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Montreux Jazz Festival 2010

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Romero Britto creates the poster of the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival.

His art celebrates life and stands for vitality and joy. Born in Brazil, Romero Britto lived an extremely modest lifestyle while growing up amongst eight brothers and sisters in Recife. Nowadays he is one of the most renowned Neo Pop artists worldwide. His paintings and sculptures combine elements of Cubism, Pop Art and Graffiti. Britto created the Festival’s poster already in 1999 for its 33rd edition and the logo of the Festival’s archives Montreux Sounds. Painted in strong and fresh colors, the poster for the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival represents a boy with guitar and his dog. Romero Britto, who currently lives in Miami, is an artistic activist for charitable and cultural organizations, he supports as well the Montreux Jazz Fondation 2.

The official news can found here.

Supercomputing and Linux

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via 451 CAOS Theory

I haven’t realized yet how far Linux extremely dominates the Supercomputing market as Operating System.

Evolution of the Linux OS share in the Top500 (Supercomputing 2009):

  • November 2007: 84.6%
  • November 2007: 87.8%
  • November 2009: 89.2%

All Top10 systems are based on Linux.

The 451 Group published also another “worth-to-read” article about Open source software and the need for speed.

We’ve also seen speed as a factor for building and providing cloud computing infrastructure. Vendors report that Linux is ideal for cloud construction since the availability of source code means that unecessary pieces can be relatively easily and quickly cut out of the OS.

BY the way, more than 80% of the Top500 systems are using Intel computers, 10% IBM Power processors, and 8% AMD Opteron. More than 85% are already based on Quad-core processors! HP is delivering 42% of the servers, and IBM 37% (source: Top500 computer sites).

And: 82% of the Top500 systems integrate between 2’000 and 8’000 processors. 1% more than 128’000 processors (source: Top500 computer sites)!

And: the Top1 (a Lab of the US Department of Energy) uses 224’162 AMD Opteron Six Core 2.6 GHz processors and generates 1’759 TFlops (source: Top500 computer sites).

Week-end in Strasbourg

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We had some great time this week-end in Strasbourg (wikipedia) with my wife and son. Always a great pleasure to go there, as it is a great city, and also because we have studied there for a while ;-)

We had two great meals:

  • a lunch at an Italian restaurant called “La Grappa”, really great. Good atmosphere and service, everything fresh, reasonable price.
  • a wonderful dinner at “La cuiller à Pot” (no error ;-), a gastronomic restaurant. Really worth a try!! And not just because we know one of the owner ;-) The Chef was nominated as a “Young Talent 2009” by the Gault & Millau. Have a look:

[…] Numerous gourmet guides have noticed the restaurant, the cuisine being daring, and the mixes being done with “opposites attract” as a motto. A star is born…
Here is Gault Millau Young Talent that really charmed ideal gourmet. Ideally located, decorated with a lot of taste and personality, this gourmet address is on the rise and it will no doubt surprise you thanks to an ideal gourmet menu composed according to the season, with a thousand and one surprises in store for you. […]

Besides the meals and shopping, I could test a bit more my new Canon EPS 5D MarkII, this time with my “old” wide-angle lens (Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0). I could really feel the advantage of the “full-frame” for the first-time. Great!

Full gallery here.

Ruinart Blanc de Blancs

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As you may know, I am quite a fan of the Ruinart champagne house.

Yesterday evening, we could share a marvelous “Blanc de Blancs” (100% Premier Cru Chardonnay grape from different years) of Ruinart with some of our “old friends”. Just fantastic, high finesse, very balanced acidity, great presence, bright, fresh. All this in a very classy bottle.

Really a highlight for all of us.