Whether you need glasses to see far away or close up, almost everyone needs glasses at some point. Even if you only wear yours on days when you can’t get going early enough to put in your contacts, glasses can be stylish. They can reflect your style, your mood, and what makes you unique.

Eyeglass stores have huge markups however, making a simple pair of glasses suddenly cost hundreds of dollars. You don’t have to pay that. There are a number of excellent sites online where, with your prescription and a measurement called pupillary distance (PD), you can order a new pair of glasses and have them delivered for $20-$100. And there are FAR more frame choices available online than you will find at your local store.

The process is simple:

1. Get your eyes checked; you should do this every year regardless. Your Doctor will give you a prescription. Ask them to measure your pupillary distance or follow these instructions to do it yourself.
2. Try on frames to get a feel for the shapes that look good on you. For example I look dorky with frames that go up at the outer corners, but great in very rectangular frames. Get to now what looks good but you DON’T have to buy them yet. If you find a pair you absolutely love, write down any brand or model numbers and take a picture of yourself so that you can remember the details. If you have a pair you love now, then take detailed measurements (in millimeters) to use when selecting other frames.
3. SHOP! Top sites include:
   • 39 dollar glasses
   • Goggles 4U
   • Optical 4 Less
   • EyeBuyDirect
4. The site will walk you through entering your prescription, faxing it to them and choosing options. Personally, I always go for anti-reflective coating (better for looking at a computer), anti-scratch (since I’m rough on them) and UV protection.

At the prices you will find on these sites you can buy a different pair for every day and every mood. Not to mention prescription sunglasses and sport glasses.

Want more information on buying glasses online (and coupon codes for some of the sites above)? See the glassyeyes blog.

Sometimes I get so caught up in writing a paper that I lose sight of the overall structure, particularly if it’s a long one! When I am trying to evaluate the logical sequence and coherence of the arguments in a rough draft, I make an outline of what I have written. I usually include all of the main sections of my paper and the specific arguments under each, but it can be as skeletal or as detailed as you need. This can be helpful even if you already made an outline before you started drafting because the process of recreating your outline from the draft will enable you to a) focus on the overall picture and b) compare what you produced with what you intended to see what works best. I’d love to hear how this method works (or doesn’t) for you!

Arman A. is a new author at Gearfire, and he is currently completing his dissertation in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Western Sydney.

I am close to finishing my dissertation. While going through the challenges it has thrown at me and getting stuck with writing from time to time, I have discovered a technique that helped me to get unstuck.

This technique can be applied to get past difficulties while writing a paragraph, section, or a whole document. If it worked for a dissertation, there is a good chance that it will work for essays, reports, journal articles, and blog posts.

When writing my dissertation I will end up reading from variety of sources, highlighting, and taking notes. After some while I would get frustrated with the amount of information and get to the point when it was difficult to choose what is important to make my point.

One day, out of frustration, I lay down, closed my eyes, relaxed, and asked myself, “What is really important for this section that I want to write about?” Suddenly, I found myself knowing exactly which points were important. I grabbed my clipboard and wrote them down.

Wow, I thought, this was easy! After that, I was able to replicate the same success many times and bettered the technique as time went by. I thought to share with others - so here it goes:

1. Prepare a pen and a clipboard. Load the clipboard with a sheet of paper.

2. Lie down comfortably, place the pen and clipboard next to you, and be aware of their location in order to grab them when ideas start flowing.

3. Close your eyes. Place the tip of your right thumb at the base of your nose, close to the socket of the right eye; place the middle finger at the point between your eyebrows, and the ring finger at the base of the nose, close to the socket of the left eye. This technique activates acupuncture points to make you relaxed and focused. Take three deep breaths and mentally repeat, “I am feeling calm, centred, and present”. Take another five deep breaths.

4. Mentally ask yourself, “What are the important things that I want to write in this paragraph/section/essay/paper?”. Note that you can ask another question, if your situation is different.

5. Wait for answers. In this relaxed and centred state, your mind is usually clear and you will be able to identify what is important to you. I had many Aha! moments in this state. If it doesn’t work, relax a bit more by taking a few more breaths and asking the question again.

6. Write them down. Once you have answers in your head, take the clipboard and pen and write them down. If you feel there is more that you want to explore, close your eyes and repeat steps 4 and 5 until you are satisfied.

When you are satisfied with the answers, tenderly move your joints, open your eyes, and slowly sit up. I found that it is efficient to structure and expand on jotted ideas right after sitting up, when I am still in that thought space.

I would love to hear about tips or techniques that you are using to overcome writer’s block.

Acknowledgements: Acupuncture technique described in Step 3 is a simplified version of Tapas Acupressure Technique.

Reading is critical to success in school, whatever point in your education you are at.  But there are better and worse ways to do it. Here are a few tips on how to read better, retain more and save yourself study time later.

1. Read with a purpose: Beyond “the teacher said so” there is always a reason why you are reading something.  Are you reading it to understand an argument?  Learn facts?  Background material?  Whatever the reason you were assigned that piece of reading, focus on it as you read.  If you aren’t clear on what you are trying to get out of the material, ask the teacher before you read.  Write the purpose at the top of a piece of paper and have it right there.
2. Read with paper and pen: As you read, take notes.  Keep looking at your purpose and write to answer the question or support what you are doing.  If done well you will be able to get everything you need to study for an exam from your notes.  (I do advise doing this by hand, since the act of writing often helps people remember things while the act of typing isn’t wired in the same way.  However if you prefer to do this electronically, go ahead. )
3. Notes should be brief: You are not rewriting the piece.  Think in terms of bullet points or outlines.  Short sentences, indentations, and lists will help you remember what you read AND make sense of it later.
4. Leave white space around your notes:  When you go to class you are going to take these notes with you and use the discussion in class to fill in any blanks.  Because of that you want to have space to add things, draw connections that you may not have made before, and clarify things.  Remember, the goal is to not have to go back to the base reading later, so these notes should be good.

