Sunday, 1 April 2012
10 tips to lower your student costs.
Written for students, tightfisted or otherwise...
After 11 tips on getting the most value for your PhD, here's 10 easy ways to reduce select costs in your student budget. If, like me, your grant barely covered your living expenses; your part-time pay always arrives too little, too late; and everyone confuses you with a social worker holding a "will work for nothing" placard, it's time to make like Tony and fight back. So, I'm kick-starting celebrations of "National Tighfisted Students Day" with a list of all the low-cost options cash-strapped students should take full advantage of:
1. Get recharged.
I'm not promoting squatting close to the campus and stealing from its electrical supply, but you should at least ensure that you your laptop, mobile phone and all else electrical and portable gets recharged at your campus, daily. Frankly, if it's good enough for the well-paid domestic worker to do at Mom's, it's good enough for us low/no- income scholars. And with the way local electrical prices are rising, it may make the difference between that hot date happening at the Wimpy... or, heaven forbid, Engen corner bakery {that's at year end, of course!}
2. Cheap, but cheerful food.
Eating off campus is like traveling around the EU and choosing to eat in its most expensive country, Switzerland. Just plain stupid; who wants to feel guilty about pooing R 500 down a loo? Fortunately, you're not going to spend even a twentieth of that as you take a long walk around your sprawling university campus to find out where the best subsidized food and drink is.
4. Market your University, for less.
Yes, you can declare your allegiance satorially, and be cheap at the same time; freshers' week is not the best time to buy University clothing for less... please contain yourself until year-end exams; prices tank as stock is cleared and you score.
5. Save on textbooks.
It may be convenient to buy all your textbooks at the local bookshop, but it's expensive. "Time is money" and since you've probably got a lot of the former, you should dispose it by sourcing your textbooks from less expensive sources, including; your campus' second-hand book store, noticeboards and online (simply ordering new textbooks online can save you stacks). You should also see what's available under open educational resources; such as free course materials, and check-out your libraries.
6. Free computer internet access.
If you live in the developing world, a nice perk of University life is internet access at speeds that are faster {at the very least in theory} than many entry-level subscribers get outside the Ivory Tower. Plus, your available download sizes are probably larger, too.
7. Free entertainment.
As all study and no play makes for a dull student life, it's important to take advantage of the free entertainment you can. Fortunately, you are in the right place; plenty of bandwidth, many "academic" servers and loads of time for techies to crack on, means that free entertainment (via peer to peer, intranets and other services) is easy to obtain; you just need to know who to ask... Of course, copyright infringement is not endorsed by me, your academic institution or your country's laws. So, understand its consequences. If its scary, you can always take out music and films from your university library...
8. Free condoms.
Speaking of risks, it's not funny to pay a hundred bucks for that Contempo Rough Riders or Durex Natural Feeling Lubricated box, when you can get free condoms @ your local university toilet? Since they are no longer stapled onto flyers, nor come in Chinese sizes, you can be confident that they will work as well as the ones you previously paid for (you know, 98 times out of 100, IF perfectly used).
9. Student card freebies.
11. Free water.
While it's unlikely to see the sharp price rises like electricity, it's always useful to fill up your water bottle at the start of the day and do a number two at its end.
I hope that this has helped you gain a few new ideas to cut down on your student expenses. Please use the comment box below to suggest any others (especially those relevant to South African students)? Ta muchus.
P.S. And if you need more, there are 50 tips on moneysavingstudent.com; mostly geared for those in the US. I could not Google anything for ZA locals, so this is my contribution!
After 11 tips on getting the most value for your PhD, here's 10 easy ways to reduce select costs in your student budget. If, like me, your grant barely covered your living expenses; your part-time pay always arrives too little, too late; and everyone confuses you with a social worker holding a "will work for nothing" placard, it's time to make like Tony and fight back. So, I'm kick-starting celebrations of "National Tighfisted Students Day" with a list of all the low-cost options cash-strapped students should take full advantage of:
1. Get recharged.
I'm not promoting squatting close to the campus and stealing from its electrical supply, but you should at least ensure that you your laptop, mobile phone and all else electrical and portable gets recharged at your campus, daily. Frankly, if it's good enough for the well-paid domestic worker to do at Mom's, it's good enough for us low/no- income scholars. And with the way local electrical prices are rising, it may make the difference between that hot date happening at the Wimpy... or, heaven forbid, Engen corner bakery {that's at year end, of course!}
2. Cheap, but cheerful food.
Eating off campus is like traveling around the EU and choosing to eat in its most expensive country, Switzerland. Just plain stupid; who wants to feel guilty about pooing R 500 down a loo? Fortunately, you're not going to spend even a twentieth of that as you take a long walk around your sprawling university campus to find out where the best subsidized food and drink is.
