New Year 2005

Problem with making your New Year’s Card on homemade pre-alpha software is that, if there’s a bug, all your friends will know it…

Well, two days after I had uploaded that last work of art, I realized I had screwed up monumentally somewhere: despite what I thought, the software hadn’t included all the pictures and nearly half my library was omitted. Meaning that many a friend that should have been there, wasn’t. Turns out the algorithm to do all that mosaic computation was a tiny bit more complicated than I originally thought. Which is great, since it’s always fun solving these problems, but also fell on a rather bad timing, since you are usually not expected to spend your days in front of a computer between Christmas and New Year… I will probably write a separate post full of geekerish about the solution, later on.

But nonetheless, we made it: it’s 5:30pm here, still 6 hours to go with this year, and I am proud to introduce the newer, better, bug-free version of my New Year’s Card… this time, you’re all on it (provided I had your picture in the first place).

Happy New Year Everybody!

Update Jan. 2nd 2005: OK, I lied… it was still buggy and missing half the pics… this time it’s for real, go ahead, check the full-size version (huge file warning), you’re there, I promise…

New Year 2005

皆さん開けましておめでとう。今年もよろしくね!

去年にケイタイで撮った写真でこのNew Year’s Cardを作ったから、あなたの写真はあるんでしょう。探して頑張ってね!
こちらもっと大き見て
こちずっと大き見て

New Year 2005

Après quelques petites difficultés techniques (et une version jolie mais incomplète), voici enfin la version 2.0 GM de mes voeux pour l’année 2005.
Pratiquement toutes les photos ont été prises avec mon keitai durant l’année 2004 et, si je vous ai rencontré suffisamment longtemps pour prendre une photo, vous pourrez retrouver votre visage de star en cherchant bien.

Bonne Année 2005 à tous!

Picture canada_dogsled.jpg
Top 3 major technical drawbacks of dog-propelled transportation versus motorized vehicles:

  1. Car engines stopping randomly every 20 minutes to take a dump.
  2. Right Tire attempting to slice Left Tire’s throat (helped by both Rear Tires) and subsequently putting it out of use for the day.
  3. Rear Tire repeatedly trying to procreate with Front Tire (no immediate use, as far as replacement for Left Tire is concerned).

In conclusion, and despite the important huggability factor (very low for your average out-of-the-box Aston Martin), I would say that dogsleds are very unlikely to regain a dominant position in the transportation sector.

It would appear they have very different standards for ski level in Japan and Canada (not to mention Europe).
That or E. slightly overestimated her skiing skills when she told me she was an ace and would enjoy humiliating me publicly on the slopes.

I guess I should have mentioned the part about learning to ski before I could walk and spending quite a few winters in mountain schools as a kid.

Hope you’re all enjoying your hangover-nursing time in between holiday celebrations.

Things are still cold around here, thanks for asking. Nut-freezingly so, I may add…

One of the interesting difference between regular snowball fights and snowball fights in a negative double-digit temperature environment, is that the later involves heavy blocks of icy snow, instead of that usual powdery sissy stuff they use elsewhere. Battles haven’t been any less fierce for that. Serious efforts were put into reducing the inheritance pool, but only succeeded so far in a slightly bruised nose and ego. Not mine in both cases, mind you.

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New Year 2005

All pictures were automatically harvested from the keitai sideblog archives, the huge majority taken with my cellphone during the year 2004.

If I have met you (long enough to take a picture) in the past 12 months or so, then chances are your mug is somewhere in there (full size here if you wanna print your own poster at home).

Hence, the kanji: 友, which means ‘friend’…
For, if a few here are a bit more than friends (and a rare few are, well, complete strangers to me right now), most of these faces are the friends who made that last revolution around the Sun somewhat bearable overall. Enjoyable, even, at times.

So, thanks everybody for being you: You rock.

And have a wonderful holiday season… may you find many a bottle of high quality, triple-filtered vodka in your Christmas stocking.

For those not easily bored: Gory technical details below
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Two top reasons I should not be here:

  1. I hate cold weather
  2. My definition of cold weather starts just below 20 degrees Celsius

I mean, I was already freezing on the plane, despite turtleneck sweater and airline blanket, while stewards were strolling gaily along the aisle in short sleeves. Obviously I don’t have the genes.

Perhaps if I drink enough vodka it’ll be a painless death by hypothermia…

On the upside, they have lotsa free sockets for your laptop and reasonably priced wifi in Vancouver airport, whence I’m writing this piece on my ongoing 3 week rant about temperatures…