Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Store your complete MP3 library for FREE

As you may have notice I keep looking for useful web 2.0 services.

I'm mainly interested by easy-to-use, nice and last but not least, FREE services.



I think that this one will interest some of you.

You may have experienced the total loss of your 10+GB of Music during one your HD formatting. (BTW needless to say how Windows sucks!)

Or maybe you want to listen to your music at work (headphones in your ears all the time may not look very appealing to your boss though)



In both cases, let me introduce MP3Tunes.

Their service is quite simple to understand: "Store all your music library and listen to it from everywhere"

So, what are the features of the service and how does it work?



First you sign-up (damn easy) and you download their software (they call it "The Locker")

Then you run the software, tell it where to look for your music and just click on the "Sync" button.

It started to upload your music on theirs servers. That's it.



Now you can log in your account from everywhere (with a Web access obviously) and then listen to your music within the browser with the embedded player.


There are some additional features that are compelling.

If, while browsing, you come across a music you like, you can pass the url (you do need to have a file which has is specific URL) to your locker and it would load the song in your library.
Once done you can listen to it anytime you want.

They actually give you a list of websites where you can easily find Music ;-)

For example, they team up with Sideload where you can get a lot of free music and loaded it to your "Locker" but also embed the track in your blog (just like RadioBlogClub).


They second thing which is really cool is that the Sync orks both ways.

That measn that all the music you've find on the web is Sync down to your PC music library.
Ok, there is nothing revolutionary since thanks to the Donkey you can download everything you need. But I like the simplicity of the process.

You find a nice song, add it to your locker and you dont have to think about it. Everything is done automatically.


There are some limitations of course.
First, you cant load files bigger than 10MB (actually you can but you need to upgrade to the Premium account which is not free).

It's not a constraining limitation for most of your library except of course if you have some Classical (that's 1.5GB I wont synchronised :-( ).



Another limitation is that, to access to your library from a mobile device you will need a Premium account.

But seriously, who will want to do that. I mean I have a 20GB mp3 player (Archos GMini 402) and a 2GB SD Card in my phone.

Why on earth will use a GPRS/3G connection for which I would be charged to listen to music?


When you sign in, you may wait 2 or 3 days to get the unlimited storage, but once it set up, everything just go nice and smooth.


So if you decide to give it a try, let me know about your impressions

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Hard to catch up all the news!

I've been pretty busy lately. A lot of assignment, projects and presentations.

Oh BTW, you may wanna try Office 2007. This new version really rocks. I wouldnt had believe that I would have to say that one day to a microsoft software but, Congratulations.



But I'm digressing. The problem is that I've been away of my Netvibes for 3/4 days and I have to cope with this 300 news waiting for me>



Even when you skip those which are not so interesting around 50 remains.

The problem here is the connection speed. It takes ages to open a simple page.

Even if you learn to be patient (in general, you have to learn to be patient AND cool in Thailand, otherwise you dont last long), it's still quite irritating from times to times.



Some interesting news:

Techcrunch talks about jajah here, they reached their 2 millions users.
For the french audience, I'm translating the post in french for TechcrunchFR, it will be posted as soon as Ouriel will come back from his holydays.
I'm glad for them. It is said that they focused on Quality. It a very smart decision.

But they need to address the same issues in the southeast asia region as well.

Cause i'm starting to think about have a glance at the competition.

You can find my posts on Jajah et other VOIP here.
If you read the comments on techcrunch article you will notice that i'm not the only one who start to complain.


If you want a comparison of VOIP, check this article



Going back to my netvibes page. Wish me good luck

THE picture of Bangkok

 



Ok, the title can be misleading. But I really think that this picture can symbolize Bangkok.


Because is an inextricable mix of ultra-modernity and kind of traditionnal, old lifestyle.


You will find this modern building, a brand new subway, a crazy networks of roads and freeways, and as you can see, these nice,neat, clean subway stations (invaded by Advertising of course)

And side by side with the aforementioned building, you will see this kind of old building with funny colors.

And along the road, all these small shops, and the vans that you, litteraly, catch on fly.



I really like this mix.

As I often tell to my friends, Bangkok is this perfect mix of Paris and Douala.

