so be on the lookout for new installments of this feature regardless of your OS.

Today, we’re kicking things off with a tip for Windows users.

While many Windows laptops feature functional keys to control hardware like sound and turning on/off your wireless card, today's OS Tip highlights a hidden yet useful Windows preference pane. Would you like to be able to control all the functions of your Windows laptop at a glance? Wouldn’t it be handy to easily turn off your wireless to squeeze out that extra bit of battery to save your term paper? Thankfully, the engineers up in Redmond thought of just that when they designed Windows Mobility Center, which is available for all laptops running Vista and up.

There are several ways to access Windows Mobility Center. You can either:

1. Press Windows Key + X.
2. Open Control Panel and double click on Windows Mobility Center.
3. Open the Start Menu, type mblctr.exe and hit enter.

Regardless of your choice, once it’s open, you can control all manner of functions on your laptop. The screenshot above gives you all the basic details - you can control:

• The sound slider
• Your energy profile
• Turn on/off your wireless card
• Manage your displays
• And much more depending on your manufacturer

Another handy feature - if you click on the large icon in the upper left of each box, you can directly access the control panel pane associated with that hardware function. Unfortunately, there’s one last caveat for Desktop users. Sorry, but you can’t access Windows Mobility Center (unless you edit your registry).

So the next time you want to control sound, brightness, or your wireless card, don’t navigate through a bunch of complicated menus. Just fire up Windows Mobility Center and change settings to your heart’s content!

Have you found Windows Mobility Center useful? Are there any additional tips you’ve found with it? Let us know in the comments!

App of the Week - Stream Music, Movies, and Photos to your Gaming Console with PS3 Media Server

PS3 Media Server: It only does everything. Photo by PseudoGil and licensed under CC BY 2.0.On this week's App of the Week, we're reaching out to all our HackCollege gamers. Instead of using your PS3/Xbox 360 to up your Kill/Death ratio in Call of Duty, read about this week's app and unlock the potential of your gaming console as a Media Extender with PS3 Media Server. Ditch watching movies on your laptop and your console’s limited file format support, and impress the dates you bring over to your place with this fantastic application.

Platform Availability: Windows XP and up, Mac OS X 10.5 and up (Intel Macs only), Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.). Windows and Linux require you to install the Java Runtime Environment.

Cost: Free! Find the copy of PS3 Media Server for your operating system here.

What it is: PS3 Media Server is a DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance - Basically a common standard for streaming media) compliant UPnP (Universal Plug and Play - Basically turn it on and it works) Media Server that works with any device that supports the DLNA protocol. For most college students, that means PS3 and Xbox 360 (Yes, even though it's called PS3 Media Server).

Read on to see the entire review!

Click to read more ...

Watch, Read, Make: There's Puppets!

Welcome to another edition of Watch, Read, Make. This week we've got a freaking amazing puppet, news commentary from Russell Brand, and a way to give yourself book writing skillz in the span of a long weekend. School's nearly here, so it's time to make the most of the free time you've got!

Watch: That video above, from this YouTube user (and originally found via BoingBoing) is pretty much the best Portal 2 craft that I've seen. If you check out the BoingBoing link, you can see the creator's design drawings. Given that this is a cosplay hobby project, it's pretty amazing the amount of work she put into it--particularly the time she took to learn how to do the very mechanical movements she's using to puppet the thing. Plus, you know, snarky robot puppets: always delightful.

Read: Russell Brand is sometimes--despite some questionable career choices--really well-spoken (or written) about things. Such is the case in this analysis of the London riots, which neither condones the rioters' actions nor discounts systematic disenfranchisement of people in that part of London. Given that Brand has lived in and around the parts of London that were the sites of the original riots, his insight into them has more weight than, say, Angelina Jolie's. It's also nice for his insight as a former reality TV show host, as it reveals (as one might suspect) that even the hosts sometimes think reality TV is stupid.

Make: Shep's vote for this week's Make item was a frozen jack and coke: make ice cubes out of the coke before you make the drink, and then toss them into the blender with your liquor. (This seems like a lot of work that could be replicated with a coke slushie from Quik Trip and a lack of shame, but that's just me.) Instead, this week's last item is a guide to how to write a book in three days. The linked page is a summary of advice from Michael Moorcock, a man who spent many years working as a pulp writer, churning out sword-and-sorcery fantasy books every three days. His secret to speed (putting in prep work beforehand so he could just churn through the actual writing) is actually good advice for any kind of large written project--including papers. I don't know if it's quite as easy to write a book in three days as Moorcock makes it sound, but I hope at least one of our readers will try it. Let us know how it goes!

Do you have anything that you'll be watching, reading, or making this weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Get Crisp HDTV in a Dorm with Cardboard and Foil

Image courtesy of SquidooGreat news! the NFL season isn't cancelled!

Horrible news! You have to watch it on basic cable provided in your dorm that's split 100 ways.

Though this is a dire (and fuzzy) picture, there's hope. If you want the crisp HD image quality for all the sports and primetime network TV shows you've come to expect at home over the summer, a few cheap materials is all you need to build your own HDTV antenna.

Squidoo has the plans for a basic UHF antenna that requires little more than cardboard, foil, and a few odds and ends from RadioShack. They don't price it out, but it shouldn't cost more than $20. The site even provides a handy PDF guide to help you cut the foil (which acts as the actual antenna) into the most efficient pattern. 

Unfortunately this will probably only work on campuses located near cities with strong over the air digital signals. If positioned correctly though, it should pull in your standard network broadcasts (NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox), along with a few other local channels, or even The CW for you Gossip Girl fans. If you aren't sure what channels are broadcasting nearby, AntennaWeb is a great resource for finding out what's available in your area.

I know you may be thinking about old movies where they adjust rabbit ears behind the TV to improve the image to static ratio, but the U.S. is all digital now, and it's awesome. The picture quality of over the air broadcasts far exceeds HD signals you get from cable or satellite because they aren't compressed, and UHF antennas such as this don't even need to be aimed very precisely.

Did you try this out? Have you used an antenna in the dorms? Let us know in the comments.

[Via Lifehacker]