moyogo's little blog

Attracting devs

2010-06-07T19:45:00.003+02:00

Ben threw some good ideas on the DejaVu mailing list after hearing Hồng Phúc Ðặng's presentation How to get contributors to your free/libre/open source project from Vietnam and Asia at LGM 2010. There are some really good ideas there. We just started translating parts of the DejaVu Fonts Wiki. Hopefully we'll start blogging more often.

Android’s source

2008-10-23T01:14:00.003+02:00

Google released the source code of Android. The Droid fonts (TTF files) are released as part of it under the Apache License version 2. How long before they are packaged and shipped with *nix distribs? Don't think there's time to squeeze it *Ubuntu Intrepid. Let’s add good stuff to them!

ATypI 08

2008-09-20T10:10:00.003+02:00

I am currently attending the ATypI ’08 in St. Petersburg.I gave a presentation on African fonts. The main concern is Latin script, used by about 90% of African languages. The presentation and more detailed paper will be available on the African Network for Localisation website.The ATypI website will also have some of the presentations available for download.I am currently sitting at David

Font dialog

2008-08-25T17:28:00.003+02:00

If you use Gnome or GTK+ applications and fonts you’ll probably be interested to see what’s been on Planet Gnome recently. Alberto Ruiz made a mockup proposal for a font selection dialog. After some feedback from the lazy web he made a second proposal. The first one was seriously flawed as people pointed out: it’s limited to Bold/Italics, non-Latin fonts almost all look the same when the preview

Adverts

2008-05-26T17:47:00.002+02:00

scaryideas has a large collection of print and video ads. Some are better than others. Enjoy !

Afrique : 5 % de croissance par an

2008-02-07T16:24:00.000+01:00

Hier soir je me suis mis devant la télé tard le soir. Après avoir zappé sur quelques chaînes sans programme attirant mon intérêt, je suis tombé sur France 3 diffusant Ce soir (ou jamais !), spéciale Afrique. Je venais juste de manquer le live de Baloji. Les discussions et débats de l’émission ont été relativement bonne. Plusieurs invités de l’Afrique francophone, une auteure, un ancien ministre,

N’ko (ߒߞߏ) on computer

2007-08-29T11:52:00.000+02:00

N’ko is this African script that was recently added in Unicode, and thus will be easier to use. However being included in Unicode is just the first step.Being in Unicode just means that some sequences of bytes are defined to represent some N’ko characters. To be able to use N’ko you need several things. The first is a system that correctly underdstands those Unicode definitions. N’ko being a

6 billions others

2007-03-12T12:06:00.000+01:00

I just stumbled upon the latest project of Yann Arthus-Bertrand: 6 milliards d’autres. After the Earth from above, we can discover 6000 interviews of random people across 65 coutries. Each person get to talk about their own lives, what the dreamt of as a child, what they are scared of, when they last laughed or cried, and many more personal question. It’s really a wonderful work. It’s really

Discovering the fragmented Web 2.0

2007-03-08T15:07:00.000+01:00

I find it rather funny when somebody I know is discovering something on the web I've been using for month, which seem like years really.Pil just discovered Facebook and online social networks. Those have been around for a while, some have had appeal, others are attracting crowds. They all have similar features but it's what they have specific that make or breaks them. Facebook has this nice

Spam-prevention bots sucks

2007-03-07T22:41:00.000+01:00

Blogger's spam-prevention bots locked this blog for some reason. Somebody has written some bad code somewhere or are my blog post just spam-like? Am I making links to dodgy websites all the time? My guess would be somebody needs to review their code or their programmers.This locks comes with a warning on top of the posting creation page. It is impossible to post and saving as draft is the only

Dell's discriminatory €6

2007-03-07T22:30:00.000+01:00

A sibling of mine is looking for a laptop to purchase. After looking at Apple's Powerbooks we checked out Dell.Dell Benelux is charging €6.05 more for a system with Windows Vista in French rather than in Dutch. They briefly explain that they pre-install Dutch Vista on all systems and that doing so in French is extra work for them. This is rather discriminatory against French speaking people in

Asimov’s fact #162

2007-01-17T22:27:00.000+01:00

From Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts:The city with the most blacks is New York, with 1,666,636, as of the 1970 census. The second largest “black city” is Kinshasa, Zaire, with a population of 1,623,760.Nowdays New York has about 2 Millions Blacks, Kinshasa has more than 7 Millions, and Lagos is somewhere above 10 Millions.In case you didn't know, it was Martin Luther King Jr's day in the USA on

Are you tone deaf or musically skilled?

