A Patchwork Planet

Great way to access Twitter and Facebook from China

2010-05-31T16:22:00.001+01:00

Both Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China but so far, Brizzly hasn't been blocked and it works.

in reference to: * Brizzly / philou (view on Google Sidewiki)

On Yunnan TV with June 朱婧

2010-03-01T02:48:00.005+01:00

Hey, maybe that deserves a blog post?!

I was on TV with June 朱婧! She's a chinese pop singer from Yunnan but living in Beijing. My friend asked me if I wanted to do this TV 2 minutes yunnan tv's special spring festival performance on drums and so it happened. On a friday evening, I went to June's friend house in Kunming, met her and her friends for the 1st time and recorded my instrument over the song. Of course, we were going to do play-back. I

From Playing music in Kunming

took my djembe but finally a friend there had this drum from Nepal and the sound was pretty good so that's what I used. It was also easier to walk with it. So we did several take to record my instrument, they had done so in the afternoon already for the other instruments: accordeon, violon, mandoline... turns out you can't hear much the difference from the original song. That's because the TV wanted a good quality sound track i guess, and we did the recording very quickly.

Anyway, on sunday afternoon, we did a fake recording with strange cloth. The director didn't like it so we did it with simpler cloth on Monday for the real recording.

Then, the show was on TV sunday night, February 14th:

And June had this video on her blog where she presents her "special band":

Well, it was a cool experience. I was certainly delighted to meet June who was very nice. I have been listening to her CD for 1 year as you can see from my 1st tweet about June.

More pictures here.

From Playing music in Kunming

1st Drupal website: Ecotourism in Yunnan, China

2009-04-23T19:02:00.001+01:00

For a while now, I've been working on making a new website for Xintuo Ecotourism, an ecotourism company based in Lijiang, Yunnan, China.

The old website was not well compatible with Firefox and was difficult to update. I considered WordPress but I have finally chosen the famous Open-source CMS Drupal as a platform for the website. Mostly because I wanted to learn by doing and this opportunity allowed it, I was sure I could do a decent website with Drupal.

I'm pretty happy with the result. I haven't been disappointed with the possiblities. The only thing is : Drupal is much more hard to keep up to date (Modules, Themes...), but maybe it's not that important once your website is up and running.
I find the theme update most troublesome, because I did some change in the theme, but when you update it (when the author released a new version for bug fix for example), you have to do these changes again...

The most difficult task was maybe to get Clean Urls to work. At first I had difficulty to understand the "help" section about this. But I finally succeeded.
My biggest disappointement was about some modules which are not available in Drupal 6 (but in Drupal 5, which makes it frustrating). For example, a module to deal with Picasa Web Album, or to have a Google Sitemap.

I had fun to play with the Weather and Maps modules, and I had difficulty to find a WYSIWYG editor but in the end, i think it's a good website for that company.

List of the main modules I added:
Views, CCK, GMap, Location, Weather, Google Analytics, Tagadelic, Wysiwyg, Fivestar...
Theme:
Marinelli

Next time, i'll write a bit about 2 other websites I did, this time with WordPress.

banging away

2009-03-10T07:08:00.002+01:00

Newspaper interview

2009-03-07T07:13:00.004+01:00

Today, I bought the local newspaper. No, I still can't read most of it! It's just that today, they had a supplement about young Laowais (foreigners) in Kunming and I was one of them. Earlier this week, I had answers a few questions by email and forwarded my picture. A friend of my friend is a journalist for 春城晚报 (Chuncheng Wanbao), the Spring City Evening Paper.

Here's the result:
Here's the content online. And here's a direct link to my interview. And here's the pdf file (same as image above).

