Le weblog entièrement nu

Sous la pression populaire de Justine Miso (une fois de plus), voici un nouvel épisode de notre mini-série « Père Noël si tu m'entends ». Je reste très classique, et il s'agit donc principalement de musique : par exemple, Émilie Simon, Feist, Paris Combo... Tiens tiens, on se demande bien où j'ai pu entendre tout ça.

Mais aussi : je suis aussi potentiellement intéressé par « l'Opération Tupeutla ». Je crois savoir que ça existe en livre de poche aussi bien qu'en CD, et je n'arrive pas à me décider de quel format me fait le plus envie.

Enfin, dernière pour aujourd'hui, probablement plus difficile à trouver : l'album « Ashibi » du groupe Nenes, d'Okinawa. C'est de la musique japonaise, dans un style traditionnel (au shamisen et tout), mais il y a sur cet album une reprise de « No Woman No Cry » qui vaut son pesant de cacahuètes (donc : la première personne se présentant chez moi avec cet album dans un paquet cadeau repartira avec le poids dudit paquet cadeau en cacahuètes).

Y'a autre chose, mais là ça va être beaucoup plus dur à trouver, donc il faut que je réfléchisse sérieusement. Je vous en reparlerai quand j'aurai trouvé une récompense à la hauteur de l'exploit.

Après quelques heures de lutte, je dispose à présent de quelques scripts sur mon portable qui me permettent de préparer des actions à l'avance et de les exécuter plus tard. En pratique, les actions en question sont la publication d'une note dans le blog, et la publication d'une image dans la galerie photos, et le but est de pouvoir choisir transuillement la photo à publier sans me presser, et de rédiger mes notes n'importe quand (par exemple dans les transports), et de n'avoir finalement besoin que d'un accès à l'Internet de courte durée pour publier tout ça.

Normalement j'ai testé tout ça sur un album et un blog dédiés aux tests, ça avait l'air de marcher, donc voici le premier (et je l'espère dernier) test grandeur nature. Si vous voyez cette note, c'est que la publication du blog marche. Si vous voyez dans cet album un espace de travail et de préparation intense, c'est que la publication des photos marche.

La suite, normalement, c'est de la gnognote : 3700 pages de Lonely Planet à lire, au moins 75 nuits à réserver en auberges de jeunesse, un peu de comptabilité prévisionnelle (y'a pas la part variable du salaire qui doit tomber d'ici peu ?), des prototypages de bagages, des choix dramatiques (je prends plutôt des T-shirts de geek, ou plutôt pas ?), des briefings de Xavier (normalement il est en train d'apprendre ses kanjis de base, là), des plannings des voyages intranationaux (y'a des trains qui vont de Nagano à Nikkō ?), dire au revoir aux copains, appeler la famille, ne pas s'inquiéter à l'idée des catastrophes aériennes en pagaille ces jours-ci, etc. Comme en plus mes clients semblent avoir assimilé l'idée que je m'en allais, je vais même avoir du temps pour faire tout ça.

Tout mon temps.

Comment ça, même pas trois semaines ?

This category hasn't seen an entry in English for some time. I think it's time to fix that.

I now have all my plane tickets for the trip (apart from the rather boring Nice→Paris and back). Here's a rough approximation of my whereabouts in the next three months.

Let's start from Paris, on the 6th of September, with a flight to Montréal, Canada. I'll then wander around for about three weeks, focusing on visiting Québec and maybe New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with possibly a trip to Ottawa and Toronto (which I only briefly visited during/around Debconf 2). Expected highlight: maybe I'll go see the wales.

September the 28th, flight to Mexico City. Slightly more than a week in Mexico, so I'll probably fall for the most obvious tourist traps. I plan on visiting things though, not lying down on beaches. No real plan yet, since a potential co-traveller is still very much that: potential. I hope I'll be able to escape Mexico City and visit some nicely precolombian site.

