Gratefulfrog's GratefulBlog

St Anton Powder

2012-01-08T22:16:00.003+01:00

2 meters of powder, more coming down every day... Paradise
(and those BD Amperage skis make it so easy!)

Skiing with Boris Debeaune and Pierre - Thank you both for the honor!

Crossunder Zermatt!

2011-12-11T21:42:00.014+01:00

A week of Cross-unders at around 4000m with Bruno Peita, Steve and Dave. (click the black border to play:-)

Lama SA-315B Air Zermatt

2011-12-10T22:03:00.003+01:00

Some pictures of Air Zermatt's beautiful SA-315B (the baby)!

TEDx Brussels 2011 - A Day in the Deep Future

2011-11-27T12:37:00.001+01:00

Here are a look at the shows that I liked at the Brussels TEDx event that I attended with Jean B. on 22 November 2011. It was an inspiring day of great ideas! More info and videos are available at www.texbrussels.eu!

Arduino - Learn by Doing!
If you don't know what it is, then you don't know that the world is changing for the better. David Cuartielles, one of the founders of Arduino, gave a quick look into what it means to the planet. Although this was one of the most important things that was presented in this TEDx, it was given a tiny time slot - insulting in my view - and we could only get a peak at the project. Luckily, I was already aware of what it is and means, but for anyone who wasn't, this presentation was too short. During the breaks Jean and I talked with David, who was passionately interesting!

Singularity - Aggregation of systems
The "Singularity" was mentioned a million times at this TED. Ken Hasse (see also Being Meta)gave a fascinating, but once again too short, presentation of how aggregation, i.e. groups acting together as organisms, are evolving thanks to intercommunication. One of the positive elements that this is producing is "Open Science" which is a really good thing that we can all do! Are corporations organisms? Do they have Id (yes), Ego (yes), Superego (not yet?)? Maybe not yet, but soon? Talking with Ken at a break, I mentioned that some Internet forums exhibit Superego, without moderation, in particular Helifreak. A very provocative talk!

Radical Transparency - Drowning in information
The artist and scientist, Hassan Elai, gave a short version of his fantastic TED - Global show. Look at that and think! One thing he added: As policy lags behind culture and technology, it become a hindrance. As technology accelerates, this hindrance can have excessively negative impact. Another speaker who had to cut his talk to fit the organizers' crazy schedule...

Identity - Nym Wars
Kaliya Hamlin gave a relatively interesting talk about the question of multiple, context dependent identities on Internet. The big question is: Why not? Just because governments would prefer to be able to track their citizens (and other country's citizens) in whatever they express? Interesting, but only so.

Eyeborg!
Rob Spence lost his eye and replaced it with an embedded movie camera. Need I say that he is a documentary film maker! His show about eye enhancements was great! Later, we met him at a break and he was an interesting and pleasant guy. This kind of stuff is what makes TED special!

End of Stability - in times of change...
Paddy Ashdown gave a great funny talk about how he sees the world changing. It would be impossible for me to summarize, but one of the ideas was: In the recent past, power was controlled by states which are governed by laws. Today, power is moving to dynamically evolving aggregates supported by interconnectivity on the Web, but there are no laws. This could/will/must lead to serious instability. Watch the video, please!

Defend the NET or it may disappear...
In my opinion, this was the most important presentation given in Brussels this year! The subject is very close to my heart. We use Internet to make our lives better. It provides communication, information, shopping, tools for doing things, access to travel, everything... But there are evil people, organizations, even countries using it for bad things and these may destory it for everyone! Mikko H. Hypponen gave a great and profound view on this which complements his TED Global talk. Later, I spoke with him about potential activities and he was very forthcoming. He mentioned that his life has been threatened and that a colleague had is son kidnapped because of actions taken to defend Internet... I found his work profoundly interesting and important. Did you know that each laser printer has an identity that is signed into every printout, thus enabling one to know the origin of any printed document? Scary stuff...

The Brainpower of the Bottom 4 Billion
Leila Janah is doing good for a lot of people. She spoke about her project to bring work, via Internet, to the poorest people on the planet and radically improve their lives. There was nothing high-tech or super scientific in it. Just an idea and energy and success stories. Her organization provides a framework to outsource work from the 1st world to the last world and everyone profits. If you feel that doing good counts, then watch her talk, and maybe do something with it? This was moving to the point of tears.

Education Connects Youth with Opportunity
No one is born a killer - no child dreams of becoming a killer, so what happens? How can this change? Literacy is not enough, education is needed, real hopes and dreams education. Check out Kushal Chakrabarti and his talk. It was very complementary to what Leila Janah had to say.

Music for the Soul
Charles Hazzlewood is a conductor who created the Paraorchestra of Great Britain. They played for us and it was more than moving! Standing Ovation and many tears. This was the highpoint of TEDxBrussels 2011. Sadly, I didn't get the chance to talk with this man after his show.

Dance you PhD
A close runner up to the Paraorchestra, this danced presentation by the gonzo scientist John Bohannon of what science could/should be was mind expanding, even Mind Blowing! With humor, sensitivity, grace we saw how lasers can super-cool substances to make a super-fluid. And that was not all! Then we saw a dance about titanium hip replacement technology. This was great stuff! Incredibly great stuff. Later, talking with him and the 2011 winner of the Dance your PhD contest, and the dancers and the choreographer, I was inspired by their earnestness, energy, and the beauty of their creations!

To Predict
This came via video link from Oxford University. David Deutsch, of quantum computer fame, spoke to us about what can and cannot be predicted and why this is so. For unknown reasons his video is not posted at the time I am writing so if you want to see him talk check out this TED show. He tried to answer the question: What can be known in advance? This is the defining characteristic of science: Scientific theories are predictive. And as such, they are self-correcting: wrong theories fail to predict correctly and get fixed or dumped. But human desire is not predictable: in the 60's we wanted nuclear power, now we don't. As technology advances at a faster and faster pace, the prediction horizon gets closer and closer. Example: in the middle ages you had a king today and were pretty sure that there would be a king in 50 years due to the slow pace of change. This is not so today. Another aspect of this is that the impact of mistakes is bigger now than ever before. Another one is that the "nature of explanation will not change". These combine to give us hope. How to protect against big mistakes? General knowledge is the key. Specialists advance a particular area, but when solutions are needed they often come from far off - the generalist is the one who can bring that. His idea of what counts for the "deep future": "The universality of explanatory knowledge and the desire to create and apply it." Very profound indeed. Check out his book: The Beginning of Infinity.