Definitely the place where I want to be.


P.S: The girl on the ad is definitely hot.
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Bangkok Skytrain

 

 

 

 




Here are some pics of the Skytrain of Bangkok. The name here is BTS

As you may guess by the name, it's an overhead brand new subway



The stations are large, almost too big, clean.

As I've already said in a previous post, the temperatures inside are kind of crazy.

It's OK during the afternoon, because the outside world is hot as hell.

but when the outside temperature start to fall with the sun, you find yourself starting to freeze.


The BTS is kind of expensive (for the thai standard).

Unlike Paris sub, here they still have the concept of zone (like in the RER).

And of course, you have 2 stations in zone 1, 1 in zone 2, 2or3 in zone 3 and the rest (about 12) in zone 4and 5.

Needless to say, the system is designed to make you pay the max. The prices range from 20 to 40 bahts (based on my personal experience).


Also, there is no way you don't pay the ticket. There are police agent at every stations and every gates.

So basically, you DO pay the ticket.


In all cases, the BTS is a must have in a city like Bangkok where the traffic jams are nightmarish.

I'll write about the circulation in Bangkok in a coming post.
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Sunday, March 25, 2007

One kind of Thai Mangos

 

 

 




This is how one kind of the thai mangos looks like.

It's totally
different from what we see in Africa where the inside is yellow.



You are supposed to eat that with the red sausage you can see on the pictures.

The sausage is made of sugar, shrimps and fish sauce. It's kind of salted though.

It's actually good, but I prefer eat the mango alone.


This kind of mango tastes a little bit like guava.

Oh this reminds me that I should show you how guavas look like here.

But this is another story.
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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Today was a good day

Today was a good day (actually yesterday but it doesnt matter).

I went to a very nice restaurant in Bangkok.

The name of the restaurant is "Once upon a time".

Very nice place, delightful atmosphere, very good food.

The adress is 32 soi 17 Pethburi Road, Pratunam.



I took some photos but with a friend digital camera so I'll post them as soon as I get them.

I dont have enough time to blog on this now (its 3:30 AM).But I will later on blog on that with pictures of courses.


Another thing that makes this day cool is that it was one of my closest friend birthday.

I know we kind of lose contact, but you know that you've got a special place in my life.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you.

And to celebrate, this song is dedicated to you.




Bill Withers, "Just the two of Us", a great classic.

So click play and enjoy.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Song of The Day: 2 Pac

People who listen to rap know that when we talk about rap, there's no other starting point than Tupac Shakur, the greatest rapper of all time (sorry Biggie).



It has been a while since I didnt take the time to listen to one of his album.

So I just had this tought minutes ago, "what the heck, I'm gonna drop two of his songs on my blog".

And that's what I'm doing right now



It's hard to decide which ones of his several great songs, I think I should avoid the most famous ones and make you discover the two faces of 2 Pac angel vs Devil.

So here comes the first one.

As usual, I'll start with the groovy one.

"You wonda why we call you bitch" from CD2 of the Album All Eyez On Me released in 1996.
One of the best album ever, and the first double-disc rap album ever. Dont restrain yourself just because of the title, there is a real (true BTW) story behind.








The second one is of course the calm one.

I love this song. It cheers me up when I feel blue.

The title is "Live goes on" and it pretty much speaks by itself. It's from the same album but on CD1.






And because I cant hold it, this is the bonus song.

Title is "Unconditional Love" which is just... Actually just press play.






We do miss Tupac as he was far above the current level of today rappers.

To find more about him, here is a nice article on his life.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Avoid International Roaming...

Unless you are insanely rich (or using a company telephone).

I've foolishly called France a couple of times using my french SIM card.


You may wanna know before you do that,that you will be charge 2.6 euros /minute if you call from Thailand.

I wish somebody has told me that before I placed this 20 min call.

It was for a good cause (saying Happy birthday), but I would have make it slightly shorter.


So now you know how much it costs to place a call from Thailand to France using a french SIM card.



BTW my mobile provider is Bouygtel.

Jajah Mobile and its shortcomings

I've already blog about Jajah.

Two days after my first post on Jajah, they send me a mail to tell me that they appreciate my post.

