Blog on Nemoworld

Hardware is hard no matter what

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 13:42:00 +0000

I have an interesting hardware issue I would like to share, because it really shows that hardware is never simple when it breaks.
You have to pay attention to every possibility and/or detail before really calling it a day.

Ungoogling so far - Part 0

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 15:25:00 +0000

One year ago, I mentioned the fact that Google was becoming a non reliable service, especially YouTube. At the time, it was waging war against adblockers, to the point that the service wouldn’t work unless you wait 5 seconds to go anywhere.

After a year, it’s time to summarize what changed on my end to stop using those services and any platforms alike. So it’s obviously the famous GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), but it applies to any platforms that could be replaced by self-hosting solutions.

NixOS 24.11 Part 2

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 12:39:28 +0000

In a previous post, I was upgrading a single machine from NixOS 24.05 to 24.11.

This time, it’s:

9 raspberry pi 4
3 orange pi 5+

They all have different profiles and purposes, but they follow 4 big classes:

kubernetes workers/controllers
git/ci/cd server
nas/s3 server
secret/CA server

I was expecting more trouble with this round, as there is more complexity (and the orange pis needs a custom kernel).

It turns out it was a breeze. Yay NixOS!

NixOS 24.11 Part 1

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 15:01:00 +0000

It’s that time of the year: a new release for NixOS!

Recently this year, (around june 2024), I migrated all my machines to NixOS. This was a journey on its own, and I should probably document it a bit, especially for the devices that are not “standards”.

So for this upgrade to 24.11 (almost released), I started with my laptop.

Usually, this is a rather painless process, but this time I experienced some fun little surprises :-)

It has been a while

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:33:00 +0000

Yes, I realized it has been a while since I wrote anything on this space.

Basically a year …

So why coming back to it? Well, a lot of people I’ve been following on the fediverse have been truly an inspiration about it, namely:

@elena@mastodon.social for the fresh and limitless energy of her discovery and exploration of the fediverse
@stefan@stefanbohacek.online for exploring other programming approaches on this space and fun experiments as well
@Daojoan@mastodon.social for the deep analysis of the moment and deeply focused way to move past it
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io for her awesome help regarding wikipedia and curation

It’s also the fact that I’m deeply tired of any “traditional” social medias. They don’t bring anything anymore (if they were even bringing something in the first place). And I love that the notion of blogroll or simply using RSS in order to curate yourself what you read/watch/listen seems to come back.

Ungoogling

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I guess it’s time.

Enshitification is rampant and becoming unbearable.
The current adblocker war that Youtube is waging is the last straw.

Time to get rid of all those platforms that are suppose to help us. You know them all, and usually referenced in the US as “Big Tech” or GAFAM elsewhere (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft).

Not just because they are the “Big Tech” and therefore “evil incarnated on earth” (which is simplistic view at best), but because a different web is possible and alternatives are there as well.

Astronomy Section

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been observing the sky since I was a teen and with various types of telescopes.

On the other hand, astrophotography is a new thing for me, and I still need serious improvements.
In the mean time, I’ve added an astronomy section where I’ll post some pictures and keep tab on gear.

Sneak peak:

Global View

Jupiter

The 2022 Refresh

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

After 2 long years of inactivity, I finally put some thoughts on this site again.

It looks like Covid did a number and a change of job as well in the process.

This new version tries to come back to its sources where white background is banished. I used the excellent Xe site (https://xeiaso.net/) as guide. It has a nice console feeling and uses zero CSS framework or JS one. In fact, the only JS framework I’m using now is lightbox for photo galleries :-).

Drawings Section

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 10:10:17 -0400

I’ve added a new section to publish some of the drawings I’ve been doing on the remarkable device.

Remarkable Custom Renderer

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 09:10:21 -0400

I’m a proud owner of a Remarkable device for quite some time (I think close to 2 years now), and it’s basically replacing all my notebooks I’ve used so far and helping me drawing as well.

And quickly I wanted to know how the data is stored to be able to do anything I want with it, like for example applying a custom renderer.

