San Francisco day #3

Late wake up this morning at 10, since I wanted to try Suppenküche, german cuisine in Hayes Valley, recommended by Lonely Planet. But they only open at 5pm.
So I decided to eat sushi at Domo, 501 laguna street, for 18,62 USD.

Afternoon in SoMA
- Moscone Center
- AT&T Park
- Coco500 , recommended by Lonely Planet, web 2.0 start-up parties. Just on left, 6 people were meeting. 2 young guys were showing their newly application on the iPhone to maybe venture capitalists. On my right, 3 students. I took a salami pizza , not good. For the price spent. The server was French.

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Payer le Thalys ou Eurostar en chèque vacances

Dans le post précédent, je parlais d’une astuce qui permet de voyager vers l’étranger avec des chèques vacances. En effet la SNCF accepte ces chèques uniquement pour les destinations intra France. Ci dessous mon expérience pour réserver un train la veille d’un week end de 4 jours.

Hier à la gare de Montparnasse, je réserve un billet Paris-Marseille qui fait le même prix que Paris-Dusseldorf. A la caisse, je demande bien un 100% remboursable et échangeable pour 280,10€ en 1ère classe (allez 0,10€ de ma poche). Changement de guichet, chouette y a une guichet uniquement pour les remboursements juste une personne devant moi. Annulation pour un changement de destination, l’agent me dit :”c’est possible mais ce qui me pose problème ,c’est le mode de paiement en chèque vacance. Je vais essayer”. Et OUI, ça passe. Pour la somme de 280€, il me rend 0,10€ en monnaie.

Finalement, les agents de la SNCF essaient de décourager les remboursements en faisant croire que les dossiers prennent 2 mois pour des bons d’achat.

Wifi & breakfast on train

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Back from KingsOfCode

It’s one week old since I’ve been to Amsterdam for KingsOfCode.  I had one contact (never met in person) on my LinkedIn who organized a side-event. In less than 5 days I planned my trip from Paris to Amsterdam. And I so enjoy it, I  talked with passionnate people. With smaller conference, I can feel mor human atmosphere where you can to talk to speakers directly.

Here are some  pics. Mike Malone (Pownce) and Andy Smith (Jaiku) both were doing a presentation on Django framework.

  • - About micro-blogging . What makes Twitter so popular ?
  • - If you find that one, please let us know . Mike
  • - That’s not because it’s built on top of Ruby on Rails :)
  • - I don’t think people care what’s build n top. Andy

koc2

I also chatted with Francisco Tolmasky, former Apple employee.

  • - What kind of profile does Steve Jobs has ? Is he a UI designer, software architect, marketing guy …
  • - Well he’s the guy who chooses what features to add or remove from the ideas . Without Jobs , Apple wouldn’t be what it is today.

de_laren

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Métro discussions entre filles

De retour vers la maison dans le métro, 3 copines (la trentaine passée) s’assoient à côté de moi. Celle à ma gauche commence à pleurer en parlant de son mec. “Je m’allonge sur le côté quand je me réveille, ma tête a l’air aplatie snif . Et il me dit quoi faire … Vraiment je l’aime mais c’est insupportable.” Pendant 5 stations, je l’entends avec ses amies moi je me cache sous un bouquin avec l’envie de rire. J’interviens sinon je vais hurler de rire

  • - C’est peut être pas mes affaires mais si tu es insatisfaite, va chercher un autre.  La plupart des gens n’osent pas changer avec la crainte de se retrouver sans personne. Je peux te promettre que vous tu bien plus heureuse. Par analogie, je fais un boulot que je déteste mais rien ne m’empêche de chercher un autre en parallèle.
  • ” – Il faut laisser passer le temps. Dans mon cas mon Gigi, il a fallu un temps qu’on s’habitue . Mais maintenant moi jamais je n’y penserai à me séparer de lui.”  une des copines
  • - Pfff je ne chercherai jamais un autre à côté .

Sinon Psychologie féminine , connerie humaine : je pense la plupart des gens acceptent leurs conditions en espèrant que les choses vont s’amélioré.

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Kingsofcode / chèques-vacances

I learned beginning of this week from one of my LinkedIn contact the existence of KingsOfCode conference in Amsterdam. Hell yeah, I’ve got a bunch a travel tickets ….

