Blog & White

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Deuxième volume du Cycle des dieux par Bernard Werber, publié en 2005. Les élèves-dieux continuent de faire évoluer leurs peuples sur la Terre 18, reproduisant les schemas de l'Histoire de la Terre 1, tandis qu'un mystérieux déicide continue d'assassiner les meilleurs élèves. Michael Pinson tente de conduire son peuple sur la voie de la non-violence, mais se rend compte qu'il est difficile de survivre face à ceux qui utilisent la violence, la tromperie et la mauvaise foi. Ils suivent les cours de dieux et demi-dieux de l'Olympe, tels Sysiphe, Hérakles et Prométhée. La nuit, Michael et d'autres tentent de gravir la montagne qui surplombe l'île d'Aeden pour découvrir qui se cache au sommet. Les élèves éliminés et assassinés sont transformés en muses ou autres créatures mythologiques et peuplent les flancs de la montagne. À son tour le déicide tente d'assassiner Michael, mais il est sauvé de justesse par un mystérieux anti-déicide. Michael, avec l'aide de Pégase vole à l'assaut de la montagne et finit par arriver au sommet (après la traditionnelle rencontre avec le Sphinx et son énigme) et rencontre Zeus. Ce dernier lui apprend qu'il est « celui que l'on attendait », lui fait passer des tests pour savoir s'il était vraiment indépendant de son peuple ou s'il s'y était identifié. Michael passe les tests, et finit par découvrir qu'il existe un autre dieu au dessus de Zeus, caché dans un palais au sommet d'une montagne qui surplombe le palais de Zeus. Michael veut évidemment aller à la rencontre de ce dieu là.

Wikipedia

After Wikipedia:

Osbourne Cox is a CIA analyst who quits his job at the agency after being demoted, ostensibly because of a drinking problem. He then decides to write his memoirs. His wife wants to divorce him and, at the counsel of her divorce lawyer, she copies many of his personal and financial files off his computer and onto a CD. The lawyer's receptionist accidentally leaves the disc at Hardbodies, a health club. After her husband is served with divorce papers, Katie changes the locks to keep him out of their house. An employee of the gym, Chad Feldheimer, obtains the disc from the gym's custodian. Seeing the content of the memoir, he assumes that it is highly classified information. Along with his fellow employee Linda Litzke, he intends to use the disk to blackmail Osbourne; Linda wants the money to pay for cosmetic surgery. Chad meets Osbourne, who refuses; Linda decides to take the information to the Russian embassy. At the embassy, she hands the disk over to the Russians, promising that she will give more information afterwards. Because Linda and Chad don't have any more information, they decide to break into Cox's house. Osbourne's wife has been having an affair with Harry Pfarrer, a womanizing Treasury agent. By chance he has recently met Linda online and begun an affair with her as well. Chad stakes out the Coxes' house and breaks in when he sees Harry and Katie leave. Harry, however, comes back, finds Chad, and accidentally shoots him dead. Linda had told Chad to carry no ID and cut the labels out of his clothes; when Harry sees this, he thinks Chad was a spy and disposes of the body. Days later, paranoid since he killed Chad, Harry leaves the Cox residence after a fight with Katie. On his way to leave, he manages to tackle a man who has been trailing him for some time, thinking he was working for the CIA or some other government agency. Harry now finds out that the man is working for a divorce firm hired by his wife who, it is later revealed, has been cheating on him as well. Harry is devastated and goes to see an agitated Linda, who confides in Harry that her friend Chad is missing; he agrees to try to help. The next morning, Harry and Linda meet in a park and she provides him with more information about Chad's disappearance. When he realizes that Chad is the man he killed, he becomes more paranoid and flees in terror, assuming that Linda is also a spy. Linda then turns to Ted Treffon, the manager of Hardbodies, who has feelings for her. Believing that the Russians have kidnapped Chad, he agrees to look for more information in Osbourne's computer. But Osbourne, finding that Katie has emptied their bank account, decides to break into his own house with a hatchet to take her jewelry. Finding Ted at his computer, Osbourne shoots him. Ted survives and runs out of the house, but Osbourne grabs the hatchet and kills him in broad daylight. The movie ends by returning to the CIA's headquarters, where an official and his director are trying to sort out what happened: Chad is dead, Ted is dead, Osbourne is in a vegetative state after being shot by an agent while attacking Ted, and Harry and Linda have been arrested. Harry was trying to board a flight to Venezuela, and the director decides to let him go so he's out of their hair. Linda promises to remain silent if the CIA will finance her plastic surgery. The baffled CIA agents agree to her terms, but decide that they have learned their lesson: they will never repeat whatever it is that they did in this case, though they are still not clear what it is they did or what they learned, if anything.

