Wonderful Internet

Internet is probably one of the best things which happened to human beings in the last century (outside washing machine and dishwasher of course !!).
I mean, it really is a wonderful way of communication. People meet their lifepartners everyday on the web. Meet people they'd never be aware of. And of course keep in touch with their closest but farthest friends. It actually is my case. :-)
One of my best friend is in UAE, we've known each other for 6 years now, and we've been in the same country only for a few months in the beginning !
Of course, both parts need to get involved somehow to keep the relationship alive but it needs much less energy than writing paper and pencil, it is instantaneous with chatting (or VOIP) and free of charge beside your ADSL subscription.
So what are you waiting for ?? Get connected ! Lol !!

Week-end in Septimanie

That title will for sure irritate my friends from Languedoc Roussillon.
For some bad reasons, the politics want to change the historic name of Languedoc Roussillon to Septimanie (ugly word...).
Anyway... we had a wonderful week-end in the Perpignan area.
Perpignan is a city lying between the Mediterraneen sea and the Pyrenées, next to the Spanish border. The proximity of the mountains and the sea give to the region some beautiful attributes. The coast is also known as the Côte Vermeille on the French side and the Costa Brava on the Spanish side.
We're in Catalogna ! The regional (still well alive) language is catalan (same spoken in Barcelona).
Catalans are very proud of their region (and they ought to !), supporting their well-known rugby team USAP, and fiercely showing the blood and gold colors of their flag.
You can find some very good wines like Collioure or Banyuls.
And artists like Picasso, Dali, or Matisse knew about these place.
Dali even made the center of the world from the Perpignan railway station.
Perpignan's architecture shows lots of pink marble, from pavement to walls.
History is everywhere in the area, beautiful castles and royal residences.
Nature is not left behind either, we, for example, visited the Big Canalettes caves, wonders of water, rocks and time in Villefranche de Conflent, which is also a medieval city.

Being so close to Spain, we should definitely learn the language !!
A big thank you to our friends and their families where we have been wonderfully welcomed.
Gracias !!

Amazing ! Chapeau bas.

My grand-mother is 83-year-old. She is twice a great grand mother !
She thought it sucks that her grand-children were living too far away from her, especially those with kids, i-e, her great grand kids.
So she decided to make the trip to visit my cousin and her young son.
Which means :
- Drive to the railway station in Evreux (Eure)
- One hour trip from Evreux to Paris.
- Change railway station in Paris (from St Lazare to Austerlitz)
- Eight hours trip by night train
- Arrival in Gap (Alpes Maritimes) the following morning
A twelve hours journey !

What irritated me was, when she took her ticket for the night train, they gave her a berth on the top !!! Could you imagine a 83-year-old climbing to her berth in a rolling train ? Non sense...
She had the chance to be able to change her berth to a more appropriate, but still !!!
There should be some kind of reserved berth on the bottom for the elder or disabled.
That would be social progress !!

New PC configuration

Since we need to buy a new PC (ours just reached its limits !), I decided, it would be more fun if we build it from scratch instead of buying it all set up.
It also gave me the opportunity to figure out what was out in the market and learn more about the state of art of technology.
First, to define what are our needs, I need to say, the PC will barely be used for playing although it might sometimes... I want it to be a tool for working : installing several OS's (Linux, XP, Solaris), sharing files with the laptop over the OS's, building a Wifi network at home, surfing the internet, mailing, writing letters, designing with Photoshop, building movies from home-made videos, and so on... and as silent as possible !
Here's what I ended up with :

Peripherals :
- Flat screen : Viewsonic VX912 (19")
- Mouse/Keyboard : Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3100
- Wifi router : Linksys WRT54GS with SpeedBooster
- Wifi PCMCIA card (for the laptop) : Linksys WPC54GS with SpeedBooster

Composants :
- BareBox : Textorm 69U6
- AC : Textorm DB-killer PW-385
- Motherboard : Asus A8N-SLI Premium
- CPU : AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (2200 Mhz - s939) 0.09µ BOX Venice
- Memory : 2x512MB Corsair PC3200 1024Mo Value Kit
- Video card : Leadtek Winfast GeForce 6600 GT Extreme 128mo
- Hard Disks Drives : 2x WD 250Go 7200 RPM S-ATA special edition
- DVD burner : Plextor PX-716A

All comments welcome !

Peindre ou faire l'amour (To paint or to make love)

We went to see this movie yesterday. It is a french movie produced by Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu. The movie casts actors like Daniel Auteuil, Sabine Azema, Sergi Lopez.
It is a traditional french movie. The situation is inspired of the every-day life and is favourable to reflexion.
The story is about a fifty-five or sixty-year-old couple. After their only daughter leave for her studies and he is retiring, how will they live just the both of them ?
They live in a flat in a city surrounded by mountains (Grenoble ?).
She paints on her free time and she meets one blind guy Adam (Sergi Lopez) during one of her painting session in the countryside around. He has her visit a house to sell nearby.
She and her husband decide to buy the house. The blind guy and his girlfriend are neighbours.
The story is about these two couples.
I wouldn't like to say more about the story, because, you have to see it by yourself...
Anyway, it is an interesting thought about how you live your sexuality after 40 years together, how sometimes you get involved into situation you never considered, how your non verbal communication can impact on the others behavior, how the way you behave can influence the situation, how you can find yourself into a new situation (even at sixty !) not knowing how to react... Very interesting movie ! I hope it will be produce in countries outside France !

