New Year Update

Inspired for once, so here is a new post to remember a few events or impressions of good old 2008:

1. January, I was in Oslo for a few days - not long enough in any case.
2. February, I welcomed friends from abroad for walks and drinks in Paris.
   
3. March, I discovered more of Norway - and was very glad to.
4. April, I had great moments for my birthday at home.
   
5. May, the weather matched my amount of work.
   
6. June, I managed to spend a week-end off in Normandy. Felt like a great achievement.
   
7. July, real holidays, with a trip between Denmark and Sweden. Wonderful time.
8. August, there was some holiday still, but lots of work too, again.
   
9. September, that's when I started to leave the office by night (I still do of course).
   
10. October, I was under the knife, it had been a while. At least it allowed 2 afternoons off.
    
11. November, I took a 3 days holiday but mostly I worked a lot. It calmed down at last.
12. December, I flew away for Christmas, once again, and did not regret it. And guess what? It is colder in Paris now than it has ever been in Bergen.
    
    Those moments and photos are not the main things about last year. I do take one picture a day too, as I wrote here before but since it is private, you guys will have to be pleased with those public bits and pieces!
    
    Now, is that a resurrection of this blog? Hmmm... Time will tell. It will tell many things!
    

Wishful driving

July 24th, 18:30, in a plane from Béziers to Paris.
Woke up late and mad but finally made it to Orly airport just in time this morning. A very good day followed: nice walks, upgraded for free with the car rental, drove along the Canal du Midi, had a constructive business meeting with nice people, and nothing went particularly wrong. Although it felt wrong somehow, spending such a nice day for no reason, in the middle of quite a mess. I was reassured in the planes when surrounded with crying babies on both occasions - the daily bothers had not vanished in oblivion, therefore it was all real.
I was driving on the A9 between Vias and Narbonne with air-conditioning, Coldplay and GPS, carefully but swiftly. Set the temperature for my imaginary passenger to 18°C and kept it to 21°C for me (around 32°C outside). Didn't bother with gas, I drove calmly enough to spend as little as possible - enough to be forgiven a sincere omission like not refuelling I thought, and I was right, it only took a smile.
I was driving and thinking, on the A9 between Narbonne and Vias. Enjoying myself. Maybe tonight I'll be home early, around 20:30. Do a bit of cleaning and ordering, then try to cook and eat it anyway. Do some Photoshopping, and some crafting somehow. A bit of self-satisfaction about the general state of things, with measure but immediate profit. One should not wait for others' compliments too often anyway. And if I am wise enough to be glad with what the future surely holds, it feels good to be satisfied with actual parameters under no particular circumstance. Not even in good company for that matter.
I was driving and smiling, between Vias and Narbonne, thinking that tonight I could find the time for a good Cuban cigar and some Islay whisky, and then some anti-tobacco candle that neutralizes guilt far better than it does smells. Fairly possibly the espresso machine will rumble on a few occasions, subtle and quiet as a supertanker that would try to make its way in the marina of Smygehamn. Neighbours so far never rang. Fear maybe.
I was driving and smoking, on the A9 between Narbonne and Vias, and despite the heat and surroundings I thought it was Spring. I felt Spring. How come? did I most charmingly ask myself, as if not waiting for any answer. And although it was rhetorical, I sort of figured out a possible explanation for that. I started this job on March 25th (Oh, that's 4 months now!). So I didn't see Spring coming. At all. And the information caught up with me at last: only now is it obvious that it romps about and joyfully tampers with anything. Don't blame me, I have been making money. Well, slightly more than when I was looking for a job but still... So I haven't found a single second for such evident steps to cross my mind: seasons. What else did I miss? If your powers of observation are to amaze me still, you may notice that I haven't blogged much lately. Nor did I read lots, set aside litigation documents, appraisal papers, contracts of employment, exclusive distribution agreements (drafted one recently, with supernatural goodwill), orders, judgments and else. I had a week off though, and shall enjoy another one very soon. But sometimes I feel the need for a longer, deeper rest.
I arrived at home around 22:30, exhausted, and I did not clean, nor order, craft, cook, eat, photoshop, drink, read, blog or use the anti-tobacco candle...
I woke up today and hurried to the office. 38,5 years to go.

