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It has been suggested that I’m addicted to Twitter. This is, of course, nonsense, as evidenced by my stats ;)

If I were addicted to Twitter, however, Lufthansa’s MySkyStatus is the Twitter/Facebook app I’d be really looking forward to use. Actually, who am I kidding? The only reason I haven’t actually used it is because I have no plans to get on a plane anytime soon.

So, what’s it all about?

As you probably know, for more or less invalid reasons, planes do not provide Internet access. This means that you can be trapped for hours inside a metal tube without being able to tell the world what you’re doing in 140 characters or less! As I see it, this is torture for yourself and for your followers, who will not be able to follow your every move. In comes MySkyStatus.

While you’re in the air, sweating and scratching, MySkyStatus will send altitude, location, departure and arrival updates automatically to your Facebook and/or Twitter pages.

This, of course, is about as useful as a Nabaztag—unless you’re a kidnapper and you’re victim’s using the service—but, I admit, I really wish I could take the plane soon, just to test it.

The service is obviously free an works with pretty much any airline and any flight. So go ahead and try it; I’ll follow on Twitter to see if it works ;)

It was about three weeks ago that I was at the Eiffel Tower with the rest of the WikiChildProtect team, we were a bit disappointed because after all our hard work, we had “only” achieved third place in the French finals of Imagine Cup’s software design category.

Not everything was lost though. I didn’t write about it because I left for Asia the day after and have been quite busy these three weeks, but we submitted our project for H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt, Special Award.

Today we got the results: we are among the five finalists that are going to Egypt!

So I’ll be in Egypt from July 3 to 7 :)

Unfortunately, this also means that I will have to abandon my mother for a few days and that I will miss the wedding of two of my closest friends… But I know that they all know what this means to me and they wish me plenty of luck.

I’ll try to keep you posted as often as possible about how this goes, but first I have to get back home to France so that we can prepare with the team and bring back a gold medal ;)

Questions that I ask myself more often than I should, but don’t worry, I’m not here to talk about my memory problems. I was recently asked: where are you “virtually”? I barely tweet any more and I’m not blogging either here or there …

The explanation is simple; or double or triple. On the one hand, if I don’t say anything, it’s probably because I don’t have anything to say, yet, you know that even when I have nothing to say, I usually figure out something, so what’s going on?

I’m busy! Busy with problems that have no place here, but busy with events that are way more interesting and worthy of being shared.

Let’s start with Imagine Cup, the contest organized by Microsoft upon which I stumbled 2 years ago when I got to the world finals in Seoul. Since then, I’ve had trouble staying away and this year, since it’s my last as a student, I’m participating in the Software Design category for the first and last time. I’m part of team Dotnet-France (fr) with Julien Dollon (fr), Olivier Courtois (fr), Bertrand Vergnault (fr) and, our dear mentor, Yann Lautrédou (fr).

In one quick paragraph, thanks to our WikiChildProtect project, we want to make the Internet a safer place for children with a solution that should be more efficient, more secure and, especially, that integrates a citizen and community approach that does not currently exist. If you would like more information, do not hesitate to out our press release (in French).

The French final in this category will take place on May 14th, on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. Only the first place of the national finals will earn the privilege of participating in the world finals in Egypt. Competition is tough this year since veterans that I know well are participating and/or coaching their own teams. I will let you know this Thursday evening whether I’ll be spending the first week of July in Cairo or not.

Finally, the other “projet” that has been nagging me is the three weeks following the finals on Thursday. I’m going to have to go to China to teach for SUPINFO at 山东科技大学, Shandong University of Science and Technology. Yes, I’ll admit that I did have a certain power to align the stars so that this would be my destiny, but that doesn’t change the fact that the following three weeks will not be easy.

There is a silver lining though: 10 days of vacation in the middle of these three weeks! The program for these 10 days: I have no idea!

I’m a little bit scared. I have a few clues of what I am going to do. I know that I’m not staying in China, I’ll rather explore Singapore and Malaysia. Aside from that, if you have any tips, suggestions, or friends in these countries that could show me around or even have a spare room for me in Malaysia, I won’t say no! There’s a thousand ways to contact me, so don’t hesitate ;)

(I'm just ranting here, so I won't translate.)

I have taken the Eurostar at least 7 times in the last month, coming and going between London and Paris. If I believe the tickets I keep in my pocket, this is my 8th trip. Every time the routine has been the same:

• I show up 30 minutes before departure to check in.
• I go through outbound and inbound passport control, and accept the fact that my Costa Rican passport will always surprise immigration officials. Depending on whether I'm leaving Paris or London, this step may actually come after the next.
• I empty my pockets and put my suitcase, backpack and jacket on the X-Ray machine.
• I go through the metal detector.
• Go straight to the train.

Things rarely change. Except today.

Today I got to St Pancras at 14h45 in order to collect my reservation for 15h30. I was supposed to check in by 15h00 and be on the train shortly after.

