Cédric Bosdonnat - mischttps://bosdonnat.fr/2010-09-08T22:02:00+02:00A geek's perspectiveHolidays in China2010-09-08T22:02:00+02:002010-09-08T22:02:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2010-09-08:/holidays-in-china.html<p>This summer, I have spent a whole month traveling in China
with my wife. This experience was even better because we organized it
all by ourselves. Hopefully some friends and colleagues helped and
welcomed us. We arrived in Shanghai and did some round trip via famous
places like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangzhou">Hangzhou</a>, the …</p><p>This summer, I have spent a whole month traveling in China
with my wife. This experience was even better because we organized it
all by ourselves. Hopefully some friends and colleagues helped and
welcomed us. We arrived in Shanghai and did some round trip via famous
places like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangzhou">Hangzhou</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Huang">yellow mountains</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilin">Guilin</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi%27an">Xi'an</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingyao">Pingyao</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Temple">hanging temple</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungang_Grottoes">Yungang grottoes</a>
and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijin">Beijing</a>. Like every tourist in China (mostly Chinese people) we
took a lot of pictures (\~1400) and had to cut the number down to
something bearable (\~300).</p>
<p>There are a few tricks we learned or used for our trip:</p>
<ul>
<li>They don't have a centralized IT system for the train bookings.
Train tickets can be purchased maximum 10 days before the departure,
but don't rush to the next station or you could be fooled! First you
need to pay 5 RMB more for each train ticket leaving from another
station. Then, if you still want to buy your ticket here, keep in
mind that they have only a small set of places: not all. Due to this
we had to take sleepers in the afternoon and hard seats in the night
for 7 hours long trips. Before taking that latter train we met an
Australian guy who bought sleepers the day before... but in the very
same city!</li>
<li>You can see all the train schedules online to plan your trip before
leaving (but you need to read a few chinese words):
<a href="http://www.huochepiao.com">http://www.huochepiao.com</a></li>
<li>To book the hotels, we used mostly <a href="http://english.ctrip.com/">ctrip</a> and <a href="http://www.jinjianginns.com">JinJiang Inns</a>.
The latter one is a cheap hotel brand, but you'll need to read
chinese to look for the hotels and book them</li>
<li>The CITS is a local travel agency present in almost every city. You
need to pay attention before purchasing something from them: we had
a quite bad tour in Guilin with them and a nice one around Datong.</li>
<li>Don't forget that long distance busses are also an interesting
travel option inside the country. It would have saved us a day by
train to go from the yellow mountains to Hangzhou.</li>
</ul>Learning chinese alone2010-03-31T18:06:00+02:002010-03-31T18:06:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2010-03-31:/learning-chinese-alone.html<p>I recently decided to learn chinese again. I took chinese
lessons at the engineering school, but forgot almost everything!
Hopefully I still have the lessons and I have found a cool on-line
chinese course with audio samples on <a href="http://www.chinese-tools.com/">chinese-tools.com</a>... but I
needed some way to monitor my progresses in …</p><p>I recently decided to learn chinese again. I took chinese
lessons at the engineering school, but forgot almost everything!
Hopefully I still have the lessons and I have found a cool on-line
chinese course with audio samples on <a href="http://www.chinese-tools.com/">chinese-tools.com</a>... but I
needed some way to monitor my progresses in vocabulary learning. I
quickly checked if there was some vocabulary training tool for Gnome but
couldn't find any satisfying tool. I thus decided to start my own tool.
