Present Perfect

When I moved to Spain, I was surprised to see that Paypal didn't let you change the country of your home address.

Well, it's 2008, and I want to add my new address in Belgium to my account. Guess what ?

"When moving from country to country, you will need to close your existing account and open a new account in the country where you will be residing.

For example, if you move from the U.S. to Canada, you will need to close your U.S. account and open a Canadian account. If you move from Canada to the U.S., you will need to close your Canadian account and open a U.S. account."

It's 2008 and nothing changed on the Paypal website.

When I moved to Spain, I was surprised to see that Paypal didn't let you change the country of your home address. Well, it's 2008, and I want to add...

I'll be in Austin this week at the Linux Collaboration Summit. I'll be going to represent Fluendo in its various forms, from the codecs over codeina to Elisa and Flumotion. If you're there and feel like collaborating, or just want to grill me on multimedia, drop me a line!

In related news, since the dollar is so "good" right now, I'm considering finally buying an audio player. My requirements are:

• works with linux
• plays flac and vorbis
• has *at minimum* a 60 GB hard drive
• is available in some store for direct purchase

Feel free to suggest players that work; the best I've found up to now is a Cowon iAudio 5 w. 60 GB. I thought iRiver was a good brand to get too, but I can't find anything above 40 GB

Up to now I've been using my N800 as a music player, but to be honest, the media player on it is just terrible. Even with the new 2008 OS it still has serious usability problems and I pretty much only use for playing complete albums because of them.

(I know there are alternatives, but none of them are terribly good either. And I just can't be bothered to write my own :))

I'll be in Austin this week at the Linux Collaboration Summit. I'll be going to represent Fluendo in its various forms, from the codecs over codeina to Elisa and Flumotion....

I've been so busy with the moving, the renovating, and the working, that I've completely forgotten to take the time to announce the return of the Jedi.

Johan was the second person working for Fluendo - even though he only stayed for less than a year before moving back to Brazil - and had a big hand in creating Flumotion originally. He's back working on Flumotion, teleworking (and telecommuting between Brasil and Europe, sort of), and going back and implementing the original ideas we had for Flumotion and its user interface.

Johan's been rewriting the wizard, making it completely pluggable by other modules, and Zaheer's taken up the gauntlet and written DVB parts for the wizard. In the commercial version we also have ASF and FLV now working. Of course, Johan took the first chance he got at slipping kiwi down the wizard's throat. On the outside, the only real difference I saw was the cute animation when I accidentally added a second period to a float entry field.

But really, it's just been great to have Johan back on the hack - finishing up the loose ends we left a few years ago when we turned Flumotion into a service first, and now coming full circle.

I've been so busy with the moving, the renovating, and the working, that I've completely forgotten to take the time to announce the return of the Jedi. Johan was the...

That might just about be the best snow I've ever had. On top of the one day of snow/one day of sun we got in the beginning of the week, we got another combo like that. There was an all-night and all-day snowfall, and by the end of the day the slopes had massive mounds of waist-deep virgin snow on the slopes themselves. I didn't even need to go off-piste at all.

Every time I fell I got up with a wide grin on my face. I jumped a little hill off the piste, went a meter into the air, landed, got stuck, tipped over, did a cartwheel, sank in the snow, turned the bord 90 degrees, and slided away, without any damage. Spectacular. I wish I had it on video.

Now, the best thing about getting back is having a week's worth of xkcd and daily WTF to catch up on.

The worst ? 7000 non-list emails in my INBOX. Got them narrowed down to 100 over the last two days.

That might just about be the best snow I've ever had. On top of the one day of snow/one day of sun we got in the beginning of the week,...

Day 2 in the village of Saint-Marcel. We are on a skiing trip for this week. We, that is, Kristien and me, Mariette from work, and Anna and her brother from one of the other companies.

Kristien and I arrived yesterday morning and already went boarding the whole day. Lots of sun, good snow - even though it hasn't snowed for a month -, a nice chalet, everything great. There's no snow in the village where we are, but that's fine. The chalet is not next to a slope, so it takes some walking to get to the elevator, but hey - the price is right.

Yesterday we made some excellent spaghetti with vodka, and we toasted to lots of snow during the night. When we went to bed, it started pouring rain like crazy. The toast didn't work.

But this morning when we woke up and looked out the window, the roofs were covered in snow. We got a little sun in the morning, but it snowed pretty much all day, adding 50 cm of fresh powder on and next to the runs. There's just no comparing to all the times I went skiing in Andorra or Italia - France really does have much better snow.

They predict some more snow all night and tomorrow. Just simply awesome... All of you who decided not to come with us this week are wrong :)

All right, time to go home, we're making tartiflette.

Day 2 in the village of Saint-Marcel. We are on a skiing trip for this week. We, that is, Kristien and me, Mariette from work, and Anna and her brother...