[10:14:51] AH: Was daydreaming while walking Baka, he pissed on somebody’s step ladder, they got miffed about a little waste water, ground is wet from rain.
[10:15:13] AH: People seem to get all upset about dogs pissing on their car tires, but happily ignore the mud and shit they drive through.
[10:15:28] SF: (chuckle)
[10:15:39] SF: That’s pretty funny
[10:16:12] AH: It is actually. The French seem to take great offence about anything of theirs being pissed on.
[10:16:49] SF: Hehehehe – that’s given me the giggles just thinking about it.
[10:17:39] SF: I have a mental image of a typical Frechman going about his work on a stepladder smoking a Disque Blu cigarette and silently cursing under his breath.
[10:18:40] SF: Then you walk down the road idly looking into the middle distance, one foot going in front of the other automatically – the familiar pull and wiggle on the lead as Baka walks along.
[10:20:01] SF: You instinctively stop as you feel Baka stop – then get a torrent of abuse from the frenchman as you notice Baka has cocked his leg and is pissing carefully up the steps of the guys ladder ……. ROFL….!
Category Archives: Commentary
“You no speaky english”
Today is I have some technical pet peeves I want to get off my chest, arse, and other parts of my anatomy.
I’m Canadian and live in France. I speak and read both English and French, but English is my first and preferred language, especially for all things technical. I’ve configured my web browser Firefox (Opera and IE have this facility too) as to which language variants I want. The HTTP/1.1 web protocol as described by RFC 2616 supports the Accept-Language header that the web client software specifies in HTTP requests as to which language the user wants to receive in order of preference.
So !WHY! is it that web sites like Google, YouTube, and many others select a web page language based on the user’s geographical location (determined by country assignments of IP addresses) rather than my personal preferences!?! Especially when there is a protocol mechanism to facilitate language choice! Why should I then have to change the web site preferences and store a language cookie (RFC 2965) to remember that choice, when my web browser keeps telling the web site my preferences as part of each request I make where ever I go!?
Why do web sites insist on pissing users off by making broad assumptions about as simple a thing as preferred language? “Oh! You live in France, you must speak French by choice. We’ll give you the French version of the site.” Bzzzzt! WRONG! Game over! Thanks for playing! Bloody wankers! (I can make similar comments about language selection when installing software, my region is set to France, but I have a UK QWERTY keyboard! What does tell you about me? Grrr.)
My second peeve concerns Contact Us links on web sites, either the lack there of, that they are often buried deep deep in the web site in some obscure corner of a page, the poor choice of options such as no means to make general comments, suggestions, or ideas, or that the page is inaccessible or won’t display at all. I wanted to comment on my language selection peeve to YouTube, but there was no link for comments, just how to complain about copyright, abuse, security, get API information, and the like. Trying some of the alternative choices, like Help Centre, would not even display at all in the browser – as though the web page request was stuck in some sort of redirection loop.
One thing YouTube/Google have done is publish their postal address and phone numbers, so I’ll probably print a hard copy of this rant and mail it to them. If I had a fax (OK, I could use the computer’s fax service I suppose), I might do it that way, but I’d probably find their fax machine connected to an automated telephone system menu that I’d have to navigate first before I could get a carrier tone. Hmm. Maybe if I press zero for an operator and blast the modem tones in their ear. That might give me some small measure of pleasure and assuage my need use a clue bat on someone.
Cast of Characters
People reading my posts and haiku might wonder after some of the names or words mentioned. I like to borrow from mythology and folklore, as the various gods, goddesses, heroes, villains, and creatures often lend so much more colour and personality to a story or poetic image. So I thought I might provide a brief run down of the cast of characters I’ve mentioned recently:
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Baka: My white fluffy little dog; a bichon frise. Word from Japanese means fool or idiot, though I meant it, when I named him, in the context of clown, bouffon, or jester. And Baka’s friendly, affectionate, and often amusing personality has developed along those lines. 
Cotton: my previous bichon frise I had from just after graduation from U(W) in 1990 to his passing in early 2005. Still in my memories.- Eos: Greek goddess of the dawn.
- fée: French for fairy folk.
- Helios: Greek god of the sun.
- Selene: Greek goddess of the moon.
- Tatty – A online friend from Norway. Witty, fun, free spirited, chatty friend, who likes dark beer and light bruises.
- Thor – Norse god of thunder.
- Unclr – An excellent photographer from Norway and friend of Tatty.