They also respond to one of my wish which was, being able to download Jajah mobile application for a Windows Mobile 2003 device.
This is what I'll talk about.


So, my request was actually to be provided with a way to use jajah when I'm not at home.

Their answer was actually the best one: Jajah mobile A web based form accessible with a simple browser.

So I jumped to the URL they gave me, log in and start using this system.

Needless to say that I was delighted to find all my profile informations and contacts on this mobile-specific website.

I bookmarked it, so I was able to place an international call for as low as 3cts (euros) within 2 clicks. And that's just great!


But they are some shortcomings.


First, I definitely think that Jajah need to really work on the quality of the communication. This stands for every calls no matter what mean was used to initiate the call.

I don't say that the quality is bad, but it's sure not constant enough.

Some calls do have a great voice quality, but some others are not so great.


The biggest disappointement I have is the fact that most of the times, it takes 2 or 3 attempts to get an actual communication.
Too often the first attempt fails because one end doesnt ear the other one.

If this is Ok when I call a europe landline number (around 3cts/min), it's almost intolerable when I'm calling a mobile in Africa ( 18cts thrown away for each attempt).

When I just want to pass an information, which typically will last 2 min, spending 1.5 euros, 70% for nothing is just not an option.


So Jajah if you read this, fix it. And you will enjoy happy customers who will spend more money using your system.


Secondly, they have a problem which is mobile specific.

When you initiate the call with the browser, you are using the GPRS connection which cannot be carry on along with a call.

So what happen too many times, at least here in Thailand, is that when Jajah will call you, they will fall in your voicemail because the GPRS connection is still active.

It's funny because they problem is due to the fact that Jajah is actually too fast.

So I suggest that they implement a kind of short timed delay before placing the call.



Overall Jajah mobile is an interesting service, especially in Thailand, where the prices are the same for mobile and landline calls (that's a topic I'll cover later).


But they are still some issues that needed to be adressed, rather sooner than later.

Weather News (Bangkok vs Paris)

My friends keep telling about the weather in Paris.

They did have snow on Monday, Rain on Tuesday, and of course a very cold weather on top op that.

The funny thing is that they were starting bragging one week ago about the nnice weather they had.


Since some have expressed some "concerns" about the weather here in Bangkok, let me dissipate your worries.

You do have a very nice weather here.

Temperatures has been lower since 2/3 days, so we do have a nice 26/28 during the day.

Today was slightly hotter though, we have something around 28/30 degrees celsius.


Yesterday was the first day that I spent entirely without air conditionning in my room.

The main advantage is the silence. The AC in our rooms are quite old systems so they tend to make some noise.

Nothing unbearable, but I do think that it affects somehow the quality of my sleep.


So to all the people living in West Europe, if the weather over there makes you feel depressed, you may want to come and spend some time here.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Football match and cultural differences

So today I did have my first football game.

We are running a kinda mini-olympic games in AIT.

I'm the international team, and unfortunately most of the other teams are country-based.



So we were just practicing.

It was probably the most frustrating football practice I've ever had in my life.

To best describe it, I think that I can say that they were playin LIKE they have no will to win or score whatsoever.

I emphasise the "like", because they do want to score and win, it's just that they dont do anything that may let you think that they do.


It's kind of hard to describe.

For example, people do a lot of short, not precise passes when they are in the defense zone.
And in the middle field, they tend to kick the ball away in a doomed attempt to pass it, even more unprecisely to the strickers.


The thing here is that you are not supposed to do any kind of NEGATIVE CRITICS or actually the slightest NEGATIVE REMARK.

And when I say negative, it means everything that is not clearly positive.

It isn't specific to any specific country culture, since almost all the southeast and south asian countries were represented in the field. So I guess it's a commonly shared cultural trait in the region.


Trust me, it was kind of hard to deal with these cultural difference.

Eventually, you say to yourself that it's just a game, no matter what it looks like right?


I'm well aware that any kind of words, that are perceived as negative ( I insist on the "perception" part) can caused unexpected behavior.

The most annoying part(at least for me) is that, if you don't pay a close attention, you probably wont realize it.

You will just notice that the person you are speaking to has changed his/her mood, and sometimes you won't understand why.



I will probably face these kind of situations many times in the future.

