Kore Chan/Senior Staff

A UC Berkeley student was robbed at gunpoint near Moffitt Library on Sunday evening.

The incident marks the fourth robbery or attempted robbery to occur on campus or on property close to campus since Thursday.

In the Sunday robbery, a UC Berkeley student was walking west on University Drive about 9:11 p.m. when two males approached him, according to a UCPD crime alert released Monday.

One of the perpetrators walked up to the victim, pointed a black handgun at his chest and demanded his cellphone. Before he could comply, the perpetrator pushed the student to the ground. The student dropped his phone, one of the perpetrators picked it up and the two perpetrators fled north on the west side of Haviland Hall, according to the alert.

The armed robbery was the second of its kind this week, after an incident at the intersection of Berkeley Way and Oxford Street early Thursday morning, according to a UCPD crime alert released Thursday. About 5:30 a.m., an armed person struck a 57-year-old UC Berkeley affiliate. The woman fell to the ground, and the perpetrator took her purse and fled the scene.

Later that evening, a 19-year-old student was robbed in front of Unit 3’s Beverly Cleary residence hall while waiting at the shuttle pickup location on Channing Way, according to a UCPD crime alert released Friday. The perpetrator in this incident also pushed the student to the ground before snatching her cellphone and fleeing the scene.

In a fourth incident this weekend, however, a student successfully resisted an attempted theft.

The student was walking between Dwinelle Hall and the Valley Life Sciences Building just after midnight Saturday when three males approached him, according to a UCPD crime alert released Monday. Two of the men stood in front of and behind the student, one issuing verbal threats while the other grabbed his backpack from behind. The student clenched his backpack and began to yell, after which the men fled the scene.

Immediately after each of the four crimes, UCPD searched the area but was unable to locate the perpetrators.

According to a recent Berkeley Police Department report, 221 robberies have occurred within the city from January to June 2013. The report also noted a 67 percent increase  in robberies targeting people with iPhones, smartphones and other small electronic devices in the first six months of 2013 compared with the same months in 2012.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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The student was walking on Campanile Way when he was confronted by three males about 12:40 a.m., according to a UCPD crime alert released Monday. A perpetrator moved in front of the student as another perpetrator grabbed his backpack from behind in an attempt to take it. The perpetrator in front verbally threatened the student, who clenched his backpack and began to yell.

The three suspects fled the scene, running east toward the Campanile. The victim, who was uninjured during the encounter, walked home and called UCPD to report the crime.

UCPD searched the area but was unable to locate the suspects.

According to the UCPD crime alert, the suspects are described as:

Suspect No. 1 — A male, possibly Asian, in his late teens or early 20s, 6 feet in height, with a thin build and dark complexion and wearing a red hooded sweatshirt.

Suspect No. 2 — An Asian male in his late teens or early 20s, 5-foot-10 in height, with a thin build and wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.

Suspect No. 3 — An unknown race male in his late teens or early 20s, 5-foot-10 in height, with a thin build and wearing dark clothing.

Megan Messerly is a news editor. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @meganmesserly.

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Every Snapchat user has been there. We understand the pain of taking 30 Snapchat pictures to find the perfect combination of “ugly-cute” when trying to Snapchat back the cute boy or girl that you met in class. We get the weird looks from older people who just don’t understand what we’re doing on our phones. We recognize the feeling of accomplishment that comes with pulling off the rebellious in-class snap.

So if you are an avid Snapchatter — meaning you Snapchat at home or on campus and while you’re studying at Main Stacks, on the toilets of Dwinelle or pretty much anywhere else — we know you’ve definitely had to overcome some real obstacles. Here are a couple of said struggles that all Snapchat enthusiasts can relate to.

The double-chin snap:

Contact Delaney Inman and Gabrielle Nguyen at blog@dailycal.org.

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Carli Baker/Senior Staff

UPDATED 4:33 p.m. — Although power has been restored to most of UC Berkeley after an explosion and a subsequent campuswide evacuation, 11 buildings remain without power as of Tuesday afternoon.

