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2012/12/27 Visiting the Futoroscope in Poitier

π 2012-12-27 01:01 in Ntrips, Trips

I had gone to Futuroscope almost 20 years ago back when I still lived in France, and my dad was performing magic there.

Since then, I had wondered how it had changed, and figured Jennifer might enjoy it, so we went just after Xmas (thankfully they had english translators earbuds for most shows).

Getting there was very convenient. A TGV gets you right there, you walk across a bridge, and you're in the park. Couldn't have been easier. The weather wasn't fantastic, but that also meant manageable lines, which was good.

We did most of the park the first day, and finished it the next morning where we took a bit more time since our train wasn't going to leave before 13:30 no matter what :)
While I thought the park had a bit too many Imax/Omnimax movies (6 different ones), we still had a good time.

Below are some pictures:

Views of the park:

Random atractions:

I got the most points shooting in the entire room in that game :)

The evening show was actually quite good. Almost as good was World of Color in Disneyworld California:

After the first night, we were able to walk to our hotel, come back the next morning, finish the park well in time for taking the earlier train back home.

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2012/12/26 Cars Displays in Paris' Champs Elysées

π 2012-12-26 01:01 in Cars, Ncars, Ntrips, Trips

Over Xmas, we walked the Champs Elysées, and we used the opportunity to visit the car manufacturer displays that are there.

For just $100, you can drive these for 20mn, but doing so in Paris is kind of futile...

Toyota:

nice sim

Renault had a nice prototype on display:

Citroën still had their multiple time WRC winner rally car:

Mercedes:

Peugeot also had a non working prototype, like Renault:

looks nice, but worthless if not for sale

nice Xmas tree :)

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2012/12/26 Yearly visit of Paris over Xmas

π 2012-12-26 01:01 in France, Ntrips, Paris, Trips

Like every year, here are a few pictures from Paris over Xmas. This year wasn't nearly as cold, and there were a few nice days:

Louis Vuiton is happy to sell you simple handbags for as many thousand euros you're willing to pay

We then walked by the little Xmas houses (think winter wine and art festival):

Macaroons! :)

Piggie :)

Chocolate tools and gears

Made it to the end, time to turn around

going nowhere, fast

and we walked all the way back from l'obelisk to the arc the triomphe, time to go home

While there, we also went to see car displays, with went on its own page.

A few days later, we went to visit le Marais, which I actually had never seen before. We stopped by a fair amount of little stores, which my dad loves doing:

Started from centre pompidou, with a silly long line we avoided

awesome scenes from top french movies

that is an inventive bakery :)

Place des Vosges, which I had never seen

House of Victor Hugo

more stores

more chocolats

A couple of pictures from Auchan:

And before going home, we went to la Villette, citée des sciences et de l'industrie with special expo on Léonard de Vinci

an actual flying RC bird

Léonard had thought about it, just didn't have the technology back then

And this is it for Paris this year. Not a whole lot, but I've already posted a lot of pictures in the past.

http://marc.merlins.org/perso/trips/post_2006-01-06_Visiting-Paris.html

http://marc.merlins.org/perso/trips/post_2007-01-07_Paris-_-Louvre-Photos.html

http://marc.merlins.org/perso/trips/post_2008-01-07_1-week-in-France.html

http://marc.merlins.org/perso/trips/post_2010-01-04_A-few-pictures-from-Paris.html

http://marc.merlins.org/perso/trips/post_2011-12-24_Pictures-of-Paris-over-Xmas-2011.html

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2012/12/22 Foie Gras at Papillon and Glass Tryout

π 2012-12-22 01:01 in Dining, Ndining

After some misguided activists somehow managed to ban the sale of foie gras in California (apparently they are too pussies to go after the real problem, which is the torturing of most chicken sold on the market, and very poor to abysmal treatment of beef, but eh, it's easier to go after the little guy than go after the big companies that kind of feed America, even if badly), I had vouched to make sure we would keep eating at least as much foie gras as before (which actually isn't that much, it's not something you eat every day, or every week), to combat this pathetic law.

At the same time, I had just gotten Google Glass to try out, so it was a good excuse to do both, and we went to Papillon to have a nice dinner with our own foie gras (which can of course still be bought in other states, and the rest of the world).

It was quite a nice dinner I should say.

you can't go wrong with yummy beef covered with seared foie gras

Here some of the pictures taken with glass. Since glass doesn't have a flash and the room was dark, it struggled a little bit (so did my own camera if I was taking pictures without flash). Still, it was nice to be able to snap some pictures at will without having to whip out a camera.