XPrize
Eileen Bartholomew spoke with great impact on the importance of transforming "crazy ideas", i.e. those that no one believes, into "revolutionary ideas", i.e. ones that change the word. The Xprize foundation encourages this by providing incentives for those who realize "crazy ideas", like making your own spaceship and going into outer space! She is looking for crazy ideas that need realizing so if you have one, write to her! Later, I spoke with her and suggested cleaning up the great Pacific ocean garbage island. She agreed that it was a great idea but said that no one seemed to be interested in putting up the money for such an award. How sad to think that making a commercial spaceflight company gets more finance that cleaning our seas, source of all life...

Open Source Biology
Andrew Hessel spoke about the idea of how an open source community in molecular biology could lead to individual specific therapeutics, i.e. drugs made just to fix what is wrong with a particular individual - your own private genome derived cures! This was a fascinating and uplifting talk!

Drug Companies are 2-Sigma
Computational bioligst, Jack Tuszynski talked about statistics in various things and in particular health care: Pharma companies get it wrong 1 in 3 times! Compare this to the aviation industry the gets it wrong 1 in 300,000 times! The success rate of drug development is 1 in 100,000! His talk showed why this is and how it can change. It was complementary to what Andrew Hessel said about making custom drugs for nearly no cost ($100) in small companies using cheap tools! This was great, and later talking with him we had a view on why it wasn't happening, i.e. pharma companies don't want to loose their monopoly on money from drugs! Talking with him was really fun and uplifting!

Zero-G Dance
With the same people as Dancing the PhD, a moving dance in simulated zero gravity! Another Standing ovation, and one of my favorite presentations! Really great! I wish they would put the video up! We spoke to the dancers and choreographers who were genuinely interested in talking with us and hearing our thoughts on their show! They are known as the Black Movement Company.

Tiger and Rock - look for the rock!
Although his show came at the end of nearly 12 hours of stuff, Peter Hinssen had a lot to say about a lot of things. In fact, his talk was one of the best! He talked down the "exponential" aspect of change preferring to look at it as an S-curve, i.e. flattening out at the end. The point where the curve "flips" (2nd derivative becomes negative) is what interests him. He brought this out in the area of health care, saying it was about to "flip". Many people take better care of their car then of themselves. This is not right. Health-care is about to flip and become personal:

Health will be quantified, i.e. a number just like on the Wii-health game,
Proactive, not reactive,
A service,
**ALL** Medical knowledge will be available to all.
check out patients like me where you can read about what happens to people like "you", a health sharing site!
The picture of the tiger and the rock. Westerners see the tiger, Easterners see the rock. Don't focus on the tiger, focus on the context that is what is most important!

Peter Hinssen is a guy who has deeply thought about a lot of things! Check out is illustrated video about the Future of IT!

5 Minutes Look-Ahead
Last but not least, Alain De Taeye told us how useful it would be if cars could tell each other about the road conditions they observed. We could then look into our future, i.e. what we were going to run into down the road! This is coming to the next generation of GPS navigation systems!

Let Darkness be Defeated by Science - Noam Chomsky @ULB 16 Mar 2011

2011-03-16T20:30:00.003+01:00

Random notes from the great man's speech - not the opinion of this humble blogger!:

The Standard Western Policy relative to Dictators in a crisis:

Sustain
Hide them away somewhere safe
Declare support for Democracy
Re-instate same regime.

This procedure is moderated depending on the level of Western Motivation: the more oil in the country and the more obedient the dictator, the higher the motivation.

The West is the USA and anyone else who wants to come along.

Prior to WWII, FDR said, "control of the energy reserves of the mid-east = control the world."
During the war, the War/peace program assumed Germany would win. US aimed at controlling Western Hemisphere. After Stalingrad, the plan changed. The "Grand Area" grew and US planned for total world dominance.

After the war, the plan was implemented. But it was feared that Europe follow its own path, so NATO was created to keep Europe in the Grand Area. In 1989, the declared enemy of NATO, the USSR, ceased to exist so NATO should also have ceased. Instead, it grew into eastern Europe, despite promises to the contrary. It had to protect the pipelines and tanker routes, as a good global intervention force...

US military kept NATO to use against the rising technological sophistication of the 3rd world.

Tunisia and Egypt

names changed
regimes remain
internal barriers to democracy remain, e.g. Military control Egypt
External barriers to democracy:

West cannot tollerate democracy in Arab world
90% of Egytians see the US as their biggest threat,
80% see Israel as the biggest
10% see Iran
80% of Egypt think their regime would be safer if Iran had nuclear weapons.

conclusion: if there were democracy in Egypt, i.e. if public opinion lead to policy, then the US would be out of the region.
conclusion: US suppports democracy only when it fits with US economic interests. There is a contempt of democracy by the US intellectual community.

Wikileaks cables said:

"Arab dictators support the US."
"There is a perception in the Arab world that the US supports cruel dictators for energy resources. This is correct and the right thing to do."

The 3rd world doesn't hate US Freedoms; it hates US policies.

Adam Smith's advice in 1890's is the same as the World Bank's today, "3rd world countries should stick to primary products and import technology from the 1st world." The colonies had no choice. Today, development of technology is warped into piracy.

The Iranian Threat, according to the pentagon:

not a military threat: low military budget and defence oriented
potential sovereign actions, i.e. could protect against US attack
seeking to expand influence in the region

Expanding Influence = "destabilize region"
US Invasion = "stabilize region"

FDR policy: No sovereignty if it conflicts with US desires.

