The 20th Anniversary of Linux

I'll be celebrating 20 years of Linux with The Linux Foundation!

Major email disaster avoided

Thank you, IMAP and auto-save!

Minutes ago, I was checking my emails and responding to someone a particularly long and sophisticated email that took me some time to write. Suddenly, the screen of my laptop was black, and my computer started booting as if I had not just been typing merrily, milliseconds before. Half expecting the worse, I reopened Thunderbird once my operating system was up and running again, and there it was. The “new account” window, where you write you name and email address the first time you launch the mail client. All my emails – years and years of them: family, friends, work… plus more than a hundred still unread and unanswered – all had vanished into some kind of digital vortex, along with the small novel-sized unsent and unsaved email that I had almost finished typing.


My computer has a strange sense of humour
when it comes to April Fools’ Day

What could have been one horrible full-scale email apocalypse ending in tears, rage and despair, was in fact just a minor inconvenience. Luckily for me, all my email accounts were IMAP (meaning the emails actually stay on the server, and I only access a synchronized copy of them), and Thunderbird had been auto-saving the email I was typing all along. So I just went to Gmail, found my email in the draft folder – all good and up to date – and just hit the “Send” button.

Now what do we learn from situations like this? Just that life is full of surprises, I guess, and that IMAP rocks. My computer can forget all about me having emails, I don’t care: they’re safe, somewhere, in the clouds…

X Prize – Making the Impossible Possible

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit organization whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity thereby inspiring the formation of new industries, jobs and the revitalization of markets that are currently stuck. Today, it is widely recognized as the leader in fostering innovation through competition.

Happy Birthday, Larry!

Today, Google’s co-founder Larry Page celebrates his 38th birthday.

Many happy returns!


Happy Birthday, Albert!

132 years ago, little Albert was born. Who knew then that he would become a world-famous theoretical physicist, often regarded as the father of modern physics? To commemorate his birthday, I invite you to watch this short video biography:

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Today, Apple’s father (and former chief-executive of Pixar) is 56 years old.

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Happy birthday.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Thank you, David Fincher

the Social Network I found the newest David Fincher absolutely fantastic. Retracing the birth and rise of the blue social tsunami, the film makes you see Facebook under a different angle, and shows you the new buzzing atmosphere of the Silicon Valley, where you can make big money with just a single idea.

The movie is thrilling. Every time I watch it, I’ve got this surge of motivation making me rush to my projects and giving one of them a huge boost. And I’m not the only one: Here at INSA, everybody has seen it, everybody quotes it, and everyone dreams of creating its own startup and living the dream of growing world-wide in a short time.

So thank you, David Fincher and Mark Zuckerberg, for making us believe in our projects, in our dreams, and in ourselves.

Ex-Imagine Cup competition relaunched by 7D²

7D² relaunched Project Hoshimi, a former .NET programming competition of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. Participation is free and there are lots of Microsoft and Intel products to win. Check out the new website and feel free to join!

Project Hoshimi Project Hoshimi

Apple.com’s surprise

Today, Apple’s website is looking funny. I sense something is going to happen…

(Thanks to David for the info!)

INSA Lyon, engineering school

Here is the second episode of a set of short video adds promoting INSA Lyon, the engineering school I am studying at. Have fun watching it!

« Older Entries