Category: Stuff that doesn’t fit

Stuff that doesn’t fit in any category, or leftover posts from the big category revolution of 2009.

Bad Sector in Memory [en]

[fr] Je recherche un billet sur lequel je n'arrive plus à mettre la main, qui disait (ou en tout cas me faisait penser) que le blogueur-consultant qui fait du "consulting gratuit" sur son blog par moment (critiquant tel ou tel service) est en fait en train d'encourager ses clients potentiels à lui donner un mandat avant qu'il ne l'ouvre en public (enfin, si son blog est assez connu), puisque son feedback sera ainsi traité en interne.

Quelqu'un voit lequel c'est?

Maybe you can help me. I read this recently but unfortunately did not file it in either my shared reading items or my del.icio.us links. It was a piece, written by a blogger who is also a consultant (I thought it was Euan or Stowe, but I can’t find the post on either of their blogs)), which basically said that one possible (perverted?) effect of giving “free consulting” on one’s blog (like I’ve done a couple of times) is that if your profile as a blogger is high enough, it could be an incentive for prospective clients to bring you in before you start blogging about their flaws/faults in public.

This was based on the realisation that as a blogger/consultant, one tends to not be so public about stuff the client has to improve, as the input goes to them internally and gets treated there. I’ve clearly noticed that since I’ve been working for coComment.

So, can anybody tell me where I read this? What is my source?

ADSL, bits et bytes [fr]

[en] Don't confuse bits and bytes like me. 1B (Byte) = 8b (bits). A 2000Kb/s DSL connection will only download 250KB/s, and that's normal.

Je viens d’apprendre quelque chose. Je sais que j’ai une ligne ADSL “2000/100”, ce que j’ai toujours traduit dans ma tête comme “Deux Mégas par seconde en download, et 100 K par seconde en upload.”

Que non. Je suis en train de transférer des données de mon serveur en Allemagne sur mon ordinateur. Mon serveur en Allemagne a une grosse bande passante (enfin, relativement: 100Mbits/s). Assez pour saturer une ligne ADSL, en principe. J’étais donc un peu surprise de constater que la vitesse de téléchargement que m’indiquait ma machine tournait autour de 250KB/s. J’ouvre une deuxième connection sur un autre serveur, et la vitesse de la première chute à 130KB/s — la deuxième, je vous le donne en mille, tournant autour des 120KB/s.

Mince, me dis-je. J’ai été trompée sur la marchandise! Eh oui. Je m’attendais en effet à voir un total autour de 2MB/s.

“Encore une victime du marketing,” me dit Patrick, avec qui j’avais partagé mon étonnement.

Une ligne de “2000”, c’est 2000Kbits/s. La taille des fichiers sur mon disque dur, par contre, est mesurée en KBytes. Bits. Bytes. Pas la même unité.

1B (Byte) = 8b (bits) *(pour se souvenir dans quel sens ça va, la grosse unité a droit au B majuscule)

Vous voyez où je veux en venir? On donne les vitesses des connections ADSL en bits, ça fait des nombres plus grands. 🙂 Du coup, cette confusion d’unités peut nous donner l’illusion que nos connections sont beaucoup plus rapides qu’elles ne le sont en réalité.

Donc, 2000Kbits/seconde, cela veut dire en fait environ 250KBytes/seconde (divisé par huit). Il faudra donc 4 secondes pour télécharger un fichier de 1MB (une grande photo par exemple, ou une minute de fichier mp3).

Alors voilà, ma connection ADSL marche très bien, mais elle est huit fois plus lente que ce que j’imaginais!

Beauté fabriquée [fr]

[en] From nature to billboard in 60 seconds. Via danah, who got it from Boing Boing, who got it from Tom Coates. Read danah's post about this video and the ensuing conversation.

Trouvé chez danah, qui l’a vu chez Boing Boing, qui l’ont eux-mêmes trouvé chez Plasticbag. Lien vers la vidéo originale, mais attention, la vidéo originale sur le site de Dove, c’est du Flash qui ne vous demande pas votre avis avant de commencer et qui ne vous permet pas de l’arrêter. C’est court, par contre: une minute environ.

La vidéo nous montre comment on passe d’un modèle (une vraie femme, humaine) à ce qu’on voit sur les grands panneaux publicitaires. En accéléré, un avant-pendant-après incluant maquillage, coiffure, et photoshop. A regarder. A méditer.