3. "Free" lunch, coffee and tea.
The person who says "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (or TANSTAAFL) is a smart economist. YOU can enjoy a few free lunches at no financial expense, if you try hard enough. Whether it's an important donor's talk, an open conference or a university workshop open to the public, you can find events where you'll spend your time, but leave with a full tummy and wallet, too. You can also find places where coffee and tea is free; such as student information office or research area. So, hunt these down to enjoy the "free" benefits of you student fee and VAT contributions.
4. Market your University, for less.
Yes, you can declare your allegiance satorially, and be cheap at the same time; freshers' week is not the best time to buy University clothing for less... please contain yourself until year-end exams; prices tank as stock is cleared and you score.
5. Save on textbooks.
It may be convenient to buy all your textbooks at the local bookshop, but it's expensive. "Time is money" and since you've probably got a lot of the former, you should dispose it by sourcing your textbooks from less expensive sources, including; your campus' second-hand book store, noticeboards and online (simply ordering new textbooks online can save you stacks). You should also see what's available under open educational resources; such as free course materials, and check-out your libraries.
6. Free computer internet access.
If you live in the developing world, a nice perk of University life is internet access at speeds that are faster {at the very least in theory} than many entry-level subscribers get outside the Ivory Tower. Plus, your available download sizes are probably larger, too.
7. Free entertainment.
As all study and no play makes for a dull student life, it's important to take advantage of the free entertainment you can. Fortunately, you are in the right place; plenty of bandwidth, many "academic" servers and loads of time for techies to crack on, means that free entertainment (via peer to peer, intranets and other services) is easy to obtain; you just need to know who to ask... Of course, copyright infringement is not endorsed by me, your academic institution or your country's laws. So, understand its consequences. If its scary, you can always take out music and films from your university library...
8. Free condoms.
Speaking of risks, it's not funny to pay a hundred bucks for that Contempo Rough Riders or Durex Natural Feeling Lubricated box, when you can get free condoms @ your local university toilet? Since they are no longer stapled onto flyers, nor come in Chinese sizes, you can be confident that they will work as well as the ones you previously paid for (you know, 98 times out of 100, IF perfectly used).
9. Student card freebies.
If you absolutely have to buy something, be pro-active and find out whether you get a student discount. It never hurts to ask. Just keep flashing your student card for a bit more credibility.
10. Free transport.
Save your travel money; use your university's buses or vans when traveling from campus to campus, or places nearby...10. Free transport.
11. Free water.
While it's unlikely to see the sharp price rises like electricity, it's always useful to fill up your water bottle at the start of the day and do a number two at its end.
I hope that this has helped you gain a few new ideas to cut down on your student expenses. Please use the comment box below to suggest any others (especially those relevant to South African students)? Ta muchus.
P.S. And if you need more, there are 50 tips on moneysavingstudent.com; mostly geared for those in the US. I could not Google anything for ZA locals, so this is my contribution!
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Four NVivo 9 tips to save you from trouble, and one from worry.
Written to save NVivo 9 users some trouble and worries.
I've been working with NVivo 9 for almost a year now and here are four important tips on what to do (and avoid). Plus a fifth on what not to worry about:
1. Work on your files locally, not via a network.
Although I was told this at an NVivo workshop last year, I proceeded to ignore it as working off a project file from the local area network folder seemed not to present any problems; it was responsive and saved me the time of backing up from my local drive. That was all good-and-well until I lost a whole day's work, because the file became corrupt! What caused this, I do not know: I suspect an automated Time Machine backup ran and NVivo subsequently froze. After restarting it, the file would not open and viewing the file's information showed it had shifted from being 180 MB big to 0 KB; not a good sign :(. I now only work locally and backup to the LAN at the end of each workday. Although this means adding an extra few minutes to my schedule, I can be confident of not losing nine hours!
