The random ramblings of a French programmer living in Norway...
2010
  The cooking process theory
Wed 15th December 2010   
These few last weeks I've been doing a number of unrelated things: I watched Master Chef on BBC LifeStyle, finished Fallout: New Vegas then started to play Titan Quest, finished a book from 37signals and another from Microsoft Press about project management, and finally spent time reading blog posts on some various famous IT heroes.

In some perverted way it all makes sense.

So, what's the common idea between these seemingly unrelated elements? Well, the common element is the notion of recipe.

  Mini review Fallout New Vegas (ObsidianBethesda Softworks)
Sat 27th November 2010   
After 71 hours playing Fallout: New Vegas, I've finally reached the end of the story.

Mind you, I'm not done with the game: Since you can't continue to play after reaching the end of the main story line, I loaded a previously saved game to explore parts of the world I did not visit yet (I picked-up the Adventurer Perk just to get the list of all locations), which is about half of the possible locations.

Talk about a huge game :)

  Random notes about Community Management
Thu 14th October 2010   

Foreword

I was really not planning to write anything about Community Management, mostly because I did not consider myself as a Manager, and certainly not a Manager of a Community.

I more or less revised this position few weeks ago when after having released 1337 and posted messages on the various relevant message boards and forums we then started to receive messages and comments asking how Defence Force was working, how such a small community managed to release such large and polished games (compared to for example the Thomson and Amstrad communities), and if we could help them by making games on their own machines!

  Hacking confessions (part 3)
Sun 5th September 2010   

First a disclaimer: What I'm writing here now is related to events that happened a long time ago, at a period of time when it was relatively safe to do it, the worse that could happen would have been the expulsion from the school. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

The beginning of the end

If I'm not mistaken, this article will be the last in the confessions category. After that I stopped experimenting, mostly because I had no good reason for doing them anymore.

  Hacking confessions (part 2)
Wed 25th August 2010   

First a disclaimer: What I'm writing here now is related to events that happened a long time ago, at a period of time when it was relatively safe to do it, the worse that could happen would have been the expulsion from the school. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

Up the ante

I wrote in the previous part there would be two parts, but considering that I miserably failed at writing, reviewing and publishing some of my longer essays, I decided that writing instead few short ones each dedicated to a particular issue would be more manageable. So here we are, expect at least a third one :)

The previous episode happened during the last year I spent in High School, this one happened three years later when I moved to Laval for my BTS Informatique de Gestion. The year is 1991, the place is the Lycée Douanier-Rousseau, a pretty Ok place to be considering how boring Laval can be.

  Hacking confessions (part 1)
Sun 22nd August 2010   

First a disclaimer: What I'm writing here now is related to events that happened a long time ago, at a period of time when it was relatively safe to do it, the worse that could happen would have been the expulsion from the school. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.

Self made man

I'm one of these people who learnt by themselves most of what they knew about programming before working as a professional programmer. Sure I learnt a lot after I started work, but before that I did university mostly to get a diploma: Except methodology, and formal methods, I can't say I learnt much.

  Five years in Norway
Sat 1st May 2010   

Celebration time!

Yes! I arrived in Norway the 2nd of May 2005, so this Sunday marks my five years anniversary in Norway. I think it's about time to do a quick look back, and possibly discuss what I can see coming next.

Some people asked me why I moved to Norway in first place: was I unhappy in France, why not moving to USA or UK, if I was planning to come back to France one day - and when -, etc, etc...

  What happened to the story line
Tue 13th April 2010   


Recently I finished a number of games, of the types that are supposed to be bundled with a story in it: Fallout 3, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2 and yesterday I finished Dreamfall.

Dreamfall as a game is probably not perfect, if only because it was originally a Xbox game, so some of the textures are a bit wonky, the controls on PC could have been better (damn you camera!), there's a bit too many fed-ex missions, and the fight sequences could have been more interesting... but as an engaging story, it's ace: You could watch it as a movie.

  Backups Better safe than sorry!
Sun 4th April 2010   

Do you copy?

When I ask to my family, friends and colleagues how they proceed to keep safe their important digital data, most of the time I get one of these answers:
- I've nothing worth keeping
- Well, it's on the PC/Mac so it's safe no?
- I have copies of all my files in another folder on my hardrive !
- I'm doing backups regularly on cd/dvd/exernal hardrive
admittedly some people are answering differently because they have already been burnt by the issue of unsafe backups and have solved the issue by implementing a real strategy.

So let me tell you why should you be worried about the notion of backups.

  How to not upgrade an Ubuntu server
Mon 22nd March 2010   
In February last year I decided to extend Defence-Force.org by having a secondary server in my home. That's the reason why I originally bought the VIA Artigo A2000, I wanted something small and silent I could put in a corner and forget. After a bit more than one year of usage I can say I'm globally satisfy with the choice.

Ok, the machine is not that silent, as a desktop is quite slow, but as a file/multimedia box/SVN server it's doing its job.

  Mini review Dragon Age (Bioware-Electronic Arts)
Sun 28th February 2010   
I just finished Dragon Age this evening, apparently I only managed to do about 40% of the whole content of the game, but when I'm being told that the survival of the land is on my shoulders and that time is of the essence I don't stop to do side quests...


So anyway, I killed the villain, saved the land, got the glory, and then the super long end credits.

  15 years working in videogames
Mon 25th January 2010   
Damn, that's typical of me - and of the industry - to miss a deadline!

On the 2nd of January 1995 I started working at Adeline Software, so the 2nd of January 2010 was my 15th anniversary in this interesting industry :)

  I can see the wall out there
Sat 23rd January 2010   
... yes, there is a wall.

We've been told for a while that the wall was here, and that we should prepare for it. Get the equipment ready, get the bodies and mind in good shape, this kind of thing. But well, you know how it works, we tend to wait until the very last moment before we change our habits.

But sometimes changing the habits is not enough. Sometimes you need more than that, you need to find alternatives that works... assuming they actually exist.

  Happy new year 2010
Sun 3rd January 2010   
Ok, I'm a bit late, but I guess the 3rd of January is still a ok time for giving best wishes for the new year.

2009 has been an interesting year - for me at least -: Managed to get through job related hazards, released my 20 years anniversary demo for the Atari STe - with plenty of very nice comments I was not really expecting -, met a nice gf and moved together in a quite nice new apartment - hopefully will not have to move again until a long while -, and got some family visiting for Christmas.