The swell has generated quite bug waves yesterday! We had a walk at Flamand beach in the morning, quite impressive. Never seen such kind of waves in the last 6 years…
Then, a visit to the Lorient beach, beautiful colors, lots of families. Really cool.
We had a super nice dinner at the Eden Rock. Always one of the dinners’ highlight on Saint Barth ;-)
Intensive day ;-)
We had another great morning at the Saint Jean Beach. The afternoon was quite cloudy, but hey, that was ok for our skins ;-)
A “simple” evening at the restaurant/take away “Le Petit Bouchon”. I had a cool Beef Carpaccio, with a lot of Parmesan and … French fries!
This evening should one of the “dinner highlight”!
More on that tomorrow.
Colombier Bay is still so marvelous. We were there quite early in the morning and were alone on the beach during 2 hours. Nice experience ;-)
The views during the walk to the Colombier beach are quite fantastic.
Nice evening too at the Pipiri Palace restaurant in Gustavia. As usual there, good atmosphere, good service, nice people, and very good meal.
Yes, we know that it is still snowing at home, again 10cm!
Yesterday was another great “Saint Barth’s” day!
First a great 3-hours stroll at Grand Fond, where we have visited the so-called “baignoires”, i.e. the natural baths created by the ocean erosion.
Also our first shopping at Gustavia: Pati of Saint Barth, Mia Zia, etc.
Then a very good dinner at Maya’s restaurant. Cool and efficient service, very fresh. I had first a Mojito cocktail, then a big salad (mesclun, how do you call it in English?) and a fantastic Tandori (no Roy it wasn’t so much spicy, as you would like it ;-).
Everywhere, a lot of cool known faces, who made us feel at home!
That’s exactly the kind of perfect day which will make us come back here as soon as possible…
Tomorrow should be another stroll to Colombier, with a snorkeling session.
So, it’s snowing at home, -8°C in the morning. Here it’s extremely hot, more a summer weather than a winter one, actually. 31°C during the day, 24°C during the night. We are not so far away from the 40°C between our both “homes”!
It’s very dry and warmer than the other years at the same period. The sun is very aggressive, our son had a allergic reaction in his face, which never happened in the last 6 years… Today he’s going better, and we could have a super nice walk at Grand Fond. More on that tomorrow!
Just to locate us from the Saint Jean beach.
A small video from the right side of the Airbus A-340 300 we took between Paris and Saint Martin, during the landing at the Juliana airport.
http://visuals.didierbeck.com/ria/ShizVidz-2010012201.swf
Excellent!
Monday was very hot, no wind until the evening. Wow, good for the tan and heavy for the skin ;-) No restaurant, but BBQs at the villa.
Cool day, again!
Sitting on the terrace, 22:30, still 25°C, having a good cigar after a super dinner at Do Brazil. Had a Sex on the Beach cocktail (excellent!), a beef Tataki on fresh pink ginger with hand-made French fries :-) And a ginger rhum at the end. By the way, yesterday I had a fantastic Ti-Punch with a very interesting old rhum.
We were at the Saint Jean beach this morning, first swimming in the ocean (26°C). Just marvelous. We have met also two friends that are on the island since 4 months (lucky!!). Was not organized, but as usual, everything happens here in a “cool” way ;-)
Playing with my EOS 5d MarkII with my new EF 35mm f/1.4L lens. ISO 200, f/9.
Same configuration, with a tripod. ISO 3200, f/4.5 , exposure time: 20s.
With the same configuration, I have taken also some pictures from the sky. No cloud but a crazy number of stars. Almost no light “polluting”. ISO: 6400, f/6.3 , exposure time: 30s.
As you see, life is hard here!
Wow, posting from the terrace of our rent villa in Saint Barth :-) 26°C, some wind, listening to Placebo. It’s now fully dark, beautiful sky with a lot of stars.
Wifi is perfectly working, with a better bandwidth as the one I have at home (download 335Kb/s, upload 130 Kb/s).
It’s 22:15 local time, i.e. we are up since … 23 hours. Which is good to forget the jetlag as fast as possible.
The travel was the faster ever, really no issue this time, including all our luggage on time. We were at Saint Barth at 15:45 this afternoon. So enough time to get the car (a Mini Cooper Cab), go to the villa, have a first quick dip in the swimming-pool, get some food at the supermarket for the breakfast tomorrow, and go to the first restaurant. As usual, we have started with a visit at the Hideaway. And a first walk at the Saint Jean beach by night after the dinner. Already seen/met a lot of “known faces” and friends on the island.
