our new techcam

one of our offices decided it didn't need its webcam anymore, so we got our hands on it before they could change their minds. We are therefore now the proud owners of an Axis 2100 Network Cam.

For lack of better use, we have placed it between our two desks, which allows people to see the massive amount of work we do everyday:

Notice the nice 7960 Cisco phone on the left, qnd my rubber ducky (hi ducky!)

Noon Food Products

Hello!

Recently, mich and I have been boycotting the local (eurest) cafeteria for personal reasons (ie. we don't appreciate eating slop). To fulfill our midday fiesting habit, we know buy a bunch of grub on monday, and live off that for the week.

One of our main dilemnas when choosing food at the local store is (of course) quantity - most of the dishes sold in france offer ok food, but the quantities wouldn't satisfy a midget on a diet. I'm talking 200 to 350 grams (yes you read it right) - GRAMS (!!!) of food. Now I weigh in at a svelt 122kg (I've lost weight...), so 350 grams of food is pretty much a hors-d'oeuvre for me.

Thankfully, our local 'Monop' stocks a British brand of food called Noon, and their dishes offer 450 grams of delish indian and thai food. I mean the stuff is actually made with real ingredients, and tastes pretty damn good, and the quantity is nice (when complemented by our chicken wing platter as an 'entrée'). The only damn problem with the Noon products is the plastic film covering the dish- When you take the scorching dish out of the microwave and try (I insist on the verb 'try') to peel that film off, you know you're in for a disaster - In nine out of ten cases, either your white shirt or the whole kitchen gets sprayed with Chicken Masala.

Being fond admirors of Noon products, we decided to put ourselves to use for once and send them an email, complementing them on their food, whilst also telling them about our plastic film issue. Here's the email:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello,

We are in Paris, France, and (almost) happy consumers of Noon products. We very much enjoy the actual food, but we have "issues" with the packaging. The number of times we have scorched ourselves (and our
shirts) whilst handling your products is innumerable.

Please continue to provide good quality/quantity food - but please put some more money on the packaging R&D budget.. It will be very much appreciated.

On another note, do you sell the products directly to end-users ? We only have two of your dishes available at our place of purchase, and they always carry a low stock. Perhaps we could purchase directly with
you ?

Best regards,

Michael & Dimitri
Paris, France
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We haven't got a response yet, but we'll keep you posted. And if you are looking for some decent lunch food, try Noon, it's good stuff ;)

ciao!

Wookie !

So had this message from Dimbo on my answering-machine today. The guy is seriously demented...

Oh, and on another note - Asterisk kicks ass !

Free - French ISP suck ass

So... My ISP (or soon to-be-ex-ISP) have done it again.. They've manage to screw me over.. again.. It blows my mind how any semi-serious business can function - with a "screw the client" principle... First off, it's next to impossible to reach any living creature on there so-called "hotline" - second, if you should be one of the 5 people-a-day that manage to get through to their "hotline" - the "person" that greets you, is there to do anything but to help you..

I've been exploi^h^h^ha client with Free (this time around) since September 2004 - so over 25 months - and order to get a new ADSL modem (Freebox v5) - and not getting ripped - I should be subscribed for at least 25 months (the swap will cost me 30EUR - instead of the usual 90EUR)..

Great.. I access their site to order the new box.. I'm greeted with a nice message, saying the swap will cost me 90EUR.. now hold on - why is this ?? Well, according to the "hotline" I changed my subscription to "degroupage total" a couple of months back - and they reset my service level..

Now what _really_ pisses me off, is the fact that when doing the subscription changed, I carefully read the information on the page whether or not be subscription would be reset - and it was not stated ! Again according to the "hotline" this is specified in the "Terms and Conditions" which I have obviously not read..

So - what to do ? I can either just bleed the full 90EUR for the modem swap (and have my subscription reset again) - or I can cancel my subscription and choose another ISP (this will also ending up costing me around 90EUR - as my subscription has been reset, and you cannot cancel without charge before at least 12 months or so)...
Last but not least, I can keep my current modem, and current subscription.. and just have the bittersweet taste of Free once again getting away with raping me in broad daylight..

This is far from being over...

Here we go again

La Poste has decided to raise the prices on stamps again... A couple of years ago it was 40 centimes for a stamp for France and Europe (20g).. Here are the new prices:

Principaux tarifs pour 20g:
* France: 0.54EUR
* France économique: 0.49EUR
* International zone 1: 0.60EUR (CEE + Suisse)
* International zone 2: 0.85EUR

It's a bloody travesty..They keep raising the prices, and their service level remains the same: useless

I loathe La Poste - from the very bottom of my heart... May each and every postman meet a vicious rottweiler on his route.

Who got the last drink?

Well well, I guess we finally have the results!

Lasse capitulated pretty early in the game, leaving mich with the "rough" task of finishing his drinks alone! Here are a couple pics from Friday night. As you all can see, Lasse is looking a bit "tired", probably from the long train ride over....

before:

after:

I've got one word: FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!

New warehouse

Went out to Villepint (near CDG airport) this morning to scope out our new warehouse location.. in order to determine where to setup my laptop - look into network connectivity and stuff.. What I hadn't been told; was that the previous proprietor was one of the money transporting companies (e.g. Brink)..
Holy cow, they had some cool stuff there.. Alarm systems up the wazoo, cameras a go-go and old shitty coaxial ipx/spx network..

I managed to grab a few shots of the safe.. I could smell the money !!

One of (the many) alarm systems

A cool note telling you how to
enter the main safe. I grabbed one
and attached on my office door

The inside of a vault door

Big-ass vault

A note explaining the personal how to handle
used (and new) rounds for their guns

"Kevlar can save your life"

How much money can each truck carry ?