© Amazon.fr

King Robert comes to the North and asks his friend Eddard (Ned) Stark to become his new Hand, since the (suspicious) death of the previous Hand. During the visit of the King, Ned's son Bran discovers that the Queen Cersei has an affair with her twin brother Jaime Lannister, who tries to kill Bran. The latter survives but is crippled. Soon after, Ned leaves his castle with his two daugters to move south with the King to his castle in King's Landing. At the same time, Jon Snow, Ned's bastard, leaves to the north to become a guardian of the Wall that protects the kingdom from the creatures living farther north, accompanied by Ned's brother Benjen and Tyrion Lannister, the Queen's other brother, a (smart) dwarf. Robb, Ned's eldest son, remains at the castle with his baby brother and Bran, and their mother, Catelyn. A murder attempt on Bran pushes Catelyn to ride south and warn her husband. In King's Landing she is told that the murder attempt on Bran has probably been ordered by Tyrion. She also manages to warn her husband, and then moves back North. On her way she meets Tyrion who was traveling back from the Wall and takes him prisoner, but he is released, having “proven” his innocence through a “judgement of the gods”. In King's Landing, Ned discovers that the previous Hand had been killed because he had discovered that the King's children were actually not his, but Jaime's. Soon after the King is killed during a hunt, and although he wants Ned to become Regent, Cersei schemes to place her son Joffrey on the throne, takes Ned's daughther Sansa (betrothed to Joffrey) hostage and gets Ned's followers all killed. Even Ned is taken prisoner and forced to claim he is a traitor before being executed. Only Arya, Ned's other daughter, manages to escape the castle and hides in the city. Lead by Robb and his mother, an army marches to the South to try and rescue Ned, but when they learn of his death and that the youngest brother of the old King has been crowned a King also, they choose to secede from the kingdom and make Robb the King of the North. During all this, the only descendant from the previous King's dynasty (the one from whom Robert took the throne) becomes the mother of 3 baby dragons, a created who had disappeared for several hundred years.

© Amazon.fr

Huitième volume de Lanfeust des étoiles, publié en 2008. Lanfeust, Hébus, Cixi, Qam et l'orgnobi se font embaucher comme serveurs sur un paquebot spatial dans le but de rallier Meirrion. Ils se rendent compte que la poule qui les accompagne depuis plusieurs épisodes est porteuse de la bactérie Gwalax et que ses œufs sont des grenades anti-Patacelse. Pendant ce temps, Thanos se fait avaler par Dheluu et parvient à prendre sa place. Glin est confié aux soins d'une clinique de désintoxication, mais parvient à s'échapper. L'orgnobi parvient à faire s'introduire Lanfeust, Cixi et Hébus au palais de Dheluu et à attaquer Thanos. Celui-ci s'enfuit, mais Lanfeust le rattrape et le tue. Cixi et Lanfeust se séparent, ce dernier rentre sur Troy.

© Amazon.fr

Seizième volume de la série Largo Winch, publié en 2008. Le fils de Tsai propose à Largo sa liberté en échange de ses parts majoritaires dans Winch Aeronautics. Largo parvient à s'échapper de sa prison pour se rendre compte qu'en fait il est toujours à Hong Kong, dans les sous-sols d'un centre commercial. Il est à nouveau sauvé par la même triade (qui lui apprend que ce n'était pas elle qui lui avait demandé dans l'épisode précédent de voler l'antique manuscrit, mais qu'il s'agissait d'un stratagème de Tsai). La triade lui demande de voler le manuscrit à nouveau, mais encore une fois Largo tombe dans un piège et est accusé d'avoir assassiné Tsai. Le véritable assassin est en fait le fils de Tsai, et Largo est libéré mais le marché Chinois lui est dorénavant fermé.

“This stout is dark and full of flavour with hints of chocolate and coffee, due to the use of freshly roasted malts and barley. Unusually, this beer is without any animal or fish-based ingredient such as isinglass… This beer is bottle conditioned.”

Sweet and slightly bitter, definitely tastes of coffee and maybe a bit of chocolate. Contains pale and roasted malts.

Hop Back Brewery, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. 4.5% alcohol.

“Ingredients: Avon Valley Water, Best Barley and Wheat Malts, East Kent Golding and Pioneer Hops, Lemongrass, Coriander and Hop Back Yeast.”

Quite bitter with a hint (but really just a hint) of lemony something. Bottle conditioned. Contains barley and wheat malts.

Hop Back Brewery, Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. 4.2% alcohol.

Vedenkulutuksen jälkeen, mittaan sähkönkulutusta:

• Pesukone (puuvillaohjelma, lisähuuhtelu, 40 °C): 78 min, 0.62 kWh, max 2 kW

“Fraoch is Scotland's native ale. Fraoch is Gaelic for Heather. Heather ale has been brewed in Scotland for four thousand years and is the oldest style of ale still made in the world. The Picts who ruled Scotland until the 9th century were known to brew the legendary heather ale, these people of the designs were the creators of the artistic style of our label.

The ale is produced to a 16th Century Scots – Gaelic recipe from malted barley bree, sweet gale and heather flowers, The hot ale is infused in heather flowers before being fermented in copper tuns. Fraoch has a floral, peaty aroma, full malt body, a spicy hearbal flavour and a dry wine finish.”

