Bonjour de Montréal! [fr]

[en] Gave my talk in Montréal this morning, now, holidays!

Disons plutôt, bonjour de l’intérieur de mon hôtel à Montréal… Je n’ai pas encore vraiment mis le nez dehors! Mais comme j’ai donné ma keynote à l’occasion de la conférence Intracom il y a quelques heures, et qu’il me reste une bonne semaine sur place pour me reposer et explorer… Rien n’est perdu.

Quelques articles à mettre en ligne — les dix jours avant mon départ ont été horriblement chargés, je l’avoue. Le dernier module de cours de la formation MCMS au SAWI (qui s’appellera MSCL l’an prochain… inscriptions ouvertes en passant, hâtez-vous!), une journée de formation à donner à Genève là au milieu, préparer conférences et cours, régler les affaires administratives en cours, faire les valises et sauter dans l’avion… j’avoue n’avoir pas vraiment eu le temps de souffler.

Les deux semaines qui viennent s’annoncent tranquilles, touristiques, lectrices et blogueuses.

 

A Few Tools I Like [en]

[fr] Petite collection d'applications et de services qui valent la peine d'être explorés et utilisés, selon moi.

Quickly, before collapsing in a little sleepy heap, some tools I want to write about here, but am not writing about because I want to do it properly and that takes time, and I never get around to doing it.

So, maybe I’ll talk about them more in detail later on (some of them I already have talked about), but just in case, here are tools or apps I like and would encourage you to look at these days:

That’s it chickens… I might add a few if I’ve forgotten, my bed is calling!

Semaine chargée! [fr]

Quelle semaine!

Le dernier module de la formation SAWI que je co-dirige, pour commencer, de mercredi à samedi. Je suis vraiment très fière de ce que nous avons accompli avec cette formation, des étudiants qui se sont lancés pour faire partie de cette première volée, des First Rezonance organisés, des échos et retours positifs de toutes parts… et je me réjouis de remettre ça l’année prochaine! (Avis aux amateurs…)

Vendredi, je fais une infidélité à la formation SAWI MCMS pour remplir un engagement pris de longue date: deux formations destinées aux enseignants à l’occasion du séminaire de formation continue “Pollens pédagogiques” de l’IFP, à Genève — en anglais et en français dans la même journée!

IntracomSignature2011-AvecDate Dimanche, je m’envole pour Montréal afin de donner une keynote à Intracom, mardi prochain. Je compte en profiter pour assister à la conférence, bien entendu, et passer ensuite une petite semaine à découvrir la ville et la région (c’est la première fois que je vais au Canada, et donc à Montréal!)

Comme je suis super bien organisée, je suis encore à la recherche d’une bonne âme locale pouvant héberger cette suissesse aux cheveux roses du 13 au soir jusqu’au 20. Un grand merci à tous ceux et celles qui m’ont donné pistes et contacts à Montréal, je vais me mettre à les explorer, j’ai juste… pas encore bougé 🙁

Après (on n’est plus dans le contexte de la semaine chargée mais je vous dis quand même), je fait une escale d’une semaine à Londres pour y voir des amis. Et je compte maintenir mon rythme nouvellement retrouvé de blogueuse effrénée: il devrait donc y avoir de la lecture! (En passant: vous avez vu ce que je commence à faire sur le blog de l’eclau? là aussi, du mouvement en perspective.)

Rouverture des bureaux et reprise de la vie “normale” lausannoise: début mai.

Tears Do Heal — But Slowly [en]

[fr] Un retour d'Angleterre un peu difficile, des vagues de chagrin qui vont et viennent depuis trois mois que Bagha m'a quittée. Mais le chagrin, c'est notre réaction à la douleur de la perte. Le sentir, c'est avancer sur le chemin de l'acceptation.

I’ve had a handful of pretty miserable days upon my return from England. Feeling very sad again about Bagha’s death, and some other losses 2010 brought along with it. But this last couple of days have been better, because tears do heal, and spring is here.

Pencil Effect Sunday 26

Three months after Bagha’s death, I’m thankfully not bursting into uncontrollable tears in socially awkward settings anymore. It comes and goes. I might spend a week or ten days with hardly a tear, and then a wave hits and I’m going through stacks of tissues every day. I’m getting used to it.

I know I need to though, so I dive into the pain and grief when it comes — and when it’s appropriate to let myself do so.

When I’m “in”, it feels like my life is over, like it hurts so much that I’ll never get over it. It feels like some part of me will forever refuse to accept that he is dead and gone, refuse to accept that there is nothing I can do about it, and refuse to accept too that nothing will bring him back. It feels like I will never manage to move on and open my heart this much again, like I will be stuck in grief forever.

Of course I know this isn’t true, and outside of these moments of intense grief, I’m living my life pretty normally these days, despite my heavy heart.