2006-11-15T10:39:00.000+01:00

Jake Mandell made a website where you can test your musical skills in only a few minutes. According to him, this test works and ‘is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct’. I happened to score 91.7% on my first try. The current version doesn't allow to go back and check your answers, but the next version should allow it. I guess this test not only give

Colourful advert

2006-10-22T14:17:00.000+02:00

The new Bravia colourful advert is there.Do you remember Sony Bravia 2005's colourful advert featuring thousands of balls rolling down a San Fransisco block with delighting indie music? The music was Hearbeat by José González and the balls were for real. This year, Bravia's advert shows fireworks, but instead of fire we see paint, thus giving us paintwork... er... yeah. The ad is once again

One EU parliament seat

2006-10-15T13:56:00.000+02:00

It cost approximately 200 millions euros a year to move the Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg. That's a crazy amount of money thrown out of the window to please a French president who's been buried a long time ago. Objectively the EU parliament should have just one seat. Subjectively I'd say it should be in Brussels since it is already the seat of the Commission and the de facto capital

Label it all!

2006-09-20T15:31:00.000+02:00

I have no idea how long this have been around but Google has an image labeler. It's interesting because it allows you to just label pictures for Google. They just give you a picture and you're supposed to give as many labels as possible. Since you're teamed up with someone else, the first label that match theirs is recorded and another pictures is given for you two to label. The fun part is that

Searching pictures

2006-09-16T09:58:00.000+02:00

I came across this interesting little website the other day: Retrievr. It's an experimental webservice that allows you to search for patterns on Flickr, by drawing a rough sketch of what you're looking for. The search is based on an algorithm that will only match larger shapes so don't expect to get exactly what you draw, unless you draw a really simple shape (like a vertical line or something

Locales mess up typography

2006-08-15T23:46:00.000+02:00

If you're familiar with computers and their multilingual capabilities (or deficiencies), you already know what locales are. Let me tell you... even though they can be very painful to deal with, they're just the tip of the iceberg.There are so many things that can change from on country to the other. For example: in French, we can't seem to agree how to write down numbers. Is 75000 written 75'000,

President or not President?

2006-08-15T17:47:00.000+02:00

I'm really starting to wonder why the result of the presidential elections is taking all the attention in the Congo. The International community is asking for the partial results of the elections, but we only hear about the presidential results. What are the results of the legislatives? Why does that seem to be unimportant?I have the feeling the Congolese media is focusing on the president only,

Visit Kinshasa (sort of)

2006-08-10T17:04:00.000+02:00

If you're reading Kim's blog, you already know Google has some high definition satellite pictures of Kinshasa. The seem to have added them to Google Maps around last week.Here's a frame from the Wikimapia project with all the locations people have added for the city of Kinshasa.The thing you might want to notice is the rich neighbourhoods on the West of the city, the downtown area in the North

How to translate to French

2006-07-24T08:39:00.000+02:00

Funny enough the English verb ‘translate’ can be translated to its cognate translater, at least according to the definitions of the TLFi, the Littré, and of course the French Wiktionary. Of course this usage has grown old and would not be understood by most French speaking people, so expect surprise and even correction when you'll use it. According to the Littré the verb can be found with that

2006-06-17T11:12:00.000+02:00

Googling "true love"Google has had a new service for some time now: Google Romance. Funny thang. What will this company not do? They’ve recently added a myriad of services, including Base, Reader, Sketchup (to add buildings you know to you Earth), etc.

Elections in the Congo are coming!!

2006-06-05T01:36:00.000+02:00

candidates per Party DRC -ZipfsLaw Originally uploaded by moyogo. Make haste Congolese people! Read up the list of Parties currently registered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (as of March 2006) and choose your deputies. There's only about 267 parties. Make your bets! Looking at the number of candidates -- a bit less than 9000 for 500 seats -- some parties stand out. These are

Huge InterWiki dictionary

2006-05-17T20:50:00.000+02:00

A few months back Patrick Hall from Blogamundo was wondering if InterWiki links could be use to produce lexicons useful for translation.WikiWord is it. For those who wonder, InterWiki links are the links made between Wikipedia in different languages. WikiWord can translate, based on those links, but can also display the short introduction of each article as well as related terms. It's really well

01:02:03, 04/05/06

2006-05-04T03:05:00.000+02:00

Counting up to six. This doesn't occur that often. Next time should be in about a thousand years.

