{ 15-4-17 } 70/100 Days Of Productivity

my july spread! 7 days in, but still good :) 

A Sister’s Guide on How To College

Coding Masterpost

Hey buddies guess what??

I’ve brought you some awesome links that I have for learning how to code, computer science posts, and also various things about hacking. :p

CODING / COMPUTER SCIENCE

www.udemy.com

The best free and paid classes on the web. This is my go to site for learning something new.

app.pluralsight.com

$40 a month but the courses are top tier. You might find a free trial from microsoft dev essentials…

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Free MIT courses with video lectures, notes, and resources!!!

https://www.codecademy.com/learn

Perhaps the most famous site for learning how to code, this is must have for any aspiring computer scientist, web dev, or programmer. A smooth UI, dozens of courses, APIs, and fun quizzes if you decide to cough up a bit of money. $19 is crazy dirt cheap compared to some $200 courses out there on the web.

https://thenewboston.com/

Dubbed by its creator as the social network for programmers, TNB is a hotbed of hundreds of video tutorials for programming and computer science, as well as other disciplines like cooking.

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/codingground.htm

Another crazy important site for anyone serious about programming. You can find online terminals, IDEs, and tutorials for almost every popular language out there, from oCaml to lisp

http://codecombat.com/

Geared towards children, this is a good introudction to programming thinking and helps a younger audience get into the problem solving mindset.

http://www.codewars.com/dashboard

For users with some coding experience, codewars offers hundreds of challenges in various languages and help them build up their skills. Perfect for intermediate to master programmers.

https://www.codingame.com/start

This site is a bit geared towards new coders, it’s still fun and helps a ton in developing confidence.

http://jonisalonen.com/

Random blog that discusses some concepts regarding computer science. Worth a read if you’re ever lost and wanna just reflect on something.

http://howtonetwork.net/

https://www.howtonetwork.com/

Both the old and new sites are still up and provide their services for learning IT skills.

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/

RESOURCES FOR COMPILERS, DATABASES, FORUMS, and SO MUCH MORE TAKE A LOOK.

http://www.hloom.com/modern-resume-templates/

What good is a programmer if they can’t make a good resume to show off their skills? With these helpful templates you can impress your potential employer.

http://freecomputerbooks.com/

I haven’t used this so be cautious. Has a lot of ebooks.

http://i.imgur.com/i3jtrA0.jpg

Web development cheat sheet.

http://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=626170

Awesome intro to programming with links to projects.

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/

Eli has a blog and also videos for various things.

http://www.net130.com/ccie/tech/Sybex%20-%20Cisco%20CCIE%20Book.pdf

CCIE book. Not sure if it’s open source. I’ll remove this link if requested.

https://www.codeschool.com/

pay money, learn to code. seems legit.

http://www.python-forum.org/

A forum for Python usrers! There are only a few sections but there are enough posts on here so if you haev a question, it might have already been asked.

http://www.dreamincode.net/

Another sweet forum that covers multiple topics.

http://forums.devshed.com/

A really popular forum! Lots of languages and users, dozens of topics.

http://www.codingforums.com/

Another large forum, perfect for any use.

http://www.programmingforums.org/

A freaking large factory of forums you will never find the same post twice.

http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html

Lots of forums, jobs, and helpful resources all geared towards game development.

http://stackoverflow.com/

The most famous one imo. Be wary friend, don’t let your CS teacher find this in your browser history.

http://forum.codecall.net/

Resources, forums, tutorials, blow yourself out here.

https://openhatch.org/

Has some training missions and other stuff. Helps you find projects to work on.

https://codefights.com/

Put your skills to the test against AI or humans.

www.datacamp.com

Like big data? Well this site teaches you Python, the numpy library, and R.

https://www.edx.org/

Full of courses for anything.

http://www.exactas.org/modules/UpDownload/store_folder/1_-_COMPUTACION/Jonathan%20Bartlett%20-%20Programming%20From%20The%20Ground%20Up.pdf

handy book on progrmaming.

HACKING

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/

This is one of the BEST websites to learn about security and you can follow tutorials by real hackers and members of the IT field. With a strong community full of experienced authors, you will either flourish by using proper grammar or be mocked for asking “how do i hack gmail??”

www.hackerhighschool.org/home.html

PERFECT FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS INTERESTED IN CYBERSECURITY BUT HAVE NO IDEA WHERE TO START. I CANNOT STRESS HOW AWESOME THIS SITE IS.

allison.com

ANOTHER PERFECT SITE FOR LEARNING ANYTHING

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/links-help-you-hacking-0162359/

Small collection of resources for educating yourself on internet security.

