MegDesk – The Blog

This Etsy shop is so filled with geeky awesomeness that I decided I couldn’t just share it with a friend or two and needed instead to dedicate an entire post.

The Pink Toque

The shop is mainly focused on creative handmade soap designs, but there are a few other fun products tossed into the mix.  A few of my favorite items:

Operating System Soaps:

I love that little Mac soap!  It kind of looks like a little soap version of the Mac Mini.

Star Wars Soap:

I enjoy things like this that are subtly geeky. Because chances are that you would only recognize that as Star Wars soap if you are also a geek. Or frequently in close contact with one. In which case, a nice scented soap would probably be a good thing, right?

Plush Sock Cthulhu

How cute are these little plush Cthulhus?  (Cthulhu?  Cthulhi? What is the plural of Cthulhu anyway?) With an embodiment of evil this adorable, I might consider switching over to the Dark Side! [Apologies to purists for the blended references.]

Check out the Etsy shop for more fun and geeky products.

Bonus Points – The creator is from Indianapolis!  Hooray for Hoosiers!

Well, technically he’s just certified!

Lucas has spent the last two weekends getting his PADI scuba certification in preparation for our trip to Mozambique. Back in Austin, this would be no big deal, but we’re in Norway. And this is “open-water” diving!

Yes, that means that his certification dives were in the Oslofjord. Swimming in the fjord is shockingly cold even in the hottest summer weather, so the idea of going in the water in February/March sounds insane to me. Even some of the Norwegians were surprised to find out that they offer dive courses at this time of year!

Of course the divers wear dry suits, but can you imagine getting in the water when it’s -10°C outside? Even just the thought of standing around on shore in a dry suit and a few layers of wool underwear makes me shiver. I guess the perk of getting a scuba certification in Norway is that you get your dry-suit diving certification by default at the same time. (If you can call that a perk. I personally don’t think I have any desire to get a dry-suit certification!)

But Lucas and his classmates survived, and I’m very proud of him for making it through the ordeal! And I’m sure he’ll be excited to dive in Africa, where hopefully the water will be a little warmer.

I promised to post this as a follow up to my Paris trip recap this week, and depending on which day you consider the first of the week, I may have actually made that deadline.

One of the problems with visiting popular destinations around the world is the crowds and the queues. Anyone who has stood in line to visit the Vatican or to view Michelangelo’s David likely understands this. And visiting Paris is no different. Many of the must-see destinations are on everyone’s must-see list, and even visiting in the middle of February we experienced a few long queues. Although the waits weren’t as long as I’ve seen at the peak of summer, the bitter temperatures made them just as unpleasant.

However, beginning with my first trip to Paris back in college, I started finding ways to avoid some of the worst waits, and on this most recent trip, we were able to add to this. Hopefully some of these ideas will prove useful to a few of my fellow travelers.

The Louvre

Just about everyone who visits Paris heads to the Louvre. When I lived in Paris over the summer, the winding queues stretching out of I.M. Pei’s famous pyramid were long and slow, and in the July heat, people actually walked the line selling overpriced bottles of water to the melting tourists.

Even before the 9/11 security increases, the Louvre had a tight security check to get inside. The long lines came not from backups at ticket counters but from the slow and painful process of getting through security. On our most recent visit, we were there outside of the peak visiting times (taking advantage of the late opening hours on Fridays), so the line at the central entrance was relatively short. I had decided that it was worth seeing the main entrance for the strange juxtaposition of the modern glass pyramids and the classic architecture of the palace, but if the line had been longer, I had a backup plan:

When the line at the main entrance is too long, or if it’s cold, hot, rainy, or otherwise unpleasant, there is actually a second public entrance through the Carrousel du Louvre shopping center.  This spot is now slightly more well-known, thanks to its inverted glass pyramid made famous in Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, but the line is still generally shorter, and it has the advantage of being inside.  So you can wait out the queue in a place that’s heated, air-conditioned, covered, or otherwise  safe from inclement weather!

To reach the alternate entrance, head back out to Rue de Rivoli, and look for the entrance to the Carrousel du Louvre on the left. Walk straight through the shopping center, and you’ll reach the inverted pyramid. The security checkpoint for the Musée du Louvre is on the left (just before the post office and the Starbucks coffee shop).

