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I don’t know how I stumble upon this report of a conference ( English translation) from Avi Alkalay but I liked 2 schemes he showed. In this first scheme (left), I like the way it reminds you that “Open” is not only about software, source code. But now that more and more people are aware of the benefits of Open Source software, it’s interesting to also stress the other sides of openness: open standards (like OpenDocument), open hardware, open architecture. In the second scheme (below) is about the trend from private control / closed access to public control / open access (apparently from Rebecca Henderson; it could be interesting to find this whole presentation from 2004). ...

Scott Hensley used one of my pictures on Flickr to illustrate a recent article on the Wall Street JournalHealth Blog. The interesting thing is that they give a link to the original photo (at the end of the article) and wrote a nice note on Flickr :-)

(… at least for large documents) Two week-ends ago, I spend a whole day trying to apply a consistent style to a thesis. I spent hours trying to be obeyed by a word processor because it would systematically change the style of some element, somewhere in the 100-or-so pages. Including figures was also a nightmare: we had to keep an eye on the (limited) memory of the computer (otherwise we got unexpected screen freeze, a lot of noise from the hard disk (paging), etc). Generating a bibliography was also another daunting task, even with the use of a dedicated reference manager … ...

I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature (*) but the Windows Task Manager doesn’t seem to refresh its graphs when we are moving its window. It’s barely noticeable when you usually move it (**) but you can spot this behaviour when one of your other windows is freezing. ( larger screenshot) (*) I know this post is nearly useless but I’m tired of waiting for this freezing software … ...

Everything is in the title. All the boxes and other furniture are all right (their owner too). Now my journeys to work will be much shorter and I’ll be able to resume my previous evening activities :-)

Despite the fact I have smokers amongst my friends, I couldn’t resist to rant a little bit about smokers (“terrorism” is currently a buzzword in Belgium and in the world, so I put it in the title). While some smokers I know understand that " One’s freedom stops where others’ freedom starts", I am about to think that many of the smokers are still thinking they are the only ones on this planet and, if one dares to complaint, they will grumble, act as if they are victim of some sort of segregation or, worse, retaliate. ...

A small post to report three very interesting restaurants in Germany. The first one is in Berlin, on Potsdamer Platz: Ristorante Essenza ( website). It’s a very stylish and very classy Italian restaurant. The decor is very sober, the ceiling is very high and I really liked the rugged wall with small cases for different wine bottles. The (English-speaking) service is impeccable and waiters are very tactful. But we don’t enter a restaurant only to enjoy the place … Food in Ristorante Essenza is also delicious, pizzas are served in good proportions and sea food is really nicely cooked. I didn’t have the opportunity to taste their wines (by choice; but they looked all very fine on the menu). Finally, icing on the cake, prices are really, really affordable for this advanced standing (Italian restaurants in Belgium will have many lessons to take in order to beat that standard). ...

Conforming to the current trend ;-) I’m wishing you, reader of this blog, a very happy new year 2008! A lot of things will happen in 2008 and I hope to be able to write more often on this blog (no, it’s not a new year’s resolution).

One of the two labs where I’m working, the Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, has updated its website. You can see it here and browse its growing content. And this time, I did nothing (a company built the website for us).

After the promotion of Open Access (see Bernard Rentier’s blog) and a history of publications in Open Access journals (see this last article from the Cyclotron Research Center in PLoS), the University of Liege is slowly slowly publishing Open Source software too. The last free software published is exams, an assessment management system (for on-line exams, …). They chose the GNU GPL 2, apparently without the possibility to upgrade to version 3 (I don’t know if it’s deliberate or not). And you can download the source code here. ...