Comme danah a mis sur YouTube une version de la vidéo, je mets un lien vers elle ici:

Note: le photomontage semble être de Cory, mais copié chez moi pour éviter le hotlinking. Pas que les requêtes provenant de ce billet fassent une différence face à Boing Boing…

Comme le dit danah: on est conscientes de ne pas en détenir les droits, mais cette vidéo est trop importante culturellement pour que sa diffusion soit handicapée par le choix malheureux de son format initial.

Rob Levin (lilo) of Freenode Just Died [en]

[fr] Rob Levin, fondateur du réseau IRC freenode (plus connu sous son pseudo lilo) est mort des suites d'un accident de la route.

I’ve just received news of Rob Levin’s death (lilo on freenode) when logging on after coming back home from a surprise evening I’ll tell you about later, given the circumstances. Needless to say I’m pretty shaken.

I’d never actually met Rob, of course. But I remember many conversations with him on freenode — about nickname issues, about freenode and the underlying concept of community it was built on, about leaving New Orleans before Katrina arrived. He was somebody I always enjoyed chatting with, and I was always amazed at how he would take time for small issues like my nickname problems. He struck me as nice, patient and understanding for the little I knew him.

As founder of freenode, he was of course an important person to me. Freenode is a place which lies at the center of my online social life. But more than that to me, he was also simply a person I chatted with every now and again and really appreciated. I’m going to miss him.

I’m doing something I usually tell people not to do: publish stuff when emotions are fresh. My excuses therefore, if I sound a bit rambling or whatever — but there’s just no way I can just head for bed right now as I was planning to do when I got home. Hopefully writing this here will help me accept what has happened and feel a little less sick.

Bye, lilo. My thoughts are with your family and friends. You will be very much missed.

Related:

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Annoying NeoOffice Error [en]

[fr] Un problème récurrent avec NeoOffice. Vous connaissez ce message d'erreur?

I’ve been getting this error ever since I moved from my iBook to my MacBook. I’ve erased NeoOffice from my Applications folder and reinstalled it. I know we had this error at school, too. It doesn’t seem to create any problems, but it’s just annoying that the first time in a session I save a file I need to click through this (and the next).

Screenshot of error message.

Welcome to Steph’s Troubleshooting Centre, and thanks for your help!

More Spam? [en]

[fr] Est-ce quelque chose qui ne va pas depuis la mise à jour de WordPress sur CTTS, ou bien est-ce qu'il y a depuis quelques jours une légère recrudescence de spam de commentaires?

I have the impression that since I upgraded, I’ve been getting a little more spam (caught in moderation) than before. (“Before”, being, of course, after Bad Behavior saved this blog’s arse — can’t believe I didn’t blog it!)

Anybody else noting an increase in various flavours of spam these last days?

Slow SSH Login from MacBook [en]

[fr] La connection SSH vers mon serveur depuis mon MacBook est très lente (je dois attendre plusieurs minutes pour qu'il me demande mon mot de passe). Il me semble me souvenir que depuis ma machine Windows à la maison également, il n'y avait rien de cela. L'autre semaine, j'ai essayé de me connecter depuis un tout autre endroit et la réponse a été instantanée. Idées?

Well, it seems that writing about my technical problems here is more efficient than bugging people repeatedly on IRC about them, so let’s continue. Welcome to Bunny’s Troublshooting Centre.

I have trouble SSH’ing into my server from my MacBook. Trouble, here, means I have to wait a couple of minutes (no exaggeration) for the password prompt. If I’m quick enough and type my password in before it times out, I’m in.

I logged in from somewhere else the other week and it responded almost immediately. I don’t recall that logging in from home (same wifi/DSL connection) from my winbox was sluggish.

Any ideas? I’ve run SSH with the verbose option on, and it does throw up a few warnings an errors. I don’t really want to paste it all here, but if you tell me what bits are useful I can put them in a pastebin. Thanks for any ideas/help/assistance.

Commentaires sur 20minutes.ch? [en]

Quand mes mains tombent dessus, je feuillette 20minutes, comme c’était le cas ce matin. Je le préfère à son frère assez jumeau Le Matin Bleu, assez bêtement parce que les gaillards qui l’avaient présenté au Cercle de la Presse m’ont fait bonne impression, et que Le Matin Bleu perd des points à cause des manchettes racoleuses de son grand frère orange. (N’essayez pas de faire l’arbre généalogique, ça va se casser la figure.)

