One of the things I really hate about travelling is furnishing a new apartment when I don't know where to find stuff. You just arrived in the country, you're tired and/or jet lagged, you don't know the language, and you have to get your place livable in two days because classes or work start on the third day. What do you do?

Living in Paris can be a fun experience after you find an apartment and finally make it comfortable. As a newcomer to this history steeped city, I knew neither where to find what I needed nor what places were good quality. It's taken me two years to discover where to shop for household stuff. The places here are where I now go.

Hypermarchés are another great place to find things. The best comparison for Americans would be hypermarchés are like a Super Target or small Walmart. The selection, prices, and quality varies greatly from store to store.

Géant Casino and Paris Store
Géant Casino is located in the blue building at 113 place de Vénétie and Paris Store is across the street. Both have a decent selection of household items and food. Great place if you're in the 13e.

Place d'Italie
Easily found at the Place d'Italie metro stop, there is a Carrefour underneath that had a reasonable selection of many household things.

Carrefour Hypermarché
There is a really large Carrefour Hypermarché located on 1 avenue Général Sarrail in the 16e of Paris. This place is huge, has a large selection of foreign foods, and many household and personal items I've only found on Amazon. Most mornings there is an open air market nearby with decent prices and selection.

Like most of my friends, I have a lot of books. The last time I moved in the states, I had to figure out what to do with several bookcases of them. I've found that it's very difficult to carry these books around with me everywhere I travel. I've since changed over to ebooks because I can fit hundreds of books on my computer or phone. They're not as enjoyable as holding the physical books, but they also take up a lot less space in my suitcase.

Even ebooks aren't a perfect solution. Sometimes I need to use a book on a different device or I need a hard copy of something because I'm travelling somewhere that doesn't have internet or electricity. After much research, I've found a solution.

I've started using a program called Calibri to manage all of my ebooks. Calibri is available for Linux, Mac, PC, and even USB drives. One of my favorite features is that it lets you convert ebooks between different formats including iBooks, Kindle, and PDF. This has let me read my books on the computer and various phones including Nokia, Android, and iPhone.

Unfortunately, digital rights management and anti-copying measures can make it difficult to read your books the way you want or where you want. Device or software manufacturers can also delete books you own from your collection after you've paid for them if the books have DRM. If your book has DRM, if the company who makes the reader software stops making it, you can no longer read your books. Maybe you need to print off a couple pages for a presentation. Have you ever been given a book by someone before they died or inherited a book after someone died? Can't do that if there's DRM. Thankfully, Apprentice Alf has found a way to remove the DRM so you can enjoy your books the way they were meant to be: at your leasure.

**Please note that this process only removes DRM when a book is imported into Calibri; it won't work on books already imported

Here's the step by step:

1. Download Calibri
2. Install Calibri
3. Download the latest version of tools
4. Unzip tools to a folder. A safe place to keep it is your "My Documents" folder
5. Open Calibri
6. Click on "Preferences" in the upper right corner
7. Under "Advanced", click on "Plug-ins"
8. Click on "Load plug-in from file" in the lower right corner
9. In the new window, go to the tools folder
10. Go to the "Calibri_Plugins" folder
11. Select the first file (eReaderPDB2PML)
12. Click "Open"
13. Click "Yes"
14. Click "OK"
15. Repeat steps 8-14 for the other files
16. Click "Apply" in the upper left corner
    
17. Click "Close" in the lower right corner
18. Congratulations, you're done!

You should have done steps 8-14 for each of these files:

• eReaderPDB2PML 
  
• ignobleepub 
  
• ineptepub 
  
• ineptpdf 
  
• K4MobileDeDRM 
  

To remove the DRM from an ebook, import it into Calibri:

1. Open Calibri
2. Click on "Add Books" in the upper left corner
3. Choose your book
4. Click "Open"

To change the format of an ebook:

1. Open Calibri
2. Find the book
3. Right-click the book
4. Choose "Convert books"
5. Choose "Convert individually"
6. In the upper right corner it says Output format and has an option next to it
7. Choose the format you want: EPUB for iBooks, MOBI for Kindle, PDF for pdf, etc
8. Click "OK"

To copy an ebook to a folder:

1. Open Calibri
2. Find the book
3. Click "Save to disc"
4. Choose where you want to save the book
5. Click "OK"

Resources:
Calibri eBook Management
Apprentice Alf's Blog
Apprentice Alf's tools