Watch, Read, Make: LOLing at SEO with Wine!

Watch, Read, Make is our weekly summary of cool things for your weekend.

Watch: David Mitchell, for those who are not familiar with him, is a British comedian who has made a career out of being stodgy. So, his defense of the use of "lol" is fun to watch. He draws the line at emoticons--he is "unfine" with them because they encourage ambiguous writing. Though this is the most appropriate-for-HackCollege episode of the Soapbox that he has up on YouTube, he has many others covering a wide variety of topics. He's also on Peep Show, a sitcom that makes me more physically uncomfortable with awkwardness than does the entirety of The Office. (Also, here he is discussing cheese.)

Read: SEO for Non-Dicks combines my favorite parts of internet writing--a snappy title and good advice! None of the advice is incredibly novel, but it's good to check if you're doing everything you can to attract viewers without being just awful with self-promotion. (If these techniques fail, though, feel free to write about Lady Gaga's Gay Marriage Love-child with Justin Bieber, or whatever.)

Make: Credit for this goes to my lady-bro and fellow writer Laura. If you're living in a dorm or apartment or are simply to lazy to carve a pumpkin, this is the craft for you! Take an empty wine bottle and turn it into a jack-o-lantern. You should have all the supplies that you need except for, perhaps, the spray paint. Charm your hall mates and horrify your RA for under five dollars!

Watch, Read, Make: Maru, Jobs, and Baking Soda Pits

Welcome to Watch, Read, Make, our weekly list of cool things to start off your weekend.

Watch: It's been a bummer couple of days. You know what will cheer you up if you have a soul? Maru the cat sliding into things in boxes, that's what. For an extra dose of fun, play this video in a room with another cat. It freaks them out in ways that are pretty truly excellent. (If you don't have a cat, a drunk roommate substitutes in pretty well.)

Read: This Wired obituary for Steve Jobs is good on a couple of levels. On the surface, it's a well-written, moving tribute to a man who--despite his avid fan base--was harsh. It's great long-form personal journalism. However, even if you don't want to read another tribute to the man, it's worth checking out for the detail that the author lavishes onto how Jobs got to where he is and how he managed to be an abrasive person to work for and still rise to the top. Reading biographies of remarkable people is always an interesting experience, particularly if they're someone who's human enough that you feel a personal connection to them. If nothing else, it will give you an idea of how you, too, can become a computer-company-founding-wunderkind.

Make: Georgia is currently in the middle of that delightful autumnal weather transition where it's too cold to go outside in the morning sans coat, but it's too hot by the middle of the day for my punky hippie deodorant to really be doing much for me. If you are in the same predicament, check out this XOJane piece on DIY deodorants. She concluded that baking soda applied to your pits after a shower does a freaky-good job of warding off odor. Try it and let me know how it goes! (I'm curious if I can quit paying redonculous prices for deodorant, because that shiz is way more expensive than it needs to be.)

Watch, Read, Make: I Can't Breathe Out of My Nose Edition

Watch, Read, Make is our weekly column of cool things to make your weekend awesome.

Watch: So, fun fact, I have the worst head cold I have ever had right now*, and I cannot stop humming songs from the They Might Be Giants kids' album because I am maybe a little zonked out on CVS-brand knockoff Dayquil. I present "I Am a Paleontologist," which is my favorite, because I can substitute "anthropologist" in to the last part and it's great. Substitute in your major and annoy your roommates!

Read: Some of the people on staff** make fun of Laura and me for how much we love our Kindles. But without my Kindle, I would not be able to kill time during my illness with this Mark Bittman Kindle single with so very little inconvenience. (I mean, I could also read it on my laptop, but that's hard when you're lying prone.) For $2.99, you get a lovely manifesto about the importance of cooking and--more important for college audiences--an excellent breakdown of what you should have in your kitchen that is cheap and long-lasting. There are also awesome recipes at the end of the book that will allow you to avoid grocery shopping for weeks at a time while still making you look like you know how to be an adult. Mark Bittman has your back.

Make: When I'm sick, I pretty much just want soft sugary things, which results in me subsisting off of peanut butter smoothies for dinner. Since that's pretty much an awful idea, I present to you instead what I will be making for dinner tonight in order to regain strength/stave off scurvy: pear pancakes. Fancy enough that you won't quite feel like you're doing breakfast for dinner, and full of delicious, nearly-seasonal fruit! Nom.

* Not true, but it sucks pretty bad. 

** Shep.

Watch, Read, Make: Nerds, Turtles, and Pancakes

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Watch, Read, Make is our weekly exploration of cool things to start off the weekend.

Watch: Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are nerd royalty. This is them singing "I Google You," which is about pretty much exactly what you think it would be about. Ten points for songs about embarrassing digital behavior! Twenty points for nerd collaborations!

Watch, Read, Make: Fear, Printed Buildings, and Fancy Glasses

Milton Glaser – on the fear of failure. from Berghs' Exhibition '11 on Vimeo.

Need a laptop? We've teamed up with Intel to bring you the HackCollege Laptop Chooser. If you share the Laptop Chooser, you'll be entered to win a Samsung Series 9 Notebook!

Watch: This video of Milton Glaser talking about the fear of failure and personal success is delightful, if for no reason other than it's personal branding explained by a person who (rightfully) thinks that "brand" is an awful term to apply to people. He cautions against pursuing professional success at the expense of personal development--doing the same single thing over and over is soul-crushing. He takes that as a jumping-off point for talking about fear of failure. The man's advice is good, and you should watch it. (Via Preakness and Argyro.)