I often write of dawn, dusk, scenery, and storms as I find them interesting times of change often mixed with beauty, colour, scents, sounds, turbulence, and emotion. They act on the senses and the mind in infinite ways and every day nature offers a new painting to begin and end the day. It also happens to be times of the day that Baka and I go for walks and the places we go when I might reflect on the world around me.
Summer’s Twilight
Yesterday I was invited to the Carlton Beach restaurant by a client for lunch. Very nice. Probably the nicest beach restaurant in Cannes. It has been a few years since I last was last there. Lovely place and the kitchen is pretty good.
It is also the best place to watch the summer fireworks. In Cannes and many other towns along the French Riviera, they have a fireworks competition throughout the summer. The Carlton is dead centre of the event in Cannes and going there for dinner and the fireworks is a grand experience.
It does require some planning though, as parking is a nightmare and there is always crowds of people. When my parents lived here, we’d drive the car down early in the day and park it in a nearby garage, then return home by cab. In the evening we’d get a lift with friends or the domaine’s guardian back down. After the event we’d often stay and luxuriate at the restaurant, while the crowds and traffic dissipated.
These days I don’t live far by foot from the Croisette, so it is often a nice walk with Baka to the sea side. Sometimes he and I would go at the end of the Sunday afternoon and walk along for a bit and then stop in a café for a glass of wine and maybe a light snack.
Last night though was the last fireworks in Cannes for the summer and I did not attend. Opted to stay home after the large lunch I had had earlier. Also Baka probably wouldn’t enjoy the boom boom of the huge speakers playing music as the fireworks go boom boom in time. And last night must have been a grand show as the boom boom of the fireworks seemed to be exceptionally loud, even from my apartment and seemed to go on for a whole hour.
Alas with the last of the fireworks come soon the signs of summer’s end; cooler nights and breezes, the departure of the tourists (yeah), the return of kids to school (boo if you’re a kid, yeah if you’re a parent), the return of daily life in the streets. The south of France doesn’t have a distinct change of seasons like Canada and northern climates, with autumn colours and fall of the leaves. Summer here just fades into winter, as the sunset into night.
R.O.U.S
I’ve been moving apartments this month from the ground floor to the second. The bulk of my things from a 63m2 flat have been squeezed into a 50m2 one, though I still have a large beige marble coffee table to sell or store, an old Atari Mega ST with hard disks, loads of games, and developer docs to either flog to a collector or junk (sniff), and a couple of boxes of books to sort and store on selves or in the deep dark mouldy cave.
For the most part it is done, though I still have to do the final cleaning and get the washer moved, once I get a plumber in to disconnect the water hose that I can’t do because the tap is frozen open, as is the flat’s mains (which has no knob to boot). Of course since it is August in France, everyone dicks off on vacation almost all at the same time, so trying to get someone around is like trying to drag an air-conditioning repair man by the toe nails away from the beach along the river Styx.
Today I hope to finally get my phone reinstalled in the new apartment, after a two week wait, and hopefully still have my ADSL service connected, since my number hasn’t changed nor did I cancel it. In the interim I’ve been using my GPRS cell phone modem for Internet access.
Just the end of last week I finally got, after four weeks waiting, a replacement Yokohama car tyre installed by a nation wide tyre specialist chain that is suppose to be a reseller of the brand! Thankfully I work from home and have had nothing really urgent requiring a vehicle, but I am amazed at how pitiful service in France can be. I could have taken a vacation in Japan and brought back a new tyre as extra luggage for the same price in less time.
Add to the fact the people in the north from France, England, Germany, etc. all seem to make there way to the Côte d’Azur to laze about in the sun, drink Côte de Provence rosé, and scratch at their navels.
Since moving in to the new place, I’ve not been sleeping well. Either the traffic noise is louder on the second floor; all the bleeding tourists need new mufflers for their cars, bikes, and scooters; or everyone lefts their brains at home before going on vacation. For example last night, as with many nights these past two weeks, someone came home that I finally spotted around 23h00 on a Harley Davidson that sounds like all the helicopters from Apocalypse Now during the Ride of the Valkyries.
Of course there are also the multitude of pizza delivery scooters buzzing back and forth; there have been what sounds like a Ferrari club doing time trials around the Gallia apartment complex; and then this morning at 4h20 it was a drag race complete with with squealing hand brake turns at each bend or corner. And they doubled back for good measure. All this was immediately followed by a hurling of shouts into the dead of night in what sounded like a mix of Arabic and accented French for about ten minutes.
R.O.U.S. aka Rodents of Unusual Size is a reference from the film The Princess Bride and these past couple of weeks, I’ve been wondering if the R.O.U.S. were suppose to be a metaphor for the French. After all that has happened lately, it’s a hard call.