Here's what really happened:

I got to St Pancras at 14h45. The machine didn't seem to know I had a reservation, so I had to wait in line for an actual person to hand me my ticket. But what's the main characteristic of people that gets them replaced by machines? People are slow! This means it was already 15h00when I got into another line in order to go through security. As usual, I emptied pockets and put everything on the machine. I went through the metal detector and nothing happened. But on the other side, things really didn't go as expected.

For some reason, the Swiss Army knife I've carried with me back and forth in the last 7 trips (and that's not even counting all the other times before this month I've taken this train) seemed suspicious. In the world of trust that we live in this translated into the following scene:

Security Officer: Is this your bag?

Me: Yes, it is. So is that one and this jacket.

SO: Can you step over here please?

I follow her to the table nearby.

SO: Can you open the bag please?

Me - to myself: Like I have a choice... I open the two main pockets of my backpack, where I keep most of my stuff.

SO starts emptying every pocket separating it into two piles: tech stuff and the rest.

Me - worried I might miss the train because I still have to go through immigration: Are you looking for anything in particular?

SO: Just watch me while I take your things out. (Yes! she actually said that!)

SO keeps emptying my backpack, which contained everything I described on Channel 8 yesterday. (Well, 2 clementines today...)

Me - freaking out because I feel I'm going to miss my train: Please, I have to get on the 15h30 train, can I help you look for something?

SO: It seems like you have a knife...

Me: Yes, I do. Here it i— SO pushes my hand away and takes the knife.

SO - to colleague: Is this OK?

Colleague looks at her putting on a face that really makes you want to trust security...

SO 2: Huh?

SO - to other colleague: Is this OK?

Me: It has to be OK. I've had it with me for the last 10 trips! I use it for work.

You know how sometimes, under pressure, you make mistakes without realizing it? Well, apparently, letting SO and SO 3 know that they were wasting my time and implying that I could probably do their job better than they do, was one of those.

SO 3: What do you mean, it "has" to be OK?

Then she gave me a bunch of BS on why it didn't "have" to be OK, on how "knifes are not allowed onboard", on how "if the police were here, they would've taken it away" and bla, bla, bla... But since she was nice and considered that the blade wasn't big enough (it's just a Swiss Army knife after all) she'd let me keep it.

It was already 15h15 by then and every single item in my bag was on the table! SO wiped one of those bomb-detecting-thingies all over my bag and finally let me put my things back in. I quickly started putting things back inside while SO tried to help, but it was my turn to push her hands away.

I then went through immigration and finally got on the train on time.

Fast-forward a few minutes and now I'm in the train's restaurant wagon. And what do I see all over the place? F***ing plastic knifes!

If those knifes are supposed to cut through whatever crappy food I'm served in there, they will also cut through whoever or whatever I would eventually want to cut with my pocket knife! And I'm talking "poor people's knifes" here. I'm willing to bet that the people in first class get metal knifes. And we all know that terrorists like to travel with style...

This same kind of absurdity goes on in planes, too.

I'm sick of it.

And things only get worse, when you think that they actually missed the knife I keep in my pocket and that both of my knives would have easily gone through if they had been in my suitcase (which is right above of me right now, next to my backpack)...

Well, not exactly. I'm at a friend's, but it feels like home anyway after such an exciting—and thus tiring—week.

If you're not following, what I'm saying is that I left Korea (about 20 hours ago) and I'm now back in Paris.

Except for the fact that the flight got to CDG about an hour late and that the food made me sick, I have to say Korean Air is a very respectable airline. On the 747 we took, we had comfortable seats (at least as comfortable as they get in coach) and we even had Video on demand. Unfortunately, lots of rain and air-conditioning in Korea were a bad combination and I caught cold, so I didn't enjoy the flight as much as I would have liked to.

So, I'll be writing more about Imagine Cup 2007 in the following days, summarizing everything I didn't talk about because I was either to busy (competing), lazy (visiting Seoul) or simply couldn't manage to get hold of an Internet connection because 1000 other people were using it too...

For now, I want to thank my friend Pascal for his hospitality, and like the guy on the picture, I'm going to disconnect 'til tomorrow.

I'm in a plane heading to Seoul right now to participate in the finals of Imagine Cup 2007 and this will be the first of, hopefully, many posts covering the event. A couple of remarks: since I am a contestant and not a journalist, I will not have a lot of time for writing, so for a while all posts will be only in English (the text will be available on all three feeds, though); and since Internet access will apparently be difficult to come by with, I will probably be posting by batches when I get the chance to go online.

That said, let's get started!

So, why am I quoting Flemming?

It's the best description I could find for the flight.

Shaken, because we probably passed through every single turbulence pouch from Paris to Seoul. Every single one! I know this particular route is bumpy—I get the same treatment when flying to Beijing—but today it was particularly rough. I felt like I was traveling on a Costa Rican road, and for those who have been there (and I encourage you to go in spite of this particular comment) that is no compliment.

The "stirred" part, however, has nothing to do with the flight, what I wanted to allude to was the elegance of the drink concerned. I maybe shouldn't even mention this if I still want people to talk to me when I get back home, but still...

