Un dimanche vite passé. Je me suis levé tard, j'ai regardé Restrepo (le documentaire de Tim Hetherington et Sebastian Junger) sur YouTube et le grand prix de F1 à la télé. Ensuite j'ai glandé en écoutant de la musique et en surfant sur le web. Je ne me suis pas encore remis au blogging de manière sérieuse — c'était impossible à la campagne, trop de choses à faire par ailleurs et trop de distractions sans compter que sans mon équipement habituel je ne me sent pas trop à l'aise pour bloguer). Demain retour au travail après cette semaine de vacances.
dimanche 26 juin 2011
À la campagne
C'est dans ce pays que je suis né. En Touraine, près de Chinon. Le paysage est assez banal mais j'y ressens un certain sentiment d'appartenance. C'est mon pays.
mercredi 22 juin 2011
mardi 21 juin 2011
Touraine, juin 2011
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| Château de Langeais |
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| Château de Langeais |
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| La vallée de la Loire |
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| Ciel de Touraine à Langeais |
Château de Langeais, Indre-et-Loire, juin 2011
J'ai trouvé un moyen pour vider mes photos dans petitmac. Dont acte. Finit les images prétentieusement "artsy", on se tourne vers simplicité et modestie, à l'image d'un photographe amateur qui se trouve dans ma blogroll : Koichi Kurita, grande inspiration.
lundi 20 juin 2011
L'Essart, juin 2011
Aucun ordi ne reconnaît l'appareil photo et j'ai oublié le lecteur de carte chez moi. On sera donc à la iphoneographie plus instagram, pendant quelques temps.
mardi 14 juin 2011
Mostly cloudy
Je change un peu la façon de présenter les liens. Le titre du billet n'a par conséquent peu de rapport avec le contenu
The story of “The National”, a US sports daily that, for 18 months, covered sports in a way unknown at the times (1990, 1991). “The National” was the dream of a Mexican billionaire and with a lot of money on the table it lured the best and the brightest sports writers of the times. The story itself is told by the participant's many voices. (Grantland)
By the way Grantland is a new sports web-magazine with big signatures (like Chuck Klosterman, Dave Eggers, Malcolm Gladwell…).
Meanwhile, Bjorn Lomborg has faith in science and technology to save the planet. (Newsweek)
There is a hospital (kind of) at the Everest Base Camp for the trek season (Smithsonian mag): Inside the ER at Mt. Everest
Jon Dobrer muses on Anthony Weiner, the U.S. Representative for New York’s 9th congressional district, who was recently caught pants down (really) on Twitter. Weiner in Doghouse. (Friendly Fire, LA Daily News). Why Dobrer? Because he’s a good opinion writer and an UU pastor and I met him at the wedding of my American niece in Southern California in 2004.
If you have a Mac, there is a nice new RSS reader on the market : Reeder for Mac. It’s the translation for desktop of the famous Reeder for iPad.
Derek Powazek learns How to turn a fan into an enemy in 140 characters and starts a new site to explain web culture.
5 Amazing Hipstamatic photographers
A design history of Oreo cookies, Eucharist wafers, edible bas-relief : The Unsung Heroes of Biscuit Embossing at Edible Geography.
Et la iphoneographie du jour :
Vue de mes fenêtres ce soir, mostly cloudy
... et une autre :
lundi 13 juin 2011
Robot Flâneur
Robot Flâneur: Exploring Google Street View
Une web appli qui présente de vues de Google Street View en plein écran et les change toute les 30 secondes. Pour les villes suivantes (au choix) : Londres, San Francisco, Manhattan, Sao Paulo, Paris, Berlin, Johannesburg, Tokyo et Mexico City.
Next Stephenson
Le prochain roman de Neal Stephenson sortira le 20 septembre :
Neal Stephenson écrit de la science fiction et de la littérature populaire et j'adore tous ses romans. Cryptonomicon est dans mon top10 de romans et je l'ai lu quatre fois (je crois, dont 3 en VO et 1 en VF), record absolu pour moi, pour un roman de 1000 pages ou approchant. Certes ce n'est pas de la grande littérature mais j'adore les thèmes de ses romans, sa façon de raconter et son style (j'aime beaucoup aussi le style et les thèmes des romans de Cory Doctorow, qui est un auteur assez proche de Stephenson, voir aussi Charlie Stross, dans le même genre).
