from afar, looking at this poster on a french mcdonalds sort of gave me the impression that they had carrot fries. hmmmm, that’s different. i thought DON’T EAT ANYTHING AT MCDONALDS but i wanted to try these fried carrots! alas, that was not the mcdeal i was looking for. for 1 euro, you can have carott STICKS instead of fries. you know, they actually put the carrots in a fries container. i can only think that an evil parent would order those carrots for an unsuspecting child that is excitedly awaiting their kids happy meal WITH FRIES! c’mon. don’t kid yourself. carrot sticks won’t cancel out whatever it’s accompanying.

in the eyes of people all over the world, parisians seem stylish, untouchable, well-groomed and sophisticated, but the northern french apparently think differently, and instead, consider them to look more like this picture – more like hickish country folk.

ok, maybe it’s just this restaurant owner’s idea of a parisian. the sign is from a restaurant located in boulogne-sur-mer (in the north of france). i thought it was funny.

hey, do you see the space invader at the bottom?

click here to enlarge the photo

no, that’s not a panther in mid pounce, it’s lulu. she’s running like a wild maniac on the beach in sangatte, france. located in the north of france, not far from calais, the beach at sangatte is one of the most beautiful beaches in the north of france that is spacious, giving you lots of leeway to move around without bumping shoulders with strangers, which is excellent because…lulu needs space!

sangatte’s historical claim to fame took place on july 25, 1909 and is related to a pilot named, louis blériot who built his own plane and flew it from sangatte, across the english channel and landed in dover, england. it was the first successful flight across the english channel. it took 37 minutes. only about 10 people were in dover to greet him thankfully, he was awarded 20,000 francs (about 3,000 euros or $3,500) by the london newspaper, “daily mail,” which allowed him to successfully relaunch his flailing business and build 500 planes that were sold world-wide.

in more recent history, sangatte gained notoriety because it was the location for an immense refugee camp, housing immigrants (mostly kurds, romanians and slovaks) attempting to cross the channel to england. then, the evil nicolas sarkozy put a stop to that and the camp was shut down in 2003. the refugees were ordered to leave the territory but having used most of their money to get to france, they had no means to return to their countries. today, many of them live in the streets of calais and the surrounding areas, receiving only little help from volunteer groups and handouts. [source: Blériot-plage]

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*Lulu Lundi – Monday is dedicated to Lulu, an adorable Boston Terrier travelng around France.

This also serves up a steaming bowl of weekend dog blogging (#12) graciously hosted by Sweetnicks

tags: france travel sangatte dog blogging bleriot beaches french refugee camps english channel sarkozy

i just found out about this music festival that looks pretty good (at least for me, for the fugees alone).

the 3-day festival called, “27ème Rencontres Trans Musicales” will take place in rennes, france (in brittany) at the parc expo near the rennes airport. here’s the lineup:

thursday, december 8, 2005 – teyss, katerine, tom violence, the binary folks, montgomery, boogaloo – lotari and more, mv bill, the fugees, winston mcanuff and the bazbaz orchestra, soil & pimp session, strup, dj prosper, boogie balagan, shout out louds, nervous cabaaret, el presidente, joakim, dj big buddha, saadet turköz, IZ, desert rebel, olli & the bollywood remix orchestra, shukar collective, dj rub ‘n’ tug

friday, december 9, 2005 – david, walters, katerine, dajla, fatale, yosh, dj zebra, julieitte & the licks, primal scream, the undertones, hayseed dixie, datarock, dj azaxx, duels, brian jonestown massacre, kill the young, engineers, champion, dj cook, dwight trible & the life force trio, rufus harley & byard lancaster trio feat. jalal mansu nuriddin (last poets), treva watheva, mattafix, sa-ra creative partners, dj morpheus

saturday, december 10, 2005 – the french cowboy & the german dudes, katerine, wax tailor, kwal, dring toy, hip j, jackson and his computer band, coldcut, missill, gang of four, erol alkan, tiga, dj marky feat. dynamite mc, skim & tone, who made who, clap your hands say yeah!, pure reason revolution, superthrillers, messer chups and lydia kavina, rubin steiner & the magical black shoes orchestra, pat panik meets netik, plan b, duplexx aka edan & insight with dagha, birdy nam nam, garth trinidad, platinum pied pipers, the mitchell brothers, rob sonic, flore

[click here for ticket prices and information]

VLC is an excellent highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, avi, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. VLC is my media player of choice particularly to play videos.

click here to find the download page for VLC (available for the following operating systems: mac osx, BeOS, Debian GNU/Linux, Linux, Fedora Core, Familiar Linux Yopy/Linupy, Zaurus, SuSE Linux, Linux Red Hat, WinCE/PocketPC, Windows)

VLC was developed by a 50-person international team of programmers, the core and majority of the team being based in france. because VLC is a free, open source application (and following along the lines of yesterday’s post), it is now vulnerable to being completely eliminated because of the insane eucd law france will try to pass on december 22 and 23 (the national assembly is conveniently meeting and voting when everyone is busy with holiday preparations).