Oh 2020

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 09:04:15 -0400

OK, so I was supposed to “keep tab” on this blog since … 2018. Well, I guess that didn’t work that well.

It's been too long: 2018 reboot

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 09:54:31 -0400

Oh hello again my old friend: the nemoworld site!

It’s been far too long since I talked to you. And maybe it’s time to do this differently.

Pretty much close to two years now since the last post, with at least 3 main reasons:

lots of time devoted to current job
lack of a simple flow to push the content
“industrial” social networks (e.g. facebook, …) are “sucking” everything (more to come on that)

So, for the first point, well, it’s more basically finding a good balance of time.

First Saturn Astropic

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 26 Jun 2016 00:18:21 -0400

I’ve been tinkering with the NexImage camera for a while but never managed to use it correctly.

How IoT can betray you

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 20:49:57 -0400

I recently restored a part of my wireless sensor network, and I’m quite pleased of the current state:

the sensor part is working
the gateway is processing
a first chart to visualize what was stored

So after running it for a whole day, I got this chart:

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OK, so far it looks great. You can see the sun:

going down in a quasi linear fashion from the beginning to around 6,
then the S transition to night,
then the flat night.

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So all good, except for one thing: that big spike in the last part! Guess what it is?

Adding recipes

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 10:14:59 -0500

I finally ported the recipes section, and with a spanish gazpacho to start.

Restoring the wireless network

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 17:41:33 -0500

I have been started to slowly try to restore both the wireless network I used to have and most important: the knowledge used to develop/maintain it.

It’s truly another example on how notes and backups can save your life.

Anyway, I managed to have a good working sensor reporting nice data to the zigbee coordinator:

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TC1:20.00;TF1:68.00;P:98194;H1:25.50;TC2:20.20;LG:50

Which means:

TC1: temperature measured by a BMP085 from Adafruit (in Celcius)
TF1: the same temperature than above but in F
P: the pressure from the BMP085 in Pa
H1: the humidity measured by a DHT22 from Adafruit (in %)
TC2: the temperature measured by the same DHT22 (in C)
LG: a simple light level measured by a photoresistor (1024 being total darkness, 0 the maximum light)

Then I left the sensor run for a while and plotted by hand the light level as the sun was rising on a morning, and it’s rather what you should expect (with a measure done every minute or so):

Testing the new site

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 11:27:51 -0500

I decided to port the site onto a new platform called Hugo, which is very similar to Jekyll but written in Go.

So far so good. It’s fast, reliable and try to help you organize your content into sections and types.

First step: gathering

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 09:58:55 -0500

Time to gather all projects and archives I’ve been working and try to make a nice list in a dedicated Projects page. It’s rather amazing to see I was writing Babbler in 2004 and I still remember its simplicity.

So gathering means also archiving as much as I can, maintaining git repositories elsewhere than just github, and backup backup backup!

Exporting this blog as well, even if there is not much at the moment. I haven’t put back the old entries in it.

It's time to start archiving

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 22 Aug 2014 16:49:58 -0500

Perhaps it’s time to come back to archiving as much as I can, and curate information, rather than just letting it go down the drain. Even if the notes are raw, even if it’s just text, links, I’m getting tired of loosing good information.

This site and a few git repositories should do the trick (and a good backup system).

So onwards!

~CapNemo

Today's harvest - 2012/10/14

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today’s harvest: last green beans and hot peppers!

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Halloween Spider Progress

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Halloween Spider project progress:

motor going up and down: check
ultrasonic sonar detecting people: check
outside case: check
program directing the whole: check

What is left to do: have a good pulley, a good string for the spider and mount that to the door lamp!

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Today's harvest - 2012/10/06

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Today’s harvest: A lot of heirloom tomatoes

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Lean & Simple

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

After a small but not really conclusive test with more javascript driven pages, I changed the site to be more lean and simple.

Mostly inspired by the excellent site from Paul Davis http://davispj.com/. I made sure every page is readable by a simple call to curl.

The body is still written in markdown and the whole page rendered with mustache.