Students should assume classes held in those buildings are canceled, according to a statement released by UC Berkeley. According to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof, 113 classes were canceled today.

The nonoperational buildings include Alumni House, Bancroft Library, California Hall, Central Heating Plant, Doe Library, Durant Hall, Dwinelle Hall, Dwinelle Annex, Edwards Track (East and West areas), Haas Pavilion and the Office of Environment, Health & Safety facility.

Backup generators are being installed at Dwinelle Hall, Bancroft Library, Doe Library and California Hall, Mogulof said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. The other seven buildings will remain off the campus grid until the campus has fully assessed the damage.

“We don’t want to reconnect it for fear that we may bring everything else crashing down again,” he said.

At an earlier press conference Monday, Mogulof reiterated that the power outage that occurred at 4:30 p.m. was caused by damage to cables caused by vandals who were attempting to steal copper crucial to the campus’s power system. However, he said whether this damage was the direct cause of the explosion is still being determined.

Mogulof called the damage to the wiring “extensive” and said it was much worse than officials had initially believed when discovered late last week.

He also said that the explosion, which occurred just outside California Hall about 6:40 p.m., happened when the team was bringing power back to campus.

The campus is taking steps to increase the security of the copper substation where the vandals damaged the wiring, Mogulof said. He added that the facility is within half-mile to a mile radius of the explosion.

“It was unprecedented,” Mogulof said. ”There wasn’t anything to suggest that we had that sort of vulnerability. We’re in a new world here where people are stealing copper out of the university’s electrical grid. We have to adapt to what the new normal looks like.”

Mogulof said that the robbers had a “highly sophisticated” understanding of where one could access the sort of copper found in the substation.

The vandals “chose a point that was secluded, that was not visible, that wasn’t regularly visited,” he said.

Officials assured members of the community it was safe to return to campus Tuesday morning in an email from Chancellor Nicholas Dirks. The email said that power to the majority of the campus buildings was restored Monday night using a “methodical approach to ensure that each building is safe to occupy.”

“Because of this method of restoration, the campus has a high level of confidence that the campus is safe,” the message said.

Mogulof said that the restoration is not a “one-stop deal” and that the campus will continue to monitor the situation.

ASUC President DeeJay Pepito posted a statement on Facebook acknowledging unease over the fact that most classes are still in session despite concerns for students’ mental and emotional well-being.

“Several people were injured from the explosion, many students were stuck in elevators for hours, campus libraries were closed, and several of the residence halls … were impacted by the power outage, all factors that produced a chaotic and stressful environment,” she said in the statement. “The uncertainties of safety made studying extremely difficult and the expectation from our University to resume with regular activity and retain properly under such unique high stress and anxiety is unacceptable.”

Pepito noted that she has been in contact with the UC Berkeley administration this morning and has asked Associate Dean of Students David Surratt to send psychologists from the Tang Center to the residence halls.

Students should check in with their academic departments for further information about classes and rescheduling, and employees who normally work in those buildings should check in with their supervisors about reporting to work, according to the statement from the campus.

UC Berkeley professor of economics Martha Olney said that while the building closures were an inconvenience, the campus did an efficient job of making alternate plans.

“I thought the classroom scheduling office was on top of things,” she said. “I appreciated their quick service, and this is good preparation for the (next) earthquake.”

Here is a Google Map pinpointing where the non-operational buildings are located:

View this map on Google Maps.

Adrianna Dinolfo and Lydia Tuan contributed to this report.
Sara Grossman is the executive news editor. Contact her at sgrossman@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @saragrossman.

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So you were assigned reading on the first day of class. You probably crossed your fingers and hoped your professor would have mercy on you, but because this is Cal, you were expecting it.

Still, that didn’t make you like ‘em any better.

Being such a brilliant scholar, you figured one page of reading was enough for one day. You were already ahead of this guy, so what could go wrong?