As I wanted to learn GTK+ and C# Mono for quite a long time, I have
installed monodevelop and started coding. The sources are available
under GPL on <a href="http://gitorious.org/mylangteacher/mylangteacher">gitorious</a> but I'm not providing any binary yet: those
who want it will need to build it using monodevelop.</p>
<p>Here is a list of the current features, though they might change
quickly:</p>
<ul>
<li>Definition of a sequence of lessons containing the vocabulary</li>
<li>The words can be grouped in some tags using drag and drop. This
helps to sort the words by lexical field (which is not always the
case in the lessons)</li>
<li>A word is composed of the term in the learned language, its
pronunciation and the translation in your language</li>
<li>Double clicking a word shows some details on it. For the moment,
they only include the strokes order for the CJK characters, but we
can easily imagine some connection with an on-line dictionary
showing synonyms or examples. The strokes order images are directly
fetched from the <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Stroke_Order_Project">Strokes Order Project on Wikimedia commons</a>.</li>
<li>The exercise mode asks for both the pronunciation and the word. The
results are stored to help see which words are mastered and which
need to be learned again.</li>
</ul>
<p>Here are some screenshots of the application to help you see it without
building it first:</p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/MyLangTeacher-main.png"><img alt="Main window" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/MyLangTeacher-main-300x215.png"></a></p>
<p>Main window</p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/MyLangTeacher-Exercise.png"><img alt="The exercise window" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/MyLangTeacher-Exercise-300x216.png"></a></p>
<p>The exercise window</p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/MyLangTeacher-strokes.png"><img alt="The strokes order" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/MyLangTeacher-strokes-300x215.png"></a></p>
<p>The strokes order</p>
<p>Of course if you wish to use it or improve it, I will appreciate any
help and comment. My short term plans for this are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Adding some properties to the course, like the author, the learned
language</li>
<li>Adding grammar points to the lessons</li>
<li>Allowing nested tags</li>
</ul>
<p>My goal for this application now is not to make it only a vocabulary
training tool, but something more complete. The ultimate feature I'ld
like to see there is the integration with some TTS with nice voices to
speak the words or even have some other exercise based on that for
listening comprehension.</p>A time for changes2008-11-28T16:32:00+01:002008-11-28T16:32:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-11-28:/a-time-for-changes.html<p>December will be the start of a new way of life for me and my
wife.</p>
<ul>
<li>First, I will work at Novell on OpenOffice.org. I will be able to
work in this familiar open source project again. On top of that I
will work from home and thus have …</li></ul><p>December will be the start of a new way of life for me and my
wife.</p>
<ul>
<li>First, I will work at Novell on OpenOffice.org. I will be able to
work in this familiar open source project again. On top of that I
will work from home and thus have more time with my wife and my
friends.</li>
<li>The next news is that I'll become father in march. Even if the
changes will really come with the baby, some are already operating
to welcome him (or her).</li>
</ul>
<p>As a conclusion to my readers interested in Alfresco, I will completely
stop working on that product and thus I will stop writing tutorials on
it. I will focus on my OpenOffice.org related activities. These will
obviously include my existing projects like the Eclipse integration and
the COOoder extension.</p>A wonderful week in Québec2008-11-02T16:10:00+01:002008-11-02T16:10:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-11-02:/a-wonderful-week-in-quebec.html<p>This week I have travelled to Quebec for my work. I had time
to discover Québec city during the week-ends and was full of the
French-Canadian culture. If I have spent such a good time there, it
thanks to my clients and hosts: <a href="http://www.infoglobe.ca/">InfoGlobe (fr)</a>. I would like to
thank …</p><p>This week I have travelled to Quebec for my work. I had time
to discover Québec city during the week-ends and was full of the
French-Canadian culture. If I have spent such a good time there, it
thanks to my clients and hosts: <a href="http://www.infoglobe.ca/">InfoGlobe (fr)</a>. I would like to
thank again David Tremblay and Sam Chau who helped me discover their
city and culture, but I don't forget the others.</p>
<p>This is definitely a place to return with my wife...</p>Some stats2008-06-10T21:00:00+02:002008-06-10T21:00:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-06-10:/some-stats.html<p>The Wordpress statistic plugin provides me some interesting
informations on what you are doing on my blog. As these may be of
interest for you too, here are some comments on them.</p>
<p>Firs of all, the top visiting day on this blog as been set a few days
ago: the …</p><p>The Wordpress statistic plugin provides me some interesting
informations on what you are doing on my blog. As these may be of
interest for you too, here are some comments on them.</p>
<p>Firs of all, the top visiting day on this blog as been set a few days
ago: the best score is now 124 visits for the day. But what it more
interesting is what kind of article you are reading.</p>
<p>Thanks to Wordpress stats plugins and OpenOffice.org I have produced the
following chart showing what category of article have been mostly read
during the last 30 days.</p>
<p><img alt="Categories for the last 30 days" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/stats_2008_05.jpg"></p>
<p>At first sight it seems that OpenOffice.org articles are the most read
ones. However Alfresco articles seems to be more and more interesting to
you as they are already 30% of the visits after only 3 months of posts.
