Photos From the Mountains [en]

[fr] Quelques photos de mes vacances au chalet.

As you know if you read my latest posts (I’m going on a link strike, be warned, so it’s up to you to dig), I was up in the mountains for nearly a week, staying at my chalet with a friend.

And I took photos.

I’d been on a photo strike for ages, and I rediscovered how much I liked taking photos, and even sorting them 🙂

Here are the albums of my days in Gryon:

Feel free to tag my photos, add notes, or add questions. I know most of the places and mountains photographed, but it’s easier to add information as it’s asked for!

My sets and collections are somewhat out of control, of course, but there is some underlying layer or organization. Maybe ten years from now I’ll go through with my project to select photos for a book or an exhibition (maybe you can help me: tags forbook and forexpo — doesn’t hurt to try).

If you’re using Firefox, you might want to download and install the PicLens plugin.

Here are some random photos that I like.

Chalet and Surroundings 55

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 94

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 16

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 35

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 77

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 27

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 50

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 59

Day 1, Croix des Chaux - Taveyanne - Villars 080

Day 1, Croix des Chaux - Taveyanne - Villars 047

Day 1, Croix des Chaux - Taveyanne - Villars 049

Day 1, Croix des Chaux - Taveyanne - Villars 030

Day 1, Croix des Chaux - Taveyanne - Villars 026

Day 3, Bretaye - Col de la Croix - Gryon 23

Day 4, Solalex - Anzeinde - Pas de Cheville - Anzeinde 26

Chalet and Surroundings 12

Chalet and Surroundings 29

Chalet and Surroundings 42

Chalet and Surroundings 37

Chalet and Surroundings 65

Chalet and Surroundings 52

Chalet and Surroundings 79

Chalet and Surroundings 10

Chalet and Surroundings 66

Chalet and Surroundings 62: Steph and Bagha

I’m looking forward to my next holiday!

A Day at the Frankfurter Buchmesse [en]

[fr] Etat des lieux sur mes recherches de fonds et exploration du monde de l'édition pour mon livre sur les ados et internet. Envies de publier (via internet) des livres avec mes photos, aussi.

A month or two ago, I was chatting about my book project and decision to find funding to Joi. He suggested that a trip to the Frankfurt book fair might be useful.

First on, the Messe is just huge. I spent a morning there and just walked, and walked, and walked. Overall, I found my visit rather disappointing, though I did learn some useful things (though they weren’t exactly what I wanted to hear). Here’s the information I gathered, from a visit to the Swiss booth and discussions with a few people.

  • I have a list of Swiss (French-speaking) publishers, and a shortlist of 4-5 who could be suitable for my project.
  • Publishers, distributors, and bookstores are all part of the same organisation (in CH).
  • The market is saturated, publishers are swamped with manuscripts, and it’s even worse in France than Switzerland (so, I should stick with local publishers — the fact I’m already recognised as a local authority also pushes in that direction).
  • I can forget about a deal with an advance, so I need to look at other sources to finance the writing part (Loterie Romande, educational associations, foundations… I’ll hunt around a bit to compile a list.)
  • Swiss publishers don’t like agents, and having one might make it even more difficult for me to find a publisher.
  • The publisher deals with the printing guys to get the book published, and deals with the distribution guys to get it distributed. Hunter, a seasoned bookwriter, tells me that unless I’m getting a huge advance, having a publisher is not worth it — I can deal with printers and distributors myself. Will just have to check if this is a viable approach in the Swiss market.
  • The publisher is precious for the editing process, because he knows what is good and what is not, the head of this Swiss association tells me. Hunter, on the contrary, tells me this mostly gets in the way. A good editor can be precious but chances are I won’t be getting one.
  • If I go the self-publishing way (offline), then I’ll need funding for the printing, which could be a problem.
  • One option, which Joi suggests and I’d been getting at, is to start off by online-self-publishing (Lulu, Blurb, or another), and once there is enough buzz, sales, reviews, etc, approaching publishers.
  • I really need to work on a proper proposal, and I have a better understanding of what such a proposal needs to look like. I got some advice from talking with a publisher over dinner (thanks again!) and Chris Webb left me a pointer to his interesting series on book proposals in the comments to my previous post. From what I gather, the more there is in the proposal, the better.

So, where do I go from now?

  • Write a proper proposal in French (as the book will be in French). This obviously needs to be broken down into manageable pieces (GTD-style), and I realise that the big nasty bit for me is the outline. I have tons of ideas of stuff that I want to put in the book, but I’m not sure how to organise it all yet. I’ve been mind-mapping, but it’s a bit overwhelming and messy. So I’ll start by writing all the rest (the easy bits).
  • Write a project funding proposal which will probably not be as detailed as the one for the publisher.
  • Ask around for leads to getting funding, compile a list, send out funding requests with proposal.
  • Send the proposal to the 4-5 publishers on the list, once it’s done.

