My-Life

Well … a city has the same name as mine: Poirrier, in North Haiti (maps from Falling rain and Nona). :-) Now I’m sure this will brighten your days!

Just a small post to say that I liked the film “Last Witness” from Chang-ho Bae (Korea, 2001 ; reviews here, here and also in French). It was shown this night on Arte TV. In one phrase, this film follows police detective Ho’s investigation on murders linked with the past war of Korea (do not look at the reviews if you don’t want to know the end of the main plot). (photo from Arte)

Les Namur Linux Days avaient pour objectifs de présenter les applications libres, sous GNU/Linux et disponibles pour l’utilisateur final, leur degré d’utilisabilité, leur état d’avancement et leur diversité. Ma première présentation était consacrée àla messagerie instantanée sous GNU/Linux (dont Jabber !) et vous pouvez la télécharger ici (page reprenant toute une série d’informations dont la présentation en PDF). Ma seconde présentation était consacrée àOpenOffice.org Impress. Cette page reprend plus d’informations ainsi que la présentation àtélécharger. ...

The Indian Students Association of Leuven (ISAL) will celebrate Holi on the 11th of March 2006, in Leuven ( more info soon). Holi is an annual Hindu spring festival, aka. festival of colors ( article from Wikipedia). Although it has Hindu roots, Holi is now celebrated by people with all religions (even by people without religion). It will be a good occasion to meet other young Indians (students or not) in Belgium, eat good food :-) and maybe play with colors. Of course, you are welcome; just drop a line to the Office Bearers to say you’ll come.

FOSDEM is the annual Belgian meeting of free software developers. Like in 2005, I would only be able to go there on Saturday (Sunday, we are preparing experiments for Monday, in the lab). A car will thus do the journey from Liege to Bruxelles, on Saturday morning (8.00-8.30) and it will come back in the evening (at around 18.00-19.00, except if we stop in a nice Indian restaurant in Leuven). There are 2 or 3 seats left. If you are interested, please contact me.

Yesterday evening, I watch “Le Voyage des femmes de Zartalé” (Zartalé women’s journey), a film from Claude Mouriéras, on Arte TV ( description in French). We didn’t initially plan to watch it. But it was worth. In the Afghan village of Zartalé, half of the community suffers from tuberculosis. There is only one small hospital nearby (a journey of at least a couple of hours). Classes are given in the fields by the mullah. The film depicts the calm conflicts between traditional values and modern ones (medications -vs- prayers, illiteracy -vs- literacy, …) and the importance (or influence, if you like) of religion. ...

I have quite a lot of work. Therefore, I don’t have much time to post here. However, some days ago, I found this cool “ad” in another lab: The first time I saw this one, I thought one can buy alkaloids, fatty acids, etc. for 0.3 - 0.65 euros from there. But, I quickly understood that it was not the case: these are parts of notes you can buy. ;-)

I spent the whole afternoon in shopping malls and fashion boutiques. Now I know that sales are giving me headache … Am I becoming old or is it a normal reaction to heat, crowd, noise, smoke, etc.?

Regarding GNU/Linux installation and usage, prejudices are still hard to fight (at least in my environment). Yesterday, we had the usual Christmas dinner with some friends and family. At one moment, talks went on technology, computers, peer-to-peer, etc. One of the boys just bought an Apple Powerbook and his wife got a laptop PC from her work (MS-Windows only, of course). We ask them to put GNU/Linux or, at least to try free software. For their general usage, OpenOffice.org (writer, calc and impress), The Gimp, FireFox, Thunderbird, … are sufficient. They don’t need more: specific applications they might use are already on dedicated computers in the laboratory. ...

If you used to see me on MSN or Yahoo!, there is a risk I won’t be there anymore. I’ll now try to only use the free Jabber protocol. If you want to know more about jabber, please have a look at the Jabber overview. Clients (software) are available for MS-Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc. ; see here for a list of software (with some of them, you will even still be able to chat with your MSN and Yahoo! contacts). My Jabber ID is jepoirrier at jabber.org. ...