In your supreme confidence you didn’t do anything else for an entire week. Before you knew it, you had eight critical articles, one novel and three chapters of your textbook still unread. How’d that happen so fast?!

If you find yourself in this situation …

… don’t panic just yet. The Clog has some tips to help you through it.

1. Breathe. This is vital. Hyperventilating does you no good. If you don’t breathe, you’ll pass out and miss even more reading.

2. Make a list of all the assigned reading. Check each class’s syllabus, and make a list of everything you have yet to get to. It’ll help you keep everything straight — plus, you can check things off as you go!

There’s nothing more satisfying than viciously crossing out a task completed.

3. Use downtime. Rather than listening to music and staring at your feet while waiting in Barrows for discussion to start, open up your textbook or reader and get cracking. Use every spare moment! Ten minutes here and 10 minutes there really add up to a lot of pages.

Who doesn’t love reading like the wind two minutes before lecture is supposed to start?

4. Be strategic. Prioritize and figure out which classes you should catch up on first. It makes more sense to read for earlier/more important classes first and then fit in the rest as time allows.

Desks aren’t comfy, so don’t stay up reading unnecessary stuff.

5. Stay awake! Oh yeah, try not to fall asleep while reading …

even when the content is less than exciting.

6. Miss some T.V. We know, this tip sucks. We wish we didn’t have to include it, but it’s the most realistic. It’s either miss out on some “Breaking Bad” or miss out on all your sleep.

If you refuse this option and pick fictional meth dealers over rest, we won’t judge you.

But if you do follow (most of) our advice, you can make your way to the light at the end of the tunnel!

Image sources: henry… under Creative Commons, Whatshouldwecallme, yougotocal, ucberkeleyproblems, yougotocal, ucberkeleyproblems, yougotocal, ucberkeleyproblems, ucberkeleyproblems, whatshouldwecallme, whatshouldwecallme

Contact Erum Khan ekhan@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter @erumjkhan.

The post Lifehacks: What to do if you’re behind on reading appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Carli Baker/Staff

Nearly three years and 150 million users later, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger have a lot to celebrate.

The duo rose to fame with their launch of the photo-sharing social media app, which allows users to take, edit and post pictures and videos from their phones. On Monday evening, Systrom and Krieger visited the UC Berkeley campus for a special question-and-answer session with excited students, who packed into Dwinelle Hall for the event.

The event was organized by Facebook’s university recruiters, who plan events to help students learn more about technology jobs at Facebook and other technology firms.

Alice Zheng, a sophomore intending to major in business administration, said she was interested in hearing about how the founders started the company.

“It was a privilege that they chose UC Berkeley to come to,” Zheng said. “It gave me a lot more interest in entrepreneurship and how small companies are built.”

During the session, Systrom and Krieger answered questions that were submitted through Facebook and asked directly by the audience about their background, the development of their product and the company’s future.

Krieger said the idea for Instagram was born after a social network that Systrom had been building, Burbn, failed to catch on with the public. The two decided to develop one of the most popular aspects of that effort — photo sharing — into its own app. Systrom developed the first filter for Instagram and posted the first photo while on vacation in Mexico with his girlfriend.

In October 2010, Instagram launched in Apple’s App Store. In April 2012, the social network Facebook acquired the company, providing the pair with a broader talent network and more resources to work with, according to Krieger.

“The company has really stayed together in that we’re still organized as a unit where we’re basically a startup within a larger company,” Krieger said. “And so day to day, the biggest thing that’s different is that we’re down in Menlo Park instead of being down in San Francisco.”

Still, Instagram has suffered growing pains along with its success. In December, users became concerned that changes in the company’s terms of service would give advertisers greater access to their photos. Systrom, however, said privacy is a top priority at both Facebook and Instagram.

“Users own their photos,” said Systrom. “They always have and always will. We don’t. Trust and privacy are the two things that you need to have, because you’re making effectively a deal with the consumer that they’ll use your product: You build the product, and they will only keep doing that if they trust you.”

