Blog & White

La plupart des images du blog viennent du Web. J'ai fait des copies locales de ces images, qui servent à leur tour de liens vers les sites d'origine. La provenance de l'image est indiquée sous celle-ci.

Most pictures of the blog come from the Web. I made local copies of them, which in turn act as links to the originating website. The name of the source is printed below the picture.

Suurin osa blogin kuvista on peräisin muualta webistä. Olen tehnyt kuvista paikalliset kopiot, ja kuva toimii linkkinä alkuperäiselle sivustolle. Kuvan alla mainitaan sen lähde.

© Le palais des thés

Le palais des thés :

« Thé vert de Chine rond, délicat et parfumé, ce thé développe les mêmes notes sylvestres que le Gu Zhang Mao Jian, mais ici sans aucune astringence. »

Infusé dans un verre à 70 °C. Plutôt doux, il me rappelle vaguement le lin yun (pas sûr, ça fait bien longtemps que j'ai terminé celui-là) ou le long jing (je n'en ai jamais bu plus de quelques tasses), mais sans ce goût amer qui apparaît rapidement lorsque l'infusion se prolonge.

Le palais des thés, 7,10 € les 100 g.

© Dan Brown

Don't take me wrong: I enjoyed reading Da Vinci Code (but much less Digital Fortress). It's not so much that being a geek I know more about computer security and cryptography (which are at the core of Digital Fortress) than about history and theology (which are the heart of Da Vinci Code), than the liberty the author takes with reality. I don't mean by that all the small but difficult technical details that non-specialists don't even start to imagin, but the small details that are (or should be) common knowledge, or are at least easy to check.

For example, he claims in Digital Fortress that the Giralda in Seville has a height of 419 ft (140 m) whereas it is actually 320 ft (97.5 m) tall. Many people I've told this claimed “Whatever, it's only science-fiction after all!” Well, in my opinion, writing science-fiction is not an excuse for sloppy background research. Another example from Da Vinci Code: Brown claims that Paris was founded by the Merovingians, whereas it did exist already five hundred years earlier. What's the point in twisting reality like that? It does not add anything to the story, so it can be reasonably attributed only to sloppy research (some people mentioned that Dan Brown has a hidden agenda. Whatever). And I won't even go into the details of biblical history.

Well, the guy is a charlot, and he proves once more that with good marketing, you can sell anything.

© finnishfood.net

Suklaavanukas on hyvää ja talkkuna on hyvää. Kuinka hyvää siis on suklaavanukas ja talkkuna?

Se on mun mielestä tosi hyvää, mutta vaimoni ja isäni mielestä se on yököttävää… Kokeile itse, ja kerro mitä pidit!

© perversiontracker.com

Bush said

“I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion. I told [Putin] a lot of people in our country… would hope that Russia would do the same thing.”

Putin replied, smiling:

“I'll be honest with you: we, of course, would not want to have a democracy like in Iraq.”

Source: The Observer, 2006-7-16

© pastisnet.be

On n'arrête pas le progrès : maintenant, on fait de la moutarde au pastis. Elle n'est pas mauvaise, d'ailleurs, elle est assez douce, avec un petit goût anisé, et contient 5,4% d'alcool…

À quand la moutarde à la Chartreuse verte ?

© chartreuse.fr

J'ai essayé hier soir de mélanger du Choco Noursy avec de la Chartreuse 1605, et le résultat était terrible ; probablement la noisette qui se marie mal avec la Chartreuse. Ne surtout jamais réessayer.

© Amazon.ca

I just watched the four first episodes yesterday, subtitled in Finnish. It was pretty easy to understand, but then again, the story is not of the difficult kind: a guy moves in as the janitor of a home for young girls, pretending to be a student (whereas he already failed twice the test for entering the university of Tokio). At the same time, he remembers that when he was a small boy he made a promise to his sweetheart to meet again at the university of Tokio. He didn't remember the name of the girl, though but surprise, surprise! she's one of the girls living the the home.

Nice to watch because it's so easy to follow, but it really looks like as series for post-teen geek boys who fantasize on finding a girlfriend but have no clue as how to do it.

© Amazon.co.uk

Cowboy Bebop is about a bounty hunter roaming the solar system. I watched a couple of episodes, and until now, the hero does not seem to be very efficient in his job, since he did not catch his preys (they didn't escape though, the first one got shot by his girlfriend, and the second crashed on the parking lot of the police station). The series is quite violent but probably no more than your average action TV series (big guns shooting all over the place, fast vehicles crashing, this kind of things). One good thing is that the characters do not make stupid faces when they are feeling emotions, on the contrary to most of the previous japanimation series I've watched. That's a definite good point for the series. Also, the episodes seem to be quite independent from each other, there is no long-running story to keep the viewers hooked (maybe this would develop in later episodes?)

Probably the series I enjoyed the most among the ones I recently discovered: it's not all about feelings and relationships between people, but on the other hand, the stories don't fly very high either, which is one drawback of the format (you can't put much in a 20 minutes show meant to be a complete story).

© Amazon.co.uk

One more anime series, again quite different from the others. Gravitation is about a rock band trying to become famous, and the lead singer of which falls in love with a famous love-stories writer. The main character is impredictible (some would say “crazy”), and the story is therefore full of surprises. This makes the series watchable even if romance is not my cup of tea.

© zstore.com

Another series of which I watched the four first episodes last evening, subtitled in Finnish as well. Much more difficult to understand than Love Hina, this series is more about the description of weird characters. The story goes like this: an orphan girl lives in a house with three mysterious boys. The boys have been victim of a curse of some kind, because when touched by a girl, they they turn into animals: a rat, a dog and a cat. The problem is that the cat is not part of the Chinese Zodiac, and it makes the character very angry because he feels inferior to the rat. Then appears a girl who is madly in love with the cat-guy (“madly” is the right word, because she annoyingly keeps on beating him up) and who turns into a wild pig when touched by a man.

This series is about the hero discovering hidden aspects of the various characters and the characters being able to overcome their fear of being touched by other people. I think.

© dvdpris.com

One more anime series I discovered yesterday, again subtitled in Finnish. This one takes place in feudal Japan and is about two samurais (who want all the time fight each other) helping a girl to find a mysterious “sunflower-smelling samurai”. They agreed to help the girl after she helped them escape from the claws of a tyranic local governor who blamed them for killing his son. Later on, they join two gangs of Yakuza who fight against each other for the control of a city.

Samurai Champloo is definitely a different genre than the two other anime I recently watched. The setting is more or less grounded in Japanese history (but there is a warning at the beginning not to consider it as a historical document), and can be enjoyable if you don't mind the katana slashing and the blood stains. One thing I hated about it was the opening titles music: who the hell decided that rap is a suitable kind of music for feudal Japan stories?

© Suomen Lämpömittari Oy

Le pu-er est un thé qui se bonifie avec l'age, tout comme le vin. À Taïwan, les conditions de conservations sont paraît-il optimales, puisqu'il y fait souvent plus de 22 °C et que 80% d'humidité n'y est pas rare. Comme l'idée m'a effleurée d'acheter du pu-er pour le conserver, je me suis demandé quel est le degré d'humidité à la maison, et quelle pièce serait la plus adaptée pour y conserver du thé. J'ai donc acheté un hygromètre couplé à un thermomètre. Pour l'instant il y a 39% d'humidité dans le salon pour 26 °C (et 23 °C dehors).

© Alexandre Alapetite

Ça y est, j'ai cédé aux sirènes du Web 2.0 et j'ai ouvert mon blog. Je ne suis pas sûr qu'il sera utile ou vivant, mais on verra bien.