guys like dolls

I don’t wear makeup.

Actually, I haven’t worn makeup for a while – I gave away everything I owned about 2 months ago – I just felt funny telling anyone, and then I felt funny for feeling funny about telling anyone. It reminds me of this article.

I haven’t been wearing makeup during the day for at least 8 years, but now I no longer wear it to dress up either. I watched the movie America the Beautiful and it really made me realize that makeup is silly. All the women (and men) are just competing against each other, each trying to outdo the rest with more and more makeup. If I start wearing makeup in high school, then you will feel pressured to start in junior high. If I wear makeup on special occasions, then you’ll need to start wearing it every day.

And then there is just the overall impression that you aren’t pretty enough. No matter what. You must wear makeup in order to fit in. Everyone does it. Shouldn’t we just appreciate people as they are?

I think you can be beautiful without putting anything on your face. and there are so many benefits – it feels nicer, you don’t have to worry about it getting messed up, your skin stays cleaner, and you don’t have to spend all this time and effort on something that isn’t worth it.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m still vain in many ways. I like to do my hair, and put on nice clothes. It will take time to get past the social pressure, but I just think everyone would be better off with less makeup in the world. And if the makeup succeeds… it’s just going to get messed up anyway.

I know some people will never give up the stuff, but I’ve stopped, and it isn’t due to lack of caring, lack of knowledge, or any other lack that I do not wear makeup. I’ve made a conscious decision.

We finally got around to scanning Sherlock’s x-ray. Enjoy.

I like to store many of my pantry items in clear containers – sugar, flour, cornmeal, anything that comes in messy bags. I feel like they make my cabinets more organized, I can easily see how much of something I have left, and, I confess, I like how they look.

Unfortunately, most of the pantry storage containers out there are plastic. And a lot of the best are clear hard plastic. The kind which used to have BPA in them, and now probably contain other chemicals we don’t yet know are harmful. To me, the best replacement for these containers is glass. But finding glass storage is fairly hard – most of them don’t seal well and are much more expensive than plastic.

But I’ve now rediscovered canning jars! I already use the small jars for canning pickles and jams, but I didn’t realize that the jars also come in quarts and half gallons. The half gallons are perfect for white sugar and flour (I use two for a 5lb bag of flour) and the quarts also store my smaller brown and powdered sugars very nicely. The jars are only about $1-2 per piece (cheaper than any of the plastic containers I’ve used) and they seal very well. Because of their cheap price, I bought several wide mouth sets, so now everything is bottled up and their lids are all interchangeable. You can get them from Osh or Ace Hardware. The best pantry food storage was right in front of me this whole time.

My company recently started this financial education push at work. They are offering classes, reading materials and we also got access to some will making software. My finances are fairly well organized, but I hadn’t ever thought about making a will. It didn’t seem like it would hurt though so I decided to give it a shot.

After a bunch of reading online I ended up with two documents. One is called a Living Will and is really easy to make at doyourproxy.org. It applies while you are still alive, hence the name. You basically choose from several sets of radio buttons about what you want to happen when you are no longer able to make your own medical decisions. Things like, if you are in a coma with no hope of coming out, do you want life support to be stopped or continue? Or, do you have a problem with artificial feeding? It took some hard thinking for me to figure out my own answers, but I feel more confident that my family members will know what I believe and their choices will be easier to make. (In the end, I really think that wills are for the benefit of your family – not yourself)

I made my actual Will using some software by Suze Orman that I got through work. It was sightly painful to use, but only costs about $15, which is much cheaper than a lawyer. I don’t think you could use it for very complicated wills but I was able to set up two in about an hour (Joey and I have separate ones because joint wills can be very problematic. A joint will can’t be changed after one person dies – no matter how out of date it gets.) The main point of the will is to name an executor, and to leave your tangible property (possessions without a title) and the residue of your estate (all money, houses, other titled objects) to someone.

The executor will carry out your will and has to go through all of your stuff and get it to the right people or places. So you want someone who can handle all of that work and that you trust. Trust is important because you can include additional notes with your will that tell your executor what kind of funeral services you like and can call out specific property you want left to people. The benefit of this “Final Instructions” document is that can be updated frequently and easily because it doesn’t need to be signed – it isn’t really a legal document, you are just asking your executor to take care of some things for you in the way you wish. For now, I chose my Mom. I know I can trust her to give our cats and dog to the right people and carry out my funeral services in the way I wish.

