Julien's fuzzy blog

I wish you all a Merry Christmas !

By the way my paper has been accepted to the Body Sensor Network Workshop that will be held at the MIT in April

Last week-end, Tbo and I went to Manchester to meet Bertrand and Venetia. We cooked a bit, ate a lot. The Christmas market there is pretty nice, a bit like the Strasbourg one, thanks to Dutch and German shops. Much better than in Paris for example.

This week-end Bastien came to London, and that made some Mommas' Club official members (Mommas, Bastien, Fred & myself), a claimant (Ludo) and even a dissident (William ) to gather all together at mine and at Mommas' at Weybridge for traditional but unformal celebration. On Friday we cooked Alsatian flammekueche [1] (including dough) using imported smoked lard [2,3]. That was damn good ! On Saturday, we made some crepes. That was followed by a traditional Internationale [4] "choir", a press ups competition and a fight club [5] for few of us.
On Sunday, Bastien and I also cooked a tartiflette [6] with freshly imported Reblochon cheese. That was pretty good too !

Who said I was not cooking any more ?

[1] flammekueche or tarte flambée: Alsatian traditional kind of pizza made of fresh cream, onions and lard
[2] lard: a kind of bacon (not the refined pork fat !)
[3] Mommas was proud to buy this lard at Rond-Point Sélestat...
[4] The Internationale on wikipedia
[5] Fight club, the movie
[6] tartiflette: kind of potato gratin topped with Reblochon cheese from Savoy (French Alps)

Yesterday night, after a VIP annual diner that sounded pretty posh (I wore my suit, but no tie ), around 20 of us went to a pub nearby to celebrate something. Thanks a lot to all that went there and also to all that just couldn't... I had a great time !

Today I had once more in my life to use MS Windows to write a couple of slides. I don't really understand how people can use that s***. After waiting 30 minutes for all the updates, I got loads of error messages all the time, crash notifications, etc. The CPU was always busy for some reason. I wanted to change to wallpaper, but it only takes BMP files and 'Paint' was not able to open my JPEG to translate it (convert wp.jpeg wp.bmp rules). I couldn't even launch IE once, it crashed before. Using Mozilla, I couldn't listen to the radio online although the plugin was installed. Then PowerPoint drove me crazy with the spacing and alignment in bullet boxes that were always everything but what I wanted.

Small game: can you reproduce this bug of a MS software ?

Warning: fuzzy blog entry !

More and more people keep asking me why I've not posted anything last week. A couple of answers and notes:

• when's the last post on Tbo's blog ? (do not invert month/day...)
• I'm quite happy to know that some people get kind of addicted to this blog
• nothing really exciting happened in my life last week...

Post-UTMB thoughts:
It's hard to believe, but the race went actually pretty easier than I expected. I also recovered really faster than I thought I would. Probably because I didn't push it hard enough though... Next year, on top of the 1st objective which is obviously to finish again, I'll then set as a 2nd one to finish in 32h or so. I'll probably dedicate my year training specifically for this event. Which means less speed training, longer distance and more mountain training . Amsterdam and maybe London marathons will be some kind of secondary events. I found running a marathon was a great thing, but running in the nature is much more enjoybable.
I was thinking about organising my own trails in UK or in France, to be run alone or in a small group. Why not try to run the West Highland Way (from the north of Glasgow to Fort William) in one stage for example ?

I've started to run again on Sunday, but far too much as I've cumulated more than 38km in 4 days. As I'm a bit sick, I'm resting again for a couple of days.
Actually the more I run, the more I need to run. I guess there's a limit. Have I reached this limit ? Some people (including Guang-Zhong, sic) started to tell me I'm running too much. That's maybe true, I don't know. Have your say by posting a comment !

Yesterday I went to watch a comedy starring Theo, called The Open Couple.

"The play deals with the fate of women in a society in which both the social system in which they live and its dominant ideology are shaped by men. The story revolves around a couple which is contemplating the virtues and vices of an open relationship."

It was really funny and true at the same time. Also, I think Theo's personality was rather suitable for the character he played ... It was professionally interpreted, I had a really good time.

I'm a bit tired these days, and unfortunately I've just fell aslept in front of my desk. When I woke up, my file was full of spaces . Kwrite, the text editor, didn't seem to appreciate and crashed !

A couple of pictures of the flat as promised. Twice my room (green) and Marcus' one (red)

   

I've spent the night in my new flat. It was incredibly quiet without the tube but with double-glazed window, darker without the street light in front of the window, more comfortable with the double bed... This room is really better than what I had before ! Looks cosy to me, but it's up to you to come and have a look. I feel more at home than at the hotel.
I will try to get some pictures soon.

This week-end I went to visit Mommas in Weybridge (SW of London). He lives in a nice, bright flat in a cute wooden-frame house. One more time, I'm jelouse...

Among all, we went wall-climbing. That was really nice. I particularly enjoyed the bouldering (see description on Wikipedia). It's a long time I wanted to start seriously to climb. I guess this was the sparkle. I will now try to find quickly a nice wall nearby (and not too expensive) before the Imperial College new sport center opens and some partner(s) to go climbing regularly.

... and I received this letter:

Your registration as an Internal postgraduate student of the University of London has now been approved as shown below.

It's not breaking news, as we found it on Thursday. Anyway, we eventually found a flat on Queensway, a merchant street in Bayswater. Single bedroom, double bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and ... a washing machine !

More info when we'll move in in the middle of August (if everything goes right).

On Sunday we saw Tower Bridge open for a rather small ship, but with a high mast.