Systrom and Krieger also offered advice to students working on their own startups, including to find a mentor and get involved in the startup scene early.

“People don’t realize when you start a startup, you’re not just starting a product — you’re starting a company,” Systrom said. “And companies are people, and people are the hardest part of the startup, meaning finding the right ones, retaining the great ones.”

Krieger added that future entrepreneurs need to have passion and be motivated by their ideas.

“We’ve seen a fair amount of people who kind of jump into it just because it’s the trendy thing to do,” said Krieger. “Make sure you’re doing it for the right reason.”

Contact Mitchell Handler at mhandler@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @mitchellhandler.

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Katherine Velicki/Staff

It was during one of those sweltering September heat waves that the Clog discovered the magic of Lake Anza. You know, those scorching weeks that make you doubt everything you’ve learned about Berkeley? Like, if the specific heat of water is so high, why isn’t the bay cooling you down? And if every undergrad pays at least $14,000 per year to study here, why doesn’t the air conditioning ever seem to work in 155 Dwinelle? Walking, thinking, exercising and sleeping in this heat for prolonged periods of time can make the sanest person crazy.

Luckily, Tilden Park surprised us with a tantalizing, brain-restoring escape from Berkeley’s fever. Only a 10-minute drive from campus, Lake Anza’s quiet beach and cool waters can be restorative and invigorating for any Cal student. Nestled within tree-covered hillsides, this serene oasis equally welcomes badass lap swimmers and frolicking enthusiasts. Even if you’re afraid of cold water, you can circumnavigate your friends’ teasing by taking the scenic Lake Anza Trail; after all, you could argue, splashing around with the ducks is much less aerobically challenging than hiking.

It’s not every day that you get to feel sand between your toes at Berkeley. Or the cool embrace of nonchlorinated water. Floating in the middle of Lake Anza, we hope that you enjoy the immersive natural beauty of this aquatic gem; who knows, maybe you’ll even recover your sanity after a broiling week in Berkeley.

The Reward:

Whether you charge unrelentingly into the water or just dip your toes in, Lake Anza offers something for all of us. Under a mile in length, the Lake Anza Trail tours the water’s perimeter and provides nonswimmers with extensive views of the lake. The sandy beach and grass lawn at the lake’s entrance are coveted picnic territories, and if you manage to dodge weekend crowds, the shores of Lake Anza are perfect for studying or sunbathing. There’s a designated lap-swim area for anyone who is tired of staring at the bottom of Spieker Pool, and if you’re reckless enough to venture out of the buoyed recreational area, there’s a 15-foot outcrop of boulders suitable for jumping (although a park ranger may yell at you).

The Trek:

Driving to Lake Anza and parking in the adjacent lot is the easiest way to reach this natural gem. Ascend Shasta Road, and turn left onto Wildcat Canyon Road. After driving a little under a mile, take a slight right onto Central Park Drive and take the hairpin turn onto Lake Anza Road in a quarter-mile. Park in the lot (one of the few free ones in Berkeley) and walk through the gate if it’s open. You can also get pretty close to Lake Anza without a car by riding AC Transit and getting off at Tilden’s Brazilian Building, and there’s always the option of running or biking here (but only for the brave!).

Enjoy your adventures; we dare you to take this plunge!

Contact Katherine Velicki at kvelicki@dailycal.org.

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As we slip into the ominous depths of midterm season and paper deadlines, it’s easy to spend our college hours slouching at a desk in Doe, scurrying from class to class or nestling under warm covers at the end of a demanding day. And even when we manage to scrape up a spare hour or two on the weekend, we flock under different roofs, congregating in frat parties, friends’ houses or bars.

But outside Fiji’s musty corridors and Dwinelle’s cramped classrooms lies a Berkeley that few people know. This glorious backdrop of our college memories is skirted by miles of wooded hills and trails that few students have explored. It’s dotted with placid, inviting lakes and winding mountain roads that seduce even the most studious cyclists with the promise of solitude, heart-pounding speed and breathtaking natural beauty.