Tastes slightly like a sweet kind of flower, not bitter. Contains barley malt.

Williams Bros Brewing Co., Alloa, Scotland. 5% alcohol.

This is somehting that needed to be said. Surprisingly, Google doesn't return that many results for this sentence. Is it stil a taboo? (Taboo, on the Web? Who am I kidding?)

Uusi vesimittari inspiroi mittaamaan vedenkulutusta:

• Vessan vetäminen: 7 L
• Tiskikone (ilman esipesua): 18 L
• Pesukone (puuvillaohjelma, lisähuuhtelu): 74 L
• Suihku: 85 L

Tänä aamuna joku mies tuli kotiini juuri kun olin lähtemässä. Hän sanoi tulleensa vaihtamaan vesimittarin. Hänen pakettiautonsa kyljessä oli kyllä Jyväskylän Energian logo (eli valtava mainoskuva kahviautomaatista tai jotain, ja pieni teksti, jossa luki “Jyväskylän Energia”). Mikä vesimittari? En ole pyytänyt ketään vaihtamaan mittaria. Miksi se tarvitsee vaihtaa? Mutta niin se on: vesimittari vaihdetaan joka viides vuosi. Ei kerrota asiakkaalle että joku tulee, hän vain tulee. En tiedä mitä hän tekee, jos kukaan ei ole kotona. Mutta mittari on nyt vaihdettu, ja vanha lukema (jonka olisin kirjoittanut tänä iltana tilastooni) on hukassa.

© Amazon.fr

The Culture is an association of evolved species in the galaxy who have merged and created together a new culture. Among other things, they meddle secretely in the development of other spieces to make them step toward peace and enlightenment. Sometimes this fails, and as it was the case with Chel, the specie falls into civil war. But the Chelgrian religion requires every fallen warrior to be avenged with the death of an enemy in order to be allowed to move into the afterlife. Some Chelgians have then planned to kill four billion Culture citizens on the Masaq' Orbital, a gigantic ring-shaped structure orbiting around a Hub, itself orbiting around a sun. The Orbital is controlled by a Mind, an AI which takes care of most of the automatic systems, as well as of the people through avatars. Most of the deaths will be souls of dead people, stored in the Hub, where the Mind also resides. The Chelgrian sent on this suicide mission is Quilan, who is desperate to die since he lost his wife in the war. He is accompanied with Huyler, a veteran officer who resides in Quilan's brain, within Soulkeeper modified to allow Quilan and Huyler to communicate. Huyler's mission is to take control of Quilan in case the latter gets cold feet. But the mission fails, because Huyler is actually an agent of the Culture, who had been turned around while his soul was stored, after his bodily death. But the Mind of Masaq' also wishes to die (because of having lost his twin during a war, almost 1000 years ago) and he proposed Quilan to die with him. The originators of the plot on Chel are assassinated, but no other action is taken by the Culture against the Chelgrian people. In the end, Huyler gets a new body and a new life in the Culture.

Leffakone's timer's been working perfectly for almost two years, but since we moved, it doesn't always work as it should. The LED goes off when it starts to receive data (as expected), but then it just reboots (because of the watchdog timer) and then waits for data again (its LED on). But it will not accept the data anymore. And after a couple of days, for no reason, it works again (and blinks happily while counting down).

I took it to the telecom lab last Tuesday and Niko took a look at it. The solders seem fine. We changed the micro-controller and flashed it. It still behaved erratically on the bench, rebooting repeatedly for no obvious reason, sometimes receiving data with the available signal low but touching the data wire with the finger (I mean the insulation of the wire, not the metallic part). Niko unsoldered and resoldered the crystal, thinking it was faulty, with no effect. It seemed doomed.

Then I took it back home, checked with an ohm-meter that all the resistors were resisting, that the capacitors were capaciting, and I put it back in Leffakone. This was last Thursday. Since then, it's been working perfectly…

“…brewed using a blend of Maris Otter pale malt and torrefied wheat, with four varieties of hop (Fuggle, Progress, Styrian Gold and Mount Hood)…”

Very sweet (it contains No3 Inverted Block Sugar and High-Maltose Syrup), very strong, tastes very slightly of flowers (violet?), otherwise boring. Contains malted barley and torrefied wheat.

Highgate Brewery, Walsall, England. 8.2% alcohol.

Artemis Fowl on 12 vuotta ja rikollisnero. Hän löytää keijujen Kirjan, ja oppii kaiken mitä pitää tietää keijuista. Sitten hän sieppaa keijupoliisin. Hän vaatii yhden tonnin kultaa vastineeksi poliisista. Hän tietää että keijujen poliisivoimat aikovat asettaa ensin aikapysäytyskentän (josta kukaan ei ikinä ole päässyt pakoon), ja jos he eivät onnistu saamaan poliisia takaisin, he laukaisevat biopommin, joka tuhoaa kaiken elämän kentän sisällä. Mutta Fowl huomasi että tarinoissa, joissa on keijuja, ihmiset eivät ikinä herää, kun keijut ovat paikalla. Se tarkoittaa että kentässä tietoisuuden taso pysyy samana kuin aikapysäytyksen alkaessa. Silloin ei voi nukahtaa eikä herätä. He ovat tajuntansa vuoksi aikapysäytyksen vankeja. Aikakentästä pääsee pakoon nukahtamalla. Fowl ja hänen ystävät joivat sitten unilääkettä, ja pääsivät kentästä pois, ennen kuin biopommi iski. Kun keijut eivät saaneet kultaa takaisin, Keijujen lain mukaan, Fowl saa pitää kullan itsellään.

“Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie and Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale were great military leaders and both men had been brothers in arms in numerous campaigns sharing many victories and accolades. They were outstanding in a brilliant array of valiant knights that thronged the court of King David of Scotland in the 14th Century. Like these great leaders Champion Double Ale is a blend of two strong characters. A strong ale brewed in the Scottish tradition, strong, warming and malty, combined with a Porter style ale with rich roasted malt characters on a background of good hop flavour and aroma.

The two beers are brewed and fermented separately in their unique ways then blended together in a warm conditioning vessel to allow the two to mature.”

Quite strong, with a strong malty taste, maybe with a hint of chocolate (maybe). Made of malted barley.

Broughton Ales limited, Broughton Biggar, Scotland. 5.5% alcohol.

Publié en finnois par Egmont en un volume unique. Trop la flemme de faire des résumés dans la langue d'Alexis Kivi (d'autant plus que je n'ai fait que survoler les dialogues, l'histoire est tellement simple qu'on comprend rien qu'en regardant les images).

Jehan Pistolet corsaire prodigieux

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Nantes, 17è siècle. Jehan rêve de devenir un corsaire. Avec quelques amis et un perroquet, il retape un vieux rafiot et part à l'aventure sur les mers. Afin de se faire remarquer du roi, il part à la recherche du pirate Barbe Verte, qu'il finit par attraper (par chance plus qu'autre chose). Pour le récompenser, le roi en fait un de ses corsaires.

Jehan Pistolet corsaire du Roy

© Amazon.fr

Jehan et son équipage, manquant cruellement d'argent sont alléchés par l'offre d'un vieux loup de mer qui leur propose de partir à la recherche d'un trésor. Ce dernier se révèle être un ancien pirate qui tente, avec ses deux gardes du corps, de prendre possesion du navire de Jehan. Après deux escales (une chez des canibales, l'autre chez des espagnols qui les font prisonier), Jehan et son équipage sont jetés à la mer, puis recueilli par le capitaine de l'ancien pirate (que ce dernier croyait mort) qui vient justement chercher son trésor. Jehan et son équipage réussissent à faire prisonier les pirates et à rapporter le trésor (avant de le voir repris par le collecteur des impôts).

Jehan Pistolet et l'espion

© Amazon.fr

Le roi envoie Jehan en Afrique conquérir de nouvelles colonies. Sa conversation avec son équipage est surprise par un espion, qui va vendre (sans recevoir un sou) l'information à deux monarques étrangers, puis vendre (encore une fois sans succès) à Jehan le fait que deux navires étrangers poursuivent le même but que lui. Chacun des trois capitaines a pour plan de laisser les deux autres faire tout le travail et de se servir ensuite. Les deux autres finissent par se taper dessus pendant que Jehan continue vers l'Afrique. Il y fait la connaissance d'une tribu qui a déjà été « civilisée », et continie vers l'intérieur des terres, où il construit un fort. Mais ses deux concurrents viennent à l'attaque, chassent la tribu qui vient se réfugier dans le fort de Jehan et encerclent le fort. Les assiégés reussissent à faire parvenir un message à une tribu amie qui chasse les concurrents de Jehan. Quand ce dernier rejoint enfin la France, le roi lui dit que finalement il n'avait pas besoin d'une nouvelle colonie.

Jehan Pistolet en amérique

© Amazon.fr

Le roi envoie Jehan et son équipage en Amérique afin de lui rapporter du Tilleulus Americanus pour soigner son foie. Arrivé à New York, Jehan engage un trappeur pour le guider. Ils sont faits prisonniers par des indiens, mais Jehan parvient à les libérer en réussissant à passer trois épreuves. Plus loin ils trouvent un champ de Tilleulus Americanus, mais sont faits prisonniers par un agriculteur irrascible, ammené à la ville proche et rapidement jugés et condamnés pour vol de chevaux. Mais une attaque des indiens (les mêmes que précédemment) sur la ville, que Jehan parvient à arrêter, leur permet de se faire gracier et de rapporter la plante tant convoitée en France. Mais le Roi n'en a plus besoin, parce qu'un de ses médecins s'est rendu compte qu'il en poussait dans le jardin du palais.

Jehan Pistolet et le savant fou

Le roi engage un savant fou pour installer des gadgets sur le navire de Jehan. Ils partent à la poursuite d'un pirate qui décime la flotte française, et finissent par l'arrêter après une bataille au canon dans le port de Nantes. À la fin, le savant fou décide qu'il ne veut plus continuer à fabriquer des armes, et s'en va fair le tour de la France sur sa dernière invention, une vélo.