Google Maps adds most of Europe

2006-05-01T18:58:00.000+02:00

Just noticed Google Maps now has roads for many European countries (Western, Central, Nordic and the road to Moscow). We can now plan road trips in Europe with Google Maps.

Librivox

2006-02-08T23:37:00.000+01:00

Kipcool pointed out Librivox to me a few days ago. It's an interesting project. They are recording people reading public domain books and making the recordings available for anyone to download. It's pretty neat. Free audibooks, if you'd like. But at the same time, anyone can contribute. So if you enjoy reading your books aloud, do it next to your computer, record it and send it to them.Il

Why “except Quebec”?

2006-01-22T20:56:00.000+01:00

Have you ever read the rules of a contest available on the Web or other medium that was available to “any resident of the USA or Canada (except Quebec)”? If you haven't… you haven't read many rules of North American contests. Almost all contest I've seen in English have that silly, but annoying, rule. The reasons are few. Quebec has specific legislation regarding advertising contest, for example

Machine translation

2006-01-14T00:09:00.000+01:00

A few blogs I read this week talk about machine translation: Pascal Grousselle (fr) echoes what Professor Veronis (fr or the english translation), this is a good one to read! They talk about the major player in automated natural languague translation, Systran and its challenger, which seems to be better for English<->French or French<->German translation. Systran is the most popular around major

Pular learner's guide

2006-01-13T23:50:00.000+01:00

I stumbled upon this Fula learner's guide. 130 pages downloadable for free, with funny illustrations, lessons and exercices. It is also using an orthography with special characters. For a dictionary, there is the French-Pulaar lexicon, unfortunately it's not using the same orthography :(. Fula/Fulfude/Pulaar o Peul is a whole range of languages, it's a language continuum from Senegal to Cameroon

things to do in 2006

2006-01-03T20:43:00.000+01:00

1 Go towards the Equator, no matter how farJust go South (or North if you're South already), live there a little, get to know people, get to know the culture first hand and share your culture, they need that too.2 Learn an African languageThis is an interesting one: Learn about an African language. Learn a bit of it. Then try to find actual stuff in the language (i.e. no translation dictionary or

Happy New Year Natasha!

2006-01-01T22:52:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year Natasha... and everybody who might wonder around here ;-)2006 has lots ahead... I'm not really sure what but from past experience I know it does ;-) I hope it balances out to be more good than bad to y'all.Fizzylight has an interesting post about finding old friends on the Internet, as well as how to let old friends find you. I've realised that I'm gradually losing touch with old

referendum in DRC

2005-12-17T19:58:00.001+01:00

Ali has a short series about the referendum taking place this sunday in the Congo DRC (first, second and third); very interesting read. If you don't know the context : the Congo DRC has been in a process for democratization since the early nineties, held aside by a couple of civil wars which ended up in a transition governement with the different componants. The transition started in 2003 and is

2005-12-04T00:59:00.000+01:00

Building resources for lingalaThere are a few things that need to be done to do any kind of language technology with a language. Even more so if this is a minority language.Lingala has attracted my attention for a while, for many reasons, the first one being that I use to understand it while living in the Congo. Unfortunately, by the time we settled in Belgium I had forgotten most of it, and was

2005-11-30T22:10:00.000+01:00

Dos de livreJe n'ai jamais vraiment compris pourquoi certains livres avait le titre sur le dos de haut en bas et d'autre de bas en haut. Ceci n'est pas pratique lorsque je les place dans ma bibliothèque, l'orientation du texte change souvent d'un livre à l'autre. J'ai cependant pu remarqué que mes livres francophones semble avoir le texte du dos écrit de bas en haut, et les livres anglophones de

