graham’s blog

• An article on the BBC News pages remarks that : After 30 years of unprecedented economic growth, the British are richer, healthier - but no happier than in 1973.
• Read in my feeds : How to take better photos for selling articles on Etsy-Ebay etc.
• Je viens de recevoir un e-mail me conseillant de voir le nouveau portail Bluewin.ch. Ce n’est pas très beau et plutot chargé et confus… Je ne l’aime pas et vous?

I’ve been “had” by my choice of template (or rather by my use of it).

My idea here was to just jot a few notes of what I’ve been reading and drop them off for your reading pleasure. I have two badges in the left hand sidebar that take up space and if my article has only a few lines I’m left with a blank space between the latest article and the preceding article.

I’m having to write these lines - usefully I hope to explain the situation - to fill in the gap for a balanced entry.

I’m in the market for a new template. I’d like this one to have three categories as lead articles to their respective categories and older posts to fill the front page. A lot like the leaders in newspapers. That way you can go straight to the main articles of life in Geneva, to articles written in French and to others on more technical subjects. I’d also like to use the WordPress pages more efficiently for longer illustrated articles that you can get to via the front page. Any ideas?

Je lisais les journaux ce lundi et deux articles dans deux journaux ont attiré mon attention. Il s’agit du concert de Jenifer à l’Arena la semaine passée. Pour ceux qui n’habite pas la Suisse ou même la France je dois ajouter que Jenifer est une gagnante d’une de ces émissions de télé-réalité ou un artiste est sélectionné au fil des semaines de participation. Je déteste ces émissions donc je n’ai pas plus (et pas envie non plus d’en avoir) de détails sur l’artiste.

I’ve been a member of Plaxo for 9 months now. I have a complicated calendar setup and wanted to synchronize them all.

I was using Google Calendar at home and Outlook at work. I also have an iMac (I love my iMac) so iCalendar is available. If you add Linked-In and mobile access it all leads into something complicated but reasonable (I thought).

Well I’m sad to report that although these services do synchronize I get regularly many duplicate entries and worst of all a lot of my birthdays show up (in multiple entries also) the preceding day of the anniversary.

I think I’ll be cancelling my Premium membership but will have to try and sort it all out soon. It’s becoming a mess.

I don’t want to have to simplify my multiple calendars just to be able to synchronize them!

Here are some notes for today:

“The Rule of Four” (Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason)

I finished my book. I’ve been reading the “Rule of Four” by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason. People Magazine said of it “If you loved The Da Vinci Code … dive into this” well I did but can’t say that I was overly ecstatic about it. Don’t get me wrong. It is a good book. It isn’t a great book. Have you read it?

I found a good scanner last weekend. The HP ScanJet G4050. It scans 16 slides without reloading. It takes about 5 minutes to scan all the slides but the result is not bad at all. I’m discovering and reliving a lot of memories of holidays, birthdays, weddings and extensive family memorabilia.

Here is an example.

This is a short post to test blue text, to remark on the arrival of Spring, to worry about my bank and to be astonished that people are willing to pay now for a gig that won’t occur before autumn next year!

Enfin en français! Il a fait froid ce matin attendant le bus à 7h00 devant chez moi. A midi je suis allé chercher à manger et il faisait nettement plus chaud. Le printemps se fait attendre mais va surement arriver d’ici quelques jours voir semaines.

Les déboires de notre Banque (l’UBS) me perturbent. Comment est-il possible de perdre autant d’argent? Je persiste à penser que nous devrions reformer les pratiques dans les banques.

Troisième sujet est les billets de spectacle. Si je vous proposais de me payer 100 francs Suisses aujourd’hui pour un service que je vous rendrerai dans 18 mois, seriez-vous d’accord? Pourquoi alors sont vous d’accord de payer chers vos billets aujourd’hui pour voir une artiste l’année prochaine?

J’ai de la peine à comprendre. J’espère que l’argent récolté sera placé intelligemment et que les organisateurs vont bien choisir leur banque!

I came to Switzerland in 1978 and was surprised to learn enough French to get by with in the course of 4 months. Ever since that era I have perfected my French and consider myself bilingual. I often calculate, think and dream in French but of course make many errors most of which are more visible in written form. Then there is my accent, but I’m trying to keep on topic here

Many people ask me how I managed and I always tell them that the only barrier to learning is in holding back and failing to try, because the person you are trying to communicate with wants to understand you and the errors you inevitably make aren’t as important as the message you are trying to convey. You always have to “Go for it!” and leave your inhibitions behind.

How come I don’t practice what I preach then? I’ve been mulling over this for a few days.