Language? Isn’t it kind of weird I’m speaking about this in English? On the other hand, I don’t want to “cut out” my English network by blogging exclusively in French about this book project.

All this thinking about self-publishing has given me the desire to put together one or more photo books. I’ve barely been printing since I went digital, and it’s nice to have photos in physical form too, as Moo‘s success demonstrates. My friend Andrea Lindenberg has put together a collection of her best riding show photographs — if you like horses, you should definitely check it out. She’s very talented.

My Flickr photo collection is approaching 10’000 photos. So, again, the inevitable choice problem. I’ll certainly make a book of my best Indian photos at some point (most of them aren’t on Flickr but are either slides (first trip), negatives (second trip), or digital-dumped-in-directories (third trip). I have a set called My Favourites, but it’s very out-of-date and doesn’t contain any recent photos. I can probably dig out the photos I use for Moo cards or stickers and add them, though.

Any opinions? If you see any photos of mine that you think deserve ending up in the (a) photo book, don’t hesitate to tag them “forthebook”. Thanks!

I Photowalked on Haight Street [en]

[fr] Je suis allée faire un "photowalk", c'est-à-dire une promenade-réunion dont l'objectif est de se balader en prenant des photos. Voici quelques photos que j'ai prises et que j'aime bien. Je crois qu'il faut qu'on organise quelque chose de similaire à Lausanne. Qui est partant?

Friday evening I met up with a bunch of people to go photowalking in Haight Street. A photowalk is simply an occasion to stroll around and take photos in the company of other nice people. I think we need to start organizing things like this in Lausanne — anybody interested?

Here are some of the photos I took.

Photowalking 11 in Haight 80

Photowalking 11 in Haight 77

Photowalking 11 in Haight 63

Photowalking 11 in Haight 46

Photowalking 11 in Haight 61

Photowalking 11 in Haight 34

Photowalking 11 in Haight 22

Photowalking 11 in Haight 8

Photowalking 11 in Haight 43

Photowalking 11 in Haight 10

Photowalking 11 in Haight 17

Photowalking 11 in Haight 87

Photowalking 11 in Haight 91

Search for photos from this photowalk on Flickr and on Zooomr.

I might add links to other participants’ sets/photos/blogs later, if I have the courage.

Taking Photos at Supernova [en]

[fr] Je suis toujours à la conférence Supernova, où je prends des photos plutôt que des notes (vu l'état).

I’m still at Supernova (gosh, third day!), feeling a lot more human now but still taking more photos than notes. I’m sitting in the second row now, so we’ll see. I might take notes. Do check out my photos, though — as for Reboot, I’ve organised them into sub-sets and one general, recapitulative set which contains all the photographs. Here are the sub-sets so far:

Supernova Open Space 7
Supernova 2007 Open Space

Supernova Twit Jaiku Party 1
Jaiku/Twit Party

Supernova Cupcake Party 52
Cupcake Party

Supernova Cupcake Party 29
Just the cupcakes…

Supernova First Day 1
Supernova, First Day (today!)

Update, Friday 21st

Please add tags as you look through them (particularly names of people, I really don’t know everyone!) and if you take photos of Supernova, consider opening up tagging to the whole Flickr community.

San Francisco Skyscraper Party 62
Reception in a skyscraper, with a view you shouldn’t miss!

San Francisco Skyscraper View 44

First US Photos [en]

[fr] Les premières photos de mon séjour aux USA.

My first photos are online. Didn’t take many in Portland, but I got a few shots of a gorgeous sunrise over San Francisco earlier this morning.

San Francisco 8

In Lisbon! [en]

[fr] Bien arrivée à Lisbonne.

Safely arrived in Lisbon. CouchSurfing rules. Photos on Flickr.

Lisbon by Night 02 Lisbon by Night 04
Lisbon by Night 11
Lisbon by Night 20 Lisbon by Night 17
Lisbon by Night 41 Lisbon by Night 37

Surprise Meet-Up Last Night [en]

[fr] Une rencontre totalement imprévue avec un pote d'IRC qui était à Lausanne pour la semaine. Je l'ai appris par hasard la veille de son départ -- du coup, on est allés faire un tour en ville!

So, last night, before the sad news hit me, I was just hanging out online while digging through the bottom of my GTD inbox when I was drawn into #swhack by a highlight. (If you don’t live on IRC, you probably don’t understand what I’m talking about — don’t fret.) Usually, highlights in #swhack mean the bots are getting chatty, but anyway, I peeked in. An irrelevant mention of Bugs Bunny (now you can guess what I highlight on) was all it was, but as the channel seemed alive for once, I stayed to exchange a few words with those who were there.

