Who in their right mind would work for free? Internships and volunteer positions are a fantastic way of making an impression on a future employer and, moreover, making an impression on society.

Volunteering

Doing volunteer work is one of the best feelings in the world. You might be interested in helping people, animals, local social enterprises or international organisations. The work might not be easy, but it will definitely be rewarding. Employers will look favourably on volunteer work, but don’t make this the driving force behind helping out those in need. Find a cause you’re passionate about and check out their website, as well as university careers services, for info about volunteer positions.

Internships

You may be seeking employment in an unpaid internship in order to gain some unparalleled experience in your field of interest. To avoid the typical Catch 22 employment situation – “you can’t work unless you have experience, but you need work to gain experience” – try looking for internship work to boost your chances of getting employed. Not all internships are going to be advertised (indeed most are filled through word-of-mouth recommendations), so if you’re really keen to gain some work experience at a particular company or in a particular field, take the initiative to do some research and make the first contact!

Internships and volunteering are also a really good way of getting a taste for your profession or later career. It’s sad but true that some university degrees can only teach you so much in terms of the practical aspects of a particular industry or role. So be on the look out for companies or organisations which you’d like to work for, because it could lead to long-term employment down the track.

For example, many law students apply for volunteer legal assistant positions with community legal centres (which can be found here: www.naclc.org.au/directory) - they may also offer an opportunity to complete your practical legal experience later on. These roles help you understand the day-to-day operations of your chosen field, which you may have minimal knowledge of by just reading your textbooks.

For business students who miss out on prestigious cadetships or internship programs with the big four accounting firms – there’s still hope! Some of the best work experience can be found by speaking to family and friends who run small to medium businesses, these places are often short-staffed and you are likely to have much greater responsibility and contact with management compared to large corporations.

This blog  is courtesy of “What Degree? Which University?" - What Degree Which University is a website for students, by students, to help them decide what to study at university and where, as well as advice on surviving the experience, finding student housing, locating a career, where to hang out, where to travel and where to have fun.”

Having just sat through a round of uni presentations this advice is fresh, first-hand, and easy to fix. From one student to another these five simple points are an absolute must-read.

1. Not having any visuals. Don't mistake this for being alternative, it's just boring. By no means does this have to be a powerpoint, but there should always be something visual that's engaging and supports what you're saying. Whether its a picture on a screen, chart on a stand, a flashy prezi (click here for more on this, it's a must try!), or short YouTube clip, please do yourself a favour and have at least one visual.

2. Avoid palm cards. We're not in grade six anymore, so using this look is a bit past its use-by-date. Don't apologise for any ad-lib either, in most cases this is actually what is expected of you the entire presentation. If you're a nervous speaker and use palm cards as something to hide behind (and trust me we've all been here at some point!) try other techniques to ensure your talk goes off without a hitch. For example when designing your speech think of phrasing things how you would naturally speak, so that if you go off-point you can fake your way back to sounding confident. Make use of visuals, as mentioned before, if only to deflect attention away from shaky hands. Use keywords and pictures on slides or a sheet in front of your to stimulate ideas and their discussion. Integrate the audience by asking them questions – let them do all the work.

3. Don't slam on the spacebar during presentations. If you have a presentation requiring you tap on the spacebar for your next slide please don't bash it, this is scary. Even if this is actually the case, it makes you sound like you're rushing to get out of there and both your audience and marker will become anxious.

4. Dress according to the tone and subject of your presentation. This tip is far from superficial. Dressing the part can help make sense of your presentation. Let's just say wearing an old Mickey Mouse jumper while discussing 'discursive representation of political figures through media broadcast of the national budget' is not so convincing, for instance.

5. At the end of the day you're just talking. Talking is what we do all day everyday, so don't over think the significance of you speaking during a presentation. In all other circumstances we're able to speak really naturally, so why not treat presentations like a conversation with classmates? Remembering this point gives you much-needed perspective, no matter how terrifying the task may be.

