The End Of All Blogs

The Green Box

2007-07-24T19:17:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post because I'm about to go biking. Another great idea, even though it doesn't change much about the oil industry. So maybe there's a chance they won't get bought and see their invention thrown into the garbages.

Here's the full article:

The Green Box

It is an interesting idea...if it works. Seems like it does but they are being so secretive about it I wonder if we'll ever see the light of this one day. What they are doing basically is trapping the harmful gazes into their magic "green box" before they reach the exhaust. The product can then be used to feed some algae that will in return probably emit oxygen and it seems they are able to produce some fuel as well from them.

It doesn't solve the oil problem, but still it's a step toward cleaner emissions so it may be really nice until we manage to use other energy sources.

Another great idea

2007-07-05T21:35:00.000-04:00

Still there!

haven't updated this much since I've been kinda busy with work and summer in general, mainly doing sports and stuff. Anyway I just stumbled upon this article and I thought I should share it as it looks promising...yes...again.

Water powered engines! Of course we're talking about hydrogen powered cars, but unlike other ideas that consisted of storing the hydrogen in some fuel cell or super compressed tanks, this one generates hydrogen "on demand" directly in your car by mixing boron with water. It produces a chemical reaction violent enough that it split the molecules.

Remember your physic classes in high school where maybe your teacher mixed this kind of stuff with water and it made a loud BANG and began boiling the water? no? oh well ;) anyway it's exactly that.

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/energy-fuels/mg19125621.200

The team calculates that a car would have to carry just 18 kilograms of boron and 45 litres of water to produce 5 kilograms of hydrogen, which has the same energy content as a 40-litre tank of conventional fuel. An Israeli company has begun designing a prototype engine that works in the same way, and the Japanese company Samsung has built a prototype scooter based on a similar idea.

If you want the full lengthy explanation, have a look (at this rather ugly web page, but don't worry it's full of content anyway):

http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

Enjoy!

Beware guitar players!

2007-06-06T19:43:00.000-04:00

Crap.

Just bought some new strings for my guitar as I broke the small one a week ago. I've been playing guitar for approximately 10 years and all those years I never bothered trying other strings size and brand as the one I had were just perfect for me.

Today though, I went to a music shop near where I work to pick up some brand new guitar strings and I decided to try another brand as well as smaller radius strings. I removed all the previous strings I had...installed the new ones...tuned up my guitar and then I figured. I lost the nice blues sound I had, now it sounds a lot more metallic, ready to trash!!! It's now cooler for playing power chords with a lot of distortion but playing blues solos just doesn't cut it like it used to do. The strings are so easy to bend now I don't like it that much.

Oh well, I'm gonna stick with them for a while but it sure changed the sound a lot more than I thought it would. Everything needs to be in perfect sync when you play any amplified guitar, it's hard to find the perfect sound but here's one advice...when you find it, just don't go and change stuff like I did.

The 1 liter per 100 km car

2007-05-29T21:44:00.001-04:00

It's real! And it's a VW. It is very small though, but it appears it is "very safe" nonetheless. And no it ain't turbo compressed ;) It produces a mere 8.5 HP at 4000 RPM and 18.4 Nm of torque but considering its super low weight (640 lb !!) it shouldn't be that bad.

What's too bad though is that this article was written in 2002 and we are now in 2007... and we never got to hear back from them. Why isn't the car in production? way too costly?

And I'll leave you on this brilliant comment from a user about the car

Does it have to look like a space penis?

I guess you decide.
Here's the full article here:
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/gw/vw1litre.htm

Wikipedia info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car

How to produce fire from water

2007-05-28T19:29:00.000-04:00

A guy just found out how accidentally, and this could possibly have some very serious repercussions.

Here's the whole story and I suggest you watch the video as well on the same page. Apparently, the fire is being caused by the radio frequencies that are actually splitting the Hydrogen molecules from the Oxygen in the water.

Back to basics...H20 (water) is made up of two Hydrogen and one Oxygen and the bond between those molecules are very strong if you like. As for now the problem with using Hydrogen as fuel for cars and many other stuff was that producing Hydrogen costs more energy than it was actually producing afterwards. It isn't clear if it's still the case though as this isn't indicated in this article but nonetheless it is interesting to see novel ideas towards clean energy sources.