Lorsqu'on envoie une lettre depuis l'étranger vers la Finlande, on préfixe le code postal par « FI- ». Pas « FIN- » ni « SF- » . Lorsqu'on envoie une lettre depuis l'étranger vers la France, on ne fait pas précéder le code postal par un quelconque code.

Kun lähetetään kirje ulkomailta Suomeen, postinumeron eteen kirjoitetaan “FI-”. Ei “FIN-” eikä “SF-”. Kun lähetetään kirje ulkomailta Ranskaan, ei kirjoiteta mitään postinumeron eteen.

“The world's original pale beers were born in London over 200 years ago. … American and English hops…”

Flowery smell, quite bitter. Contains barley malt.

Meantime Brewing, London, England. 4.3% alcohol.

Wikipedia

Bond drives the man who was behind the assassination of Vesper in the previous episode to Sienna to be interrogated. He's a member of a secret criminal organisation named Solace, but manages to escape thanks to a traitor at MI6. Bond traces the traitor's contact in Haiti, where he meets Camille Montes and Dominic Greene. Greene is the chairman of Greene Planet, an organisation which supports environmental actions, but Greene is also a member of Quantum and schemes a coup d'état to make General Meneral Medrano the new president of Bolivia in exchange for a piece of land in the Bolivian desert. The CIA is involved, but they do not intend to stop him. Camille wants to kill Medrano (who killed her family), but Bond prevents her to do so. Bond then follows Greene to Bregenz when the latter uses a representation of Tosca at Lake Constance as a secret meeting place with business partners, involving pipelines. Bond discovers that an advisor of the Prime Minister seems to be involved with Quantum. Me believes Bond only seeks revenge for the murder of Vesper, and relieves him of duty, with no success. Bond then asks René Mathis (his partner in Casino Royale) to help him go to Bolivia and follow Greene. In La Paz they meet Canille again, but Bond is framed by the chief of police. Bond and Camille escape with an airplane found at the place Greene seeks to acquire, but are shot down by a military airplace sent by Medrano. They discover that Greene's goal is to control water, not to find oil. Back in La Paz, Bond contacts Felix Leiter, who tells him that Greene and Medrano are in a hotel in the middle of the desert and are going to sign a deal where Greene provides Medrano with funds to buy himself the support of the police. In exchange, Greene wants to control the distribution of water in the country. Camille and Bond arrive just at that moment, Camille kills Medrano and Bond gets answers from Greene before leaving him in the desert (where he will be killed by Quantum shortly after). Finally, Bond goes to Kazan in Russia to meet Yusef, Vesper's former lover who had driven her to betray her country for the profit of Quantum, and is about to do the same with a Canadian agent. To M's suprise, Bond doesn't kill Yusef.

I fixed a bug in xautoaway (actually, in X11::Protocol). The new version is available.

I changed my RSS feed so that it displays the stories in HTML instead of the old text-only version. Moreover, I added a link to each of the RSS items to use automatic translating services (Google Translate and Babelfish). This link only appears if the RSS feed is requested with a given language in parameter. E.g., for English, use http://users.jyu.fi/~mweber/blog/index.rss?lang=en as the RSS feed's URL. You can replace the en at the end with fr or fi for French and Finnish respectively.

J'ai changé mon flux RSS afin d'afficher les histoires en HTML au lieu de l'ancienne version en texte simpe. De plus, j'ai ajouté à chaque item RSS un lien vers des services de traduction automatique (Google Translate et Babelfish). Ce lien n'apparait que si le flux RSS est appelé avec un paramètre langue. Par exemple pour le Français, il faut utiliser http://users.jyu.fi/~mweber/blog/index.rss?lang=fr comme URL du flux RSS. On peut remplacer le fr à la fin par en ou fi pour l'anglais ou le finnois, respectivement.

Disclaimer — Désistement

I cannot be held responsible for death by fatal hilarity when reading the automatic translations.

Je ne peux être tenu responsable si vous mourez de rire en lisant les traductions automatiques.

Recette adaptée de la glace au lait de Chef Simon.

Ingrédients

• 5 dL lait
• 70 g sucre
• 30 g sirop de glucose
• 6 jaunes d'œuf
• 10 g fécule d'orge
• 100 g gingembre frais rapé
• 2 dL crème fluide
• gingembre confit découpé en petits cubes

Préparation

Cette recette décrit la manière dont j'ai préparé ma glace au lait, mais elle contient une erreur importante. Lire les commentaires pour davantage de détails.

Délayer le sirop de glucose dans le lait et y ajouter le gingembre rapé. Faire bouillir. Fouetter les 6 jaunes d'œuf avec le sucre. Filtrer le lait encore chaud et le verser sur les jaunes d'œuf et le sucre. Faire épaissir comme une crème anglaise. Délayer la fécule dans un peu d'eau et ajouter en fin de cuisson. Laisser refroidir (12h au frigo), puis passer à la sorbetière. Lorsque La glace est presque prise ajouter le gingembre confit dans la sorbetière, fouetter la crème fluide et l'ajouter dans la sorbetière et laisser tourner jusqu'à ce que la crème soit bien incorporée.