亮相：Philippe Semanaz（菲利普），法国人，27岁，在昆明学习中文，希望能找到份好工作。

　　第一次见到菲利普是在KTV，卷卷的头发，戴着眼镜，文质彬彬的感觉。菲利普很聪明，学什么东西都比较快就能学会，玩骰子、吹牛，赢了众人好多次，搞得“老江湖”们有些汗颜。第二次在打架子鼓的酒吧里看见他，没想到，这位外国朋友一打起架子鼓来，非常地投入和忘我……

　　通过交谈了解到，菲利普是法国人，因为非常热爱昆明，所以决定留在这里。他说：“当我还是一个工程学学生时，因为一个项目，我很幸运地在昆明度过了一个学期。然后我回到法国继续学习。毕业后，我在巴黎做了一年IT工程师。我并不讨厌那里的生活，但我想到国外去体验一些不同的东西。而且我不想等到找到工作才着手准备。所以目前我在昆明学习中文，希望能够在这里找到一份很好的工作！”

　[Above is my friend's description: we first met in KTV (friend of a friend) and then we went to Speakeasy, with the same group of friend]　

　　对话菲利普

　　Q：为什么选择留在昆明？昆明最吸引你的地方是什么？

　　A：我认为这是一个学习中文非常好的地方，我从来没在上海或北京生活过，我也不打算这样做。当然，我也喜欢昆明的天气，云南的文化很多元，在这样的氛围中学习和生活很不错。这里丰富的生物资源以及奇妙的景观，让人惊叹。

　　Q：在中国，1980年后生的一代人被叫做80后，在你们的国家，20~30多岁的年轻人有特定的称谓吗？

　　A：在法国，我们称之为“千禧一代” 或者“ Y一代” 。众所周知，这一代人是非常灵活而又十分叛逆的。

　　Q：你如何看待昆明的年轻人？

　　A：我在昆明认识了许多年轻人，他们绝大多数都对我的国家以及文化非常感兴趣，并且他们提问时都十分友好。

　　Q：法国的年轻人有什么比较特别的？

　　A：似乎我这个时代的人都被国际化的职业所吸引。我有已经结婚的朋友，我觉得对我们而言，结婚并不是优先的，事业更重要。

　　本报记者杨颖

My original presentation and answers in English:

I'm from France and when I was an engineering student, I was lucky to spend a semester in Kunming for a project. I then came back to France to continue my study, and when I was done, I worked 1 year as an IT engineer in Paris.
It's not that I didn't enjoy my life there but I felt like I wanted to live abroad to experience something different. and I didn't want to wait until I get a good job opportunity. So now, I'm learning Chinese and I hope to find a good job here because I really enjoy to be here.

1、为什么选择留在昆明？昆明最吸引你的地方是什么？ [why Kunming?]
For the moment, i think it's a very nice place to learn Chinese because the city life is particularly enjoyable. I have never stayed in Shanghai or Beijing and I'm not planning to do that unless I find a good job there. I like the weather of course, but the thing that I like the most, is to be in Yunnan, this region of China that has so much to offer: so many different cultures, rich biodiversity, wonderful landscapes...

2、在中国，1980年后生的一代人被叫做“80后”，在你们的国家，20—30多岁的年轻人有特定的称谓吗？你怎么理解？[how do you call the generation of people who were born under 1980, I made some Internet research for that one :-)]

In France, we call it the "Millenium Generation" (because they got in the working life after the year 2000) or the "Y Generation" (because born after the "X Generation" which is the generation after the "Babyboomers"). This generation is know for being flexible but also rebellious. Only our grand-parents have know a war on our territories and our parents are often Babyboomers. We generally feel European and we gave up our national money (Franc) for Euro when we were young enough so we adapted quickly.

3、你如何看待昆明的年轻人？ [What do you think of Kunming's young people? question piège :-D]
I have met many different young people in Kunming but I have to say, most of them were very curious about my country and my culture, and always asked me very nicely. It's always interesting to exchange about cultures.
It feels like many of the young people I met would like to travel abroad but it's still difficult and expensive: I feel very lucky to be able to be here.
(On another note, I know most of them are only childs and I always wonder how this might affect a whole generation's "personnality". I have to say that I have yet to find out about this.)

4、在你们国家，年轻人都追求一些什么（尤其是80或者90后）？ [what are people from that generation are looking for?]

Well, it seems people from my generation are attracted by an international carreer. I have friends who have gotten married but that's maybe not a priority: I feel the carreer is more important for most of my schoolmates. We tend to think we can deal with that later, maybe in our 30's.

