Caffeine is a necessity of a productive life. For some people, it may be the reason for a productive life. I start every morning with a latte, whether it be from the campus coffee shop or from dad’s espresso machine while I’m at home. And I’m a stuck-up prick when it comes to coffee. But who wouldn’t want a delectable coffee treat every morning?

Espresso is a very finicky liquid; it can spoil easily and needs to be served at the right temperature. My drink of choice, a latte, is made up of (usually) one to three shots of espresso dumped into steamed milk. They only get messed up every one in awhile.

So, I’ve got a little known tip for any hot, espresso-based drink. Because brewed espresso will spoil if left out in the air for more than about 10 seconds (Starbucks says 4, sites will say 30). To avoid this potential spoilage, warm up an ounce or two of milk in the microwave, and immediately after the espresso is done brewing pour the milk in. This mellows the coffee taste well; the bitter taste of espresso apparently means that the espresso has spoiled (news to me). I’ve been using this little trick for about a month now, and it definitely makes a difference. Sure it may be a placebo effect, but I swear it works.

Now you’re coffee tomorrow morning will taste nice and smooth. Happy New Year.

Sorry we haven’t been posting. We hope you’re enjoying your time not thinking about school.

An update:

• Rosario is still without Internet access back home.
• I’m actually (unexpectedly) in RI/MA/NH. One of my close friends suddenly passed away, so I have other obligations for the time being. We’ll resume a regular posting routine soon enough.

In the mean time, be sure to check out the HackCollege Pack and the Best of HackCollege over in the sidebar, if you haven’t already in your holiday boredom, that is.

Take care.

There are probably many topics to post on, but it’s Christmas Eve. Rosario is at home with no Internet connection, and I’m in Eastern Washington on a 56k. And I’m sleepy.

So, in lieu of an interesting, lifehack-eriffic post: Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays.

Christmas is in the air.

I didn’t know at all about Software for Starving Students until it made the front page of digg yesterday. I’m not quite sure why.

It’s an entire downloadable CD full of mostly free (as in beer) software. Party on, Wayne.

Enjoy the Christmas Spirit: Software for Starving Students

Click through for the entire list of programs included.

Read on to your heart’s content »

We were a little skeptical when Daniel from DormItem sent us an email asking if we would take a look at his site. It seems like the college-specific version of craigslist has been tried far too many times. I don’t know if Rosario and I were simultaneously taking large amounts of narcotics, but Daniel is proved us wrong. DormItem is like Facebook’s older, more mature sister: she’ll hook you up with her hot friends if you’ve got money.

Read on to your heart’s content »

So Kelly decided to answer my rhetorical question a few entries ago by arguing that the Internet does not offer free beer. Now, because I love a Google challenge, mixed in with some Digg dexterity, I set out last night to see what I could find.

To begin, there appears to be some confusion with the phrase “free beer”. From Wikipedia:

In hacker slang, gratis is typically referred to as free as in beer while libre is referred to as free as in speech.

Free as in beer refers to things which are available at no monetary cost (like free beer at a party). While one is permitted to use the object (e.g., drink the beer) without payment, one does not necessarily receive any rights (e.g. take the beer home) or ownership. It can be contrasted with the expressions free as in speech, free as in freedom, or free as in rights, which refer to something which is free of restrictions, as in the freedom of speech. One is permitted to use the object, reproduce it, repurpose it, and generally do what one will with it; usually the only restrictions applied are that credit be given to any entity that contributed to any resulting object and that such object be free as in speech as well. An example of a license with such grants and conditions is the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

Essentially, “free” can be available at no monetary cost, or it can be referred to in the sense of freedom. Isn’t that a kicker.

Using the latter interpretation, Voresoel.dk offers its beer recipe under a Creative Commons License, just like open-source software.

It takes about 3 weeks, but, hey, if not the ladies, I’m sure the guys would be impressed.

Oh, and Kelly: Keep in mind that the day after you’ve blogged drunk, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do to your regular readers.

Hello everyone. Now that we’re on break, we’ve had some time to do some much needed housecleaning around the site. We’ve made the following minor improvements:

• We cleaned up the categories and made them more specific. Now everything won’t be just in the general “College” category. There might be a little shifting around as we decide exactly how to use these new categories.
• We removed some sites from the blogroll (the links on the right) that have gone offline or are no longer being updated. We are surviving.

And currently Rosario and I are talking about updating the site’s look, mostly color-wise. We’ll let you know how that’s going as we make decisions. Or you’ll just see the site different one day.

As always, please email us if you have any input. Have a good break.

Hello. I’m back in my home town of Everett, Washington for the break watching “Waterworld” of all movies. I know, good movie.

Anyway, I spent Friday through Sunday on a service trip called De Colores in Mexico. It’s the stereotypical build-a-house-in-a-third-world-country type of service trip. (Mexico isn’t necessarily third world, but I had never seen poverty like this.)

Anyway, I’m usually not one for the hardcore service trips. (I realize service may be less of a consideration at other schools, but LMU is huge on service.) But I’m definitely thankful I chose to take two days out of my break to go on this trip.

And so I recommend considering a service trip such as De Colores. It was by no means a life-changing trip, but I had fun and it changed my perspective a little bit.

For now, back to “Waterworld.”

So I was asked today to help wrap some gifts for a baby shower. Sure, I helped, but I’m neither practiced nor proficient. And so I figured: Some of you probably aren’t either. Digg-ing along, I found a great article in the UK News on the exact formula for wrapping the perfect gift:

The formula is the brainchild of Dr Sara Santos of the University of Manchester, who has been working with Amazon.co.uk to help its team wrap the perfect Christmas presents.

She has considered all the factors that could impact on gift wrapping – the shape of the box, the pattern of the paper, and the amount of paper and tape wasted in the wrapping process.

Dr Santos’ equation – ½(d + 2h + w)² = 2(w + h)² – proves that wrapping attractive Christmas gifts is not just a matter of choosing the most stylish paper and trimmings, but is actually a highly technical process with little margin for error.

Where “d” equals the depth of the box, “h” equals its height, and “w” equals its width.

But I know some of you are more visual, so I also found some great tutorials from the SHIMOJIMA Co:

Last but not least, some people just don’t have the spatial skills for wrapping. Maybe I just don’t. And so I found some good practice over at GamePuma.

Hope this helps!

With finals and final papers all around, I know the last thing you guys need are more ways to procrastinate. If this is the case, you’re probably not visiting the site right now anyway –as we have seen a little dip in daily visitors this past week.

So for those of you without finals and final papers, let me show you my two latest addictions:

• PuzzleLand has 5 levels. Help James defeat Gregory! It took me 2 days. Or you could use the directions.
• Tilt has more than 11 levels. My best score has been 2010.

Enjoy!