11 posts tagged “france”
I was very very excited when I opened the box from France today :)
All good stuff!
Merci Beaucoup!
During our little trip around France, Caroline selected a very nice Bed and Breakfast when we stopped at Aix.
Marine, the host is particularly friendly and welcoming and took the time to help us navigating in the region, and to select our tourism stops (and gastronomic stops - which are equally important).
Also, the bedroom (actually there are more than one), the house and the breakfast are all top of the line, and for a reasonable price. We couldn't have a best deal with an hotel -- I think Caroline convinced me to use more B&B and less hotels :)
The photo we took aren't very well shot and doesn't capture well the aesthetics of the place (checkout the website!), but give at least a little preview of this, big, fully restored, old house. The restoration looks really good, it mixes modern fixtures with old furnitures within 1.5+ meter thick (~4 feet) walls.
This a view of our bedroom which feature a nice king size bed.
We didn't enjoy the pool because we went right in the middle of the winter, but I guess it's a nice addition when it gets warmer starting at spring.
This is a part of the vast community room
It's probably not as funny when translated, but let's try.
Actually it's quite difficult
"WARNING - Launching is subject to fees"
The two signs aren't related. The first one just warns about the fact that the path ends abruptly in the water. And the second one is for boats, saying that you cannot launch your boat into waters from here for free.
So it could be interpreted (when written in french): "Hey drop your car into water from here it's rewarding!". "Please if you drop your car into water don't forget to pay the fees", "Before committing suicide don't forget to pay the associated feeds".
It's been of the most shocking revelation of my recent visit to France. The French are riding bikes; a lot and in modern and innovative ways. It seems that the Parisian initiative, "The velib'" got a lot of press from around the world. [1] so I was really eager to try this new system (launched during the summer 2007), and If I were expecting change, I was expecting to notice it only in Paris. Well, I indeed saw a lot of positive change but I also noticed it in other towns. I can't wait to see Paris and other major towns in a few years, I hope the future built is for less pollution, less noise, less stress, more "green". velib' and similar system are surely one good step in that direction.
velib' would change my transportation experience in Paris...
In Paris I almost exclusively used public transportations. It's relatively fast, not THAT expensive (though it is, if you don't work) and convenient. But It's depressing.
I only used velib' once for a short trip (So I realize that's not a great deal of experience, comments are welcome in this conversation)
The ride was 25 minutes (I got lost) so less than 30 minutes and thus free. It was raining a bit and it was dark, but nonetheless it was fantastic to be at the surface. Paris is a beautiful city but it's hard to enjoy it from underground. I went on l'"ile de la cite", Saint Michel, Saint-Germain... It was just lovely, I can't imagine how cool it must be in summer. Also I felt pretty safe during the whole ride. You have to be careful at intersections though (cars cross the bike paths there).
How it works?
The New York Times put that well:
The Vélib system is simple. You swipe a credit card in a kiosk that is located beside a row of parked bikes and purchase a one-day, one-week or one-year subscription. (The system also takes a 150-euro deposit authorization to ensure the bike's safe return.) The machine prints out a card with your code number and you enter a personal password. You tap in this code and password to unlock a bike and ride off.
When you've reached your destination, you look for the nearest Vélib station, click your bike into an empty dock, watch a light change from yellow to green to acknowledge that you've returned your bike, and you're done. The first half-hour is free, after that the cost is 1 euro, or about $1.45, for the second half-hour, 2 euros for the third half-hour and 4 euros for each half hour after that.
Kudos to the city and partners, the sheer implementation of the idea is brilliant
The immediate consequence of this success is that you cannot miss velib' users there are literally everywhere.
- Bike stations are ubiquitous
- The Bike lanes and contraflows are numerous and well designed. There are 371 kilometers of cycle paths in the city. I guess you can probably plan your trip to almost exclusively use the safest path.
- Bike and 2-wheels parking are numerous too (though it's not really related to velib') It looks like the city built a lot of parking space for 2-wheels which is great. For sure there is no park-meters to hijack as in San Francisco, so the city had to build something else :)
- The fares appear to be fair, though I haven't practiced enough to really tell
velib' quirks (most of them are minor)
I heard that american tourists were running into issues when trying the system because of the silly credit cards there were using (no chip). So at first I tried with my french credit card (with a nice little chip, thanks Mr. Moreno). Well it didn't work, don't ask me why. I changed station just to be sure, and it was the same issue. Oddly when I tried my dumb american credit card it just worked!
I should probably not complain about this one, but by using my american credit card I wasn't charged for my velib' at all! Maybe because the amount was low (1 euro for the day pass, then I used it for free because not for too long). So it's not perfect... (well for me it's surely is :)
Update: "They" probably read me, since this morning I've been billed $1.52!