[I'm still not sure how my answers where translated...]

Test

2009-01-29T20:47:00.000+01:00

some issues with the Disqus comment system. this is a test post

Websites without RSS feeds...

2009-01-12T06:32:00.007+01:00

Yes, there's still website without RSS feeds outhere, and if like me you can't accept that idea, or if you find RSS to practical to live without, then you find a way to make your own, and/or find something to replace it.

I've been doing exactly that for a while now, and I felt like sharing about 2 tools I find very useful to do that (Feedity, to create free RSS feed from a website, and Update Scanner, a firefox add-on) through some examples (GoKunming's classified, GoKunming's calendar).

Feedity
It's been a while since I have been using this service and it proved itself to be quite valuable. It's not that easy to set-up but when it finally works the way you want to (if it ever does), it's great.
For example, GoKunming has a feed for its article section but not for its classified section. And if you live in Kunming, you might wanna keep a look on that without having to visit the site everyday. Well, that's what RSS feeds are for, right?
Feedity let me create this feed which is working well for now. Might not work forever as it depends on how the website is built. if the said website change something, it might not work anymore. You then have to create it again if it's still possible.

Update Scanner
This tool proved to be useful when feedity was no help. Because it's not always possible to create the feed you want.
Then, this Firefox Add-on will help you to scan regularly the webpage you want to find if anything changed. It will even tell you what changed!
For example, look at that calendar page on GoKunming... I've tried to create a feedity feed for it, but it didn't work. So I've just added the page to the Update Scanner list : Whenever they add events there, I know it quickly (you can set up how often it should scan the page):

Well, if a website doesn't give you what you want, you might be able to get it anyway. It's not perfect, I wish all webmasters would use modern tools... (and opening up their site). Sometimes, you can also ask for it, like I asked GoKunming to have a RSS feed and got it. I've been wanting to do another wishlist for them but it's just too damned long...

But I'm ranting... This post is about how to keep an eye on website you love but don't have RSS feeds :-)

[update] sorry, comment section is missing because of a blogger-Disqus issue I'm trying to fix. please email/twitter me. or comment on friendfeed.

[update2] Funny how GoKunming just changed its calendar page - to something worst - the same day I published this. When I say worst... just check it out.

[update3] March 12, 2009. Calendar has been improved from last time. Now you get all the month events on the page again. so it means you can use "Update scanner" again! Let me see if I can make Feedity feed...

[update4] not so good but here it is:

三首歌

2008-12-23T05:52:00.002+01:00

三首歌... 3 songs. That's the small job I got for Christmas night, from my neighbor. I'm not a good singer but that Chinese company need some entertainment for the party they organized in a five-star hotel, and what's better than a foreigner singing songs that you can't understand...
The good part is I could choose the songs. I picked 3 french songs I like (and that I could sing) that I plan to sing in the following order:

- Bazbaz : Sur le Bout de La Langue
- Art Mengo : Lettre à Milena
- Bazbaz : Allo Papa Tango Charly

1. Bazbaz : Sur le Bout de La Langue

J'ai sur le bout de la langue
Un mot qui me brûle
Un mot qui m'embrouille
La tête m'arrache les os
Me griffe le cerveau
M'abime de bas en haut

Refrain:
J'ai sur le bout de la langue
Ton petit coeur qui tangue
Sur le bout de la langue
Ton petit coeur qui tangue {x3}

Il y a sous ta peau
Comme un frisson qui me touche
Un éclair sur ta bouche
Couche-moi près de toi
Nan, je ne bougerai pas
Même si tu ne m'écoutes pas

(Refrain)

Ne me montre pas du doigt
Si je veux tes mains d'abord
Si je te demande encore
De me raconter l'histoire
Des gens qui s'aiment une nuit
Des gens qui s'aiment une vie
(Refrain)

2. Art Mengo : Lettre à Milena

Il disait "Vous avez sans doute mieux à faire
Que de lire, je le sais, mes lettres ordinaires
Vous avez, il est vrai, mieux à faire de vos nuits
Que de lire sans arrêt mon visage qui s'écrit"

