My Canon EOS 5D MarkII & lens EF 35mm f/1.4L USM

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Didier

Wow, that’s cool :-) I have received today my new camera and lens.

After quite a long comparison phase between the new Canon 7D and the “old” 5D MarkII, I have decided myself for the full-reflex, i.e. the EOS 5D MarkII.

More on this comparison later on but the full-reflex capability was decisive ;-)

As you have to use EF lens (this camera is not compatible with the EF-S series) and I was interested to shoot with a fix 35mm, I have also acquired a new Canon lens (from far the most expensive I have), the 35mm f/1.4L USM.

My first attempts (please be indulgent ;-) are quite exciting.

Slideshow function in SmugMug

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Didier

SmugMug is evolving very well, nice new features are published very regularly. Really a great service. From far better than Flickr…

An example of the embedded slideshow feature below:

http://visuals.didierbeck.com/ria/ShizamSlides-2009090305.swf?AlbumID=8565060&AlbumKey=bxxiE&transparent=true&bgColor=&borderThickness=&borderColor=&useInside=&endPoint=&mainHost=visuals.didierbeck.com&VersionNos=2009090305&showLogo=false&width=600&height=400&clickToImage=true&captions=true&showThumbs=false&autoStart=true&showSpeed=false&pageStyle=white&showButtons=false&randomStart=true&randomize=true&splash=&splashDelay=0&crossFadeSpeed=250

The beginner’s guide to St Barts

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Didier

via passionateforparis and The New York Times

I have found by chance this excellent article introducing St. Barts (Saint Barth for the French-speaking persons ;-) to newbies. Really worth a read, very funny and informative, a good summary of the possible explanations of the “why do so many people go back to Saint Barth?”.

It’s relatively easy to maintain a healthy disdain for the renowned fabulousness of the Caribbean island of St.-Barthélemy until you actually go there and find yourself up to your neck in deliciously warm turquoise water, not quite hungry after your recent two-hour lunch but beginning nonetheless to ponder your plans for the drinks and dinner to come. […]

It’s not an instant process, but there are steps you can take, places you can pause and genuflect, like stations of the cross, on your way to that nirvanalike state of a St. Barts veteran. It needn’t take as long as you think, or even, perhaps as much money, though a credit card certainly helps.

“Yes, St. Barts, I am here, at last, here I am where I belong.” […]

Too late for us ;-)

MVVM Light Toolkit V2

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Didier

via Laurent and the Innoveo Blog

Cool stuff!

At Innoveo Solutions we are using .NET and WPF for our Innoveo Skye® Editor application. Skye® Editor is a distribution channel editor targeting business people letting them edit and configure their insurance products.

From the beginning we have adopted the Model-View-ViewModel architecture. Having our solution growing we were facing the issue of having our ViewModels dependency growing too. Some ViewModel became too much dependent of others. This was obvious in our unit tests whose complexity to setup were growing too. It was time to find a solution to decouple the ViewModels.

The solution came out after a discussion with Laurent Bugnion, the famous author of MVVM Light Toolkit. At that time we used the V1 that already helped a lot in this decoupling.

Now with MVVM Light Toolkit V2 it is even better with the new Messenger API. What we also really appreciated in comparison to other frameworks is that it is really light and the ability to open and edit the user interface into Expression Blend.

So Thank you Laurent for this GREAT framework and I looking forward for V3!

I also would like to thank my managers at Innoveo Solutions who understand Open Source and the need to have people contributing to Open Source projects, even during their professional working time. A Win-Win situation and not just a one way benefit as often.

Thanks also from my side to Laurent Bugnion, great work and contribution!

Saint Barth Portfolio 2009 (10) – February 2009

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Didier

Just a precision based on some of your comments here and there: no, I am *not* in Saint Barth right now. Actually the next stay there is planned for February 2010. Unfortunately, still some months to wait. On the other side, we are lucky enough to be able to go there again ;-)

As a reminder, I am re-publishing parts of my last Saint Barth portfolio from February 2009!