This love for the natural side of Berkeley inspired Travel Tuesday. We want you to see your school more intimately, to delve into our city’s widespread opportunities for adventure and perhaps even dodge some stress on the way (after all, endorphins are a girl’s best friend).

The Reward

If you’re looking to seduce someone with a phenomenal view, Panoramic Way is a foolproof destination. Even after years of exploration, we still support this hilltop as the best view in Berkeley. Although this is not the highest vista of the Fire Trails, it offers an extremely broad yet intimate view of campus, Oakland and even San Francisco.

The Trek

There are two convenient trails that lead to Panoramic Way. Route A is considerably longer, flatter and more scenically diverse. Route B is steep, direct and easily navigable.

A.    Lower Fire Trail Route:

Begin on Centennial Drive, the road that leads into the hills beginning at Memorial Stadium. After following this road for exactly half a mile, passing the Strawberry Canyon Pool, you will arrive at a dirt parking lot; this is the beginning of the Lower Fire Trail. Though the moderate incline might make this part seem twice as long, you will take this wide dirt path for three quarters of a mile until you reach a hellishly steep, absolutely disgusting 200-yard slope (the Connector). Before you smash your computer and shun nature forever, please note that after this, you are almost done! Once you trudge up the Connector (10 points if you run it), there will be an asphalt road on your right; follow it for half a mile until you reach a luxurious brown building at the summit. Turn right onto the dirt path at the fork, but don’t go too far or you’ll miss the view.

B.    Clark Kerr Route:

Begin at Clark Kerr’s Golden Bear Track. First, find the dirt path at the far side of the track, opposite the pool. Walk past the beach volleyball courts, and within 100 yards you should see a dirt trail branching to your left (Stonewall-Panoramic Trail). A little under a mile, this steep, rocky trail will take you all the way to Panoramic Way. It’s a climb, but hey, how else were you going to burn off those post-Valentine’s Day/Easter pregaming chocolates?

Image Source: Katherine Velicki, The Daily Californian

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The C.V. Starr East Asian Library is thought to be one of the best study spots on campus.

The post Best places to study during finals week appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The BLAMO system that faculty members have been using over the past month — made of scavenged parts and everyday software cobbled together in 30 days by senior producer Jon Schainker — reduces the financial barrier for producing high quality video on campus.

“If someone wanted to do a professional quality recording in the past, it would take 3-4 hours to set up and costs significantly more than BLAMO,” Shainker said. “We had to get creative with a way to do this without putting a big dollar sign next to it.”

The system allows professors to hold virtual office hours, attend virtual conferences around the world and incorporate video into their classes, according to Schainker.

So far the most frequent users of the system are professors teaching in the UC Online Instruction Pilot Project.

In a Nov. 18 forum on online education, Christopher Edley, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and special adviser to UC President Mark Yudof, said that increasing availability of online courses could generate revenue for the university despite controversy over the use of online education.

The program is in the process of identifying 25 high-enrollment courses at UC Berkeley to become available for online viewing, including campus professor of public policy Robert Reich’s Wealth and Poverty class, Edley said at the forum.

The system is UC-wide and so far professors from UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz have all taken advantage of its capabilities, according to Shainker. 

Schainker credits the speedy creation and approval of the system to the very low financial cost.

“Most the equipment is scavenged from old (audio/visual) projects on campus and the software it runs on, called Camtasia, is only $100,” Schainker said. “We improve the quality of recordings by using professional quality cameras and lenses, as well as a broadcast quality microphone.”

Users pay around $100 an hour to use the system, and because it is still new and a foreign concept to many professors, a technician makes sure it is set up and running correctly for each recording, Schainker said. 

In the future, Shainker said he hopes to increase the awareness of the system on campus and encourage students to utilize the technology.

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