US+Europe are alone in opposing Iran; non-aligned countries support Iran.
Brazil and Turkey: threatened by Oabama for their support of Iran
china now investing in Iran, against US desires; US warned China that it should respect "its international responsiblities" (i.e. US policies) - China's military budget is increasing and may ultimately prevent US navy from operating near the Chinese coast.
Danger of the Iran nuclear program: Obama proposes nuc-free mid-east, but not applicable to Isreal...

So the Grand Area doctrine continues but the US is losing its capacity to implement it. At the end of WWII, the US represented 1/2 the world's wealth. In the 1970's, only 1/4.

US econmy has changed
radical concentration of the wealth in 1% of the population
same concentration of political power
creates a vicious cycle: power->laws->power...
change of election finance laws lead elections to become a marketing campaign.
frustration of US population increasing as economical/political power decreases
Crises are worse and worse...

bailout by taxpayer
unemployment approaching depression levels
banks give huges bonuses to managers
blame immigrants for crisis, but who are they? The people fleeing from the US supported dictators...
whites are becoming a minority...
Today racism in Europe is worse than in the US
ultra right wing parties in W. Europe: expelling roms from France; Hungary 75% right wing, people preferred the communist regime; Austria, Germany...

Externality of the problem: i.e. to be ignored because it is out of scope

risks don't count because of assured taxpayer bailout
destruction of the environment is "a necessity" in business thinking;
known but ignored
compress/cut funding of the protection of the environment
not funny when this happens in the worlds biggest superpower
market freedom is like a religion
as long as the public is appeased, it goes on...

Hors Piste aux 2 Alpes - 6-11 mars 2011

2011-03-12T20:00:00.001+01:00

Stage hors piste sous la direction d'Etienne Drumain de l'ESF des 2 Alpes

Des pentes raides et des virages incroyables!

Merci pour l'honneur!

Hors Piste La Grave Fév. 2011

2011-02-12T12:07:00.004+01:00

5 superbes jours hors piste avec Sylvaine, Greg et JF et les guides Laurent, Fred et Pierre de Snow Legend.

Grand Merci à Tous!!!

pour lancer, cliquer le texte en bas à gauche de la photo - ne pas cliquer la grosse flèche!

Fraudulent MBT Shoe site

2011-02-02T14:57:00.006+01:00

Beware of the website www.hellomymbt.co.uk

They are located in China not in the UK.
They sell poor quality, counterfeit MBT shoes.
They over-charge your credit card.
They are thieves and no one should ever buy from them!
They run a scam.

www.hellowmybt.co.uk Keywords:

Fraud
Counterfeit
Imitation
Scam
Evil
Robbery
Criminal
Thieves
Theft

Couloir de la Rama avec Boris Debeaune, Jan 2011

2011-01-21T20:00:00.005+01:00

1700 vertical meters - all jump-turns - GREAT Stuff! Thanks Boris!

Wikipedia needs you! But you need it even more!

2010-12-31T22:10:00.000+01:00

Early Powder at Zermatt December 2010

2010-12-09T21:19:00.007+01:00

Skiing with Steve and Bruno Peita in Great Powder at Zermatt.
Most shots were taken on runs down from the Furggsattel Chair.

TEDx Brussels 2010 12 06: But who is going to save the world?

2010-12-06T19:18:00.004+01:00

Quantum Microbiology/Biochemistry

Frank Tipler
Jeffrey Satinover not exactly microbiology...
Stuart Hameroff

These guys gave various pieces of information which lead us to believe that quantum mechanics has a great influence on the behavior of cells, and could play all kinds of important roles in the development of the hard to cure diseases. Most of it was either too abstract or too far from my understanding or both, which means that I sort of got it, but only sort of...

Autonomous Cars

Sebastian Thrun

This guy is an AI professor who's team won the Darpa Challenge once upon a time, i.e. to build a 100% autonomous vehicle and race it, and win. He later went on to lead the Google Autonomous car project. He also created Google's Streetview...

He spoke about his philosophy for problem solving:

Listen,
Decide,
Do.

He also mentioned the term "pyramid of pain", referring to the idea of taking care of what hurts you most, first. Today, he is thinking about how to make car travel more efficient, e.g. better use of road space, more use of each vehicle, etc.

An interesting talk and an interesting guy, worth reading about.

Nerds: Who they are and why we need them

David Andergg

This child-psychologist talked about his concern in the rising anti-intellectualism in the USA, i.e. the idea that it's not cool to be smart, or to be a "nerd". He mentioned various TV series and anecdotes about his patients to underpin his argument, which was very interesting and compelling. He attributes fear of nerds by older generations as a manifestation of their own fear of not being adequate in the modern constantly evolving hi-tech world. Their fear of understanding less than their children would seem to drive them to hold the kids back...
Oh, don't forget a Nerd's not a Geek!
This talk was very profound.

One Laptop Per Child: there are 2 Million out there today.

Nicholas Negroponte
Mary Lou Jepsen
Walter Bender

Negroponte:

"Am I doing something to change the world today"?
"Am I doing something that normal market forces will utlimately do anyhow? If so, then stop"!
Have children change the world.
Collaborative, autonomous learning => the child is the agent of change.
Teachers in Uruguay really excited about the OLPC's which were deployed to 100% of the kids in 18 months.
In Peru, the rural kids were first given the OLPC; they used it to educate their parents, and the entire village.
25% of the children in the world are in India.

Jepsen

Display is the bottleneck
Factories (Fabs) are where it happens (Taiwan)
Understanding the Fab processes to be able to communicate with the people there to get the new ideas implemented
She's a real problem solver
LCD is the only game in town for the next 10 years, at least
The OLPC screen consumes 1 Watt; the machine stays charged for a week!

Bender

Linux, Sugar labs,
"In the kitchen, what do you put on the lowest, most accessible shelf"?
Free Software Culture!
Sugar (the OLPC OS) = Python,
A tool to make tools
Surround them with Mountains, create a very low floor and no ceiling, then step back
This presentation was particularly inspirational!