I'll let you know how I do.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Joke on different cultures around the world

Ok. I got this one from one of my very good friend Asif who is from Bangladesh.

So disclaimer:"It's a JOKE" with smewhat is a caricature.
So here is the joke:


Check this out

TRADITIONAL ECONOMICS
You have two cows.

You sell one and buy a bull.

Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.

You retire on the income.



INDIAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You worship them.



PAKISTAN ECONOMICS

You don't have any cows.

You claim that the Indian cows belong to you.

You ask the US for financial aid, China for military aid,

British for technology, French for submarines, Switzerland

for loans, Russia for drugs and Japan for equipment.

You buy the cows with all this and claim exploitation by the world.



AMERICAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.

You profess surprise when the cow drops dead. You put the blame on some nation with
cows and naturally that nation will be a danger to mankind.

You wage a war to save the world and grab the cows.



FRENCH ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You go on strike because you want three cows.



GERMAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You reengineer them so that they live for 100 years,eat once a month and milk
themselves.



BRITISH ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

They are both mad cows.



ITALIAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You don't know where they are.

You break for lunch.



SWISS ECONOMICS

You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.

You charge others for storing them.



JAPANESE ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You redesign them so that they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary

cow and produce twenty times the milk.

You then create cute cartoon cow images called Cowkimon and

market them worldwide.



RUSSIAN ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You count them and learn you have five cows.

You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.

You count them again and learn you have 17 cows.

You give up counting and open another bottle of vodka.



CHINESE ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You have 300 people milking them.

You claim full employment, high bovine productivity
and arrest anyone reporting the actual numbers.



BANGLADESH ECONOMICS

You have two cows.

You don't know economy.

You choose one of them as the Prime Minister of the country
and the other as the Leader of the Opposition


Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Send Free SMS from your cell phone

So I wrote about sending SMS for free here.

Nothing new is this post, I just want to remind you that since it's a web based form which requires no software you can use it on your cell phone.



So you need a data plan, a browser ( Opera mini is the way to go without any doubt) and the adress www.gizmosms.com and you are set to go.


Given the prices of data plan and the amount of data required to send a SMS via gizmo, send an sms would cost you less than 1 cent.

That's a service I'm gonna use heavily when I'll be back in France.



There is a downside though to the use with your mobile, you have to input the phone number digits manually, something I'm not use to do at all since I use the phonebook.

But I do have a PocketPc phone running on Windows Mobile 2003 so I will use copy-paste.

However most of you will have to do the input by yourself. Sorry, nothing is perfect in life :-)

The Subway "Ticket"

 



Here is a snapshot of the "ticket" used to take the subway in Bangkok.

It is as you can see a black coin. It's using RFID technology which is pretty nice.
You keep it with you during the trip and it's collected at the exit gates.


It's funny to see how common it's used here when French transportation companies are just beginning to introduce RFID technology for customers.

So whicn one the most developed country?


P.S: For people more comfortable with french here is a quick wikipedia introduction on RFID.

Send unlimited SMS for free

Thanks to my friend Maxime for this tip.



So we can send SMS for free using GizmoSMS which is a service provided by Gizmo an SIP-based alternative to Skype which allows you to place ToIP (Telephony over IP) calls without any software. You just initiate the call from your browser.


Unlike Jajah you still need an headset since the voice stream still goes through you personal internet connection.

According to Maxime the calls are cheaper than Skype. I'll check it by myself later.

I od have a concern on the quality though. Since they don't use P2P I'm wondering how they ensure the quality of calls.


Anyway my focus is on their free SMS service which works in several countries.

Unfortunately it doesn't work in Thailand so you can't use it to send me SMS.

But it works in France and in several others western countries, so it's a great way for me to send SMS for birthday or whatever events when I don't need an answer.


By the way if you do want to call me just copy and paste this in your browser :

http://gizmocall.com/0066811001201

A good article on Prostitution in Bangkok

I don't have time to write about everything I can regarding life in Thailand in general and in bangkok area in particular.



That where the super blog of Maxim comes to be quite handy. So I gonna link quite often to the interesting posts he write.

