Bon voyage, adios, and goodbye SPM readers. Between fashion weeks, lookbooks, DIY projects and street style photographs The Campus Closet has been quite the journey for the last nine months, but just as the old saying goes “everything good must to come to an end.” Like I said in my first post, fashion blogging has always been a passion of mine because it allows me to inspire and be inspired, so hopefully in the last two semesters I have done just that.

I will continue on my fashion blogging journey this summer while interning for stylist Sophia Banks in Los Angeles, California, an opportunity I owe to all of you!

So thank you for reading and supporting, I wish you all lovely summertime adventures. Remember in order to be irreplaceable one must always be different, so keep expressing and inspiring ASU fashionistas. Au revoir SPM. see more

Back in August, I took over this technology blog for the State Press Magazine (which might be pretty obvious) and was ecstatic at the chance to let my creative juices flow in a field I love. Since then, I have worked with my amazing editors to produce posts that both held relevancy and interest to you, my readers. Since this is the last Tech Spec post of the school year, I wanted to go out the same way I started my blog: by sharing a personal story about technology.

I recently went over to my grandmother’s house to catch up and to help her out with everything she needed done. As I was talking with her, I noticed that she now owned an iPad Mini (my grandma is good with technology). Of course, I had to talk to her about it: when she got it, why she got it, if she liked it, etc. She spoke about how impressed she was about how it can effectively cut out most of her use for her desktop computer since she can answer emails, write documents and browse the web with it. As my grandma shared these positive points, she told me about her favorite feature, which is FaceTime. I immediately thought that I understood, because she has many friends across the world (so FaceTime could become be her new outlet to catching up with peers), but that was not the reason. Her main use of FaceTime is to check in on my uncle.

My uncle suffers from multiple illnesses, including epilepsy. He has been in a care home almost all of life, making communication between him and my grandma strained. Everyone gets to see my uncle around holidays as he is brought to my grandmother’s house to celebrate with us, but that is pretty much it. Since my uncle has an iPad that he can use as another form of communication, my grandma realized that they could also video chat each other. She had one of the workers at the care home help set everything up and then the magic began. Since my grandma cannot leave the house frequently, she never gets to go visit him. FaceTime changed that. My uncle, with help, is now able to see and interact with his mom whenever they call one another. The part of the story that touched me the most was when they were ending one of their first calls. My grandma was able to give him a kiss goodnight for the first time in ages. She kissed her hand and held it to the camera, and my uncle picked up the iPad and kissed the screen. see more

At the beginning of my freshman year in the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, I never thought I would have so many opportunities my freshman year. I’ve interviewed athletes, gone to countless basketball and softball games and, of course, written this blog. I never expected to obtain a position at the State Press, much less a position where I got to write about my passion in sports. I hope you enjoyed my posts, have a great summer!

There were weeks where I wasn’t sure I could make it, weeks where the ideas just weren’t flowing, but I knew I needed at least three and potentially four ideas for my blog. I wasn’t sure I could do it some weeks where I was stressed with schoolwork and I somehow managed to write my posts and get them in on deadline.

I now realize that what I write can make a difference in people’s lives. From my story with autographs to my piece about ASU student basketball manager Antonio Cannavaro, I had people thanking me left and right for writing about that topic or bringing a certain issue to light. People told me that they read Out of Bounds every single week, and that’s what kept me going. see more

Hey, everyone, it’s Holly.  So, finals are upon us already and another semester has gone by ridiculously quickly. As we get ready to say goodbye to friends and hello to our parents and summer jobs, we here at Sparky’s Quill want to leave you with a sentimental goodbye and our favorite historical Internet memes. I just want to say thank you to everyone who read our blog this semester and how grateful I am for being able to have this opportunity. I’ll be interning at the Museum of Tolerance back home in Los Angeles this summer and testing the waters before I jump into the field of Public History. I’ll be reading “Killing Lincoln” and “Game of Thrones” and immersing myself even further in the world of history (and fantasy). He doesn’t even go here. Photo courtesy Tumblr

  Photo courtesy Tumblr

  It’s from the History Channel. It counts. Photo courtesy Tumblr see more

If you’re like me, you’re a procrastinator when it comes to organizing your clothes. To me it’s my biggest nightmare to go into my room and see a pile of clothing that is unorganized, so I tend to throw as many clothes into my closet and drawers as I can fit.

Last week I decided to do some spring cleaning and finally go through all of the clothes that have been neglected the past few months. Through the process I came up with some tips for all my fellow procrastinators and fashionistas that need some organization in their lives! Perfectly organized closet. Photo courtesy Tumblr.com

Tip 1. If you can’t see it you won’t wear it! see more

On every college campus, there are students who are working on interesting projects, creating useful items or just dabbling with ideas. Especially in the technology (engineering) field, you can always find out about some person who is working on something fascinating. One of these people is computer science sophomore Greg Littlefield, who has come to produce some interesting programs that can be taken advantage of by anyone. While Greg Littlefield loves building unique programs, he also enjoys using the programs himself. Photo by Courtland Jeffrey

Let me start out by saying that Greg is a close friend of mine, but I feel that he has some interesting projects that could come of use to, or could entertain, my readers. I have known Greg for eight years now and he has been so interested in the programming aspect of computers that he began to teach himself code in middle school (he created a program that allowed him and his friends to chat over the school server). From then on, he has found many different projects that utilized his passion. Since he has entered into college, Greg has created, and has continued to improve upon, a couple applications in specific: his ASU Seat Checker and a program called “Granular.”

Over his freshmen year of college, Greg realized that at the end of every semester, he and his peers ran into the issue of trying to find open seats in full classes. Most people know that if you want to get into a full class, you are stuck either hounding your advisor for some sort of help or constantly refreshing the online class roster in the hopes that someone decided to drop the course. Since Greg ran into this specific problem and did not want to occupy his time with always pressing F5, he created a Java Applet (a program that will run on any operating system with Java) that runs on PC, Mac and Linux that does this task for you. It runs in the background and, once you input the class information, it will periodically check to see if a spot has opened up. Once a seat becomes available, the seat checker will display a notification, letting you be the first to pounce on that hard–to–get class. Coincidentally, as I spoke with him, a full class that he wanted opened up and The Seat Checker notified him, so he got in. see more

Ever since video games began in the 1970s and 1980s, they’ve been synonymous with sports. They’ve taken a journey from the arcade to your living room TV screen and from Tecmo Bowl to the latest Madden or FIFA game. Here is my list of the top five sports video games. My guidelines were that it had to come out in my lifetime (since 1994) and I had to have extensive experience playing the game. The games themselves are ranked five through one on how “fun to play” they were and how much the title was a “game-changer” in the sport which the game covered. Photo courtesy of EA Sports

5. NFL Street

This game makes the list because of how fun it was to play. It included running along the walls, hurdling players, diving and taunting to earn “gamebreakers” with NFL stars, and legends whose physical features were out of proportion and stereotypical. Truck sticks and guys flew to make amazing catches. It harked back to the playground days playing pickup with friends. There was something refreshing about a game not aiming for hyper-realism. There were only eight stadiums in the game and only a handful of players to select from, but the hours spent button mashing and gasping at the absurd physics engine more than made up for it. Photo courtesy of Sony see more