Reisun.org

Found on a gps forum post.

• Icon Editor IcoFX
• AVI Video Converter Prism
• DVD to MPEG-4 Converter HandBrake

This link had a really nice tip/cheat sheet for Numpy arrays. As of today the link appears to be broken, so I have saved it here. The image was unfortunately not saveable, so I have a PDF version of the page.

I recently moved to Boston, MA (partly for career reasons, mostly to live with my current significant other and make sure she is the one before we get engaged/married) and started working at MGH, a hospital. My biggest surprise that I have felt is how slow and bureaucratic things are. For almost a decade I have been working for the government and thought it was slow and bureaucratic, but in comparison to a hospital things moved at lightning speed.

Case in point: this is the start of my third week here, and I still dont have access to my office. Apparently I am being unreasonable and impatient to inquire about getting a key to the office at the Buildings and Grounds office, bypassing the (often unhelpful) administrative staff who keep telling me to just wait. I dont think two and a half weeks of waiting makes me impatient! The B&G staff, in contrast, was pretty helpful and even mentioned that they received the key request last Thursday (a full week after the admin staff said they will put in a request) and that the key should be ready by last Friday. Today is Monday and still no key…

I do not particularly care either way, as I will be leaving this job as soon as I am sure my SO is the one and we will both leave Boston for better work, but the principle of gatekeeping and slowing things down (for whatever petty reason admin staff have) is antithetical to the way I work and live.

I travel a lot for work, and have on occasion been stuck at a layover over night. Luckily for the most part it was due to mechanical difficulties, which meant the airline had to put me up at a hotel. I recently read that that is becoming rarer as airlines reduce flights and costs. The article I was reading mentioned the Mini Motel, which is intriguing, but probably impractical to lug around on the off chance you might get stuck. (Checking it in, which I almost never do normally, won’t help because most forced overnight layovers leave the checked luggage on the plane.) So unless I can carry it onboard, it isn’t that useful.

Still, might be worth a look as a cheap sleeping bag.

There are a few quotes/passages that have profoundly affected me in the way I think or live each day. I think the three most important are the following:

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
  Henry David Thoreau
• “Sail forth – steer for the deep waters only, Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.”          — Walt Whitman
• I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

  5 U.S.C. §3331

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Quick note: the eMotion Solar PMP looks interesting! A solar powered media player (mp3, mpeg4, etc.) that has a built-in led flashlight and a usb charger. $169, so a bit pricy but something definitely worth considering.