Heri

I am looking for beta-testers for a fairly simply (web) project related to blitzweekend.

Helps if you are a freelancer, a designer, a developer, or an entrepreneur and always looking for talent, in your city or in other parts of the world.

Email me at heri@madmedia.ca

thanks!

Yesterday evening, someone broke my locker, while I had 1 hour of sports, and took my wallet. Apparently, the !@#…\ who did it also broke other people’s locks.

I called the bank, and they told me that they registered 5 transactions in the last 30 minutes, with a total of $700. They had the exact amount, the different shops the thief went to, and the time.

Needless to say I am really pissed off. There was also the Carte d’assurance maladie in the wallet, the debit card, $100 in cash, and other cards that will take me days and weeks again to renew. To make it even more painful, the police said they are closing the case, because there are no witness(es). I think this really got me angry because there was a way to get the place and time where the thief went. But they don’t want to make the effort, something that seems to be well-known by thieves.

Now, I am not going to blame anyone about it. It’s best to do something about it (I am an engineer at heart anyway) so I was wondering if there was any website out there that lists all the lost/stolen objects. Some sort of mix between google maps pins with a database, and asking people if they have seen something. People would register the valuable objects, pets, people they have lost or have been stolen, and visitors are then asked if they saw something at a particular hour. An idea, anyone?

A photo of my mother, about 30 km from the capital

I received this photo by email today. I don’t know why but I found it so cool. It somehow revives childhood memories, and scream “real” to me — after a weekend talking about MVC, ruby arrays, and other virtual stuff.

I hate blog memes. I also hate assimilating countries to dictatorships according to what you hear in the media. One man’s dictator is often the country’s hero, and if you don’t experience what is going on in the country, it doesn’t make sense to support either party. For instance, the sandinists in Nicaragua were labelled rebels in the early 80′s, and that was the US’s excuse to actively support the previous governement by sending weapons and CIA field officers. However, if you go to the country, the story is totally different as the sandinist movement was a grassroots movement that was spurred by pretty much every Nicaraguan. The same thing is hapenning in Zimbabwe and in Iran, although the situation is much more complex.

As such, I don’t really want to have a judgement about what’s happenning in Burma. The country was closed to foreigners since the current governement took power and we can only guess what burmeese people are experiencing. I know too well this exercise will bring stories of torture, abuse, ignorance, violence etc. even though it’s mainly second-hand information that back them up.

As such, I cannot judge the current governement until I go there. Visit the website about Free Burma, International Bloggers’ day

But I can do one thing though, and it’s wishing freedom for the Burmeese people, against whoever is threating their freedom. I wish they have the strength and willpower to stand up.

Beyond Burma, I also have a thought today about North Koreans, Kurds, natives of Darfur.

Yesterday, I learnt that my neighbour was dying because of her cancer. This was a hard news to stomach. Even though I didn’t know everything about her and her past life, I knew from the beginning she was a good person, the one that would care and support you.

Today, I also learnt that my instructor in eskrima was also gone, without notice. Like yesterday’s news, I was just left dumbfounded. This was just the sort of thing I took for granted.

But then…well when you think about it, I really shouldn’t be sad about it. I knew my neighbor did everything she wanted to do in life. She was leaving in peace. For eskrima, I know we gave everything we got. 100%. 200%. It was short but intense, with memories of us running like wild in Montreal parks during the hot summer, doing figures in front of _surprised_ hassidic jews. We couldn’t have done more. And maybe that’s all it matters in the end.

Today, a friend then told me “an era is gone”. I agree with him. And like people who would shout “the king is dead, long live the king”, I wanted to tell him back “an era is gone. Long live the new era”

Time to move on then. And I will remember giving 100% of myself.

A few months ago, just before summer, I wrote a post where I asked myself questions on what I should do with this blog

So here is my editorial line:

• there will be no posts here about what’s happenning on the web, unless I already met with the people I am writing about. So no more links, videos or random products found on the web. If there is really something noteworthy, it’s going to be at the tumblr blog
• instead, there will be mainly posts about finished projects or work, and some occassional notes about what I am doing outside work.