En attendant voici le "blurb" de REAMDE :
Four decades ago, Richard Forthrast, the black sheep of an Iowa family, fled to a wild and lonely mountainous corner of British Columbia to avoid the draft. Smuggling backpack loads of high-grade marijuana across the border into Northern Idaho, he quickly amassed an enormous and illegal fortune. With plenty of time and money to burn, he became addicted to an online fantasy game in which opposing factions battle for power and treasure in a vast cyber realm. Like many serious gamers, he began routinely purchasing viral gold pieces and other desirables from Chinese gold farmers— young professional players in Asia who accumulated virtual weapons and armor to sell to busy American and European buyers.
For Richard, the game was the perfect opportunity to launder his aging hundred dollar bills and begin his own high-tech start up—a venture that has morphed into a Fortune 500 computer gaming group, Corporation 9592, with its own super successful online role-playing game, T’Rain. But the line between fantasy and reality becomes dangerously blurred when a young gold farmer accidently triggers a virtual war for dominance—and Richard is caught at the center.
In this edgy, 21st century tale, Neal Stephenson, one of the most ambitious and prophetic writers of our time, returns to the terrain of his cyberpunk masterpieces Snow Crash and Crpytonomicon, leading readers through the looking glass and into the dark heart of imagination.
Routine
Bozo Sapiens (a blog I just discovered courtesy of Nina T.) has a very interesting post about the Exxon Valdez accident and routine :
The Exxon Valdez, like most modern supertankers, was a study in contrasts. Carrying 53 million gallons of crude and nearly as long as the Chrysler building is tall, it was controlled by a crew smaller than many fishing boats'. Computer technology did most of the hard work, but – crucially – did not make decisions. The result was an inevitable mismatch between the high responsibility of the job and its low prestige: as long as nothing went wrong, sailing a supertanker was not that much more interesting or glamorous than driving a bus.
dimanche 12 juin 2011
Disney World
A Rough Guide to Disney World (NYTimes.com)
Un hilarant voyage en famille à Disney World, par John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Un hilarant voyage en famille à Disney World, par John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Anti-circumcision campaign
Anti-circumcision campaign cut short
Un mouvement californien contre la circoncision qui était animé initialement par les meilleures intentions s'est rapidement vu récupéré par des antisémites.
Un mouvement californien contre la circoncision qui était animé initialement par les meilleures intentions s'est rapidement vu récupéré par des antisémites.
samedi 11 juin 2011
Quotable tweet
Never forget... when a social media site is free (Facebook), you're not the customer, you're the product - @zittrain#bigdata#hyperpublic
zephoria
Quotable tweet
In any sufficiently complex situation, good news & bad news become indistinguishable.
anildash
Abus de pouvoir et garde à vue
Phénoménologie de l'abus de pouvoir ordinaire et de ses suites judiciaires
Un texte qui serait très drôle s'il ne soulignait pas les graves problèmes d'abus policiers et de Droits de l'Homme dans ce pays, le mien, le vôtre : la France d'aujourd'hui. Par Francis Chateauraynaud, directeur d'études en sociologie à l'école des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) de Paris, où il dirige le Groupe de sociologie pragmatique et réflexive (GSPR).
Cleaning Up Online Conversation
Clay Shirky on Cleaning Up Online Conversation
Both anonymity and scale reduce what Robert Axelrod calls "the shadow of the future"—the sense that our current actions will have consequences down the road.
That provides some options for turning the jerk dial down. One is to make identity valuable: Stack Overflow won't let new users post until they have exhibited enough other behaviors—visiting the site, responding in helpful ways to other posts—to earn the karma for full participation. Another approach is to partition public platforms, thus reducing the incentive to publicly act out. Twitter does this by segmenting its audience: I can rant all I like, but only to the users I can persuade to follow me. Yet another approach is to enlist users in defensive filtering. Amazon sometimes refuses to publish a post, but most of its policing is done by customers who flag offensive reviews and elevate those they find helpful.
mardi 7 juin 2011
Earth Moves
Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG (via NPR) reports the weird story of a very slow landslide in Vermont.
Like they say on NPR :
In northern New York and Vermont, the disaster has developed slowly. Weeks of torrential rains have glutted Lake Champlain, flooding hundreds of miles of coastline. Now, in the mountain village of Keene Valley, N.Y., all that water has triggered a massive landslide that is slowly destroying a neighborhood.
