Numpy (scipy) Tip Sheet Saved
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.
Working at a hospital
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.
Mini Motels
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.
Quotes to live by
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
Solar Powered MP3 Player
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.
Water Purification
Recent news articles reveal that there are trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in the water supply of most major cities. That, and the fact that in a year and a half I should be in a job that takes me to different cities in remote locations all over the world, have made me more conscious about the water I drink. My current living arrangements leave much to be desired, and I currently store a few gallons of spring water on my dresser table, transfer some amounts to plastic containers and cool them in the small dorm-fridge. While this may be overkill for the US, I have purchased the Katadyn Exstream XR Water Purifier bottle and will be trying it out for a few days. I have read reviews that the purified water has an iodine taste to it, which I would like to confirm.
As I said this is probably overkill for the US (although spring water apparently is also contaminated in some parts), but when I get posted overseas I will definitely be bringing this with me. A more in depth review in the near future.
Slashdot Spam response form
Slashdot is often a place for taunting, ranting, and otherwise juvenile behavior. But there are some patterns and memes that are hilarious (or at least used to be ) that keep cropping up. The following is one the funnier ones, a stock response form for a post claiming to solve spam email once and for good.
Your finding advocates a( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!