San Francisco !

So I arrived in SF last monday evening. As I have some family there, I'm enjoying the few days I'm spending with them, as we see each other every 5 years. On tuesday, we did some sight seeing (the weather was excellent !) and since then, I'm stuck in front of my computer most of the day, working on the DIrectory server.

Today though was excellent : we drove to Napa Valley, and did some wine testing. I have been there 20 years ago, and I remember having tested a very good Champagne (Tm), from Domaine Chandon. I was not that much impressed by the other wines we tested back then, but I wasn't the heavy wine drunker I'm now :)

I must admit that what we tested today was wonderful. There are two differences with the french wines I'm used to (actually, four) :

1. when I test french wines, out of 10 bottles, only 2 please me, 3 are average, and 5 can be thrown in the sink. In Napa, They are more or less all pleasant, even if I won't put all of them on my table (it's a matter of taste here)
2. I'm used with 12.5° wines, most of the Napa wines are above 14°C. Some of them are closer to Porto than normal wine. That also mean you have to be carefull not to swallow all the wines you test !
3. There are some local 'cépages' (grapes) that we don't have in France, like the Zinfandel. Not my favorite...
4. We have Chateaux, Grands Crus, 1er Crus, AOC. Napa has Cabernet, Syrah, Chardonnay. Of course, our Chateaux are made of those same Cabernet, Merlot, Viognier, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Marsanne, ... but we don't name the wine from the cépages they are made of. Probably a mistake because it's really confusing for the vast majority of people who don't know anything about the Clos de la Roche, for instance (it's a very good burgundy Grand Cru, a Côte de Nuit, made of Pinot Noir)

Are those differences important to me ? Yes, and no.

Yes, because I just find it disapointing that french producers don't understand that quality is a must, and producing mediocre wine is just killing them.

And no, because navigating through all the small villages in Burgundy, a place where 50 different producers can share 125 acres of vineyard (4700 bottles per producer, average), is stunning. Old houses, beautiful landscapes, and of course great wines and good food is part of the pleasure.

However, I would say that there is no reason for any Napa owner to be ashamed from their production : they top most of french wines !

Time to go back to the Directory Server code after this day off !

Boston...

So I'm in Boston, enjoying a short stay with good friends. Zhenya and Alexei are kind enough to welcome me in this beautiful city before I fly to San Francisco, I really appreciate !

Boston is really a nice place to be in October, when all the trees turn red and yellow. Very differnet from Paris !

On the other side, I still have a lot to do on the Directory server, but frankly, with a 6 hours jet lag, plus many places to visit (tomorrow : Newport), I don't have time nor energy to spend more than a couple of hours a day to work on the schema refactoring we are currently working on (but it's still making progress).

I will arrive in San Francisco next monday, with some more places to visit. Time is flying ...

LdapCON 2009 : Portland !

I'm flying to Portland tomorrow where the 2009 LDAP conference will stand, just before LinuxCON. Stefan Seelmann will travel with me, we arranged a common flight (Stefan is one of the guy behind Apache Directory Studio)

This will be the second LDAP conference, the last one was organized in Köln back in 2007. I will present two talks, one about replication and another one with Ludovic Poitou about a new Java based LDAP API.

The most interesting part is that the LDAP community will be there, this is a promize of many interesting conversations (and probably a lot of beers to drink :)

It's a 17 hours flight, with a stop, quite a long journey...

For those of you interested in LDAP, feel free to join us !

A question of style...

This morning, Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot, who designed the Apache Directory Server web site pointed me to the new Nexus site. And then back to Directory Studio.

Pretty similar L&F :) In fact, the CSS are the very same.

First, Pierre-Arnaud is quite proud to see that what he designed was used as a base for a commercial web site (granted that the people behind Nexus are Apachers too - Sonatype's founder is Jason Von Zyl, one of the well known Maven guy )

Second, I think that we should also add the ASL 2.0 header in CSS, and probably HTML pages (assuming that Confluence does it automatically when exporting pages : something to check)

Last, not least, I'm quite sure that Pierre-Arnaud, and the Directory project team, would have appreciated to be contacted before those CSS are used for a commercial web site. Just because Pierre-Arnaud has spent hours, and probably days, to polish those CSS and would have been pleased to have been thanked for that.

