A bit of trivia about women and technology.

According to Genevieve Bell, anthropologist and Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group:

In India, 80% of cyber-cafes in rural India are run by women.

In Singapore and Indonesia, maids who can clean and provide IT supportare highly sought after.

In Korea, 70% of gamers are female, in the U.S. that number drops to 40%, and in the U.K., it drops to 25%.

64% of Facebook users are female.

reports ChipCick. Also, a recent Study Proves Women Know More About Megabytes Than Men Do.

Ten little zen things that I do

This post is totally inspired by 10 Odd Little Minimalist Things I Do from Zen Habits, it's my take on the same subject.

1. No watch.
It started with a watch with a broken bracelet - I learned to check time on my mobile phone.

2. No alarm-clock.
Cell phone again. That's not really creative, as Lifehacker recently asked: "What's Replaced Your Alarm Clock?" and over 7000 people said "cell phone".

3. No "real" phone.
Primarly because of all the marketing calls you can get - haven't had one since I moved in! Also, only one number to give, one bill... But I really need a better cell phone plan.

4. No TV.
It's just a screen for the PC, the Wii and the X-Box. I might start watching it while doing housework, however, I don't promise I'll keep away, but it doesn't suck my time (the web, however, hmm...)

5. No iPod.
I used to prefer my cheap normal Zen Creative mp3 player, but It's getting more and more...

6. No mp3 player.
Cell phone taking over again.

7. No hairdresser.
Though maybe I should visit one once and again. But I wear long blone hair, which is a simple, but great look, cut my bangs myself and wear them slightly to the side so no one can see if they're cut unevenly.

8. No hairstyling products.
I never decided to sacrifice any time to first, learn some advanced hairstyling, and then just do it. I believe you can't go wrong with long hair.

9. No make-up.
Actually, I don't do this that often. You rather won't see me without make-up at work. But sometimes, I don't wear any and feel good about it. My mind is free (if I don't have time for make-up it's absolutely okay) and that's what counts.

10. No gym membership.
That's mainly for financial reasons. This may not work for everyone for various reasons, primarly motivation. Health is priceless and if you can't get motivated without attending a class, do it. You might also take bigger pleasure in that class, meet friends there, use equipement you don't want to store home, etc etc. But I like yoga, pilates and kick boxing and manage pretty well to make good use of my floor, big ball and Wii.

7 weeks with Windows 7

I've been trying Windows 7 RC for over 7 weeks now. It's high time to open my big mouth about the new shiny features and the stuff that sucks. (Please note that I haven't touched Vista with a pole and hope things stay that way, which means I don't know what waslready introduced in Vista.)

Let's start positively. Windows 7 is really shiny. I does have a professional look and feel. Well, not the wallpapers, but overall.


More importantly, it's fast. Rumors say it will work just fine on netbooks!

The usability is enhanced. That goes both ways, unfortunately. On one side, I love the new taskbar with huge icons that you can pin, hover,... do try this at home. I love the merging of the folders instead of the "replace or resign" that used to be.

But... it's the little things. And the frustration they bring.

Windows Media Player is now twelve - that's like two per Windows. It manages my music library well, but doesn't understand that in the universal language of humanity, that loooong key you could find even in the dark in a fraction of a second means "pause". "Pause" is Ctrl + P. "Pause" is Ctrl + P. "Pause" is "I don't care the water is boiling, the phone ringing and the best scene coming, find Ctrl+P if you want to pause". That alone makes me want to go back to the best ever VPlayer (or AllPlayer).

Paint got redesigned. I'm still using PSP7. 7 - oh the irony.

Microsoft is one for those software companies that don't really see the huge difference between "user friendly" and "looser friendly", which leads to odd situtations. See what that is?


That's Windows 7 vs. me. I'm on an admin account. Any software installation makes that question pop out:

Do you wany to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?

Yeah, admin acount. And it warns me that installing a program will make changes on my hard drive! So I clicked "change when these notifications appear" to see less of that and got the window above, politely asking wether Mr UserAccountControlSettings could make changes to my computer.

One last thing hard to forgive. It won't get to sleep when Windows Media Center is running, but it will while Firefox is downloading a big file. Boo.

Okay, enough complaining. It's just a release candidate, and Microsoft deeply values my opinion about the improvement opportunities and usability challenges.

If you want something more constructive to read, I recommend Lifehackers's "Get Windows 7's Best Features Right Now".

Summer is here!

Yeah, Summer is here!


I had my last exam yesterday. Yep, on a Saturday, at 9 a.m. Finally, it's over!!!

Now, I know I just came back from a two-week vacation in Tunisia, but believe me, I'm tired like crazy again. Honeymoons are absolutely well-deserved vacations for the whole emotional weight of getting married, no matter how wonderful marrying one's loved one is. By going to school at the same time, you totally earn the right to another trip. And we're totally planning one. Kinda. Someday.

For now, my plans are:

• getting my butt back to the office Monday morning
• pushing my master thesis (I wonder if my advisor remembers me and that's not good)
• learning some python and cooking
  
• erm, blogging more, doing some Silverlight stuff again would be really cool...
  
• taking advantage of the fact that I now live next to the forest!
  

I hope you're excited for Summer as well. If you need, here are some activities suggestions, and here's some advice about how to put things off and stop caring to realize your dreams. Have a great Summer everyone!