2005-11-20T20:21:00.000+01:00

Fun with Unicode˙issnɐ ʇiɐɟ əl inb ʇdiɹɔs ʇiʇəd un ʇiɹɔə ɔuop iɐ,ſ ˙iɔəɔ əɯɯoɔ səɹəʇɔɐɹɐɔ səl ɹəsɹəʌuəɹ ɐ ʇiɐsnɯɐ,s inb ə6ɐd əun nʌ ɹioʌɐ suəiʌnos əɯ əſ sioɯ sənblənb ʎ li˙əɹəɥʍ ɹəqɯəɯəɹ ʇ,uop i ʎləʇɐunʇɹoɟun 'əɹoɟəq əɹəɥʍəɯos ʇi ʍɐs i ɐəpi ʎɯ ʇ,usɐʍ ʇi ˙əuo siɥʇ puɐʇsɹəpun ll,noʎ əqʎɐɯ ˙ɥɔuəɹɟ ʞɐəds ʇ,uop noʎ ɟi ɥdɐɹ6ɐɹɐd ʇsɐl əɥʇ puɐʇsɹəpun ʇ,upip ʎlqɐqoɹd noʎUpdate:Here's a script that does

Wikis, desillusion and Lingala

2005-11-17T21:51:00.000+01:00

Wikiwiki web! i.e. create webpages in no time with no stress.It's been a while since I've started using Wikis, and it hasn't been too long since I started contributing to some. I've been busy with Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (mostly the English and more recently the French editions), not to mention the French edition of Wiktionary the free dictionary. These "free" projects have a lot of

When will this be true?

2005-11-17T10:48:00.000+01:00

[...] Ensemble, mes frères, mes soeurs, nous allons commencer une nouvelle lutte, une lutte sublime qui va mener notre pays à la paix, à la prospérité et à la grandeur. Nous allons établir ensemble la justice sociale et assurer que chacun reçoive la juste rémunération de son travail.Nous allons montrer au monde ce que peut faire l’homme noir quand il travaille dans la liberté, et nous allons

2005-11-05T13:28:00.000+01:00

More cool maps apps... for North AmericaYahoo! is showing off its new Yahoo! Local maps beta. It looks and behaves very much like Google Maps, except it doesn't have the satellite picture. The API is also available so there's going to be a myriad of sites using it. Unfortunately this does only work with USA and Canada addresses or maps. What are companies like Maporama, Mapquest or Multimap that

2005-10-27T11:53:00.000+02:00

23e note 5e phraseVoici un petit clin d'oeil à Pascal Grousselle. La 4e phrase de ma 23e note (2004-06-11) étant donné que la note ne contenait que 4 phrases :« I now know I live exactly 3km away from work. »La note elle-même était pleine de faute, mais relatait d'un site permettant de voir une carte de Montréal avec vue satellite. De nos jours Goggle Maps est bien plus rapide et pratique, même

2005-10-09T09:06:00.000+02:00

More on Free free stuffIt's free and it's legal. Legal Torrents lets you share any media that is legally shareable. From Indie Music, to amateur documentaries. Definitely a place I'll check once so often. Too bad it does not have a feed for the new stuff.[Update] Foolish I am, here's the Legal Torrents RSS feed, enjoy.[Update]We need more things like this and Jamendo, and they need to be

2005-10-03T19:19:00.000+02:00

Music for Free and Free MusicThe band Harvey Danger just released its latest album, Little by Little. They are making it available for free, on-line, via the website or via BitTorrent. The album is a bit short but has a couple of good songs on it, like any regular album available in stores. Nothing too fancy, but you could really like the music. I enjoyed track 1 "Wine Women and Song", 4 "Little

2005-09-28T16:46:00.000+02:00

Pygmies in the CongoThe Congo has the chance to be the home of between 15 000 to 30 000 Pygmies. Unfortunately, their situation is all but fun : BBC News - Pygmies' struggle. “They cannot afford the hunting and fishing permits sometimes required by the local authority.” “Because Pygmies have never taken part in any census they are not allowed to own land.” “This Pygmy community is poor and has no

2005-09-25T22:14:00.000+02:00

Google searching blogsI don't know how long this has gone unnoticed by me... But I'm glad I found this today. Google is doing blog search. Now there's nothing to exciting about that, unless you a blog addict. I'm not really, so I wasn't too excited when I saw it. Especially since other good search engine have been doing it too, like Clusty for example. What's exciting is if you go to the bottom