But it's probably always the same story : deadlines, rush hours, etc. Anyways, it's always a pleasure to see that your work is being reused, it's a proof that it's not that bad, all in all :)

So congrats for the great job, Pierre-Arnaud !

Street Fighter

Today I played this game again. Well, even if everything is going virtual those days, the experience was very real... Long story short : an old lady was grabbing money on an ATM and a young mobster was assaulting her.

At first, I thought this was some young couple having fun (you know, with those hair coloration, you can't tell from 10 meters looking at her back if she was young or not... Say NO to artificial colors ! Gray is sexy ...). But when I saw the walking stick falling down, I switched to Berseck mode. That mean : you don't think about the consequences. Ok, would the guy looked like Mike Tyson, I probably would have thought a bit more, but, well, you know, there is something in your brain that short-circuits in such situations.

I grab the guy, choked him, and he started to suffocate. He released the money. The woman was safe. I was safe. I asked someone to call the police.

Now, many lessons learned :
- First, people around you in such situation don't know what to do. There were 3 guys, quite young (30 years old), they were just watching; I had to yell at one of them so that he called the police. Lesson one : John Doe is not used to violence, whatever movie he is watching.

- Second, I remember that I had to release his neck, so that he can breeze. My "idea" was that it could kill him, and I didn't want that to happen. So I put him on the ground, trying to lock him, as I learned when I was doing Judo, 30 years ago. Lesson two : it's not because you did one year of Judo training that you are still good at it, 30 years later...

- Third, of course, this guy wasn't waiting the police calmly... he was trying his best to escape, well, using a mix of whining, and desesperate move to get away. He wasn't violent though : no pinches, no teeth, no punch, just like a snake, trying to escape. At some point, he turned me down, and I was under. Not good. He escaped. Lesson three : Secure your hold, don't try to change your position, when it's safe. He might have suffocated, but probably won't have passed out.

- Forth, when he started to run away, the other peeps just did very little to stop him. So he was away. Good for him. Anyway, he was under 18, and would have probably spent a day or to in jail, and would have been released. He was not french either, that mean there is very few the police can do. My bet is that he was a kind of refugee, and needed the money badly. I can understand that. Life is a battle. Lesson four : Don't expect any help. the fight lasted for something like 2 minutes, and *nobody* tried to give me a hand. Probably plain normal.

- Last, not least, the ground is dirty and tough. Even if he didn't fought back, I got some scratches. Also, my physical condition was not perfect : I was injured as I fall down from my bicycle 3 days ago, and at some point, I didn't want to increase the injury. Lesson five : it's *exhausting*. I never thought that a 2 minutes action was so demanding. It took me 5 minutes to recover after this effort. Ok, I'm 44, but I do ride my bicycle every day (around 20km a day). It does help a little.

At the end, I wish I don't have to do that again. Nobody was injured, the woman did get her money back, the young mobster had a new chance to behave better (hmmm, ok, I'm not that optimist). So all is good !

PS: Calling the police in Paris in August is simply not possible. They never showed up, they didn't even replied the call ;)

Social Sites OD !

There is not a single day I'm not receiving an alarm from someone moving from one place to another, tripping from one country to another one, anything...

Trippit, Dopplr, wtf ?

Soon, there will be a new Social Site like named GirlIFckd.com...

This is utterly useless and annoying. I bet that their business model is doomed from day one, but there are still some VC wanting to waste their money on such companies. We probably have to wait one couple of years to see those parasites dying.

French sucks in English

This is obvious, you just have to read my posts ;)

But now, it's confirmed by the french students scores on TOEFL. With an average of 88/120, France ranks at the 69th place, far behing the norwest european countries, on the same seat than Bulgaria, Belarus and Latvia.

That explains a lot ... Désolé :)