You see, we were asked by Microsoft to get to the airport extremely early. We were actually the first people to check-in (never done that before, by the way. I've already been among the last, but never the first.) and already some of us (including me) were on a waiting list because our flight was extremely overbooked, even though we already had confirmed seats (or at least I did). Anyway, I kindly told the lady that, if there was any problem, I was ready to make the sacrifice of accepting an upgrade to Business class. And, guess what. I got it!

Here's my place in our plane's seating plan when I checked-in:

And here's the place where I actually sat:

That's right, I got to travel the only way people should travel during the longest flight I've done this year (according to FlightMemory at least).

Well, there's not much more to say for now. The pilot's announcing that we are about to start our descent towards cloudy and hot Seoul, so I'll get back to you with more later today.

So, here I am, preparing to go back to Paris. And, by preparing, I mean I’m already at the airport in San José where they do offer free WiFi (unlike Barajas).

There was lots of work to do last week: a full schedule of meetings last Monday and Tuesday and after that, a less-full schedule of family to meet until today, as well as a passport to make. I’ll be talking about the passport later this week (or in a couple of weeks, we’ll see) in order to put the “tech” back in my blog.

I don’t have much more to say about my visit to Costa Rica. I really enjoyed the 27+ °C every day, the pool, Taco Bell, Quiznos, 27+ °C, the pool :)

Oh, and there’s the fact that I’m in the VIP Lounge in Juan Santamaría Airport (that’s the name of the airport in San José) and I don’t really know why. I somehow got an upgrade for the crossing of the Atlantic.

Well, I’ll be showing you my passport as soon as I get my hands on a camera to take a couple of pictures. There’s also a couple of code snippets in C# I’d like to show you. In short, I hope I’ll be writing for frequently than once a month…

Oops, I forgot to post this when arriving at Costa Rica. I'll post now, and you can read everything about me leaving in the next entry ;)

I am sitting on the floor in Barajas airport in Madrid right now. It's 09:24 local time and the airport is as empty as they get. This entry will not be posted right away though. I have no intention (or the means) to pay 5€ for 30 minutes of wireless Internet access (I’ll talk about this again later.)

I left home today at 4:30 a.m. I know what you're thinking: does the world actually exist at that time in the morning? Well, apparently it does, and it's not that bad either. If you want to find a parking spot in Maisons-Alfort (that's where I live, in case you didn't know, it's right outside Paris) apparently 4 o'clock in the morning is the right time to do so... My father (God bless my private driver ;) ) took me to Orly airport.

I have no numbers with me (and I have to pay for the Internet, so can't look for them right now) but I couldn't help noticing that, in Orly, the screens above the check-in counters were all CRT. I wonder how big the cost involved in disposing of the CRTs is, that replacing them by less energy-consuming, and therefore more environmentaly-friendly, LCDs (to mention only a couple of their advantages) does not seem to be worth the investment...

Anyway, at Orly, Iberia made us board the plane approximately 40 minutes later than originally intended, however, we took off only 5 minutes late. Congratulations, therefore, to Iberia, who's scoring points againts its reputation of frequent delays.

Now, back to Barajas after almost two hours of sleep in the plane. Nice airport! I have no idea how recently built or renovated it is, but it's very nice. The laic motiv is glass: they've got glass panes instead of outside walls, glass elevators, glass floors, glass handrails. You get the idea.

At this time in the morning it's still a wonderful airport. I have no idea if it gets worse afterwards, but for now everyone is still in a good mood, you can easily find a place to seat near you gate and squat an electric outlet to connect your laptop.

They do use LCDs over here, although rather scarcely. I had to walk quite a bit after getting out of the plane before finding a screen that would tell me what terminal my flight's leaving from, and once there, I had to walk quite a bit to find another one to tell me what gate I needed to go to. All that only to find out that the gate was not indicated, but, as I said before, everybody is friendly and in a good mood so I got an answer quickly and with a smile.

(I wonder if the fact that I find everybody cheerful and friendly is because they're really like that or it's just that I've lived in Paris for too long...)

The only thing I do regret in this airport, is that WiFi is not free. Once again, I have no numbers to back me up, but I bet I'm paying enough airport taxes in my plane ticket for them to afford a good Internet connection. That, combined with an agreement with Fon, where the airport would get a cut on credit bought by Aliens (people who are not part of the Fon network), should be enough allow Linuses to get free Internet access. Well, the world's not perfect... If I find a suggestion box let them know what I think...

I guess I'm going to stop here for now. My flight only leaves in two hours, but I'd like to get a seat near my gate. Right now I'm on the floor squatting an electric outlet because my laptop's battery lasts for like 10 minutes on a full charge. I guess it's time to change battery, laptop or both. But well, that's something else I can't really afford right now.

If you read all this, you might be wondering where I'm going, since I left Paris for Madrid, but I'm waiting for a plane here too. I'm going to Costa Rica! My home country. On the other side of the Atlantic ocean (hence the title.) Why? That's a subject for another entry.

For now, I'll wish myself me good a flight, and I'll write again (and actually publish this entry) once I get over there.