A Day in my Life [en]

Tonight I went to see The Virgin Suicides with my brother.
The movie was all right – nothing to scream and shout about. I appreciated the teenager narrative point of view, and the fact that the story is not fully explained.
It’s worth seeing if you want to go the cinema, but it’s maybe not the film to see if you’re feeling a little depressed.

I felt like eating guacamole, so we went to eat mexican. Both my brother and I had a good time trying to get him to roll his fajitas correctly.
Nice evening!

Cali is busy chewing on used hankies she has dug out of the waste-paper basket. Bagha shoots out of the flat with a “mrrrraou!” each time I open the door.

Hopefully, professionnals are coming tomorrow the trim the tree that Bagha uses as a ladder to access a certain lady’s balcony. He will be allowed outside for the first time in ten days.
My grandmother recommends offering her a water-pistol. That indeed seems the best way to keep the tiger at bay!

HTML-Kit and WS_FTP Lite [en]

I’ve adopted HTMLkit. It’s really nice. I haven’t finished customizing it, but one thing is sure: I’m going to become an in-site-editing enthusiast.
The only feature it has missing is multiple file replace. I’m longing for something which will do what BBEdit does – carry out a replace on all the files in a directory.
And thanks to those who suggested it, I also got WS_FTP Lite.

Between Friday night and yesterday, I finished writing the script for my work at Orange. Thanks to those people who helped me : ) – working on the web is great!

One thing I’ve started doing when I need help on a topic is this (soooo simple, why didn’t I figure it out before?):
First, search with Google, and fine a few relevant threads in mailing list archives.
Then email the people who seemed to know what they were talking about, or who seemed to have a problem similar to yours.

Savoir [en]

Pour être efficace dans l’usage que l’on fait de son savoir, il importe d’avoir plus de connaissances que celles que l’on utilise réellement.

Pour enseigner, il faut savoir plus que ce que l’on enseigne – plus que ce que l’on enseignera jamais.

Knowledge [en]

To be efficient in using your knowledge, you always need to know more than what you actually use.

When teaching, you must know more than what you teach – more than you will ever teach.

Crashing Macs [en]

What’s the point in filling the university with iMACs, if they crash as much as PCs?

For the first time in ages, I decided to check my mail before going to class. It took me 15 minutes to find a computer that would allow me to move the mouse over the screen.
I’m better at coping with crashed PCs than crashed MACs, I guess.

Class is going to start soon, got to run!

Intranet [en]

Writing web pages for an intranet is nice: if they show up OK in your browser, you know that they will behave the same on all the company’s computers.
Orange is giving me a good chance to mess about with CSS – and now that I look at the stylesheet I use here, I see there is a lot of work to be done.

I also want to slightly redesign (haven’t I been saying that for ages?) and clean up all my files.

My “helper” at work made me discover EditPlus, which is, I must admit, an improvement on Notepad. Even if it was just for the coloured tags and the multi-file replace.
So I’m hunting around to see if there is anything better, and also looking for a good free FTP client.

Suggestions, anyone?

Sérénade [en]

Le travail chez Orange est très chouette – mais il y en a beaucoup. Je devrais normalement avoir trois personnes pour m’aider (l’une d’elles est déjà  en place, et fait vraiment bien avancer le schmilblick).

Mes examens de français approchent à  grands pas, et avant eux, les deux séminaires qu’il me reste à  faire.

Quant au chat, il insiste. Après avoir chanté une sérénade aux chattes de la “dame au balcon” – à  dix heures du soir bien entendu, pour qu’il puisse la tirer du lit – il a encore récidivé cet après-midi après que j’ai péniblement obtenu du concierge la mutilation du buisson coupable (coupable de permettre à  Bagha de pénétrer en territoire interdit).
Tout ceci s’est donc accompagné d’un téléphone peu agréable qui contenait menaces de tribunal et suggestion d’abandonner mon chat à  la SPA. Ah oui, et ce serait aussi un bonne idée que je déménage. Heureusement que la dame de la gérance n’avait pas l’air de prendre toutes ces plaintes trop au tragique: “non, mais vous inquiétez pas pour ça…”

Orange Work [en]

Work at Orange is exciting, but tiring. There is too much work for one person (coding something like 400 Powerpoint slides in HTML) so I have an assistant, and should get two more on Wednesday.
Only thing, they don’t know HTML yet, so I’ll have to teach them some basics before they can really help me.

More and more, I’m realising how much I have learnt about web designing and publishing. I also tend to forget how little the “common mortal” knows on the subject. Hanging out with the “web designers” community on the Net doesn’t help!

Kitty Kitty [en]

If you want the news, you’re going to have it.

Bagha has been going balcony-climbing quite regularly – or so it seems.
Thursday ten p.m., he even did a bit of singing up there. Unfortunately it woke the lady up. She was quite irrate. I guess I would have been too.
Friday morning, phone call. Summary: if things don’t get better, she will file a lawsuit against me. She recommends that I get rid of my cat or move somewhere else.

Guess what state I was in.

The woman at the flat rental agency was nice, told me not to worry, and that I could go ahead and cut off the branch that helps Bagha get on the dear lady’s balcony.
This afternoon, I had a rather tense conversation with the caretaker, who was unwilling to let me mess around with his bushes as he hadn’t received any clearance from the authorities above.

With all the stress and tiredness of this first week of work, I ended up bursting into tears, and he ended up finally cutting the branches off.
I don’t approve of using tears to get results – but I must say they changed the situation dramatically.

So I let Bagha out after 48 hours of confinement.

And when I came home a couple of hours later, he was up on the damn balcony again. There was an alternate route.