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Networking%20Manual/Networking%20For%20Dummies%207%20Ed%202004.pdf

A must read for anyone with a desire to get into IT

http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/

Crash course on Command line.

https://www.cybrary.it/

Great if you cannot afford pricy online classes. Instructors know what they are talking about and despite a few poor quality videos, you will be supplied with helpful resources and forums.

https://evilzone.org/

One of the better forums out there for learning. Delve into it at your own risk.

https://v3rmillion.net/

ROBLOX hacking, general exploits, or just normal discussions. Roblox helped put me on my path to coding and I love how every day, millions of kids are being taught the ability of coding thanks to its studio.

https://www.hackthissite.org/pages/index/index.php

Lessons, challenges, forums, and resources all bundled in a site to hone your pentest skills.

http://www.enigmagroup.org/

Like hackthissite, but with a different UI

https://www.hellboundhackers.org/

Read the above

https://pentest-tools.com/home

Free pentest tools. Don’t use it for anything wrong.

https://www.defcon.org/

Hehe..we are in defcon 4..

https://picoctf.com/learn

Capture the Flag learning site. Amazing imo.

http://overthewire.org/wargames/

Another war games site. You get various challenges that are fun to solve ^.^

http://hakipedia.com/index.php/Hakipedia

Wikipedia but for security.

http://smashthestack.org/

Wargames.

http://www.wablab.com/

Compete against IT pros. Git rekt code-bug

http://academy.ehacking.net/courses/computer-hacking-forensics-investigation/

Explore this site a bit.

https://www.ethicalhacker.net/features/book-reviews/the-basics-of-rootkits-leave-no-trace

The link kinda gives it away.

https://github.com/mrrrgn/simple-rootkit/blob/master/README.md

Fun little project.

http://www.fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials.html

Professional blog that has tutorials and highly detailed information.

https://www.corelan.be/index.php/2009/07/19/exploit-writing-tutorial-part-1-stack-based-overflows/

Ahh read the above please!

https://trailofbits.github.io/ctf/index.html

A CTF guide. Pretty well written and has slides. Awesome resources. What else can I say?

http://www.securitysift.com/windows-exploit-development-part-1-basics/

Another swell blog.

http://www.thegreycorner.com/2010/01/beginning-stack-based-buffer-overflow.html

Woa..another..awesome blog..there are too many to count!

http://www.flexhex.com/docs/howtos/hex-editing.phtml

Hey kid? Wanna learn how to hex edit like a b0ss?

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-03/bh-us-03-willis-c/bh-us-03-willis.pdf

Nice little pdf for forensics.

www.greyhathacker.net

A blog that’s a bit dated but has useful information.

xeuhack.com

Dated but useful blog.

www.cybersecuritycourse.co

haven’t tried this yet but it has great reviews.

www.censys.io

Search engine for data scientists.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/51719-best-security-websites.html

Best sites to learn from.

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/ebooks/

Awww yiss ebooks

http://bookboon.com/en/it-programming-ebooks

Might run into errors downloading books.

http://ebook-dl.com/

Full books that are virus free.

That’s all for now! Special thanks to everyone who suggested I make this!

So I was back in Mandarin class and the teacher let us know that in ancient times sometimes they wouldn’t even give their girl children names. Their attitude was why bother getting attached to her when she’s just going to grow up and belong to someone else? She doesn’t need her own identity because she is the property of her future husband. If they needed to refer to a woman they would say that’s Wang’s wife. In the same way you would say oh, that’s Wang’s car or Wang’s house. Let’s remember that we give names to dogs, horses, ships and buildings but some human women don’t deserve such recognition. She also touched on sex-selective abortion for a bit and it was all in all a pretty sad discussion today.

I was really moved but it felt like everyone else didn’t care or thought that stuff doesn’t matter because it doesn’t happen anymore. And yet even now women’s identities are being erased when they get married. Their personal history and family ties are untraceable because they are “adopted” into their husbands family. It’s disgusting and I hate that its so nomalized and I hate that even women’s names are not our own. We might as well never have been given names in the first place.

Scans of the inside covers of Strang’s Calculus, which you can legally-download for free here from the MIT website. This is my all-time favorite math or physics textbook. Scanned it so I could cut and paste it into my new sketchbook, wanna try and make a ~cool artistic~ reference poster out of it, ‘cuz I’ve been real into that idea since I took notes about rings for the algebra midterm on a big piece of watercolor paper.

