nantonos

Credo in Unum Webum / 
URLem Omnipotentem / 
Factorem HTMLum / 
licerum / visibilium omniem / 
et invisibilium / 
et in unum toilum standardem /
[...] Consortium
tilium Dei Internetum /
per quem omnia /
facta sunt
/ amene (sic)

The Mercantour National park is a scenic area of France, in the Alps, right up against the border with Italy. Actually it only became part of France in 1947. Anyway, from January to March there is a special combined train and bus ticket, the 'train du neige' to take people from Nice in sunny Cote d'Azur up to St. Delmas du Tende and then by coach on twisty narrow roads to Castorino in the snowwy mountains. Good photo opportunities, a nice ride through the mountains. And snow, which we don't get in Nice. When we got there, it turned out that there was a mountain bike (VTT) race on. In the snow. And also paragliding. And a dog sled. All at once.

More from this trip later...

Apparently, according to some online test, the required reading level of this blog is 'junior high'. (If that term means nothing to you, which is likely for non-Americans, wikipedia explains that this is broadly equivalent to collège in France and, reading between the lines, it sounds like the first few years of secondary school in Scotland. I further deduce that it doesn't peek behind livejournal cuts like this one - yup that one is college (undergrad).

Just for fun and to see what it made of technical material, I gave it the SVG Tiny 1.2 spec which it said was college (postgraduate) level. I assume that means doctoral studies at university.

And even more fun, Epona distribution requires, apparently, a genius. I mean, genius? Really? Of course in an automated test the big, clear maps count for nothing; perhaps it was startled by the provision of references?

Towards the end of a long walk down the cliffside path from Èze village to Èze-sur-Mer. Apparently Nietzsche used to take this walk while living there, and wrote some of Also Sprach Zarathustra there. Not being one of the Übermensch I did this walk in the descending rather than ascending direction :)

Here are some acorns from a holm oak, spotted on the way down.

New lens, finally a sunny day 4 days later :) . Here I liked the wood tones, architectural detailing and the reflection of the sunset-lit buildings across the street.

New lens is a Cosina Voigtländer Ultron 40mm f/2, here used on a Nikon D40. This is a nicely built, manual focus prime lens (review here).

Last week I attended a workshop in San Jose, CA. Except that I attended from a video conference suite in Brussels (1.5 hour flight rather than 10 hour flight). It was an interesting meeting too, although it was odd working at those hours (5pm to 2am, which translates to 9am to 5pm in California).

The facilities were top-notch, with two HD cameras per site and a pair of large screens at the front of each meeting room. It was, though, a little odd knowing who to address and where to look. Here is a photo of the screen in Brussels, where a speaker (green top, in San Jose) is "looking" at the monitor, at someone asking a question (standing with mike, in black, in Brussels). You can also see myself, taking the photo!. But from the point of Brussels, we were looking at the back of their heads. Forest of laptops, typical for that sort of meeting.