2005-09-22T07:16:00.000+02:00

Future in Search TechnologyI think a few things Google and other big Search Engine companies are starting to do can be very scary (think Big Brother and the likes), but on the other side the potential is amazing. Indexing phone calls, searching for video (AltaVista, Yahoo) or even better with indexing of text content (Google), keeping track of your search history. searching through directories

Disconnected

2005-09-19T18:44:00.000+02:00

I've been disconnected for a while. My new appartment has a fast internet connection directly through the university. But since the landlord, the company owning the building, the company managing student housing or the university don't seem to know anything about when or how it will actually be activated by the IT company the uni is outsourcing all this kind of stuff, I have no idea how long this

Biking in Utrecht

2005-09-12T20:42:00.000+02:00

I finally bought a bike today after my mom and sis dropped me off under the Hoog Catherijn. I bought a mixed breed bike for around 50 euros. I'm quite happy since it has a working light. I added a back seat (to do grosseries and carry stuff or people). With that I also took a lock. They had locks that were as expensive as the bike. Being cheap as I am, I settle for a second hand chain with a disk

2005-08-25T22:47:00.000+02:00

La mondialisation menace la planète Babel, certains disent que ce serait plus mieux si on se comprenait tous, d'autres pensent que ce serait mieux si on gardait chacun la langue de ces parents. Voir aussi : Trois questions à... Bernard Caron

getting ready for Utrecht

2005-08-25T15:13:00.000+02:00

I've finished registering for all the courses for the next semester. It's quite easy, as expected. It's funny that some parts of the website available to students from the university are not all translated yet. Apart from that I should go to Utrecht next week. The Stutent services have found an apartment for a bit less than €500, not as cheap as I hoped, but it might be a good deal. I'll have to

2005-08-13T00:58:00.000+02:00

BelgaeBack in Belgium, once again. For a bit less than a month this time. As usual, I have to go to the bank to change my card, cuz they don't work and/or on top I don't remember the exact PIN... You'd think I'd get it after doing this for 7 years... but no, every time, I end up mixing up my PINs and the cards just do survive a year of lying useless in my tiny wallet.Apart from that, the weather

So I can speak Spanish now!

2005-08-02T01:09:00.000+02:00

It seems I can speak Spanish now… at least to some extent. The only thing I really need to do is speak out and not be as quiet as I often am. Spending a month in Colombia really helped, I’m going to have to find ways to keep practicing.See more progress on: Learn Spanish

Barranquilla, Bocas de Cenizas

2005-07-28T11:15:00.000+02:00

Barranquilla, Bocas de Cenizas 02 Originally uploaded by moyogo. I'm back from Barranquilla, I had a great time. It was hard to leave I must admit, once again I was on denial until the last day about my departure.If you have a chance to go, do it! It's worth it. Colombia is a beautiful country with very nice people. You can't help but to enjoy it. Even if the country is considered one of

Language and Culture Preservation

2005-07-21T23:28:00.000+02:00

The UNESCO has an endangered languages programme. It recently put up a Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation. It is quite alarming to see that 80% of the African languages have no orthography, among likewise alarming statistics.The current language technology is adequate for major written languages. Still nowdays some languages spoken by millions, considered as minor languages, do

It's been a while

2005-07-18T17:42:00.000+02:00

Since last time I've posted, many things happened. I'm leaving Montreal for good in a few weeks. I already left work and am currently visiting friends in Colombia after taking a Spanish course.I've been following the Spanish Summer program at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. The program was pretty decent, I quite happy with it. There's always room for improvement of course, I

Unicode fonts

2005-06-08T08:01:00.000+02:00

I've been looking into the Lingala language and what technologies actually support it. I eventually found out that Unicode has decided some time ago to stop support new precomposed characters. What this means is that characters such as LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E + MODIFIER ACUTE is the only way to represent ɛ́ in Unicode. In the past Unicode did support, and therefore still is supporting,

2005-03-23T01:57:00.000+01:00

Linux geek wishlistOne thing that has been on my geek wishlist for a while is the ability to switch the language of a desktop environmnent of a computer without having to log out. I know it's not possible with Gnome... Maybe one day. The problem in itself should be to hard. But I guess you'd end up restart all the currently running applications to have the change come into effect. hmmm sounds

