last one of the year

A necessary one. So the end of 2009 is close. It's been a thoroughly eventful year. I finally finished my education. We got married twice and moved continent. We found new jobs, and I am being properly salaried for the first time in my life. We found a great apartment in a fantastic location at a good price. We took a short holiday in Hawaii. I had my ACL reconstruction surgery. And we had visitors with us from time to time.

Sure there were stressful moments. I know there were some but I cannot remember half of them now. I'm sure they were all worth it. I really like the way things are now. I have a great job that I really enjoy. I think if I earned a bit more and if Pete had a bit more free time, life would be perfect. It's almost perfect now, which is a good place to be in. And I wish all our family and friends were living here in the bay area too.

So maybe I'm not really looking forward to 2010. But that's not me. Come what may, I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

merry christmas

It's been unbelievably quiet at work this week. Mandatory staff holiday going on here. I wonder how I get any work done during most of the year.

It's our first Christmas here in the USA, without Pete's family. No games night, no christingle or midnight mass (I enjoy the singing, even though I'm really bad at it). I hope our home-cooked Christmas dinner will be good.

Merry Christmas to all!

Sneak peek

 

Two down, one to go!

Guess where

this photo was taken. A fascinating country. Must return for a proper
visit sometime.

bridge in fog

Don't go to San Francisco in the summer if you want a clear view of
the Golden Gate.

Tree crash

In our apartment complex parking area. And we slept right through it!

Hmmm... Earthquakes...

My wonderful research group

Website at
http://bmr.group.stanford.edu

XTEST extension

Another computer-related one. If you did the Mac 10.5.7 upgrade recently and now find that you cannot run the MATLAB editor due to some X11 XTEST extension not being installed, check out this article to enable the extension:
http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/Xquartz/

Open new Terminal from any Finder window

Mac OS script that opens a new terminal and changes directory to that of your Finder window. The icon sits in the Finder toolbar.
http://manas.tungare.name/software/finder-toolbar-scripts/

Sealions

At Santa Cruz.

my hearing is still ok

Created by Train Horns

dream last night

An amusing dream I had last night which I want to share.

In my dream I was at work. I don't recognise/remember the environment but I know I was at work. We were in a meeting but I don't know who else was there at this point. Then I saw a familiar face syt22 so I called out to him. I asked him what he was doing at my work. Turns out that he was now working at my research lab. I said that was rather surprising seeing how he being a lawyer and all artsy-type. So I probed further about what exactly could a lawyer be doing at an radiology research lab. Now this gets really interesting: he's here to write a bit of Perl script to parse legal documents and find/tag keywords in them. So I started thinking how this would work, and where the dollar variables would come in. (I only just started learning Perl, for real, you see.) Then we have a bit of a chat and some of his other friends, whom I've briefly met them in real life or seen Facebook pics, appear in my dream too.

---

So I guess I've been thinking too much about syt22's upcoming wedding dinner. And maybe too much about work and coding. I never thought I would have in one dream: syt22 and his friends, research lab, and Perl. But I do (now I mean, not last night) wonder if law firms could make use of something like the above. Maybe they already do!

Burp

Cheapest beer in town!

I love my job

I have a to-do list at work to keep organised, and to stop myself from stressing over what I have to do. If I have it written down then I know it will be done. This list is longer in this job than it has ever been when I was in Cambridge. I guess this is what having a real job is like. I love it. I can actually contribute to others' work.

Anyway, check out http://www.stanford.edu/~worters

just for fun

http://polyene.mybrute.com

In California and nearly settled down. The apartment is pretty bare and we're still twaiting for our stuff to arrive from the UK. Maybe I'll write more when I get a chance to sit down and write.

countdown

I've been watching daytime TV. My favourite is Countdown. It is a gameshow with two contestants. Most of the game consists of word rounds: making the longest word from a jumble of nine letters, chosen in turn by the contestants from shuffled stacks of vowels and consonants. I rarely do better than the contestants. For every four or five word rounds, there is a number round: making a number from six other numbers by addition, subtraction, etc. I love the number round. I watch the whole program for those few rounds. They say mental exercise is good for a healthy mind.

back in cambridge

And now I shall busy myself with selling bits of furniture and books, and preparing to end the Cambridge chapter of our lives. For now.