Once you’re through security, you’ll end up back in the museum’s central atrium, along with all the masses from the main entrance.  Consider bringing along a credit card that doesn’t charge a hefty international fee, and you can use the self-service kiosks which have multiple language options but still tend to attract fewer crowds and shorter lines.

Musée d’Orsay

We visited the Orsay on a Saturday, and despite the cold February weather, there was already quite a line when we arrived around 10 am. Since we planned to visit the Rodin Museum later that day, we decided to reorganize our schedule and head there first. There wasn’t much of a line at the Rodin Museum, and the two museums offer a shared ticket (Passeport Musée Rodin + Musée d’Orsay) that costs slightly less and allows you to use a separate entrance at the Orsay.  Once again, it’s the security checkpoint that’s the bottleneck, so being able to use the pre-paid ticket entrance can save a lot of time.

The advantage of the combined ticket is that it costs less and allows you to use the alternate entrance.  However, if you don’t want to visit the Rodin Museum, and you have your plans decided in advance, it’s possible to buy tickets to the Orsay online for a small service charge. This will also allow you to bypass the general queue and use the less-crowded advanced-purchase door.

Château de Versailles

Unlike the Louvre and the Orsay, Versailles has two lines.  The first is to buy tickets, and the second is to get through security.  First of all, make sure you realize which is which! I’ve heard multiple stories of people waiting in the entrance line only to find out half an hour later that they needed to buy tickets before joining that line.

To skip the ticket-buying line, it is possible to buy tickets online ahead of time.  Unlike the Orsay, the price of advanced tickets is the same as buying them on site, and if you are unable to print them yourself (perhaps you bought them the night before using an iPhone and the hotel Wi-Fi), you can just take your booking number to the on-site Internet Client Service office to pick up your tickets.

As a last resort, if you arrive at Versailles without tickets, it may be possible to buy your tickets with a credit card at the ticket machines and skip the long ticket-purchasing queue. However, the ticket machines are inside the building with the ticket office, so you essentially have to jump the queue just to get inside to the machines.  The people in line in front of us decided to try it and came back to tell us that there was no line for the machines, so Lucas went ahead and bought ours from the machine as well.  I would have felt a little awkward walking past the waiting crowd, but Lucas reports that the line filed right past the unused ticket machines and into the staffed ticket office. So it wasn’t actually cutting per se.

Unfortunately, at Versailles both pre-purchased tickets and same-day ticket sales filter through the same security line, so you’ll probably be stuck in the second queue, regardless of how and when you buy your tickets. Still, one line is much better than two! As far as I know, the only way to avoid the line at the main entrance is to join a group tour.

Le Tour Eiffel

Although I have no personal experience with this, it does seem possible to buy tickets to the Tour Eiffel in advance.  This could be a little risky (especially at certain times of year), since there is no refund offered if part of the Tower is closed for weather restrictions. In our case, the top level was inaccessible due to icy conditions, so I’m glad we didn’t have a pre-paid ticket all the way up!

This is a cute time-lapse video of what it might look like if baking cookies was like using PhotoShop.  I’m neither a great baker nor a great PhotoShop artist, but I think my baking might turn out better if I had an Undo button!  On the other hand, I’m glad I don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for a license to use our kitchen.

Adobe Photoshop Cook from Lait Noir on Vimeo.

This week I finished uploading my photos from our Valentine’s Day weekend in Paris.  The full album can be found here.

We booked our trip to Paris back in December when RyanAir was having one of their crazy airfare sales, and the roundtrip tickets cost only 200 NOK (around $35) per person.  Since we could fly any weekend in February, I thought it might be something fun to do for Valentine’s Day.

Since I’ve been to Paris a few times before, and I spent a few months there during university, the trip didn’t require much planning.  As soon as we booked the tickets, I looked around for a decent budget hotel, and found the fantastic little Hotel Diana in the Latin Quarter (with free Wi-Fi – a huge convenience with the iPhone).

Beyond booking the hotel, I really didn’t do anything else, so by the time February rolled around, I had nearly forgotten about the trip.  I knew it was coming up, but I wasn’t thinking about it, since we were in the middle of an organizational flurry for our Easter trip to South Africa and Mozambique.