First Quarterly week-end in the Loire Valley

Seb was organizing this first week-end since our move to Toulouse. The choice of the place happened when we went to see the excellent Feydeau play : "Les fiancés de Loches", easy enough to translate... Loches is a city in the center of France. Not knowing Loches, we'll have a look at it ! Then, he looked for a place to stay. A ferme-auberge, I don't know if this exists outside France... Basically, farm-inn : dinner bed and breakfast at the farm. I LOVED that week-end ! The four of us just get along too well !! And it was also cultural !

Saturday afternoon, we visited the Chenonceau Castle, a beautiful castle from the Loire Valley, built over the river Cher.

The castle was built from 1513 by Catherine Briconnet and Thomas Boyer over a medieval castel owned by the Marques family. From the initial castel, they only kept the dungeon and a well.
The castle was also owned by King Francois the First, Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medicis, Louise de Lorraine and Madam Dupin.

Diane de Poitiers built the bridge over the Cher which makes this castel so particular and ordered some beautiful gardens along the river. She was the lover of King Henri II, whose wife was Catherine de Medicis. After the death of King Henri II, Catherine took back the castle from Diane. She had her own gardens built and a large gallery over the bridge where she could give giant parties.

Louise de Lorraine was King Henri III's wife. She stayed in the castle after his death, having the place covered in black and herself in white like the royal mourning colors ought to be.

Finally, Madam Dupin, was keen on the intellectuals of her time : Diderot, Rousseau ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau stayed there for a while, raising her kids. He was really fond of her !! Like the inhabitants of the village who saved her and the castel in the french revolution.

The castle is fully furnished and you can also admire some paintings from masters like Rubens inside the castle.

After Chenonceau, we paid a visit to Loches. The city is less famous for Feydeau's Fiancés than for two influent women. Loches is the city where Joan of Arc met King Charles VII and convinced him to go to Reims. Loches also hosts Agnes Sorel's grave, Charles VII's lover, famous for her beauty. It's medieval castel from this time has a dungeon, 37 meter-high, the highest from this time in France. The dungeon had been a prison, until late, in the early 20th century.

In the evening, we had a wonderful dinner cooked by Mrs Pasquier, our host for the week-end. Tomatoes and eggs from their hens, goose (their) with zuchini's gratin and potatoes. All vegetables from their kitchen garden. Cheeses from their cow's milk, and plum pie from their plumtree ! MMMMmmmmm !!

On sunday, we started with a huge breakfast with jams, butter, and milk from the farm, bred and croissant. :-)

After breakfast, we employed ourselves to make our own butter from fresh sour cream, and we made it !!! Then, Mrs Pasquier took us for a visit of the farm and first to the milkroom where we managed to manually milk a cow. We had a wonderful chat with Mrs and Mr Pasquier on agriculture and breeding and the way they drive their farm. It was really interesting !

I really recommend you pay a visit to them. They are really moving, friendly, nice and passionate people ! Stop by Chatillon sur Indre in the Bigorn Farm !

We finished the week-end by having lunch in Saint Hyppolite at the rib steack festival and a little visit of Chatillon sur Indre before driving back to the Chateauroux's railway station.

It was a WONDERFUL week-end. I almost forgot to tell, that we of course played Yam each time we could !!

Quarterly week-end concept

We have this concept with two friends (two wedding witnesses). It happened when all four of us were living in Paris and we thought we didn't see each other often enough. Although we were living in the same city, we couldn't manage to see each other regularly. By chance, it happened we were in a restaurant when we had this thought. Immediately, we decided to get together the first thursday of each month and try a new restaurant, rolling the choice of the restaurant over the four participants. It worked perfectly. Fixing the time is the key thing.
Anyway, when we moved to Toulouse, we could not do this anymore, so we thought of another way of doing it with the new constraints. It had to be a week-end but once a month was too much...
With the four of us, seeing each other every three months was not too constraintful and in a year, we'd roll over the organization.

Militant for no Katrina anymore

First, I want to say to my american friends and those living there, how much I think about them.
What happened is just terrible... And I was deeply moved. I didn't know anybody living there, but if you had friends or family overthere, I hope they're safe...
Also, I must say, I feel also very angry. Because I think human beings is partly responsible in the going-wrong of the climate. As some of you know, I am deeply into the preservation of nature (in one word : ecology) and I believe there's something we can do about it.
So please, people, be aware that all the wrong we're doing to this planet, we're doing it to human beings. So, let's remind what every single one of us can do on an everyday basis :

- Do not waste water
- Limit your trash
- Save energy
- Buy food from bio-agricultural origin
- Refuse genetically modified food
- Recycle plastic, paper and glass

I'm doing my best to apply these rules in my life, not just saying it. It's little, but that multiplied by, it can make a big difference.

Catching up with technology

That's it ! We installed the Webcam Seb had for his birthday.
The problem we have now is to have our friends connected the same time as us !!
And of course, let them know we have it too !!

So, now we're ready ! Let's chat and see each other !