Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs, evaluate how you were happy in 2007 and what you're up to for 2008:

1. Have you been healthy in 2007? Are there major illnesses preparing for 2008?
2. Have you had sex in 2007? How do you plan to have sex in 2008?
3. Have you had a home in 2007? How do you plan to have one in 2008?
4. Did you feel safe, protected against crime in 2007? How do you plan to feel safe in 2008?
5. Did you have a safety net against accidents or illness in 2007? How do you plan to have one in 2008?
6. Did you have a steady source of income, or otherwise a resourceful environment in 2007? How do you plan to have that in 2008?
7. Did you have close friends in 2007? How do you plan to have/keep close friends in 2008?
8. Did you have close emotional or intimate partners in 2007? How do you plan to have/keep partners in 2008?
9. Did you have a supportive and communicative family in 2007? How do you plan to have one in 2008?
10. did you respect yourself and other people in 2007? How do you plan for respect in 2008?
11. are you proud of yourself and what you did in 2007? How do you plan to be proud in 2008?

How to use this quiz for 2007: answer the questions in order. Then take the number of the first question where you answered no. That is your happiness score out of 10. Now, try to improve this score in 2008.

If you answered yes to all the questions, then you've been happy already! Keep going for 2008.

Only inertia and prejudice, not economics nor the lack of good educational ideas, stand in the way of providing every child in the world with the kind of experience of which we have tried to give you some glimpse.

Seymour Papert (also on wikipedia) & Cynthia Solomon, Twenty things to do with a computer, MIT A.I. memo nr 248, June 1971

In America, people buy stuff in “stores.” Over here, they buy stuff in “shops.”

In America, people find the word “shop” old fashioned. They expect it to designate a small and cramped place where goods are not on display in large quantities.

Now, if we look at three hundred years ago, when people in America had just settled and were still essentially speaking the same language as in England:

• “storehouses” were places where goods were placed to keep for a long time, before they were sold.
• when they were to be sold, they were moved to “shops” and put on display for customers.

And then, gradually, cultural changes made it more convenient for customers in America to go and buy their stuff directly from the shelves of the storehouse — there there was no aesthetic in the display, but goods were available in large quantities.

This has not happened over here, so there we are linguistically.

The wagon was nearly full. As my head was crossing the door to the cabin, I could see complete columns of heads stretching from the first row of seats to the next door on the other side. Only a few seats were unoccupied, and I glanced from side to side to choose where I would settle.

The first seat available next to the entrance looked unavailable, due to a pair of legs extended straight under it. My eyes swept over the next few rows, only to discover that the few seats unoccupied by people were mostly occupied by their belongings, and ended back at the initial position.

Invoking the power of the human voice over things, I asked the person sitting next to the pair of legs if the seat was available, with my line of sight crossing briefly the attention of the owner of the legs as a token of dual addressing. Instantly, the legs retracted and I could let myself fall into place.

A sense of awareness immediately dawned upon me, unforeseen after two hours of flight. Instead of falling asleep quietly, as I usually do in trains that bring me home, my attention was caught by my two immediate neighbors.

The legs were probably the first item to establish contact with my subconscious. Now retracted, their leather would wrinkle at the fold of the knees; and with the crotch these were the only two areas where the black fabric was not faultlessly smooth, down to the limit of the boots, at the edge of the calves. The pants, like the boots, were faultlessly following the curves of the flesh underneath — only the two buttons at the top would give away that this skin did not belong to the human being it protected.

As my line of sight was raising again, I was expecting to follow the path to the typical traits of a character used by time, hardship, life obstacles and an overall lack of self-care that I already met fitting in similar pants. Instead, my awe blossomed.

Two simple pieces of clothing were fitting a lean torso and the material was not loose enough to hide a toned layer of muscles and little body fat. Two large hands with healthy and perfectly trimmed nails were folded together on top, and their rosy skin appeared smooth and clean. Despite the absence of hair on the hands themselves, I could see clearly and without any doubt that their hue was belonging to a blonde blue-eyed dutch or german man.

