Jaisalmer: deuxieme jour

October 24th, 2009

Hey, quick post, le pc plante toutes les 30 sec.

Hier, second jour a jaisalmer, lever du soleil sur la terrasse du toit de l’hotel, en haut du fort. Genre, juste formidable, pour la vue sur la ville, et la lumiere ocre refletee par toutes les briques a ce moment la. Pas de soucis pour se lever a cette heure la, nos amis musulmans nous reveillent tout juste a la bonne heure.

jalsaimer

On a decouvert les temples Jains. Magnifiques temples ornes et sculptes a l’extreme. Les jains sont, en resume, des phobiques du meurtre, au point de porter des foulards pour ne pas avaler d’insecte, de balayer devant eux pour ne pas ecraser de fourmis, et qui sont super calmes et tout trankillou. Apres la petite balade dans le fort, on est alle au lac (reservoir d’eau) Amar Sagar, puis Lodruva avec tres beaux pavillons romantiques et chatris, et enfin les cenotaphes de Bada Bagh qui offrent un point de vue unique sur le fort.

Bon en gros tout plein de jolies photos a montrer.

La journee s’est finie par un petit trip en chameau dans les dunes pres du village de Khuri, histoire d’admirer le coucher du soleil susmentionne. ( et accessoirement tester la resistance de l’appareil photo au sable…) Diner resto vegetarien  tibetain, derniere nuitm dernier lever du soleil sur la meme terrasse, et depart pour Jodhpur (5h de route traversee par vaches, chameaux et chevres) d’ou l’on  ecrit le post.

Ici a Jodhpur, 2ieme plus grande ville du Rajasthan, on a visite le fort Merangarh, sorte de place fortifiee  enorme qui offre une vue imprenable sur les toits bleus des habitations de la vieille ville. D’ou peut-etre le fait que l’on appelle Jodhpur, “la ville bleue”.

Petite visite d’un temple en marbre blanc dont on a oublie le nom, mais surnomme le petit Taj Mahal (probablement par quelqu’un qui n’y est jamais alle, ou qui a beaucoup d’imagination, ou qui fait payer a l’entree…)

Lunch (thali) super epice (pour Caro…et pour toutes les personnes normalement constituees me dit-elle). Balade dans la vielle ville, marche de Sadar Market, Clock Tower genre mini Big Ben. Beaucoup de monde, d’agitation et de vehicules (moto, rickshaw, vaches…) , a tel point que l’on arrivait plus a respirer ( a moins que ce soit les effluves des epices tres presentes sur ce marche dedie aux indiens).

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Delhi – Jaisalmer: Night train with John Lennon

October 22nd, 2009

Ok, la blague passe mieux en anglais, mais j’ai batptise J.Lennon le premier cafard que j’ai croise dans le train couchette partant de delhi pour la citee feerique de Jaisalmer.

La derniere journee a Delhi a ete consacree a Old Delhi, avec son trafic fluide qui qvqnce de 2.5 cm par minute, et son petit million de personne par rue. En gros, Delhi, c’est 25 millions d’habitantm ce qui fait des marches comme Chandni Chowk assez denses. Les visites ont ete le Red Fort, la grande mosquee Jasma Masjid et quelques temples sikh de loin. Mais la circulation, meme a pied, etait pas vraiment evidente. Petits arrets dans 2 magasins de musique ‘pro’, mais la qualite des tablas etait pas au rdv. Faut direm 65 euros la paire, fallait pas s’attendre a des merveilles.

Bref, tout ceci a fini a la Old Delhi Railway Station, ou avec 2 Sud Africains avec qui on a sympathise, on a embarque dans le fameux train couchette concert (des beatles bien sur, beatles = cafard en anglais). Avec les heures de retards, apres 21h de train ( sans repas, ca aurait ete trop fun) et quelques heures de sommeils entre les multiples arrets embarquant quelques indiens discrets comme des…indiens bruyants, nous arrivames a bon port…ouf.
Nos 2 amis sud africains nous ont genereusement offert 2 barres de cereales qui constituairent avec les couchettes spectacles, un repas d’un romantisme rare.  Apres tout, c’est une lune de miel non?

Ceci dit, l’arrivee au fort de Jaisalmer nous a tout de suite fait oublie ce train. Perche sur une petite colline au milieu du desert, le fort de Jaisalmer a l’air d’etre un chateau des mille et une nuits. On a ballade a travers les rues hors de la citadelle, visite des havelis, maisons privees anciennes fortement scultees et decorees par des salles de mirroirs et pierres precieuses.

Apres la promenade, on a profite un peu de la vue depuis notre chambre d’hote et rempli quelques giga de photo depuis la terrasse de l’hotel, ou l’on compte retourner demain pour admirer le levee du soleil.

La presence des chauves-souris, de 2 vieilles anglaises, et du patron de l’hotel parlant un peu francais et tres accueillant n’ont fait que participer a ce moment formidable, et allez disons le carrement: putain de romantique.