2005-03-22T17:01:00.000+01:00

Del.icio.us, public bookmarks, tags and social softwareI've finally signed up for Del.icio.us (or however is it spelled), after only reading good things about it. It seems these social software sites where you can share whatever you find on the web a getting more hype by the minute. For me it all started with social network sites, like orkut and Friendster. Then, this blogging thing, blogger and

2005-03-11T13:23:00.000+01:00

Lingála, Unicode, A12N, and keyboard layoutsThe are very few Lingala Language resources available on the web. Yet the ones that are available are not consistent with one another, i.e. they have different orthographies and spellings. After searching and asking questions here (fr) and there. I seems the correct orthography is with ɛ and ɔ (open e and open o) and with some accents to mark

redesigning

2005-02-25T06:00:00.000+01:00

I started redesigning my webpage. It's quite simple now, but I added some CSS and simple graphics. I started playing with the blogger template too so both sites look sort of similar. There is still some things I could do. I'll do them when I have time or when I'm bored.

Basilique Notre-Dame devant la Lune

2005-02-16T05:48:00.000+01:00

Basilique Notre-Dame devant la Lune Originally uploaded by moyogo. This is a picture I took after leaving work, skipping capoeira once more. I posted it on flickr.com and am now blogging through their blog this feature.

2005-02-07T05:50:00.000+01:00

Logitech Orbit I found out that OrbitView was having problems with the clean and lean new pwc drivers. The progam setpwc can handle it with no problem (resetting the tilt/pan, setting them, getting info, etc.). So my webcam, a Logitech Orbit, can actually tilt and pan without any trouble in Linux. I should look into making something similar but using gstreamer, I have no idea how yet. Another

2005-02-03T16:14:00.000+01:00

SkypeI finally took the time to figure out how to set up skype properly on my Ubuntu GNU/Linux machine. The problem was my only audio in is my webcam, and skype can originally only work with one audio device. Luckily the skype linux help page suggests using the skype DSP hijacker. That allowed me to specify a MICdev. echo123 played back whatever I said.So who do I talk to now?

2005-02-01T01:25:00.000+01:00

Laptops I've been thinking about getting a laptop for next year. Wouldn't I look good with one of those 12" laptops, sitting at a table in one of those starbucks-like coffeshop (no, not the other kind), working on some project or assignment? Well if I want that look, I definitely need to pick the right one. It all started with Fred talking me into admitting that the apple 12" laptops were great.

2005-01-29T18:51:00.000+01:00

Google's scoringStrangely enough my own webpage went up on Google. The search for moyogo on Google returns my webpage as the third main result. I have drastically simplified the page (moyogo's homepage), removed the link to Moyo Go Studio and made sure it was XHTML 1.1 valid.I'll see where my future changes lead.

2005-01-27T00:30:00.000+01:00

gtk+ and gnome patchesI finally got my hands dirty in some little gtk+ hacking.I've always wanted to improve the gtk+ IPA input method. Currently it's rather lacking a lot of characters, diacritics and modifiers. Instead of writing my own set of sequences or arbitrarly adding some to the current method, I went on and implimented the X-SAMPA sequences. This might not be the best sequences but at

2005-01-25T14:17:00.000+01:00

De StandaardThe Belgian Dutch-language newspaper, De Standaard, has a RSS Newsfeed (and others available on the mainpage). This is great. All newspapers should have newsfeeds.

2005-01-24T22:06:00.000+01:00

CogprintsBrowsing through Francis' website, I found a link to Cogprints, an electronic archive for papers in Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics and many areas of Computer Science. I'll have stuff to read for when I'm bored.

2005-01-24T14:59:00.000+01:00

ECMAScript Menu SystemThanks to a blog (456 Berea Street Quicklinks) subscribed on Planet HCI, I read about a great ECMAScript Menu System that allows clean and lean code (separating content from presentation). Sweet.

2005-01-22T23:25:00.000+01:00

Next year's (4) The Utrecht University Council (Utrecht Universiteitraad or U-raad) has a website or so I found. Interestingly enough, the Internationalization workgroup has 2 objectives. One is to bring more international students into the English speaking programmes. The second is to figure out how to give them proper representation in the council and other similar entities. This is great. To

2005-01-21T05:01:00.000+01:00

The Paradox of ChoiceSpotted on Planet HCI, an interview of Barry Schwartz, "The Paradox of Choice". The story of my life, at least for the last few years.