The top 10 articles can also show what is interesting you more
precisely.</p>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Post title</th>
<th>Visits</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/pages/libreoffice-eclipse.html">OpenOffice.org & Eclipse</a></td>
<td>251</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/using-webscripts-to-extend-alfresco-web-client.html">Using webscripts to extend Alfresco Web</a></td>
<td>101</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/getting-an-ooo-cws.html">Getting an OOo CWS</a></td>
<td>44</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/generating-uml-diagrams-from-java-code.html">Generating UML diagrams from Java code</a></td>
<td>40</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/pages/le-mariage-chretien.html">Marriage as a Christian (fr)</a></td>
<td>34</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/whos-using-my-alfresco.html">Who's using my Alfresco?</a></td>
<td>32</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Albums (dropped)</td>
<td>31</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>o.r.i.g.i.n.a.l. plugin for wordpress (dropped)</td>
<td>30</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/toggle-alfresco-in-a-read-only-mode.html">uno-skeletonmaker and multiple services</a></td>
<td>24</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[Toggle Alfresco in a read-only mode][8]</td>
<td>19</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>The good news here are that the Eclipse integration page is the most
visited page: it makes me hope that their are some people using it. This
is quite comforting to know that this work might not be completely lost
in the abyss of the forgotten projects.</p>
<p>The next good news is that Alfresco Webscripts sounds interesting. I'll
try to post a little bit more on what I'm doing with them and what you
could do. As I already mentionned it above, Alfresco topic seems really
hot, because 3 recent Alfresco posts are already in the top ten...</p>
<p>Last but not least, the great surprise to me is the number of persons
visiting my page on the christian wedding. I didn't even expect it to be
read by other people than friends... this is really good to see that
there are still persons considering this way of life. Should I translate
this page in english? As I didn't want to do it at the beginning, leave
me some comments if you would like to see it translated. Of course, you
may offer your help to translate it too!</p>Using Firefox 3.0 beta 52008-05-22T09:29:00+02:002008-05-22T09:29:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-05-22:/using-firefox-30-beta-5.html<p>As I have updated to the Ubuntu 8.04 I now have firefox 3.0
Beta 5 installed on my computer. Some of my extensions where not updated
for Firefox 3.0 but I have found some betas of these extensions or
replacements. Here are the extensions I've found: I …</p><p>As I have updated to the Ubuntu 8.04 I now have firefox 3.0
Beta 5 installed on my computer. Some of my extensions where not updated
for Firefox 3.0 but I have found some betas of these extensions or
replacements. Here are the extensions I've found: I hope these links can
be useful to someone else.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Firebug</strong> - Use the 1.2 beta version which could be fetched on
<a href="http://getfirebug.com/releases/">firebug's website</a></li>
<li><strong>Del.icio.us bookmarks</strong> - Use the beta provided on <a href="http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2008/04/firefox-3-delicious-and-you.html">del.icio.us
blog</a></li>
<li><strong>Document map</strong> - This extension shows the document headings as a
tree: this is really handy when reading huge pages. This extension
has no version for Firefox 3.0 beta 5 but I have found another
experimental extension doing the same job: <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/7203">HeadingsMap (es)</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now I can use Firefox 3.0 like I was using Firefox 2.x... </p>Eclipse RCP and AJAX2008-05-14T22:16:00+02:002008-05-14T22:16:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-05-14:/eclipse-rcp-and-ajax.html<p>Some time ago, I've discovered an Eclipse project which sounds
interesting to me. This project aims at providing an AJAX runtime target
for Eclipse RCP applications. I didn't have more time but to play a
little with the public demos. Thus I still wondered what is the gap for