Presentations for the most part are scary. Even if you're a confident speaker, we all feel some level of nervousness before getting up in front a class. Follow these practical real-life tips and all the hard work you put into presentations will get a well-deserved facelift.

What are your presentation tips? We could all do with sharing a few of these...

Even Darth Vader is a food blogger!

Post by Nichole Donovan

So not to be cynical but it seems like everyone’s a writer/blogger these days – but this doesn’t automatically make them good. Here’s a few pointers to set yourself apart:

1) Have a plan. Everything you write you should be proud of, so treat your work with same respect and professionalism you would a business.

2) Post regularly and consistently. There’s nothing worse for readers than stumbling upon a great blog, only to find the writer’s given up a couple months later. Try to avoid sporadic bursts of content as well and spread the love.

3) Only post in what interests you. When you’re a blogger, you are the product you’re selling – so sell your personality and interests.

4) Good layout. Not only should you choose a theme that is aesthetically pleasing but also one that reflects your blogger tone, make your format unique. This can sometimes seem difficult where limited themes are available. However some subtle changes such as font and colour can make a world of difference – and give something generic a real facelift.

5) Strong headlines. Remember when people subscribe to your blog they receive emails when you publish new posts. The headline must enticing enough for them to want to give it a ‘click’. Avoid being cute or worse, cryptic.

6) Images. It’s true the more you give your readers the more they’ll want to give to you. This means multiple pictures where applicable, links, video clips and mp3 sound bites.

7) Write as you speak. Enough said really. Nothing worse than an online Shakespeare who takes themselves too seriously and a tone that doesn’t suit the subject.

8) Try to limit your categories. If you’re not posting hundreds of times a week, you’ll only end up with a couple articles per category and this looks silly. By refining your categories you’re also refining your area of interest, and in doing so become more special.

9) Share the spotlight. Guest posts give readers something new and different to read, click, ‘like’ and share. You want to be your reader’s source of all things new and interesting – including other people’s views.

10) Don’t let it go to waist. Take the time to promote yourself and your hard work – at least an hour each week.

Nichole is a Communication student at UTS and Zookal's blog editor. In her spare time she writes for holliandlola.com under one of many unexplained nicknames 'Lola' – check it out here it's a whole lot of fun!

Are you a writer/blogger? Got any good tips? Want to write for Zookal? Let us know your thoughts below...

Parking/traffic  tickets suck. And if we knew a sure way to get out of them we would. If like us, you too are on the lookout for a good excuse just check out this story from the US...

Physicist Dmitri Krioukov, from University of California, recently challenged a traffic ticket for failing to sufficiently stop at a stop sign with a bit of good old maths. Simple? No. But believable – yes. The equation he used (pictured above) will easily make sense to some. To others, like myself, it requires a little extra explanation. So here it goes... Krioukov explained the officer was mistaken, having confused his car’s real space-time trajectory.

Trajector-what?!

Ultimately Krioukov’s car, because of its length, seemed in the officer’s view as though it hadn’t sufficiently stopped at the stop sign. Meaning, the officer’s perception of reality did not adequately reflect what was reality.

Next time you’re faced with a ticket just explain to the officer the ‘significance of space-time trajectory’. They’ll be so confused they’ll have to believe you!

I’m going to show you how you can start playing PC games, in this case Skyrim, through immersive Virtual Reality in your room using some of the devices out on the market.

With this setup you will be able to move through the game and look around naturally, similar to like in the real world. You’ll be using the head mounted display to make you feel like you’re inside the game, the head tracking will let you look around the world, the motion tracking allows you to move naturally in real life to correspond to actions in the game, and some basic speech recognition to do more abstract tasks such as navigating through a menu or initiating a chat with NPCs.

