big picture

I was just looking back on some financial stuff for the last year. It seems I often forget to look at the big picture with this stuff, instead getting caught up in the details. One mutual fund that I have in my IRA has been a bit of a dud since the market went south in 2000/2001. I was gratified to see that it had gone up from about $25 to $35 over the course of the last year. Then, I zoomed back a bit more, and remembered that I bought it at around $40 back in the nineties, and that it had hit a high of about $100 before the crash. Oh well, maybe it’ll get back to $40 before I retire, so it won’t be a net loss.

movies

I’ve read a bunch of top 10 lists from various movie reviewers recently, ranking the best movies of the year. I tried coming up with my own list, but I could only think of 5 really good movies. Not that anyone cares, but here it is:

  1. Millennium Actress
  2. Triplets of Belleville
  3. Finding Nemo
  4. A Mighty Wind
  5. LoTR: Return of the King

Python

I had to learn Python this week for a little project at work. (OK, I guess I didn’t have to learn Python, but it seemed like the best tool for the job.) Just for reference, here are some key sites, if you’re going to try to pick up Python:

I’ve also found that the Python 2.1 Bible is a decent book to get started with.