Part of that was the application for Lucas’s visa to South Africa, and thanks to an unexpected delay getting his last UK visa, he was anxious about getting the application in as early as possible.  When we finally gathered the documentation and appeared at the embassy, the consular agent told us it would take a week or two, and I was about to ask Lucas if there was a chance he’d need to travel for work when I realized, “We’re supposed to go to Paris next weekend!”  Thankfully the South African embassy was wonderfully accommodating, and they were able to process his visa in time for the Paris trip!

We threw some clothes into our carry-on bags, bid the cats goodbye, and headed to the bus station for the long ride to the Torp airport.  (In true RyanAir irony, the roundtrip bus tickets cost more than the airfare!)  After an uneventful flight and another bus ride, we were in downtown Paris!  Since it was already nearing midnight, we took a €12 taxi ride from the bus stop at Porte Maillot to the hotel, and along the way I pointed out to Lucas the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, and Notre Dame cathedral.

The next morning we began our sightseeing by walking over to the Panthéon, because it was close to the hotel and I had actually never seen it (short of rushing past in a taxi).  From there we walked through the Jardin du Luxembourg, which was eerily quiet.  In good summer weather, the gardens are crowded to capacity, but in the frosty February chill, the entire garden was practically deserted.

From there we walked over to Église Saint-Sulpice.  This was another place I’ve never been, even though I was interested in seeing the Delacroix murals.  At that point we decided that despite the temperatures, Paris in February is somehow colder than Oslo in February (I think it’s the wind chill), and we stopped back at the hotel to change into warmer socks.

Our next stop was Notre Dame cathedral.  Unfortunately, due to the ice, we couldn’t climb the towers and see the chimera, but the bare trees made it easier to appreciate the Gothic architecture of the exterior, and I enjoyed seeing it in the snow.

After a walk along the Seine and enjoying the views from Pont Neuf and Pont des Arts, it was time to find some lunch.  Although we planned to eat French food, the restaurant we were looking for turned out to be closed.  Since we were very close to the street I used to visit for Japanese food, we ended up having yakiniku for our first meal in Paris!

After lunch, we walked past the apartment I shared with Mike and Meera and walked back through Jardin des Tuileries to the Louvre.  The line wasn’t long and security was moving quickly, so we were able to use the main entrance through the I.M. Pei glass pyramids.  As it was a Friday, and the museum would be open late, we had plenty of time, so when I asked Lucas what he most wanted to see, he didn’t believe me that we couldn’t see it all.  In the end, we made a noble effort, and we did cover a lot of the museum!

When museum fatigue finally got to us, we walked over to the Marais and had a leisurely dinner at Vins des Pyrénées.  The wait staff was friendly, and the food was quite good – especially Lucas’s duck breast!  Yum!

Our second day began at the Rodin Museum – surprisingly, yet another place that I’d never visited!  It was snowing lightly as we explored the grounds, and I appreciated the contrast of the dark bronze sculptures against the snow.  We enjoyed the exhibits inside the museum and were amused to find a painting of Rodin’s famous The Thinker by none other than Norway’s own Edvard Munch!

After a quick stop for lunch at a cafe, we visited the Musée d’Orsay, which was quite crowded considering it was February (though it was a Saturday).

From there, we walked over to the Place de la Concorde and down the Champs-Élysées, where we bought a snack and decided to watch a film to take a break from walking.  Afterward we climbed the Arc de Triomphe to admire the views and happened to time it so that we could watch the Tour Eiffel exhibit its hourly sparkling effect (a holdover from the Year 2000 celebrations of my original time in Paris).

While we had Tour Eiffel on our minds, we headed over to visit the iconic structure and waited in the queue to go up.  Due to the late time and the questionable weather, we could only visit the 2nd floor, but the wind cut our visit quite short anyhow!  The one time that I seriously questioned the idea of visiting Paris in February was when I was shivering in the icy wind atop Tour Eiffel!

For our last full day in Paris we took the RER out to Versailles.  In a twist of luck, the weather cleared up a bit on Sunday (Valentine’s Day), so the sun was shining as we waited in line to visit the château, and the weather was much better for wandering around the gardens.

Although I’d been to Versailles a few times before, the Petit Trianon had not yet been restored, and I was happy to have the chance to explore Marie Antoinette’s little realm.  I particularly enjoyed the charming Queen’s Hamlet (Hameau de la reine).  I’m not sure if I just missed it on my other visits or if it’s only been restored in the past decade as well.

We returned to downtown around sunset and headed up to Montmartre, where we visited the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur and then walked back down along the winding roads and quiet stairways.  Back at the bottom of the hill, we strolled by Pigalle (because nothing says “Happy Valentine’s Day” like sex show ads and a massive “Sexodrome”) so Lucas could see the Moulin Rouge.

For dinner, we waited in the queue outside Chartier and then gorged ourselves on ridiculously cheap food!

On Monday morning we took the RER from Hotel Diana back to Porte Maillot to catch the bus to Beauvais Airport.

In case you haven’t heard, Mattel unveiled Barbie’s latest career choices at the American International Toy Fair, a few weeks ago.  They put it to a vote on the internet, so not surprisingly the popular choice (swayed by the computer-addicted masses) was “computer engineer.”  The company also created a “news anchor” doll, which was the most popular choice among girls.  I’m pretty sure that I remember seeing a call to arms on a geek girls website and casting my vote for computer engineer, so I’m amused to see that the choice won and that Mattel followed through on their promise.

Since I started programming when I was young enough to be playing with Barbies, I think I would have wanted one of these no matter what she was wearing.  However, I will admit that I’m not thrilled with what Mattel came up with.  Even though they claim to have worked closely with the Society of Women Engineers to develop the doll’s look, I’m not so sure that SWE is the group to turn to for fashion advice, even when it comes to “geek chic.”

First, let’s start with the good points:

• She has binary on her t-shirt.  That’s definitely adding to her geek reputation, since any decent programmer either owns or admires a shirt with a clever binary joke or message.
• She has cool retro glasses.  A lot of people have chastised this decision with sarcastic comments like, “Oh, you can tell she’s smart, because she’s wearing glasses!”  No, she’s a computer engineer, and staring at a monitor all day has damaged her eyesight and dries out her contact lenses.
• She has a pink laptop.  I’ve seen bloggers complaining about this one too.  Pink is Barbie’s favorite color, so she chose a pink laptop casing.  Plain and simple.  My own laptop is blue, because I like blue.  If I liked pink (and I know a few female programmers who do), my laptop would be pink too!
• Is that a circuit board print on her jacket sleeves?  Probably not the most stylish choice, but that definitely earns points for being subtly geeky.

So, clearly Mattel got a few things right.  Unfortunately, they also got a lot of things wrong:

• The leggings and jacket thing?  Way too trendy for most programmers.  And that half-sleeve jacket looks like it would be very uncomfortable to wear while typing.  I rarely wear half-sleeves for this very reason.
• There’s a folder icon on her t-shirt?!?  Enough said.
• I don’t understand the bluetooth earpiece.  Unless she’s Skype-calling her internet friends in Denmark, I don’t see why she needs this.  Plus, I’ve read that she also comes with a mobile phone.  I don’t know any engineers who are permanently attached to a bluetooth cellphone headset.  Those are sales and management types.

For fun, I decided to mock up what I think computer engineer Barbie should look like.  I’m a women, I played with Barbies, and I’m a computer engineer.  I think that makes me qualified, right?  And if any crafty parents out there want to redesign the wardrobe of their children’s computer engineer Barbie, feel free to borrow from my concept design:

• She keeps her cool pink glasses and her personalized Barbie-pink laptop.
• She also keeps her gorgeous flowing blonde hair, but we’ve added some pink highlights to show her funky, geeky side.  Think computer whiz “Penelope Garcia” from Criminal Minds.
• Her binary t-shirt has been replaced with a geek-standard black t-shirt from Think Geek, cut in a flattering feminine shape.
• Leggings?  Fitted jeans are more versatile and stylish enough for most engineers.
• Instead of a self-important bluetooth headset, we give her an iPod, so that she can enjoy her favorite coder soundtrack without disturbing the colleagues in her cube farm.  (This should also help to appease the Mac fanboys out there.)
• And lastly, it may not be the most stylish accessory, but a copy of Visual Studio will definitely make Barbie’s life easier than trying to debug that binary code.

I would definitely buy my daughter that second Barbie.  I think she looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.  Cool and realistic.  Either that, or this career has completely destroyed my sense of aesthetics!

This weekend, we went with Tara and Tor to Tor’s family cabin in the mountains.  Even though we’ve been in Norway for three years, we’ve never experienced a traditional cabin trip.  Even more embarrassingly, we’ve never been cross country skiing.

We drove up on Friday night, and our first cross-country experience was quite an adventure – skiing from the car to the cabin carrying our bags through the dark!  On Saturday, we took a slightly longer ski trip and then spent the rest of the time curled up in the cabin, enjoying the heat by the wood stove and drinking wine.

The trip was a lot of fun, but I have to admit that after a few days it was nice to be back to the cats, the running water, the electricity, and the indoor bathroom!

I really want to keep up my two posts per week resolution, but I don’t have any time this week.  We got back from Paris on Monday (I was hoping to post about that), and today we have to leave early to go on a very Norwegian weekend cabin trip, so I’m just trying to dash something off in a rush.

So in honor of my week of travel overload, here’s a link to some cool LEGO sculptures of UNESCO World Heritage sites:

The World in LEGO

At the moment we have only folded 451 Scrum Post-It paper cranes, but our pile is getting a bit unruly.  I really need to go through and string them, but I haven’t found the time.  However, in true Scrum fashion, the crane-folding task has been parked for the foreseeable future.

Last week, our product owner came to my office with a picture from a technical journal article about modular software design.  The image was of a massive modular origami structure, and he asked if we could make something similar:

I did a little research and ended up finding the exact image on flickr, posted by the folder himself (appropriately – a fellow programmer).  It turns out that this is a Level 2 Menger Sponge crafted out of over 2,000 pieces of paper, using a style of origami module called Japanese Brocade.

The Menger Sponge was the first three-dimensional fractal ever discovered.  At each level, the cube is constructed of a set of 20 of the cubes of the previous level, forming a sort of open framework.  Since it takes 20 cubes to form the next level cube, the number of base cubes used in a Level n Menger Sponge is 20ⁿ.

Thanks to the nature of a fractal, we can scale back our project to a Level 1 Menger Sponge, which would be made up of only 20 base cubes and will require only 72 paper modules.  We can further simplify the design by using one of the most basic building blocks in modular origami, the Sonobe module.  The result of our efforst should look something like this:

This one actually looks like it could have been made from Post-Its.  Unfortunately, since our color scheme is decided by our product owner (the color of the tasks on our Scrum board have a pre-defined meaning), the resulting coloring of our Menger Sponge will be fairly random.

We started working on the model last week, and already we can see some significant progress:

Ours is definitely messier than the one pictured above, but I’m hoping that as more of the model is completed, it will become a little more structurally sound.  Either that or it will just completely fall apart!

If everything goes well, after we finish the Level 1 Menger Sponge, we may actually try to build a Level 2.  I’ll let you know how that goes!

I know that some people find it annoying that subscribing to my RSS feed in Google Reader only shows the summary of new posts, forcing you to click through to the website to read them.  I just want to say that I have been working hard on trying to fix that.

I really don’t have any idea what’s going wrong, because if you look at the feed in IE, you see the full text of the posts.  In my hours of research, I have learned that Firefox truncates all feeds, but the information is clearly there, since IE is picking it up.

I have tried tweaking some of the scripts.  I have tried upgrading WordPress.  I have tried yelling at the computer.  Nothing has worked.

So much for “Really Simple” Syndication!

Even after hours of searching and trying various solutions, the only hint I have found that looks at all promising is to redirect my feed through FeedBurner.  That isn’t optimal, but if it works, I guess I’ll just deal with it.  Perhaps it’s a Google conspiracy, since they own FeedBurner (*thinking about dumping my Google shares on principle if that’s the case*).

Unfortunately, this means that you’ll probably need to update the feed in your reader to use the FeedBurner URL:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/megdesk Like I said, it’s not optimal, but at least it seems to work.