The whole process took about a day of thinking, researching, and deciding. Once we figured out what we wanted the wills to say it was pretty easy to execute using the two web apps. After generating the documents we printed one hard copy because they need some signatures. The Living Will needs to be signed by two people who are unrelated to you (we used our neighbors) and your Will also needs two signatures, but they can be related. Neither document needs to be notarized (at least in CA) – which I didn’t want to have to deal with. After getting the signatures, I scanned everything back in and sent electronic copies to a couple of people for safe keeping. And most importantly, I sent a hard copy to my executor so that if the time came, they would be able to act.

For a day of work I think I probably saved my family weeks of painful decision making. So, even though I usually try to pretend death doesn’t exist, I think the one day was worth it.

Lately I’ve been trying to reduce our trash output. Just generally making switches from disposable to reusable. One of the things I decided to try was using handkerchiefs instead of kleenex. I’ve decided that I’m never going back.

The first thought I had was that handkerchiefs might be gross, or take too much time, or something like that. I don’t know anyone else who uses them. Instead though, they have saved me money (I used to go through a lot of kleenex) and they feel good!

There were two kinds two choose from, synthetic or cotton. I got some of both from Amazon to see which ones I liked best. The synthetic ones are really easy to fold and don’t wrinkle at all, so they look nicer in their box. The cotton ones crumple up, which I could probably fix with ironing, but I’m too lazy for that. The cotton ones are cotton though, so they are more natural (but I couldn’t find a good set of organic ones). Both sets were around a $1 per piece. It seems to be a mixed bag, so I like having some of both.

I pretty much use them just like I used paper tissues except when they are dirty I toss them on top of (or in) the washer instead of in the trash. Then, whenever I do a load of regular laundry they just get cleaned as well, so it hasn’t taken any extra effort nor cost to use them. And they haven’t been gross at all, especially when I just toss them inside of the washer itself. No touching of other people’s handkerchiefs is necessary.

My nose also likes them because they are softer and thicker than the paper version.

I still have one box of tissues in the closet that I can pull out for guests if necessary, but you should definitely try them in your own home. They aren’t just for old men anymore.

I’ve been lagging on the photo front lately, so I went on a sorting and uploading spree yesterday. I posted photos from Mission peak, including a few panoramas from the same spot, two San Diego hikes, and a bunch of other stuff. Here are a few of my favorites…

Random tidbits on the computer/nerd-alert front. I accidentally launched my laptop into the air last month and shattered the screen. It was good while it lasted, and it is sitting on a shelf, waiting for me to find time to replace the screen. In the meantime I picked up an Asus UL30A-X5, which runs Linux beautifully, lasts for about 10 hours on battery and is incredibly light between the 13″ screen and lack of an optical drive. In order to hedge my bets and have something with a bit more speed I also built my first desktop, based loosely on one described at Ars Technica with a few minor changes (P55A-UD3 motherboard, 5750 graphics card, 400W Corsair power supply). It too runs Linux and anything I can throw at it like a champ. So I use the desktop at home and the laptop at school, using Unison to keep things in sync.

I just got Unison up and running to synchronize the data between my laptop and desktop machines. It is the closest thing to magic that any software in recent memory has come for me. Keeping data in sync between multiple computers has always seemed like a huge pain, but Unison scans my home folder on each machine (> 100k files!) in about 30 seconds, lets me review any differences and then synchronizes them. If you regularly use two computers and are tired of emailing files back and forth to yourself, you should check out Unison. In particular, read this post by Philip Guo for a well written introduction and detailed instructions (randomly, I mentioned Philip more than two years ago for another incredibly helpful post that he wrote about applying for graduate fellowships).

You could say that this year was the year of the hippie. I gravitated with increasing intensity towards all things natural and less wasteful. Everything from becoming mostly vegan at home (with the exception of cheese, which I still haven’t found a great substitute for yet) to using handkerchiefs instead of kleenex and only natural cleaning products. Even Lola eats vegan dog food.

I harvested my first crops from the yard (tomatoes, onions, spinach, and peppers were the big winners) and Joey and I are still eating seasonal local produce from spud. I eat many more vegetables now, like eggplant, squash, and carrots – which I’m sure is hard to believe for those who knew me even just a few years ago.

A big change for me is that I started working 80% time at work (4 days a week, 80% of the pay). This has helped me find a better balance between work and home and I feel much more relaxed.