The last article he wrote yesterday is on the prostitution problem in Bangkok. I didn't really visit bangkok at night so I didn't see it by myself.
I'll probably write about that when I will have more personal experience (ok dont get me wrong, I mean when I will see it in the streets by myself, not actually experienced it).



So here is the article, feel free to leave comments.

Monday, March 12, 2007

The silliest question about my trip (so far)

I do get some let say "curious" comments about my stay in Thailand.

It has started since I started telling to people that I'm gonna stay 18 months in Thailand.


Generally people seem to think that the World is made of Europe and North America and maybe China (lot of people are talking about China on the news so there must be something there). You may include the Maghreb (well since a lot of these people have "invaded" France we do notice them - Courtesy of my friends Nicolas Sarkozy and Philippe de villiers).

But that's pretty much all. The rest is some kind of exotic places, some kind of parallel world where you may spend a couple of weeks in holydays, take a picture of beautiful landscapes and go back to the World (see paragraph above for the definition of the World) saying how lucky the people who live over there are lucky to have such a beautiful country.



So, I do get some not so smart questions, but I've got a winner here.

So I have this old acquaintance right? Its been 7years since we lost each other of sight. So we came across on one of these social network.
And when I told him, he came out with this silly question
"For what on earth did you go to thailand for? You dont like your life anymore?"


What am I supposed to understand?
That one has to be really fed up with his life to live France for thailand?
The guy has no idea of what Thailand looks like , nor whats life like here but still he assumed that moving here should be some kind of desperate act.



So people I know that 90% of what you think you know about Asia (to be general) is made of cliche, it's not a big deal I was just like you a couple of months before.

But please, think a little bit before asking stupid questions.

That being said I will gently answer all your questions.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

song of the Day: Muse Day, pure Rock

The first song of today is a punchy song. you may wanna check your volume before clicking on play.

Today we have "Citizen Erased" extracted from "Origin of Symmetry" the 2001 Muse album. So enjoy!





The second is way more cool. "Sing for absolution" from "Absolution".
Like we say, after the storm, the calm. Just press Play


Life in AIT : 108 Shop

 


The one-O-eight shop is a shop you come to know the first day you arrive in AIT. And basically you will go more often to 108 than to class if you do have long night like me.


The 108 shop is one of the four shops with have on the campus but it is unique. It's opened 24/7 including public holydays.

This is a shop I wish I had back in Paris. It's really handy. Especially since I dont have (yet) a fridge, anytime in the day or night I can go and pick up a fresh bottle of water.

Sad thing is that aside of water they mainly sell chips, and awfully tasting over-chimical industrial cakes. And the cookies are just eatable.
They also sell newspaper and magazine. Unfortunately I'm not that fluent in Thai (understand I barely know 20words).

Various others things are also available like shower gel, shampoo, dippers.



Oh BTW they do have cornetto ice creams, price is 20 bahts (less than 0.5 euro). YEah I can feel some becoming jealous.

Well, that's life. ;-)

Saturday, March 10, 2007

A normal Day in AIT

So as you may know now AIT stands for Asian Institute of Technology. It's the most internationalised university in Thailand and probably in the whole southeast region

People keep asking me what a day here looks like. So here is a little description of the daily routine.


So basically I wake up 20min before my first class of the day (that range from 8h30 AM to 4hPM). I'm still not used to the thai very early wake up which is something like 6AM.

I grab a bite in the school cafeteria before entering the class. Class lasts from 1h to 3hrs. Its most of the time interesting. But I do have some problems with one of the prof, I mean with his accent. Indian do have a very good english, but You may have hard times listening to what they are saying.

Teachers are WAY MORE CLOSER to students than in France. One of the teachers often offers the breakfast to all the students. Really cool!



I take my lunch at the cafeteria. There is one cafeteria in every school, plus the big cafeteria with several stands. A normal lunch is between 30 and 50 bahts (60cts to 1.10 euros) for a complete meal.

I Go to class in the afternoon if I have one, otherwise I take a nap, go to the library or play basket or badmington(but not before 6PM, did I not mention the weather here.


For the dinner, depending on the people I have dinner with I go to Khun Sue who hold a very decent restaurant, the Viet ( vietnamese food), or to Thamasssat.