Every thing knows every thing

David Orban : European Singularity Institute

The idea of change described by an exponential function. At first the rate of change is low, and hardly anyone feels it. Then it becomes steep and those who weren't aware fall behind and turn their backs on it.
Relates to the fear of nerds talk.
The Internet of things: a network of things communicating amongst themselves, not involving humans...
Evolving from ownership to access (cf. zipcar)
William Gibson: "The future is already here, but not evenly distributed".
"It's never too late to pick up a new profession."
The exponential is expressed as the advanced collaboration phase, when every thing knows every other thing.

Drupal: Out of control management

Dries Buytaert

Movember = Mustache November for charity.
1.5% of the world's websites are built with Drupal
Premise is that you have to give up controlling if you want to let people create.
Create a culture of uncontrolled sharing
Give up control.
The free software workers spend their days in frustrating jobs. If you want them to work for you in the night, then you'd better be sure that you don't frustrate them or they will be gone...
Lead like a superhero:
Jump in,
Decisive Action,
Jump out,
Inspire!

Interface Brain-Machine

Tan Le

Emotiv is a brain to computer interface.
We saw the demo.
It seemed to work - really interesting!

Resources of the bottom billion

Paul Collier of Oxford university

High commodity prices will push the discovery of resources into the developing world: Africa, Afghanistan, etc.
Weak govts there lead to plundering of the natural resources, i.e. either only a few benefit or the future generations are robbed in favor of the present.
How to avoid plundering, i.e. how to prevent he 21st century from looking like the 19th?

Public Geological Discovery information - no secrets about what's there.
Tax the extraction
Distribute the revenues over time, i.e. save 1/2 of the revenues for the future.
Use the savings in local investment: create local capacity
Invest in investing.

National Resource Charter

Building Starships

Marc Millis

Pioneers are people not organizations
Innovators only improve on existing things
Pioneers are underdogs until they succeed
Check out the Tau Zero foundation
And the book:"Frontiers of Propulsion Science"
And the site Centauri Dreams
They are looking where other people aren't.

Living (3 lives)

Marc Luyckx Ghisi

Innovate, forget the old shit
Read Peter Drucker's "Post Capitalist Society"
REALLY read it!

35,000 jobs in Bangladesh

Bibi Russell is an ex-super model that created an industry in her native land and created 35 thousand jobs in weaving...

What will save the world?

Rik Torfs

5 points to summarize the TEDx :

The Individual vs. the Group: Brilliant individuals are not individualists because that would be stupid.
We have to live attentively:
"a turning point in history" is like the turning point in a swimming pool, it occurs regularly every 25meters...
Be aware of small changes,
TEDX was like telling good jokes amongst brilliant people.
The future is easy to talk about because we can't be wrong,
The past is hard to interpret.
Self confidence vs. vanity and/or shyness
Vanity kills creativity
The Quality of the noble Art of Conversation:
An emotional flavor in scientific topics and vice versa.

What will save the world?
- Profound lightness, not superficial seriousness...

New Little Heli!!

2010-06-07T18:37:00.002+02:00

Some Pics of my first build: a TRex-250 SE

Félix sur le Saxophone - Mai 2010

2010-05-16T15:33:00.006+02:00

Félix improvising and playing with some buddies!

La Grave Avril 2010

2010-04-10T19:41:00.003+02:00

4 Spring Days off-piste at La Grave

La Grave - La Meije

Bureau des Guides

Snow Legend

Taxi de la Meije

Hotel Edelweiss

Doing the right thing

2010-03-19T15:43:00.002+01:00

Sea Shepherd Captain Peter Bethune understands the consequences that may face him for the courage he has displayed in defending endangered whales, i.e. jail in Japan as a political prisoner.

He told Captain Paul Watson:

“You don’t change the world by sitting on your ass and being afraid to do the right thing.”

Hors Piste - les 2 Alpes fév. 2010

2010-02-28T13:44:00.001+01:00

Stage hors-piste de l'ESF aux 2 Alpes avec Etienne Drumain, merci à tous!

La Grave - Le Big LePowSki Feb 2010

2010-02-20T20:00:00.004+01:00

Skiing at La Grave during the Big LePowSki 20 Feb 2010. Black Diamond Pro-skier Ptor Spricenieks and Cyril the mountain guide took me down a 2400m descent called "La Chirouze Droite"! This was the morning after a 50cm dump of fresh powder. Fantastique! Thank you for the honor!

How to Build a PC

2010-02-07T14:37:00.007+01:00

Check out the Misc; section of my home page for a step-by-step guide:

how to build a Computer from individual components.

Let me know what you think!
GF.

Zermatt Jan 2010

2010-01-30T10:27:00.001+01:00

Some shots from Great Skiing in Zermatt Jan 2010 including the famous moguls lesson by Bruno Peita!

Zermatt Dec 2009

2009-12-10T09:54:00.001+01:00

A few views of some early season skiing with Bruno Peita - if you go to Zermatt he's your man!

Saving the Birds...

2009-08-01T00:00:00.002+02:00

Il était une fois à Roquesérière...

and so you wanna be a zoo keeper...

2009-06-05T17:00:00.000+02:00

Somewhere Saxophones, the Return!

2009-05-13T20:00:00.003+02:00

Félix joue dans son concert de fin d'année!

Zermatt off-piste with Bruno Peita

2009-04-05T18:31:00.004+02:00

31 Mar - 3 Apr, Bruno and I did some great off-piste skiing in the Stockhorn area of Zermatt

Marcel Duchamp, marchand de sable...

2009-03-07T20:41:00.004+01:00

Que fais-tu, Rrose Sélavy?

D'ailleurs, c'est toujours les autres qui meurent...

Ski aux 2 ALpes

2009-02-22T22:40:00.005+01:00

Les vacances de février 2009 aux 2 Alpes avec la famille Vidal : Du ski, du ski, et en plus du ski hors piste avec le guide Boris De Beaune.