2005-01-21T04:46:00.000+01:00

ALSA hacking ermmm, OK, it's not really hacking but whatever. It's already a good place to start. I read part of the ALSA 0.9.0 HOWTO, wrote the little audio playback program, and it runs! w00t! So now all I have to do is set up some kind of capture stream and play that back. What I would like to end with is a decent way to record with my webcam. So far only Gnomemeeting can do that. but doesn't

2005-01-20T05:57:00.000+01:00

Working in the Netherlands There is a rather interesting site, Undutchables, for people looking for jobs requiring another language than Dutch in the Netherlands. the site also give useful tips. (Found through Jobs in Holland)

2005-01-17T22:01:00.000+01:00

Student Language and Speech journal After browsing around the EACL and looking at conferences they will hold this year. I stumbled upon, this student journal, the European Students Journal of Language and Speech, that I remember seeing before. I should read some papers, it could be interesting.

2005-01-17T16:53:00.000+01:00

Next year's (3)Ach... Still looked for some info for next year. After looking at the CambridgeLaan residence website, I followed a link to the United Students Party, or the ICC (InterCultural Committee). The ICC is a international students association for the CambridgeLaan rez. They seem to know how to have fun.

2005-01-17T05:43:00.000+01:00

Next year's (2)So... I ended up doing nothing today. I have an excuse, I did drivesafe for McGill students last night. That was real fun, yet very tiring.I was then wondering if UU had similar services for and by students. I've been wondering how the students have organized themselves... or is it organised? Anyhow, There doesn't seem to be any union or federation of student's associations. I

2005-01-16T01:36:00.000+01:00

Next year'sI was just reading about my optional courses for next year, well first I had to find somewhere central where to find the info. The Master students CAI website and the CAI Master programme are pretty useful. The second one is pretty much just a copy of the CAI Master's brochure (pdf). Ach... I'm still a bit disappointed by the English coverage of some university sites, but in general

2005-01-15T22:05:00.000+01:00

VolunteeringI was checking out some volunteering sites today. I stumbled upon one I might seriously consider once I get 3 years of professional experience, geekcorps.

2005-01-15T00:52:00.000+01:00

XChat and it's notifier appletI installed xchat systray, it's nice little applet that allows you to get notifications in the systray (Gnome, KDE and what not), among other things (like setting the away status or even browser/email client launching). There's a .deb package just works right of the bat with Ubuntu.

2005-01-14T15:55:00.000+01:00

Utrecht in English A friend of mine is thinking about going to Utrecht this month or the next one. It just made me realize how little the number of English useful resources are. There's a youth hostel I remember seeing, Strowis. It's right in the center and quite cheap, luckily the site is in English. There another cheap hostels/B&B, the B&B Utrecht City Center. For longer term housing there

2005-01-14T07:12:00.000+01:00

Nice graph: Mac for the Masses (by Paul Nixon)Paul Nixon made a very nice graph to get an idea of how Apple is aiming for The Masses. It would be nice if Apple actually gets a decent size user base. Maybe I should do the switch one of these days... wait a minute... I barely use Windows already.

2005-01-11T01:45:00.000+01:00

Geez, I didn't even notice that 43things had added my entry into my blog. So that function works well, sort of. Links don't seem to be parsed properly, it just print the address as text not as a link. Ah well, too bad, what can I do about it?

2005-01-11T01:38:00.000+01:00

There's a blog entry on how to boost your Firefox. You can also try using a version compiled for the kind of machine your using (Windows/PC) from moox. First use the CPU tester to find which one to download.

google

2005-01-09T09:17:00.000+01:00

That's interesting. I was just googling "moyogo" and my page one 43 things appears to be one of the tops hits, even before my personal home page, "moyogo":http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~moyogo (http://home.sus.mcgill.ca/~moyogo). I really wonder how come my personal webpage went down in hits, even if I link to it from other places.(See more progress on "Try out 43 Things"...)

2004-11-23T03:21:00.000+01:00

piercingWhich Piercing are you?

2004-10-30T02:17:00.000+02:00

my own little wikiI started my own personal little wiki to gather my notes. It's called moyogo's notes. It's a wiki but the wikitext is not that same as the wikipedia one.