Petrol is so last generation, and ethanol, while we're at it, is NOT a viable solution for future generations if it relies on corn production (and I'll show you why in another post later on)...so lets move on already :)

How to protest against high gas prices

2007-05-24T22:33:00.000-04:00

Here's a nice article about what to know about gas stations. Here's another good read also.

As for protesting against prices going up, I'm trying to think about something but I'm not too sure what would work. One thing is sure though: Always use your credit card when you pay. Why should you? because it costs them money, about 2.5% of the transaction goes to Mastercard or Visa...(which also suck because you're giving more money to banks though) Unfortunatly, it doesn't cost the big oil companies most of the time as your local gas station might not be owned by them even though you see the big Shell or Exxon logo...it just means that this guy is affiliated with this company and must buy its gas from them.

If the oil companies do own gas stations it would very well be nice if everyone started using their credit card to pay for gas. I'm trying also to never fill up my tank entirely so as to make more transactions in different gas stations. As for now I limit myself to 20$, whatever the price of gas is. If it goes up, it means I fill it less... and I will probably try going lower than that as it fills approximatly half of my tank anyway. A quarter of my fuel tank may very well be acheivable. Unfortunatly, for this to have any real effect in order to piss them off would be that many people start doing it, and that they have a somewhat flat starting fee for a new transaction and that I am not sure.

Anyway, the point is to piss them off and I'm trying to see what I can do. I hope I got you in the mood also and if you have any suggestions feel free to share them, I'd be glad to try them out.

9/11 Coincidences

2007-05-17T21:28:00.000-04:00

A quite good retrospection of many "coincidences" related to the 9/11 event. This is some must watch videos as they may open your eyes and let you start thinking logically again without accepting everything the mainstream media or the politicians tell you.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven

I know it takes a while to watch as there is a lot of infos but it's worth it.

All your gas are belong to us!

2007-05-14T22:03:00.000-04:00

I am so fed up with the oil industry right now... they are just making huge insane amount of profits, and growing every years, and you know what? they are growing on OUR backs. They have rose the price of gas significantly for the past years saying it is "necessary".. there are lots of tensions... the world is unsafe... blablablabla... but then, they are making HUGE profits, even greater than before.

They know that most people depends on gas. If the price rises even more, people will just pay more, but they will pay, we have not much choices and they know it quite well. They don't care. They are ravaging Alberta (Canada) right now and a lot of of other countries as well. For example have a look at this document:

Shell, use your profits to clean up your mess.

And they don't care! Our own government will even let them go past its own policies concerning greenhouse gas emission reduction. What the fuck is wrong with us?

Here's another quote from a summary about the relationship between the oil companies, the OPEC and the war in Iraq:

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, profits have shot up for oil companies. In 2004, the major U.S. oil companies posted record or near record profits. In 2005 profits for the five largest oil companies increased to $113 billion. In February 2006, ConocoPhillips reported a doubling of its quarterly profits from the previous year, which itself had been a company record. Shell posted a record breaking $4.48 billion in fourth-quarter earnings—and in 2005, ExxonMobil reported the largest one-year operating profit of any corporation in U.S. history.

Taken from: 25 Censored news in the media (item #17)

Want to know what kind of profits they are making? Have a look over here:
Pigs at the pump

Now... you know why I'm angry. And that is just some part of it....

A tribute to her

2007-05-10T23:17:00.000-04:00

It's really hot over here. Been biking a lot also but tonight I took a sport break for a good cause. Here's my photoshop-ed tribute to the marvelous lady that is Monica Bellucci. Again, I started from scratch from the same picture as the previous post. I watched a few tutorials on YouTube prior to that but I still had some basic experience with this wonderful software.

