tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68192512009-05-01T14:55:51.115-04:00A simple person leading a simple life in a simple city where it rains a bit too much I might say... maybe that's why I started a blog... to write when I must stay in.Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-73159265128250409002008-10-22T19:14:00.003-04:002008-10-22T19:32:20.015-04:00

Google released the source code of Android. The Droid fonts (TTF files) are released as part of it under the Apache License version 2. How long before they are packaged and shipped with *nix distribs? Don't think there's time to squeeze it *Ubuntu Intrepid. Let’s add good stuff to them!

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-67804980807534004272008-09-20T04:10:00.003-04:002008-09-20T04:20:28.435-04:00

I am currently attending the ATypI ’08 in St. Petersburg.I gave a presentation on African fonts. The main concern is Latin script, used by about 90% of African languages. The presentation and more detailed paper will be available on the African Network for Localisation website.The ATypI website will also have some of the presentations available for download.I am currently sitting at David

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-6451102364299394222008-08-25T11:28:00.003-04:002008-08-25T12:02:10.647-04:00

If you use Gnome or GTK+ applications and fonts you’ll probably be interested to see what’s been on Planet Gnome recently. Alberto Ruiz made a mockup proposal for a font selection dialog. After some feedback from the lazy web he made a second proposal. The first one was seriously flawed as people pointed out: it’s limited to Bold/Italics, non-Latin fonts almost all look the same when the preview

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-19370821510963472832008-05-26T11:47:00.002-04:002008-05-26T11:48:55.855-04:00

scaryideas has a large collection of print and video ads. Some are better than others. Enjoy !

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-2283793576800970792008-02-07T10:24:00.000-05:002008-02-07T10:39:55.091-05:00

Hier soir je me suis mis devant la télé tard le soir. Après avoir zappé sur quelques chaînes sans programme attirant mon intérêt, je suis tombé sur France 3 diffusant Ce soir (ou jamais !), spéciale Afrique. Je venais juste de manquer le live de Baloji. Les discussions et débats de l’émission ont été relativement bonne. Plusieurs invités de l’Afrique francophone, une auteure, un ancien ministre,

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-22987798292281494392007-08-29T05:52:00.000-04:002007-08-29T06:31:50.479-04:00

N’ko is this African script that was recently added in Unicode, and thus will be easier to use. However being included in Unicode is just the first step.Being in Unicode just means that some sequences of bytes are defined to represent some N’ko characters. To be able to use N’ko you need several things. The first is a system that correctly underdstands those Unicode definitions. N’ko being a

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-42176128424748754942007-03-12T07:06:00.000-04:002007-03-12T07:17:00.578-04:00

I just stumbled upon the latest project of Yann Arthus-Bertrand: 6 milliards d’autres. After the Earth from above, we can discover 6000 interviews of random people across 65 coutries. Each person get to talk about their own lives, what the dreamt of as a child, what they are scared of, when they last laughed or cried, and many more personal question. It’s really a wonderful work. It’s really

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-86207757933696884282007-03-08T09:07:00.000-05:002007-03-08T09:17:14.268-05:00

I find it rather funny when somebody I know is discovering something on the web I've been using for month, which seem like years really.Pil just discovered Facebook and online social networks. Those have been around for a while, some have had appeal, others are attracting crowds. They all have similar features but it's what they have specific that make or breaks them. Facebook has this nice

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-22864653902286921122007-03-07T16:41:00.000-05:002007-08-29T06:33:22.423-04:00

Blogger's spam-prevention bots locked this blog for some reason. Somebody has written some bad code somewhere or are my blog post just spam-like? Am I making links to dodgy websites all the time? My guess would be somebody needs to review their code or their programmers.This locks comes with a warning on top of the posting creation page. It is impossible to post and saving as draft is the only

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-77360224906389641352007-03-07T16:30:00.000-05:002007-08-29T06:33:01.642-04:00

A sibling of mine is looking for a laptop to purchase. After looking at Apple's Powerbooks we checked out Dell.Dell Benelux is charging €6.05 more for a system with Windows Vista in French rather than in Dutch. They briefly explain that they pre-install Dutch Vista on all systems and that doing so in French is extra work for them. This is rather discriminatory against French speaking people in

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-33385605032910303042007-01-17T16:27:00.000-05:002007-01-17T16:46:22.775-05:00

From Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts:The city with the most blacks is New York, with 1,666,636, as of the 1970 census. The second largest “black city” is Kinshasa, Zaire, with a population of 1,623,760.Nowdays New York has about 2 Millions Blacks, Kinshasa has more than 7 Millions, and Lagos is somewhere above 10 Millions.In case you didn't know, it was Martin Luther King Jr's day in the USA on

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1163584074816084152006-11-15T04:39:00.000-05:002006-11-15T05:00:34.390-05:00

Jake Mandell made a website where you can test your musical skills in only a few minutes. According to him, this test works and ‘is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct’. I happened to score 91.7% on my first try. The current version doesn't allow to go back and check your answers, but the next version should allow it. I guess this test not only give

