Madd0's Tech Blog

But only because I want to be just like him when I grow up :P

OK, maybe not just like him, but I'd love to be able to find the balance he seems to have reached of enjoying life fully and using his wealth to help worthy causes.

If you don't care about who my role models are, just take a look at the video. It's very interesting by itself too.

You cannot be a blogger and not have to go through this at least once a year. Of course, it's up to you to decide how you react, whether it's worth your time or not, whether the person who tagged you deserves a response...

Yes. That's right. I've been tagged with one of the myriads of blog memes going around. So, without further ado, here's ten things everybody already know about me:

1. Who tagged me:
   Well, that would be my dearest friend Stéph. Few are the people who could've tagged me and actually elicited a response. But Stéph is one of them.
2. My greatest dream (or at least the one more likely to happen):
   This is a good one... Hard one too... I guess my greatest dream is to do something significant for the world before I die. I know I'm kind of neglecting the parentheses there, but who cares...
3. An important moment soon to come:
   Hmm... I'm graduating this year. I think that counts.
4. The song that describes my current frame of mind:
   "Current" is a very volatile state, but if we're talking about an average, it's probably No Rain, by Blind Melon.
5. Big moments in the past year:
   I've been lucky to have had plenty of big moments last year, but I guess meeting Great people at La Sorbonne, including Bill Gates, ranks amongst the top moments. There was Korea too... Yes, there have been plenty...
6. What makes me happy:
   Oh, whoever knows me, knows I'm easily amused, but I guess "amused" is not the same thing as "happy." I'm usually happy with a job well done, after riding my bike, but most often, I'm happy when I know I've made other people happy.
7. What I miss:
   I miss going back to my country and to its beaches and forests. I still don't consider Costa Rica my first choice for living, but I'd like to be able to go back there more often.
8. My favourite movie:
   I don't have a favourite movie. It's that simple. I like all movies that help me forget about real life for a while.
9. My greatest project:
   With graduation approaching, I suppose I have to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. That feels like a pretty big project to me.
10. What I hate:
    There's lots of things I hate, actually. If you want to know more about them, I suggest you come here regularly for my rants or follow me on Twitter, where you're likely to hear me talk about plenty of stuff I like and hate.

Now, tradition has it that I must not break the chain. The thing is, I'm not very good at this, so I will not tag 7 people as expected... If you feel inclined to reveal personal information about yourself, though, consider yourself tagged, and don't hesitate to link back here.

Photo tonbut

Just before New Year's I created a Twitter account. Mostly out of curiosity, after all:

"What's the point of living, without curiosity?"

(That's from House, M.D. isn't it the best quote ever?) I also wanted to make sure nobody would hijack my nickname, but that's secondary...

Anyway, I started "tweeting," as it's called, on December 29 2007 and, man, is this addictive!

For those of you who don't know what Twitter is, I'll try to summarize it in one (made up) word: micro-blogging. The idea is to answer the question "What are you doing?" in no more characters than an SMS can hold (i.e. 140). If my explanation is not clear enough, take a look at the video Twitter in Plain English.

So, why am I talking about Twitter today? Well, because I'm talking on Twitter more and more lately (exponentially more since December if you believe my stats). I'm trying to use Twitter with micro-blogging in mind, as a complement to this blog. My tweets, as the short messages are called, even have an RSS feed.

My editorial line for this blog has always been clear (although not always followed):

Blogging about pretty much anything—but mostly Tech—in English, Français y Español

I intend to keep blogging and to keep following that line. On Twitter you'll find something more in the lines of:

Talking about pretty much anything—including Tech—in English, Français y Español

Although it's mostly French and English, since that's what my followers speak.

I really like the micro-blogging concept because I find that I don't always have enough to say about something that actually deserves a post here. Take my last tweet (as of this writing) as an example:

My favorite apps from my Utils folder: PureText http://tinyurl.com/38ra9p and Texter http://tinyurl.com/2xwg7v

Quick, simple, still tech, but as much as I enjoy writing, I wouldn't have opened Windows Live Writer and written a tri-lingual post for that.

So, if you want to share more of my wisdom, or just want to know more of "What am I doing?" click on the birdie to follow me on Twitter, or use the RSS feed I linked above if you don't want to go through the hassle of creating an account. Don't forget to come back here regularly, though, after all, Wisdom is sometimes too long for Twitter...

A few weeks ago I posted the pictures of the Imagine Cup conference that took place in Paris and during which I had the opportunity to interview Bill Gates.

An event like that was of course filmed and now the videos are also available for online viewing and for download from the web site of Microsoft France.

There are six videos:

• French (well, French and Costa Rican :P) finalists from 2007 (French)
• Bernard Charlès, CEO Dassault Systèmes (French)
• Ora Ito, Designer (French)
• Andrew Herbert, Microsoft Research Cambridge (English)
• Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman (English)
• Q&A with Bill Gates (you can see me here again) (English)

Click on "Voir ..." to view the video online or "Télécharger" to download.

Have fun!

As usual these days, there were all sorts of cameras present at yesterday's activity. This is great because I of course couldn't take my own pictures. Here's a selection of pictures that I have received:

Yep, that's me, to his left first and then to his right.

And here are links I've received/found with pictures of the event. I'll be editing these as I find/get new ones:

• G-IT
• Photos by Séverin Ferrand
• Photos by Stéphane Rangaya
• Photos by Emmanuel de Taillac
• Photos by Maxime Gaillard
• Photos by Stéphane Rangaya
• Photos by Johanna Piou

I'm exhausted!