an …</p><p>Some time ago, I've discovered an Eclipse project which sounds
interesting to me. This project aims at providing an AJAX runtime target
for Eclipse RCP applications. I didn't have more time but to play a
little with the public demos. Thus I still wondered what is the gap for
an Eclipse RCP applications developper before starting to create a RAP
application.</p>
<p>Today I had some time to have a look at the sources of a RAP application
project. There is quite nothing more to do if you are already
programming Eclipse RCP applications as the differences are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Adding the <code>org.eclipse.rap.ui</code> plugin to the dependencies.</li>
<li>Importing the <code>javax.servlet</code> and <code>javax.servlet.http</code> packages</li>
<li>Add an <code>org.eclipse.rap.ui.entrypoint</code> extension to define the RAP
application entry point</li>
</ul>
<p>To internationalization of a RAP application works also differently from
the standard Eclipse internationalization. This is described in the RAP
on-line help: internationalizing a RAP application shouldn't be a huge
problem.</p>
<p>A RAP application can even be packaged in a WAR file as any other web
application. There is no wizard to perform this, but a sample Eclipse
feature projects with Ant build scripts are available on the Eclipse
CVS. There is also generic Equinox documentation on that topic at
<a href="http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/server/http_in_container.php">http://www.eclipse.org/equinox/server/http_in_container.php</a>.</p>
<p>Thus creating a standard Web application by using the JFace and SWT APIs
is quite easy. When combined with <a href="http://www.springframework.org/osgi">Spring-OSGi</a>, let us imagine
creating powerful and sexy Web applications.</p>
<p>The only thing I still would like to see before being a RAP fan is a
benchmark of an application used by hundreds or thousands of users. Does
it make a difference with toolkits like <a href="http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/">GWT</a> or <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/">YUI</a>? Can I use
RAP for business applications used every day by a whole company? </p>Zimbra & Evolution2008-05-01T22:35:00+02:002008-05-01T22:35:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-05-01:/zimbra-evolution.html<p>As I had problems to use <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a> collaborative messaging
correctly without using the web client interface, I decided to find a
really useable solution.</p>
<p>I was using Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 on my Ubuntu laptop to read all the
emails from all my mail boxes. I tried <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/">Lightening 0.8 …</a></p><p>As I had problems to use <a href="http://www.zimbra.com/">Zimbra</a> collaborative messaging
correctly without using the web client interface, I decided to find a
really useable solution.</p>
<p>I was using Mozilla Thunderbird 2.0 on my Ubuntu laptop to read all the
emails from all my mail boxes. I tried <a href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/">Lightening 0.8</a> for Zimbra
calendar management, but there were some bugs and problems to connect to
my Zimbra Calendar. I tried Zimbra Desktop too, but there were some
problems with searches in shared folders. There are even some tricky
things with the emails trapped into server filters.</p>
<p>Then I tried <a href="http://www.gnome.org/projects/evolution/">Evolution</a> because it has all the features I needed:</p>
<ul>
<li>Multiple emails accounts</li>
<li>Calendar</li>
<li>Shared contacts</li>
</ul>
<p>The only problem was to make it work properly with Zimbra. There is an
evolution connector for Zimbra, but it isn't present in Ubuntu Feisty
Fawn repositories. Hopefully I found <a href="http://www.hockeypfef.net/index.cfm/2007/3/27/Howto-Configure-the-Zimbra-Evolution-Connector-for-Ubuntu">this interesting blog article
explaining how to build it</a>.</p>
<p>There are some more things to do for it to work:</p>
<ul>
<li>Install all the dependencies: they aren't all listed in the article
and I can't remember which one I have installed. Don't worry the
<code>configure</code> program will tell you what is missing!</li>
<li>Edit the <code>configure.ac</code> file to change the evolution version to the
one matching your installation. In my case I changed into this