When the future's architectured
By a carnival of idiots on show
You'd better lie low.

Clic - Clac - Dans la boite

I first thought of doing yearly albums of one picture a day when I came across Frank Horvat's photo book for the year 1999. But there was another motivation of course, i.e. my inability to remember my past, with criteria that are still quite foggy.

I do remember things of my childhood, every once in a while, but in a way that makes them no different from a family story heard far too often. As if it were a cousin's memories, told by a grand-mother over and over. But since I have almost no contact with said family, I have to conclude that some colors, still pictures, vague remnants of things I still have in mind occasionally, are mine.

These albums are therefore a way to look back with no ambiguity, if such a thing is possible. And if I stop shooting flowerpots or walls or parquet floor at 23:50 to get rid of the exercise.

I started on January 1st, 2007. One picture, one short text, every day. It becomes a challenge with my current job though. And the writing explains why this page is not my top priority.

I try to find a solution for editing and printing the 2007 album (not for public release or anything of that kind. Still, 2-3 units could find their purpose). Some online publishers I tried do not match: prints would be of low quality, especially for pictures with an Orton effect or a bit more Photoshop work than usual.

Since I switched to Apple, I might give a chance to the offer that comes with iPhoto. In any case, the automatic display and options seem much smarter than other things I have seen around. But now I need the necessary time to fill in all descriptions, titles, comments, and check the whole thing.

At this rate, the 2007 album shall not become real before 2009. But isn't it typically the sort of thing that can only get more valuable over time?
Don't ask my memory.

Oh, it's been a while since I last updated the Jukebox (ok, the whole page). The old, bloody FTP is down for some reason. I shall edit and update whenever I will have found a solution.

(EDIT)

Fixed!

StraightfromtheJukebox: Camille - Cats and Dogs

The alarm beyond the alarm

Waking up at 7am is not the hardest part, I figured out. I even got a liking for witnessing the birth of the day - somehow it brings peace of mind. A very foggy peace though.
I really could not say how long I will work there, but whatever the firm, the daily schedule could hardly get better over time. I am on the tracks, and any deep change would now mean an even deeper cause.
Funny that I would more easily make plans for the next three decades when having no job and not making a living, while now I just enjoy the day somehow.
Still, it is good to wake up with the Sun. For many great, happy, furious, odd, unexpected things will knock at the door, every once in a while. I prefer them to surprise me when I'm dressed and fed, with pen and paper nearby.
I can draw a first conclusion in any case: A day is not 3 times 8 hours anymore, it's 2 times 12. And I should stop staying awake beyond 02:00 am...

Chapters

Lundi de Pâques

When I work for free (well, for good Cuban cigars and coffees),
when I get my luggage back at last (they managed to forget it on both ways),
when I feel I should go to bed early, and hopelessly know that it shall not be the case.
When I am scared shitless with my new job starting tomorrow.
When I open one week of mail and instantly stop trying to understand the tax department’s vocabulary and poetic licence.
When I eat a lot while I just did for one week.
When I finish a wonderful novel and want to read it again just to write down lots of quotes.
When I know that, once in my bed – 2 hours late on schedule I guess, I will open the 4th Harry Potter and think: "ok, only the first chapter…"

A real life post! (may contain bits of real people)

It seems I am no longer a stray lawyer. After 3 months without an office, I found a new position at a law firm. Better pay, better job, but I guess tougher work and timetable (that was inevitable compared with my last job).
I half believed I would not get it, since I have been in touch with that firm for quite some time, had my share of interviews, and was told about the same issues over and over. An applicant with an extra language could have convinced them to drop my resume at any time.
Since they most certainly found such applicant in parallel, I would very much like to know what made the difference. But that's not a question to ask.
We'll see by and by, things change all the time. In any case, that's a promise to learn more, meet new people and earn a little something in the process. Who knows? I might like my job someday?
I have a whole week for myself before starting, and it is not insane luxury given everything I have to settle by then!

One Apple a day...

That's it! I switched to Apple, and bought a new laptop today after the old Acer passed away for good. I will need time to get used to the MacBook Pro, but so far everything I tried was the same... only easier and faster :-)
And now, after an afternoon on softwares, parameters and playing around, I'll spend half the night on transferring data. Isn't life beautiful? Through a 15 inches, 1440 x 900 matte screen?
It is.