Mais permettez, Madame, cet aveu déchirant
Je suis sous votre charme, comme un petit enfant

Il disait "Dites-moi au moins "tu" une fois
Alors, je serai comme le plus heureux des hommes
Dans cette intimité seule connue de nous,
Vos lèvres de papier sauront me rendre fou"

Si le sommeil me fuit, si j'ai peur de dormir
C'est qu'au fond de mon lit, c'est la mort qui soupire

Il disait "Arrêtez de m'écrire chaque jour
Ce que vous me donnez, pour moi, est bien trop lourd
Chaque mot que je trace, chaque mot que je lis
Porte en lui la menace de rester incompris"

Vos lettres me font peur, leur bonté m'exaspère
Vos rêves de bonheur sont des fruits trop amers

Il disait "C'est ainsi, je ne sais pas y faire
J'aurai vécu ma vie comme un célibataire"

Permettez-moi Madame, de me taire aujourd'hui
Je vous laisse mon âme et je reprends mes nuits

3. Bazbaz : Allo Papa Tango Charly

Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Répondez, nous vous cherchons
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Vous vous dirigez plein sud
Vers le triangle des bermudes

Ici, Papa Tango Charlie
Je vous entends très bien
Ici, Papa Tango Charlie
Me laisserez vous enfin
Je n'ai plus besoin de vous
Je vole par vent debout
Je vais noyer ma solitude
Dans le triangle des Bermudes

Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Répondez, nous vous cherchons
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Vous n'allez pas d'habitude
Vers le triangle des bermudes

Ici, Papa Tango Charlie
Je vous entends déjà moins bien
Ici, Papa Tango Charlie
Auriez vu compris enfin
J'ai perdu celle que j'aimais
Je ne la retrouverai jamais
Je vais noyer ma solitude
Dans le triangle des Bermudes

Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Répondez, nous vous cherchons
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Allo, Papa Tango Charlie
Vous perdez de l'altitude
Sur le triangle des bermudes

Ici, Papa Tango Charlie
Je n'entends cette fois plus rien
Ici, Papa Tango Charlie
Vous m'avez laissé enfin
Mon avion est comme fou
Moi je me moque de tout
Je vais noyer ma solitude
Dans le triangle des Bermudes

Allo Papa Tango Charlie
Allo Papa Tango Charlie
Répondez, nous vous cherchons
Allo Papa Tango Charlie
Allo Papa Tango Charlie
Pas de réponse sur latitude
Du triangle des bermudes

non, non, non ....
yeh, yeh, yeh, ....

On a side note, I just realised how difficult it was to include music on your blog. Even snippets which is legal (right?). Seems to me that the World Wide Web is loosing more than a battle here. Last.fm doesn't seem to support the sharing of music by including code in your blog anymore.... Deezer can't play any of the songs I want anymore (that's because they don't support snippets)... and iLike didn't have the song I wanted... Life is hard.

(update) and radioblog is back to the rescue...

Next semester

2008-12-18T10:55:00.001+01:00

Time to think about next semester already.
The current semester in Kunming College of Eastern Language and Culture (KCELC) is going to finish on January 9th. That's soon.

This morning, we were handed the information sheet for next semester: it will start on February 23rd and end on July 10th 2009.

I definitely wanna continue to study Chinese and I was very satisfied by the school, so I'll continue to study there...

Citation d'Albert Einstein

2008-11-19T05:57:00.001+01:00

Kunming's Zoo

2008-10-22T11:52:00.002+01:00

I finally visited my neighboors... the animals of the Zoo. The sky was amazingly blue today and the view was so bright, I had to go out in this green hill in front of my home.

So my neighboors are birds, monkeys, elephants, lions. Some look very depressed and I don't really wanna see them again, but some were quite nice. I'm thinking of the Lion (maybe because I feel related, being born in the end of july, or maybe, just because he was eye-catching)

From Zoo

I still don't know who are the noisy ones in the morning. I can hear them shouting (or is that singing?) from home quite often. and it could be birds or monkeys. I'm not sure.

