Great Indian Food in Leeds [en]

[fr] Maliks Restaurant est un excellent endroit où manger de la nourriture indienne à Leeds.

Besides telling you about an excellent place to eat Indian food in Leeds, let me try my hand at using the hReview plugin.

ew, it breaks. Maybe it doens’t like Markdown? help?

Maliks Restaurant


11 Merrion Way,
Leeds,
LS28BT,

+44-1132-246-8828

place

Best Indian food I’ve eaten since India!

Maliks outside

I went to Leeds Market this morning with my Dad, and we had decided to go and eat some Indian food. The places he remembered were (un)fortunately all closed, and we ended up having a meal at Maliks, just behind Merrion Centre.

Well, let me tell you — this is the best Indian food I’ve eaten since I came back from India! We chose the lunchtime buffet, a real deal at £6.95: two delicious starters (fish and tandoori chicken wings, really yummy), vegetables and two choices of meat which actually tasted like they’d been cooked in India. I ordered a naan to eat my meat with (extra but really worth it), and I wasn’t disappointed: huge and fluffy.

Maliks first floor 1

There were two choices of dessert included in the buffet: Rasmalai (perfect, not chewy at all) and rose-flavoured rice pudding.

Unlike most Indian restaurants which tend to be a bit dark and stuffy, the inside is modern and well-lit. It’s a nice change. I mean, “exotic Indian” interiors are nice the first few times you go and eat Indian food, but one can get fed up of them.

We talked a bit with the owner at the end of the meal. He told us they’d only just opened. I asked him if I could take a photo with him on it for my review. He also showed us upstairs — there’s a huge room there if you’re thinking “reception”.

More photos:

Maliks Restaurant in Leeds: here it is! Maliks Restaurant in Leeds: upper room Maliks Restaurant in Leeds: location

My rating: 5.0 stars
*****

Hairy .htaccess Dreamhost WordPress Problem [en]

[fr] Un des derniers problèmes qui me résistent sur le nouveau serveur.

Here’s roughly what I wrote in a support ticket I sent Dreamhost this morning. If you have any suggestions, I’ll take them.

> Hello,

> I have a site http://cafecafe.ch on which I have installed wordpress
(http://cafecafe.ch/wp/ -> displays as http://cafecafe.ch/blog with
Filosofo Homepage-Control plugin).

> That server has a subdirectory http://cafecafe.ch/membres/ which is
password-protected using .htaccess. Inside is another wordpress
install http://cafecafe.ch/membres/wp.

> I had this set up on my previous host and it worked fine.

> Now, if I go to http://cafecafe.ch/membres/ the request is caught be
the blog installed in http://cafecafe.ch/wp/, and I’m shown the page
http://cafecafe.ch/blog/.

> To make sure it wasn’t a conflict between the two wordpress installs,
I created an empty directory http://cafecafe.ch/test/ which I tried to
password-protect in the same way. The problem is the same (going to
http://cafecafe.ch/test/ displays http://cafecafe.ch/blog). If I
comment out the “request valid-user” line of the .htaccess, I get to
see the directory listing.

> Similarly, if I come back to http://cafecafe.ch/membres and comment
out that line in .htaccess, both wordpress installs work fine, with
permalinks and all (only the private blog isn’t protected anymore,
which won’t do it).

> I’ve tried not doing the password protection manually, and using what
is provided in the panel for that, but the problem remains exactly the
same.

> Weird, isn’t it?

> Hope you can help me out on this. Tried checking error logs but they
were empty.

Arrived in the UK [en]

[fr] En Angleterre. Contente de voir que ça se calme un peu côté SarkoWeb3, et que je vois maintenant surtout des billets constructifs.

Just a note to say I’m safe and sound in the UK. I’m going through the latest on LeWeb3 and I’m really glad to see the mob has somewhat calmed down and I’m starting to see some very constructive posts popping up. I’m sticking stuff in del.icio.us as fast as Flock can synchronize my favorites.

I’ll write more on my views about the whole mess in the coming days. For the moment I’m recovering from too many weeks of madness.

Le Web 3: Recap [en]

[fr] Résumé (sans les liens, cliquez dans le corps du billet):

Positif: atmosphère et gens sympas, bon réseautage, excellente nourriture, voir des anciens amis et en faire de nouveaux, Hans Rosling (et danah bien sûr), bon choix du lieu de conférence, en-cas dans le hall, et un compliment concernant ma brève prestation sur scène.

Négatif: mauvais wifi, fête trop bruyante, récupération politique (même si je pense que Loïc pèche plus par excès d'enthousiasme pas toujours bien placé, et par manque de "sensibilité clients", comme lors de l'épisode Ublog), niveau un peu "grand public" des présentations, pas de fête de clôture.

En somme, contente d'être venue malgré les déceptions, mais pas certaine que je remettrai ça la prochaine fois.

Right, in telegraphic style, here’s a wrap-up of how my LeWeb3 went.

Positive: overall nice atmosphere and people, good networking, excellent food, saw old friends again and made new ones, was blown away (like many others) by Hans Rosling’s presentation (both by the numbers he gave and the software. I liked the venue, thought the sizing was right (small enough to encourage people to communicate, without being cramped). Break food/drinks were nice (even if there was no bottled water). Somebody said something nice about my brief panel contribution. Impressed at Loïc organising something this big in so little time.

Negative: bad wifi, noisy party, political takeover (though I do believe that Loïc messes up more by excess enthusiasm and some lacking in customer care skills — like with Ublog — than because he’s a “bad guy”), not being in the target audience (topics were a bit too general for me), and not having a good-bye party or some chance to say good-bye to people (people left little by little and I hardly got to see anybody before they left).