Where do you recommend getting textbooks from? (renting, buying, online etc)

well textbook companies are evil and sometimes you have no choice but to buy a textbook new, but for other times where that’s not the case i’d recommend you check out slugbooks! ^_^ they compare a bunch of different sites selling the textbook you need so you can find it at the cheapest price :) it’s like the kayak of academia lol!

fiction is my addiction, and since it’s almost the summer, i thought i’d share some ways to get free ebooks or save some money to get more books so you could have something to get lost in over the summer. while this list has a lot of ya resources, there’s still something at the end if you’re looking for something more academic

free ebooks:

project gutenberg is always worth mentioning, because come on, it has 50,000 books in its collection. that’s a lot of books, and you can always catch up on the grimm’s fairy tales

riveted lit is run by the publisher simon and schuster, and they put books up that you can read for a limited time. if you’re looking for something more ya, this is a great place to start

bookbub has more discounted ebooks than free ones, but let’s care about the free ones. you get a daily email with a bunch of discounted or free books

free audiobooks:

sync is my absolute favorite thing. it gives away two free audiobooks, one clasic and one more contemporary, every week over the course of the summer. it starts on may 5 for 2016, and there’s an amazing lineup for anyone who loves to read young adult like i do (they’re going to have i’ll give you the sun, boy meets boy, and on the jellicoe road) and there’s even a nelson mandela’s history on week 12. it’s all free anyway, so why not?

audible allows you to get two free audiobooks in your trial, and if you always wanted to hear a celebrity narrate that classic you never wanted to pick up, you can find something to fulfill that. 

hey, it’s project gutenberg again. not only do they have audiobooks, but they have audiobooks in other languages such as chinese, korean, spanish, and many more. if you wanted to test your comprehension of a foreign language in a new way, well, there you go

cheap books:

the book depository and wordery have free worldwide shipping for all you international people looking for that amazing book that your bookstore refuses to stock

if you live in the uk, the book people has some really amazing deals 

if you live in the us, there’s book outlet. the prices are phenomenal and i want to cry because they don’t ship cheaply to me

saving money

if you buy something using ebates, you can get a rebate. buying something from book outlet? get a 10% rebate while you’re at it. it even has rebates for university bookstores like the stanford university bookstore. also, for your first time, you can get $10 back along with the original rebate. plus, it’s awesome how it’s for more than just books, because you can get a rebate for clothing stores or ebay. you can look at the full list of stores here.

if you have any questions, you could always drop by and ask. i hope these help you to get something to read!

29.05.17 • day 1/30

here’s the first page of my June spread and some bio notes I did today!!

will be aiming to achieve 30 days of productivity starting from today in preparation for mid-years right after June break ;-;

managed to review my bio test, watch an online holiday lecture and do up some notes today, let’s hope that I will continue being this productive!!! (۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶

how i spent only $34 to purchase $1,000+ worth of school supplies for college

One thing I’ve found that many college freshmen do is they purchase everything at the school bookstore, shelling out more than $800 for what they think is the cheapest deal possible. Let me tell you now, that you’re doin’ it wrong if you think paying hundreds of dollars is the best you can do. 

To put it into perspective, for this past year, if I purchased all of my required textbooks from my school book store I would have had to pay $1,466 (tax not included)–and this is the total calculated if I bought used textbooks only. If I wanted brand new textbooks, it would have been over $2,000 (tax not included). In the end, I only spent $34 to purchase an entire year’s worth of supplies (that’s a 97% discount!!!), and I will tell you how. Of course, how low you can go will depend on the type of textbooks your professors require you to have and if you need any online access codes.

1. Email your professors

A lot of professors receive compensation from publishing companies to include their books in the curriculum, so many professors will say a book is required when in reality, you probably read 4 paragraphs from that text in the course of a semester. Always e-mail your professors beforehand about the list of required texts and other required items so see how many times you really need that book or item.

For example, at the beginning of fall semester last year, one of the required items listed for lab was lab cartridges which cost $88. Before making the decision on whether to purchase that or not, I e-mailed the lab coordinator and asked about what the cartridges were, which labs they corresponded to, and how often we would need to use them. The response? We didn’t need them at all for lab. If I didn’t ask my professor about it beforehand, I could have potentially paid $88 for something I didn’t need. 

2. Join your school’s Facebook network.

Most, if not all, colleges will have a network on Facebook. Whenever you get your admission e-mail, or in your school’s portal, there should be a link to join the main Facebook group. Through there, once you’re accepted, you should be able to access many other Facebook groups within the school network. Many colleges will have a group dedicated to students who are selling their old stuff, and many will sell their textbooks on there as well.

Freshman year, I paid $150 for my general chemistry textbook, the solutions manual to the chemistry textbook, general biology textbook, lab manual, lab goggles, and clicker by purchasing them from a student who took those courses already and had no use for them anymore. To put into perspective how much I saved, the general biology textbook itself retailed for $150 in the campus bookstore; and the total amount I would have had to pay if I purchased all those books from the bookstore would have been more than $560. I basically purchased this at a 75% discount! 

