You know the drill, weekly status update time! This week featuring doctoral colloquium submissions, latex, vegetable gardens, meditation and Bravely Default. Let’s dig in:
- Minutes ago I submitted to the IEEE VIS 2014 Doctoral Colloquium! The doctoral colloquium is an event where PhD students get the chance to discuss their projects with leading visualization researchers. It is a great opportunity to get valuable feedback and a fresh look at your project. Unfortunately, I missed the full paper deadline earlier this year, but fingers crossed for this one! Since VIS is held in Europe for the first year this year (in Paris: practically next-door!), I would really love to attend.
- Speaking of submissions, I love myself some LateX, but I don’t always love the editors for it. I was on Eclipse with Texclipse (yes, really!) before, but lately, all I use is an online latex editor called sharelatex. It’s like the google docs of LateX, so you just edit and compile in your browser. You can even share and collaborate with others. Other recent online favorites include an online latex table editor and a latex symbol classifier that allows you to draw any symbol in the browser and returns the latex code for it 🙂
- In other news, I started a vegetable garden on our balcony. It is really awesome to sow seeds, watch them sprout into seedlings, grow into plants and eventually turn into edible produce. Not all vegetables are of course suitable for growing on a balcony, so I’ve looked into which work well in pots and am growing those. I have sown red and green peppers, a zucchini, various radish types, purple carrots, parisienne carrots, red spring onions, rucola and iceberg lettuce. I am also growing some herbs this year: cilantro, sage, parsley , basil and oregano. I’ll keep you posted on the harvest results ^^
- If you’re interested in learning how to meditate, lift.do has compiled a nice overview on how to get started with it, backing up their statements with stats from people using their app. I am following their 7 steps of calm (it is not nearly as cheesy as it sounds) currently and it feels great so far. Lift.do is actually quite cool and has several programs to help you achieve your goals. I am also following their daily decluttering challenge and previously completed the eating more vegetables and fruits plan.
- And for something completely different, I’ve always been a huge fan of Japanese RPGs (I swear to you, despite last week’s post and more indications, I am not a Weeaboo!) and this year, a real gem has been released! It’s like old-school Final Fantasy and released on the (also excellent btw) Nintendo 3DS. It’s called Bravely Default and, well I don’t know what else to say, it’s really amazing! See for yourself
That’s all from me this week. Enjoy your weekend and have a great week after!