Next steps would be:

page support
project support
a way to gather data from outside

I guess it’s time to post about:

How to couple a servo to a photo-resistor on an Arduino board

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

After using the great examples provided in the Arduino kit, I decided to create my own circuit (nothing very fancy) by combining 2 examples and see if it’s going to work.

So I first draw the schema:

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Components:

10k ohms resistor (R1)
photo-resistor (LDR)
Servo motor (Servo)
Arduino UNO or alike

Then tested it. And it worked the first time :)

Pretty nice to see the servo moving when the light goes down or up.

Homomorphic Encryption

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I recently rediscover this fascinating property many math systems have: homomorphism.

Specially when it’s applied to an encryption system, it becomes even more fascinating: the way to compute with encrypted data without having the need to decrypt them!

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Making a very robust encryption system is already hard, making it homomorphic even so. Many systems are partially homomorphic like supporting just addition or just multiplication. Only two systems are known to have both really be usable (see Homomorphic Encryption).

Successfully trapped!

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Last friday, we manage to trap our 2 strays!

The poor cats were so hungry…

Those two black cats are pregnant and so we are expecting them to have their kittens around first or second week of April.

We are going to keep them in those traps until the labor starts, then move them to a big box full of soft rags.

“Short hair”:

“Furry”:

Spring is here!

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Spring is finally here!

Some time spent in the arboretum seeing the first flowers of the new season.

Crocuses:

Creepers:

A small blue flower:

Here is a view on the arboretum:

Jupiter and the Moon

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I took yesterday morning a little video of Jupiter and the Moon close together in the morning sky.

Something simple and always beautiful to watch:

Using a laptop as bridge

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

From time to time you need to reach your network where it’s not possible directly (the computer has no wifi card, the driver is missing, etc).

Fortunately, you have at least an Ethernet port and … a laptop or other computer using Linux that you can use as a bridge.

Just connect the 2 devices with a regular Ethernet cable (or a cross one for old cards) and activate IP_forwards and NAT with the following script, found in this forum :

A new way!

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Alright! I finally made the jump! The CouchDB way!

This blog is now running with:

CouchDB
my own couchapp
nginx (hosted on a linux box).

It was fairly easy to do it (except a few issues with the URLs still…) and Futon is enough to edit posts (except that you have to be careful when you edit a field, hum).

I’m going to extend this couchapp and add more in order to be able to do more than just a stupid blog (perhaps too many on this planet ;) ) and collect and share data. I have put the server into a dedicated URL: https://io.nemoworld.info in order to just do that.

Bulk

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A few interesting articles that I collected recently:

A German team unveils a self-driving car [en]: a truly autonomous car and also a reminder to the question: why do we still own a car when it’s parked most of its time?!
A very interesting article from the BBC showing how privacy is being killed by profits [en]. It’s time we reclaim our privacy! (encryption, direct exchange, etc)
“Sharing IS legitimate” tells this great post [en]. I had no doubt about that. Just that IP holders don’t want to loose their business…
A study reveals people behavior on password use [en] … well it’s not pretty. Perhaps it’s time to read carefully the great article on password strength

DIY and Opensource

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I recently stumbled upon an interesting article talking about the 13 open source hardware companies making $1 million or more and ended up finding even more.

Time to recap a bit! So here is the list of companies presented in the conference (you see download the slides here too).

Adafruit http://www.adafruit.com/
Arduino http://www.arduino.cc/
BeagleBoard http://beagleboard.org/
Bug Labs http://www.buglabs.net/
Chumby http://www.chumby.com/
Dangerous Prototypes http://dangerousprototypes.com/
DIY Drones http://diydrones.com/
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories http://www.evilmadscientist.com
Liquidware http://www.liquidware.com/
Makerbot http://www.makerbot.com/
Makershed http://www.makershed.com/
Parallax http://www.parallax.com/
Seeed Studios http://www.seeedstudio.com/
Solarbotics http://www.solarbotics.com
Sparkfun http://www.sparkfun.com

DIY Biology links:

2 feral cats visiting us :)

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, they have been around for a few days since we’ve given to the angora one a big chunk of grilled salmon!

It seems like 2 siblings and still a lot scared by any human presence.