So without any more words, here's my precious... my preccccciousssssss... ok you get the point ;)

Ahhhh Monica

2007-05-08T18:40:00.000-04:00

In this era of digital media and photo/video editing I decided to play around a little with some photos and here's what came out of it. Of course it's not perfect and it looks a little silly, but it was fun to make nonetheless. I love working on Monica.... ;)

So who would like to play in Monica's hair? Me!!! So there, I did it. One more thing to cross out from my life's TO DO list ;)

I think the hardest part in this is getting the lighting / mood correct for everything. For example the destination picture had some noise in it due to my digital camera while the other one didn't. Fortunatly, the main light sources in both picture were coming from approximatly the same direction, else it would have been a lot harder to adjust it. I know the final result isn't perfect at all but that's all I could do in under an hour :/

Here are the source pictures:

Frank and Monica Bellucci, the perfect couple if you ask me. Still waiting for her phone call....she's been very busy you know...

Mike Gravel for president!

2007-04-29T14:58:00.000-04:00

Wow, I must say I'm impressed by this guy. I've watched some of the conferences / interview / debates he did and every single time he answers questions clearly and honestly. Now how is that for a change America? Aren't you all tired of the same old crap the Bush administration has been shoving up your a** ? This may be one great president if you decide to elect him. He's not like all the other democrats out there as he just doesn't seem to be supporting them anyway ;)

Have a look at the debate for the Democrats' presidential election:

This is just a sample of how outspoken he is, search for him on YouTube or on Google as well you won't be dissapointed. He should probably have his own political party, but then he wouldn't have any chances of being elected sadly.

Here's his website: Mike Gravel For President

Let's just hope he won't get shot before the elections ;)

Chicken

2007-04-23T20:16:00.000-04:00

Yes I'm still alive and doing well.

I've been enjoying the weather a lot around here, doing sports and going outside mainly. Oh yes... ohhhhh yessssss... it is BIKE TIME(tm) !! Oh my god. I've been doing a lot of biking since the snow started to melt and really enjoying it. To celebrate this, I decided to play chicken against a car and lose... o_O... whaaaa?

Yeah, but it wasn't planned as such ;) What happened is that I was riding my bike with over excitement and confidence, jumping everywhere and speeding around everything and all of that juvenile stuff... when a big pile of snow appeared in front of me...it just popped right in front so I had to think fast! Looking to the left, all I saw was a big brick wall so I discarded this option immediately. Swift thinking saves lives. So I then looked to the right and saw that I could jump and land in the middle of the road in the wrong lane. That was it... my only option. A quick glance up the road ahead and I could see no cars coming, yet. So I went for it. Jumped as high and as far as I could and landed it perfectly like a pro. Only then I realized... they were coming at me! A pack of plastic and steel reinforced beats, mostly cars, were heading straight for me.

I could have ran like hell, but I did not. I could have stopped and prayed, but I did not. I looked at them right in their head lights, but to my surprise they didn't seem to even blink once. They just kept going. I was outnumbered and those things weren't a fair match I guess... so I quickly looked around and saw an escape route. My only option. I had to get back on the bike track as fast as I could. There was only one problem, I had to get over the sidewalk's thick border while attempting a 45 degrees jump going a nearly 10 or maybe even 12 miles an hour.

I got my front wheel to cooperate and jumped right on the sidewalk... unfortunately... the rear wheel didn't follow. It kept struggling between the road and the sidewalk. So it hit me: "Damn... I am going to fall". And so it happened. With the force of a cyclone I was thrown on the ground right in front of a couple walking by.

They just didn't understand what happened. They looked at me with their eyes wide open, they were speechless. How could he survive such a crash were they thinking...probably. As they saw me getting back on my bike they smiled, but it wasn't an ordinary smile. I was a smile saying something along the line of "what the f*** you moron you just crashed right in front of us but it was fun seeing you crash though, thanks for the entertainment".

So I kept going...but I hadn't rode nearly 20 feet that I realized my front tire was depressurized. I had a flat tire and was 15 or 20 km from home :)

Ah what a great day it was

One woman knows!

2007-04-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

Yup,

it maybe took a lesbian relationship for one to understand men but eh...if that's what it takes then go for it ;) For once, I find it funny how a woman ended up in the same situation as most men are most of the time when they date a woman for the first time.