Et puis pouf, faim, internet, post la, et on va retourner manger au resto tibetain auquel on est deja alle cet aprem. Tres bonnes specialites comme le lassi (smoothie au fruit frais), le momo (genre  de ravioli vegetarien).

Pour conclure tout va super bien, la lune de miel est bien consomme, demain trip a dos de chameau dans le desert, tout ca, on racontera dans un prochain post si on survit au 45 degres du desert.

October 20th, 2009

Alors, j’ai vu le bordel au Caire ou les mecs, pour eux, un feu rouge, ca veut dire passer en claxonnant.
J’ai vu Bangkok, ou le boudhisme prend tout son sens sur la route: apres tout, pourquoi pas finir cette vie entre 2 bus et un taxi….

Mais, la Dehli, c’est encore autre chose. Une vache dans les bouchons qui qttend au feu rouge! Pas de pitie sur la route, les pietons et les 2 roues, tuez les tant au’ils sont faibles, c’est nawak. Heureusement, y’a trop de monde pour aller vite.
Ceci dit, je crois que j’arriverai a y epanouir mon type de conduite ;-)

Alors pour ce aui est du programme de la journee, splendide. 2 Go de photo…
Qutb Minar (Minaret): Genial
Baha’s House of Worship (Lotus temple): moderne, mais tres zen, et spirituel a l’indienne
Hunayun’s Tomb: tombes qui ont inspire le taj mahal
Jentar Mantar: instrument d’astronomie, genre megalo
Bon, et des petits passages pres du palais du president (genre Sarko peut s’accrocher, Baudoin pas mieux…), et le petit arche de triomphe (india gate).

Bref, Caro endormi dans la voiture au retour, bien creve encore du voyage. Apres petite douche bien meritee, on va au resto de l’hotel qui nous offre un gateau pour notre voyage de noces!!! si ca c’est pas trop coool.

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Arrive a New Dehli

October 20th, 2009

Et voila, apres 12h de vols plein de vieux marques de cocardes, et d’espagnols et leur discretion legendaire, nous sommes arrives a Nez Dehli vers les 4h30.

Le tour operator etait bien la a l’heure, et on a pu dormir 2 petites heures avant de maintenant se lancer dans la ville. Donc pour l’instant rien vu!

Sinon, petite anectode: a l’enregistrement, j’annonce d’un ton joviale qu’il s’agit d’un voyage de noces, juste au cas ou il reste des places en buisiness class. Apres tout, il suffit de provoquer un tout petit peu la chance parfois. On s’est rendu compte a l’embarquement, que lq mqdqme, probablement mal baisee, et depuis bien des annees surement, nous a volontairement separes dans l’avion.

Bref, de la pure mechancete gratuite! J’ai pu faire changer nos places a l’embarquement, ou la seconde madame ne comprenait pas pourquoi on avait separe 2 personnes s’enregistrant ensemble….putain, la conasse……

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6 days before my Honeymoon in India

October 13th, 2009

That was a terrible year professionally speaking, and in a certain way, I’m stopping it this week!

I leave to India for a 5 week trip with my wife. We’ll go to north and south, and will finish this in the laquedive islands .  (The reason why I passed my PADI Open Water is that I’ll dive there)

My current boss does not want to let me leave, and I’m currently dealing with him how to change the way we work today to maybe stay here longer. I’m quite satisfied with all the discussion we had together (at least, the lunches was good…), and if he really does what he said, I’ll maybe stay here, but now as a senior developer and Scrum-master in an improved team (more than 2). Indeed, as I wrote the specification of this project which is very ambitious and not so stupid, how can I say no to a boss proposing me a 6 person team and a total autonomy  to lead it in the way I want, and stock option to motivate to the success of this software platform…

So let’s forget this story during the 5 next week, and decide this when I’ll come back in November.

I’ll try to keep to push photos on the blog during the travel, to keep in touch with family and friends.

Visual Studio Shell and Babel stuff

September 17th, 2009

It’s not easy to continue hard working while keeping traces of the things you leanr doing it…that’s why I did’nt create any post last few days.

As I recently had to think on a new project my company is trying to build, I had to look for few technologies to help developping huge integrated designer tools. This project targets to create several definition files. These definitions files needs to include data from each others, and the syntax won’t necessary be easy for non-geek/it users.

Keeping this in ming, and still fighting with Devart PostgreSQL linq tools, I remarked that their tool for designing Linq To SQL classes looked really like Visual Studio 2008.

In the beginning of my short carrier, I worked with Eclipse for Java :-( , and some C cool stuff. I worked also with Websphere which was just built on eclipse with IBM jpg…but when I start to work with Visual Studio .NET (2002 I think). I don’t want to create a troll post, so here is my point:

As Eclipse did, Visual Studio has now a Shell. That means that freely, you can install you Visual Sudio Add-In on an empty Visual Studio application.