You’ll need the following, or an equivalent in some cases, to get this to work:

• Skyrim - PC game.
• Sony HMZ-T1 - A high definition head mounted display that also supports Stereoscopic 3D.
• Microsoft Kinect - Gesture and motion tracking
• TrackIR5 - Head tracking.
• TrackClip Pro - Used with the TrackIR5 for more accurate head tracking.
• Shoot - Command based speech recognition software.
• FAAST 0.9 - Software used to map Kinect gestures to the keyboard.
• Microphone - For speech recognition.
• Windows 7
• Nvidia Graphics Card with Nvidia 3D Vision Support - For 3D stereoscopic.

I won’t explain how to setup the different devices as there are articles you should be able to find easily in search engines, but I will provide the scripts I used to let you map gestures and speech recognition commands as well as any other important software and settings I've used.

Setting up Sony HMZ-T1 Head Mounted Display

This one is pretty basic, just follow the normal steps to setup the HMZ-T1 from the manual. If you have a TrackClip PRO, attach it to the left hand side of the HMZ-T1 in a similar position as in the image below.

If you want to enable Stereoscopic 3D as well for Skyrim, the Sony HMZ-T1 supports this and you can enable it in the NVIDIA Control Panel if you have an Nvidia graphics card. Just go to the Sterescopic 3D > Set up stereoscopic 3D link on the left side of the control panel and tick Enable stereoscopic 3D then press Apply. Note that only newer graphic cards support Stereoscopic 3D so check first that your graphics card supports Nvidia 3D Vision.

Setup TrackIR5 for Head Tracking

The TrackIR5 will track you head movement around in real life and at the same time move your view in the actual game through head tracking.You can also possibly use older versions of TrackIR too, such as TrackIR3 or TrackIR4. In addition to setting this up through the normal way, you will need to somehow place the TrackIR5 at head level in front of you, which may be tricky if you are going to stand up so that the Microsoft Kinect can track your motions at the same time.

What you can do to have head tracking work while standing up is to get a wire (like a coat hanger) and use blu-tac or sticky tape to make it hang from the roof, and then use blu-tac to stick the TrackIR5 to the wire. See the image below on one way you could hang the wire from the roof.

Skyrim doesn't support head tracking natively, so you will need to open up another software that comes with the TrackIR software which emulates the head tracking via emulating the mouse. You will need to open the mouse emulator for the TrackIR5 called TrackIR Mouse Emulation, which is located in the same folder as where TrackIR5 is installed (C:\Program Files\NaturalPoint\TrackIR5\TIRMouse.exe in Windows 7). Now your head movements will correspond with your Mouse's movement on the screen as well as your character's orientation in the game.

I set the Mouse Emulator to allow X Axis Auto Panning and set it to 75, which means that when you look left or right at 75% of the TrackIR's range then it will start panning your Skyrim character's view automatically to the left or the right so you don't have to turn too much in real life.

Microsoft Kinect

You will need to first connect the Kinect to your PC using PrimeSense's OpenNI drivers (see these instructions). Once you set that up, download FAAST (I used version 0.9) and load the following script for Skyrim:

Skyrim Script for FAAST

To run FAAST, just click on Connect and then Start Emulator.

The included script will map the following real life movements to the game's movements:

• Walking on the spot - Walk forward in the game
• Lean left - Straff left in the game
• Lean right - Straff right in the game
• Lean backwards - Walk backwards in the game
• Right arm forward - Use sword
• Jump - Jump in the game
• Crouch - Crouch in game

You should stand about 1.5 metres/5 feet in front of the Kinect so it can pick up your whole body's movements. You can easily map more movements from the Kinect for Skyrim using the instructions from FAAST's website.

Speech Recognition

If you want to have some speech recognition as well in the game, just grab a microphone and set-up Shoot (instructions for Win 7) with the following Skyrim Profile below:

Shoot Skyrim Profile

These are most of the voice commands you can use with the script, and you can easily add more too:

• Open Menu - Open main menu in the game
• Close/Exit Menu - Close the menu
• Go up/down/left/right - Navigate around the menu
• Enter/Confirm/Accept - Accept
• No - Deny
• Talk - Talk to NPC
• Pick up item - Pick an item or any action that maps to the E key.