It's a nice read, head over to the "Best of Craig List" in a post titled

"Guys, I owe you an apology"

ahhhh, we need more women like this one, no need to be lesbian though.

Mitsubishi, Subaru and Acura...wake up!

2007-04-18T22:50:00.000-04:00

What the hell are they doing? They've completely ruined a specific car segment this year.

Subaru: With its new ultra conservative Impreza WRX, it looks as if you're not buying a sports car anymore.

Mitsubishi: The new Lancer EVO X is great, but the base model is so so. Where has the Ralliart gone? They offer basically the same car in 3 models only by aesthetic changes...and it now sports a 152 hp engine, compared to the 162 HP / 162 LBS of torque in the previous Ralliart.

Acura: No more RSX? OMG. They just renamed it a CSX and it is very conservative design wise. The engine is not that great either and it looks to be the same as the Civic SI with only 147 LBS of torque and 197 HP. They also added a grand daddy looking Type S model for the Acura TL...I mean...wtf. It sure got the power, but it's ugly and costs a lot more.

If I'd be buying a car right now I seriously wouldn't know what to pick. I guess I'd have to go for a used car ;)

Subaru WRX 2008 unveiled!

2007-04-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

...and put back to rest.

Some pictures have leaked from the 2008 Subaru WRX model and I must say it was quite a surprise for many people. It doesn't look at all like a sport car anymore. They just terribly messed up the design to a point where it looks just like another Toyota Corolla.

First, the 2008 Subaru WRX sedan:

The 2008 Toyota Corolla:

Noticed some similarities? Anyhow, they've made a lot of people angry, not sure to where this will eventually lead. Is this the end of their Impreza model? Probably not, but they'll need to put a lot more efforts if they want to conquer the compact sport cars segment as I'm not sure any sport car enthousiast will want something like this if you compare it to the Mitsubishi EVO X, its direct competitor.

Only sales figure will show which one people will prefer so we'll have to wait some more. Let's hope the competition will go on as this was good for the industry. Has Subaru chickened out? let's hope not.

For more infos, head over to Subaru WRX News

Interlude

2007-03-16T19:00:00.000-04:00

A while ago a found out about the Tesla Motor company that built a great fully electrically powered car. I know not many people can afford what they built, but it is still one step in the right direction.

I applaud good alternatives to petrol based engines and this one seems pretty efficient if the specs are right. This is why I decided to put on their logo on the right in the "Stats" section. In all honesty, I'm not getting paid for it, just wanted other people to discover what they're doing.

I'm hoping we will someday really enter a new era in environmental friendly transportations.

Back from the 2007 GDC!

2007-03-14T20:21:00.000-04:00

Finally.

Nah, don't get me wrong ;) The Game Developer's Conference (GDC) wasn't that bad this year, but the traveling was... Everything went wrong from the start to the finish.

First, just to get started on the right foot, we arrived at 6h45 in the morning at Quebec City's Airport because our flight was scheduled for 8h20 or so. I was a little tired but eh, didn't matter much as I was planning on sleeping on the plane anyway. So we get in line in order to retrieve our tickets and what do we find? Our flight was canceled. CANCELED. Not enough pilots or something they said... so yeah that's nice. They managed to book us on another flight though that was leaving at 12h....for Newark. Not really where we were supposed to go...we were supposed to fly to Detroit and then change flight for San Francisco. But no..we went to Newark's Airport, right next to New-York city, and THEN to San Francisco. If you haven't figured it out, this route isn't exactly the fastest way to go there.

So we finally landed in San Francisco, California. Having gotten our luggages and all we were then heading towards the taxi area when a man said "eh you guys need a taxi?"...of course we did, so we followed him. Waiting for us were two huge black cars which looked kind of nice for taxis so we hopped in without any doubts or fears. But then when we arrived on the freeway, we noticed the guy didn't even turned on his taxi cash-o-meter or whatever you call that ;) So he then said, it's a 15$ per person flat rate. We were 4 people in the car. 60$ for a short ride...what a rip off. So we negociated something like 45$ total. But when we arrived at our hotel, the guy didn't want 45$, tried to rip us off again and after a little discussion we just gave him 5$ more and he left happy as a child... this is when we noticed the guys had REMOVED their car's license plate... wow. Those were nice taxis...welcome to the USA.