Remarques

Le gingembre frais (c'est-à-dire qui n'a pas été chauffé) contient une enzyme protéolytique qui va faire cailler le lait. On récupère donc d'une part du petit-lait sucré (qui devient une assez bonne crème anglaise) et d'autre part du gingembre rapé au fromage blanc. La prochaine fois, j'essayerai de faire bouillir le gingembre rapé une minute pour dénaturer l'enzyme. J'espère qu'on ne perdra pas trop de goût.

“soft and golden season ale.”

Quite bitter, but maybe not as much as other beers from the same brewery. Contains malted barley.

Shepherd Neame, Faversham, Kent, England. 4.7% alcohol.

xautoaway.pl is an autoaway script for Irssi that allows Irssi to go away automatically when your X Window session has been idle for some time. Additionaly, it supports Irssi running in a GNU screen, being detached from an xterm in one display and reattached to another xterm on another display. Distributed as-is, under “it-works-for-me” pseudo-license (and under GNU GPLv3 real license).

It requires the X11::Protocol module and some additional setup (the provided, incomplete extension to X11::Protocol to support MIT-SCREEN-SAVER and the screen wrapper to be run instead of GNU screen).

Wikipedia

Ten years have passed. California is soon going to become a state and join the Union. Alejandro and Elena are married and have a son, Joaquin. Elena is pissed that Alejandro spends all his time as Zorro instead of with his family. She soons divorces from him, and Alejandro finds out she is dating Armand, a Frenchman who started a wineyard in San Mateo. But Elena is actually working under cover for the Pinkertons, who are spying on Armand on behalf of the United States' government. They soon discover that Armand is a member of Orbis Unum, a secret fellowship of knights who seek to keep the domination of the Old Continent and prevent the rise of the USA. Armand is importing secretely loads of soap and turning it into nitroglycerin (???), that will then be distributed to the Confederacy's army. Alejandro and Elena manage to stop the shipping of the explosive and save the day.

Bensa maksaa Keljon Shell Expressillä 1,294 EUR, mutta Palokassa se maksaa vain 1,259 EUR Palokan Neste Oil Expressillä. Matka Palokkaan ja takaisin on noin 20 km. Auto käyttää noin 7 L/100km, siis 1,4 L bensaa, joka maksaisi 1,76 EUR. Tankkaan 35 L, hinta ero on siis 0,88 EUR. Se ei maksaa vaivaa. (datan lähde: polttoaine.net).

I just finished motdictd.pl a gateway between the DICT protocol and the MOT online (not free at all) dictionary collection accessible to the University of Jyväskylä. It runs as a local DICT server, started from the command line by any user (preferably not root) and listens to 127.0.0.1 on port 2628. DICT queries are turned into HTTP requests to NetMOT, the resulting HTML code is cleaned up and returned as pure text to the DICT client. The CLI DICT client doesn't support multiple servers, so it accessing the gateway requires to call dict -h localhost if the default server is dict.org.

“Craft brewed with organically grown ingredients, using Target and Goldings hops to provide a zesty aroma and fruity flavour.”

Strong hop falvour, slightly bitter and fruity. Contains barley malt.

Brakspear Brewing Co., Oxfordshire, England. 4.6% alcohol.

“a traditional hop flavour to balance the sweet malty caramel finish”

Smells a bit like beef stock. Quite bitter, slightly flowery. Made of barley malt and wheat.

Carlow Brewing Company, Carlow, Ireland. 4.3% alcohol.

Jyväskylä se situe à 62.22°N, 25.73°E. Le graphique ci-contre représente la durée du jour en 2008 en fonction de la date (du 1er janvier au 31 décembre). Le défaut aux alentours de l'équinoxe est probablement dû à une problème d'arrondi et au fait que les calculs prennent l'équinoxe pour point de départ. Je ne m'attendais pas à ce que la courble soit aussi linéaire à distance des solstices, ni qu'elle soit aussi « pointue » aux solstices.

Ici, les heures de lever et de coucher du soleil. Le décalage fin mars et fin octobre sont dûs au passage à l'heure d'été et au retour à l'heure d'hiver.

Beaucoup plus étrange ici, le midi solaire (mi-chemin entre le lever et coucher du soleil) n'est pas à un intervalle de temps constant du midi civil comme on pourrait s'y attendre. Encore plus étrange, cette courbe a deux maxima et deux minima qui ne sont pas au même niveau et qui ne correspondent pas à des dates clés. Les points d'inflexion, en revanche, semblent situés aux solstices et aux équinoxes.