Entrance is 10 kuai. Lots of people go there to play Mahjong in the shadow of the bamboos. I guess they don't pay. Will ask next time.

Linux : mon expérience (Xfce)

2008-09-18T07:46:00.004+01:00

J'ai installé Linux sur mon ordinateur portable Toshiba (Satellite 2410-303) qui se fait vieux (plus de 5 ans). Ce n'était plus tenable sous Windows XP, l'ouverture d'un programme était souvent très longue. Et je ne pouvais pas réinstaller car je n'avais plus le CD fourni par Toshiba. Il fallait payer 60 euros pour en récupérer un de façon légal et j'ai préfére tenter l'aventure Linux.

Heureusement, je ne me suis pas lancé seul dans cette aventure, et mon ami G. m'a beaucoup aidé. J'ai débuté avec Ubuntu 7, puis Ubuntu 8 pour enfin installer Xubuntu (Xfce, une distribution plus légère).

Tout ça pour dire que j'en suis plutôt content malgré les quelques limites auquelles je me heurte:
- gros problème avec Scim, le "programme" permettant d'écrire du chinois. celui n'a pas l'air de pouvoir fonctionner malgré les différents essais que j'ai fait en suivant des indications plus ou moins complexes. Quand je lancais le programme, l'ordinateur se mettait à ramer pour une durée semblant indeterminé mais surtout très longue.
=>Bref, je l'ai désinstaller et j'utilise NJStar pour écrire du chinois. C'est un programme qui ressemble à un éditeur de texte avec son propre système d'écriture. je peux ensuite copier-coller mes charactères chinois. Pas top, mais ça me suffit pour l'instant.

- je viens d'essayer d'installer Skype, mais ma machine ne semble pas en vouloir non plus : même comportement, l'ordi se met à ramer et Skype ne s'ouvre pas.
=>Apparement une alternative : http://www.raketu.com sans téléchargement! à tester.

- le client Last.fm que j'avais finalement réussi à installer semble maintenant avoir un poblème. Il marchait bien sous Ubuntu 8. Mais maintenant, même comportement, l'ordi se met à ramer. Je me dit qu'il est probable que ces différents problèmes soient issues de la même source.

- Google Earth ne marchait pas quand j'ai essayer de l'installer. C'est un des 1er programme que j'installe... mais avec ma distribution légère, il ne faut peut-être pas trop en demander.
=> Heureusement, il y a google maps.

- Problème de raccourci clavier. Je ne me suis pas trop confronté au problème mais il est clair qu'il ne sont pas facile à parametrer.

- Screem Html/xml editor pour éditer les pages web. Il plante souvent : le programme se ferme sans prévenir et surtout sans sauvegarder. makes me SCREAM a lot.

Pour finir ce billet sur une note positive, voici une petite liste des programmes que j'utilise et dont je suis content:
- Picasa! pour la gestion des photos/images, je trouve qu'il n'y pas mieux.
- 'Pidgin' pour le chat. gère plusieurs protocole, c'est bien pratique.
- Je suis passé de 'Amarok' à 'Banshee' pour la musique. (Il me manque des options mais c'est pas mal.)
- 'Transmission' pour les fichiers bittorrent. Il m'a l'air de faire son boulot plutôt bien!
- Google Desktop fonctionne.
- 'Cinq et plus', un casse-tête auquel j'ai bien accroché.

Et puis, vivement Google Chrome sous linux!

PS: à noter aussi que Xfce (Xubuntu) est la première distribution qui a pu faire marcher ma carte wifi. Excellent!

Un blog francophone pour Kunming

2008-08-31T15:03:00.006+01:00

From Kunming

M'installant à Kunming pour un moment, je viens aussi d'ouvrir un blog dédié à cette ville de Chine. Gokunming.com est le site anglophone de référence de la capitale du Yunnan. On verra bien ce que devient mon site en français...

Sinon, voici les nombreux billets sur Kunming que j'ai écris dans le passé.

Flickr permet enfin d'incorporer les diaporamas

2008-08-21T03:03:00.002+01:00

Il y avait des alternatives mais c'est quand même bien que Flickr propose enfin cela directement:

Going... back!