No fear, you will know when I will be again “back home” :-)

Lorient

Full employment

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Didier

via Seth Godin

So true…

You will never be out of work if you can demonstrably offer one of the following:

Sales

Additive effort

Initiation

Sales speaks for itself. If you can sell enough to cover what you cost and then some, there will always be someone waiting to hire you.

Additive effort is distinguished from bureaucracy or feel-good showing up. Additive effort generates productivity far greater than the overhead you add to the organization. If your skills make the assembly line go twice as fast, or the sales force becomes more effective, or the travel office cuts its costs, then you’ve produced genuine value. That surly receptionist at the doctor’s office–she’s just filling a chair.

The third skill is the most difficult to value, but is ultimately the most valuable. If you’re the person who can initiate useful action, if you’re the one who makes something productive or transformative happen, then smart organizations will treasure you.

Vincent Bolloré

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Didier

I have the chance to be a member of the “Four Seasons Club” (in French: le club des quatre saisons), which is a private business club founded in 2003 and based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is a French-speaking club, gathering personalities from the economical, political, academic, cultural and media worlds.

The number of members is limited to 120. For me, a quite unique opportunity to speak French, my mother-tongue, and not (broken) English or (broken) German!

The Club is also an opportunity to see and to meet extremely interesting people, coming from different horizons, and not “just” the business.

On last Wednesday, we could see, listen to and meet Mr. Vincent Bolloré (wikipedia):

Vincent Bolloré (b. 1 April 1952 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France) is a French industrialist, corporate raider and businessman.

He heads the family investment group Bolloré and is ranked 451st richest person in the world according to Forbes, with an estimated fortune of US$1.7 billion. He is married, with 4 children.

Vincent Bolloré is from a well-off family from Brittany, and he graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from Université Paris X Nanterre. Bolloré started his investment career as a bank trainee at investment bank Edmond de Rothschild.

His personal investment career began when he took over the reins at his family-controlled conglomerate Bolloré, which deals in maritime freight and African trade, and paper manufacturing (cigarette and bible paper). The company he leads today employs 33,000 people around the world.

He is a well-known corporate raider in France who has succeeded in making money by taking large stakes in French listed companies, in particular the building and construction group Bouygues, where he left with a sizeable capital gain after a power-struggle.

In late 2004, his investment group started building a stake in advertising group Havas, becoming its largest single shareholder. He mounted a coup and replaced Alain de Pouzilhac as Havas Chief Executive Officer on July 12, 2005.

In 2005, through his family company, Bolloré expanded his media interests by launching the Direct 8 television station. Towards the end of 2005, he began building a stake in independent British media planning and buying group, Aegis. As at 19 July, 2006, his stake in Aegis stood at 29%. Direct Soir, a free newspaper, was launched in June 2006. In January 2008, he manifested interest in becoming a shareholder of famed, but troubled, Italian car manufacturer Pininfarina.

He is a close personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

I haven’t known any detail about the Bolloré Group before this meeting. Actually very interesting! As Vincent Bolloré, a very charismatic and fascinating person, with quite a lot of distance and humility with his business successes. And a definitely not common strategic approach (“we do what the others don’t want to do”), with a very diversified group founded in 1822!

It was also the last day of the very long Indian Summer in Zurich.

View of Saturn’s rings during equinox

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Didier

via CICLOPS

[…] Seen from our planet, the view of Saturn’s rings during equinox is extremely foreshortened and limited. But in orbit around Saturn, Cassini had no such problems. From 20 degrees above the ringplane, Cassini’s wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun’s disk was exactly overhead at the planet’s equator.

The novel illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun’s angle to the ringplane, significantly darkens the rings, and causes out-of-plane structures to look anomalously bright and to cast shadows across the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn’s equinox which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. […]

The images comprising the mosaic, taken over about eight hours, were extensively processed before being joined together. First, each was reprojected into the same viewing geometry and then digitally processed to make the image “joints” seamless and to remove lens flares, radially extended bright artifacts resulting from light being scattered within the camera optics. […]

The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, beginning about 1.25 days after exact equinox, using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide angle camera and were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained at a distance of approximately 847,000 kilometers (526,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 74 degrees. Image scale is 50 kilometers (31 miles) per pixel. […]