Ici la même courbe sans le passage à l'heure d'été pour davantage de lisibilité. La forme en « escalier » de la courbe est dûe à la précision des valeurs calculées, qui est limitée à la minute. On remarque en particulier que le décalage entre les midis solaire et civil varie entre 0 et 32 minutes, avec un décalage moyen d'environ 18 minutes lus sur le graphe (17 minutes par calcul si on considère le décalage en longitude entre Jyväskylä et le centre du fuseau horaire à 30.00°E).

Green & Black's Organic dark chocolate, Trinitario: frais, légèrement acide

Anthon Berg Rich Dark, Ghana, 72%: crémeux, noix de coco

Anthon Berg Soft Dark, Ghana, 57%: doux, fleuri

Thé vert, grandes feuilles torsadées. Les feuilles sèches on un parfum fruité (abricot sec) et peut-être un peu grillé. L'infusion est plus verte, assez douce et peut-être un peu fruitée (abricot sec encore une fois).

I just tested Synergy. This little tool allows to share one keyboard and mouse between several computers sitting next to each other (that is, each computer needs to have its own display) over the network. When the mouse cursor reaches the edge of the screen, it moves to the screen of the computer next to that edge (and the keyboard's focus too, of course). The great thing is that it works in Linux (and other Unices), in MacOS X and in Windows. So it's perfectly possible to have a mix of all these types of systems, and it woks seamlessly, without any extra hardware.

J'ai reçu aujourd'hui (enfin hier, vu l'heure qu'il est) la carte topographique au 1/20 000è de Jyväskylä que j'avais commandée mercredi soir. Service rapide !

Voici donc deux courbes de niveau pour un trajet Hinkalo — Agora, en voiture et à vélo (les chemins parcourus sont totalement différents). Le dénivelé total est de 93 m.

Le trajet en voiture est long de 4680 m. Du point de départ au rond point de Keljonkeskus situé entre les deux supermarchés, le dénivelé est de 80,5 m pour une distance parcourue de 2000 m, ce qui fait une déclivité moyenne de 4%, mais avec des pointes à 14% sur Tuulimyllyntie et 13% sur Myllyjärventie.

Le trajet en vélo est long de 3380 m. Du point de départ jusqu'au petit tunnel, la déclivité moyenne est de 5,7%, mais avec peu de variation sur ces 1100 m de trajet.

This is the follow-up to the previous episode.

Today's discussion with Ville was concluded more or less like that: he claimed that having access to the source code is of no use for him although he can code, because he has never been able to gather the necessary energy to start hacking an existing software. Well, that's his problem, isn't it? I devote some of my free time to hack software (in a very insignificant way, I'm sure) to adapt it to my needs, he devotes his to something else. And I enjoy my small software hacks. I'm proud of myself when I manage to understand MPlayer's subtitles code and add support for DVB subtitles, or when I add support for X11's screensaver protocol to perl's X11::Protocol module. And let's be honest: L^AT_EX is ridiculously complicated, but I enjoy fighting the beast and bending it to my will.

I have loads of fun doing things myself. I make my own pizzas from scratch (dough and tomato sauce, altough I don't grow the tomatoes, olives and wheat, nor do I breed pigs or milk cows), I make my own ice-cream, my own Home Theater PC, my own blog engine, my own Carcassonne meeples. Buying something ready-made feels like a waste of money if I can do it myself for a reasonnable cost in time. I'm not going to devote large amounts of time on large projects such as writing my own operating sytem, word processor or image manipulation software, mainly because the time it would cost me compared to the benefit I would get out of it compared to using the existing tools is not worth it. Hacking oversized projects don't really interest me, even if they have bugs and I'd like to fix them. But I very much appreciate that small, one-person -sized softwares are free for me to hack when I set my mind to it.

The ones who consider the freedom given by free software to be useless are the ones who are too busy/lazy to take advantage of it and have more money at hand than time.

This is the follow-up to the previous episode.

So, is free software always better than the other kind? Jonne claimed that the “freedom” aspect of free software isn't an advantage for him, because free software is hard to change, and it takes a long time to implement the new feature you would like to add to it. The alternative would be to send a bug report or feature request to the developers. But both in free project and proprietary ones you may reach grumpy developers, who will consider your request as low priority.

Now the real difference between free and proprietary is that in the case of free software, you have the right to do it yourself. It may be difficult and take an enourmous amount of time (such as integrating CMYK in GIMP, which was not designed orginally to handle anything else than RGB), but it is possible if you are willing to devote resources (time and/or money) to it. With a proprietary software, if the developers don't want to implement your feature, there is no appeal. Jonne's argument was that you can always find a software (free or not) that does what you want. I claim that this is not always true.

The first example is that when I built my leffakone five years ago, there was no software running on Linux that supported DVB subtitles and automatic TV commercial removal. Actually, there was no software that was supporting these two features at all. So I took the time to implement them myself (and yes, MPlayer's subtitle code is an horrible mess). The second example is a recent problem with Python's X11::Protocol module. It had a bug that I managed to identify thanks to the source code, and I found a way to go around it. I submitted a bug report, but to this day (over a month later) it has still not been answered. X11::Protocol was exactly what I needed, but had it been proprietary, I wouldn't have been able to find a workaround, and would have needed to settle with a sub-optimal solution, which would not have been doing exactly what I want.