As you might know, I am also writing another blog called montrealtechwatch, and of course those rules don’t apply there, as I write most of the time about services and people I have never met. Here, it’s going to be the complete opposite. Posts will be less frequent, longer, and also of a complete different nature. There is another thing though: I will try to make it as interesting, fun, and insightful as possible.

I wanted to present something at democamp, and it was OpenSpace.

But that was last month, which seems like an eternity for me, and I have moved on. This doesn’t mean that OpenSpace is dead but I think I would need to overhaul it to make a great demo. I have learned my lessons and am planning new design features that would make it more interesting.

For democampMontreal3 I will be presenting a _small_ web application I have been using locally for a few weeks and that I think will have some potential. It’s called workcruncher, it’s not ready for public testing yet, but it’s definetely more interesting than OpenSpace.

Sorry for hijacking the event In return I promise I will write a full post about it on this blog, just after/during democamp

I saw a couple of minutes ago “Oliver Reinchestein’s comment about OpenSpace”:http://montrealtechwatch.com/2007/06/20/introducing-openspace/#comments, and he corrected me three times about what they did.

This week, I also “posted about Chris’s case”:http://montrealtechwatch.com/2007/06/18/is-there-freedom-of-speech-in-canada-i-am-not-so-sure-today/ and then, I read “more details the same day”:http://blog.fagstein.com/?p=414. Steve Faguy says it’s not a freedom of speech but a freedom of expression issue and that there were many false assumptions in the posts published about the case.

I remember also “this music video I hated when I first watched it”:http://heri.madmedia.ca/articles/2007/04/30/i-hate-the-music-industry-and-sarah-mclachlan. It seems I was wrong and that the producers of the videos were planning something different than what I thought.

In all three cases, I made assumptions, I took shortcuts and I was wrong. I apologize for that. In fact, the problem was that I wrote them during the _action_, in the heat of emotion. Now, I would like in the future to go beyond that, without killing the spontaneity – and get more insightful words. It just crossed my mind that I might be contributing more to noise than signal on the Internet.

I have thought about this – and I am considering stopping blogging …. no, wait, that was a joke. No, I am considering an agreement or a contract that I would take, me with this blog, a pledge that would require each of my posts to be:
* insightful, for everybody, and especially for people who go here,
* funny,
* speaking about real-word experience, not just about something I read on the internet and about people I have never seen in real life,

Those are 3 temporary “requirements” I found. Of course, that would have a lot of consequences, mainly much less posts on heri.madmedia.ca. But on the long term, I think it would be much better, for everybody.

So here it is. My goal for the next post is write this “agreement” – I would need to come up with an agreement, yet cool, yet inspiring, yet reminding me to think and do more, and go to the next level.

Wish me luck.

It’s Saturday. It’s hot in Montreal. Now is a nice moment to listen to music from Madagascar

Lova Rakotomalala, another blogger from Lafayette, Indiana, “writes about songs from the group Mahaleo”:http://rakotomalala.blogspot.com/2007/06/nostalgie-mahaleo.html

The video production quality is bad. The sounds makes me cringe. The videos are so old we don’t know where they got it from. But I love them. Lova writes:

Both clips are making me…well, I cannot possibly describe how I feel but if you lived in Madagascar as a a child, you know exactly what I mean. ( Joy, distress and ecstasy all at once)

This is exactly how I felt.

Projects are started and launched. I go to places and events. I learn new ideas and new ways of working, everyday, to the point that I redefine myself every year or so. But I (re)discovered today that the most important things were you are coming from and your defining moments when you were a child. Altough I am not a guy who lives in the past, remembering your sad and happy moments moved me a lot and I thank Lova for that.

Here are 2 photos from my childhood in madagascar I am sharing on this blog today:

I am the small guy with the yellow shirt. The lil’ girl on the bike is my older sister. It was taken at Anstirabe, a town 2 hours from Antananarivo

Another old photo with everyone on the picture. And I am the guy on the center. The photo was taken in Antananarivo. At that time, I was going to a Catholic school (the best middle/high schools in madagascar are held by catholic organizations). It was also the time where I was running and jumping in streets.