Life of a Frequent Traveller

A very true argument: I agree with every word of it! "This is not a glamorous life: Waking up in the middle of the night and forgetting where you are, watching the weather forecasts intently, sprinting to make your connection, and don't get me started on the bureaucratic rules that big companies set for their staff (one of the reasons I love working at a startups)." Read here

Effective Point&Shoot Urinals ?

It seems like the Dutch are really concerned about the cleanliness of their toilets, in a country where beer consumption is not very low ... They've come out with a god idea to help men better "focus" while they're urinating: a black fly etched into the urinals

Welsh 3-digit Phone

Here is my (important) contribution: silly things you can find around the world: a 3-digit (1-2-3) emergency phone on which you're supposed to dial 999 to ask for help ;)

In case you want to check it by yourself, it is at Worm's Head (GPS coordinates are +51° 33' 48.26", -4° 18' 15.88" (51.563406, -4.304411)).

Deux culottes

Vu de l'extérieur, on semble bien s'amuser à la police: une enquête sur le vol de deux culottes !

Real Women Don't Write Programs !

Just found this humorous scientific paper written by Carol (a woman who apparently can program) ! Excerpts:

3. SOME SOCIAL BARRIERS TO FEMALE
PARTICIPATION IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
COURSES
3.1 Real Women Don’ t Date Computer Geeks
Real women don’t change tyres, mow lawns, or date
computer geeks.

4.1 Real Women Don’ t Write Programs
Real women don’t pump gas, like mathematics, or write
programs.
4.2 Most Women Can’t Program
An employer explained to me why he had not interviewed
any of my female students for a graduate IT position in his
company. “Most women” he said, clearly and slowly,
“can’t program.”
Of course, he is absolutely correct. Most women can’t
program. Most men can’ t program either. What most men
and real women have in common is that they are
unembarrassed by their lack of programming ability.

Towards Experiential Computing

It has been a few years since I've been looking for a clever system able to capture rich media experiences. I've been attending large conferences, where I desperately felt the need to capture, in a rich and meaningful way, diverse experiences: talks, random or prepared meetings, ephemeral chats, sightseeings etc.

Could not find anything. I discovered some research work such as LifeLog or MyLifeBits. And now I see a bit more clearly into the problem, thanks to Ramesh Jain. Life=Experiences (Events) . Laptops and phones are not computers, they are experiential devices. They enable us to capture and share experiences, and consequently create knowledge. Watch the talk here.

Another Sync Nightmare

Every now and then, honest people, using modern technology, spend hours, late in the night, crawling through the forums,looking for a tiny piece of wisdom that would help them do very simple things: synchronize emails, calendars ...

I hate blogging about this, but I have to admit that it is a big relief when you find the magic cure. So, if you're the happy owner of an iPhone 4 and you want to synchronize with multiple Google calendars, this is the info you may desperately look for : https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect once you're logged in.

All other details (why ? how ? where ? etc) are useless.

Good luck !