5 Tips for Being Successful at University or College

1. Involve yourself
Be sure to be involved in as many extra-curricular activities as possible. These could be anything from the Yearbook team to a sport that you like to play. Try something new, and widen your comfort zone. Being involved will expand your friendship circle, and you'll meet great new friends from a variety of backgrounds. Also, it's a well known fact that having a sport that you play regularly will improve your academic results. University is a time for experimentation, so throw yourself at as many activities as possible, and pick your favourite ones later!

2. Stay organized
Having a messy room would translate to having a messy mind. Keep your room clean, and you'll be motivated throughout the years. Staying organized doesn't just apply to your room, it also applies to the books and notes that you keep. Find some sort of organization system that works, and keep unnecessary items out of the way in your small room. Keep your electronic documents organized, and efficiently backed up with Dropbox, a folder that synchronizes all your efiles that you need across your workspace and the internet cloud.

3. Keep an eye on your expenses
I'll have to admit, many of us in our first taste of true freedom tend to spend far more than is necessary to survive as a student. Sort out the things that you want from the things that you need, and use your money on the things that you need, while saving up for the things you want. You will be respected for being able to distinguish between the two categories.

4. Find the best student deals and bargains
For me, I found OZBargain, a bottom-up approach to finding the best deals around Australia. This probably saves me about a hundred dollars a month, as I now have access to the craziest deals and freebies! If you want to save money, find a deal website or a bargain newsletter. There is one for almost every country in the world! If you can't find any, ask the locals.

5. Skype your family and friends often

Most importantly, ENJOY YOURSELF!

Changing to a different environment can be rather stressful, and skyping back home can always ease the tension, not just for you but also for your family and friends. Even if you have had an open mind, and find that you enjoy the place you've gone to for university, staying in touch is important as a means of maintaining an image of home: an anchor for yourself.

Securing your Twitter account from password sniffers

One of my previous posts features sniffing Facebook passwords through Android phones, and how to prevent this.

I went through Twitter to find out how to secure a Twitter account, and it was relatively easy for me to find the https switch.

Just navigate over to your Twitter settings, and under the Account tab scroll all the way to the bottom. Then check the HTTPS checkbox. Very easy!

Enjoy!

Sniffing Facebook passwords (and other popular services)

It would seem very unlikely for a hacker to be sitting on your local network, stealthily stealing passwords using scripts through Wireshark or sifting through your files. But with the new Android program FaceNiff, password sniffing becomes a very real possibility.

FaceNiff can be downloaded straight off the internet onto an Android phone, and with the press of a button it will start 'sniffing' passwords off Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Amazon and Nasza-Klasa from the local network. I decided that this was too easy to be true, and gave the program a shot. Sure enough, within seconds I could gain access to Facebook accounts. By pressing one of these accounts, you are taken to their Facebook home page, and I even tested it out by posting as my friend. Everything worked perfectly!

Of course, with any Android user now having the ability to gain access to Facebook, this brings up the issue of security. Not only is this application extremely easy to use, it has made hacking portable, and thus increases the risk exponentially.

To prevent an Android user from gaining access to your Facebook, you can increase the security of your Facebook account simply through the account settings.
1. Log onto Facebook.com

2. In the upper right-hand corner, click on 'Account' and press 'Account Settings' from the drop-down menu

3. Look for "Account security" and press the 'change' button to the right. Then scroll down and ensure that the checkbox next to 'Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible' option is checked, and press save.

You're done! You will know if this setting is activated if the URL shows 'https://www.facebook.com'

This should prevent hackers from sniffing your password on Facebook, and thus gaining access to your account. I haven't played around with the other popular services, but I know there is a Firefox extension for helping out with securing your connection whenever possible called HTTPS Everywhere. I don't use Firefox though, so I hope something similar will eventually be rolled out to Google Chrome.

Note: All password sniffing was done with the permission of my local network group.

Forwarding Zimbra email to your personal email account

Hey all,

Trinity College Foundation Studies uses Zimbra email, and many people were asking me how to

forward Zimbra email to their personal accounts so that they didn't have to check the Zimbra email anymore.

Click here to access the PDF which is a tutorial to forwarding your Zimbra email to your personal email. This tutorial demonstrates it in five simple steps!

Hope this is useful to you all!

Cheers for now,

Nihal Mirpuri

Melbourne, The Liveable City

Six hard months have passed since my last post, which, I have to admit, was posted because I was procrastinating doing my work. In February I moved to Melbourne to study at Trinity College Foundation Studies. I've got a lot more time on my hands now, so I can start blogging again =)

According to The Economist, Melbourne is the second most liveable city in the world. I can certainly see a difference between Melbourne and Jakarta:

It's not hard at all to guess which one is Melbourne, and which one is Jakarta!

If you ever come to Melbourne, you have to check out Menya, the Japanese restaurant that sells excellent Japanese food for a very affordable price. Their speciality is Gyu-tan Don, so if you are a first timer there ask for that (it's grilled beef tongue)!

More on things to do in Melbourne will come up soon! Stay tuned!