Although my curiosity had become acute, social protocols were still applying; my first look at his face was short and going sideways, as if I was on my way to look through the window.

Short, but rich. His eyes were scrutinizing sideways my ring, as mine had been doing a few seconds. His face and head were shaved short but not bare, revealing the hair pattern of a man in his early thirties. The shape of his jaws was perfect, and the combination of his jaws, mouth, nose, eyes and eyebrows were a display of well-tended manhood and assurance. He was definitely hot, albeit calm and seemingly laid-back.

A few seconds passed, during which I was registering this vision and trying to focus on the trees outside the window; and then he started to address my immediate neighbor, commenting on the sight outside.

His voice was soft. This, together with his concise clarity in his use of the Dutch language, finished to convince me that I was in the presence of someone special. He was explaining our geographical surroundings to his friend on my side, with the patience and preciseness that would be appropriate for teaching. His friend was far more quiet, speaking a few words every now and then. He would speak Dutch as well, but with an accent that I would consider German.

Who were they? I soon understood that they were on their way to Brussels. Did they meet in Amsterdam? Why would they take the train, since I was convinced that they would rather use a motorbike?

In the mist of building a number of scenarios that would explain their presence next to me, an idea struck me as exceptionally significant: they looked free.

Leaving for a land so close and yet so remote is an exciting prospect.

The idea came a few days ago from a pair of friends, who intend to visit several cities as part of a small scale version of Flickr's Jumping Project; besides the pictures, they intend to have fun and party and that was enough for me to join them.

And now that accommodation and travel are all set, comes the question of what to do there. Having fun is an excellent plan; however, I would feel foolish if I was coming back afterwards without any insight on Warsaw. And there I am today, researching facts and hints about the city, its culture, people and history.

I realize I know next to nothing about Poland.

The name “złoty” sounds fun, but I have no idea of what is its value. Besides Chopin, I know no one originating from Poland. There are 20 theaters in Warsaw, but I do not know the name of any of them, nor what shows are produced there. I knew that Poland was a republic, but it wouldn't have crossed my mind that there was a President of Warsaw. So much to learn!

And yet at the same time I know that the country is ruled (or has been, until recently) by two very conservative parties and their friends, and I fear in advance the feeling of staying in a world of roman catholics, albeit for a short time.

We shall see.

Today I use this page as a public notepad:

• the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn as modern versions of Russel's teapot - refuting the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the sceptic to disprove unfalsifiable claims of religions
• to read: A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins and its elaboration on the theme of the teapot
• Solipsism, Russel's Five Minute Hypothesis and the Brain in a vat theory as philosophical parallels to religion
• the Sentient Puddle of Douglas Adams as a relativized justification for the perfection of the world
• Infant metaphysics - how humans develop and absorb the distinction between self and reality - as a part of Developmental psychology
• the Humpback_anglerfish and a specific drawing of Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal as a depiction of the essential role of males from the point of view of females

Today the read box from irrepressible.info was quoting a paragraph from the Iranian Gay & Lesbian Healthcare Providers Association; this prompted me to discover more about this group, and I read some of their articles.

In one of them the following sentence rung a bell:

My family, like most Iranian families, centered on worrying about people's judgment. I learned from my family that my purpose of life was to earn people's respect by becoming educated and successful. Provoking envy in people meant I was on the right track. — Dr. Payam Ghassemlou

This idea disturbs me, for it describes accurately some of the feelings I have now about the way I was educated — although I have no (known) Iranian origins.

This accurate match does not seem to fit with the idea that the driving line of thought behind my education was socialism, not Islam. So I was told.

Or does it?

