François Guillier's Blog

ça y est ! Après pas loin de 3 ans (puisque nous avions ouvert "une caisse" pour les sports d'hiver), nous sommes allés skier.

N'y connaissant rien et ne sachant par où commencer, nous sommes partis en TGV jusqu'à Genève et avons utilisé les services de Ski Morzine. C'est très bien organisé, tout est prévu mais c'est malheureusement pas donné. En plus, ça a un côté assez marrant de se retrouver entouré d'anglais (managers, employés et vacanciers) alors qu'on est dans les Alpes.

Mention spéciale à notre moniteur de l'Ecole de Ski Français avec qui nous avons fait énormément de progrès en quelques heures de cours particuliers (OK moi partant de zéro, je ne pouvais que progresser ! ). On a même eu le droit à des démonstrations du ski à travers les âges (voir vidéos).

Je viens de mettre des photos et vidéos en ligne.

We obviously knew about the famous Velib' scheme (for the ones who don't know, it is a Self Service bike hire system available 24/7 with a pick up/drop off location every 300 metres or so) but haven't had a chance to try it.

Since the weather was very nice and we wanted to visit the tower of "John-Without-Fear" [Tour Jean sans Peur] not too far from where we live, it was a very good opportunity to test the Velib'.

In theory, this is an excellent idea... in practice, all is not perfect...

Our biggest grudge is certainly the fact it is very, very hard to find a bike in working order... Almost all the ones not in use have a (usually small but impeding) problem. If there are two (or more) of you, by the time everybody has found a good bike, you have probably lost 5 minutes of your 30-minute allowance.
Problems are usually flat tyres, saddle clamps, chains/pedals. In short the usual problems with a bike but I can't believe there are so many broken bikes!

We figured out that the best way to have a good bike, is to use the one just dropped off by someone else. If a bike is in its rack, it is probably because it doesn't work (well) :-(

One thing: Why don't the hooks have 2 additional buttons: one green to say the bike is fine, one red to notify a problem. When you bring your bike back, you could have 10-15 seconds to "vote". Then if a bike receives more than a couple of red votes, it is locked and the problem is notified automatically to the HQ! (apparently in Lyon there is a notification system but I don't know how it works).

The second problem is that the streets of Paris can be very complicated. This applies to drivers as well I suppose (but I try to avoid this kind of exercise if I can!). There are countless streets/junctions where you ride on the left hand side of the road! This should not be complicated when you have spent years in the UK but actually it is; you end-up not knowing what to do to stay safe. Also most of bus lanes are open for bicycles but these lanes can be in the middle of the road or on the left and not always on the right hand side. And taxi drivers are allowed in them so you hardly have less traffic than on the main road! I think it is just a question of getting used to it. Cycling routes are signposted and have loads of markings on the ground so at least someone made the effort to provide an infrastructure.

Conclusion for this first attempt: Good but quite hair-raising!

Some info about my new job... not that I intend to make it a regular feature (and I certainly don't intend to get ''dooced''!!!) but just in case some of my most faithful readers are interested...

Well... after receiving several offers, I went for the one with... the lowest pay! (not quite... but not far). Basically, it also was the one I preferred and also one of the safest for my CV. In France (at least in Paris), it seems that you have to be very careful with this :-( (Sad but true... I'll write another time about this subject).

After spending years being basically my own boss when it came to pure technical matters, I am now starting a new life as a cog in the machine. This not entirely involuntary... I was a bit curious of working with bigger teams and having to reach a bit of uniformity across the board.

I already noticed that scaling operations is certainly not good for speed: And the reason is simple enough: If you are alone, once you decided what to do you just have to [find the time to ] do it. When you involve 3,4,5 people or more, by the time the idea is understood by all (which can be hard with non-technical managers), validated and dispatched to the person in charge... it will take age and you'll have to wait! But there is a bright side with this system... you are not responsible for everything and this can be far less stressful (ore far more is someone is blocking your urgent task). You just have to be Zen and see! ;-)

On the technical side, well... I have to say... I am still to see at least one server room (I know there are 4 of them across the country). I know how a server room looks like and I am not sure I would be thrilled like I would have been a couple of years ago but currently, the hundreds of servers I can log on seem a tad virtual! (Yes a good part of them are virtual indeed but this is another story). Some of my former colleagues might laugh, if they read me, as the majority of Linux servers are Debian based (grin). Actually version 4.0 seems OK (so far). For hosting (and since it's the core business of the company), it's a split between PHP and Apache Tomcat. Databases are MySQL. They have very heavy weight configuration (with replication, firewalls, VLANs, etc...), loads of scripts and automatic systems for almost everything (installing images, set-up application, all the monitoring) so in theory all the job could done in one click... Obviously, we are talking about computing and I already had to do some DIYs by issuing some UPDATE/INSERT/SELECT on a mysql database. Job would be boring if everything was working! ;-)

My office is at the 14th floor of the Tour Montparnasse although we will move away soon (thank goodness I'm not the person in charge this year! :-) ) to the centre of Paris because the tower is being stripped of its asbestos. In métro, it takes just 30 minutes door to door from our (temporary) accommodation so nothing to complain about. When I think that some recruiters wanted to send me miles outside Paris!

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/

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...