Today was day of "firsts":

• First time in I can't remember how long that I wake up and it's still dark outside (yes, I know, what you're thinking. I'm not lazy, I just manage my time differently).
• First time I risk missing breakfast in a hotel because it's too early (I guess you're seeing a pattern here. It's just coincidence).
• First time I take a morning train in London to go down to Paris planning to come back up in the evening.
• First time I went to La Sorbonne and visited its main amphitheater.
• First time I'm asked to speak in front of so many people (although I'm not actually 100% of this one).
• And finally, the first time that I meet Bill Gates!

Since he was in the neighborhood, BillG dropped in La Sorbonne to demo Microsoft Surface and talk about Imagine Cup to a hall full of students. After all, this year's Imagine Cup finals will precisely take place in Paris.

I got to Gare du Nord at about 11:50 and had to be in La Sorbonne as close to noon as possible. I got there at about 12:45 because I had to go to my apartment first to change. Why was I changing? Well, because I was going to be onstage.

After a rushed rehearsal and discovering what I had to say and do onstage, I patiently waited with two other MSPs/French Imagine Cup finalists, Manon and Benjamin, for several hundred people to settle into the centuries-old main amphitheater of France's most famous university.

At about 14:30 (or at least I think it was that time, I wasn't really thinking about that by then...) everything started: Marc Jalabert, head of Microsoft France's DPE, gave an introductory speech and invited my friends and I to come onstage. We were asked a couple of questions about Imagine Cup and then sat down next to the other special guests: Bernard Charlès from Dassault Systèmes, Ora Ito and Andrew Herbert from MSR. In that order, the three guests gave their speeches.

After a couple of minutes of improvisation to make up for a slight delay, finally, the star guest arrived: Bill Gates. He gave a short speech and showed the "Bill's last day in Microsoft video". He also demoed Microsoft Surface, but that didn't go as well as expected. We'll blame the lighting.

Finally, it was time for our 15 minutes of glory. Manon, Benjamin and I went back onstage to join Marc and Bill for a Q&A session. We each got to ask two questions. After that, some pre-chosen students among the audience asked a question each and the afternoon was over. Or was it? We were rushed to a short photo shoot will Bill and then to a cocktail. The rest of the evening is much less interesting unless you're me, so I'll stop here.

I am now on a Eurostar heading back to London, actually suffering because there are no power outlets and (and here Windows went into hibernation because I ran out of battery)

In the good sense of course… Today was a great day! It was a day of discovery, of rediscovery, of new things in general.

So, what’s all the excitement about?, you might wonder. Well, let’s see, more or less in order:

I might be onto a gig in Malaysia, how cool is that?

I was one of the winners of the Trick-or-Treat category in MAKE’s Halloween contest! I get the latest issue of MAKE magazine. Check out all the other winners in all categories. Next year, the Hack-o-Lantern will be mine :)

I installed Simon’s newest release of My Exposé for Windows Vista. It’s a CTP (Community Technical Preview), but it’s pretty stable and bug-free. It features a new placement algorithm, way more organic than the original grid placement. An improved trigger interface, so that you can write your own triggers. As a matter of fact, it comes with a new trigger for Voice activation and control (of which I wrote a first version, but Simon pretty much rewrote it afterwards). Oh, and it also comes with extremely cool icons, made by yours truly ;)

Last week I was notified that I had won a book, two books actually, on Certifdotnet, by getting a top score last month. Both books arrived today: Ajax : le guide complet and XAML, which happens to be part of the same collection as my own book. (Yes, all in French, sorry)

I got the serial cable for my Lego Mindstorms yesterday. I can’t believe how hard it is to get the right serial cable these days. What’s worse, it’s also hard to connect it to a “modern” laptop computer, since they don’t have serial ports any more. But no worries, I borrowed a RS232-USB converter from a friend (who will remain anonymous, just in case ;) ) and, after recharging and buying batteries today, I got to use my RCX again after about 3 years (OK, I’ll admit I could’ve looked harder…).

So, I’m geek enough that playing with Legos (albeit very technological and not-necessarily-childish Legos) is already exciting, I went ahead and downloaded and installed Microsoft’s Robotics Studio November 2006 CTP. Yet another CTP, but this one, sorry Simon, is way cooler that My Exposé. I guess the “new technology” factor + the “moving creations” one makes it more exciting. The only feature I’ve tried for now is the Visual Programming Language (VPL), which allows you to program your robots using drag & drop, but that was enough. I can’t wait to play with simulator and the runtime. I think it’s safe to say that this weekend I’ll be playing with Legos quite a lot :)

Finally, just before starting this post, I learnt that Photosynth, from Live Labs, is now live! Well, a preview is live… If you don’t know what it is, I suggest to get my OPML file and subscribe to most of the feeds to stay informed and/or click here for their explanation. There’s also videos here.

Well, I guess that’s pretty much all. Sure it might not be everybody’s idea of an exciting day, but then again, it’s not everybody’s blog ;)

Oh yeah, and I won 25 cents at poker, which doesn’t seem much, but I actually doubled my stack :)

Finally, after who-knows-how-many years (2-3?) of developing and using amazOOP, I got a real incentive to keep working on it: my fist Amazon cheque!!!

It's from Amazon.de, which ironically was the last affiliate programme I subscribed to, but who cares...

I just hope the other Amazons will follow the German example soon ;)