Read: This summary of MIT research up at BoingBoing talks about the fact that they're looking into 3D printing as a way to make buildings. The idea is taht 3D printing, rather than traditional large-scale building techniques, opens up the possibility of organic shapes which are otherwise impossible. Personally, I'm just waiting until I can print myself a tree-yurt and call it a day.

Make: Glass etching (making frosted glass in patterns) is one of those crafts that I keep meaning to try. This article, via CRAFT, shows how to do it. Buy some cheap glasses from the dollar store and experiment--if you're feeling some school love, you can use contact paper and etch your school's name onto the glasses (a good gift for parents), and if not you can always etch other designs or phrases (like your name) onto them. Having interesting glassware, rather than plastic cups, is a sure-fire way to feel more like an adult.

Got anything interesting planned for the weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Watch, Read, Make: Louis CK, iPhone Economics, and DIY Shoes

"Watch, Read, Make" is our weekly dose of Friday fun to prepare you for the weekend. This week we have Louis CK, an analysis of the iPhone and the job market, and DIY shoes. Start Friday off with a bang!

Watch: The (very NSFW) footage of Louis CK commemorating Georgia Carlin comes from the Glorious Leader's blog (he in turn got it from the Laughing Squid). The footage is nice in that it's a sweet commemoration of a man that Louis CK clearly admired, but the lesson that he cites at the beginning--to set clear project goals, be unafraid to try something really new, and to quit doing what isn't working--is easily applicable to college life. It's also valuable for the honesty that Louis CK displays when talking about how scary it can be to really try something new. His act sucked for 15 years, and he still didn't want to toss it out. The dynamic is the same as a biology major who hates his program but is scared to move to English. However, it was only after Louis CK made the switch that he began to experience real professional success. It's something to keep in mind when you're thinking about your own academic future.

Read: This post on why the iPhone isn't creating jobs in America is fascinating and depressing in one fell swoop. Part of the issue that the study authors raise is that shifting production to the US would lower Apple's profit margin on each phone to 50%, rather than 65%--depressing, but not surprising. Taken with this piece, which traces the sourcing of Kindle components, a less-discussed issue is raised: even if either company wanted to source production in the US, the US doesn't have the manufacturing industry to build the electronic components the devices need. The comments on the first post raise the issue of R&D costs not being factored in to the original 65% profit margin statistic, and the arguments for and against the validity of the number which follow are really worth a read.

Make: I am obsessed with this one-piece shoe pattern. Hackers come up with all kinds of interesting soft circuit work, but I so rarely see people making their own shoes. If you've got a hankering for cobbling some up this weekend, snap a picture and send it to us! Until then, I'm going to stick to designing HackCollege shirts (coming soon--get excited).

Got any other things that have you excited this weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Watch, Read, Make: Newscasters, Anteaters, and Zucchini

Need a laptop? We've teamed up with Intel to bring you the HackCollege Laptop Chooser. If you share the Laptop Chooser, you'll be entered to win a Samsung Series 9 Notebook!

It's Friday! Time for weekend content fun. This week we've got a Google interview of Anderson Cooper, an anteater gif with spirit, and cake you can make in the microwave. Friday just got excellent.

Watch: This interview with Anderson Cooper (via the Huffington Post) at the Googleplex is really fascinating. In part, he's just an engaging speaker--the man has seen a lot of things--but his focus on just going out and doing what seems interesting is really valuable for a college audience. If you're feeling like your school lacks an emphasis on real-world application of what you're learning, listen to his comments about Yale. He feels the same way, and as a result, he went out into war zones and started shooting news stories after graduation because it seemed like it would be interesting. When he speaks about his career trajectory, it certainly seems like he followed the small, go-nowhere project ethic in order to become a well-regarded newscaster.

Read: This Reddit thread of gifs which make people laugh is pretty much the best thing ever. My personal favorite is the anteater. I cannot stop laughing. If you're having a less-than-stellar day, this will cheer you up.

Make: You know what's better than vegetables? Cake. You know what's even better than cake? Cake that has secret vegetables in it so you don't die of malnutrition. You know what's even better than secred malnutrition cake? Secret malnutrition cake that you can make in the microwave. Go forth and produce, readers!

Watch, Read, Make: Muppets, Money, and Beer

Welcome back to another edition of Watch, Read, Make. This one's special, because I'm back in school now (boo/yay). This week, we've got Alice Cooper dancing around like Satan with the Muppets, a breakdown of how one freelance blogger makes a living without a regular job-job, and a way to reuse your empties in order to heat up some water (science!). Check 'em out and keep yourself busy this weekend.

Watch: You know how I know the past was sometimes much better than the present? Because in the past, apparently Alice Cooper could go on the Muppets, sing "School's Out for Summer," and everyone was just okay with that. Also delightful is the fact that Alice Cooper is some sort of unidentifiable goth clown and is doing a conga line with the Muppets while wearing a red leotard devil costume. This clip almost compensates for class. Almost.

Read: Are you interested in making money on the internet as a self-employed person? (Of course you are, you web 2.0-er!) Then read Dear Professional Blogger: How Do You Make Money? It's a good outline of the upsides of self-employment (getting to do work you're engaged in, not having to deal with office politics, and--in that particular author's case--being able to travel regularly), while still making it clear that part of how you stay solvent as a freelancer is working all the time (something that Chuck Wendig, also a professional freelancer, is clear about). In general, posts from people that really specifically break down how their money is earned and spent are rare--the whole series of posts that that author links to in the original post are worth checking out if you're at all interested in personal finance.

Make: This solar water heater made out of beer bottles (followed by several variants on the design) is delightful in every way. At least two of the versions of the water heater on the linked page appear to be do-able with pretty common supplies. If you've living anywhere where hot water is at a premium and/or you enjoy making things out of the remnants of your drinking, try making one. Impress your friends!