But what I’m starting to understand — and understand really because I’m experiencing it — is that these moments of pain where I am so adamantly refusing to accept that Bagha has died, and I now have to live without him, are actually the very thing that is helping me accept it.

When I was told this it made immediate and perfect sense to me. I feel pain and sadness because I am facing the fact Bagha is dead. Even if my reaction (defense mechanism) to that pain is a futile refusal to accept that which is causing the pain (clearly a flavour of denial — “I want my cat back, I don’t want him to be dead”), it remains that if I am feeling that pain it is precisely because I am realizing or accepting a little more that my life from here onwards will be without him, and I have no choice in that matter.

That is why sadness and tears heal: they are the expression of a step forward in accepting a difficult reality. And though it feels sometimes that the steps are small and the road long, I know I am making progress, and that my heart will heal again.

Deb Roy: The Birth of a Word [en]

[fr] Une vidéo fascinante sur l'apprentissage du langage -- et aussi sur le traitement et la visualisation de quantités étourdissantes de données linguistiques. A regarder.

Ah yes, another video. You see, some evenings, instead of sitting in front of the TV (not my usual evening occupation, by the way), I sit in front of my computer and watch videos I’ve queued up on Boxee — or hunted down for the occasion. No surprise, TED Talks are a favourite hang-out of mine.

Here’s one titled The Birth of a Word: researcher Deb Roy recorded the whole three first years of his son’s life to gather data which, once analyzed, would bring insight on how we learn language.

It’s fascinating. Fascinating for the language geek in me, and also fascinating from a data visualisation and analysis point of view. In the second part of his talk, Deb moves on to analysis of publicly available commentary (online) matched to TV shows they’re about. The visualisation is stunning (he’s showing us real data) and the implications left me feeling giddy.

Your turn.

Hat tip: thanks to Loïc for pointing out this video on Facebook.

Nouvelles musiques: adieu la radio [fr]

[en] Years ago, when I sold my car, the radio stopped being my source for new music. Now it's TV series, Facebook, and Tumblr.

Il y a des années de cela, lorsque j’avais une voiture, je passais chaque jour du temps sur la route à écouter de la musique et… à chanter avec. Des périodes CD (c’était avant l’iPhone!) et des périodes radio. J’aimais la radio qui ne parlait pas, qui passait simplement de la musique.

C’était là que je découvrais de nouveaux artistes. Grâce à la radio que j’achetais des CDs (toujours ou presque dans les bacs à 10-15 balles).

Quand j’ai vendu ma voiture en 2007, j’ai perdu non seulement mon local de chant préféré (heureusement je chante avec Café Café, sinon mes pauvres cordes vocales se ratatineraient) mais aussi ma source de nouvelle musique.

En fait, j’ai aussi perdu mon lieu principal d’écoute de musique. J’aime travailler dans le silence, je n’arrive pas à lire ou écrire en musique. Alors j’écoute de la musique quand je fais le ménage ou quand je retouche des photos mais… c’est vrai que j’aime le silence.

Aujourd’hui, piétonne, j’écoute aussi de la musique en marchant ou dans les transports publics, mais c’est très frustrant pour moi de devoir “la fermer” et de ne pas chanter à plein poumons comme j’en ai envie. (Non, je ne suis pas “celle-là” dans le train qui chante pour tout le wagon avec son casque dans les oreilles…)

En plus, merci iPhone, la musique a maintenant une rude concurrence: les podcasts. Je suis accro à On The Media et à Radiolab, par exemple. (Si vous avez des émissions de qualité comparable à me proposer en français, je suis preneuse, hein.)

La radio a donc complètement disparu de mon radar — si ce n’est sous forme de ces podcasts, ou lorsque j’y passe 😉

Depuis quelques années, donc, j’ai conscience que mon “répertoire” musical stagne. Je n’achète plus de CDs depuis longtemps (un des derniers était Back to Bedlam de James Blunt) et malgré ce que pourraient croire certains, je ne suis pas une grande pirate: trop paresseuse pour télécharger “illégalement”, je me contente d’acheter des morceaux isolés sur iTunes. En passant, j’ai la sensation de payer pour le service plus que pour la musique (vous m’entendez, là-bas?)

Source première de nouvelles musiques? Les séries TV (et films), Grey’s Anatomy en tête. Un petit coup de Shazam pour identifier le morceau qui passe, et hop, j’achète.

Deuxième source? C’est ça qui me fait écrire aujourd’hui: mes fils d’actualité sur Facebook et Tumblr. Mes amis qui partagent vidéos et morceaux qu’ils aiment. Parfois, j’achète.

Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms (RSAnimate) [en]

[fr] Excellente explication du pourquoi (et comment) le système éducatif d'aujourd'hui est... coincé. Héritage des Lumières dans un monde qui est aujourd'hui celui de la technologie et de la globalisation: dur, dur!

This is the second RSAnimate video I’ve watched (the first one was Dan Pink) — I love them. The graphics really help you understand and remember what is being said. Watch this one, and listen to Ken Robinson explain the root problem of today’s education — it’s only 10 minutes and you will not regret it.

And when you’re done, do what I’m going to do right now: head over to the RSA YouTube channel and watch other videos.

Ye Olde-School Personal Blogs Are Still Around [en]

[fr] Le blog personnel existe toujours. On a parfois tendance à l'oublier, noyés que l'on est sous la masse des machines à audience que l'on appelle "blog" ces jours.

Yesterday evening I was winding down when I thought of checking a bunch of old-school (personal) blogs I visit once in a while. If you’re not an old hand, and you’re looking for some good personal blogs written by those who made up the blogosphere in its golden hour, read on:

There are of course tons of other great blogs out there. But most of these were around in my early days of blogging, and it warms my heart that they still are.

What are your favorite personal blogs?

Thoughts on Dystopian Tech Future Vision [en]

These last weeks I’ve been catching up with On The Media (partly thanks to being back in the saddle), and earlier this evening I was listening to the February 18 piece on “Our Future With Technology”.

I had a few thoughts as I was listening that I’d like to share with you.

First of all, I quite strongly believe in the position defended by Brooke at some point which says that technology mainly allows us to become more of what we are. This is along the line of what I try to explain about “dangers” of the internet regarding teenagers: most of the trouble they face online is the same kind of trouble they face offline. Yes, sometimes with a twist, and other consequences. But in a very general way, the internet is not a completely alien place — as our local online world sociologist Olivier Glassey said a few months back during a talk I attended, we need to stop thinking of the “online” as a “separate space” (the expression he used is “le lieu de l’altérité”).

A bit later in the show, they are talking about augmented reality: what will it be like when we can wear glasses or contact lenses which, along with facial recognition software, will allow us to identify the people we come upon in the streets? OMG-there-will-be-no-privacy-anymore the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it <insert more dystopian panic here>.

I’m always surprised that this kind of thought experiment never includes things like “well, some people might end up covering their faces” or “we’ll start wearing masks” or “there will be a way to opt out of being ‘facially recognized'” or… whatever coping mechanism one can imagine. Because as technology advances and disrupts the way we are used to living, we also evolve coping or evading mechanisms to resist change. Why does run-of-the-mill dystopian thinking always depict us as passive victims of the unstoppable advance of technology?

We’re not passive. We usually actively resist change. For example, we now carry on our phones everywhere we go, but we choose to mute them or screen our calls — something that was pretty unthinkable 30 years ago when all we knew was landlines.

With the dystopian glasses on (the show was constructed as an attempted dialogue between utopian and dystopian visions of our tech future) the idea was brought up that augmented reality might at some point allow us to ignore or obliterate what we disagree with — extreme example: not seeing people with radically opposed views to ours. Bob concluded “people obliterate people”, which in my sense is right: we are already obliterating what we don’t want to see. Technology might allow us to do it better (“becoming more of what we are”) but sticking to what is familiar and ignoring the rest is fundamentally human. If I wasn’t so tired right now I’d fish out this article I read (no memory where) which shows how we very selectively remember what already fits in our worldview and obliterate the rest.

I see the “people obliterating people” thing at play in India. In the same spaces (I’m talking of streets or neighbourhoods here), you have completely parallel and distinct societies that live on with very little knowledge or understanding of each other. Literally invisible to each other.

F.lux: Better Lighting For Your Screen [en]

[fr] f.lux adapte automatiquement la luminosité de votre écran à l'espace environnant. Fini les écrans surbrillants tard le soir, et possiblement les problèmes d'endormissement liés au fait de baigner dans une forte lumière bleue jusqu'à 2h du mat'. Essayez!

F.luxYou probably know by now that optimal screen brightness is similar brightness to that of your surroundings. My dad recently pointed me to f.lux, which I have installed and started experiencing (happily). From their website (lifted shamelessly):

Ever notice how people texting at night have that eerie blue glow?

Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen?

During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun.

F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.

It’s even possible that you’re staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.

f.lux makes your computer screen look like the room you’re in, all the time. When the sun sets, it makes your computer look like your indoor lights. In the morning, it makes things look like sunlight again.

Gone are the days of adjusting brightness so that I’m not looking at a blinding screen when online in the evening! And I love the idea that this might fight the “wide awake at 2am” syndrome by fixing the lighting issue. Of course, you may disable f.lux at any time for an hour, if you need your white balance back for any reason.

Download for OSX, Windows, Linux.