Conclusion

Hopefully these instructions will help you set up your own VR simulation! If you are stuck on any of these or have any feedback at all just comment below and I'll try to reply back as soon as I can.

This should give you a feel of how Virtual Reality is like before it's more ready to enter our homes, perhaps not too far from now.

Chris Zaharia is the Co-founder & CTO of Zookal, a start-up providing a range of educational services for University Students in Australia. You can follow him on Twitter @chrisjz.

By Nichole Donovan

Surprisingly, not all lectures are revolutionary or life-changing. However I would argue that even in the worst lectures lies a little hidden gem. So listen up.. because for me today this was the inclusion of a short clip (featured above) about cephalopods!

Now if you know anything about cephalopods, and their relation to the course Media, Mediation & Power, you’d know they blend into their natural surroundings by actually morphing their physical appearance and SHAPE! So quite simply they transform in 3D. More specifically they use the chromatophore in their tentacles like pixels to emphasise or reduce the appearance of particular colours. Realistically they’re fun to watch. Enjoy!

As we start our first week back at uni most of us are probably still testing the waters a bit. Maybe some of your tutors won’t let you use a laptop in class? Maybe you don’t want to lose your handwriting this early out of school? Or perhaps, the piles of last term’s printouts (still stacked in your room) have lost their appeal for the coming year?

Well, thankfully, the start of each semester brings with it a sense of new beginnings and a chance to start fresh. And with the increasing popularity of e-books, making the switch from loose leaf to the latest technology would appear inevitable. In fact, we all seem to be juggling so much these days. So in a way having everything on one easy tablet is rather appealing. However the price? Not so much. Although in terms of organisation (and the planet!) making the change may well be worth it. But with the humble notepad still priced at around a dollar this remains a big decision. Especially considering the often limited student budget.

To try and make things easier we’ve put together a group of our favourite options for you to ponder (just click on the options below for our handy links). So what will you be using this semester? Perhaps I’ll opt for a more retro look and scrounge up some old papyrus and a quill!

1. ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime 32G $599

2. Airmail A5 Spiral notebook $3.95

3. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 $710 (prepaid)

4. Loose Leaf Paper $3.99

5. Vintage Notebook $7.49

6. Sony Tablet S $599 32G $599

7. iPad2 32G Wifi $689

8. Exercise book with holes $2.95

9. Exercise book with no holes $1.12

Let us know what works best for you and post a comment below – we just love hearing from you!

With all this summer sun you’re probably looking for something fun outside to do this weekend, right? Well look no further than the Australian Open of Surfing being held this year at North Steyne in Manly.

Having started on 11th February the final day is this Sunday. So make sure you head down at some point between now and then. With the huge Beach Bowel imported from the US, and awesome live music it’d be hard to stay away. Tomorrow’s line up alone is a particular standout starting with DJ Grant Smillie, followed by Bluejuice and then Sneaky Sound System!! Not to mention Stonefield and the fabulous guitar sounds of Children Collide, Saturday afternoon.

We even managed to get a sneaky pic of organisers setting up this weekend’s music stage (pictured below). And.... included the link so you can map out your weekend of fun, surf, sand and (let’s not forget) serious hotties!

Click here to go to www.australianopenofsurfing.com

Happy valentines day everyone!! After a much needed ciesta/fiesta over the new year we're all more than ready get stuck into it. And with uni on the horizon what better time to start then now. But first some time for a little lovin.. and since we have a cozy night ahead of us with all this rain, why not stay in tonight with your special someone, or group of friends, and enjoy one of Zookal's fabulous V-day movie picks. Here they are...

Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pretty Woman
Notting Hill
The Proposal
My Be Friends Wedding
I Love You, Man
Made of Honor
Kate and Leopold
Just Go With It
Leap Year
The Notebook

DISCLAIMER: These movies are listed in no particular order as we couldn't possibly bring ourselves to choose favourites. They're also designed to suit guys and girls... bar The Notebook of course (that one was always going to be a major chick-flick). However, as a challenge.. If you do ever manage to sit your guy down for a viewing you've both done very well!!

Love from the Zookal Team xoxox

So you think uni is overrated hey? So did I... that is until I realised there were actually some people in my lectures not playing angry birds, and thought to myself; ‘wow maybe some students actually do achieve stuff’. And no, I’m not just talking about handing in assignments on time, I mean real stuff. So real in fact that just trying to comprehend how or why someone could ever create something so mind blowingly awesome is like trying to touch your elbow with your tongue.

6. The automatic drink mixer

Ever wondered what would happen if you could somehow combine the genius of trained engineers with the pure unbridled inventiveness of a bunch of drunken college kids? Well a group of engineering students from Washington University have brought us the answer, and its wireless. This little gadget creatively named the “automatic wireless drink mixer” after some fairly inebriated brainstorming, allows the user to mix their drinks automatically and wirelessly from a touch screen interface. The design uses preset drinks whilst also allowing people to mix their own using exact percentages; it also comes in built with an infrared sensor that detects whether the glass is in place for those of us to shitfaced to remember.

5. Laser Backpack

That’s right, lasers. Whilst I will admit that this invention does distinctly lack a few capabilities –such as melting through walls- I still believe it’s justifiably awesome enough to make my list, and here’s why: The laser backpack, a project undertaken by a group of UC Berkley students, uses a variety of laser scanners and positional sensors in order to create a complete digital 3d representation of the surrounding space almost instantly. So yea, screw all those game designers labouring away at building a complete digital replica of some building, because now we have lasers! The more obvious use of such technology will likely be an extension of Google earth, allowing people to look inside buildings as well as out, because people really do have far too much privacy nowadays.

4. Holograms

What’s real, Russian, made in a college dormitory and likely to blow your mind? My first guess would have been something mechanical and unnecessarily dangerous, but turning the page on some recent research I was met with something that truly blew me away. Displair, a company out of Russia, has recently unveiled a new invention that looks suspiciously like something out of minority report. The device combines an infrared camera, a projector, and cold fog to project 3D images into thin air and capture the user’s hand movements as they manipulate them. Videos posted online show users manipulating maps of the world projected 3d onto a shimmering base of cold fog, and although still in the prototype faze it looks pretty damn good. The infrared sensors capture movements that allow the user to ‘press’ things, swipe and even make objects larger or smaller through simple gestures. The company estimates their product will cost somewhere in the range of $4,000-$30,000 when mass produced, so time to start saving.

3. Spokeless Bike

When a group of students from Yale set out to make a truly unique bike, this is what they ended up with. A single-speed, spoke-less push bike. So yea screw you logic. Although looking pretty bad-ass the design is admittedly fairly inconvenient. It only functions properly at the highest possible gear ratio which means its max speed is relatively limited.

2. Automatic dish maker

Created by a student from MIT University this handy gizmo aims to replace cupboards worth of dishes with small flat disks. The device is about the size of a dishwasher and capable of forming any one of these flat disks into a number of different dish designs in just under a couple of minutes, and when you’re done there formed back into the original disks.

1. Nuclear Fusion Reactor

If you’re anything like me then the idea that a 16 year old kid could muster up the knowledge and parts to make a nuclear bomb in his back yard is scarier than Godzilla on crack. So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered that in 2006 Thialgo Olson, a 16 year old highschool student, succeeded in building what is essentially the business end of a hydrogen bomb in his basement. For two years Olson conducted research whilst collecting the necessary parts from the hardware store and Ebay, where he was able to grab such rare gems as a high voltage X-ray transformer... whatever that is. Eventually all the work paid off when the machine succeeded in producing a tiny flash of hot plasma, which Olsen modestly explains is “several times hotter than the core of the sun.”