6th of October is when I leave Mexico and fly to Japan. This is the longest stay I'll make (almost four weeks), since I really loved that country when I was there (internship in 1998, then holidays in 2001). I'll most probably have a co-traveller for part of that stay. He's never been to Japan yet, which means I'll be unable to avoid spending a few days in Tokyo and another few in the obligatory Kyoto-Osaka-Nara triangle. I don't mind too much, since they are nice places to see after all, and there's going to be some relaxed travelling in-between (not the Shinkansen, in other words). And then, when my friend flies back to France, I'll have almost two more weeks to go to exotic new places I've never been to before. Like, Kyushu and Shikoku. No precise plans yet, either. Expected highlight: everything, but I'd like to both spend some time (more probably, money) in Akihabara, and see some more traditional places (I'm toying with the idea of staying a day or two in the temples around mount Koya-san).

That leads us to the 2nd of November, and a flight to New Caledonia, where I'll only stay until the 5th, so I'll probably run around, but not very far from, Nouméa. I'm glad my digital camera is reasonably fast in taking pictures and doesn't require much manual fiddling.

On the 5th of November, I'll take a plane to Auckland, New Zealand. I have two weeks to spend there, so I'll probably stay on the North Island, in order to take time to see the sights. I'll try to cover a reasonable part of it, though. With any luck, I'll go swim with the dolphins (and my sister will hate me with hateful jealousy — oh well, "too bad").

Then comes the trick: on the 20th of November, I'll fly back to New Caledonia, for obscure reasons linked with frequent flyer programmes. If things go according to plan, my previous stay will have been a reconnaissance stay, and I'll be able to schedule things for the second one to happen in a more or less organised way. I'm told New Caledonia is a lovely place for a first experience in scuba diving, so I'll see if I can take that opportunity.

And then it'll be the 26th of November, and I'll be on my way home, just in time to catch the northern hemisphere winter. I may not spend too much time enjoying the rain and cold, though, as I assume I'll have hundreds of pictures to sort, annotate and organise. And several hours of DV tapes, too, out of which I'll have to make a video report on a DVD if I want to avoid lynching by my friends and family.

That is the current plan. It's rough enough that things should go according to it, but it doesn't mean much.

Oh, yes, it does: it means I'm growing terribly excited as days go past.

It seems what I've called my PDA for almost seven years (a Sharp PA-X500) is now dead. Well, it's not quite dead, but apparently the touch-sensitive screen is no longer sensitive to touching, and I'm not aware of any other input device for it. So I'm appealing to my fellow geeks, at least to those of you who know about this kind of things; hear my plea, and please provide some advice. People from Japan, I'm especially eager for your wisdom.

First, is there any way I could recover the data that's in it? There's nothing deadly important, it's just to save me the bother of collecting all these phone numbers and addresses again. Some have sentimental value, even if I have totally lost touch with their owners. Before someone suggests deep hackery like removing the memory chip and plugging it into some hand-soldered adaptor then into their old Amstrad, I was more thinking about something infrared, since there's an infrared port. The problem is: can it be activated from outside? I can't switch the thing on the usual way (since the touchscreen is, well, not touchy), I can only get to what's best depicted by this picture of what happens when I remove and re-insert the battery. It's the standard touchscreen calibration tool, from what I understood, but maybe it says somewhere that it can be switched to infrared file-server or so. The manual (in Japanese) mentions Zaurus thingies numerously, but I don't know what they say about them (my Japanese skills are old, and they were never that great anyway). Any idea?

Second part, in the very likely case I'm going to replace it: what should I buy? My specs are: stuff the PDA features, I initially bought that as a kanji dictionary, so the replacement needs to have a kanji dictionary too. One where you draw the kanji on the screen, and it recognises it. I'm clueless when it comes to classifying kanji, and if I have to tell the thing that what I'm looking for is something with 17 strokes and the key for "hand", then it loses much of its interest. A kanji→English dictionary would be nice, but not needed. I've managed to cope with kanji→Japanese then Japanese→English. The other, more normal, PDA thingies (addressbook, scheduler, world clock, alarm, etc.) would be nice, but are not compulsory. I don't care about games.

I'm going to visit Japan in October, and yes I will spend a couple of hours of Akihabara, but I'd like ideas and opinions beforehand. If someone has an idea for getting the data out but it would require the manual, just say so, I'll bring it along.

Why it chose to break down now will stay a mystery. Maximum embarrassment for me because I'll be dictionary-less for a few days in Japan? Or longing for some well-deserved rest since I'm soon going to have the opportunity to replace it? No idea. In any case, it sucks.