Following my recent re-discovery of the ultra cool E Ink technology, I have been researching possible applications for conference name tags. I came across nTAG, which does pretty much exactly what I had in mind. If the rental price is right, I might use it for the Office 2.0 Conference that I am organizing in October. Ultimate geek factor!
Yesterday, some friends and I spent the best part of our lunch time discussing about photography. I pointed them to the website of Fred Miranda, one of the best places to find information about digital photography and to discover amazing shots of American outdoors. Equipment reviews are extremely helpful too. For example, I’m really lusting for this new Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM right now. I just wish I could afford it…
Eliot and I went through the rest of the IFR scenarios today. Three hours of ground lessons non-stop, after a full day of work, following a flight back from Europe, the day following a wedding is a sure way to wipe you out, especially if you do not get any dinner before. Well, I’m wiped out, but I’m glad to be done with these scenarios. They sure aren’t as fun as flying for real…
Dave and Ellen got married today. May was Ellen’s matron of honor. I was honored to be Dave’s groomsman, also called usher by our British friends. The ceremony took place on the mezzanine level at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco, and the reception was held on the 36th floor of the hotel, with panoramic views on the City and the Bay. Breathtaking! It reminded me of a time when I lived across the street, at the Paramount, on the 36th floor too. It feels like it was eons ago. Dave, Ellen: congratulations! It was an awesome wedding. We love you!
I finally made it back home safely, right on time for Dave and Ellen’s rehearsal dinner. The flight was a little bit painful though. From my window seat, I could only see half of the TV screen. It showed kids movies for the whole duration of the flight, so I did not really miss anything, but this is telling me that I should carefully plan my next trips to Europe if I am to keep flying Lufthansa.
For the past year, I’ve been using London Heathrow as my primary hub for traveling in Europe, but following the recent events that took place there, I have decided to use Frankfurt Airport instead. It offers direct flights to San Francisco operated by Lufthansa (a Star Alliance partner), it is a lot smaller than London Heathrow, and all terminals are directly connected to each other. Also, the excellent and reasonably-priced & Towers">Sheraton Frankfurt Hotel & Towers is located within the airport itself, making it a lot easier to catch the 9:35AM flight back home. Good bye Heathrow! Guten Tag Frankfurt!
Five years ago, an exceptional event prompted me to start writing a personal journal. This event happened on September 11, 2001. I was supposed to fly from San Francisco to New York, for a meeting with a customer. Obviously, I did not make it to New York that day.
Today, I was supposed to fly from Geneva to London Heathrow, then fly from London to San Francisco tomorrow. I did not make it to London either, and I am stuck in Geneva, trying to book another flight back home.
CNN is showing archive images of the World Trade Center just before they collapsed. Like most of us, I have tried to forget them, but they keep coming back somehow. Writing must have been a way for me to deal with these events and their impact on my psyche. Publishing fragments of my journal on this blog follows the same idea. Here is where it all began.
Four years ago, I saw a demonstration for one of the very first electronic paper displays developed by E Ink Corporation. Recently, the technology was licensed by iRex Technologies BV, a spin-off from Royal Philips Electronics, in order to develop the iLiad electronic reader. And today, the reader has been adopted by ARINC in order to develop the eFlyBook, a portable electronic device that contains all of the U.S. digitized terminal procedures, IFR high and low altitude enroute charts, U.S. airport facility directory, the FAR/AIM, and can display other user installed eDocs. Through the use of E Ink’s technology, the eFlyBook remains readable even in direct sunlight, and offers more than 20 hours of battery life.
I was in Geneva for a meeting with a customer today. I could not find any affordable plane ticket for my return to San Francisco before Friday, so I decided to spend two more days in Switzerland, and find a calm place where I could write some long overdue white papers for work. I headed to Davos, on the other side of this small country. The five hours drive there was amazing. It felt like half of the time was spent in tunnels dug into mountains. For the whole duration of the trip, I listened to La 1ère, a station from Radio Suisse Romande. The interview of Jazz musician Michel Legrand for Paradiso was fascinating, and listening to Pipo (Philippe Rosat), a musician-farmer who was the guest of the day for C’est pas l’heure, highly refreshing. C’est vraiment sympa la Suisse…
Sony just announced a new GPS logger, the Sony GPS-CS1. It uses 32MB of flash memory to record any GPS track at 15 second intervals. One practical use is for geo-tagging of digital pictures, which is now supported by Flickr. Another application would be for recording flight logs, like my friend Matthieu Laban is doing. And if you merge the two, you could get a pretty cool logbook…
As mentioned before, the one thing I have missed since I moved to the Bay Area is good chocolate. So whenever I go back to France, I make sure to buy one of these little boxes filled with delicious confections made from this amazing bean. Today, I got to try samples from Jean-Paul Hévin. Delicious! Reynald, you can also get them from Japan from this website. Enjoy without moderation!
Hugues (also known as Huggy, or Huggies, depending on who you ask) is the guy who introduced me to May four years ago. Today, it’s his turn to get married, and I got the honor of being one of his witnesses. His bride is Leticia (Leti), one of the most joyful persons I ever met. The couple got legally married last month, and today was the ecumenic religious ceremony held at the Saint Martin Catholic Church in Louvecienne, and the party organized at the Château du Val. The later also serves as a retirement home for recipients of the French Légion d’honneur. Now I understand better why people want this medal so bad. Congratulations to the happy couple, it was a really nice wedding! Pictures to follow soon.
Last month, I read about Muji in the excellent easyJet IN-FLIGHT magazine. Today, May and I shopped at one of their outlets in Paris. We bought a tiny umbrella that comes with a convenient box for dry storage in a bag after the rain, a stuffed girafe that we called Steve, and miniature replicas of Tokyo buildings made of wood. We promised ourselves that we would get other cities (New York, London, and Paris) next time we visit another Muji outlet. Later, we had dinner at L’Absinthe, a restaurant owned by Michel Rostang. The fois gras was outstanding, and the bugnes delicious. You can pass on the steak though, for the quality of the meat was not on par with the rest of the food.
If you and 8 of your friends are looking for an affordable place to stay in Paris during the Summer, you might want to consider living on a boat anchored on the Seine. A group of friends attending Hugues’ and Leticia’s wedding did just that, and at 200 euros per night for nine people, it sure beats anything else I’ve seen. The boat they rented is called Nova, and is located on the East side of Paris, near the new Pont Charles de Gaulle. The boat is equipped with the very best audio-video equipment and features a full kitchen. Just be advised that when other boats pass by, it moves a little bit more than one would expect.
May and I are in Paris and met Sandra, Nassim, and Thomas at Le Strapontin, a cute little restaurant in the Quartier Latin. Food was good, wine honest, and the owner offered us two bottles of champagne, for a reason that still escapes me. He and I both really like Franz Ferdinand. Is this a good enough reason?
Honda recently announced that they will finally sell the HondaJet, one of the most promising aircraft in the Very Light Jet (VLJ) category, and certainly one of the slickest. This is a pretty significant development, for the program is backed by Honda Motor Co., Ltd., which gives it access to very significant resources, and the fanatical support of Takeo Fukui, Honda’s President and CEO. Here is another plane that goes into the list of aircraft I like.
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