Carving in Zermatt

2009-01-29T20:00:00.001+01:00

Some views of a Dave, Steve and Bob in their carving adventure in Zermatt, January 2009.

Web Applications, anyone?

2008-11-29T19:53:00.004+01:00

Well, after a ton of reading, and thanks to the Google App-Engine,I've finally made my first tiny web-app!

It's a demo for the visualization of airport performance which provides a multi-variate view for the imaginary performance of an airport over a 28 day period. The visualization simultaneously presents: throughput, performance, runway system configuration and weather impact.

It's only a little bitty thing, but a first step!

Check it out: http://gratefulfrog-ap-demo.appspot.com/

And the documentation is available as well:

Problem Solving & Project Management

2008-09-14T18:47:00.009+02:00

Hey! It's been a long time since I wrote words on this blog!

Would you like to see how to solve any problem?

If a man's hungry and you give him a fish, he'll feel less hungry.
If you teach him to fish, he won't be hungry again.
But if you hit him in the face with a fish, he won't bother you about fish any more!

Now, for the implementation, take a look at this.

Earned Value Analysis anyone?

Are you interested in finally understanding (and maybe learning to be a decent project manager)?

Then fasten your seat-belt and read this.

And why not take a look at loads of other obscure but fascinating stuff on my Home-Page.

Somewhere Saxophones

2008-05-27T22:57:00.005+02:00

Closing the season at Lech, April 2008

2008-04-22T21:10:00.003+02:00

And great skiing was had by all...

Check out the boots!

Galapagos, and that made all the difference...

2008-04-06T16:34:00.014+02:00

A selection of photos from our life changing experience in the Galapagos islands, March 2008

click to see Keiko's photos and Paul's photos which are even better!

This is the link to the itinerary and company that organized the trip:

http://www.activesouthamerica.com/itineraries-tortuga.php

Basketball Avril 2008

2008-04-05T17:00:00.000+02:00

Quelques photos de Félix et ses copains dans le dernier match de la saison contre Evère!

Jungfrau Region 2008

2008-02-22T17:38:00.002+01:00

A few views of some of the greatest skiing ever!

Basketball Jan 2008

2008-01-26T13:02:00.000+01:00

Quelques photos de Félix et ses copains du BCEEI Cadets-C en 2008 !

Operation Foot Comfort 6-9 Dec. 2007

2007-12-09T23:59:00.000+01:00

Dave Snow Dog Fitzgerald's masterpiece of cinematography documents the incredible success of our adventure to get custom ski boots at the Strolz shop in Lech, Austria.

Check out this link if you want to see more pictures and a higher resolution video!

A long time ago, a very big impression...

2007-12-01T20:05:00.000+01:00

Basketball Novembre 2007

2007-11-11T19:19:00.000+01:00

Quelques photos de Félix et de ses copains de l'équipe de basketbal!

The Victoria Cross: For Valour

2007-11-10T19:52:00.000+01:00

This is a link to a youtube show taken from the BBC documentary: "The Victoria Cross: For Valour." It is an inspirational piece of work!

Best Basketball Sept. - Oct. 2007

2007-10-20T19:40:00.000+02:00

Quelques photos de Félix et de ses copains avant les matches...

An Afternoon Out, with the boys...

2007-10-20T19:34:00.002+02:00

Stan, Peter and me on 25 August 2007...

From Comme Chez So...

Something you don't see very often!

2007-09-02T17:09:00.000+02:00

Yo !

2007-09-01T09:57:00.000+02:00

Via Delle Bocchette: 29/6 -2/7 2007

2007-08-15T17:15:00.002+02:00

La Montagne de Tous les Etés

2007-04-29T12:49:00.000+02:00

Notre Parcours de l'Etang Bleu!

Parcours de tous les jours

2007-04-29T12:39:00.001+02:00

En été, nous faisons ce parcours tous les jours!

La vie est belle au 21e siecle.

Du nouveau dans le sud?

2007-04-14T22:22:00.000+02:00

Enfin, il y a du nouveau! Oui! Roquesérière a son blog! Il y a un lien à gauche qui y pointe, allez-y!
A+b.

Plongée : Du Nouveau !

2007-03-22T18:51:00.000+01:00

Amis plongeurs ! Je viens de poster un guide de Briefing de Chef de Palanqué sur mon site http://gratefulfrog.net. Il est surtout utile pour les plongeurs en formation au Corail diving Club ou dans un autre club belge. Pour l'obtenir, il suffit de suivre le lien en bas de ma Home Page ou l'autre ci-dessus. Toutes vos remarques sont bienvenues!
GF.

Some new old things

2007-03-20T21:45:00.000+01:00

Well are you interested in geometry? Do you remember all those proofs of triangles being congruent? Well if you check out my home page you'll find a demonstration of Euclid's Great Secret Theorem which just might surprise you! But I'm not telling what the surprise may be...

If you're interested, just follow the link at the bottom of the Gratefulfrog Home Page.

Heros return

2007-02-15T19:44:00.000+01:00

After weeks of battle, the heroic Sea Shepherd Crews are returning to Civilization, or at least to Australia where one of their ships may be confiscated after the British (well known for their courageous war against Terrorism with Mr. Bush and his America - yeah, right...) canceled its registration because the Japanese barked! Woof Woof and the Brits use their most famous talent Bureaucracy to hinder the only people on the planet who are actually trying to save the seas! What more to say...

Just take a look at the Sea Shepherd site, and their blogs and pictures from the Antarctic campaign.

Then send some money, or go and do something with them!

Get out there and do it!

Today the whales have a defender!

2007-02-08T21:18:00.000+01:00

At last the Sea Shepherd ships have hunted down the Japanese whale killers! Hopefully they'll be able to save a few whales down there in the Antarctic, while there are still whales to save!

Any Japanese, Norwegian, Icelandic, or Danish person reading this should do something *NOW* to prevent his or her government from continuing to senselessly hunt marine mammals for pure profit or for whatever justification they come up with.