L'Arlésienne et ses soeurs

Depuis longtemps, l'idée me vient d'éditer/faire éditer et publier certaines choses, tant à titre privé que pour une diffusion publique, et ce blog n'a jamais été conçu dans cette perspective.
Différents écrits, à retravailler, à mettre à jour, à reformuler. A écrire depuis le début pour certains. Des travaux photographiques également, comme le journal photo de 2007 (une photo par jour du 1er janvier au 31 décembre), la version 2008 suivant normalement son cours sur mes disques durs.
Quant aux écrits, et pour pallier la frustration de n'avoir pas encore poursuivi mes études par une thèse (projet sans cesse reporté), j'envisage notamment de reprendre mon étude préférée, de la remanier un peu sans doute, et de la proposer pour une distribution publique (ISBN, etc).
Inutile de songer aux éditeurs traditionnels, seule une publication à compte d'auteur serait possible et je ne peux pas me permettre de payer 500 exemplaires à laisser pourrir à la cave.
Le sujet est trop spécifique, même si je souhaiterais en faire profiter des non juristes tant le questionnement à la source du travail est universel. J'avais d'ailleurs écrit ce texte, en sa forme universitaire, avec le souci constant qu'il soit compréhensible par quiconque, dans les questions soulevées et les directions de recherche proposées.
Or, depuis la fin de mes études, l'édition en ligne s'est développée de manière significative, et certaines entreprises proposent des services relativement intéréssants (dans la mesure où il n'existe pas d'alternative). Il ne faut toutefois pas négliger le tarif de l'imprimeur lui-même, ni les frais de port puisque ledit imprimeur est souvent (toujours) à l'étranger.
Une entreprise comme Lulu.com par exemple, propose aux auteurs de fixer leur propre revenu par exemplaire vendu, la commission pour Lulu étant de 25% du prix fixé. L'acheteur éventuel devra cependant payer en plus le coût de production global, donc il s'acquittera de bien plus que le revenu de l'auteur +25%. Mais dans le cadre d'une impression à la demande, et avec tous les avantages de cette publication "libre", le projet vaut la peine d'être étudié.
J'ai donc adapté mon texte à l'un des formats proposés, abandonné l'interligne 1,5 des travaux universitaires, et me voilà à nouveau tapant et retapant, relisant, complétant et questionnant un texte que je n'avais pas touché depuis 4 ans. Advienne que pourra. Si j'ai le temps de mener ce projet à bout, et si je trouve une solution vraiment attirante auprès de l'un de ces éditeurs en ligne (pour l'instant le schéma que je retiens n'a pas encore été mis en place), d'autres projets pourraient suivre dans un genre très différent !
Bien sûr, tout conseil sera ici le bienvenu.

"Casse toi pauvre con"

Tout le monde connaît déjà l'anecdote.

Nicolas Sarkozy en visite au Salon de l'Agriculture sert toutes les mains et flatte tous les museaux disponibles jusqu'à ce dialogue avec un visiteur cerné par le bain de foule :

"- Ah non, touche-moi pas"
NS: "- Casse toi alors."
"- Tu me salis."
NS: "- Casse toi pauvre con."

Le Parisien met la vidéo sur son site, YouTube l'accepte, DailyMotion la rejette. Les médias sont contents, ils ont créé un nouveau buzz. Les commentaires d'internautes et de politiques vont bon train.
La vidéo me fait sourire plus qu'autre chose, et je ne vois là rien d'incompatible avec la fonction. Question de recul et de mise en perspective sans doute. Je n'attends pas d'un dirigeant qu'il évite de poser ses coudes sur la table pendant le repas, ou qu'il respecte la "French etiquette" de Nadine de Rotschild, surtout lorsqu'il s'expose au public, tout sourire, pour se prendre un râteau bien sec.
Je trouve autrement plus choquant l'épisode aujourd'hui oublié, du jour où Patrick Devedjian a traité Anne-Marie Comparini de salope devant les caméras, alors qu'elle n'était même pas présente.
Je trouve plus choquant encore que l'on présente l'anecdote actuelle comme une nouvelle politique.
Mais le rapport entre Nicolas Sarkozy et les médias n'est pas simple. Il a choisi la surexposition, alimenté la machine, projeté au devant des médias sa vie privée toute entière sans retenue, bien avant d'accéder à sa fonction actuelle. Il est donc tout à fait prévisible qu'il soit attendu au tournant à chaque seconde.
Et les médias, suivant le bon vieux modus operandi "Plus c'est con, plus c'est bon", trouvent sans cesse matière à écrire un nouvel article.