[Picture credit]

The secret of the Coca-Cola formula

The Coca-Cola formula is super secret, so it's not copyrighted or protected otherwise. (Honestly, I don't know what the big deal is, other "Colas" taste as sweet and as unhealthy to me, but anyway.)

An interesting altervative (but I think just as unhealthy) is OpenCola - a drink with a formula on a GPL liscence.

Just as with software, "anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License." [Wikipedia]

But now, the secret is partially out - Failblog published a picture of Coca-Cola employees getting one crucial ingredient:


Did I say unhealthy?

I got to level one at Project Euler (and would like to thank my boss and everyone...)

I go to level one at Project Euler! I got this pretty picture as a reward:


Now what does this have to do with my boss...

First, let's precise that the term "my boss" means "those guys who make the decisions and I don't know which one decides what" - no sucking up! So, "the boss" transferred me to a Python project and with a bunch of guys, we're learning Python.

Remember how I wrote I started learnig Python by solving Project Euler problems? Well, that's what we're told to do at work! There's a contest going on, in which many problems are from there, so when I solved one, I submitted it both to work and Project Euler and it was the last one I needed to get to level one, so here I am.

Can something be more motiviating than a contest at work? I have to code...

Tunisia trip: my shopping

My honeymoon in Tunisia didn't lack shopping, here's what I bought:

A French-arabic dictionary:

Muuuch cheaper than the only Arabic dictionnaries buyable in Poland. This dictionnary is intented for pupils (Tunisian children learning French), which is absolutely okay for me.

Two issues of AlJamila:

One issue of Saydaty:


A home deco magazine but it's called "Home" or something like that and it's a hell to google.

A Northern-African cookbook by Haydée Tamzali:


A shiny golden camel and a few shiny colofrul boxes:


Some belly dance stuff:

A few satin nightgowns - so pretty I can't find accurate pictures on the web.

A long part dress, and that should be it. Good thing I didn't take too much luggage with me, so we didn't exceed the weight limit.

[Picture credit, credit, credit]

Things are really wrong when BBspot is right.

BBspot is my favourite fake geek news site and you most probably have read their legendary article "Microsoft purchases evil from Satan":


Good one. Some time later, BBspot wrote about Microsoft forcing users to upgrade from XP to Vista. On a serious note, a friend is making good cash in the UK helping people downgrade. But back to the point. BBspot quoted Vance Fredericks (whoever that is) saying:

"This project is targeted at XP users who don't see the benefits of upgrading to Vista. The first change will be to install a desktop wallpaper of a naked Steve Ballmer during the next update. Customers will be unable to change the background, unless they upgrade to Vista."

Now that's some serious blackmailing.


But that was supposed to be a joke, right? As it turns out, not entirely. Microsoft is working on a special edition of Windows 7 for netbooks (the sweet tiny computers that might save Windows XP), "special" not having a positive meaning here, and in that version, you won't be able to change the wallpaper!

Now, that wallpaper probably won't be a picture of Steve Ballmer. But it might be that:



Or that:


Which makes that wallpaper look really cool:


BBspot was right, so things are really, really wrong. Still, the worst question is: how many sick ideas will Microsoft take from BBspot?

Tunisia trip: overview

I just got back from my honeymoon in Tunisia. The trip was really great, here a little more about it.

We stayed in Sousse:


...in a hotel as fancy as this:


...with a pool with slides as cool as this:

The shopping in Sousse and chilling at the hotel sums up what we did in a vast majority of our time.

We also did a bit of sightseeing, which included the Bardo National Museum in Tunis:


Carthage:


(do follow the Wikipedia link, as I'd have to post at least two dozens of images to give you the whole picture of this site) and the lovely town of Sidi Bou Said:


Another cool thing we did was driving quads in Port El Kantaoui - they have really great tracks between hills and olive trees (the desert is about 600 km to the south from there), totally separated from the streets. For 30 Tunisian Dinars (about 20 USD), we got an almost 2-hour ride with a really cool guide - absolutely worth checking out.

Okay, finally, the food. Basically, if you go to a country this far, you're not accustomed to the local bacteria, so you're really at risk of food poisoning - and that's what happend to us the one and only time we stuck our noses out of the hotel. So, our travel agencies only book all-inclusive trips and in our hotel, we were absolutely at no loss not eating out. The food was really great and there were many dishes to choose from: some "international", some local, but all really great. The best thing was the meat, grilled just before serving, by this very friendly staff:


Okay, that's all for now, I will post a few more specific posts on some specific subjects (for example, how I survibed haggling....not!)

[Picture credit, credit]

I'm going to Tunisia

I promised myself never to write a post where I apologize for not blogging (because if I don't write, I don't write and that's all) and promise to do better (because better would be getting to the good stuff right away).

Well, I apologize and hope you understand how busy I have been recently. (I also got hit on the forehead with a wii-mote, but it's not related.) About that doing better part, however... better will be later. Right now, I'm going to Tunisia on my honeymoon, so I can't really commit to producing blog content. But here's the good news: I'm intensively using Google Reader and try my best to pick the best stuff and share it, so if you want something fresh and geek to read, check it out here.

Besides the usual feeds, my reading list now contains lots of Tunisia-related content. Namely:

1. Tunisia on Wikipedia
2. Tunisia in the CIA World Factbook
3. Tunisia.com
4. Tunisia on Wikitravel
5. Tunisia on Travelistic

Travelistic, by the way, is "the YouTube of worldwide destinations". I was planning a daydreaming session on this site, by the way. It could be great to see all the places I'd love to see for free. I'll do that someday.