2. If you work via a network, you can also expect big problems if you shut down your computer without closing NVivo properly.
Just in case the thought of losing your entire day's work won't persuade you, how about not being able to work on your file for the rest of the day?! When adding external speakers, I switched my Mac off by mistake. DOH! I was then unable to open the file off the network as I kept getting a message that it was "already in use". I then tried everything I could to circumvent this problem, to no avail (I was blocked from copying the file to another location as it's "in-use"; logging out of the LAN software; re-mapping the drive... even the old restart everything fail-safe failed.) So, the moral of the story is not to work off the network; if your computer's power shuts down unexpectedly, you may find it impossible to work on the same project file that day...
3. Set all automated tasks to run outside your NVivo sessions.
As an NVivo user on Mac, I must run NVivo 9 on Windows 7 above Parallels over MacOSX. And if the computer processing resources available to any one of these fails, NVivo sputters and does not work optimally. To limit this danger, I take these preventative measures:
4. Save a new version of your file each day.
It's a good practice to change your filename for each day. In my case, I simply change the daily date I type in the filename; i.e. "17 Mar 2012 ICT Access and Use UCT". I then backup the file to the relevant project month folder on the network. This ensures that I have the a backup record and can easily show the progress on the work I'm paid by the hour to do. It is also useful when working with other people on the same project file; for example, being a fallback just in case certain attributes are not imported.
5. Don't be afraid to import many, large video files as internal source.
If you want full coding functionality, you should always import files as internal sources, not as externals. Originally, I thought that importing a file as internal source automatically meant that the video was saved into the NVivo file itself. So, I thought I must limit myself to only importing the most interesting videos as internal source. However, through experimentation, I soon learnt that one could use the 62-bit version to import files much larger than NVivo 9's guidelines stated AND many of them (see the screengrab below), without the project file's size growing substantially.
The NVivo file above is just 170 MB in size; you don't have to take my word for it, see below.
As long as the location of the source video remains the same, there are no issues. Now, since the maximum file size of an NVivo project is reportedly 2 GB, I can add many, many more video interviews as internal source. So, with a nod to QSR International's Australian pedigree, it's a happy case of "No worries, mate!"
So, those are the most important tips I have learnt and if you have other ones to share, feel free to submit them via the comments box below, thanks.
As an NVivo user on Mac, I must run NVivo 9 on Windows 7 above Parallels over MacOSX. And if the computer processing resources available to any one of these fails, NVivo sputters and does not work optimally. To limit this danger, I take these preventative measures:
- I ensure that all the computers' backups and software updates (PC and Mac) either run outside my work hours or must be manually activated.
- I do not run more than three software packages simultaneously.
- I run NVivo in full screen (not Coherence) mode in Parallels almost all the time, so there's no temptation to run several Mac and PC applications simultaneously.
4. Save a new version of your file each day.
It's a good practice to change your filename for each day. In my case, I simply change the daily date I type in the filename; i.e. "17 Mar 2012 ICT Access and Use UCT". I then backup the file to the relevant project month folder on the network. This ensures that I have the a backup record and can easily show the progress on the work I'm paid by the hour to do. It is also useful when working with other people on the same project file; for example, being a fallback just in case certain attributes are not imported.
5. Don't be afraid to import many, large video files as internal source.
If you want full coding functionality, you should always import files as internal sources, not as externals. Originally, I thought that importing a file as internal source automatically meant that the video was saved into the NVivo file itself. So, I thought I must limit myself to only importing the most interesting videos as internal source. However, through experimentation, I soon learnt that one could use the 62-bit version to import files much larger than NVivo 9's guidelines stated AND many of them (see the screengrab below), without the project file's size growing substantially.
 |
| Screengrab of ICT Access and Use video interview imports (17 March 2012) |
As long as the location of the source video remains the same, there are no issues. Now, since the maximum file size of an NVivo project is reportedly 2 GB, I can add many, many more video interviews as internal source. So, with a nod to QSR International's Australian pedigree, it's a happy case of "No worries, mate!"
So, those are the most important tips I have learnt and if you have other ones to share, feel free to submit them via the comments box below, thanks.
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