Weeks start on Monday

Giant Bomb is one of these websites on which you get used to spend time and time as days pass. Although this project is quite recent, it’s active and improved regularly. The main goal of Giant Bomb is to create a wide database about video games, using a kind of wiki software, a bit more specific to video games than usual ones. Now, let speak about the main thing: the systsem.

The system

So, the system is simple: anyone can create an account, and then log in. Once you are logged, you can start to edit pages. Actually, you can start to submit changes, because all changes are moderated, unless you have 1000 points. And that’s the point. You get points by editing articles, creating new pages, and adding images. But you don’t get those points easily, and most of users don’t have many. Indeed, you must follow guidelines to for your submissions to be accepted. So, a lot of pages are now created, and a lot still need to be done/completed. Even if there is nothing more to gain by having more points than to be able to edit (and then, after 5000 points, to create) pages without moderation, the concept of a specific wiki-site about video games is interesting; and it’s possible that one day, giant bomb may become the video-game-wikipedia.

Note: The site is kinda recent, so, it’s still buggy sometimes, and moderation is not always perfect.

… Well, no. That’s not exactly what you are thinking of. Except if you are a nerd. I won’t talk about S&M stuff here. Not in this blog, and even less right now. is an awesome programming language, designed for document creation. Actually, that’s not a “real” programming language, I mean, not like C or Python. A document is composed by two distinct parts, each one merged with the other. On the first hand, you have text. Text you want to type, the real content of the document. On the second hand, there are “structural” parts, which allows to describe the document and its content, to specify font, font-size, etc. But these structural parts are not just about “global” structure, it also exists for local usage, like when you want to Italicize some given text. So, you are able to perfectly control what you do with text. But because of this feature, it’s not natively WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). And if I have to choose between perfect control and WYSIWYG, my choice is already done: I keep the control. Nothing’s more annoying than a document which “do what it wants”. People who have experienced problems with (especially old versions of) Microsoft Word would see what I mean.

Anyway, the syntax of this language is very well done, it allows complex evolutions: a consistent amount of other document-conception-oriented languages are derived from . But speaking of is a language abuse, because the real stuff behind it is . is a language more “primitive” than + (mostly called ). In fact, is more like a layer upon Tex. The compiler is using TeX specification, and just allows a more intuitive approach of it.

Finally, I would recommend / to those who want to have a reusable, precise, way to create and maintain clean documents. But if you just want to redact some crappy documents and if you don’t care about paying software a huge price (or if you are a student ), just buy Word 2007, it’s great, as long as you don’t compare it with .

Tags: amazing, word processor

Hi there.

Early this morning, I found mistakes on a french website. No ones cares (even those who did it, maybe), but it was the reason why I decided to get Thunderbird 3 Alpha. Actually, the french dictionary was only available for Thunderbird 3, and I needed it to correct those mistakes, since I have a Qwerty keyboard, and since I’m too lazy to use an International Qwerty Layout. Maybe I’ll get a Dvorak Us Keyboard soon, but it’s not currently the matter.

So, I installed Thunderbird 3 Alpha pre. I didn’t notice any differences with the 2.0 at the first look, excepted about addons. Indeed, not any did work, but adblock plus. Great thing, but I needed at least the “MinimizeToSystray” addon, in order to let Thunderbird to check my mails regularly. And the MinimizeToSystray addon, on the mozilla addons repository, was available for Thuderbird 2 and previous versions only. So, I tried to find how to tell to Thunderbird 3 to accept it. It’s in install.rdf in the xpi archive. The only thing you have to do is to seek for <em:targetApplication> <!-- Mozilla Thunderbird --> and then replace the <em:maxVersion>2</em:maxVersion> in the <Description> section by <em:maxVersion>3.0a2pre</em:maxVersion>. So the package is there, and it works almost perfectly for me (where “almost” means “since you don’t try to run the old Thunderbird”).

Update : I found a bug in the minimize to tray plugin: when you call thunderbird, it’s started twice, and you have to close one instance.

Update #2 : The new version is out, so I updated the xpi in order to get things working.

Tags: addon, alpha, thunderbird

I created my deviantart account years ago, to be precise, in the very first part of 2004. Since this time, I hadn’t paid attention to this account, for various reasons. But about two weeks ago, I suddenly realized that this account could be used to show up my work.

And, yeah, that’s enough on me, let’s talk about the website now. The reasons why I though that this website were interesting were the following:

1. This website exists since a very long time, and is world wide famous. So, some very interesting advices and tips can be decently expected.
2. A lot of great artists are there, at least to improve traffic on their personal website, and the “favorite” feature allow any registered user to easily keep up to date a list of his/her favorites works among the whole community.
3. Ajax integration, with a well done design, gives to users a nice experience (even if some bugs still remain), and this, since a long time ago (since Ajax were “explicitly described”, about 2 or 3 years ago).

This website, although it’s not perfect, is very nice, and gathers great artists.

But, despite of  this all, and after a short while on deviantART, I observed some behaviors I didn’t like at all. First, users are subjects of a sort of “ladder”, and so, most of them try to reach the best “place” they can. All the exchanges between users I saw were about “the favs”. When you like something, you can “add it to your favorites”, or “fav-it”. And then, the “most-faved” work get the first place, and is of the front page of the site. So people try to get the top of this ranking at any price. It’s really difficult to exchange something, even to have a little chat with another user.

And so, I’ve decided to move my photos on flickr™, because I think that flickr™ is more “sober”, contain less ads, and that I don’t need comments on my photographs, since photography is just a hobby to me. I’ll keep my desktops and all that stuff on DeviantART, just to keep photographs/screen shots separated.