J’ai des chèques vacances (350 Euro ) qui vont se périmer en décembre 2009. Chouette je décide de les utiliser pour un voyage a Amsterdam. Avec une queue pas possible a la SNCF de Montparnasse, je sors mon numéro de dossier de réservation. Et la le gars au guichet que non,le Thalys ne prend pas les chèques vacances. EUH les chèques vacances ne sont valables qu’a l’intérieur de la France. A quoi ca sert de voyager alors seulement dans le pays ?

De plus le petit con au guichet me dit qu’ils sont remboursables 100%. OUI mais en pas cash sous forme d’autres billets SNCF. Bande d’arnaqueurs.

Il y a une astuce a ce système :

http://blog.effraie.org/post/Bug-SNCF/cheques-vacances-%3A-workaround?pub=1#pr

1 acheter des billets remboursables en France avec vos chèques-vacances

2 se faire rembourser

3 acheter un billet pour l’étranger avec cette somme. Voila

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The Boat that Rocked/ Good Morning England

Today I just watched “Good Morning England”. It’s a good comedy about Radio Rock, a pirate station which broadcast from a boat crowded by DJ. However they come into conflict with the British governement because of their provocative ideas. 50 years back (not so long) , England government could censor silently any source of  media, it’s such a hard thng to imagine for a democratic country .  It reminds me of China where wordpress.com is blocked , I hope in the next 5 decades China freedom will improve.

PS: the title in French is “Good Morning England” which I think is stupid to translate an English title by another.

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Low budget Lord of the Rings : the Hunt of Gollum

This morning on TV, I learnt about a fan Tolkien made movie : ‘The Hunt of Gollum’  for a budget 3000 £ . 160 people were cast on the  40-minute story I think it’s mind-buggling how much can be done for so few means.

With a budget of £3,000, the film cost somewhat less than Peter Jackson’s trilogy, but that doesn’t mean this fan-film looks like it was put together with cardboard and string.The trailer promises a lavish production that models itself closely on Jackson’s vision of Middle-earth – with North Wales, Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath doubling for Tolkien’s orc-infested lands.

For more information http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8022623.stm

The trailer is available on youtube.

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Eureka

Yeah I found it : yesterday I was looking for how to add tab on the upper page ( or tabbar) like on this blog

tabbar

Not sidebar, there is a plenty of non sense plugin, javascript and so which add your page on your side bar. The solution : in wp-admin Pages> add a new page. Of course depending on the theme you use, the theme must display it. Everything is in the theme.

I was nearly switching to Joomla to own the  tabbar. Now just one thing I still don’t know how to a post to under a certain page

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Youtube edu

Who said YouTube is just for entertainment ? I just read the Times from April about universities classes going online. I myself subscribe to stanforduniversity . What is the goal ?  Promotion, gain international exposure, attract potential students, degrade élite degrees . After all watching these classes doesn’t give you a diploma or gain access to alumni network.

http://www.youtube.com/edu

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The Art of “Invest less, Get more”

I just came across an article from TIME.

How do you get started? All that’s required is a great idea for a product that will fill a need in the 21st century. These days you’d do best if your idea either makes people money or saves them money.

The term ramen profitable was coined by Paul Graham, a Silicon Valley start-up investor, essayist and muse to LILO entrepreneurs. It means that your start-up is self-sustaining and can eke out enough profit to keep you alive on instant noodles while your business gains traction.

I love this term LILOs, for “a little in, a lot out.” With economic crisis, VC are less willing to invest in high risk start up. Nonetheless some entrepreneurs turn to find cheaper developers through rentacoder.com or eLance.com.  It’s getting cheaper and cheaper to start a company :

  • hardware cost less, servers are affordable
  • cheap developers in rising countries are available
  • open source technology are free, no high licence fee

For me the new wave of entrepreneurs who will go through the crisis are the ones who can monetize instantly their projects. I think getting a load crap of users then selling ads/their personal info is not a business model. Rather it should be ‘freemium’ : free to register, pay for additional services (WordPress, Flickr …). Think of it a decade ago Jeff Bezos needed 300k$ to launch Amazon.  Now one lonely guy can run plentyoffish and generate revenues. Here is a VC’s view on Open Source

Guy Kawasaki on Startups using Open Source

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