3-Way Street
Une vidéo qui montre les interactions entre les voitures, les cyclistes et les piétons à une intersection typique de Manhattan. Plutôt impressionnant!
(via)
dimanche 5 juin 2011
NYC Grid
NYC Grid is a photo blog dedicated to exploring New York block-by-block and corner-by-corner. Updated every weekday, each post covers a new street with a focus on the mundane and ephemeral.
Photo : NYC Grid - E. 86th Street, between 2nd and 1st.
A treasure trove for the NYC lover.
samedi 4 juin 2011
Photo iPhone du jour
iPhone et app Camera+. The frame is a bit funky, but I wanted to mask the sun with the wall of Le Louvre.
Mon quartier
Le Nord du Boulevard Barbès, entre Château-Rouge et le carrefour avec l'avenue Ordener, un soir de semaine vers 7 ou 8 heures n'attire aucun touriste venu visiter la capitale et pourtant il y a des choses à voir.
La foule est énorme et les petits commerces florissants. Il y a les tapineuses qui travaillent sur le trottoir au milieu des passants, pas gênées du tout; les vendeurs à la sauvette d'épis de maïs grillés (capital technique : un caddy de supermarché, un bidon de peinture vide, du charbon de bois, une grille de barbecue, des épis de maïs frais), les vendeurs de verroteries hideuses, de faux bijoux, de montres de contrebande, de téléphones portables de provenance douteuse, d'accessoires divers en cuirs, de CD et DVD piratés, de bimbeloteries diverses; les macs qui surveillent discrètement leurs gagneuses; les ménagères africaines qui bavardent assises sur les bancs; des hommes qui bavardent assis aux terrasses des cafés... Quelques blancs, toutes les ethnies africaines du nord au sud, beaucoup d'originaires du sous-continent indien, des asiatiques et même des juifs orthodoxes qui se baladent en tenues de juifs orthodoxes. Aux odeurs de gazole se mêlent des relents de bouffe exotique et de kebab et l'odeur du charbon de bois. Les commerces sont nombreux : boutiques qui vendent de tout, épiciers qui vendent de tout, marchands de vêtements ou de chaussures en solde, marchands de meubles pas chers, boutiques de valises et de sacs, bistrots crasseux, coiffeurs indiens pour hommes et africains pour femmes, salons de manucure tenus par des asiatiques toujours pleins à bloc de femmes africaines qui attendent leur tour, bouchers halals, restaurants de kebabs turques ou libanais, pâtisseries orientales, épiceries vendant des produits exotiques, du riz en sac de 20 kilos, des racines et tubercules comestibles d'origine africaines, minuscules boutiques d'objets électriques, minuscules magasins de téléphones portables, cyber-boutiques vendant la connexion Internet à la minute et des cartes téléphoniques pré-payées pour le monde entier... Un spectacle vraiment intéressant.
vendredi 3 juin 2011
Not your stereotypical Autistic
Not your stereotypical Autistic
I have a mosaic of burns and scratches across my hands, and no idea how I acquired any of them. I had the same thing for breakfast as I had yesterday and will have tomorrow, before setting off for the office where I work methodically through my paperwork from the left side of my desk to the right. I'll get everything done, but not necessarily the way a normal person would. I look normal, but I'm not.
I am Autistic.
A fascinating read. Not every autistic persons are diagnosed while young. This post explain what day-to-day life is like for someone suffering from autism (mild autism I should say because she's a functional adult after all).
Twitter vs. Facebook
Twitter Archives and the Sendai Quake — Satellite — Craig Mod
There are four design reasons why I think we all run to Twitter to perform first-person reportage:
- It’s focused.
- You can only do one thing (really) in Twitter: say what’s in front of you.
- It’s lightweight. Both in terms of data (mainly just text packets) but also in terms of interface. (Although the growing interface complexity of recent releases worries me.)
- It’s efficient. You open it, you post, you leave. Quick.
- It has a near perfect delivery mechanism. The open model of one to many and the publicly linkable nature of most tweets combine to form a very strong platform for quickly disseminating front-line reports.
It’s also interesting to note that there are now effectively two Twitters:
- Twitter as micro-curation tool
- Twitter as reportage tool
Facebook, on the other hand, has been guided by a very different set of design decisions. In contrast to Twitter:
- It’s not particularly focused. There are countless activities from posting updates to commenting on photos to creating groups to playing games.