because the version 2.10 wasn't taken into account by the script:<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><code><span class="err"> EVOLUTION_VERSION=`pkg-config --modversion evolution-shell-2.10 2>/dev/null`</span>
<span class="err"> if test -z "$EVOLUTION_VERSION"; then</span>
<span class="err"> AC_MSG_ERROR(Evolution development libraries not installed)</span>
<span class="err"> else</span>
<span class="err"> EVOLUTION_API_VERSION=2.10</span>
<span class="err"> EAPI_MAJOR_VERSION=2</span>
<span class="err"> EAPI_MINOR_VERSION=10</span>
<span class="err"> CAMEL_API_VERSION=1.2</span>
<span class="err"> EDS_API_VERSION=1.2</span>
<span class="err"> fi</span>
</code></pre></div>
</li>
</ul>
<p>After the usual <code>make</code> and <code>make install</code> steps I have a new <em>Zimbra</em>
account type in the wizard. Adding a Zimbra account adds the email
account, the zimbra contacts and the calendar. Zimbra shared email
folders are normal folders in Evolution. For an offline use, there is
only to select the folders to use offline. I still have to see how the
appointment attempts are done by emails.</p>
<p>The only things I could reproach to this Zimbra - Evolution connector
are:</p>
<ol>
<li>the Evolution tags are viewed in Zimbra as <code>$Label1</code>, <code>$Label2</code>,
etc. It could be much better to be able to reuse Zimbra tags in
Evolution and vice-versa.</li>
<li>the connector doesn't show the shared calendars of Zimbra: only the
user calendar</li>
</ol>Discovering VIm2008-04-19T21:50:00+02:002008-04-19T21:50:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-04-19:/discovering-vim.html<p><strong>This post is not intended to participate in any troll
throwing competition and doesn't aim at (re)starting any flame war with
emacs users.</strong></p>
<p>I'm using vim for some times, but in many occasions I could see how few
of its features I am using. I discovered today some interesting …</p><p><strong>This post is not intended to participate in any troll
throwing competition and doesn't aim at (re)starting any flame war with
emacs users.</strong></p>
<p>I'm using vim for some times, but in many occasions I could see how few
of its features I am using. I discovered today some interesting features
for coders like autocompletion, mass insertion, going to matching
parentheses. Here are some useful links:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.43things.com/things/view/253990/learn-vim">http://www.43things.com/things/view/253990/learn-vim</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cs.utah.edu/~kad/vim/vimnotes.shtml">http://www.cs.utah.edu/~kad/vim/vimnotes.shtml</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=194">http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=194</a></li>
</ul>
<p>There is even a page in OpenOffice.org wiki to help <a href="http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Editor_Vim">configure Vim for
OpenOffice.org</a> developement. I think that I'll try all this out
soon... </p>Measures to avoid data loss2008-02-14T00:00:00+01:002008-02-14T00:00:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-02-14:/measures-to-avoid-data-loss.html<p>During the time my website was down, I was afraid of having
lost some data. Among them were the 400 photos of my wedding and some
interesting articles about UNO. To avoid this I decided to setup some
backup scripts. It is easily done using:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://restkultur.ch/personal/wolf/scripts/db_backup/">db_backup</a>: a small PHP tool …</li></ul><p>During the time my website was down, I was afraid of having
lost some data. Among them were the 400 photos of my wedding and some
interesting articles about UNO. To avoid this I decided to setup some
backup scripts. It is easily done using:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://restkultur.ch/personal/wolf/scripts/db_backup/">db_backup</a>: a small PHP tool for dumping databases</li>
<li>wget: to mirror the FTP</li>
</ul>
<p>Now this site will be mirrored by my own computer and maybe soon by
another website... in case of. </p>Why my blog has been down2008-02-11T10:40:00+01:002008-02-11T10:40:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2008-02-11:/why-my-blog-has-been-down.html<p>During more than one month my blog was down. I had several
complains about the missing OpenOffice.org Eclipse integration update
site. This is mainly due to my ISP for not warning when they unactivate
an account. In fact Free.fr as unactivated my account due to too many
spam …</p><p>During more than one month my blog was down. I had several