And the same goes for any Asians regarding the hunting of sharks, and in particular whale sharks, for shark fins soup!

All the rest of you, send money to Sea Shepherd while there is still life in the sea to save!

There is no justification for the destruction of endangered species in the 21st century! So get with it!

News, at last, news

2007-01-10T15:38:00.000+01:00

Yo! It's time to say something, again.

That's why I've decided to say that Life is Good!

Orca Days

2006-11-15T22:30:00.001+01:00

Once upon a time, we went for an orca adventure...

For a description of the trip look at Lofotdykk

And that made all the difference...

2006-10-08T19:58:00.000+02:00

listen...

2006-05-12T22:25:00.000+02:00

Surprised? Well I am! This is just to see how webcam capture works!

More on Breezy and updates!

2006-05-07T17:34:00.000+02:00

Well there's been another update of the xorg and the 64bit fglrx drivers are dead again. Looks like I've got to update backwards to the libdri.a found http://mail3.mpr.org/mlomker/libdri.a.gz

Now, there's a load of help at this site, too:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Breezy_Installation_Guide.

Hia Haya Dohr!

2006-05-05T09:54:00.000+02:00

Hello there, y'all!

This is just to say that I'm now linking to my good friend Haya Dohr and his blog full of Art Photos!

Be sure to check it out!

See ya round here real soon!
GF.

Bloggy Day

2006-04-29T09:19:00.000+02:00

Well, Internet world out there, things are still good. A great 2 week break in the South and all is fine. Of course, there is still work to be managed, alas. Funny how a break has taken my focus off the Literate Programming that I was doing. But there's no new focus, yet.

I will keep you posted with posts.

News, at last...

2006-04-06T19:50:00.000+02:00

This is just to say: Life is Good! Free software is great!

The Spirit of Open Software: Ubuntu Breezy

2005-11-27T18:01:00.000+01:00

Well, recovering from minor surgery, and pushed by accumulating bugs on my obsolete Ubuntu 5.04 Linux, I finally decided to upgrade to 5.10 Breezy on my AMD64 machine.

Yes, this was in many ways a crazy thing to do, but you probably know me by now...

So, after downloading for an hour, I began the long apt-get dist-upgrade. Here are the issues I encountered and the responses I brought.

ialibs could not install: to get by this, first remove xorg-driver-fglrx, then install ialibs, then re-install xorg-driver-fglrx.
X would not start: as one might expect the fglrx driver needed massive re-configuring, in particular I had to first start with a vanilla /etc/X11/xorg.conf, then explore loads of proposed solutions. Of course it is not absolutely necessary to use the fglrx drivers for the ATI graphics cards, but if you don't use them you don't get 3D graphics acceleration - it's as simple as that. To debug X problems, it is very important to check the start-up log for X's error messages at /var/log/Xorg.0.log. All in all this problem was much harder to fix than expected mainly due to my own lack of knowledge, but finally this link provided the solution. Thanks to Ubuntu forums!
Skype kept locking up the microphone: This problem would appear to be caused by skype's use of the obsolete OSS sound system. I finally managed to get a workaround on a 32bit chroot by following this advice and also this site. If you want to know about dchroot, check here. Indeed, many 64bit issues can be worked around by use of a 32bit dchroot environment to simulate 32bit while still running the 64bit kernel (this is particularly useful to get access to flash and macromedia players under firefox - those proprietary for money only tools :-( aren't available in 64bit compatible form).

If anyone out there wants to try this upgrade, I suggest using the command line version, i.e. apt-get, rather than synaptic since this allows better handling of errors. Considering the size of the upgrade, I'd say it went pretty well - but I doubt that most people would be willing to put in that much effort every 6 months just to keep up with Linux releases - which don't bring much visibly improved functionality and can even make some things slower or impossible!

In any event, the Ubuntu team (bug reporting and followup), wiki and forums are constantly available to provide information, and support. Those people are really helpful!

They really follow the Ubuntu spirit: "Humanity to others: I am what I am because of who we all are." This is really what I feel separates the open software world from those other people who are just out there for themselves.

Boomerang - Dada

2005-11-10T20:40:00.000+01:00

So much to say about those 2 subjects, yet so little time so litte ti... In the meantime, be that Greenwich or other, check out these sources while I'm typing out another Blog entry!

Enjoy!
GF

Link to a Friend

2005-10-15T20:33:00.000+02:00

The Gratefulfblog has advanced even deeper into the heart of the 21st century, which is probably in exact opposition to the heart of darkness! It is now linked to the ultra-modern ART of my friend Blake Hurt!

Follow the link to check it out!

And counting...

2005-10-03T19:20:00.000+02:00

Just to keep everyone their toes, I've put a visit counter on the blog and another one on the home page.

Otherwise, there's nothing new under the sun.

Except that I'm helping a friend and artist to make his home page, too! As you'll be able to see, we've got a ways to go before it's perfect. Even so, I recommend taking a look at his works, particularly the 2005 works.

Even more grateful than ever, GF.

1st Free (as in Freedom of Speech) DVD

2005-09-23T10:13:00.000+02:00

Last weekend I was able to use my accumulated knowledge of Free Software and the free software itself to produce a 30 minute DVD of my son's first basketball game of the season. I followed my own previously elaborated instructions (cf. http://gratefulfrog.net/). This worked perfectly, almost. Yes, folks, depite all the effort of documenting the procedure, there was one step that I hadn't fully documented: the usage of dvdstyler.

The result was that the DVD's title page spilled slightly over the TV screen. So, next time don't forget that the background image size must be equal to the TV image size. The picture should be resized before using it, with the GIMP for example. Ideally, a larger picture should be chosen and cropped. If a smaller picture is used, then the difference in aspect ratios of digital photo (4/3) and PAL-TV (5/4) will cause distortion.

Another minor error was that the sound recorded using the camcorder's spike mic was mono, left channel only. During the editing process, I should have copied the left channel to the right channel to have a result in mono both channels. Oh well, you live and learn.

