legally free music

Guys, I'm proud. I was looking at my bandcamp stats (we geeks sure have weird rainy monday time-killers), and saw some traffic coming from a legallyfreemusic post. So I clicked, then I smiled:
  • "arranged in pleasant and often subtly beautiful ways" makes me blush
  • A minimix! Woot, my first-evah minimix =P
  • I was covered the day before my favorite band from my student town Grenoble, the fantastic RIEN!



So, pride aside, you should really have a look at legallyfreemusic. A no-fuss straightforward lil' site featuring each day hand-picked goodies, diametrically opposed to the big CC one stop shops (with all due respect to them!).

Long live!

seems like home to me... but is this it?

Hi there.

Thursday 8th July 2010 was the day I did my first solo concert. It happened at Le Dock in Grenoble, and I'm very proud of it: felt good, the audience response was fantastic, and the smiles on the photos speak for themselves.


Lots of laughs, lots of fun, lots of confidence about my music possibilities in live, lots of new big ideas (don't get any). Mountains of thankyous to my friends who were there; see you soon.

Now, Montréal.

As usual: bandcamp, facebook.

redesigned UPX website

One month ago, when blabbering about UPX, I mentioned the UPX logo was ugly, and said I was "on my way for a logo proposal". So I began with the logo, then wondered if I could also give some love to their website.

The authors liked my redesign, and now, ta-da, it's live:


I tried to keep the original spirit as much as possible (single-page, purple, simple). The logo was made using Inkscape, and the html/css was done with a mighty text editor. Props go to Brett Alton for the original css/html layout, which was a pleasure to tweak.

nude


Yay. "nude", my second homebrew demo record, is finally ready. Spread the word, burn it, pass it to your friends or worst enemies, delete it, hate it, love it. Download nude.

Yay. Le ronj-album nouveau est arrivé et s'appelle "nude". Faites passer le mot, gravez-le, filez-le à vos potes ou pires ennemis, détestez-le, aimez-le. Téléchargez nude.

[ghacks] save disk space with UPX

Howdy geek friends, I posted a new article on gHacks. It's about executable files, transparent compression, scripting, and weird Polish ex-girlfriends (though I'm not sure about the latter).
ohmygod, this logo is awful.
on my way for a logo proposal
Disk space is cheap, but there are still situations where you'd like to reclaim space.
For me, one of them is getting the maximum of the free Dropbox account I use to synchronize my applications between work and home --
hey, don't say my sysadmin I do this, he'd get a heart attack from the sole thought of a virus among my tools collection--.
Of course {zip/rar}ing everything is a no-go; nobody wants to have to open an archive before being to launch an application. So what?
Read the article on gHacks.

[ghacks] how to use autotrash to totally forget about the trash

Phew. My second article for gHacks is online. It's called "How to use Autotrash to totally forget about the trash" and talks about a nifty Linux application that saves you from the hurdle of caring about the trash:

The trash (or “Recycle bin”) is a sane concept of our operating systems. A file sent to the trash can be recovered if the user realizes the file was still needed after all. Now, the problem is: when should you empty the trash?
  1. If you never empty it, it grows and wastes valuable disk space
  2. If you empty it frequently, you lose its buffer benefits for recovery. Plus, who likes frequently doing this highly manual task?
  3. Finally, if like me, you get bored by this nonsense, you end up permanently bypassing the trash (with systematic Shift+Delete instead of Delete), which is of course very dangerous
Read the rest on gHacks.

[ghacks] do your own awesome vector posters with inkscape & potrace


 My first article for Ghacks is online and is called "Do your own awesome vector posters with Inkscape & potrace":
This article will cover a very powerful but little advertised feature of Inkscape. If you don’t know it, Inkscape is a free vector graphics editor, counterpart of Adobe Illustrator (like GIMP is Photoshop’s counterpart for raster graphics).
This feature is Inkscape’s vectorization tool, made possible by the integration of potrace.
Read it on Ghacks.

writing for ghacks


Woot! I'm now a guest writer for Ghacks, a popular tech blog.

The geeks among you should keep an eye on it, it is an excellent blog covering software tips, hints and tweaks (think Lifehacker, but more human / homemade and less Gawker).

I'll mostly be serving linux tips, software advice, and practical howtos. My dear flying molehill remains where I'll ramble about music and the software industry in general. Also, I'll link to Ghacks when I post a new article there.

coming soon: music production and Linux in 2010


Hi there. The video of the talk about UbuntuStudio/JACK&FFADO/Ardour that I gave at Ubuntu Montreal GlobalJam 10.03 will come in a few weeks. The time for me to get the video that nekohayo shot (thanks!), edit it, and upload it.
I'll post a link here along with the slides as soon as it's done.

may i see under the rug, please?

photo by jmanners

Great-looking {screenshots | videos | demos} is a minimum when evaluating software products. When, after tests and demos and various assessments, your pen approches the sheet to finally tick the functional checkbox, remember one thing to ask to the vendor wooing you: "Your product demo looks great, but now hand me your keyboard, leave the room, and let me have an unbiased look on my own"

Because even without access to the source, a quick glance like this one can reveal a lot:
  • "Ooooooooh, myriads of .vbs files doing the installation/updating. Hello, is this 2010?"
  • or "Well, the user UI may be fine, but I'm not exactly fond of administrative interfaces implemented in 1995-ish gray unresizable nested multi-tabbed Java applets using Comic Sans and GIF exports of pixelated MS cliparts"
  • or "Are these four different UI frameworks for the same object-listing purpose? My little finger tells me someone didn't to its integration homework when buying competitors"
  • or "Wow, the lawyer responsible for your EULA would have done a great job defending this dictator on trial I just saw on TV"
and the list goes on and on.

Before I go on, two facts to temper my musings:
  1. As a hobbyist programmer, I know that complexity means hairy stuff growing here and there. If perfection exists somewhere, it is certainly not in software.
  2. Also, the result matters more that the means; a useless program coded in the awesomest language with top-notch libraries and using the greatest package management techniques remains useless.
Still, this sanity check is one possible first step to evaluate the quality of a software product, and to better understand the application your company is about to sell one kidney for. This dust under the rug will be a great set of clues to start with, and will also give you technical points for further negotiation with your reseller.