complains about the missing OpenOffice.org Eclipse integration update
site. This is mainly due to my ISP for not warning when they unactivate
an account. In fact Free.fr as unactivated my account due to too many
spam comments in the database.</p>
<p>On top of that, I had no internet connection during the same time and it
was hard to manage these two problems at the same time with the ISP.</p>
<p>Now everything is up again but you can also get the update site at this
address:
<a href="http://api.openoffice.org/Projects/EclipseIntegration/dev-update/site.xml">http://api.openoffice.org/Projects/EclipseIntegration/dev-update/site.xml</a>. </p>Wordpress easy configuration2007-05-06T11:03:00+02:002007-05-06T11:03:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-05-06:/wordpress-easy-configuration.html<p>As you might know, Wordpress is really to setup and use.
However you need to add some PHP code to your theme for many plugins...
including the Original one. A few days ago, I discovered a fantastic
wordpress plugin: <a href="http://automattic.com/code/widgets/">widget</a>, helping users to configure the appearance
of their blog's sidebar …</p><p>As you might know, Wordpress is really to setup and use.
However you need to add some PHP code to your theme for many plugins...
including the Original one. A few days ago, I discovered a fantastic
wordpress plugin: <a href="http://automattic.com/code/widgets/">widget</a>, helping users to configure the appearance
of their blog's sidebar. If other plugins declare their UI additions as
widgets, then the user can drag & drop them in the widget list to change
his sidebar.</p>
<p>Then I took some minutes to widgetize the Original plugin... and the
changes will be available in the next version of the plugin. Thus, stay
tuned... </p>Beryl and visually impaired persons2007-04-27T09:39:00+02:002007-04-27T09:39:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-04-27:/beryl-and-visually-impaired-persons.html<p>You will probably say that I'm about to write some stupid
thing about 3D effects and visually impaired persons. You are wrong:
Beryl can bring really useful features to the linux desktop for these
persons. Many of them need reversed colors and/or a magnifier on their
screen. Even if …</p><p>You will probably say that I'm about to write some stupid
thing about 3D effects and visually impaired persons. You are wrong:
Beryl can bring really useful features to the linux desktop for these
persons. Many of them need reversed colors and/or a magnifier on their
screen. Even if there already was Orca having these features on Linux,
they were not so good compared to what can be done with Beryl. Just
forget the 3D cubes and lovely effects, but try to play with <super> +
mouse wheel or <super> + m. Those shortcuts can magnify or reverse the
whole screen easily and let me think that we could find some usability
improvements for persons who have some difficulties to read on a screen.
Just see this screenshot, which is the copy of what I saw on my desktop
(it hasn't been cut afterwards).</p>
<p><img alt="Beryl magnified screenshot" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/screenshots/desk-reverse-mag.png"> </p>A panorama from Lyon2007-04-15T16:32:00+02:002007-04-15T16:32:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-04-15:/a-panorama-from-lyon.html<p>Yesterday afternoon we were walking in the center of Lyon. Hopefully we
had the digital camera to take some shots of the beautiful colors of
Lyon when the sun starts lowering in the sky. I created a panorama using
<a href="http://hugin.sourceforge.net/">Hugin</a> from 11 pictures: just see why Lyon is a beautiful …</p><p>Yesterday afternoon we were walking in the center of Lyon. Hopefully we
had the digital camera to take some shots of the beautiful colors of
Lyon when the sun starts lowering in the sky. I created a panorama using
<a href="http://hugin.sourceforge.net/">Hugin</a> from 11 pictures: just see why Lyon is a beautiful city!</p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/photos/saone-small.png"><img alt="Saône river late in the afternoon" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/photos/saone-xsmall.png"></a></p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/photos/saone.png">Hight quality</a></p>Crossing the desert2007-04-06T10:56:00+02:002007-04-06T10:56:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-04-06:/crossing-the-desert.html<p>Yesterday, with some friends, we went discovering new games.