2008-08-02T23:28:00.001+01:00

In time like these... I feel the need to write down, to express some feelings, kind of.

In times like these
In times like those
What will be will be
And so it goes
And it always goes on, and on, and on....

(full lyrics)

Découvrez Jack Johnson!

I'm going back to China (in the city called Kunming). To live, not just to go and come back. I guess I'm looking for something more.
It's not easy to go and live abroad if it's not your work who take you there, but that's the "rules" of this world. And if most of the times, you go by the rules, sometimes you push the things a bit. So I registered as a student (to learn Chinese) in a school and got a student visa for 1 year.

I am a new day rising
I'm a brand new sky
to hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
do I stay or run away
and leave it all behind?

(full lyrics) (wikipedia page)

Découvrez Foo Fighters!

It's times like these, you just have to make a choice:

PS: This post has also been written to test the new shiny (but useless here, i have to admit) comment system (Disqus)

Bullet in the head - RATM

2008-05-07T19:05:00.005+01:00

Great song from Rage Against The Machine

This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin' proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow the rules when the set commands ya
They said it was blue
When the blood was red
That's is how you got a bullet blasted through your head

Blasted through your head
Blasted through your head

I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched at the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You was mesmerized
Cellular phones soundin' a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before you realize

They load the clip in omnicolor
They pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds

Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high

They load the clip in omnicolor
They pack the 9, they fire it at prime time
Sleeping gas, every home was like Alcatraz
And mutha fuckas lost their minds

No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
Play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they are tellin' ya
Buying all the products that they are selling ya
They say jump
Ya say how high
Ya brain dead
Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in your head

Just victims of the in-house drive-by
They say jump, you say how high

Ya standin' in line
Believin' the lies
Ya bowin' down to the flag
Ya got a fuckin' bullet in ya head
...
A bullet in your head

Live version:

Délabré

2008-04-27T09:25:00.001+01:00

Délabré
Mise en ligne par Philou.cn

I just love being back on Flickr...

3 R's

2008-04-06T16:39:00.003+01:00

Getting more andd more invites on Deezer "social network"... but will it work? didn't tried any sharing feature yet there.

Also, more and more people following me on Twitter. I like to use it as mini-blog, as a status updater in FB, and would love to use it to chat with my friends...

Travel map

2008-03-27T22:27:00.002+01:00

Discovering some new feature of a Facebook application...
Here's my travel map:

Kunming, China

San Martino Di Castrozza, Italy

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Visit TripAdvisor.com

Bande annonce: Le Bocal (Arte Radio)

2008-03-19T22:03:00.004+01:00

Je suis allé au 'gouter' d'Arte-radio ce dimanche, et c'était pas mal du tout. (Le Point Ephemère, pas loin de chez moi)

On a notamment écouté cette bande annonce pour la saison 2 de leur feuilleton "Le Bocal". très drôle!

A la radio

2008-03-13T22:26:00.006+01:00

Une petite chronique Radio bleu besançon sur le blog de la LPO Franche-Comté dont je suis à l'origine. On parle de moi à la radio :-)

Where am I?

2008-03-12T20:40:00.003+01:00

Trying out Loki web services... It's quite promising if you ask me.

It seems i don't have the right phone to use it (could have been cool though). And anyway, i'm not using Internet on my mobile yet (too expensive).

Update:
Can't make the automatic update work from my office computer(i think because of a proxy issue) so it's not really fun.

Concert au "Perroquet bleu" (Rue Darwin)

2008-03-01T21:07:00.006+01:00

Cool concert last night. Liam have some really cool tunes. I especially enjoyed when he played a song with Erica and Stephanos.

Erica's cover from Marie Laforet was very nice. ("c'est Julien")

Concert was at le "perroquet bleu".

Chat with me!

2008-02-26T12:10:00.003+01:00

You can chat with me if i'm logged in Google Talk, and you don't even need an account!

On my shoulder - The Dø

2008-02-25T23:09:00.000+01:00

The Dø – On My Shoulders

(via canal +)