There are several ways to describe socialism; the following is relevant:

Socialism as a political system of communal ownership: a political theory or system in which the means of production and distribution are controlled by the people and operated according to equity and fairness rather than market principles — Microsoft Encarta

This raises the question of who decides what is equity and fairness. If I understand correctly, that would be the very same people who decide how to redistribute the wealth. Threfore, assuming that attribution of wealth to a person is decided not based on their innate capabilities but rather by their perception by society as a group, the way to attract (more) wealth to a specific person is to ensure that they are judged positively by society.

There we are. Islamism and socialism as backgrounds for family life have different goals, but some of their effects on the education of the young are the same — namely, preventing the blooming of children when it doesn't lead to "success" as defined by society.

I once thought that all families were doing that. How naive.

Alleen in de logica, in de wiskunde en in de natuurwetenschappen is de waarheid anoniem, dat wil zeggen objektief geldig; gaat het over mensen en hun meningen, dan kan zoiets als waarheid alleen geboren worden wanneer men het gezicht en het stemgeluid van de spreker er bij geleverd krijgt. — Harry Mulisch

Translates roughly as follows: “Only in logic, mathematics and nature science is truth anonym, i.e. objectively valid. When it deals with people and their opinions, something like truth can only appear when the face and voice of its bearer is delivered with it.”

Our leaders, both in the EU and the US, paid careful attention to the lessons learned in the French Revolution, namely that as long as you keep your people well fed and entertained, you can do whatever you damn well please. In the French Revolution, the people storming the Bastille had nothing to lose. But our level of comfort is carefully maintained to keep actual violent revolt from ever happening. Even the poor in our countries have too much to lose (thanks to government programs)to risk anything angrier than waving a slogan on a posterboard sign. -- Original Replica

Too late to catch the train which would take me on time. Yet too early to take the next.

A few minutes later, seating in the wagon and waiting for the departure, I was considering the good time I spent yesterday evening playing Dance Dance Revolution in Delft with two friends. With no book to read, no one else in the wagon, and a good sleep last night, my eyes kept themselves busy looking around the station.

Rotterdam Centraal is quickly changing these days. The upper cross-tracks platform for pedestrians has caught my attention for weeks already and I'll probably try it soon. The new underground tunnel will soon be ready as well - we expect it for September 1st. And still, trains are going as usual, and there is no hour in the day where the line of sight from track 1 to track 15 is clear.

Today, the noisy red train parked one track away from my train.

So exceptional and still so common at the time!

Its looks are different; no train in the region looks like this one, and the only trains from Germany that are technically related do not pass Rotterdam and do not share the same colors. But the red trains pass the station once per hour, nearly all day long. During all the time I have spent in this station, their sight has become pretty common.

And then, today was a little more unusual, for a little while.

I looked at the train, then it left, and then nothing happened. Why wasn't I nervous? Why didn't I feel the pressure of stress and expectation today?

Until today, I would watch the red train each time with fascination, my excitation would rise as the train would be accelerating to leave, and only recede when the train would move out of sight. But not today. This change, by itself, was worth some interest and I toyed with the idea for a while as my train eventually departed.

It could be that I eventually divorced from my relationship with this train. We fell in love some years ago, then we had our intense experiences together last year, but it has been a while since our last good moments together and I even cheated on it already. Maybe I just accepted that it's time to let go and change my direction. (no pun intended)

It could be that I have been subconsciously counting on them to deliver friends to my neighborhood. Now that this duty is over, or rather that I realize that it is not the train that brings the friends, but the friends who use the train, the expectation has waned and the mean has lost the undeserved attention I was giving to it.

It could be that they were representing a very concrete and repeated link between my new life and the old one. That they were nagging me as an easy way to escape the challenge of building myself and overcoming fears, and that eventually I came to accept that there is no going back now.

Or it could be simply that I am still too tired for my feelings to react as usual to my daily surroundings...

For sure, as I was waiting for my bus last Sunday, in that creepy underground international bus station at the east of Paris, a beautiful sight caught my eye:

 Two goth lovers, young
 Leave tonight for Germany
 Alone in the crowd.