We played in an association who owns a lot of author games. One of the
most well known is <strong>the Settlers of Catan</strong> which inspired a free
computer game: <a href="http://pio.sourceforge.net/">pioneers</a>. Yesterday evening we played two interesting
games: <strong>Carcassonne</strong> and <strong>La Traversée …</strong></p><p>Yesterday, with some friends, we went discovering new games.
We played in an association who owns a lot of author games. One of the
most well known is <strong>the Settlers of Catan</strong> which inspired a free
computer game: <a href="http://pio.sourceforge.net/">pioneers</a>. Yesterday evening we played two interesting
games: <strong>Carcassonne</strong> and <strong>La Traversée du Désert</strong>. Here are some
notes on those games.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne_(jeu)">Carcassone (fr)</a></strong>: a really good game, but I recommend to use some
variants of the rules. To avoid big unfinished constructions, only the
finished elements are counted. To reduce the amount of randomness, we
have chosen to have 3 cards in hand every time instead of one. That
makes the game even better, playing during approximately 45 minutes.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Travers%C3%A9e_du_d%C3%A9sert">La traversée du Désert (fr)</a></strong>: a game where you have to place your
dromedaries to gain water and oasis and block the enemies. Interesting
quick game with beautiful pieces, it's a bit long to read the rules and
prepare the game. However it should be much better for the next games:
the games mechanic is really easy to understand.</p>Booking a hotel using the net2007-03-29T10:13:00+02:002007-03-29T10:13:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-03-29:/booking-a-hotel-using-the-net.html<p>Last week, I had to go for some days in Rennes. To book a hotel there,
I used the Mappy services to locate hotels near the town center. The
problem is that when Mappy can't find an address in a city, it locates
it near the town hall. Thus I …</p><p>Last week, I had to go for some days in Rennes. To book a hotel there,
I used the Mappy services to locate hotels near the town center. The
problem is that when Mappy can't find an address in a city, it locates
it near the town hall. Thus I found a not-too-expensive hotel near the
town hall: that was what I expected. However when I arrived there, 21h00
in a cold day, I couldn't find the hotel where it was indicated by
Mappy. The problem is that the hotel was 20 minutes far from the city
center by bus... It took me 2h30 to find the correct place of the hotel
and I found it in an industrial zone with nothing around.</p>
<p>The conclusion of this really bad experience is: do not use Mappy-like
services to locate a hotel: better prefer the good old yellow pages and
a real map. By the way some other maps are better and simply tell you
that there is no result for the asked address: at least they are honest
! </p>A wonderful week-end2007-03-12T23:37:00+01:002007-03-12T23:37:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-03-12:/a-wonderful-week-end.html<p>During two days, my fiancee and I have decided to make a break
in a our hight-speed rhythm of life. This break was the occasion for us
to think about our coming wedding. More precisely to think about the
christian wedding and the reasons who leads us to get married …</p><p>During two days, my fiancee and I have decided to make a break
in a our hight-speed rhythm of life. This break was the occasion for us
to think about our coming wedding. More precisely to think about the
christian wedding and the reasons who leads us to get married at the
Church. For this we have participated to a week-end organized by <a href="http://www.chemin-neuf.org/CANA/">CANA
(fr)</a>.</p>
<p>A friendly welcome, interesting testimonies from couples married for
some years, times for reflection (alone then in couple), prayers, all
these made a calm week-end which helped us to grow. I really recommend
these sessions to all the couples having questions about the christian