This morning we had only milk to offer and they ate 4 plates of it! Hungry they are! Perhaps, we’ll catch them as pets ;)

Damn Oracle...

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Just a little excerpt from IRC about Java and Oracle:

<RSchulz2> "Thank you for installing the  Java Development Kit Version 7  from Oracle Corporation. "
<CapNemo> "from Oracle corporation" .... is it just me or it gives a nasty back taste !
<pantsman> like reading a bedtime story to your kids and then finding out it was written by a paedophile

I would say no more ;)

Back to the basics

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

In a previous post I was talking of this great course provided by MIT on electromagnetism with Walter Lewin as the teacher.

After searching among books about astrophysics, I finally found one that could bring me to finally grasp the mathematical/physical meaning of the last theories out there: “The Road To Reality - A complete guide to the laws of the universe” by Roger Penrose.

To keep - 2010-01-15

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

To keep 2010/01/15

Video about robotic: http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2010/01/13/video-artificial-intelligence-noel-sharkey-on-the-inexorable-rise-of-robots-39745322/

Good podcast about cosmology: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2010/01/15/easy-listening-and-learning-with-deep-science-podcasts/

TweetDeck on Ubuntu Karmic 64bit

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Since Karmic is out, I couldn’t find a good way to make TweetDeck working.

I decided to try troubleshooting it for just 5 minutes and found a simple solution with the help of several blogs:

First make sure you have the proper 32bit required libraries already installed: http://www.ossramblings.com/tweetdeck_in_64_bit_ubuntu

sudo apt-get install lib32asound2 lib32gcc1 lib32ncurses5 lib32stdc++6 lib32z1 libc6 libc6-i386 lib32nss-mdns
sudo cp /usr/lib/libadobecertstore.so /usr/lib32
sudo ldconfig

But that wasn’t enough. By simply launching TweetDeck in a terminal you could see the app can’t access to th gnome-keyring library. So I used getlibs to grab the right version as explained here

I'm sorry Mark but privacy matters

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently read an article interviewing the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, about privacy and Facebook in which he basically says that privacy is dead and useless for most people.

Well, I’m sorry dear Mark, but you are dead wrong. Most people I know cherish this important notion of life that is privacy. Not everybody wants to publish each state of its sexual life or last payment you did to IRS.

2010 TODO List

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year everybody. I hope new year eve was good for you.

Now it’s time to draw the plan for 2010 or at least to know what needs to be done.

Lots to do in opensource projects:

embryosys
- Change the website
- Need a working prototype (a kind of 0.0.1)
- Use CouchDB as storage (see graph view project)
similar
- Make it as a library used by embryosys
- Trying to reach the point where active processes are managed (0.0.1)
babbler
- rewrite as a webservice
- RESTful - offer topic files
linux aviation howto
- rewrite/update partially the doc
- HTML5? DocBook+XSLT?
- Need advice from TLDP

Then a couple of web projects:

Eee pc 1000HE

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I recently bought a netbook: Eee PC 1000HE, and so far I’m extremely happy with it.

I was searching a small device not too heavy (I have enough of breaking my shoulders with the laptop in the bag…) powerful enough to sustain development tasks (erlang, java, eclipse) and in some extent to support video playing (for encoding I can use something else obviously).

Electromagnetism to begin with

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I have been following an excellent course on my iPod in the train about Electromagnetism. The courseware published by MIT is performed by the brilliant Walter Lewin during 36 memorable lectures.

I’m still finishing following course #29 but since course #22 I can be happy to master and understand Maxwell’s Equations:

It was a great pleasure to follow that course. Mr Lewin structures each course the same way:

Happy New Year 2009

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Happy new year to everybody!

This year was clearly special in many ways.

Goals for the new year to come:

share more info on Internet
use a different way than a blog…
listen more classical music
learn piano!

And more ;)

Pesticides and bee's CCD

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I recently read an article about a study made by a team of researchers from Penn State University showing that beeswax and bees are contaminated by pesticides with a maximum of 31 of them!