Thamassat hold a market on Monday and Thursday. There are plenty of small stands with food as well as shop stands. You can buy perfume, clothes, shoes, watches etc. Otherwise we once every 2 weeks (on average) we go to a steak house. Steak house means a lot of steaks and french fries, basically its western food oriented , I mean of course the local version of western food. Its pretty good too.

It will be around 70 bahts for khun sue including drinks (water or juices), 50 bahts for the viet and around 150bahts (roughly 3.5 baths) for the steak house.



What you do in the night is really up to you. I do spend some time talking on msn with France, Canada, thailand. Blog as much as I can. Eventually I go to sleep.


That's a regular day for a MSc student in AIT, Thailand..

Any question?

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Song of the day: Robin Thicke

This song is just great. If your have decent headphones, may I suggest you wear it to listen to the fabulous job he has done with the sound.
The name of the song is "Teach u a lesson". Click play to listen.





The album is as great as this song. It's a MUST HAVE. The name is "Evolution of Robin Thicke"


I can't resist. So I'm dropping a second song untitled "Lost witout u".




What else to say. Nothing but "Listen".

PS: Don't forget to drop your comments.

Bangkok Subways

 

 

 


Some pictures of the subway in Bangkok.

They are brand new (which means just few years old). There are 2 lines of subways and one aerien line which name is Skytrain.



There is one thing I still don't get. Why do the put the AC so cold inside. I swear to God it's freezin inside. I mean you come from outside where the temperature is about 34/36 degrees and you get into the wagon and it's like 12/14. And of course you wear a simple T-shirt.

There are wasting so much energy while making the 10 station trip very discomfortable.


Otherwise, the subway is really cool, the stations are incredibly huge most of the time, 2 or 3 times wider than the parisian subway stations. I still don't see why but still the stations looks great.

I took the pictures with the crappy camera embedded in my phon but I'll come up with better quality pics.

More to come soon
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Funny things to see

 



Well during my excursion to science park (somewhere between AIT and Bankgkok) in my quest for the St Graal, understand contact lenses that are wearable by me, I happened to bumped into the funny baby elephant that you can see on the picture.

People didn't look surprise at all. So I assume that there is nothing extraordinary for them.

Let me know what you think.
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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Crazy temperatures (part II)

I know I've just posted about that but right after my post I went to Future Park (a huge Mall) in my everlasting quest for contact lenses that fit me well (I will talk about that in a coming post).

I miss word to describe how it was outside. I think that hell can't be hotter.


And for the oven experience previously describe, I said 1.5 well I was wrong, make it 2.5 to get a better idea. From now on I'll make I'm always in an ACed room in the afternoon.

Hot...Did you say hot?

Well, we're entering the summer here. It's funny when I think that we are just entering.

Temperatures here could, at best, be described as crazy.


Just saying that it's hot is far from being enought to express what we feel here.

I think that to get an idea you shoudl try this.


Turn on your oven and ajust it to the level 1.5 (around 45 degrees). Let the oven heat up for about 15 min. Then open it and put your arm inside.

Well now you know what it feels like here when we are under the direct sunrays. Except of course that it's the WHOLE BODY which is being litteraly burned.


I spent the last 48hours without my bike which means that I had to walk to move across the campus. In concrete terms I spent 3 times more time outside that I usually do.


I do have the funny impression that I'm being "cooked" when I'm outside. It's actually funny when I sit in my room with AC on like now. Back outside it's not that funny.


Oh, and if you want figure I would say between 34 and 36 degrees. But temperature felt under direct sunlight should be around 38/40.


And for those who remember summer 2003 in France, well, let say that it was just a joke compare to here.

So, still wanna stop by?

Monday, March 05, 2007

More info on the Magha Puja Day

My friend Maxim has written a very comprehensive article on this special buddhist day.

So if you are interested and want to have more details on it, just click here.


Thanks Maxim.

Song of the day

The song of the day is a Toni Braxton song from the album "Secrets".

The song is "How Could an Angel...
It's just beautiful, so click play and enjoy.







Today is also the birthday of a special friend.

So Happy Birthday to you (You know who you are)

See, this year I didn't forget :-)

Good Luck for your exam as well. I know you gonna be fine.