PLEASE sign the petition!! (in french but please sign it even if you live outside of france). it is highly likely that if you use free opensource software, it is french (a lot of it is, in fact, from france) so if this law is passed a lot of your software will simply evaporate.

of course, say, for example that VLC is null and void and outlawed by french legislation. there are still other types of applications like it NOT MADE IN FRANCE. that is NOT going to stop french people from downloading it and using it!! i just don’t think the people behind this eucd directive have considered the GLOBAL realm of digital media and its availability. they haven’t thought this out very carefully…

there are SO MANY free, open source applications that millions of people use lawfully every day and depend on them; i wonder how that will play out if all of that has to go away? i mean, for my site, i use a free open source CMS. even the operating system for apple computers, mac os x, is based on open source.

i wanted to feature a 3D computer-animated video short called, “mousetrap” created by yann, our friend, and a talented french artist based in valenciennes (northern france). it is a cute, three minute video, in .avi format, that quicktime no longer supports on my mac, so i use VLC.

click here to see the video mousetrap
the above link is for mac owners that use quicktime PRO and pc users. both should be able to view this easily from their browser.

MAC owners not using quicktime PRO should click here (then control click on mouse.avi to download it to your desktop. you can use VLC above to play it.

tags: france free software digital rights creative commons french government vlc media player politics dmca eucd sacem open source gnu mousetrap 3d animation

when we were in the north of france just a few weeks ago, we went into a hypermarche (sort of like a super target and k-mart) called auchan (in calais) and i was surprised to see this “buy by weight” section. i’d been wondering if france would adopt the buy in bulk system because i was getting tired of buying a tiny box containing THREE lentils that cost an arm and a leg. (or getting a bag of 4 sour gummy worms for 3 euros) i’d always shop at costco in the u.s. where i bought large volumes of food and other items at rock bottom prices. i always make sure i go there even when i’m visiting the u.s. – to get giant boxes of snacks or stuff i can’t find in france. well, now i can do that here. – except they don’t have reeses (i know! i shouldn’t be eating junkfood anyway!)

we’ve been testing various brands of coffee (we’ve probably tried 5 different kinds so far) and saw that there were coffee beans to buy in bulk. so we dispensed about a kilo’s worth (crossing our fingers that it was ok), ground it on the premises (they have the same grinders you see at my fave trader joes in the u.s.) the coffee cost 32 cents of a euro (about 37 cents) per 100 grams (about 1/4 lb). it was ok coffee (not great but WAY better than the dreaded grand’mere. yeah, i know my post was really bitter (sorry) …but not as bitter as grand’mere!

at auchan now, you can buy a lot of things in bulk: grains, breakfast cereals, candy, pasta, dried fruit, nuts, beans, chocolate, even bulk dry dog food (though i am against any commercial pet food since it’s made of horrible stuff – more on that at a later date). ok, the products are not of a high quality but they are surely acceptable. best bets here: lentils (and other dry beans), coffee, candy, nuts.

my favorite thing about this is that you are not getting tons of packaging surrounding the products, so you produce less trash (meaning less for the incinerators and landfills, meaning less pollution). of course, what they provide are PLASTIC (=bad) bags but that is going to change within 5 years when they will not be able to use them. (instead they’ll probably use a bag derived from corn and that is biodegradable).

tags: france travel shopping food in bulk auchan discounts hypermarche costco

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day.

“Keep the Promise” is an appeal to governments and policy makers to ensure they meet the targets they have agreed to in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Some of the most important of these promises are contained in the UNGASS Declaration and the 3 by 5 Initiative:

The UNGASS Declaration of Commitment was signed by all 189 members of the UN in June 2001. The governments of these countries committed themselves to taking action on HIV and AIDS in the fields of leadership, prevention, care and support, treatment, reducing vulnerability, and human rights. The following targets were set for the end of 2005:

* Reduce HIV prevalence by 25% among men and women aged 15-24 in the most affected countries.

* Ensure that at least 90% of young people aged 15 to 24 have access to the information, education and services necessary to develop the life skills required to reduce their vulnerability to HIV infection.

* Reduce the proportion of infants infected with HIV by 20% by increasing access to services which prevent mother-to-child transmission.

* Increase annual spending on HIV and AIDS to $7-10 billion in low and middle-income countries and those countries experiencing or at risk of experiencing rapid expansion of HIV epidemics.

The 3 by 5 Initiative, which was launched by WHO and UNAIDS in December 2003, set the following target, which many governments promised to help achieve:

* Provide access to antiretroviral treatment to 3 million people living with HIV in developing and transitional countries by the end of 2005. (Learn more about 3 by 5 in our treatment section.)

People have a right to hold governments and policy makers to account as they announce whether these promises have been kept, and whether enough progress is being made towards longer-term targets.

One of the Millennium Development Goals – to which all members of the UN have committed – is to have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS. Substantial progress must be made by the end of 2005 to ensure that our leaders will be able to keep this promise, too.

The red ribbon

The red ribbon is an international symbol of AIDS awareness that is worn by people all year round and particularly around World AIDS Day to demonstrate care and concern about HIV and AIDS, and to remind others of the need for their support and commitment.

The red ribbon started as a “grass roots” effort, and as a result there is no official red ribbon, and many people make their own. It’s easily done – just use some ordinary red ribbon and a safety pin!
What can I do to support World AIDS Day?

There are many ways in which you can support World AIDS Day. For example:

* Raise awareness of HIV and AIDS in your area
* Wear a red ribbon and ask others to do the same
* Protect yourself and your partners – this is the first and best way to stop the spread of HIV
* If you are worried – get tested.

At school or work, you can support World AIDS Day by:

* Having a dressing up, down or fancy dress day
* Putting up some posters (see below) – get people talking
* Selling red ribbons
* Organising a creative writing/poster campaign
* Setting up a debate or a quiz – there’re lots of ideas for topics on our site
* Cooking an international meal or having a cake sale
* Arranging a sponsored three-legged race or balloon release
* Getting your friends, family, colleagues or pupils to express their feelings and expand their knowledge about AIDS
* Using your imagination!

[source and more information: avert.org, world AIDS day]