The conversation topic quickly drifted to Switzerland, and for some reason I didn’t quite grasp straight away, people were suddenly very interested in the fact that I was in Switzerland, and, more than that, in Lausanne.

A few lines later the penny dropped, and I realised that crschmidt was chatting with me through the free wifi provided by my hometown! He had been here all week for the FOSS4G conference. He works for MetaCarta, who were sending him there.

Half an hour and a park name confusion (my mistake) later, we were meeting up in Parc Montbenon. We went out for a drink, a stroll in the Roman ruins and a short photo session by the lake. We talked about History classes in Switzerland and the States, looked at satellite maps of Lausanne (blurry) and Geneva (I got to see the building the coComment offices are in!), and all sorts of other things that add up to enjoyable conversation without having to be blog material.

Before I knew it we had chatted away until past 1am and my tiredness reminded me that I had planned to go to bed early. But nevermind! It was worth it, nice to be able to meet Chris before he left this morning. Hope you had a safe trip home!

Chris and Steph in Vidy
Proof of meet-up!

OĂą sont les correcteurs? [fr]

[en] Typo. And an article on why it's stupid to try and solve the "dog bite" problems by outlawing certain breeds and making dogs wear muzzles in parks.

RĂ©ponse: y sont partis! C’est le correcteur orthographique de MS Word qui fait le boulot, maintenant.

Lausanne-Cités 13-14.09.2006

A part ça, Ă  lire dans le mĂŞme canard, un article tout Ă  fait pertinent sur la problĂ©matique des ‘chiens dangereux’.

Bloggy Friday: quel succès! [fr]

[en] Bloggy Friday meet-up last night in Lausanne was a success!

Pas moins de douze blogueurs (plus deux non-blogueuses!) hier soir au CafĂ© de l’EvĂŞchĂ©: les inscrits (mĂŞme les pas sĂ»rs) et deux invitĂ©s surprise!

Voici les trois photos que j’ai de la soirĂ©e (voyez, je fais des progrès en matière de non-mitraillage). Cliquez sur les photos pour voir commentaires et explications.

Bloggy Friday en direct!
Petite soeur
Bloggy Friday

Nokia 6280 compatible Mac :-) [fr]

[en] Nokia 6280 seems nicely compatible with OSX.

Faut que je passe annoncer la bonne nouvelle Ă  MobileZone: mon nouveau tĂ©lĂ©phone (Nokia 6280) paraĂ®t joliment compatible Apple. Je dĂ©couvre les joies de la synchronisation sous OSX avec mon MacBook: il faut brancher le câble (j’ai aussi reliĂ© les deux par Bluetooth, pas certaine que ce soit nĂ©cessaire), et sur le tĂ©lĂ©phone, choisir mode de connection par dĂ©faut pour le câble USB.

On peut ensuite synchroniser contacts (depuis Address Book) et calendrier (iCal).

Concernant le calendrier, j’utilise Google Calendar depuis un moment. C’est joli et on peut y accĂ©der de partout Ă  condition qu’il y ait un ordinateur connectĂ© Ă  internet Ă  disposition. L’idĂ©al serait de pouvoir synchroniser mon tĂ©lĂ©phone avec gCal, mais ce n’est pas encore vraiment possible (quoique… quelqu’un a le courage de tester GCalSync?). Voici comment je m’en sors:

  • je m’abonne dans iCal Ă  mes calendriers Google (en read-only)
  • j’ai un troisième calendrier dans iCal que j’appelle “Phone”
  • dans les rĂ©glages de synchronisation, j’importe les Ă©vĂ©nements créés avec le tĂ©lĂ©phone dans ce calendrier
  • de temps en temps, je l’exporte d’iCal, l’importe dans gCal, et transfère les Ă©vĂ©nements sur les bons calendriers gCal (avant de vider le calendrier “Phone” dans iCal. A la synchronisation suivante, tout rentre dans l’ordre.

En choisissant le mode “Stockage de donnĂ©es”, on peut voir dans Finder le contenu de la carte Mini-SD. Du coup, voici la première photo publiĂ©e avec cet appareil:

Desktop

Si vous allez voir la version originale de la photo, vous verrez que les bords sont un peu imprĂ©cis. Trop de compression ou bien (gasp!) zoom numĂ©rique Ă  l’insu de mon plein grĂ©?

PS: si vous n’avez pas encore de compte Flickr, c’est le moment de vous en faire un. C’est gratuit.