Despite these slight defects, the result was Cinema quality - mostly due to the quality of the original footage shot by a pro who prefers to remain anonymous, even though we'd like to put a picture of her right here for all the world to see!

Another day, another dive...

2005-09-11T18:31:00.000+02:00

Well folks, after flooding at the house and loads of cleaning up all night long, today I voluntarily took to the water to dive! And it was a pleasant dive at that: 2 exercises completed, no incidents of any kind, and we even saw a sturgeon! But the best part was as always surviving...

Diving is so dangerous, I wonder why I do it...

In other news, the house has dried up, to a great extent at least, after last night's flash flood and newly discovered leaks. There seems to be no end to annoyance here at the ranch.

More news is coming, stay tuned.

Ubuntu GnomeMeeting Eureka

2005-09-10T16:16:00.000+02:00

Yep, more gratefulness and good news from the GF!

Today I did my first Video Conference on 100% Free software, free as in Freedom of Speech, that is. Not a bit of you know who involved! And of course, all running across the ADSL IP connection at no extra charge.

My configuration:

Ubuntu Linux 5.04,
GnomeMeeting,
Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000 webcam.

There's a trick to getting GnomeMeeting to work on Ubuntu 5.04: Don't use the default V4L2 plugin, instead download and install the package: libpt-plugins-v4 . Then select the V4L codec on the video configuration tab of the preferences for GnomeMeeting.

After that, it works perfectly.

To make a call, find the person you want to contact and get his/her 'callto', for example, I am 'callto:ils.seconix.com/gratefulfrog@gmail.com'.

Put that in the address bar and you're in business. Don't forget to check the 'view' menu for options allowing to see receiver and/or sender video feeds!

Isn't the 21st century a great time to be alive!

From the dark

2005-09-09T18:12:00.000+02:00

We're not alone! Yes, despite overwhelming disdain from the local public, the truth is that when you share information over Internet, someone somewhere may actually use that information and the world can be a better place for it.

Naturally, this probably won't happen very often, but every time it *DOES* happen, that little bit of betterness created can go along way.

All that to say that after trying to help some of the local public into the 21st century, wasn't I pleasantly surprised to see that someone was actually interested in my common-lisp sudoku solver (look for sudoku.lisp here)!

So in one week I was able to show several people that the world has evolved since the days of Impressionism, and help a potential lisper find his way through the dark moments of lisp-newbiedom.

I think that's pretty good and am grateful to have had the chance to do both.

Excitement, grateful too, for a frog

2005-09-07T14:44:00.000+02:00

Today I had some excitement showing nice people at work some of the wonders of the 21st century, in particular, Internet wonders.

It makes me incredibly happy to bring enabling ideas and/or technology to people who can use it to improve their lives. Maybe I should think about doing that professionally? mmm. No response from the masses makes me wonder if I'm dreaming again, which everyone knows is bad for long term health....

In other news, I saw an interesting article about digital art on wired.

I'll keep y'all informed as to the profession "enabler".

See ya round'ere,
GF.

something new!

2005-09-06T12:58:00.000+02:00

This is yet another good idea!

Some Exciting things with RSS

2005-08-25T15:39:00.000+02:00

It seems like my organization could make good use of RSS, but it may be too advanced for them...

Ubuntu Forever!

2005-08-23T21:46:00.000+02:00

The Ubuntu team has once again come through big time! The Colony 3 version of Breezy (Ubuntu 5.10) contains the fix to one of my annoying little bugs concerning the front panel microphone not working.

It now works, and can be controlled by the 'alsamixer', as you'd expect!

Those guys at Ubuntu-dev are doing a real top-quality job. They are setting a high standard for software, free or not!

If you're reading this and still using another OS, why not try Ubuntu? The Ubuntu-Live CD's are an easy way to try it out without corrupting your working(?) system.

The support, i.e. instant bug-fixes, is reason enough to go for it!

Check them out: Ubuntu Linux

Bob Moog

2005-08-22T22:32:00.000+02:00

It is with great sadness that I report that Dr. Bob Moog has died.

See the message at his company's site.

My condolences to all.

Syndication!

2005-08-22T19:50:00.000+02:00

Yes, today the Gratefulfrog is syndicated! What's that you wonder? Well, if you've got an RSS/Atom reader plugin for your browser, then you can simply click the 'Site Feed' link, bookmark it, and you can automatically follow the updates to this Blog.

Although that may appear silly, it's not. If you're looking for a syndication reader plugin for the Firefox browser, try sage. It's simple to use, but lacks some of the sophistication that may be available elsewhere.

Once you've got a reader installed, you can bookmark any page that offers RSS or Atom. Look at the lower right of the Firefox status bar and you'll see an orange button. Click it, and you can bookmark the link. Be sure to put it in the 'Sage Feeds' Folder.

You're in business.

Check out other interesting feeds:

In case you missed it, the 'RSS' button that follows will link you to Gratefulfrog's GratefulBlog Feed!

So lads, let's get on with it!

Et voilà l'été 2005...

2005-08-20T18:05:00.000+02:00

Mountain Men

What's this?

Triple Mountain Foot Shot

Nice...

Peek-a-boo!

Cool...

Close Frog Shot

Deux

Je l'ai eu, aieeeee!

Father & Son in Sun, London

Oh!

Et basta!

Last Dive Trip

2005-08-07T20:05:00.000+02:00

Bonjour! (Maldives!)

Summer

2005-08-07T19:57:00.000+02:00

Well, summer holidays are over and we are back in the saddle... Next holiday is already planned!

Life is good.

More of the same

2005-06-17T21:25:00.000+02:00

Today, gratefulfrog and son saw some music videos and went shopping. Also, gf's gf arrived from London, which is like the big apple but different, let's call it the big pear, ok.

Gf's gf doesn't think much of this blog, alas, I'm destined to eternal misunderstanding...

I recently learned quite a few things which I may report at a later date.