Donc, bref, un peu surprise en allant sur le site de 20minutes (qui lui, au moins, existe), parce qu’il me semblait qu’au départ, on pouvait commenter chacun des articles. Quelqu’un se souvient? Ma mémoire me joue des tours? Si je me souviens juste, quelqu’un sait pourquoi ils ont arrêté, et quand?

En tous cas, commentaire sur l’article Charles Poncet a incité les jeunes au vandalisme. Faute de frappe (d’orthographe?) vers la fin du premier paragraphe: [les propos] tenus part Charles Poncet. J’ai aussi aimé, à la page suivante, dans 20 secondes, la bagarre provoquée par un pneu.

Faites gaffe dans les parkings, les pneus cherchent la bagarre!

Monthly/Weekly Calendar Improved [en]

[fr] Une amélioration du planning que je me suis fabriqué. Les semaines sont verticales (plus logique vu que le temps file verticalement durant un jour). Il y a une version française en PDF.

Screenshot of calendar days. I barely started using the calendar I created for myself that I’ve already made some major interface changes: most significant being that I’ve shifted the weeks from horizontal to vertical view. You still get four months on a single sheet of paper, but you have to hold it the other way.

The reason for this is that time inside a day flows vertically (morning things at the top of the day box, evening things at the bottom). It makes more sense for me to have the next morning straight below the current day’s evening. This means I lose an “at a glance” view of “all my mornings this week” or “all my evenings this week” — but I’m glad to sacrifice that for some temporal continuity, and an easier view of “my next Tuesday afternoons”.

I’ve also revised the six little lines used to fill up the days: two large ones for a.m. and p.m. (marked as such), one fine one for lunch and supper, and another not-so-thick one for evening. On my version of the calendar, I’ve also pre-filled regular weekly commitments (judo, singing, etc). The screenshot shows you what it looks like.

Here is the new version of this calendar (version française). If you want to edit stuff, get the Open Office 2 version.

Bridging the gap between me and orthodox GTD [en]

[fr] Je note ici quelques divergences entre le système d'organisation que j'ai mis en place et ce que recommande directement le livre "Getting Things Done" (comme il ne semble pas qu'il existe en français, j'en parlerai -- peut-être de vive voix -- plus longuement à l'occasion).

(Whatever “orthodox” GTD is, to start with.)

I started to try to hack together some implementation of GTD based on what I had read at 43folders, and, I have to say, I didn’t do too badly. I’ve now received The Book and am starting to read it. Of course, there were some missing elements I’m now understanding, and I’m preparing to set aside enough time to start implementing a good system for myself. Roughly 2 days work to gather and process all the “open loops” in my life — most people I talk to tell me they would have expected more time was required, but I still think it’s a lot of time when I look at my overbooked calendar. Still, I’m really looking forward to doing it, and I already know it will be worth it.

For the moment, I’ve noted the my filing system isn’t really DA’s-GTD-compatible: I use 26 hanging folders, and stick translucid folders (labeled! I got that bit right! love using my labeler, in fact!) under the right letter. But I’m already noticing that letter C is bulging (don’t ask me, but clients as well as administrivia tend to collect under the letter C). I’m not going to get a hanging folder for each file (way too expensive), and even the cardboard (manila-type) folders we can get here don’t really come cheap. The transparent plastic ones are really nice, but I’m not sure they’d stand up on their own.

In addition to that, the box I’m storing them is a bit deep, and I had to line the bottom with the lid of another box to have the daily folders of my tickler file stand upright at the right place. I’m not quite sure which solution I’ll come up with. How much do manila folders (A4 size) cost, and can I order them online without the shipping fees killing me?

Another huge gap I’ve noted is that I store the tickler and A-Z reference in the same box. That’s not going to be enough space for very long, so I’ll have to go and buy other boxes to store on/under the desk.

Also, I’ve been noting “action items” on small index cards (A8), and DA suggests using a whole sheet of paper per item. I’m looking forward to reading through chapter 7 to understand where that comes in handy. I’m also looking forward to figuring out good lists to use, and of course, going through the initial collecting phase (though I’m a bit frightened I might end up putting my whole flat in the inbox).

Will keep you posted.