Our server: 'so, I meant to ask you about that thing you were wearing' :)

All in all, very good use of an evening :)

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2012/12/18 Day trip for a 1.5ft storm at kirkwood

π 2012-12-18 01:01 in Nsnow, Snow

Arturo and I decided a bit last minute to go check out the fresh snow that had just fallen, with very low temps (i.e. good dry snow). Thanks to Arturo's driving we got there right around 08:50 and were at Cornice right as it opened. We got close enough to first chair (it was pretty empty).

drive up was much nicer than expected, even if the snow line was low.

1.5ft of fresh mostly dry snow, not bad

Arturo, my partner in crime

later, we had some more fresh snow

Video from first run:

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2012/12/15 FOG Drive from Alices Restaurant to Half Moon Bay

π 2012-12-15 01:01 in Cars, Ncars

I'm usually not awake enough for a long drive to Marin County where those events usually are, so I haven't really attended many, but having a meetup at Alice's Restaurant at a more reasonable 08:30 made it so that I could say hi :)

a little hook by the lighthouse

gopro testbed :)

Unfortunately, the drive back wasn't as easy. I ended up having some time to look at the local beach:

... because I had a pretty bad blowout on a brand new tire no less. No, I don't know what did it.
Thankfully while it was a bit scary, I was able to keep control of the car and stay on the road until I could pull over. I got home 2 hours late, with a pretty expensive tow ($840, ouch!) although I'm told it's supposed to be covered by my insurance, so maybe it won't be so bad. Now I just have to worry about whether my rim got bent (the rim itself is more expensive than the tow).

the local sheriff helpfully put his car and lights to protect mine

tow truck took a bit over an hour to show up

Oh well, it didn't end perfectly, but it was still fun to go out and socialize with other car enthusiasts on fun roads.
(And yes, the car is fine, but since it doesn't come with spare wheels, when you lose a tire, you gain a tow).

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2012/12/05 Serial Console With WR703N

π 2012-12-05 01:01 in Linux

I was looking for a cheap one port serial console server I could use to monitor a server far away. Turns out they are quite expensive, so I looked at making my own.

I ended up being told to look at a WR703N which can be had for around $25, either from china, or sometimes a US location like amazon . Another option is the mostly identical TL-MR3020

Both have an openwrt distribution which you can get from http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr703n and http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-mr3020

One way to get serial could be to open the device and with a bit of soldering and a level converter, one is supposed to get a serial port off the bare chip. That was more time than I was willing to put in, so I just used the built in USB port and a PL2303 USB-serial converter.

Unfortunately, the USB support on those devices has a bug there full speed USB devices (i.e. USB1) do not work reliably and in the case of a serial converter, it'll hang after a minute of use or two.

This is described in a long thread at https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=39956&p=4 but you can jump to post #84. Basically the fix is to use a passive high speed (USB2) hub, and plug your USB1 device into it. No USB power required, and a cheap $10 USB hub works fine.

Next, get an old USB key, format it with ext4 as explained below, and edit /etc/rc.local on the router to mount the USB stick. This allows logging the serial session without writing to the main flash of your device, since that's not replaceable.

Ok, so the end cost is between $40 and $50, but you get a super small linux capable router that acts as serial console server, can log the output and provide ssh access. Still not bad... (I used a free 64MB USB key I had lying around).

/etc/rc.local:

# Get the card ready with # mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdc1 # tune2fs -c0 -i0 -m0 /dev/sdc1 # opkg install kmod-fs-ext4 mount -o noatime,commit=600,data=writeback /dev/sda1 /mnt

cd /mnt # opkg install kmod-usb-serial-pl2303 # opkg install screen # This will dump serial logs in /mnt on your USB key screen -m -d -L /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

# If you don't want screen, you can try minicom or microcom # http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/f/topic-3-7-11379-0.html

2012/12/03 Opening the season at kirkwood

π 2012-12-03 01:01 in Nsnow, Snow

This year, the season started better than last year. I went for a day trip with a couple of coworkers to get some early powder. It was good for a first day, although the powder was very wet due to high temps, and kirkwood was very understaffed and took way too long to open lifts (1H late to open just one lift, and 2.5H to open a 2nd lift to the top on cornice. That's pretty sad actually).

line, nothing running

finally going up over 1H late

powder was still nice, note the way too long line on cornice

wee

All in all, it wasn't perfect, but it sure beat a day at work :)

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2012/12/01 2012 Company Xmas Party

π 2012-12-01 01:01 in Google

This year, we had a great locations with multiple rooms, got to see nice cars, played sims, and got to socialize with good food away from the loud room. It was at the Club Auto Sport in San Jose.

It was great.

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