I have quite a few visitors and family members that are more comfortable in French and each attempt I have made to write in French and in English has “lost steam” after a few days or weeks due to lack a perceived lack of interest.

A good webfriend reminded my lately that it wasn’t because there was an absence of comments that people aren’t reading what I am writing. This must of course be true when I write in French too.

I’m going to try again and to hell with my faults in French (which incidentally is a lot harder to write than to speak, in my opinion).

I won’t even try to do too much spell checking and grammar sifting. I will only have one rule. Black writing for English and blue writing for French. (Once I work out a comfortable way of accomplishing that)

If I’m successful at it, I’ll consider adding a plugin and doing it as professionally (well almost as) Stephanie does on her perfectly bilingual blog.

Two things that have bothered me today.

First off I log into MySpace only to be greeted by a welcome to the Swiss MySpace and in German! The login screen had mention of French so I chose that in order to understand what was happening. Once I had logged in I was directed to the UK MySpace.

Problem is I live in Switzerland but in order to ‘benefit’ from Swiss Groups or happenings I would have to accept MySpace in French. My Web language however is English. Why can’t we have a Swiss English Speaking Group ? I’m sure that Stephanie would have something to say about this over at Climb to the Stars as she has extensive coverage of language problems on the Web on her blog.

My mind has gone a complete blank for the other item I wanted to post here but I am sure it had something to do with a site assuming that because I am living in Switzerland I must speak Germann.

I get “junk mail” from Nero, Filemaker and Iris in German and there is no way to get them to change languages so all these messages get deleted.

I’m not an exception. A recent ethnological survey lists 12 living languages in Switzerland.

Websites should bear this in mind but at least leave English (as it tends to be a common language for many) when they are localising.

A major pain is EBay that directs Swiss customers to their German website or more subtly Swiss (French speaking) sites that direct their customers to French Websites. I’ll stop there or I’ll start ranting.

Since I was a kid I’ve always been on the lookout for shiny new objects.

When I was a kid it was new Matchbox Cars, or a new Lego Box or some Meccano.

When I was a teenager it had a lot to do with Music, new singles or LP’s. I was thirsty for music and spents hours listening to it.

I continued and indeed still continue with my passion for music of most kinds in my life today.

In addition, however, with the advent of the Internet I am still on the lookout for shinies and it becomes almost unhealthy at times.

I collect sites as I collected music but unlike my music a lot of these sites lose their shine rapidly or are replaced by even shinier ones.

Life was simpler before the Internet. For a fiftysomething geek, if the genre really exists, it can become an ongoing struggle.

I don’t dare expose the number of apps I had when I was using Windows XP and know I am using my iMac (I love my iMac) my applications folder is overflowing with stuff I pick up and in reality use only from time to time.

I can’t afford (or justify using) Photoshop and I try to be ethical so I have Photoshop Elements and Pixelmator and the Gimp and strive to use them properly. I mention these apps because inevitably I tried out Photoshop Express earlier as well.

In every category it’s more or less the same combat.

It would be nice to be able to simulate an application environment by hiding or concealing applications on the fly. That way I could dip into the Lucky Bag (a childhood memory) and draw out a new toy only when I really needed it. I should be able to have categiries of applications such as -Often Used- or -Not yet mastered-. Perhaps in the Apps folder they could be sorted into categories (Graphics, Words, Games, Music etc etc).

Maybe this is possible or partly possible. I haven’t tried working with them yet.

I’ll let you know how I get on. Is this a problem for you?

I was clearing and arranging my desk in a post-Easterish fashion earlier and came across two quotes I’d like to share.

Math is like love - a simple idea, but it can get complicated (R. Drabek)

A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.(Anon)

I might as well go for a strike and add another quote I found while looking for the source of the last one (I didn’t find it).

A programmer is someone who solves a problem you didn’t know you had in a way you don’t understand.

Well Easter came and went, and I’m back at work after a wonderful weekend.

I’m playing around with media servers.

Last week we purchased a PS3 and changed flat screens to a rather nice 40″ Samsung Full HD, and after running around for optical and coax audio cables, I finally have it set up correctly.

One thing that irked me, was that although the TV has an optical out it transpires that this will not relay a 5.1 channel signal and only channels a stereo output. I only found out by testing it myself and asking various vendors. Samsung’s website didn’t help at all and googling it didn’t bring any answers either.

So, coming back to my media server subject, I noticed that the PS3 can connect to UpnP media servers and once I understood that you first have to pick which service you want served on the PS3 (audio, image or video) the PS3 connects nicely.

So I’m trying EyeConnect by Elgato and it’s working well. Soon I will have to pay, once the 30 day tryout expires, but this is generous compared to other “shareware” offerings. More about that later.