It seems you have here a kind of combination of multiple molecules creating a highly toxic compound. As usual in biology, the cause of a problem is rarely coming from one factor but from multiple.

Of course, this study doesn’t prove that combination is the cause of CCD but it certainly contribute. They want know study the difference of organic vs non-organic bee keeper.

LHC and... rap!

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Here is as a fun video that a good friend gave me ;) How to explain the purpose of the LHC in rap style ! Like we say in French: Tout un poême !

The fun part now is to see so many concerns that the LHC will trigger the end of the world. It’s funny but it’s sad to see a so bad knowledge of science and particularly nuclear physics.

Old posts

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I have found a way to put back online my old posts going back to 2004.

I can’t find my first web page hosted by my university. Archive.org didn’t exist yet !

It’s pretty good to see the tag cloud getting shaped the way it is.

Ainsi va la vie ;)

Nemoworld is back

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Ok I have chosen the wrong hosting company it seems…

Dedimove was a reseller of dedibox machines. It seems they got in trouble with Dedibox company and since then no access to my server and of course I have only an old backup of my blog…

Well, perhaps it’s time to start from scratch… again.

Anyway, this time I need a regular backup or close to that.

See you soon

Happy New Year / Bonne Année 2008

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year / Bonne Année 2008

I hope this new year will bring you lots of good stuff (health, happiness, joy, love … yup very important ;) ).

Another year in the big universe… Same resolution for that year: trying to post more often ;)

Oh well… specially to post stuff useful such as tricks I found myself that could save time for others ! That’s something that blogs and Google (or other search engines) provide the best. So thank you all.

Embryosys and ADT

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Ok I have finally found the time to put on google code the first pieces of embryo systems.

I hesitated between Google code and hosting myself the code. I opted on Google for its longevity, I guess ;)

Anyway, this first version contains only the libdss to manipulate DSS object (stands for Data System String). It will be a practical way to store the ADTs in the engine. Basically, it contains a header (with its type and id) and a set of fields (pair key/value). To be short: a very stupid simple way to store structured information. Perhaps I will change that to use xml instead… who knows.

Privacy, P2P and Comcast

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

For a while, you can read articles talking about Comcast blocking BitTorrent traffic on their network.

I have tried several times to use it and yes I had few problems here and there: the torrent was more a tiny stream than something else or even a drought !

Now, perhaps it’s time to think of we use Internet. Specially the server centric way… P2P is known to solve a lot of problems by dispatching a task to multiple points and use that network as a force rather than a weakness.

Parrot and ADT'81

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have recently listened a very good interview of Randal Schwartz which is a brilliant figure of the Perl world (Interview: FLOSS weekly 9 with Leo Laporte and Chris DiBona / 2006-07-15 .. so a year ago) in which he was explaining in details the status of Perl and in particular of the project Parrot.

Parrot is a virtual machine designed to welcome any languages as long as they are implemented using the Parrot language (PIR and PASM).

SiCKO

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have seen the famous new movie from Michael Moore “SiCKO” and I’m just feeling outraged ! This movie confirms what my wife and I experienced when she got a surgical operation which would require in any CIVILISED countries (such as UK, France or Canada and much more) few days of rest at hospital but instead got kicked out after 1 night after the surgery !!! I still remember that day and how furious I was and also how bad were the nurses in this hospital : just talking each other and ignoring patients to take care.

Back online (2007)

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

2 days ago, we got a snow storm with a bunch of snow on top of the freezing temperature from the Arctic pole.

I made some pictures :) enjoy the coldness and New York messy !

Here some pictures :

Update: 2007-07-23: eheh sometimes I look at those pictures to remind me the coldness when it’s 80-90F (~25-30C).

Embryo Systems in orbit

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Ok. I was preparing this for already a moment. And it’s finally here. I just launched the website http://embryo-systems.info as the front-end of my project EGS.

I’m working on it for a long time but I have always change my mind on details or structure or even with language to use ! This time, I have the time, the structure, the language set .. so in few words : I’m finally working on it.

