Well, my turn! I, like most of my co-workers in the computers field, can have moments of awkwardness that a “well-adjusted” person would allegedly never experience. Today, for instance, Tom and I were both anguished by the fact that we couldn’t tell whether a woman we saw at a restaurant was Georgia, who we happen to have known for years!

Ironically, I seem to be doing better at reading people than actually identifying them.

Let’s play: the BBC web site offers an online test that will help you get a better idea of how perceptive you *really* are.
It is at www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/

Feel free to post or email me your score!

I was getting tired of this blog’s old look, so I’m trying this new one. I know, I know: the gear looks really crappy. I need to spend some time fixing it.

Ooooh.

It’s a dye-sublimation printer, which means that, when it comes to printing photographs, no inkjet comes even close: just like argentic photographs, no pixels are visible. That’s because, technically, there is no space between pixels.

Thus far, I am extremely pleased with the quality of the various prints I’ve made.

It is reasonably fast, about 1 minute/print, and the prints are dry as they come out of the printer. That’s one of these mundane things that it would be foolish to overlook.

Samsung promises that, because of the printing technique used, prints will not fade.

The printer comes with 10 sheets of photo paper and, of course, it doesn’t take more than an hour for the exalted wannabe photograph to go through all of them.

I was happy because I had bought 30 more sheets a few days earlier; I was busy patting myself in the back when I realized that dye sublimation really doesn’t work with inkjet photo paper. I have to buy special paper!

Oh, well, including the ribbon, each photograph costs around c40.

Pros: lab-level quality, photos are immediately dry, good printing speed, the printer is portable, allowing you to organize your own print party wherever you go -as long as there’s an electrical socket available-, bright LCD screen and user-friendly menus, can print from a computer, memory cards, cell phones…
Cons: prints are on the expensive side, printer is more transportable than portable, 2″ LCD screen is a tad smallish

I am testing this new concept: blogging from a window in my browser.
For instance, I first posted this entry using Deepest Sender (it’s a Firefox extension).

There were a few issues with my post. I realized that I could fix them using Performancing. This tool, lets you, again, use a rich-text editor but it also lets you browse your old entries, edit your categories, etc.

All in all, a couple very good extensions. I also tried BlogThis! but it only pales in comparison.

Professionally:

First of all, I work for a Telecom company. We design and sell smart switches and routers. Our company is very innovative and was the first one to come up with the concept of layer 2 VLANs and ports mobility.

Personnally, I am a “Manager of Software Development”, which means that I oversee a group that creates Network Management Software.

Open-Source:

I have also been part of the open source movement for many years.

My latest projects are:

• NextBBS, a feature-laden and performant Message Board System.
• nWizard, an online installation and helper wizard for programers, regardless of their level of expertise.

My Web Sites:

• Well, there are many of them.I used to be a web host, but that activity got absorbed by a bigger fish. You can still take a look: ReadySetHost, formerly known as Hosting Group
• Free Message Boards Hosting: Clic!Dev
• An Anime and Video Games Online Community: Militate
• …and many more!

Well that’s it for now. Cheers.

It’s worth a look.