They literally caught my eye, glancing in my direction every now and then — as if they were sensing how much strangers among strangers we were. As my bus was leaving, I was looking at theirs, hoping that I'd see them for a last time… And then as I drifted into sleep the memory faded.

I was smiling when I got back home at 6 in the morning on Monday.

Yesterday evening, I was jumping with the crowd at the weird sounds of Patrick Wolf. This show was a masterpiece — one of the two main reasons for my presence at Lowlands this year. The other was a performance by a Dutch ochestra — the show is called Games In Concert and it is about themes from video games.

I was smiling as I was watching the stars from my tent yesterday evening.

“A smile sticked to my lips” — these are the words I was thinking about, borrowing them from a friend from Denmark.

Spending three days at Lowlands was like a vacation. Three days of music, three days away from the city, three days without thinking about work, computers or the Internet, three days of discovery — I went there to discover new bands, new music styles, and I got just that. What a bright mid-summer!

Yet I didn't take any pictures, and my memories are fading already. Would I believe that I was there if my wristband was not left as a witness?

As I was jumping in the crowd yesterday, a spectator next to me was rather quiet, enjoying the show without moving. He wasn't jumping, clasping his hands or singing along, as most of us were doing. A stranger in the crowd, as it seemed — until I saw him embracing his boyfriend during The Stars.

Love persists in memories.

In decreasing frequency order:

vodka pomme de discorde

that's not what the drink is for!

vodka bad dream nightmare

drink water before sleep, it makes it go down more easily.

vodka comment en faire ?

I wish I'd knew!

manipulations psychologiques milieu professionnel

all managers are doing it.

colocation asocial

advice: move to another place.

climatisation en panne a mon domicile elle fuit l eau d ou vient la panne

turn it off, it's bad for the environment anyway.

dans ma trousse d écolier

there be dragons.

bien que le repas fut frugal

... we had plenty to sleep well.

pourquoi mon chat m excite sexuellement

I'm not sure I want to know

india religion workweek

not sure how they're related

ecrir sur des pomme qui on beaucoup de forme sur image chef

these sentense words incorrect

cirage chaussure python

I know python has many uses, just not this one

people that cant die?

they're called vampires.

le monstre du loch ness porn

wild fantasies, for sure

epita geisha

do they offer any for students?

godemichet de-ma-maman

not sure this deserves to be searched on the internet...

A kōan (公案) is a story, dialogue, question, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to intuition.

Sometimes kōans appear out of nowhere, and I was today witness to a beautiful one:

(20:32) <@kena> sylvain_: c'est quoi l'art pour toi ?
(20:57) < sylvain> je suis inculte, nul, con et moche, et tu me
         poses cette question ?
(21:04) <@kena> tu dois avoir une opinion non ?
(21:43) < sylvain> je sais pas
(21:43) < sylvain> les filles me détestent totues
(21:43) < sylvain> j'en ai marre
(21:43) <@kena> ça répond pas vraiment à la question
(21:43) <@kena> je sais pas moi 
(21:43) <@kena> invente un truc
(21:44) < sylvain> faut que je trouve des choess à photographier.

Thanks, Sylvain.

And as discussed today on IRC, this context is often a function of the interest shown by other people.

Mixed feelings and confused thoughts - I found it easier drawn than explained, in the style of Indexed.

(Not entirely satisfying though: not sure whether tolerance really increases in the stereotypical USA group as interest increases...)

Yesterday evening I had a lively discussion with two colleague from work, about the cultural differences between the Netherlands and North America. It boils down to two ideas:

• the perceived freedom in the Netherlands is merely a superficial by-product of the blissful indifference of the average Dutch citizen towards other humans. There, do as you will, for nobody cares.
• in North America, especially the USA, freedom is more a matter of national pride. It's protected, and relationships between people are taken very seriously. Conflicts and inequality are routinely accepted as a necessary evil without which freedom would be put at risk.

