François Guillier's Blog

Publicité pour la semaine anglaise sur Canal + trouvée dans le télérama de cette semaine :

The concept was imported into the UK by 2 people who discovered the activity whilst on holiday in France. It seems that Go Ape has been a great success and is now developing at a fast pace on this side of the Channel.

My wife (fiancée at the time) having tested it during The Day I wasn't allowed to gate-crash, organised a trip to Thetford Forest along with colleagues and friends.

Despite my initial fears about the vertigo issue, this problem proved to be unfounded and I have to say I really enjoyed myself. It was actually more technical than I expected (you go quite high and you really don't want to mess-up too much with your carabiners!) but you soon get used to the double "attach-detach" sequence. Was it because of the "made in France" on the pulleys? But even on the highest points, I felt safe and confident.

It would have been a shame not to do it! :-)

Photos and videos: http://www.guillier.org/parties/20071021/

Je viens de mettre quelques photos en ligne de notre petit voyage dans le Nord-Est de l'Angleterre :

http://www.guillier.org/travels/200708-01/

Jeudi soir, nous sommes restés à Ripon dans le B&B déjà testé il y a 2 ans.

Vendredi matin, visite de Ripon (en particulier sa cathédrale) puis direction Durham. Jane qui a été étudiante là-bas a peu à peu retrouvé ses marques même si des choses ont changé depuis.

Nous avons dormi dans son "College", dans une chambre voisine de celle qu'elle a occupée il y a 7 ou 8 ans (mais j'ai vérifié, il n'y a pas (encore) de plaque avec son nom! ;-) ).

Samedi, visite du Prieuré/Château de Tynemouth (NE de Newcastle) puis du site de Corbridge. Plus tard dans la journée, l'abbaye d'Hexham dont la crypte (datant de l'église primitive) est composée de pierres récupérées à Corbridge.

Dimanche, visite du site de Vindolanda puis du musée de l'armée romaine (en particulier son film reconstituant le mur et les forts en 3D).

Arrêt du coté de Steel Rigg: Enfin un bout du mur! On commençait à désespérer ! ;-)

Et pour finir la journée, visite de Housesteads, un fort construit directement le long du mur (alors qu'en général, ils étaient à quelques kms).

Lundi, retour sur Cambridge avec 2 arrêts : D'abord à Richmond pour voir le château puis à Southwell, pour visiter "The Workhouse", une maison inventée à l'époque victorienne pour "accueillir" les pauvres et les infirmes. ça avait des airs de bagne !

Software Problems with Girlfriend 1.0

Several years ago I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from Drinking Mates 4.2, which I'd used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution for system stability was to try to run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off.

To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is also incompatible with several other of my favourite applications, such as Lads' Night Out 3.1 and Geeking 6.1. I tried a temporary uninstall of all Girlfriend utilities to test the capability (on the advice of a friend) of a popular shareware beta-program, Party Girl 2.1 - which though highly functional, had many bugs.

Eventually I tried to run Girlfriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover terrifying system conflict when these two systems detected each other, resulting in severe damage being caused to all my hardware. Sensing a way out, I got an expensive diamondware patch to upgrade one of the conflicting applications to Fiancee 1.0, only to discover that this product has to be soon further upgraded to Wife 1.0....

Maybe one day I'll give more details...