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1161519443341900452006-10-22T08:17:00.000-04:002006-12-18T00:20:23.846-05:00

The new Bravia colourful advert is there.Do you remember Sony Bravia 2005's colourful advert featuring thousands of balls rolling down a San Fransisco block with delighting indie music? The music was Hearbeat by José González and the balls were for real. This year, Bravia's advert shows fireworks, but instead of fire we see paint, thus giving us paintwork... er... yeah. The ad is once again

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1160913721549852102006-10-15T07:56:00.000-04:002006-10-15T08:02:01.563-04:00

It cost approximately 200 millions euros a year to move the Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg. That's a crazy amount of money thrown out of the window to please a French president who's been buried a long time ago. Objectively the EU parliament should have just one seat. Subjectively I'd say it should be in Brussels since it is already the seat of the Commission and the de facto capital

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1158759361656531512006-09-20T09:31:00.000-04:002006-09-20T13:01:20.490-04:00

I have no idea how long this have been around but Google has an image labeler. It's interesting because it allows you to just label pictures for Google. They just give you a picture and you're supposed to give as many labels as possible. Since you're teamed up with someone else, the first label that match theirs is recorded and another pictures is given for you two to label. The fun part is that

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1158393989796192482006-09-16T03:58:00.000-04:002006-09-16T04:27:33.273-04:00

I came across this interesting little website the other day: Retrievr. It's an experimental webservice that allows you to search for patterns on Flickr, by drawing a rough sketch of what you're looking for. The search is based on an algorithm that will only match larger shapes so don't expect to get exactly what you draw, unless you draw a really simple shape (like a vertical line or something

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1155679631483004302006-08-15T17:46:00.000-04:002006-08-15T18:07:11.496-04:00

If you're familiar with computers and their multilingual capabilities (or deficiencies), you already know what locales are. Let me tell you... even though they can be very painful to deal with, they're just the tip of the iceberg.There are so many things that can change from on country to the other. For example: in French, we can't seem to agree how to write down numbers. Is 75000 written 75'000,

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1155657158202404912006-08-15T11:47:00.000-04:002006-08-28T22:46:06.620-04:00

I'm really starting to wonder why the result of the presidential elections is taking all the attention in the Congo. The International community is asking for the partial results of the elections, but we only hear about the presidential results. What are the results of the legislatives? Why does that seem to be unimportant?I have the feeling the Congolese media is focusing on the president only,

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1155222704644860412006-08-10T11:04:00.000-04:002006-08-10T11:11:44.670-04:00

If you're reading Kim's blog, you already know Google has some high definition satellite pictures of Kinshasa. The seem to have added them to Google Maps around last week.Here's a frame from the Wikimapia project with all the locations people have added for the city of Kinshasa.The thing you might want to notice is the rich neighbourhoods on the West of the city, the downtown area in the North

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1153724253898648032006-07-24T02:39:00.000-04:002006-07-24T05:15:06.486-04:00

Funny enough the English verb ‘translate’ can be translated to its cognate translater, at least according to the definitions of the TLFi, the Littré, and of course the French Wiktionary. Of course this usage has grown old and would not be understood by most French speaking people, so expect surprise and even correction when you'll use it. According to the Littré the verb can be found with that

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1150535560733645362006-06-17T05:12:00.000-04:002006-06-17T10:43:11.020-04:00

Googling "true love"Google has had a new service for some time now: Google Romance. Funny thang. What will this company not do? They’ve recently added a myriad of services, including Base, Reader, Sketchup (to add buildings you know to you Earth), etc.

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1149464398516173162006-06-04T19:36:00.000-04:002006-06-04T20:59:00.093-04:00

candidates per Party DRC -ZipfsLaw Originally uploaded by moyogo. Make haste Congolese people! Read up the list of Parties currently registered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (as of March 2006) and choose your deputies. There's only about 267 parties. Make your bets! Looking at the number of candidates -- a bit less than 9000 for 500 seats -- some parties stand out. These are

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1147892277790157192006-05-17T14:50:00.000-04:002006-05-17T16:07:01.923-04:00

A few months back Patrick Hall from Blogamundo was wondering if InterWiki links could be use to produce lexicons useful for translation.WikiWord is it. For those who wonder, InterWiki links are the links made between Wikipedia in different languages. WikiWord can translate, based on those links, but can also display the short introduction of each article as well as related terms. It's really well

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1146704775993667852006-05-03T21:05:00.000-04:002006-05-09T17:45:46.533-04:00

Counting up to six. This doesn't occur that often. Next time should be in about a thousand years.

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6819251.post-1146502968622836292006-05-01T12:58:00.000-04:002006-05-01T13:02:48.636-04:00

Just noticed Google Maps now has roads for many European countries (Western, Central, Nordic and the road to Moscow). We can now plan road trips in Europe with Google Maps.

Denishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257010028506315069noreply@blogger.com0