- It’s heavy. It pulls a lot of data every time you open it.
- It’s inefficient. To jump in and just post an update is to ignore a plethora of multimedia and notifications vying for your attention. (But it's hyper efficient at other sub-activities such as tagging photos.)
- The closed system of reciprocity in followship limits its mass broadcast capabilities.
jeudi 2 juin 2011
A Short History of the Campsite
A Short History of the Campsite
There is a satisfying immediacy about the prospect of establishing an encampment for the night — clearing the site, erecting the tent, chopping wood, building a fire and cooking over the live flame — that in turn suggests a meaningful connection to landscape, place and the rugged life of backwoods adventurers. In essence camping is an act of faith and survival, a way to buttress a modest, isolated human settlement against the forces of nature. Situated "somewhere between challenging new circumstances and the safe reassurances of familiarity," the camp is a temporary substitute for the home — a place to dwell, to sleep, to interact socially, to prepare and eat food. Stripped of any but the most vital conveniences, the camp is literally and figuratively open to the stimuli of its natural surroundings.
Disclosure : I hate camping, but this article is a gem.
The city I love
Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion
Beau timelapse, peut-être un peu trop touristique, mais de belles vues de Manhattan.
New Streetside View
Bing A New Streetside View - Bing Maps Blog
Bing vient d'ajouter une nouvelle fonction : Streetside View, panorama des rues d'une ville, bien plus jolie que Streetview de Google.
J'ai fait une capture d'écran de cette portion de la 51ème rue Est à New York qui m'est chère :
C'est l'hôtel où je descends à Manhattan flanqué de part et d'autre par le bar à vins que j'adore et par un restaurant français qui n'est pas mal du tout! Une bonne adresse, le Pod Hôtel, 230 E.51st Street.
mercredi 1 juin 2011
Barcelona's tactics
This, from The Run of Play, a blog of high quality about football (soccer) that I discovered today, thanks to Coldbrain.
It's an intelligent analysis of Barcelona's tactics, by Alan Jacobs.
Copycats Wanted - The Run of Play
Barcelona doesn’t play a striker, and hasn’t since Ibrahimovic left. They just have a bunch of skilled players—you could call them midfielder-forward hybrids or something—who take turns orchestrating the attack and making runs to the goal. Normally it’s going to be Xavi who gets things going, but at any given point in the match the player launching the push forward could be Busquets, Alves, Messi, Iniesta, even Villa or Pedro (though in the last two cases usually from a wing). Seven different Barça players had shots on goal in the final; they finished with twelve shots on goal total. Meanwhile, only three Man Utd players took shots at all, and Rooney’s goal was the only shot on target. When you’re playing Barcelona, you just have no idea where the attacks are going to come from or who will be making them. How can you plan for that?
Imaginary cityscapes
Stefan Bleekrode, 24 years old, draw imaginary bird-eyes view cityscapes. (He paints too, but his cityscape are the best of his work, in my opinion).
The Social Animal
From The Guardian : a review of David Brooks' latest : The Social Animal, in wich he argues that human decision making is not rational but unconscious in the great tradition of the anti-rationalist philosophial reflections of the British Enlightenment.
David Brooks: What's the big idea?
Most success stories stress academic ability, IQ, hard work, he argues. Brooks rather stresses non-cognitive skills, which, he writes, is "the catch-all category for hidden qualities that can't be easily measured, but which in real life lead to happiness and fulfilment." "By that I mean emotions, intuitions, genetic inheritance. Soft stuff, which is pretty rich given that my wife thinks I'm insufficiently touchy feely."And what are these mysterious non-cognitive skills? Good character (energy, honesty, dependability, recognising your weaknesses and controlling your worst impulses). He also mentions "street smarts", by which he means reading situations and people, often unconsciously, and developing human relationships. He thinks these skills can be honed.
He gives examples of policy-making without non-cognitive street smarts. "When we invaded Iraq we were blind to the social problems that would be involved. We didn't realise they didn't trust us." Hold on – didn't he write a New York Times column urging invasion? "I did. I was so blind about it. In that column I wondered what Michael Oakeshott [the British conservative political philosopher] would have said. He would have said: this society is very complicated and you should be circumspect in thinking about what you can achieve, and that invading to install democracy without trust is doomed. And then I wrote: 'Having said that, I think we should invade.'"
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