Finally, I saw the new design two days ago: DeviantART v6. I greatly prefered the previous one. And some of the qualities of D/A I mentionned above have disappeared. I’ve not cancelled my account, because I will use it for things like “screenshots” and “Desktops”, and also because It allows me to keep a “fav-list” of what I like on the website. But regadless of this, I’m mostly disappointed about D/A.

Tags: art, deviantart

The first thing I though when I stop wondering, the first time I ever played Hellgate: London, was “Oh shit!”. Sure enough, I was regretting my purchase. The main reason was: 60 bucks is fairly expensive for a Release Candidate, or maybe even a Beta. And though, this game is nice. In spite of all the bugs, system ressources wasting, and else… Game design is functional, there is a lot of items, etc. And a nice effort has been done, since its release: major bugs have been corrected, ressource wasting has been mainly resolved. The entire game has been improved.

But even if the game don’t still deserve the critics it had at its release, it still suffers a lot of “average” features which are not “great”. Like hardness, level design, repetitive play, the game is still unbalanced, and more. These are the reasons why this game is definitely not addictive. It’s too “work in progress” to be, anyway.

Tags: diablo team, hellgate london

The less I could do by buying (and using) Vista Professional was to write a post on it. That’s what I intend to do now. Vista is amazing, hem, great, …, functional. No, I’m nor jokin’ neither sarcastic. It really is functional. But, that’s probably all the good I would write on it. And before to go any further, I’ll explain what I mean.

By “functional”, I mean “It can run, with no problems.” Seriously. It can. But, not on all cases. It will run with no problems if you ignore incomplete boots (always followed by a reboot to solve them, sometimes twice). Although these “turn it off and on again” problems, you’d prefer not to install any third party driver. I assure, you’d prefer. Especially these kind of sound card drivers. No, you probably won’t get a BSOD. But you won’t be able to boot, I mean, to reach login step, since they ‘ll be removed.

But, this OS is beautiful. And, on a E6750 Intel Proc, with 4GB ram and a Leadtek 8800 GTX inside, and all this stuff on an Asus Striker Motherboard, it is fairly smooth. And, It can run Dx10 native, since its release, and without any others problems than Vista ones (Heh, anyway, I’m not totally sure about this).

If you ask me why I’m still running’ it, I’ll probably answer “I wonder. But it’s a bit addictive. And beautiful too. And runs all the softs I need. Excepted Digital Audio Software. That’s why I still have XP.” And, also, it is not very great to save system resources. That’s why I’ll manage to boot if from HD though VmWare by a Linux (Archlinux as example), to start it only when I want to play. But I’m not sure I’ll proceed exactly like that, I’m still thinkin’ about all that stuff. For now, anyway, I’ll focus on programming, no matter which OS I have.

Now, I come to the “Round trip” mention in the post’s title. The reason why it’s here, is because SP1 for Vista was released. At least. ’cause all I wrote above, I mean, ALL, is only true AFTER Vista SP1 patch.

So, if you are considering buying a computer, I’ll say to you: “Wait another one SP for Vista, or maybe two of them, before doing such a regrettable thing”. It’s for the moment a lot too expensive for what it is.

Tags: Microsoft, SP1, Vista

Yeah, I know. It’s not a news. But I mention it if you had skipped it. It’s almost like the beta 5, and it’s still that good =]

Tags: firefox 3, release

I recently changed servers (actually, the change is not yet finished). I had a Dedibox (for almost a year) and I recently got an extra server: a Gandi virtual dedicated server, to have two servers for 43,05 € (35.87 € (for Dedibox) + 7,18 € (for Gandi)) a month. I had not had any problem with the Dedibox for all the time I had it. The Gandi server was sometimes a bit slow (The risk with numerous virtualization slots in one physical server) but for the price I paid, it was more than enough. Then I decided to take two Kimsufi servers, instead of the Dedibox and Gandi, for a total cost of 47,82 € a month. It took Ovh nearly a week to set them up, but I was happy to see that there were no problems at all but the delay (I heard that Ovh hadn’t a very good reputation, so I was on my guard, even if I wanted to form my own opinion). Now I’m reassured, all is going good, and I pay a little more (4,77 € a month) for servers which offer much better performance (especially in terms of disk space and international peering).

The only one problem with Dedibox is cancellation : you need to send a mail with return receipt to proxad, which costs money and takes time. Overall, I’m satisfied by both Dedibox and Kimsufi, but since Kimsufi are cheaper, my choice’s made.

Tags: dedibox, gandi, kimsufi, ovh

After a short while spent (wasted?) to configure this blog, to correct the mistakes left in the template by Kapikua, and to add some other mistakes by myself; I found the time to start an article on Firefox 3 Beta 5. Why? Because I think this soft is awesome. Yes, ok, it is a beta. But, this beta is more stable than Firefox 2. And, that’s not all. It’s very prettier, faster (they fix a lot of memory leaks), more ergonomic, has an awesome zooming functionality… in severe ways: Ff 3 beta 5 is better. So, we could just ask ourselves why is it still called a “beta”.

The only answer I found is: “The gold release will completly overwhelm I.E. and other browsers”. This might be The browser we are waitin’ for.

Tags: awesome, beta, browser, firefox 3

And… Yeah. I start a blog. Once again. No, I’ve nothing more to tell than before, but… This time, I’ve not started a blog just to use wordpress. It’s because, from time to time, I’ve things to write, to share, to note. And I’ve think that it could be cool to have such a nice tool, to *log* (cause that’s the first purpose of this kind of tool, actually) all that stuff.

And why do I choose to do it in English? First, I need to improve my skills in this marvelous language. Then, I’ve found no reason to write in french: the very most of people who could be interested in this log can read English (or, since I write it, Engrish, sorry). And, do not hesitate to correct me if you see mistakes (thanks for any help).

See you. o/

Tags: start, wordpress