So we then proceeded to the hotel's front desk for checking-in. We were setup 2 people per room, with 2 beds in each room...of course. So when it was our turn to get our room, the other guy with me made a joke at the woman processing the registration like "I hope it's a 2 beds room right? hehehe" ...but she didn't answer anything. So we thought...hmm she doesn't have a good sense of humor but eh that's fine who cares anyway. So we go upstair, use our key, enter the room and.... just one fucking bed in the room.

So what did we do? Was this even the end of our problems in San Francisco? Stay tuned for more in the next blog-isode.

The Mitsubishi Experiment

2007-03-03T17:16:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, I bought myself a brand new Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart with a 2.4L mi-vec engine and got a great deal on it as Mitsubishi was and is still trying to gain some weight in North America. You got to adapt as they say...they weren't fat enough for most Americans ;) Just kidding...

In the summer, this car is great, I just love it. It handles great, it is very stable at high speed and it is very "rigid"...it feels solid somewhat. It got enough torque at low RPMs so you can easily start in the 2nd gear also if you got some passengers and want to make a smooth start. It's been great thus far.

Unfortunatly, the original tires are crap. They lasted about a year and now I need to replace them. Be ready to shell a lot of money for good tires that large. Last winter I tried putting some cheaper tires and boy it just blew away everything I liked about this car. It just didn't feel right. So the next day I called my garage and put another set of "very" expensive tires but at least the car handled great. After two winters with them though, I find I probably should have picked snow tires instead of ice tires as you tend to loose some grip if they are too large. It keeps the car floating on the snow instead of crushing trough it. They are great on ice, but not so much on snow. I can't say I had too much problems with them though, partly because the car is very predictable, but you need to be careful in a snowstorm. The hand break is a useful tool to put in your toolbox anyway if you got a FWD (Front Wheel Drive) car.

That's it for the tires, next post will talk about winter driving and Mitsubishi's free Assistance plan which unfortunately can be very handy ;)

Women are persons

2007-02-26T18:58:00.000-05:00

Yes,

You may find this funny or totally unbelievable, but it may well indeed be true! All this time I didn't know, nor did I even think about this idea at all... Women are persons...haha, give me a break. Didn't know until today, it struck me like a ton of bricks when I went to the supermarket. Oh yes, I hear you say wtf? I hear you say Are you kidding me? I hear you say a lot of things and I understand how you may feel toward such a crazy idea.

But it's true. Like I said, I went to the supermarket today in order to get me a lunch. Unfortunately I was out of cash so I used my debit card in order to pay for my stuff and withdraw 60$ at the same time. This is when the woman handed me a 50 dollar bill along with a 10 dollar bill as she didn't have enough 20 dollar bills. So she said: "Will this be OK?" So I said: "Yes no problems I don't really care anyway". So I took my money and my lunch and left.

When I arrived at my work place I said to myself, how cool is that! I got a 50$ bill....it's been a long long time since I hadn't seen one. So I took it out of my wallet and looked at it and then it all became clear. On the back of it was a small inscription and it said: "Women are persons". So that was it, the Canadian government wanted us to know women were persons. But why on the 50 dollar bills then? Why not on the more commonly used 20$ bills? This remain a mystery but I think it's part of a large conspiration. Indeed, who are the people who can afford to have 50$ bills with them? Those who are wealthy. The poor are mostly stuck with 20$ bills or lower most of the time so only the rich are able to know and understand this information. They probably want to keep that for themselves...

We really need to do something about it.

Here's the proof if you don't believe me:

As you can see this is the front view of the standard 50$ canadian bill.

Now if you flip it, you end up looking at the back...but what is this on the lower left corner? Let's zoom in on it.

And there you go... pretty incredible eh? It's there for all to see.