The apparent cultural difference is arguable, but many seem to recognize the underlying concepts when traveling on both sides of the ocean.

And then, nobody cares on this side of the ocean anyway. They do as they will, we don't care.

Of toch?

I remember one of the great achievements worldwide during the past few hundred years. I believe it's called “human rights.” If I recall correctly, a consensus has built historically that regardless of any superficial disagreements, care should be taken to respect this common civilization framework - that “people are born equal in dignity and rights,” rights including “liberty, security, protection of the law,” etc, etc. Nothing new here, most countries agreed a while ago.

Well, it seems that some cultures have troubles grasping these simple concepts.

I learn today that black people can be lynched in the land of freedom without any form of justice. I was nauseous when I read that, but hardly surprised.

And regardless of this specific point-time event, poor people still don't deserve to be healthy. Afterall, if they don't earn money what are they worth?

French people like to say that they know better. That this would not happen in their country. Well, for sure, locking up black and poor people in overcrowded prisons where they eventually die forgotten is an easy workaround. Hiding the dust under the mat is just as shameful as throwing it right in the eyes of human rights.

Oh well, now I'm feeling depressed.

A few weeks ago Timothy Ferris' The Four Hour Workweek entered my reading agenda. The book certainly looks nice - hardcover, golden borders, and the inside is refreshingly sparse, spaced, easy to read.

The rationale for this book is appealing: most people seek a life of achievements outside work, but do not have either the means or time to reach those achievements. Tim wrote a book to explain his successful experience in reaching a life of (expensive) leisure involving only four hours of work a week, and proposes a model to follow to do the same.

The idea is simple: express the means for your achievements as dollars, and make other people work for you to get these dollars for you to spend. Once you got the money and time, profit! And then the book goes on and on about how to quit a job, create a side business, and pay people in India to manage the side business. The side business should involve selling information products (costless to create) at high price (high margins) to small markets (no risk for competitors).

A salesman's dream.

The important step is to find the right market. A business concept that holds. Find a virgin niche market - that is, people who need something that nobody provides yet, such that you could provide to them for a high price goods that don't cost much to produce. The ideal product: a collection of facts around a topic sold as a video on a DVD. The catch: finding the topic. It has to be narrow enough to match a need where people would want to spend money, broad enough to attract a sufficiently large number of customers to sustain the business, and uninteresting enough that no competitors will ever compete.

I'm not sure how many free niche markets are left out there. Tim says lots, I see none. Too bad, maybe I'm just not creative enough.

Then I think I knew I wouldn't finish reading when I understood that the key to finding free time and staying rich is to delegate work to lowly paid slaves^K“assistants” — preferably in India, since they have a “different scale of values” anyway, and foremost you can just dump one and get another at will if you're unsatisfied and even get a refund.

In other words, buy slaves in India to do your work for you, get the money from the business they run for you in your pocket and give them the leftovers.

In other words, you can leverage the gap of social and economic inequality in the world to make you even richer and contribute even more to inequality.

Not my cup of tea, so I'm not joining.

“Relax, don't do it, when you want to suck it to it, Relax don't do it, when you want to come.”

That was the catchy line from this tube from the UK band Frankie Goes To Hollywood. They were successful, they were controversial, and their most popular song Relax was banned by the BBC pretty fast due to concerns with the overtly sexual nature of the lyrics.

The original music video is featured on Youtube:

Shortly after the release and the ban of this video, another clip was made, quite boring compared to the original one:

(thanks to MeFi for all the memories)

A while ago I acquired a Brother laser printer, model HL-2030. This is a cheap printer with excellent printing quality (up to 1200dpi) and power saving features. Moreover, it supports the standard printer language PCL-5 which makes it “polite” to free and open operating systems — such as, GNU/Linux and FreeBSD.

On Linux, the Brother printers are fairly well supported. There is a lot of information on what drivers to use on LinuxPrinting.org and several good hints for the printer HL-2030 are hinted there as well. Brother also provides official Linux drivers that give access to all the printer features.