Weather forecast is quite good for the coming days here. It seems that a lot of flights from New-York were canceled due to some snowstorms…
The difference of temperature between Saint Barth and Zurich could reach about 40°C in 2-3 days :-)
Everything is just *fantastic*, as usual here…
Time to go to bed now. My son will be up very early tomorrow, to go to the beach.
Dear colleagues, friends, partners, competitors, customers, readers,
As you know, I am waiting for this moment for quite a while!
We have the chance again to visit our “second home-sweet-home”. I cannot say how far I am happy to be there with my wife and my son. To have the time for them. To think about something else as the business and Innoveo (although I love that ;-).
No holidays since last August, quite a long time…
So a good chance for a “hardware” reset, a re-load and recharging.
I wish you all a very good time, take care!
PS: yes, I should be able to publish some pictures & stories from *the* island ;-) Stay tuned!
As you may know, I have left the Flickr service, where I had a Pro Account, for more than one year (in December 2008). Actually, I haven’t deactivated my Flickr account, it is “just” a normal account now, as I didn’t want to break different links on my photostreams. Some limitations are now appearing on my Flickr, i.e.:
So, it is clear that I cannot use anymore this service. On the other side, it’s free!
So let’s compare a bit more the different services (SmugMug and Flickr).
Disclaimer: this comparison is a mix of facts and my own subjective rating of both services (still as users from both during months).
| CORPORATE | FLICKR | SMUGMUG |
| Overall information | sold to Yahoo! in March 2005, founders left in 2008 | independent, profitable and debt-free |
| Number of employees | around 50 | 50 |
| Number of photos | 4’000 million | 766 million |
| Founding year | 2004 | 2002 |
| STANDARD SERVICE | FLICKR | SMUGMUG |
| monthly upload limit | 100 MB | unlimited |
| limit per photo | 10 MB | 12 MB |
| max. video duration | 90s | not supported in “standard” |
| max. video size | 150 MB | not supported in “standard” |
| shown size (photo) | smaller resized images | no reducing resolution |
| number of photos shown | last 200 | unlimited |
| gallery personalization | no | yes, very nice |
| slideshows | yes, but limited | yes, lots of customization possible |
| costs per year | free, but with ads | $40 |
| PRO SERVICE | FLICKR | SMUGMUG |
| monthly upload limit | unlimited | unlimited |
| limit per photo | 20 MB | 24 MB |
| max. video duration | 90s | 10 mn |
| max. video size | 500 MB | 600 MB |
| HD supported | 720p | 1080p |
| storage limit | unlimited | unlimited |
| bandwidth limit | unlimited | unlimited |
| statistics | yes | yes (far better) |
| customization | no | fully, including hostname |
| batch organization | yes, but limited | yes, extremely powerful |
| costs per year | $25 | $150 (an intermediary “Power” level exists for $60/year) |
I am wondering, based on this tables, if it would not have been better to compare the “Pro” service from Flickr with the “Standard” level of SmugMug…
Anyway, you feel perhaps how far both services are different. Perhaps also not with the same target groups/segmentation of customers.
I have left Flickr for mainly three reasons:
It is clear that the price differences is really huge between both services, but you get something from what you are paying!
First, it was quite easy to migrate from Flickr to SmugMug, as you can find a Firefox extension to automatically migrate all your pictures from your Flickr account to SmugMug. The tool is called “SmuggLr” and it is free.
Secondly, based on my SmugMug Pro Account, I have created a new subdomain called “visuals.didierbeck.com” of my own blog “www.didierbeck.com”. Both are now similar from each others, although I am definitely not finished with the customization. I will perhaps also merge both (blog and visuals) in the coming time. All my pictures and videos are now published under the “visuals” subdomains.
Thirdly, and perhaps the most interesting: the effect of having done these changes had a *huge* impact on the traffic of my pictures! I had about 18’000 views on my Flickr pictures within 2 years. I was many times above 100’000 views per month in 2009 on SmugMug! More data about this just below.
Some data
about 2009 on visuals.didierbeck.com:
Visualization of the traffic during the last 12 months:
