Quick takes in pictures

1. The Sun came out yesterday! It was glorious.

2. I took this beauty out for a photo adventure yesterday. I hope the photos come out well, it was a pleasure to shoot.

3. The cat enjoys it when we watch something on the TV.

4. My sister invited us out to the Coast last weekend. It was so lovely to be by the ocean and the weather was perfect!

5. I was playing around with the binoculars and my phone while at the Coast.

6. Coast vacation puzzle time.

7. One more Mimi picture. We are really enjoying having a furry buddy around again.

Washington DC

A few weeks ago, Matthew had to go to Goddard for work and I flew out to meet him at the end of his work week. It turns out I took A LOT of photos on that trip. Here is a selection.

DC at Night:




DC in Day




Botanical Garden



Sculpture Garden and Women's museum



Birdz.



Alexandria, VA

February Quick Takes

1. This Sunday, I'm purchasing all the equipment I need to process black and white film. There is a place locally with an attic full of photographic supplies that you can dig through. I'm going with a friend to check it out and pick up all the equipment I need. Shooting film lately has been really enjoyable and I'm excited to be more connected to the process.

2. Work is a bit stressful lately. Managing people is not my favourite thing to do and having to take people off projects is heart wrenching. I am re-evaluating the way I manage in hopes that I can curb problems in the future before they bloom into something major.

3. Tonight was my group's holiday party. Matthew came at the tail end and my boss took the time to tell him how great I am. It was a nice round about way for him to say that I am awesome because, dude, I am awesome at my job.

4. I started doing a one minute plank every night about a month ago. For the first couple of days, I couldn't do the full 60 seconds, but now I am able to make it through the minute without any problems. It is really satisfying to progress is something physical because I am not a super physical person.

5. On Thursday I woke up early and decided to do 45 minutes of yoga and 20 minutes of meditation. It made my stressful week so so much better. I was not as irritated by little things, I was happier in general, and everything felt so much easier. I took the time to do a 20 minute meditation on Friday and again my day was really great. I am going to try to get up at 6am so I have enough time to meditate before getting ready for work. It totally makes a difference in my day.

6. Speaking of meditation, a friend introduced me to Tara Brach. I added her podcast to my feed and I really enjoy the meditations. Her voice doesn't irritate me the way some other meditations do (Headspace, I'm looking at you). I also joined a group at work that meditates every Tuesday for an hour. I'm excited to meet with them next Tuesday.

7. I joined Instagram recently and I am really enjoying using it. It fulfills the Social Media aspect I desire without being overwhelming or fake. Please follow me! https://www.instagram.com/source.decay/

Learning Python

I like to casually peruse job openings just to make sure that I am learning all the skills I need to move to another job if needed. I'm not planning on leaving my job any time soon, I just like to keep myself marketable. A lot of other data analysis positions ask for knowledge of Python and R. I am getting some R experience at work doing statistical significance, but there isn't a lot of call for Python, so I thought I would actually sit down and really learn it after dabbling in it for a few years.

I looked through a couple of "Learn Python" websites before finding this Reddit post where the person was looking for exactly what I wanted. I dislike the websites where your code has to match the key EXACTLY and I would rather have the key just check my result against expected. I am working through the "missions" on Check.Io and am really enjoying it. I thought I would document my journey through learning Python on here mostly as a reference for me, but maybe it will be fun for other people as well.

One of the first tasks is to write a program to convert numeric values to Roman numerals. For my solution, I decided to create a dictionary that holds the numeric to numeral translation (1 = I, 5 = V, etc) and then set up a function that takes each place (one, ten, hundred, thousand) and converts it to Roman Numerals.