Beyond this, reading more productively depends on what you are reading.  Here are a few examples of common things you might be reading and how to handle them.

• History - Generally you are trying to understand what happened and why it happened.  Therefore you should start by building a timeline of the reading (either across the top of the page or down one side if you need more space).  Then make notes on WHY things happened; what were the goals that one group/person was trying to achieve that caused the next major action to take place.
• Literature - Generally you will be trying to understand both the story itself (who/what/when/where) and the themes that the author is talking about.  For this I suggest dividing your notes into two parts: One that deals with the story itself, the characters (who they were and just a brief sentence about their primary motivations), the time and place of the story and perhaps a bit of information about the author.  The second part should deal with themes and techniques: is this a love story?  War story? Is there a theme of family?  Responsibility?  Greed?  These are the things you will end up writing about on a test, with the items in part one supporting your analysis.  Thinking about it as you read will help later.
• Philosophy - What is the argument that the author is trying to make?  What are their main points?  How do they structure their argument?  Do they address all the questions you had as you read the article?  What other questions would you ask?
• Math - Here you want to focus on pulling out vocabulary and key formula’s that will be used.  Annotating an example (by writing the example down and then making your own arrows and notes to explain each part of the process) can help you study later.
• Science -Background information, key new terms and items, and the properties of different things being studied should be captured.  If there is a life cycle being presented then create a time line that shows all of the stages.

There are lots of other types of reading, but this should give you a good idea of how to start.

Shannon posted last week about highlighting your reading.  I tend to use highlighters primarily for key sentences that either illuminate an important point or that may be useful to quote in a paper later.  If you do, make sure you make a note for yourself that you’ve highlighted the passage so that when you review or write later, you can easily find it again.

The goal here is to make your notes complete, legible and brief enough that when it comes time to study you can do so quickly and easily.  Taking good notes on your reading is the first step to better grades and more productive use of your time.

The first full week of school has come and almost gone, and if your schedule is anything like mine, you already have a long list of reading assignments to complete. One thing that can be discouraging about actually doing all of the coursework on schedule is that when you sit down to study for exams, you have nothing but a blank book staring back at you. This is where strategic color-coded highlighting comes in.

By highlighting key points in the material, you will have visual clues guiding your revision come exam time. And even if you like to take notes or make summaries of reading assignments, I find going through an entire chapter or article first, highlighting along the way, helps point out what is worth putting in your notebook, and what is not. A page marked entirely in yellow, of course, is no more helpful than the blank one when it comes to revision. What you need are immediate visual clues and that’s why I have devised this color-coded system.

Yellow → Highlight in yellow important points, facts, examples etc.

Pink → Use pink (or orange) to denote material that is even more important than what’s in yellow. For example, sentences that summarize sections, that explain the significance of the section, or provide definitions. (You may be really thankful for the two-level highlighting if you only have time for a bare bones revision.)

Blue → Reserve blue for words that will subsequently be defined (and then put their definitions in pink), titles or special terms.

Green → Mark in green dates, names or places that you will need to remember. Green can also be used for formulas.

Purple → If the material contains any rules, use the boldness of purple to set them apart.

That’s it. The two-levels of pink and yellow are not meant to cover everything on the page. Remember that this system is not meant to allow you to highlight more, but just with greater specificity. Adapt the color code to suit your needs or the highlighters you have in stock. This may add a few minutes to your reading schedule, but once you get the hang of your system, you may find it a worthwhile investment!

One overlooked component that has to do with the internet is DNS. DNS stands for Domain Name System. What it does is transform easy to remember domains into their respective server’s IP address so you dont have to remember each website’s IP. Usually, your service provider provides you with DNS, but sometimes those servers can be slow which slows down everything because you cant start loading a page until you know where the page is. OpenDNS is a DNS system that has many servers and they are usually fast. OpenDNS also has a few other services such as it automatically disallows you from visiting sites that are known to be harmful by not giving its IP. This not only prevents you from browsing those sites but it also prevents any applications from sending/receiving information to the site (i.e. Viruses and other malware). OpenDNS also allows you to make shortcuts to websites. For example, if you make “gf” a shortcut to http://gearfire.net, any time you type in gf into the URL bar of any browser (providing that you are using OpenDNS) it will redirect you to http://gearfire.net. Here are a few videos on how to setup OpenDNS.

Setup for your Windows PC:

Setup for your Router

It’s the end of the term, and the difference between a B+ and an A- (or a D+ and a C- for that matter) is often the little things. Here are a few things to do or check that will make help you over that hump.

Please note: None of these tips will make up for a failure to know your content. If you are taking British history but think of General Lee instead of Oliver Cromwell when the Civil War is mentioned, you have a much bigger problem. But as someone who has been in school forever and has also TAUGHT classes, these are things that can tip the scale in favor of the student. Read the rest of this entry »

From grade school though grad school you will be doing presentations at least once a semester. Often these fall toward the end of the term and are your largest project. It is important to make them clear, concise, and memorable. So here are a wide range of tips, tricks, and guidelines to use. Read the rest of this entry »