I would consider that purchasing from students at your university is generally a safe transaction, as most people meet up on campus to exchange the cash for the product, but remember to always exercise caution. You can always ask the seller to send you more detailed pictures if you want to know more about the condition of the item, and most of the time, you can also try to haggle the price of the item down. 

3. Try to find online PDFs

One of the biggest reasons why I was able to save so much money this year with my textbooks was because of online PDFs (bless those uploaders). I was able to download my organic chemistry textbook and solutions manual, and molecular cell biology textbook online for free. If I had to purchase them from the campus bookstore, I would have had to pay $917. That’s a lot of money I saved!

Generally speaking, textbook versions don’t really vary much. For the organic chemistry PDF I mentioned, I actually found the previous edition of the one we were required to have for the course. I e-mailed my professor and asked if there was any particular difference between the 3rd and 4th edition, and he responded saying that other than the fact that some content in one chapter was moved to the next, there was no difference, and there really wasn’t. Even the chapter problems were the exact same. 

If you’re the style that likes to have a paper copy in their hands, you can always print out the PDFs. 

4. Share with friends

As a biology major, we have many labs, and for those labs, we’re required to purchase a lab manual. This past year, I took orgo lab, and the lab manual for that was $143. I couldn’t find this online as a PDF because A) it was the newest edition for this year, and B) it was written by our lab coordinator so it couldn’t be found anywhere else. So I chose option C instead: share with a friend. One of my friends compared the previous year’s edition with the edition we were required to have to see if there were any big differences (such as different experiments), and there weren’t really, so she purchased last year’s lab manual from an upperclassman for $25 (I paid $12 since we were sharing). Since we had lab on different days, we were able to share the manual. 

I also made scans of the manual as well so I wouldn’t hog it when she needed it to complete her conclusions, and she could use the scans for her pre-lab while I was using it to write my conclusions.

5. Don’t buy, rent instead

If you absolutely have to have a book and you can’t find it online as a PDF, see if you can rent it instead. Although your campus bookstore will also have rental prices, 3rd party rental prices are almost always cheaper. Two sites I highly recommend are Chegg and Bookbyte. Although I haven’t used Chegg personally, many of my friends do and they say Chegg’s prices are lower. I’ve personally used Bookbyte, and although their selection is a tad smaller than Chegg, they have great customer service. In addition, if you need your rental for a couple days past the rental date, you can send it back late (up to 12 days I believe) without being charged any additional fees or paying for an extension. 

For example, if I were to rent the anthropology textbook from my bookstore would have costed $40, and renting from Amazon would have cost $35, however, Bookbyte had my anthropology textbook listed for $12 to rent. They actually sent me 2 copies of it (I was only charged for one), and both were in excellent condition. When the time comes for you to return your textbooks, just print out the pre-paid shipping label Bookbyte sends you and you can ship the book from your campus mailroom.

6. Ask upperclassmen

Second semester this year, I was able to get my hands on a hard copy of the newest edition of the orgo textbook and solutions manual for free, because one of my upperclassmen friends passed it down to me without asking me to pay, so she’s basically the nicest person ever. You can always ask upperclassmen friends first for textbooks and such if they’re the same major as you because chances are, they’ll still have their old textbooks and would most likely be much more willing to help out a friend than a student they don’t know. 

7. DON’T BUY “USED” ONLINE ACCESS CODES

The only thing you cannot get a discount on are online access codes. Any sites that are selling “used” online access codes are fake, and you should not purchase from them. Online access codes are associated with specific professors and courses, and e-mails as well. In addition, most have a set expiration date (usually a year or a semester), so any “used” online access code will most likely have expired by the time you try to use it. 

What I usually do if I have to have an online code is accept their free trial. Companies such as McGraw Hill’s Connect have a 2 week free trial, and since my professors put up all the assignments in advance, I complete all the assignments within the free trial period. When the free trial expires, I can’t access the module again unless I pay, but the records of me completing my assignment still exist and I still get my homework points. I was lucky enough that our professor assigned online HW as easy gimme points, so I didn’t have to wait until he taught the material to finish it. The only online homework I paid for was Sapling, which was $10 since the free trial was only 6 days and homework assignments were uploaded weekly. 

tips for graduate grants, awards, & fellowships

hello! usual disclaimer applies: i’m a phd student, not an expert. i work in an english department with a medical humanities project, so this advice may not apply to STEM folks, undergraduates, or to all fellowships or grants. use your own common sense & discretion. beneath the cut: 

finding the money

keeping track of the money 

actually applying for the money, feat. the world’s longest treatise on project proposals

soliciting (& receiving) letters of rec

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