In a very short period of time (a few days) I saw quite a few bugs (the whole station turned red for a few minutes) (reportedly[fr] it's because the stations are running windows and not Linux, are trolls riding bikes ? :)
More annoying, it looks like it's quite often that stations are full. It's probably more the case during the night and the week-end? I know that the staff is reshuffling bikes around stations, maybe they don't do it 24/24. From my understanding the problem is that users are taking bikes to the same locations (to go out). so the stations are filling, and if a station is full you can't return the bike. Apparently, you are credited 15 free minutes to go to another one. I know that my friend Julie cancelled a gym class because she couldn't find a spot to park.
The velib' are bulky (22kg) but that's fine, as a regular bike commutes what I find more annoying is the lack of higher gear (1, 2 and 3 only), I found myself only using the third one and wishing for twice as many (or at least one allowing me to go FAST).
The last drawback I see, is that velib' doesn't encourage people to wear helmets. Face it, it's dangerous! :/
Elsewhere
It seemed to me that bikes were everywhere during my trip to France, maybe it's a consequence of me becoming a cyclist in San Francisco (I hadn't ridden a bike for years before settling in SF), maybe people were biking that much before but I wasn't aware of it?
Paris surely got a lot of press (see a few references below [1]), but it's not the only city in France where you can bike. Soissons (north-east from Paris) doesn't have a bike sharing program but kudos to the old lady (70-80 years old) I spotted biking in town, at night, by -6C).
When I visited Rennes, I learned about the "velo a la carte" which I believe is the world first system of the like using computers.
Then in Aix-En-Provence, I spotted v'hello
In Marseille it's called "Le velo"
And I now that Lyon has "velov'" for a long time.
Looking for the wikipedia entry for the list of projects it looks like the increase in new projects is accelerating.
[1] blog & press references:
This english video by NYC folks presents the system just after the launch and before improvements. You see bikes, stations and users. Fun fact out of 1400+ stations in Paris the video is made from the very own station I tried (a few meters from my friend Julie's apartment)
- NYT article
- SF-Gate article, same system in preparation in the city by the bay?
- Le capitaine sauve par velib' [fr]
- video from streetsblog
- a pool dedicated to velib'
- official press section
- bike hugger
- http://www.parisdailyphoto.com/2007/09/velib-to-go-international.html
- One good article from washcycle great blog
- ... and a second one
Juste une petite note en francais pour expliquer que je porte le combat pour sauver groquik sur le sol Nord Americain.
En effet, il faut developper le "Groquik Awareness" chez nos amis americains qui, je viens de l'apprendre ce matin n'ont jamais connu groquik.
Dans ce cadre, j'ai fait une note en anglais qui liste quelques liens sur l'histoire de groquik et son "remplacement" par le perfide lapin. Nous, en france, les lapins on les mange, que cela se sache (Les americains consomment peu de lapin - ca ressemble trop a un animal de compagnie)!
- http://www.grosquick.net/
- http://membres.lycos.fr/payelle/groquik/
- http://membres.lycos.fr/nowaynoe/groquik.html
Il paraitrait d'ailleurs qu'une des principales revendications des grevistes en ce moment soit le retour de Groquik, les medias ont ete manipules et ne font que diffuser de fausses revendications. Mais personne n'est vraiment dupe tellement les soit-disant revendications sont ridicules.
Today I ran into Nick in Six Apart kitchen wearing a very cool Nesquik yellow tshirt (you know: naturally worn off by the time. The state of the art of hypeness, as we're used to when Nick is involved). Anyway, it took me a few seconds to notice because I didn't have(*) my breakfast just yet, but then I shocked. Instead of the famous Groquik the infamous Bunny was displayed on the shirt!
This is how I learned (thanks to nick and wikipedia) that poor americans never had the pleasure to meet the big happy guy. Since the beginning, they only knew the vicious bunny!
France and Greece first had another mascot for Nesquik, which was a fat yellow humanoid cartoon monster called Groquik—a variation of Gros Quik ("Fat Quik"), created by Gilbert Mas and puppeteered by Yves Brunier. In Greece the mascot was called Κουικάρας (or Quikáras--English:"Big Quik") He was later replaced by Quicky, much to the discontent of fans who protested against the lack of a sympathetic character and the Americanism. In Portugal, the mascot was a kangaroo, Kangurik, which was replaced by Quicky in 1989/1990.
There are tons of websites on the french web about groquik... most of them were created a long time ago. Hords of fans gathered thanks to the nascent web, and tried to kick out the bunny to get Grosquik back. Unsuccessfully.
- http://www.grosquick.net/
- http://membres.lycos.fr/payelle/groquik/
- http://membres.lycos.fr/nowaynoe/groquik.html
Puis un jour tragique, nous vîmes, malgré nos yeux brouillés par les larmes, notre idole disparaitre à bord d'un train, confiant le Nesquik à un lapin insipide qui se pretendait son cousin. Groquik ne revint jamais de ces vacances
rough translation:
A tragic day, by our eyes full of tears, we saw our star and hero stepping in a train and leaving. Nesquik was left to an insipid bunny pretending to be his cousin. Groquik never came back from vacations.