wedding: this helps you to understand the meaning of the wedding and the
place of God in the couple.</p>
<p>There we have been told about an interesting book that could be added in
the <a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/pages/le-mariage-chretien.html">Christian wedding (fr)</a> page of this website:<br>
<strong>Les langages de l'amour</strong>, <em>by Gary Chapman</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.fr/langages-lamour-Gary-Chapman/dp/2863141929">(fr)</a></p>Making beautiful photos2007-02-24T21:17:00+01:002007-02-24T21:17:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2007-02-24:/making-beautiful-photos.html<p>This afternoon, I found out by pure chance the blog of an old
friend. My reading stopped on two really interesting articles on <a href="http://r0ug3.dyndns.org/dotclear/index.php/post/2007/02/08/Pyramide-louvre-HDR">HDR
photos</a> and <a href="http://r0ug3.dyndns.org/dotclear/index.php/post/2007/02/18/Photo-Cadrage">centering photos correctly</a>.</p>
<p>Thus I tried to find more informations on HDR photos and how to create
them. This has lead me to an …</p><p>This afternoon, I found out by pure chance the blog of an old
friend. My reading stopped on two really interesting articles on <a href="http://r0ug3.dyndns.org/dotclear/index.php/post/2007/02/08/Pyramide-louvre-HDR">HDR
photos</a> and <a href="http://r0ug3.dyndns.org/dotclear/index.php/post/2007/02/18/Photo-Cadrage">centering photos correctly</a>.</p>
<p>Thus I tried to find more informations on HDR photos and how to create
them. This has lead me to an <a href="http://turtle.as.arizona.edu/jdsmith/exposure_blend.php">interesting Gimp script</a> and I made some
tests:</p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/photos/HDR-photos.png"><img alt="HDR photo and the original photos" src="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/photos/HDR-photos.png"></a></p>
<p>The photos 1, 2 and 3 are the original photos where we can see several
different details, and the HDR photo is the one produced by the gimp
script after some layers handling (because I have moved a little between
the photos). Now I should try to make real photos like this. </p>
<p><a href="https://bosdonnat.fr/data/HDR-test.zip">HDR-test.zip</a></p>Geek or not geek ?2006-11-12T20:41:00+01:002006-11-12T20:41:00+01:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2006-11-12:/geek-or-not-geek.html<p>There is a big while since my last post. In fact I took some time after
the OpenOffice.org conferences to have some non-geek activities. That's
part of why I'm not really active in the OpenOffice.org project these
last months.</p>
<p>Among my non-geek activities I really like cooking, but …</p><p>There is a big while since my last post. In fact I took some time after
the OpenOffice.org conferences to have some non-geek activities. That's
part of why I'm not really active in the OpenOffice.org project these
last months.</p>
<p>Among my non-geek activities I really like cooking, but not just pizzas
and noodles. What a pleasure to prepare some good meals and cakes for my
beloved darling. Some days ago, I had the idea to write some <em>"HOW-TO
learn cooking for Geeks"</em>. But I can't imagine how to do it... you just
have to read the manual. Here is a good one for french cooking:
<a href="http://www.letscookfrench.com">http://www.letscookfrench.com</a>. </p>About this site2006-08-23T23:55:00+02:002006-08-23T23:55:00+02:00Cédric Bosdonnattag:bosdonnat.fr,2006-08-23:/about-this-site.html<p>As you might have seen, I had some problems with my old
dokuwiki. Thus I have decided to use something else: and I found
WordPress. There was a quite long time where this site was unavailable
for me to install WordPress and some util plugins. The content of the
old …</p><p>As you might have seen, I had some problems with my old
dokuwiki. Thus I have decided to use something else: and I found
WordPress. There was a quite long time where this site was unavailable
for me to install WordPress and some util plugins. The content of the
old dokuwiki is not back, but just stay tuned...</p>