I tried quickly this shel last week, and I’m really enthousiast with the flexibity of this tool. I already worked with OSGi which is the service oriented open framework behind Eclipse. But as I quickly seen the SDK behind Visual Studio, it’s really something else.

Same service oriented concepts, but really more mature I think. The SDK is really simple to take in hand, and you just have to focus on your specifities instead of fighting again a framework.

The Managed Language framework (Managed Babel) allows you to access all the intellisense features, to call your own parsers or builders. Really impressive.

I’m looking forward using this in my next project! Creating a new language seems really easy: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/cc837016.aspx

I think DSL (powered by WPF) seems really cool too…

LVM on ubuntu

September 4th, 2009

Ok, here we are, a ftp server has no more space on its 1 To /home mounted drive… we don’t know what take so much place, but now the idea is to put another 1To drive to have a bigger /home.

No choice, LVM to create a new 2To partition, and mount this on a brand new /home where I’ll have to copy old 1To home. It’s not so hard to find what to do, but as always under linux, nothing go well at the first time.

After rebooting the machine, the old /home sdc1 does not work.  Then juste before panic, I see that my colleague changed the order of drive on sata controllers, and the old sdb1 was now sdc1.
I just change the /etc/fstab mount device for the old /home and everything went ok and it’s 1To of precious data not lost…

Ok, so start building the logical volume with the 2 new drives sdb and sdd:

fdisk /dev/sdb, v to display status, o to create msdos partition table, and v to see display again, q for quit

fdisk /dev/sdd, v to display status, o to create msdos partition table, and v to see display again, q for quit

Then I have my devices sdb1 and sdd1, I can create physical volumes:

pvcreate /dev/sdb1
pvcreate /dev/sdd1
pvdisplay confirms that

Now let’s create and activate the volume group:
vgcreate memnonhome /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdd1
vgchange -a y memnonhome
vgdisplay to confirm the volume group.

As I did’nt find a way to take all the available space with lvcreate, I used the size value given by the vgdisplay to do
lvcreate -L1829G -nHomeLV memnonhome

and then

mkfs.ext3 /dev/memnonhome/HomeLV which has created the partition correctly.

After few modification in the /etc/fstab, I mounted the old home in /oldhome, and the /dev/memnonhome/HomeLV in /home.

Just have to run a last copy with the -p option to preserve owners rights etc…
Ok, so few preparation, and so lucky to make it work in 1h…cool…Again google and other blog save my life.

Cajon video

September 3rd, 2009

I play the Cajon with a friend since few months. I’m a beginner, while my friend Didier Casamtijana has lived several years as a professional percussionist.

Indeed, I’m really happy to play with Didier, learn a lot from him, and also take so much pleasure playing this fabulous instrument.

Here are some video of us playing together.


Data access is not easy…

September 3rd, 2009

I try to find a cost free configuration for an ASP.NET MVC application.

For this, Mono is the obvious part of the solution. PostgreSQL is a database solution that I follow since few years, and after trying MySql and SQLServer express, It’s sure that it’s my favorite one. Not only because it’s free, but specially for the clarity of the documentation and the high performance of this database.

The thing is thas I really hate working with SQL commands, and since few months, I ‘m really kind of Linq technology.

Indeed, I try to set up this configuration:

mono 2.4.2.3 – mod_mono 2.4.2 – apache 2.2.11  – PostgreSQL 8.3
mono – FastCGI – lighttpd – PostgreSQL 8.3

I tried both fascgi et mod_mono, and in both cases, the configuration is not so hard and works quite well. The issue is that I really need now to be able to use linq to SQL with the postgreSQL database.

I tried with the Devart dotConnect component which pretended to be compatible Mono, and Linq.
That’s right, it creates good DataContext models (compatible with SQLServer DataContext which allow to swith really easilly from one to other). The big issue, is that does not work under Mono, as they answer to my question in their forum.

I now wait the DBLinq integration in the Mono 2.6 which was annouced for September and supporting PostgreSQL/MysqlSQL/SQLite with linq support.

Just that my boss won’t be please, because I’m really late on this point…
Not an issue, right, I ‘ve quit last monday ;-)



First blog: first blog

September 3rd, 2009

Hi, I don’t really understand why, but it appeared very clearly during last night that I should open a blog.

The idea is firstly to write and store useful piece of information concerning IT stuff, programming tips and code snippets. I confess that I learn a lot from the various developers blog you can google with so desperate queries and getting so unexpected information from them. If these information are there, it’s because these guys make the effort to write about their work and maybe we can compare that with a karma thing, but I’d like to offer the same thing with my own work to others.

But as I try mostly to have an interesting life and sometimes far from a laptop, and as my family is quite far, maybe it’s also a good idea to share good things that happens to me, some photo, jokes…piece of life too.