P.S. to Californians, you have it backwards.
]]>P.S. Yes I missed these stories:
- Can You Count on Voting Machines? where "some Santorum voters complained that the iVotronics “flipped” their votes before their eyes". [Thanks Pierre for the link]
- Votes Reportedly Flipping from Repub to Dem in TN. [Found from Mark Crispin Miller's site]
[T]he well-organised villain struck as an armoured van was picking up cash from the a Bank of America branch in Monroe, Washington. Wearing a dust mask, safety goggles, dayglo vest and a blue shirt, he pepper-sprayed a security guard and grabbed a bag of cash before fleeing briskly.
Responding plods were hampered in their pursuit by the fact that a dozen other dayglo-vested, masked, goggled and blue-shirted men had congregated in the vicinity - just as the legion of bowler-hatted suits assembled in New York's Metropolitan museum in the latest Thomas Crown film fatally embugger the authorities' efforts to bracelet the eponymous billionaire blagger.
In this case, it appears that the anonymous miscreant recruited his unsuspecting dupes on Craigslist.
King5.com quotes one of them, named "Mike", as saying "I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour."
The ad purported to be hiring workers for a road maintenance job. After responding, Mike was emailed instructions to turn up at the bank wearing vest, goggles, mask "and, if possible, a blue shirt," he said.
This is the best flashmob ever.
(Who said mobs are smart, already? ;-)
]]>My last good laugh at it is from a box of Carman's "Original Fruit-Free Muesli". After the compulsory "100% Australian Made and Owned", we find this fantastic declaration (emphasis is mine):
We always try our best to source our quality ingredients from Australian farmers. Unfortunately, that is not always possible and sometimes we have to import ingredients from other countries.
What an horror! Shame on those Australian farmers who force Australian muesli-lovers to eat imported junk from overseas(*). Shock and awe!
And I gotta love this last one: "Proudly Printed on 95% Australian Recycled Board." That leaves us with infinite speculations about the remaining 5% of that board. Not recycled? Imported? As inconceivable as it seems, could it possibly be both?
No, seriously, what is this compulsive need for displaying proudness all about? You've got a continent of your own and you're afraid of the outside world?
Note:
(*) Which can be the only explanation for that piece of tooth-breaking stone we found in this Carman muesli pack.
Methink, reading Andrew Anker's comment about Vox, that I should try something about anonymous comments: register with a valid email address or pay 1€ for commenting anonymously ;-).
]]>This may, or may not, have an impact on this blog. I've discussed the subject of separating my professional writings from my personal ones over the years, but I've done that more on my french blog than here. Although I started this blog in english about 6 years ago, my french blog has taken precedence and has grown quite differently. I've become used to writing more freely and in a more eclectic way in french, and to reducing my writings here to more technical, less personal subjects. Also, and that adds a bit to my frustration, my French audience is significantly more vocal and contributing than the anglophone one, making me less and less motivated to continue a standalone professional blog in english (under my personal "brand" that is).
That is not to say that I will stop writing in english. But this 6-year old adventure of mixing pro and personal blogging in two languages under the same roof is likely to end soon. Unless you tell me otherwise, or unless I suddenly find the right way to design such a site properly for once.
]]>My two cents in terms of marketing:
For MT Open Source, go to www.movabletype.org. For all the other options, go to www.movabletype.com.
]]>MT is still lacking certain features to make it a full-blown CMS platform above its blog engine origins, but its design, template system and tags make it flexible, powerful and affordable (low learning curve and low cost) at the same time. That's its charm in my opinion for projects like this one.
(And it's always nice to see some content flow from a "tiny" MT to a "big" public portal, one can easily forget how complicated it used to be to syndicate content on the internet last century ;-).
Note :
(*) No, that's not the same LLM. ;-)
This expired certificate alert just showed up for my GMail account. Apparently Google let the SSL certificate expire for the smtp.gmail.com domain.
In the midst of the current DNS insecurity storm, it's not exactly a good idea.
Has anyone else seen this?
]]>Chef David Chang on failure, Thoreau, and vegetarians.
Good to see there are still chefs in NYC who care about the right thing, food, and not decorum. Usually it's the contrary, and NYC is where I've had the worst food in my life (before London!), i.e. a place where people go out in insanely expensive restaurants to show off and be seen rather than to enjoy food, and where the politically correct answer when asked about that shit in your plate is to say "great food" with a smile.
I use to say that New Yorkers (as the British) eat only because it's a necessity (otherwise they would die), while San Franciscans (as the French) eat because it's a pleasure. A cliché yes, but one that I've consistently seen, verified and had approved of by locals on my dozen times on both coasts.
(Note to my friends in NYC: I've also had great food in NYC, but that's because I was well accompanied, and shown a few rare good places. :-)
]]>I didn't know him before I saw the following video, which is one of the most beautiful, inspirational and thought-provoking presentations I've seen in my life.
P.S. Here's a more recent presentation he gave last May to Carnegie Mellon students:
Passion and love.
]]>Anyway, here's my first photoset from New Caledonia, where I just spent three months, and where I'm going to settle anytime soon because life's too short not to live where your heart is.
]]>Methinks airlines should consider actually reducing the electronics on some seats. I'd be more than happy to get only power and internet connectivity to hook my own laptop or smartphone, plus a couple of widgets for displaying movies, the flight map and information in my web browser. I wonder how much that would decrease the production and maintenance cost of a seat. I know there are some security issues (you wouldn't be able to use your portable during landing and takeoff) but providing a computer and a screen on each seat seems a bit overkill to me.
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