Feet in the water, Wind in the face, & Eggs in the pockets

We had a wonderful Easter weekend with my family! We went to visit some friends of us in Normandy that we hadn’t seen for a long time, and it was really great! We don’t often spend time altogether with my parents and sister, and it’s very nice when we get to do it.

We got there with my parents on Friday evening, and my sister Delphine joined us on Saturday evening. The first thing we did when Delphine got there was to go to the sea and enjoy the fury of the wind mixed with the a cold rain full of salt. We could hardly stand up with the wind, and the rain was getting everywhere. We had to scream to get heard, but it was really great, and we got enough fresh air for a few days. I’m closing my eyes on this pic, but it wouldn’t change much since all the drops on my glasses prevented me from seeing anyway

On Sunday, other friends joined us. After tracking eggs in the house for quite a time - Delphine had prepared a game to search for them all around -, we went hiking to a nice place with waterfalls. We had a lot of fun there, climbing, chatting & singing. My parents knew these friends in a choir, years ago, and music is one of the most important things we have in common

On Monday, our last day there, we went for a long hike to the Mont St Michel. This is a very touristic place in the middle of a bay, and full of people in Easter. Now what is great is to go there on foot, crossing the bay with your bare feet, walking in the mud and sand for 7 km and back, crossing cold rivers up to the hips, jumping on moving sands as on a trampoline. We had a very nice and funny guide to cross the bay, and the weather was really great although still a bit cold, so we enjoyed our day to the fullest.

Overall, it was really a great time, and a nice breath of fresh air before diving into real life again

ReactOS : GNU’s not Windows either…

Although I have known the ReactOS project for quite a time, I have never really considered it greatly so far. Actually, I agree very much with Aaron Seigo on the fact that porting more and more great FLOSS to Windows serves Microsoft more than the FLOSS movement.

But then something hit me: when GNU was first created, the aim was to replace the UNIX system piece by piece, so as to end up with a fully open-source OS. I don’t think it would have really worked if RMS had begun by replacing things on the top of UNIX instead of beginning with the core: a C compiler and an editor.

This is why I have come to wonder if ReactOS might be a way to go after all, allowing people to run both FLOSS and proprietary software for Windows natively, on an open-source OS, replacing the core of Windows with an open-source one. I don’t think I would use it, because I’m very happy using only FLOSS on top of GNU/Linux, but it could be part of a transition towards open-source for many users, something of that taste:

• Step 1 : a user on Windows with proprietary software
• Step 2 : a user on Windows with his favourite proprietary software and a few FLOSS, like Firefox, OOo, etc.
• Step 3 : the user switches to ReactOS, keeps using his favourite proprietary software and gets access to more FLOSS
• Step 4 : the user switches to a GNU/${your_favourite_kernel_here} and uses FLOSS only

This would make the Windows-to-GNU transition much smoother, just as long as there are not too many great FLOSS on Windows that would keep them using it, as Aaron rightly pointed out.

Wonderful Work, Lord

As I was driving back to Paris tonight, after seeing my grand-mother on the way back, I saw a very nice rainbow on the side. It was a wide and beautiful one, although not complete. Taking its root in a little wood in the middle of the country, somewhere to the right of the highway, it was growing in a slight veil of rain, then dying in a black long cloud that was over the forest. Going up, the cloud turned whiter and whiter, finishing with nice round shapes, and a bright blue sky!

I kept looking at it as I drove, amazed with its beauty. By the time I could not see it, I turned my head to the left and there was a beautiful sunset that was turning the whole sky to a bright orange, with powerful rays trying to go through the little clouds here and there, behind which the sun was hiding.

Great work Lord, I’ll be back to your drive-in for more thrilling episodes!

Windows Hasta La Vista!

One day late, but still enjoying this nice story from DistroWatch : Hasta La Vista, Baby!

Kubuntu Dapper Flight 6 is out!

Thanks to Mithrandir, Kubuntu Dapper Flight 6 has been released, at the same time as the Ubuntu version.

It features KDE 3.5.2 & the new Crystal look. Currently in universe, getting their way to main are knetworkmanager (an app using network-manager to help dealing with multiple networks), kpowersave (a great replacement for klaptop), kerry (a beagle client for KDE) and more to come

If you are an advanced user and still on Breezy, this is yet another chance for you to take the step to Dapper and help testing and making Kubuntu 6.06 rock hard!

You can dowload Kubuntu Dapper Flight 6 on this page.

Pure nerd!

Oh what a surprise

Just having fun taking the test jpatrick mentionned on his blog. My results are :

Pure Nerd

78 % Nerd, 34% Geek, 47% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

What are you? Take the test!