Gun control ?

Extra curricular activities..

A few pics of me from this weekends festivities..

Protect & Serve

Preparing a Serbian Ice Tea

Friday traffic mess

What happens when you block Charles de Gaulle Etoile at friday afternoon rush-hour ?
People get pissed off !

My wife took a couple of pics of the mess:

The Long Hop Staff - "Au Complet"

hello!

Just thought I'd post a pic of the staff I work with on the weekends. This is to accustom Lasse to the people he will be spending next weekend with...

from left to right: Me, Charlotte, Guillaume, Olivia, Marko, Alice, Arnaud, and Eric.

Laptop thief gets screwed...

Saw this video on google earlier today !


A Berkeley professor gets his laptop stolen by some useless student on campus.. An act I'm sure he'll live to regret..

Watch it ! It's absolutely fabulous !

Police Water Truck - Up close and personal

Was walking around yesterday close to Bastille, and spotted a sweet vehicle 
that most people don't get to see up close.

This fine water-blaster truck was sitting on the curb, probably in standby, waiting for shit to hit the fan at the Techno Parade happening in Paris on Saturday.



and up close:



Voila!

Free BSD (!) Magazine in France!

Yes, it has happened! The very first FreeBSD (sorry, it's FreeBSD, not Free BSD...)
magazine has hit the kiosks in France. Well, calling it a magazine is maybe a bit 
"too much", as basically it's just a copy of Freebsd 6.1 and a light installation manual.
Nevertheless, it's a step in the right direction. Let's hope some people buy it, 
to keep it going, although at around 10 euros, it's pretty steep for something you can download for free...

Congrats anyways!

Here's the cover:



I took this at the Chatelet RER station - the dude behind the counter was looking at me pretty weird...

I want my lyrics..

Had some issues with lyrics fetching in Amarok for the last couple of weeks.. Haven't given it a lot of thought, until today - when I actually wanted the lyrics for a track.. (go figure..)
Some hunt it turned out to be..

When clicking the lyrics tab in Amarok, it would bitch about no script would be running.. When attempting to start lyrc - would give me the following error:

      /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `initialize': Connection refused - connect(2) (Errno::ECONNREFUSED)
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `open'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:553:in `do_start'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:542:in `start'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1032:in `request'
          from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:769:in `get'
          from /usr/local/share/apps/amarok/scripts/lyrics_lyrc/lyrics_lyrc.rb:122:in `fetchLyrics'
          from /usr/local/share/apps/amarok/scripts/lyrics_lyrc/lyrics_lyrc.rb:187
          from /usr/local/share/apps/amarok/scripts/lyrics_lyrc/lyrics_lyrc.rb:172:in `loop'
          from /usr/local/share/apps/amarok/scripts/lyrics_lyrc/lyrics_lyrc.rb:172

Basically, how the lyrc script works - it's by looking up a song (title and artist) on www.lyrc.com.ar - and the parsing the lyrics.. (simplified..)
So started out by verifying that I could access the website - which I could.. So it's not a network problem...
Next - check proxy settings.. From #amarok on EfNet, I learned that Amarok gets its proxy settings from the KDE controlpanel.. No proxy settings were specified - as it should be.

Next - I managed to launch the script from Amarok scriptmanager (without actually looking up any lyrics) - and attach truss(1) to the PID - from which I could see that it would trying to connect to localhost on port 8888.... Interesting...
Looking over the lyrics_lyrc.rb source - more specifically the fetchLyrics function - I noticed the following:

    if ( @proxy == nil )
     @proxy = `dcop amarok script proxyForProtocol http`
 end

Running, the above command - would yield:

http://localhost:8888

Back to KDE control panel and double-check the proxy settings.. still no problems there..
Finally, I did a recursive grep for localhost:8888 in ~/.kde/
Bingo.
The file ~/.kde/share/config/kioslaverc
had ProxyForProtocolHttp="http://localhost:8888"
I have absolutely no idea how it came to be there.. and I don't care.. I removed the file, and restarted Amarok - and voila.. lyrc works again !

Though, now I can't remember which lyrics I was looking for..

And a not so sober picture

Just to prove the last post... this is one of the not so sober pics...

Drinks at the Hop

dsc00080.jpg
Originally uploaded by mich_bsd.

Went out Saturday night for a couple of drinks at the Hop..
The Long Hop is a nice pub/bar in the 6th (right next the metro Maubert-Mutualite).. oh yeah, and that useless slacker buddy of mine, Dimbo, is working there on weekends..

On the pic: the incredible bar duo - Marco & Dimbo (rare photo, both of them conscious at the same time)

Spelling 101

dsc00077.jpg
Originally uploaded by mich_bsd.

"MAC DONALD'S" - wtf ?

I mean, the huge McDonald's building is *right* there.. All they had to do, to get it right, was to turn their heads... fools..

Do as we say, not as we do

dsc00078.jpg
Originally uploaded by mich_bsd.

French cops setting a good example as always....

(The license plate is not really fulfilling the requirements...)

Amarok 1.4.3

Yessir - Amarok 1.4.3 was just released.

Mainly bugfixing - but a couple of nice new features; such as:

- DAAP Music Sharing with ZeroConf/RendezVous support
- Amarok File Tracking

Read more:

Amarok - rediscover your music

What is he selling..

pot.jpg
Originally uploaded by mich_bsd.

On the way home from work yesterday, I saw this conspicious van parked close to my street.. "pot-mand.nl"....
I wonder what the pot man(d) from the Netherlands are delivering..