That's all for now. Don't despair.

sudoku generator, Azores & teeth

2005-06-16T15:32:00.000+02:00

Well solving sudoku's is easy, generating them is another matter. Particularly if it's got to be elegant, and it does. The first version of the sudoku generator is nearly ready, just keep hanging and it'll appear here one of these days.

By the way DP just got some teeth pulled and is not suffering at all. In fact so not suffering is he that he has to play DOD all day long.

In other news, we're looking for info about diving in the Azores, if anyone's been there or has any ideas, please comment.

Today GF's son DP has something to say!

2005-06-13T19:13:00.000+02:00

He says that he has a video to show but no place to put it, alas. We're shopping for a place to put videos on the net, for cheap, very cheap, even for free may be too expensive...

More later from GF & DP.

All in a day's blog

2005-06-12T19:59:00.000+02:00

Well, that's it for today, and what a day it's been!

I created this blog.

I populated it with lost blogs from my old blog which didn't allow for enough sharing.

I went diving, too!

sudoku solver in Common Lisp

2005-06-12T19:44:00.000+02:00

Hi Ubuntu!

Sorry to have been so slow in getting news out there, but I spend so much time tweakin' that I don't have much left for writing.

Anyway, here's the news from http://gratefulfrog.net

I've just posted a little common lisp program that will solve any sudoku puzzles that you may have on your mind. It is fully documented and will run on any Common Lisp envt.

Hope someone finds it interesting

How To - have done...

2005-06-12T19:41:00.000+02:00

Yes, as promised the HowTo DVD is now available.

All comments, good, bad and indifferent are welcome.

http://gratefulfrog.net/PhotoAndVideo/HowToDvd.html

short aside, but necessary to have done, once

2005-06-12T19:40:00.001+02:00

After some discussion on #cinelerra IRC, I learned that the ffmpeg package available at the Ubuntu repository is out of date.

Downloading and installing the latest cvs snaptshot was child's play (particularly since I learned of "checkinstall" which automatically updates apt's list of installed sources), and now my video workflow consists of:

Capture: 2 choices, both work perfectly.
- dvgrab (on Ubuntu 64 bit) at the command line
- Kino (on Ubuntu 32bit) with a little GUI, but I don't find the preferences dialog very intutive, particulary for directories and file names.

Edit:
- cinelerra works well!

Render (cinelerra)
- render in a single file to quicktime4linux:
--> audio settings: 2's complement,
--> video compression as DV

Encoding: ffmpeg
- use the command line:
> ffmpeg -i rederedFile.mov -target pal-dvd dvd.mpeg
- still to explore encoding as a CVCD, or other CD-ROM format for short films, so as to save on blank DVD's.

DVD Authoring: dvdstyler
- use the intuitive GUI to create menus,
- write the iso image to disk: dvd.iso

DVD burning: nautilus
- insert blank DVD,
- in file browser select dvd.iso,
- right click, select burn disc.

short, sharing, with whom?

2005-06-12T19:40:00.000+02:00

After making my first DVD on Ubuntu, I have decided to write a HowTo. This will soon be available either here or on the forums.

I am very happy to have gotten this to work on a Ubuntu system, with free software only!

Soon the HowTo...

first success story, before!

2005-06-12T19:39:00.000+02:00

After last attempts, I took a new approach:

Editing:
- cinelerra to make a 3.5 min sequence

Render:
- separate the video and audio:
- cinelerra render video as mpeg video to small.mpv
- cinelerra render the audio as mpeg audio to small.mpa

Multiplex:
- mplex -v 0 -f 8 small.mpv small.mpa small.mpeg

Create iso image:
- dvdstyler: load small.mpeg
- make simple menu with "play" button.
- create iso image.

Burn iso image to DVD using gnome.

It works!

another step forward, in the past...

2005-06-12T19:38:00.000+02:00

Well, today at least I can say that things are moving forward. This is due to the great help of the Ubuntu bugzilla team and the cinelerra IRC channel.

I have managed to accomplish the followning:

Capture DV:
- kino capture worked perfectly,
- captured 5 hours of DV into quicktime4linux containers, shot by shot,
- but now I cannot load the captured files back into kino...

Edit:
- cinelerra 1.2.2 worked perfectly.
- I built a 25 minute video sequence with titles and color correction,

Render
- again cinelerra:
- I rendered it audio+video as quicktime4linux with 2's complement audio and DV compression for video. This 6GB file could be copied back to DV tape.

Convert to mpge2:
- failed using ffmpeg 0.4.6 prel,
- cinelerra IRC informs that I should get the latest cvs of ffmpeg and rebuild.

This is my next step.

old news, the start of the journey, again.

2005-06-12T19:36:00.000+02:00

This first entry in my gratefulblog will be followed by the story of my voyage through the world of Linux and its use in digital video editing.

My vessel is 64bit AMD based with the devilish NEC ND3500 DVD burner in the engine room.

Today we're sailing on Ubuntu Hoary 64bit, but this has come after more or less success with Fedora 2 & 3 / 32 & 64 bit, Suse 9.2 32bit, Ubuntu Warty 32 & 64.

There is one thing that sets Hoary apart from the others: Support! Response to bug reports on bugzilla, support & documentation on the forums all make Ubuntu the pole-star of Linux distributions.

After very tough installation problems, initial operational issues involved getting various aspects of sound recording & playback to work. ALSA & OSS, sox jack and friends, all work more less than more, today.

The same for graphics & video playback, they work much less than more.

Other tools that you may read about here are:
- kino
- cinelerra
- transcode
- dvdauthor
- dvdstyler
- avidemux
- anything useful or needed to go from DV to DVD.

Until next time, don't give up, GNU & FSF are what's right!

Level 0

2005-06-12T19:23:00.000+02:00

Hello World!

This is the first day in gratefulf frog's new gratefulblog. The old gratefulblog, hosted on Ubuntu Forums seems to refuse world access. So the frog has been looking for a new home and he's found this one, for now.