2004-10-17T14:15:00.000+02:00

fall in the northRemy, Natasha and I went to the Laurentians yesterday.Remy tooks really nice pictures in the Laurentians Park. I wish I had gone camping the previous weekend with Pil and his friend. For some reason I bailed out at the last minute mainly because I feared it would be cold and rainy. Of course it wasn't at all. Pil took some really nice pictures in the Adirondacks.

2004-10-13T20:13:00.000+02:00

A good friend of mine and my cousin have mentioned the gmailfs thingy for windows. I should give it a try

2004-09-28T14:01:00.000+02:00

Ubuntu LinuxI've been testing a new linux distribution to come, Ubuntu Linux, based on debian. It's pretty easy to install, and it has close to everything I would install from debian unstable myself. There's a pretty vibrant community around it.

2004-09-28T12:12:00.000+02:00

Starting somewhereSo, I've been wanting to get involved in the GNOME project somehow for a long time... I remember getting the CVS stuff, compiling and trying it on my home computer. That was before 1.0. Why did I ever stop? Anyhow, Bugzilla seems to be a great place to start. I'll try to find little bugs, spend some times to try fixing them, submit a patch and keep going.

2004-09-26T13:15:00.000+02:00

back to MontrealI've been back to Montreal for a little while now. Lots of thing have happened. I'd like to say it all but I can't really. I have some pictures in my mcgill gallery. These are pictures of Utrecht and then pictures of my cousins wedding. Our grandmodther just died last week. I wasn't able to go back just for the funerals.

2004-08-17T13:03:00.000+02:00

yoIt's been a while. I just move to Laurier Street. There's a really nice view of the street from where I'm sitting at the moment. The noises in the street can be pretty loud but I think overall it's not bad at all.The more I think about it the more I think I will do what I want to do. Stay here for a bit and work.

2004-07-26T02:46:00.000+02:00

jailed on orkuti've been silly... i'm jailed on orkut now.

2004-07-18T16:22:00.000+02:00

first blog entry in a whileYo! I guess I haven't taken much time to write to this blog in a while.I'm pretty impressed by how the gaim-vv project is going. Video/Audio conversations should be in order soon :D. I should give it a try one of these day. I still have problems with USB under Debian. I can't figure out how to record from the usb audio or how to let gnomemeeting control the webcam.

2004-07-03T19:40:00.000+02:00

Lubumbashi's Belgian SchoolA couple of month ago my sister sent me a link toL'école belge à Lubumbashi. So that would be my very first school. I can't remember any of it. It has probably changed a bit with the years too.

2004-06-28T04:23:00.000+02:00

boredI went to modern-jive today. It was the first time I was bored there. It's really wierd how sometimes I just feel utterly bored. I guess I felt really bored most of the day. Maybe I'm just tired of how things are knowing I will leave.

2004-06-21T05:12:00.000+02:00

III Jornadas en Tecnologia del HablaThere will be a conference on Speech Technology in November in Valencia, Spain. III Jornadas en Tecnología del Habla Valencia, November 17, 18 and 19.

2004-06-18T13:33:00.000+02:00

that's itI think it finally hit me...I'm leaving Montreal, and I don't know if I'll be back again. I hate to go. I'm leaving what I really like, my friends, the place, my neighbourhood, the city, its multiculturalism, its joie de vivre, the way people are and the way I fit there.I should try to see things on the bright side. I will have a greate experience and I can always come back.If only...

2004-06-14T00:15:00.000+02:00

spooky photoshoped picsI stumbled upon this victoria's secret revealed a couple of days ago. It's quite scary why they would want to photoshop such a picture, and even more so why they would miss such a thing.Another example of a retouched pics, and a good one with a gallery of other examples.

2004-06-11T12:16:00.000+02:00

Map of MontrealI found this sweep java applet with a huge detailed map of the city of Montreal. That one is a keeper!It has really good quality vectorial graphics, therefor good zoom-in and zoom-out. Many things can be displayed; Police district, electoral districts, landmarks, etc. You can even set labels over the map and draw paths with calculated distances.I now know I live exactly 3km away

2004-06-10T03:10:00.000+02:00

car sharing instead of owning a car? After looking for car options for next year, I found this list of car sharing sites in the world. Really useful stuff. Unfortunately, it's missing Montreal's own car sharing site. The one for the Netherlands is Green Wheels