Archive for September, 2006

For a very long time, one of the greatest hits of search engines sending visitors to Roumazeilles.net has been “free download word”. Now, we are nearly in position to offer another advice than the usual Go download OpenOffice.

I still consider OpenOffice as the best replacement for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but new opportunities are appearing. First, Google announced the availability of Google Spreadsheets and Writely. While still in beta stage, these applications are downloaded on the run from the web freely and will be supported by advertisment in the application as soon as the beta-stage is off.

Feeling the heat of the competition no doubt, Microsoft revealed that it was considering seriously the possibility of putting Works (too often not considered by buyers of MS-Office) on the list of freely (and legally) available application. They would use the same business model of including ad banners in the application itself.

For the moment, it is difficult to assume the success of such a strategy. Google is offering a very simplified product (Writely does not include in its free word processor important goodies such as mail merge or WordArt; And Google Spreadsheets still does not have the ability to create graphics) and Microsoft is probably just trying to kick Google while it’s still young with Works which has always been their cheap solution to counter the arguments against Word and Excel.

Furthermore, it is not decided yet if you - the user - will accept the presence of advertisment inside the application. I know that the Opera web browser has long been ads-supported (I did not really mind the presence of the banner at the top of the browser window), but the arrival of ad-free Mozilla Firefox forced them to remove completely this feature. So, advertisment may stay as a temporary option in the strategy of a software developer and basing all your business model on that may be very difficult and dangerous.

So, for the time being and probably for the near future too, this is still Go download OpenOffice (remember that it is also available freely for Mac OS X (under X11)).

For a few months already, we had dual-core CPUs. Try forecasting the next marketing step for Intel and AMD. Any idea? Right! They are rushing to prepare CPUs hosting four cores in the same package (usually dubbed QuadCore). AMD goes to a solution on its socket F: Three versions clocked at 2.6GHz, 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz. Intel promissed (not exactly, but not too far from it) its QuadCore Core 2 Extreme before the end of the year.

In both cases, we will start to see prices exactly adjusted to push your eyes out of your orbits and to pull the banknotes out of your wallet.

You were wondering how much it could cost you to rent a business jet for your next private trip. Just go to http://www.avion-affaires.com/. They present you the opportunity to request an online quote.

You’ll see! This is no so expensive (!) after all: I believe that I did not find anything under  10,000 euros for a roudn trip in Europe.

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image. Maybe you thought this deer was belling in rut; But no! He’s just bored to death during a photo session near the park border and he’s merely yawning.

Some of you may have noticed the lack of updates in the recent days. Apart from some personal unforecasted obligations I had to serve, it comes from a heavily occupied weekend: I had the possibility to do a two-day photo session in the Rambouillet forest, organized by the ASCPF 50km South of Paris.

In the middle of the rutting season for deers, it seemed a good idea to go hunting with people used to this kind of hobby and to take advantage of excellent conditions. The photo session is organized by the Association Sportive de Chasse Photographique Française to initiat some people to the association and the art of photo hunting with big tele-lenses. For a mere 50€ (covering 2 days), a complete newby like me is guided in a 180ha park (the Espace Rambouillet, managed by the French Office National des Forêts) where we can find boars, deers, roe-deers and fallow-deers roaming freely but slightly less afraid of man than in the open forest (Despite that, there is strictly no chance to reach and touch the animals; This is not even a zoo).

This is indeed an engrossing experience for a photographer interested in animal life. The advice provided by Guy Mallet and Daniel Trinquecostes are precise, concise and to-the-point, for hardware as much as for hunting techniques. But this is not a class course about photo hunting; It is mostly oriented toward practical application (and they can be long for a city dweller with few sports habits like me who is not used to slow walking in the woods and in wet pits during hours). And nature photographers are nice people indeed. We knew that most photographers like to share their passion; This even more visible in this context.

Click on the thumbnail to enlarge it.

All in all, these two day produced a few dozen images. The camera is not stressed, the flash memory cards are not flooded (with data), but some good snapshots can be collected if you apply a few basic rules:

• No need to rush and press the trigger from afar; Be patient.
• A good telelens is required: A 300mm on a digital camera or a 400mm on an analog camera seems to be the bare minimum to reach if you want to grab a few good images.
• Light is missing in the forest and under vegetal cover, all means to compensate this issue are welcome: stabilized lens or camera sensor, tripod (or - even better I think - a monopod), large aperture lens (my clear Minolta APO 300mm f/4 was most welcome and much more confortable than the Sigma 400mm f/5.6). And, when time comes to press the trigger, hold your breath for half a second.
• Camouflage and smooth quietness are needed. I don’t believe that the camouflage nets and similar green-looking garments are not absolutely necessary, but white, and bright and light colours are the first major error (you quickly learn why so many seasoned wildlife photographers use gaffer tape and sock-like to cover the tube of white or pale grey lenses).