Jonne also claimed that developers don't need the source code of a software, but the software should be designed so that it can be extended. Firefox is a good example: a lot of features can be added as “extensions” and the developers don't need to access Firefox's source code. But not all software is designed to be extensible, especially if it is in the (financial) interest of the publisher to prevent anyone to develop an extension without its blessing. This means that if the extension you want to develop doesn't follow the publisher's commercial strategy, you won't be allowed to do it. And again there will be no appeal. An no, you don't always find another software that does the same thing and would allow you to develop your extension.

And guess what? Most of the software available nowadays is not extensible. That is, it's not meant to be easy to extend. If you want to change its behavior or fix a bug, you have no choice but to dig into the source code. And even if the software has been designed with extensibility in mind, it doesn't mean that the data it exports through its extension API contains all the information you need for your purposes. A good example of this if my blog engine, Bloxsom. It was designed to be extensible, most of the work is done by extensions rather than by the software's core. But for implementing features such as multiple languages and multiple categories, I had to change the core, because the extension API was not enough. And I don't know any other blog engine that fits my requirements. But hey, I don't know all the blog engines in the world, so I may be wrong.

To be continued.

I started to use free software in 1996 (or was it 97?), with Slackware 3.0. The first reason why I decided to learn Linux is because Unix systems were the ones used by real coders. Windows already looked too much like a toy, had the bad reputation of a shaky house built over the sand of MS-DOS. And also because it was cool (from a geek's perspective, of course). The reason why I continued to use free software was that even though free software is free as in “free speech”, it is also free as in “free beer”. There were software filling my needs, and I adapted the topic of my free-time projects to what was available on Linux. For example, I could have continued to play aimlessly with SoundForge in Windows, but coding an IRC bot in Perl on Linux was more appealing. It was a creative process, the creation of somethat that acts (if only by reflex), on the contrary of something you contemplate with more or less awe (like music or a painting). And also, the IRC bot was working on my behalf, providing a service.

I had a long discussion with two colleagues the other morning, who claimed that Free Software is a fad. I didn't agree with them at first, thinking about the origins of the free software movement, but after reflection I have to admit that in the last five years it actually has turned into a fad. Not a passing fad like clothing fashion (although the pointy shoe fashion could have changed more quickly for my taste), but in the sense of something that a lot of people use, and who use it because everybody else is also using it. The reason for this is that free software is free (as in “free beer”) and people are more often than not choosing something free over something they have to pay for. The average software user doesn't care whether he has the right to modify software or not. He's a user, not a developer, and he doesn't know how to use this right. I guess plenty of users still use warez software or free (as in “beer”) proprietary software instead of free software, because warez doesn't cost more than free software (at lease from the point of view of money). In some cases, one free (as in “speech”) software can drive the fad. This is the case of Firefox I guess, which was in its time technically superior to Internet Explorer (it respected the standards of the Web and had popup and ad blockers). And I wouldn't be surprised that Firefox has been the main driving force behind the free software fad.

To be continued.

Suite de l'épisode précédent.

J'ai passé aujourd'hui un certain temps à discuter de mécanique auto avec Henrik et en particulier de la consommation rélle d'une voiture. On a fini par en revenir au problème de trouver la courbe de consommation spécifique des moteurs de nos voiture, mais il semble que les constructeurs tiennent à garder ces informations secrètes… En revanche, Henrik a trouvé un article en allemand de Helmut Tschöke et Hanns-Erhard Heinze publié dans le Magdeburger Wisseschaftsjournal de 2001 qui compare les consommations de divers types de moteurs (essence, essence à injection directe, diesel à injection directe pour voitures personnelles et les véhicules utilitaires).

Les auteurs indiquent entre autres qu'étant données les masses volumiques et les densités énergétiques différentes entre l'essence et le diesel, à consommations énergétiques égales, le moteur diesel a une consommation moyenne inférieure. Cependant le diesel produit davantage de CO₂ que l'essence, à consommations égales. Mais les consommations moyennes des voitures à essence et diesel ne sont justement pas égales.

Un peu plus loin, ils se demandent s'il est possible de construire une voiture qui consomme seulement 1 ou 2 L/100 km (la Volkswagen Lupo 3L a été conçue pour ne consommer que 3 L/100 km en moyenne) et concluent que ce n'est pas possible, mais qu'on pourrait descendre à 2 ou 2,3 L/100 km.

Les auteurs introduisent finalement la notion de facteur de mobilité (FM), égal au produit de la consommation par le temps nécessaire à la parcourir divisé par le nombre de personnes transportées. Sur un trajet de 300 km, le piéton a un FM de 30, le vélo 7, la voiture 7,8, le car 1,4, le train 1,6 et l'avion 5,5 (le piéton consomme l'équivalent de 0,5 L/100 km et le vélo 0,35). Ma voiture a un FM de 6,1 avec 4 passagers et 8,1 avec 3 passagers.