"Et qui c'est qu'a commencé ?"
De nombreuses personnes s'interrogent sur qui devrait être tenu pour responsable de l'appauvrissement intellectuel du débat public au fil du temps, opposant systématiquement les politiques, qui multiplient les démarches populistes (hier l'insécurité, aujourd'hui le pouvoir d'achat), les médias - qui choisissent l'ampleur et la teneur d'une information, et le public, qui choisit de lire, regarder, consulter ou non lesdits médias. J'ai tendance à croire que c'est une fausse question. Derrière les médias il y a des hommes, qui font partie intégrante de la masse quoi qu'ils en pensent, tout comme les politiques qui sont influencés par des phénomènes purement sociologiques. Il n'y a pas de "catégorie" responsable du phénomène, ou de "catégorie" victime. Bon gré mal gré, nous avançons tous ensemble.

De plus, le phénomène n'est pas franco-français, il se retrouve partout. Mais pour rester en France, car c'est l'exemple qui m'est le plus familier, je pense que l'on a dépassé depuis très longtemps le stade du discernement minimum, lorsque l'on se remémore entre autres l'affaire de l'Observatoire avec François Mitterand (1959), qui n'a eu qu'à se faire discret quelques temps pour revenir à la vie politique propre comme un sous-neuf et accéder à la plus haute fonction. Certes, je mélange tout, c'est mon bon plaisir. Mais cette affaire marque véritablement, pour moi, le jour où tout est devenu possible. La période où, pour paraphraser Audiard, les cons ont commencé à tout oser et ce, sans le moindre risque de sanction. Depuis ils tournent, en orbite géostationnaire, constamment proches et distants à la fois, et à l'image de l'inflation législative ils ne remplacent pas une connerie par une autre, ils les additionnent avec l'assurance qui de la fonction, qui de la profession. Comme certains mécanismes organiques, la bêtise s'use que si l'on ne s'en sert pas.

Ma conclusion sur ce non-événement est fondamentalement apolitique: l'hypocrisie est un obstacle bien plus grave au discernement que la bêtise.

Procrastinating molecules and journalists

The Outers, as Dan Simmons would call them in Hyperion, will soon (a few centuries or milleniums from now) get to listen to the song "Across the Universe" by the Beatles. And all that for free! Since the NASA celebrated its 50th birthday at the same time than the Beatles, it was decided to send the song towards the North Star, Polaris, which is 431 light years away. Of course the waves will keep travelling farther, that's the funny part. If we officially mastered the technology of FTL drives, of course we'd have sent good ol' Paul Mc Cartney Himself but hey, we're not there yet.
On French TV, I heard that it was most unlikely that *anything* would catch the message and reply, since it had been "so long" since we started airing programs with radio waves. Something would have happened already.
Like what? Smarter TV journalism? I bet not.
A light-year is equal to 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, although the length of the reference year could always be discussed. In any case, it is commonly defined as the distance that the light travels through a vacuum within one year. Do the maths: Gugliemo Marconi invented the ancester of the radio in 1894, and of course the guy didn't aim at the stars. Though even if he had, with the proper material, the waves would only reach planet "HD 114729 b" by now (which is a gas giant, 114 light years away). An exoplanet indeed, but we have observed and described some that are 17.000 light years away from Earth.

Let's put that in perspective: in Puerto Rico, on January 15th, at Arecibo Obervatory, scientists discovered traces of methanimine and hydrogen cyanide, two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids. Location: a galaxy 250 million light years away (Arp 220). That's not a distance anymore, but that's the delay between what we have seen and what happened. These molecules had at least 250 million years to spend since the information we just got was *up-to-date*. More than enough to evolve into amino acids, bacteria and beings since then.

Although they could just as well have procrastinated for a while, waiting for the Beatles to ring the doorbell.