Now, I let you look at the other images I could produce. (more…)

Lithium-Ion batteries from Sony are currently in the eye of a major communication tornado. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong. We had heard of the exploding DELL portable PCs; This was followed by a major recall of batteries. Then, we heard that the Apple iBooks were also subject to the same: explosions and recall. Today, this is Toshiba who’s heard annoncing a giant recall of 340,000 batteries manufactured by Sony.

I would forecast that, one after the other, it’s all of a family of Sony Lithium-Ion batteries that will return to Japan before the end of the year. And, in the mean time, we start hearing that commercial airlines start refusing cabin travel for some batteries. Korean, then Virgin Atlantic, announced indeed that portable PCs branded Dell and Apple will no longer be allowed in the passenger cabin if they contain their batteries (the ugly, heavy, dangerous little black block will have to travel as checked-in baggage in -relatively safe - storage. Most corporate managers will now have a hard time playing Solitaire or MineSweeper in the plane).

The marketing company e360insight sued SpamHaus for wrongly listing it as a spammer. But we just heard that SpamHaus lost and will have to pay a record 12 million dollars fine.

Pentax finally let everything loose about its new high-end Digital SLR camera, the K10D. Summed up, the beast has enough to fight directly the Nikon D200, the Canon 40D and other Sigma SD14 or Sony Alpha A100 (the latter being somewhat left behind, but it is widely available since last July).

Of course, it got a 10 mega-pixel-paint job, but - more importantly - if receives a powerful 22-bit A/D conversion chip that would announce exceptional Raw image quality output from the CCD sensor (let’s wait for the tests, but it should be impressive). We also are eagerly waiting for the results of the quality evaluation tests at the highest sensitivity (the K10D sports no less than 3200ISO!). The ever-needed image stabilisation system is included in the camera body (as already seen in the K100D) to bring from 2 to 4 stops of margin (here go the blurred images!); And the CCD sensor is cleaned by shaking it regularly.

However, the most interesting part (comparatively) seems to be the mechanical quality: Pentax annonces protection against water that could go from droplets to splash. Very nice indeed for pro-users and those who like to be able to bring their camera everywhere (dust and rain are welcome!).

Last but not least, the back screen is a 2.5″ LCD with a very large viewing angle, but this is becoming more common nowadays. Nonetheless, some will be surprised to find SD memory cards on a high-end camera while most high-end users are still thinking “Compact Flash” for all their memory storage.

All in all, a very good camera indeed that will feed the competition race starting at the Photokina fair and rushing for the end-of-year buying spree.

Sometimes, I like to browse what is appearing in the ads. Today, I noticed that the announcement of the new Digital SLR from Canon, the 40D replacement for the 20D/30D line, is driving prices down for the 30D.

If you want a good price, you can check by yourself, but I found the following offers for the Canon 30D:

• Royal Camera 579$
• CCI Camera city 575$
• Genius Cameras 575$

Posts about EOS 40D: EOS 40D initial scoop All of them

I cannot recommend specifically those US companies, but they seem to be known locally and they claim to have the camera in-stock. It looks like a sign of times: People are emptying the stocks of Canon 30D by crushing the prices.

Time to bargain-shop if you don’t need 10 mega-pixels? Or should you still wait for the next generation (maybe forever)?

It is said to be a good idea for any web site to use geolocalisation services. So, I added the little map you can find at the bottom right of the pages of this site (since today). It shows a map of Paris around our location.

What do you feel about this? A good idea? A bad idea? It’s your call.

I guess that such a title had you think that you would find the address of a pirate web site. But Universal announced the signature of a two-year deal with SpiralFrog : all the Universal catalog in free legal download. Two things are included in the deal (to explain it): The whole thing will be financed by advertisment (You can think that there may be a lot of it) ; Music titles will be protected by the Microsoft DRM solution (It’s worth noting that a few weeks ago a hacker announced a full crack to this; Up to now, it was merely a technical news flash).

Source: IT-wire.

My method is quite simple. So simple that, when my phone rings to ask if I’m the owner of my house or if I heard about the new regulation allowed by the IRS or related to my bank account, it can always be applied.

I quickly ask to be excused : ” Please, can you wait for a second? I won’t be long “.

Then, I just have to drop the phone on the table. It’s not too hard on my energy and it’s up to the friendly telemarketer to decide when he/she wants to stop talking to the kitchen table.

Ain’t it easy? Have you a better one?

If you are like me, organizing your CSS code is as difficult as understanding it. The Blog Herald has one neat post with tips about organizing and writing your CSS. I don’t know if it is perfect, but it already looks quite good.