Incredible, horrible tragedy in Asia with (so far) almost 100,000 people who died from the tsunami... and all the others that are left in the worst conditions, potentially exposed to diseases and that have to deal with the aftermath!! What the hell was that?! Some people from there maintain blogs that give us a more immediate, alternate source of information from traditional media. The picture above was found on this blog, and there is also the Tsunami Help Blog which tries to coordinate help in the area... -- By the way, I was "surprised" by the number of my American friends and colleagues who donated money right away (even small amounts to organizations lik Red Cross , Medecins Sans Frontieres)...

The Adbusters Media Foundation which is against globalization and market domination by big corporations recently launched the Blackspot sneaker, a converse-like shoe with a black spot instead of a brand logo.

The idea is to go against brands, and especially against Nike with the no-brand shoe. According to Adbusters, every shoeholder will be a shareholder, meaning each buyer will have 1 vote in the company... they also claim that the sneaker is 75% bio degradable. Nice idea, but isn't "no brand" a brand? I am not against getting a pair but something tells me I will more likely shop at Tecnica in the near future...

Adbusters also pushes counter-culture ideas around Christmas like: "Buy nothing for Christmas", and they post testimonials of what people do instead of buying gifts on their web sites (one gave each of his family members a membership to a non-profit organization)...

Many people like me got new cameras for Christmas and I am sure the question "what do I do now with my 2 GB of videos?!?" might have popped into others' heads. Well, here is my advice: delete them. ;o)
Ok, you can also use Procoder from Canopus. It converts pretty much any video format into, well, any other format...

First visit at the new Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), which reopened a few weeks ago. The collection is amazing and we will surely return soon. One of the most regarded paintings was "Les demoiselles d'Avignon" from Picasso, which apparently was recently restored. 

Woohoo, we just received our new camera: the Canon SD200. It's without regrets that we will put the old one away (Canon Powershot A10, aka "The pound"), although it had been very reliable. Among other things, the SD200 takes videos in 640x480 in 30 frames per second, which looks really good on TV. It is a 3.2 Mega pixels which means that it can take pictures in 2048x1536, which is quite more than what we need. Only one drawback: it does not compress the videos in mpeg and they take way too much space: with a 1GB card we can only take 8 minutes and 30s of film... of course, once it is on the PC I can convert it to mpeg4 and shrink the size by 10. 

First snow in New York... 

Christy went to Storm King a month ago and this piece of art that I see today in her pictures reminds me of how this past month has been difficult for her. She has been sick for 3 or 4 weeks and feeling like (to quote her) "a pile of shit", and unable to get out of bed.
It seems to me it represents the difficulties and trials and tribulations she went through in the past weeks... anyways, I think the sculpture is not very attractive.

However, there are a lot of sculptures outdoors that she liked, such as this one from Noguchi, and also the stone wall from Andy Goldsworthy, a British earth artist of sorts, who constructed a stone wall which goes through a pond and up a mountain in a meandering type of way. Beautiful but it didn't photograph well...

Last picture before heading to the plane, she didn't want to leave Tuck... (I know, I do all my pictures with this background)

My sister, Eva, and her friend, Sabine, were just here for 2 weeks. They really liked New York, check out their blog here http://wedidit.blogspot.com for more pictures and comments...

Wedding of Jill, a long-time friend of Christy, and Kevin. The beautiful set up is from Graeagle's golf course, and actually the bride and the groom took off after the wedding for a little tour with a decorated golf cart. Maybe Christy and I will try to find something like that in France for ours...
As I was there for a few days, I also drove to meet my friends in San Francisco for an evening at Zeitgeist, and it was awesome to see them all...

Just before heading to Jill's wedding, we stopped by Tiffany's - not the store. She is a good friend of Christy and Brandy who used to ride horses with them 20y ago. She now lives 30mn away from Sacramento and hasn't give up ridding as she still has half a dozen horses... I think now Christy wants one again :-/

I realized I didn't show any picture of the kitchen, so here it is! It's a bit small but convenient: despite the picture you don't have to multiply yourself to get a dish or some food from the fridge when you are cooking... ;) 

In case you wondered how many people can watch TV or where one can sit in our apartment, now you know...