Welcome to dictatorship of USA

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, it’s a sad day. The congress voted a new law about the so-called notion of “illegal enemy combatant” (which is already a pure stupidity as if USA was in war state .. yeah right) and how justice must be done for them… Now, anyone who provide “material support” (can be anything then) to terrorists or “illegal enemy combatant” can be judge by a new kind of military trial without knowing what are the charges!

open-aero.org is now open

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

At last ! I have found the time to finish the first step of this project. At least, a first version (0.1 except the mail activation oops !) is online.

The goal is to federate open source aeronautical projects and therefore offer to anyone an accurate list of projects in this domain.

I will add new features soon (perhaps this weekend or next week). Keep in touch ! The address -> http://www.open-aero.org/

Ahhhh Paris !

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, I miss the beautiful city ! New York is great but Paris is Paris, you know.

Look to this

from a tourist for example :)

Shuttle STS-121 go to deorbit

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Wow ! Ok the shuttle can now de-orbit and will launch the burn in minutes !

I hope the landing will be safe and joyful !

Discovery, we are waiting for you !

Shuttle STS-121 and EVA

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was always passionate by astronomy and space exploration. And I’m very happy to see the shuttle going to space again with a dynamic crew.

I have followed them by NASA TV and I have made capture of the end of the first EVA (I think).

Thanks to NASA TV for these marvellous views !

News Bulk 2006-06-26

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Let’s start a little harvest of different news I found :

Stupidity : A mom sue MySpace.com about not protecting her kid and for a big ammount of money (it figures). MySpace is a chat system like IM. The mom sue it for not protecting her girl from the guy who sexually assault her. What the mom forget to say is her girl called the guy after the chat … she should sue the phone company as well no ?! Source: Teen, mom sue MySpace.com for $30 million.
Where is my Mom ? : It seems that the percentage of immature persons is growing and growing. Ahhh yes it seems so good to not have to be responsible to something and let others take care of you … But it has big drawbacks too. So many people get married without knowing what it means and then divorced because they feel like it. Well, are you among those immature persons ? Source: Discovery Channel :: News – Human :: Serious Study: Immaturity Levels Rising.
Are we there yet ? : Well, String theory exists now for 30 years, and it’s true that no experience has been built to verify it. So, of course, skepticals are moving and screaming that we are losing our time in this “stupid way” or “wasting way” … Well, curiously, I read in the last book of Leonard Susskind (the father of String Theory) that new experiments are on the way to verify it ! So, are we really wasting our time in 11 dimensions ? Source: Northwest Florida Daily News: Has string theory tied up better ideas in physics?.

That’s all folks !

Pictures of Sicily

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I found the time to publish my old pictures of Sicily I made in 1992 all around the island.

Lots of pictures of monuments like church or roman/greek ruins, but also mummies (! yes !).

The Right to Pay, not to Listen

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

We were talking with my girlfriend about to see a movie tonight and we didn’t go. Pretty boring you would say, but the reason is interesting : the price of a single ticket : almost $10 !

Why we have to pay so much money to see a movie during 1 to 2 hours ? Years ago, I was able to see almost a movie per week even with my tiny pocket money (it was 35 francs ~ 5 € or $6). Do we need much more money to make a movie ? Is it the cost of the life growing everytime ? Or simple and pure greed ?!

Quebec Time :)

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 27 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Oki time to go to Quebec city :)

This beautiful city full of street theaters and music and hot wines ! This time the weather is particularly cooooooold ! less than 0F !!! So good coat, pull, gloves and boots !

See you for the beginning of year :)

Ptit séjour à Budapest

ndufour@ptinem.casa (Nicolas R. Dufour) — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Et oui ! Me voila à Budapest, écrivant depuis un cybercafé de l’avenue Andrassi sur un clavier allemand !!!

Visiblement ya bcp de touristes allemands visitant la capitale ;)

C’est une ville magnifique, avec son magnifique (tout illuminée la nuit), sa ville haute encore ceinturée de remparts et ces rues ou les immeubles rivalisent de beauté en ornements et autres décorations.

Bientot des photos du voyage dans la rubrique Photos … donc à suivre .. j’ai un avion a prendre pour rentrer à Paris :-)