Using the generic driver

Unfortunately, Brother “officially” indicates that they do not have specific drivers for FreeBSD, and that FreeBSD users should use the generic drivers. Of course, using this printer (as well as many others from Brother) with FreeBSD is possible using CUPS and the generic printer drivers provided in the packages Gutenprint and/or Foomatic. For example, with my HL-2030 printer I proceeded as follows to use the generic driver:

1. install and setup CUPS (not covered here, there is a section for it in the FreeBSD documentation)
2. setup appropriate permissions on /dev/unlpt0 (USB device for the printer) — I used root:cups 0664
3. generate and download the PPD file for HL-2060, (HL-2060 is a compatible printer)
4. setup CUPS to use this PPD file and the USB device (use device "no-reset") to reach the printer.

That works very well, but I wasn't satisfied because it supports only resolutions up to 600dpi, and the paper margins are not well defined.

Using the Brother driver

Hopefully, I found possible to use the official Linux drivers provided by Brother on FreeBSD. This is made possible by the Linux emulation layer on FreeBSD.

Note the following:

• CUPS should already be installed and running, and the printer should have been tested first using the generic driver as described above. Rationale: if the printer or the USB device somehow don't work, the official driver can't do anything about it.
• This has been tested on FreeBSD 7.0 for i386 (32bit). See notes below for some hints for the x86_64 architecture (64bit) and other versions of FreeBSD.

Here are the steps:

1. install the Linux compatibility libraries through port emulators/linux_base-fc7. Likely you need to set the Linux kernel version high enough prior to installing the port, using for example sysctl -w compat.linux.osrelease=2.6.9 (save to /etc/sysctl.conf to make the setting persistent).
2. install print/psutils which contains pstops required by the Brother drivers.
3. download the LPR driver and CUPS driver for your printer from Brother. Download specifically the Debian .deb files.
4. extract manually the contents from the .deb files. They are .tar.bz2 files in disguise: use the command tar -xjf
5. place manually the files in the appropriate FreeBSD directories:
   • .so in /compat/linux/usr/lib
   • bins in /usr/local/bin
   • Brother-specific files in /usr/local/Brother
   • CUPS data+filter in /usr/local/share/cups and /usr/local/libexec/cups
6. edit all the script files included in the .deb and change the following:
   • all references to files included in the .deb should be modified to point to their new FreeBSD location
   • references to other tools (gs, pstops...) should be modified to point to /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin
   • use path to USB device /dev/unlpt0 instead of /dev/usb/...
   • the LPR installation script may contain commands to change the owner/group of files in /var/spool/lpd. Replace with user "root" and group "daemon" instead of the default "lp".
7. open the "postinst" scripts from both .debs and read what commands they use to setup the printer, and execute them manually (LPR driver first, then CUPS driver). This should register the Brother PPD file into CUPS and create the printer configuration.

Et voilà!

If anyone volunteers to create a FreeBSD port, that would be great.

Special Notes

Users of FreeBSD x86_64: the binaries and libraries provided by Brother are compiled for Linux 32-bit. You need to ensure that your linux_compat package supports running 32-bit binaries.

Previous versions of FreeBSD: you are on your own. The steps above are untested. It may be that the USB stack in previous versions of FreeBSD (than 7.0) cannot send data to Brother printers.

USB device: the standard USB printer device file on FreeBSD (/dev/ulpt0) fails with (some) Brother printers. Use the non-reset /dev/unlpt0 instead. This works. The drawback is that the printer needs to be switched off and on when an error occurs (the driver cannot reset the printer using this device).

Today, I learn that the USA opposes G8 climate proposal. I'm not surprised, although I'm interested to learn that they are now “isolated on the issue among G8 members.”

They are one of several global enemies when it comes to environment issues.

In other news, Irak gets bombed by the USA because they fail to comply to international requests for less dictatorship…