Overall, I’m glad I came, but I’m not sure I’d come to this event again.

Ce soir: Scènes de Ménage [fr]

[en] On TV tonight (just 5 minutes). Will post a link once it's online.

Je fais très bref vu l’état (et je vous parlerai de SarkoWeb3 quand j’aurai récupéré). Si vous êtes à la maison ce soir, vous aurez l’occasion de me voir faire de mon mieux pour répondre aux questions de Martina Chyba durant les cinq minutes que dureront le plateau de l’émission Scènes de Ménage (TSR1), consacrée ce soir aux geeks et à la technophilie rampante en cette période de Noël. Cinq minutes qui ont occupé tout mon vendredi après-midi, et même plus.

J’ajouterai le lien une fois que l’émission sera en ligne. L’émission est en ligne!


Update (en direct): je tiens à préciser que je ne suis pas d’accord avec la “définition” geek (+ nerd) donnée dans l’émission après le premier sujet… Pour moi ils parlent des cas déjà problématiques, là.

Michael Hampton is My Hero of the Day [en]

[fr] En principe, les problèmes de serveur sont résolus. Retour à la normale aussi vite que j'arrive à transférer les données avec la connection wifi très approximative que nous avons ici.

Michael Hampton, also known as io_error just saved my life today by solving the encoding problem on my new hosting. It seems something went wrong when I imported my SQL dumps into the new database. Solving the encoding issue seems to have solved the “can log into admin but can’t do anything” WordPress issue (if someone can explain why, I’d be interested).

And danah is my heroine of the day, because after a morning of politicians and WiFi fighting, it was nice to hear an interesting talk.

Le Web 3 et Sarko [fr]

[en] Not impressed by what Sarkozy said. I tried translating in the IRC backchannel. Seemed mainly like electoral blah-blah to me. Note to conference organisers: don't do this. Don't mess up the program for last-minute political celebrities who won't take questions, and won't even speak in the language of the conference. Update: check the sarkoweb3 tag.

Sarkozy a bouleversé son emploi du temps pour venir parler à Le Web 3 (tout comme Shimon Peres (orth?) et l’autre candidat dont j’arrive pas retenir le nom Bayrou), et nous aussi, on a bouleversé le nôtre pour l’écouter. Ca commence à ressembler à un défilé de politiques plutôt qu’à un truc de geeks. Déjà qu’à mon avis beaucoup des sujets sont très généraux (bien pour les médias et le grand public, pas très instructifs pour nous)…

Bref, le discours de Sarkozy ressemblait à mes oreilles à du blabla électoral standard (certes, c’était sur sa vision d’Internet, il est resté dans le sujet) — mais bon, j’ai quand même préféré l’autre qui a répondu à des questions du public, même si ce n’était que moyen et assez consensuel.

Conseil pour organisateurs de conférences: ne bouleversez pas le programme pour faire intervenir des célébrités de dernière minute, surtout quand celles-ci sont d’un intérêt local (50% de la salle n’en a probablement rien à faire de la politique française) et parlent sans traduction dans une langue qui n’est également pas comprise de tous. J’ai fait une traduction “à l’arrache” de ce qu’il disait dans le canal IRC… en espérant que ça aura été à certains.


Update: collection de liens avec le tag sarkoweb3.

Aussi, si vous avez une ligne de 40Mb, c’est cool, mais assurez-vous que les bornes wifi tiennent le coup. Aussi… (c’est pour Laurent)… où sont les fontaines à eau dans la salle? ou les bouteilles?

Oui, je suis de mauvaise (48h à tenter de remettre mon serveur debout, tout en voyageant et avec un accès wifi à peu près impossible, stress accumulé, etc etc). Bah.

Update: lire aussi Anne Dominique, “Loïc Ministre?”

You Should Twitter [en]

[fr] A découvrir absolument, Twitter, un service au croisement du moblogging et de la messagerie instantanée. Inscrivez-vous et essayez! Je vois du potentiel ici pour les adolescents, dans le sens où ça permet de s'envoyer des SMS sans devoir donner à l'autre son numéro de mobile.

Twitter is a cross between moblogging and instant messaging. You can send messages by SMS or by IM and they are displayed on your page.

In addition to that, people who have chosen to “follow” you get updates by IM or SMS. It’s easy to add/remove a person from those you are following using the mobile lingo.

I see great things for this product once they implement groups and allow some granularity regarding privacy (ie, stuff only for my friends, stuff only for my family, stuff only for my co-workers, public stuff, stuff for my girlsfriends). I already see the potential of Twitter as an SMS anonymizer (think teenagers and dating sites).

Go and grab an account, register your cell number (if it works with a Swiss phone number, it should work with anything!) and start twittering! You can even try to ping Technorati with your new TwitterBlog. But can you claim it, Mr. Marks?

WordPress DreamHost WiFi Arghl! [en]

[fr] Rah! que de problèmes.

Somebody please tie me up before I start screaming or kill somebody. I can’t stay connected to the wifi network here more than a few minutes. Dreamhost aren’t responding to my support tickets (we’re way past the 24 hour response time). This site (CTTS) is “working” (meaning, it displays more or less, and I can access the admin area and post and do stuff I normally expect to do on a blog). Another of my sites (client site behind password), which is also WordPress, which I transferred the same way (dump database, rsync files, import database) vaguely displays at times, lets me in the admin area, but doesn’t let me do anything once I’m in there (dashboard only).

Add to that I’m not really enthusiastic about the title of the panel I’m on, but unfortunately I don’t have anything better to offer.

Arghl!