Overall, I feel this past year has been very productive and I’ve become more aware of my actions. I hit about 70% of my goals, though I didn’t do as well on the few I outlined in last year’s post. Here were the specific goals from last year:

• explore more 3d art projects – I completely failed at this this year. I started taking an art class, but then dropped it because it wasn’t exactly what I expected.
• get a six pack – Well, the six pack isn’t there! but I am in much better shape than at the start of the year. I feel pretty healthy, so I’m not going to worry too much about the fact that I didn’t accomplish this. I’ll still keep dreaming though.
• volunteer and donate – I wanted to start giving back and this went very well. I gave blood and volunteered at a community farm near us. Joey and I researched many charities and donated to the ones that we believed in. This was an increase of infinity percent given that the year before we didn’t do anything, and I believe we made smart choices.
• keep working on the house – This goal, well, it feels like it is ever present. I know we made progress, but I still don’t feel satisfied. The yard needs a lot of work, but recently Joey and I have been making a concerted effort to get this done. (Sounds like what I said last year… hopefully next year will be the winner!)
• camping/backpacking frenzy – We did indeed go on a frenzy this year, which Lola loved. I had never been backpacking before and we went three times, culminating in a week long trip. Our hikes and runs have been more regular and we’ve now explored all of the dog friendly open spaces close to our house. We even had a tick adventure.

Highlights from next year’s resolutions:

• start an additional hobby – Time for something new! I am already very into gardening, cooking, reading, puzzle-ing, and such like that – so none of those count.
• grow more food – Since October I have been keeping track of all of the food that Joey and I purchase. I’m going to continue doing that for a year to figure out how much food we consume, and thus how much I would eventually like to grow. This year I have 96 sq ft of veggie space, so I want to harvest a lot more than I did last year – and keep track of it!
• floss more – I know this is common, but I’ve never made this resolution before. My trick – I’m going to allow myself to floss during the day instead of only at night.
• run a marathon or hike 30 miles in one day – To me, these are fairly equivalent in terms of effort. Hiking takes longer, and usually involves a lot more hills, but I find it a lot less boring than running. We’ll see which one wins.
• volunteer and donate – I want to continue in this category, especially in terms of giving my time. I hope to contribute to several organizations this year.

This is the year of turning 26 – hope it goes well.

I’ve previously written about LayoutEditor, a cross-platform application for designing lithographic masks with an emphasis on MEMS. There are other, commercial programs like L-Edit that are available at Stanford but I like LayoutEditor because of its macro support. The icing on the cake of course is that LayoutEditor is free. Or at least was until recently. In late 2008 the creator of the project decided to take it commercial to make ends meet. That’s great, and I’m sure the software has improved greatly since then because of the decision. And it didn’t affect any of the pre-commercial users because the free versions were still available on SourceForge.

But sometime in mid-2009 all of the free versions (at least post-2007) were scrubbed from the SourceForge files page. This was a bit of a problem, because I was pretty sure at the time that I would need another fabrication run (and reticle layout) to finish my PhD. And I’m sure that I’m not the only student who would be more than happy to use old but free software if it were available.

But the free version of LayoutEditor was still available, there just weren’t any direct links to it. The URL format on the new downloads page is easy to guess, so when I noticed that the SourceForge files were gone I started poking around. When I found the 20080925 version (the latest and greatest free version) I downloaded copies for a few different platforms for insurance. A neutered free version was available on the updated LayoutEditor site, but it didn’t have my beloved macro feature amongst many other essential features.

I hadn’t thought about it again until I came across the files while cleaning up some backups the other day. I poked around on the site again and all of the files I had previously downloaded were gone. So even if someone was desperate enough, there was no trace left of what was once free software. I want to emphasize that there are probably great features in the post-commercial versions of the application and you should support it if you can, but that doesn’t change the fact that the software was once free (and sporadically open source). Which is why I decided to mirror what I have:

layout-20080925-win32 (installer)
layout-20080925-win32 (source)
layout-20080925-mac-osx
layout_20080925_xUbuntu_8.04_amd64 (DEB)

layout-20080628-win32 (installer)
layout-20080628-win32 (source)
layout_20080628_xUbuntu_8.04_i386 (DEB)
layout_20080628_xUbuntu_8.04_amd64 (DEB)
layout-20080628-Fedora_9.i386 (RPM)
layout-20080628-Fedora_9.x86_64 (RPM)

You can see in the license file that the software is free to copy and distribute, so don’t be shy to mirror it elsewhere for redundancy. If you are running 32-bit Linux, I can say that the 20080925 Windows version runs great under Wine at least under Ubuntu 9.10.

So there you have it. Hopefully this is will be useful to someone out there working on a class or research project.

Update (09/24/2010): Here are some additional copies of the source code courtesy of Timothy Joseph. These would be especially useful if you’re using a Linux distribution other than Debian or Fedora, and need to build from the source. Thanks Tim!

layout-20080925 (source)
layout-20080628 (source)
layout-20080419 (source)
layout-20080205 (source)
layout-20071204 (source)
layout-20071204 (linux source)