Having a meaning related to well-being, the swastika is widely-used sacred symbol in Dharmic religions. As such, it gained adoption by the Unicode standard and has several computer-recognized Unicode encodings: the Han characters 卍 (code 0x534D) and 卐 (code 0x5350), and the Tibetan character ࿌ (code 0xFCC).

On the Windows platform, a font called “Bookshelf Symbol 7” gathers a number of symbols that can be found in printed works although they rarely are used to write occidental languages. Until recently, this font included two variants of the Han character in positions 0x7E and 0x86:

Last Friday, I was working on a Windows system and the following dialog opened:

The message “The font has been found to contain unacceptable symbols” was suspicious, and I knew what to expect when I applied the upgrade and restarted the system:

Et voilà, no more swastika. Corporate censorship at work, in the name of political correctness. Damn their stupidity.

Gisteren ben ik naar Off_corso geweest. Die is een nachtclub in Rotterdam, en ik was er nog nooit gegaan - de typische avondthema is 80's and 90's, en dat heb ik gewoon geen zin in.

Maar gisteren was the thema erg anders. Villa achterwerk is een nieuwe party die van Betty Ford Clinic de plaats inneemt - en Betty Ford was de grooste party in Rotterdam voor fun en gay lovers. Het heeft verschillende stijlen van muziek (pop en techno), een heleboel mooie jongen, en helemaal gek show, en overal een leuke positieve sfeer. Gezellig! Als Betty Ford, Villa achterwerk vindt plaats elke maand; eind april ga ik zeker terug.

Trouwens is mijn agenda al bijna vol. Volgende week ga ik naar Sensation White in Antwerpen, en daarna doe ik waarschnijnlijk een paar reizen naar Frankrijk…

Drukke lente, druk leven.

The following is a quote from a semi-official Usenet newsgroup for the French institution EPITECH where current and soon-to-be students can meet and discuss their past and future education in computer science:

moi chui pa un intelektuel mer g ete pri fo just avoir la motiv couz. moi jveu savoir c ki kisera dan ma class et si ya moy kon se voi avan la rentrer. au fet jven un psp ki li ler jeu graver.

A translation of this text in “traditional” French would read as follows: « moi, je ne suis pas un intellectuel mais j'ai été pris; il faut juste avoir de la motivation, cousin. Moi, je veux savoir qui sera dans ma classe et s'il y a moyen qu'on se voie avant la rentrée. Au fait, je vends une PSP qui lit les jeux gravés. »

Regardless of the content, which is of little value outside of the specific milieu where this quote belongs, I find it striking how the new French differs from the language of the “litterature.”

There are two interesting facts to be observed here:

• to my knowledge, most youngsters below 20 of age nowadays use this new form of the language when they type on keyboards;
• as time passes, without major cultural transformations we will see more and more language corpus generated with keyboards.

Combining these facts, I would expect that in little more than 10 years we will see French being gradually replaced and/or transformed for many uses, including business, services, education, information, correspondence and all places where the corpus is not intended to be archived. This will result in a cultural shift where two languages will be in use : classical French for literature, law, treaties and such other items of historical interest, and colloquial French for all the rest, radically different and more closely matching the spoken language.

For my part, I will be practicing the new style for the coming years. I intend to be able to mold into the new generation and not be left behind.

Tomorrow evening I will be in a train to Paris, France, as a stopover to the French alps. A week of vacation and sports should follow. Assuming enough snow, I will be riding a snowboard for the first time in the 3 vallées.

Leaving for vacation is, by all means, no easy task. Besides the very basic need to guarantee a cash flow for what is probably the most expensive form of vacation on land, and arranging for minor details such as equipment, tickets and reservations, a number of items needed specific care:

• arranging water, food and company for the cat who will be guarding my apartment,
• battling with the French railroads company about the 300 euros that they owe me,
• explaining to the 8 people in my group who are oblivious to the art of cooking that rice and pasta are not a sufficient and healthy diet for one week of sport,
• preventing any sickness that could have assaulted me before my departure.

Now that the end (or beginning) is near, it becomes clear that at least half of the energy that this vacation is costing me was spent before I even left. In other words, planning a vacation to a place where everything is not taken care of for you is a real life project that needs appropriate resources — time, energy, cleverness, social interactions, business contacts, contracts signed and bills paid in due time, and the like. That may seems obvious to the seasoned vacation planner, but is new territory for me.

Considering that my other vacation plans for the year include at least 12 visits to friends in various places in Europe, as well as serious culture tours around the Netherlands, and attending some conferences for my curiosity's benefit, I have now decided to plan budgeting energy and time to organize my travels.

Sometimes, I long for the days when leaving for holiday was (and hopefully will be) simply a matter of saving up enough cash and catching the first plane to my destination…