5 Tips to improve your concentration

From flickr user: jaded oneWe all know that, especially after the night before, that it is hard to keep your head up and pay attention to the lecturer. This is also similar when you are trying to write a last minute essay. As a result of me failing to this, I started looking for ways to improve my concentration, to get things done with out going into a daze about what sandwich I would take to a desert island (humous, lettuce, cucumber and tomato btw). The best way was an acronym for FOCUS, with each letter standing for a technique.

F = Five More Rule, if your ever tempted to give up during anything, just say five more. This could be 5 more minutes, paragraphs, questions.

O = One Think At a Time, only concentrate on doing one task at a time put all the others task's you need to do out of your head.

C = Conquer Procrastination, when you feel like putting sometihng off ask yourself "Do I have to do this? Do I want it done so it's not on my mind? Will it be any easier later?".

U = Use Your Hands as Blinkers, your eyes pick up on alot of things at once that may distract you, use your hands to get rid of these when reading a book or screen.

S = See As If For the First or Last Time, next time you are in a lecture day dreaming just look around the room and appreciate all the things around you. This will help you to stop wasting time and concentrate on the task at hand.

For more information on this read Sam Horn's article HERE

Getting together a group presentation using the internet

From flickr user: Andrew*I discovered after having to get together a presentation over the holidays with a number of group members, that there are a number of useful tools which could be used to improve the productivity of creating a presentation over the internet. Not only for the communication between members but also helping with a collabrative effort for creating the presenation.

Google Docs

This is a very useful as you can have multiple people accessing one document at a time over the internet. This means you don't all have to be in the same place as you are creating it. Creating a more coherent flow between the different work with in the presenation. So as the work is put into the presentation everyone reads it and edits it as they see fit. Also it allows the creation of presentations that can be exported into a variety of formats when the times come to give it.

Skype

Combining this with Google docs is very good as you can be discussing the information you are adding and editing while you are doing it over Google docs. Allowing feedback from all members of the group when adding content to the presentation, this may add to the overall quality of the presentation. Furthermore it will flow a lot better as everyone is working on it at the same time as opposed to a number of sections that have been 'glued' together.

Google Calendar

Another useful web app from google is their online calendar, you can utilise this to sync the item's with other users. This can then be used for you all to meet targets for your sections of the presentation. Allowing you to check what should be done with what is contained in the doc, if a member has failed to do their part you can contact them so it is done ASAP.

Just remember though even with all these tools after the presentation is created you will still need to get together in the flesh to practise it all up, even if you have the document completely polished. Please leave a comment with any other useful tools you have discovered for this purpose.

Credit Crunch Money Tips

Image credit: Flickr user René EhrhardtIf you haven’t been living under a rock recently you will know about the credit crunch. I don’t want to get into why because I honestly don’t know, but I do know some tips to help you save money and use it wiser.

Blyk Sim Card:

Blyk is a network operator for 16-24 year olds. Each month you receive 217 texts and 43 minutes free! You don’t have to even top-up to have them. The only catch as it were is to make sure you leave your phone on during daytime to receive MMS adverts. Now before thinking no thanks I don’t fancy ads all day, they are relevant to your interests asked on sign up and I never seem to get more than 2 or 3 max a day. As you must be able to receive this messages a colour phone with MMS capabilities is required with no simlock to accept the Blyk sim card.

NUS Extra:

This seems to be a standard one but still sometimes overlooked. NUS Extra card costs £10 but will get you discount at many places such as JJB, Superdrug, Warehouse and Amazon.com. It even gets you free fries when you buy a Big Mac and McDonalds. There are lots more discounts, check out the site to see if it could benefit you.

16-25 Railcard:

For any students who travel by train often this is a must. The 16-25 railcard costs £24 and you will save 1/3 on rail fares. If it’s cruising up and down the country visiting your mates or just popping home to the parents now and again this is the card to have.

 Did you know HMV vouchers can be used in Watersone’s?

Any vouchers you received for Christmas or birthdays could be used on books for your course.

 If you find yourself spending lots on shopping then maybe you should start making a shopping list before you set off. Before going to the shops check your cupboards, fridge, freezer wherever you keep your food and anything else you need and ask yourself what you actually need. This avoids impulse purchasing of products that may take your fancy as you wander around. Also have you tried the stores own brand products? I admit that sometimes the cheaper own brand products are disgusting but most of them are fine. Try them out as you may save yourself a bit.

Another way of saving a bit of money is to turn off those lights! Well more specifically any electrical items you leave on. Now I assure you this isn’t a save the planet speech but a save the pennies one. Anything left on standby or any lights switch them off and rejoice in the knowledge you are not wasting money.

Finally if you interested in an overview of your money situation in university go to www.studentcalculator.org.uk. This site can shows your budget, how much you have spent and the dreaded how much you need to pay back on loans!

Doing Work/Revision while others drink

From flickr user: DjenanWith it coming up to exam times there is always a time where you have left some revision or general work to the last minute and you need to do for the next day. The only problem you have is that all your other house/flat mates are taking this opportunity to get as drunk and rowdy as they can, making them set on distracting you at any available opportunity. Here are a few ways it which you can try and keep your concentration so you can get your work done and join them ASAP!!

1. Seems obvious but keep your door locked so that no one can get into your room, it is quite remarkable how many times a drunk person will come to you as the only sober one with a ridiculous question.

2. Put your headphones on so you can hear no outside noise, the first you hear the battle cries of drunken antics you will be out of that seat in a shot.

3. Another tip for general concentration is to go for more instrumental music as if there are word you are obliged to sing along.

4. Before you start make sure you have already had plenty to eat and drink, taking some more liquids into your room with you for when you are hard at work. This will mean at no point while you are working you will need to leave and enter the kitchen where the others are drinking saving you from being distracted by them and whatever drinking game they are playing.

5. If you are having a bit of a mental block during the work then take a break and do a little bit of exercise, as a result after the exercise is done you will find it alot easier to concentrate and hopefully get alot of the important work/revision done.

If you have anymore suggestions don't hesistate to write them in the comments section.

Getting past network restriction

Now I have first hand experienced the feeling of getting to uni and (after all the commotion of freshers week has calmed down) hoping for some super fast downloads but being greeted by your network only allowing access for certain services. These range from online gaming to simplFrom flickr user: nobleIgnoblee webcam services on msn! So for this reason I set about a way to bypass this.

Firstly there are two pieces if software that we used for this:

FreeCap

Your Freedom

In order to set up Your Freedom correctly you first you need to sign up for an account which can be done here. Then after installing it you will be greeted by a useful setup wizard. The first information that you will need is the address of your university's proxy server, this is usually found on your university's website, for example Cardiff University's is http://resicache.cf.ac.uk and the port number should be entered as 8080. After it will search for your freedom servers for you to tunnel with, it is always the best idea to choose the server which is closest to you. It will test this server to see if it is working then you just type in your account detail and you are good to go. Just click "Start Connection."

After Your Freedom is setup open up freecap, go to file>settings and under default proxy have the server name as 'LOCALHOST' and the port number as 1080, save the settings and exit them. After this has been set-up add which specific application you would like to bypass the proxy to the free cap list using the 'add application' option. After this is done run the application and it should be running how it should if there were no restrictions.

For issues with freecap visit this page.
If there are any issue with your freedom this page is helpful.

These also contain detailed setup instructions on how to get them working. There are other software that can be used such as sockcap, proxycap and http tunnel but we found the first two worked best.