By the way, here is the view from our new apartment... I wish!
That's a picture taken from a trail near Cold spring, upstate New York, where we went on Sunday with a couple of friends. The hike was nice and it's only 1h15 away from the city, so we'll definitely return before the end of the summer... especially because we didn't finish the hike as we kinda got lost (while I was leading) and had to head back ;)

Mission accomplished (almost): we are officially installed in our new apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn! This week we solved the final utilities issues like subscribing to Gas, Internet and Cable TV which means I can blog while trying to watch something on one of the 135 channels (suggestions welcome), and we can wash ourselves in hot water. I guess now I probably won't go so often to the gym down the street - I was going everyday to take showers ;)

New apartment

Christy and I just signed today the lease of a new apartment. It's in the same neighborhood as our current one, but bigger by ~150 sq ft and with plenty of windows and light! (No more living in a cave) It’s a 1 bedroom, close to all, and by close I mean: the vet, the gym, the groceries, the laundry, good bars and restaurants are literally in a 1 block range. Trains, theaters, more good bars and restaurants are in a 2 block range. There is more stuff 3 blocks away but I might never need to go there anytime soon… It’s almost like living on 16th and Valencia in San Francisco, but better ;)

Wednesday I am going to see Miss Kittin at the Canal Room! She's a frenchy so I can't miss that. She sings in english on electro/80 music...  Check one of her mixes. 

Update: she really did put on a good show, with seamless mixes, and a cool selection of music. I wish all the shows I have seen so far in New York had this quality...

Siren Music Festival last weekend at Coney Island. Free concert = tonsss of people => we saw most of the bands from far away, a beer in the hand. yeah. Although the picture is from 2003, I can assure you there was that much people, and I still managed somehow to find my boss, and two other people from work in the crowd :) It was cool and we ended up on the beach altogether for a few corn dogs and, of course, more beer... 

Last weekend was the most relaxing of all since I move to New York. We had this house in the Hamptons for two days, a car, great weather and no Internet access. It took us 3 hours by train to get there, riding east along the coast, but it's worth it (I guess any occasion to get away from the city is worth it).

East Hamptons beach. The Hamptons are like Deauville for Paris: it is the place to show off in the summer, and for that matter renting a place there can go from a few thousands to a few millions (for example the rental site hreo.com allows to set a price range to refine your search by $100,000 increments only). Consequently most New Yorker cannot afford to go there often, if at all, and in fact are pretty annoyed with the hype around it -> check the great site nukethehamptons.com...  

The PS1 museum started its Warm up parties this weekend: art+ electronic music + beer & hot dogs = 1000 people... (the shitty photo is from Christy's cell phone) 

We kinda let our backyard live its life for a few weeks and here is the result: a massive green mess. Now we have a "plant", which is 7 feet tall and I seriously think I am going to cut it up, unless it starts to give bananas, kiwis, coconuts or grapes soon... any idea what this is? 

Coney Island's Mermaid Parade with Moby as the Ocean king. Coney Island has a boardwalk with old wood roller coasters like Santa Cruz, a trashy but nice-to-have get-away from the city... 

As a good tourist, I went today to the statue of liberty and Ellis Island. It was raining but hey, at least I had room in the boat... The statue is quite impressive but since she is closed to the public I think it's not worth stopping on the island. / En bon tourist je suis alle voir la statue de la liberte et Ellis Island. Il pleuvait mais bon, au moins j'avais de la place dans le bateau... La statue est plutot impressionnante mais etant fermee au public, s'arreter sur l'ile ne vaut pas vraiment le coup. 

New York map: Manhattan is in the center, with New Jersey on the west, Queens on the east, and Brooklyn in the south/east. See the purple star on the map? That's where we live: Brooklyn Heights. The green star shows where christy studies, the yellow, where I work and the blue, where she might do her internship. Overall, we spend about 1h15mn in the subway everyday which is not that bad, for now. We'll see when it's 90 degrees with more than 50 % humidity... / Voici une carte de New York avec Manhattan au centre, New Jersey a l'ouest, Queens a l'est et Brooklyn au sud-est. L'etoile violette sur la carte montre ou on habite: Brooklyn Heights. La verte, c'est la ou Christy etudies, la jaune, la ou je travaille, et la bleue, la ou elle fera peut-etre son stage. Dans l'ensemble, on fait 1h15 de metro par jour, ce qui n'est pas si terrible, pour l'instant. On verra quand il fera 30 degres avec plus de 50 % d'humidite... 

Surfing Internet from the garden: the best!!