Makha Bucha Day

Today is a public day off because it's the Makha bucha day.

I tried to know what was the reason of it. But unfortunately the thai friend with who I talked yesterday has a not so good english ( I mean it's really bad ). So I barely get what He was trying to explain.


But from what I get it's a buddhist holy days (there are actually 3days, from saturday to Monday).


The campus is totally empty, it's really funny and wierd and the same time. I've never seen it like that before.


The bad thing, for me at least, is that banks are closed and I don't have a penny left since saturday.
I was planning to go to HSBC in Bkk to retrieve some money from their ATM in order to avoid the insane fee they charge if I retrieve at another ATM just because my bank account is in France.

I guess not everything is globalised.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Add my blog to your Netvibes page

Logically I've decided to provide you with the possibility to easily add my blog feed to your Netvibes pages.

So just click on the button below

Add to Netvibes


The button will be present permanently on the sidebar.

If you don't use Netvibes, don't forget that you always can suscribe to this blog's feed by clicking on orange icon on the adress bar (available for every Firefox and Opera versions and Internet Explorer 7 only).

Netvibes Feed (FR)

I've added a new widget in the right of the blog.

It's my list of the (french) feeds related to computers on Netvibes.


You can add it to your netvibes personal pages.


For those who don't know what's Netvibes, let's say that it's a online RSS feed reader or a news aggregator. More informations in french here (sorry there is no decent english version available on wikipedia).


If you don't already have a news aggregator like Google reader, you may wanna try netvibes which is really cool because it's highly customisable.

Friday, March 02, 2007

First cinema in Thailand : The prices

So I went today to the cinema for the first time.
I'll tell you what it's look like as well as include some things you may want to know if you ever have to go to the cinema in Thailand.



First, in Thailand there is only one company who have all the multiplexes which name is Major. You have to check for each movie if english is available either for subtitles or as a VO. The one I saw was a Thai movie and english subtitles were available.


Second things to do is buy your ticket. The price is higher during the week-end (actually from thursday to Sunday lol) and we payed 120 bahts which is more or less 2.60 euros.

But there is some kind of class system. Apparently there are "Opera Places" which look like a two places sofa with two nice little tables at each end where you can put your drinks on. Price is 500 bahts then (11euros). There are also "Royal places" but I didn't see what they look like. But apparently it sounds like places in a balcony. That would be a 1000bahts for each. You really have to want to impress that girl ;-)



Oh BTW great difference compare to France, when you buy your place, you also choose it. Those who have tried this system for planes now what I'm talking about.

In concrete terms that means that you don't have to queue and get squizzed at the gate of the room. You can gently get in when you want and be sure that your place is free. Neat!


Though other french people don't agree with me I thing that ticket price are a little bit high for the thai standard. I mean I can eat some decent meal at the cafeteria for 30 bahts. So the cinema is 4 times higher than the price of a meal. The equivalent in France would be a price tag of 15-18 euros for a ticket.

Yet this the price that I pay for my unlimited access card in France. I will raise the issue when I chat with thai friends to get their point of view on that. Maybe I'm wrong somewhere.

I'll let you know soon...

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Overview of Social Music

Some of my friends tell me that my posts are too long.
Personnaly I think that it depends on how much free time you have.
Anyway there are many things I want to blog about but I just dont have enough time to do so.



Therefore when I will stumble upon some good articles, I will do a short post with a link to the original article.



Let's start with social music. Social music is basicaly all the services that allow you to listen, share and sometimes store music you like.

Techcrunch has post a comprehensive review on the subject.

I have translated this article for Techcrunch France, so click here for the french version.



My favorite one is Pandora, a service where you enter any artist or song name and it automatically generates a radio with similar music. It's a great way to discover music you don't know in the genre you like.
You can create as many radio as you want and even mix them.

You have you personal page where you can display your favorite artist and/or songs.
Of course you can share your radio with your friends. Its a classic for any social network.



RadioBlogClub is also very interesting because you can embed a song in your blog and I think it's a nice feature that I use on this blog. You may wanna try it.



All this website are designed so that you can listen to good music everywhere you can access internet.



More to come soon on this subject.

P.S: If you can't wait my post on it go check mp3tunes.