(*) please fix my english
Un petit post en Francais de temps en temps cela ne fait pas de mal, et ca tombe bien certains m'ont demande mes impressions sur l'iPhone! Et oui il semblerait que la date de l'arrivee de la fameuse machine en France reste tout ce qu'il y a de plus imprecis, et les interesses se languissent de savoir ce qu'il en est. Oh, je ne pretends pas en faire une revue exhaustive, juste quelques impressions en passant.
- l'iPhone est locke. C'est la grande guerre cela n'a echappe a personne, et j'espere qu'Apple perdra cette bataille car c'est une mauvaise guerre. Personnellement cela ne me gene pour l'instant pas tant que cela etant donne que je n'ai pas eu trop le temps de faire joujou avec, je l'utillise juste comme un telephone. L'installation de certaines applications tierces peut a terme etre interessante
- l'iPhone est plus ou moins fragile: Tres resistante au scratchs la vitre est donc tres dure et peu se briser.
- L'interface est intuitive avec quelques defaults (a mon gout) qui j'espere seront corriges (Exemple le bouton "play" dans la boite vocale visuelle) n'est pas bien identifie
- J'aimerais avoir un reglage du son directement sur les ecouteurs (en plus du click et du double click qui permettent de passer les chansons ou de raccrocher en communication)
- L'interface du telephone est tout simplement claire et intuitive - exactement ce qu'il faut quand on est occupe au telephone donc distrait
- Je me surprends pas mal a regarder quelques videos sur youtube a certains moments perdus... c'est tellement facile!
- Le web est lent, je l'utilise juste quand je ne peux pas faire autrement :) J'aimerais des applications dediees (twitter, blogging, newsreader)
- Je n'utilise pas le mail (je m'en fous un peu)
- J'aime bien l'interface multitouch. Je voudrais un auto-finder dans le carnet d'adresse quand meme (comme mon blackberry)
- Je voudrais une messagerie d'instantanée (AdiumX please!)
- Je veux des applications fun entre iPhone sur le reseau locale (40% de mes collegues au bureau en possede) donc les tables de reunion sont parfois remplies d'iPhone :)
- Je veux un jumelage bluetooth! et une synchro par bluetooth aussi
- Cela m'horripile que le reveil ne marche pas quand le telphone est eteint (tous mes autres telephones faisaient ca tres bien)
- Je veux utiliser l'iPhone comme telecommande universelle, ou comme interface Synergy, ou comme interface VLC
- J'aimerais un "eWallet" meme si 1passwd semble prometteur
- La qualite photo est plus que correcte meme s'il ne faut pas trop en demander
- J'adore assigner des photos a mes contacts, ca se retrouve dans toutes mes applications sur mon mac apres. cool :)
Les raisons de mon achat:
- Caroline et moi etions coince avec une qualite terrible sur t-mobile, on a decide de passer sur AT&T et a ce moment la, la question de l'iPhone se posait.
- Je voulais un telephone qui marche. Mon Blackberry Pearl etait incapable de m'afficher le "caller id" (nom de l'appelant), et etait franchement parfois trop complique ou posait de vrais problemes d'accessibilite dans l'interface.
- C'est un bel appareil qui n'a pas laisse un grand geek insensible.
- Le prix venait de chuter (- $200)
- Enfin un telephone qui synchronise parfaitement (ou presque) et simplement avec mon mac. Ce qui etait impossible a realiser avec mon blackberry. Je n'ai enfin plus qu'un carnet d'adresse.
- J'upgraderais quand la version 2 avec 3G + video + GPS sera sortie :)
Conclusion: Oui il est bien, vivement la prochaine version quand meme... Apple a sorti un produit d'une tres grande qualite a mon avis, et je ne pense pas que les petits gars de Cupertino s'arreteront la (y'a des francais qui bossent sur le dev d'ailleurs). Je suis bien content que ca remue un peu du cote des telco et des fabriquants de telephone (qui ne sont pas vraiment mes amis). Lle Google Phone promet d'etre interessant aussi!
un iPhone 8Go c'est 305 euros avec le cours actuel du dollars...
Well that's flattering... We have our batch of problems too (Anyone has a video to contradict (how do you say "contrecarrer" in english :/) this idealistic vision ?):
Thanks for sharing lulu!
My Vox development server is dying :
miro kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled
Message from syslogd@miro at Wed Jul 19 12:41:59 2006 ...
miro kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled
Message from syslogd@miro at Wed Jul 19 12:41:59 2006 ...
miro kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttledMessage from syslogd@miro at Wed Jul 19 12:41:59 2006 ...
miro kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled
It's 36°C in Paris...
