Number 100

As I prepared to document things and post updates I realized this post will be the 100th one published. Seems like a big deal... and in a way it's strange that it has taken me so long to write 100 posts. Anyway, here go some updates.

This post was initially supposed to be titled facebook (or something playing on that theme). I've switched off my account on facebook since July and it seems I've suddenly "switched off" my friends. A few friends still keep in touch - chats, emails, phones etc - but the number of people I'm in touch with and who know what's happening has gone down drastically. It seems like most people do not know the concept of emails or random phone calls/texts.

This became much more apparent on my birthday. A Facebook birthday results in around a hundred or so notifications with messages from all the world over. Without facebook reminding people to wish me, this year ended up being noticeably calmer. In addition, me being in a new city now meant that as yet, none of the friends I have made here know when my birthday is. I wasn't complaining much, I like calm birthdays too and I didn't feel like celebrating much this year.

What FB has done though, is that it provided me a place where I could make amusing and/or witty remarks and get instant "likes" from my group of friends. Without that, these days my amusing remarks are sent to just a couple of my friends via chat messages. The blog feels like something substantial where I should write seriously when I have something of substance to post. Ah well, I'll figure it out sometime.
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My geek levels have gone through the roof. I got genuinely excited to buy myself a RaspberryPi which I then used to serve as my media center, connected to the nice hi-def TV included in my rent.

My external hard disk crashed. Crashed hard. I lost a lot of data. I have a second disk serving as a back up, but I realized the severity over days. My first concern was for all the photos. I realized I had lost all photos from 2013. I eventually found photos taken post May 2013, realizing that all raw images (and non-processed photos) from my January trip were lost. Then I realized all my work done during my MS thesis and my Bachelor's thesis was lost. I do have the final reports/papers stored at multiple places, but the programs and files seem to be lost.

That prompted me to (a) get a new external hard disk and (b) start looking to replace my 6 year old laptop.

I'm typing this from my new machine, currently running Gentoo which I installed all by myself over the last 40 hours while doing other stuff. Having already configured ssh and screen before, I could get all installation done while I was at work, checking in periodically to see how far the installation had progressed. Darktable works blazingly fast, the fan doesn't kick in when I start watching Youtube videos and I have a battery life longer than an hour.

(Note to self: compile NetworkManager with the USE flags -dhcpcd dhclient, and disable the n channel. That will solve your wifi problems.)

On to other things now...

Dispatches

I generally remark that this is a small town, but its "centre" is much larger than that of Antibes and the zone of fun activities is spread out over a larger area. Still walk-able, but the good network of buses and trams is helpful.

And loads more French being spoken all the time. I always mentioned that in France, people always assume that you speak French when they strike a conversation with you. They ignore all the other hints - the lost look on face, the obviously different facial features etc. Probably a good thing (one could almost say that they don't stereotype, but that would be blatantly wrong).

Pissaladière here has fish in it. I'm sorry, but I lived in the region where Pissaladiere was invented (or so I was told) and there, it is a strictly vegetarian onion pie/pizza. It's the same bloody (small-ish) country and you shouldn't get the basics wrong. (Err on further investigation, I find that anchovies do end up on it... but honestly, I'd never seen it before!)

So many parks in town. It's great and I went around excited thinking I could easily set up a slackline but it turns out that it's not allowed in any of the parks in the city. As I spent some hours grumbling and complaining to myself, I realized that I'd ever put the slackline in parks before. We always set it up in open areas (though, inside the city) with trees. It's kinda hard to find such a spot here. But a few weeks of roaming around has had me finding a couple of spots.

I mentioned to about a dozen people that this place is well connected to major cities. It's easy to head to a big city or to RyanAir destination (there are multiple in a radius of 300 km), to which my friends replied, "Are you so eager to get out of that city?"

Des fromages

Short post, nothing major to report here.

As I sit and attend a workshop purely in French, I marvel at how quickly my French has improved in the last 4 months. I go through entire days at work not speaking English. Then I look at the slide, I see the speaker saying that they need to collect all the info, with the words "des fromages, des fromages" in parenthesis.

Apparently, pie charts are also called Camemberts in French.