Published January 2nd, 2010
in SPIP, webmaster and software.
I have been a member of my current tennis club for about 3 years. 2 and a half years ago, another member and I decided that the website needed a little fresh air. We needed something to communicate with the members and something to show the club’s inner life, something easy to update. The two of us started out looking for solutions and finally settled on a spip system. Yeah yeah… I know, it might not be the most up to date, blooding edge technology but it sure works really well. It relies on php and mysql which make it a perfect fit with our current web hosting service and I wanted something stable, well documented, easy to custumize and maintain.
My colleague focused on the contents and handled the integration, customization, html hacking part. The result is at http://www.tennispoissy.com.
- Events are done with Agenda 2.0
- The design is based on Multiflex 3, with some custom squeletons
- Images display smoothly with Fancybox
- Email alerts and RSS are provided by Feedburner, which I added very recently.
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Published October 3rd, 2009
in USA.
A little while ago, I started a series of posts about the trip my girlfriend and I made to Western US in April - May. I must confess I have a hard time finishing up. The truth is that it is no longer hot, I am not excited anymore by the trip. And I don’t remember the little details that make a story sound true and interesting to read. So, just for the sake of completeness, here are the other places we visited:
Stop #4: Mesa Verde National Park
Not as terrific as the other parks, but we learned a lot about the particular way of life of the ancestors in this region. The rangers have a true talent, they tell you the story with details.
Stop #5: Arches National Park and Moab
We stayed 1 night in Moab and went rafting on the Colorado river (under the rain) from there. Arches NP is nearby.
Stop #6: Bryce Canyon
Only one place like this. It is so beautiful that I did not want to leave.
Stop #7: Las Vegas
Sin City. Well… you have to see it once, it is just crazy.
Stop #8: Death Valley
God this is a hot place. And I mean hot. The main feeling hiking outside is that you could die. It is weird, nowhere else have I been aware that if I stay too long outside, I will die.
Stop #9: Yosemite
Waterfalls, wildlife, landscapes and bears, real bears with fur and claws.
Stop #10: San Francisco
What a shock when we got to SF. We were back to civilisation. SF is a nice city to visit. Good food. The cable car, the ups and downs, the Golden gate bridge.
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Published July 2nd, 2009
in Monument Valley, USA and National Park.
Fully rested at Lake Powell, we were ready for some intensive touristic activity. Monument Valley is actually in the middle of nowhere. We took the full measure of how vast the US are. We got a sense of the pride US citizen could feel to be part of a nation that controls such a huge and diverse territory. We saw the need for big comfortable cars. In this country, the world is big, anything is possible, you just have to get there, to just do it.
Anyway, we got to this incredible place… and I made pictures.
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Published June 30th, 2009
in Lake Powell and USA.
Our first stop at the Grand Canyon left us flabbergasted, absolutely amazed and has really set us in the mood for traveling, exploring and just enjoying this wonderful feeling of having 2 entire weeks ahead of us for the sole purpose of tourism. It felt like whaaaaa, here we are, this is it.
At the same time, after a day ’s walk down and up the canyon (not ’till the bottom to be honest) our brainworker’s legs were aching a little bit.
So Lake Powell was more of a rest for us than an opportunity to explore. We drove around the area and scoped out nice places and views and nice pictures to bring back home. I really regret that we did not have the time to go to Antelope Canyon, which is nearby. But that’s the drawback of having everything planned out beforehand: you have to stick with it.
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Published June 14th, 2009
in USA, National Park and Grand Canyon.
I spent my last holidays in the US, visiting the national parks and the cities of Las Vegas and San Francisco along a road trip. It was a nice long trip (2 and a half weeks) like I never made before, we rented a car and went from place to place every night, riding the long straight and desert road. I am planning to release a few pictures of the tons of pictures I took there in a series of posts. Here I go, this is the first one. So after having landed in Las Vegas, we cruised to the Grand Canyon. Amazing sights, infinite landscape.
Next stop is Lake Powell.
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Published March 15th, 2009
in photo gear and photos.
I am really excited, I finally got a tripod for my DSLR camera. I wanted this one exactly (SILK Sprint PRO) because it is the best trade-off between weight, size and stability on my budget. It weights 1,1kg, has got nice pads to manipulate it when it is cold. It really is a cool equipment you can take with you on holidays.
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Published January 28th, 2009
in mountain and photos.
Here they are, as I just finished to sort them out:
Problem with big cameras is they are big and expensive, so I did not want to take mine skiing. Meanwhile, its when you ski, when you explore the mountain that you get to see fantastic mountain landscapes. Plus, when I ski, I am not in the mood of stopping by and wondering what picture would be interesting to take, how I should parameter the camera… So these two picture were taken in my after-ski time. Still, taking photos was a nice way to spend my spare time.
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Published December 26th, 2008
in photos.
I am taking advantage from this Xmas downtime to start publishing some of my photos on the web.
I am using a combination of tools to make it simple to publish:
- digikam for photo management, tagging, editing.
- imagemagick for resizing, adding copyright at the bottom of the images
- flickrfs for publishing.
All of the pictures published here are public. I must say that I am very concerned about privacy on the web and tend to consider that if it is on the web, then it is public. So you’ll never find pictures of me or my relatives here. It is not public, it is not on the web. Arf, so old school…
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Published October 22nd, 2008
in Business Intelligence and opinion.
In the past 2 years, we have seen some applications emerging with ideas and concepts coming from Business Intelligence but for individuals. They are applications which provide analytical functions about some specific area of individual’s life, as personal finance analysis or more recently personal fitness tracking. I am stunned to see this business behavior, which consists in quantifying every possible thing, spreading to the individual. (With the exception that companies own their own data, not the individuals tracking their expenses on a remote server, but this is another story).
Take the case of fitbit. This is an example of data not only targeted to, but also about the individual. To my mind this initiative has an interesting potential, not really for the user (this is my personal view, one might feel differently), but for the people who will have access to the statistics of the thousands of users, provided thousands of users… of course. But the fitbit team can use the data to perform unprecedented studies with sociological, health, commercial purposes, taking advantage from the data taken right from the human body.
If these companies make their way and conquer enough users, they have the potential to be a real blast. After all, google is making money while people are writing emails, why fitbit shouldn’t make money while people sleep? Like, hum, this group of people hasn’t slept more than 4 hours in the past 4 days and they live in California and are in their 20 sthing, let’s try and sell them some energizing beverage, and this other group is over 70, let’s entice them to invest in sleeping pills.
These examples clearly show a move of BI technologies and practices towards individuals both as a source of data and as a target. Are we witnessing the birth of Personal Intelligence?
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Published October 5th, 2008
in photos.
Location: Ile de Ré (France)
Date: September 2008
I just want to share some photos I took lastly with my brand new camera. They were taken on the Ile de Ré, an island west of France.
For the 2 sunsets, I wanted to underline the wonderful range of colors in the sky.
On that same night, the port was interesting for the reflections in the water as the weather was very calm. Also the lights from the restaurants gave the whole place a warm touch.
At last I chose black and white to stress the “calm before the storm” atmosphere.
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