Mont Ste-Anne, and The Police

2007-02-18T19:21:00.000-05:00

Went to Mont Ste-Anne today for serious snowboarding business. It was nice since I went with a friend I haven't seen in a long time, yet the conditions weren't on par with what I've seen at Stoneham. It was somewhat icy and there were lots of hard little moguls everywhere since about 90% of the people who go to this mountain are skiers.

I'm not sure we can make a correlation between wealth vs ski and snowboarding but it seems wealthy people seems to do a lot more skiing than snowboarding. They put their children on skis too when they're young and not on snowboards ;)

Anyhow, it's been a very good day even though my little not tasty at all sandwich and beverage cost me like 16$ at this place...what a rip off. But then I didn't mind that much since I got 50% on a day's ticket which means I only paid 30$ instead of 60$ the regular ticket costs. Why is that? Simply because I got the "Axion" card that gives us some rebates at Stoneham and Mont Ste-Anne.

If you ever happen to go there and plan on snowboarding, here's a tip: never, ever, ever try the "Chemin du Roi" trail. Don't even think about it! It's as flat a an airplane's runway and goes on for miles. We took it because we were trying to find a quick way into the parking lot. Bad idea. Once we ended up on the other side of the mountain and the next in this damned trail. I never experienced that much pain in my front foot until then ;)

And now The Police, the great band...nah..just the cops. Went out tonight and when I came back to my place I was seeing this car's headlights behind me and thought...hmm those look like cops cars' headlights. But then I said to myself...whatever. I probably shouldn't ;) As I was driving 80 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, the car kept following so I thought meh this ain't a cop otherwise I'd already be in troubles. As I saw in the distance some red lights, I hit the gaz...for the fun of it, because I'm nuts? probably. Looking in my rear-view mirror, the car was still following me now going around 100 km/h in a 50 km/h zone. Alright I'm not THAT crazy, it wasn't a residential road, nothing on each sides of the road, just a plain straight line with nothing up to some street lights. As I finally stopped my car, the other car stopped just right beside me and then I realized...it was a police car after all O_o. Fortunatly for me, this was probably the end of his shift as he just looked at me for 2 seconds and then turned right toward the police station...

The moral of the story? trust your police car intuitions more often ;)

New blog underway

2007-02-17T21:07:00.000-05:00

I posted an quick article about some differences between 2 programming languages and other stuff and I found that it just didn't belong here as it was work related and didn't concern about 95% of earth's population. Yes, I work in the video game industry and it's been a passion of mine since I was a kid.

So, I moved it to a new blog that will focus entirely on programming in general, the video game industry and other things not related to my personal life.

If you happen to know some of those keywords: C++, C#, Quad Core, Thread, Process, DLL, Linking, Compiling, .NET Framework, XNA, Access Violation, Linked list, Binary Tree, Octree, BSP, Occlusion, Fragment Shader, Shadow Maps, Vertex Shader... And if you happen to know what a pointer is, head over to http://endofprog.blogspot.com !

Hope you enjoy it, if you don't just don't read it, it's that simple ;)

The Google Crusade

2007-02-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

Just heard some good news!

I am now in second place when it comes to search results concerning my name. I've been trying (although a little lazily o_O) to conquer Google with my name and it's not that easy. You must be careful about what you post, where you put your keywords in your text and other stuff like this. Google's search engine is a really complicated piece of software that analyze many things and reject pages that it thinks are crap or made to fool search engines.

So by searching Francois Hamel on Google you will now be presented with great results :) The third placed is owned also by me from my old account on a game developer site. The first one though will be hard to win over as the main title of the site is specifically my name...although it isn't me! Next step I guess would be to be back linked some more on popular web sites. I'll try it when I got time.

Wanna see the beautiful search results? Click here

Aside from that, I've started playing around with C# and making myself a small technical demo using DirectX managed. The language is great, but having a greater C/C++ background and always thinking about memory / speed optimizations you can do with this language, it is somewhat hard to always do things right in C#. There are many things that you just cannot do and it's sometimes a pain ;) I'll explain later on, I still need to do more tests with it.

Frank revealed!

2007-02-16T19:26:00.000-05:00

...and his bathroom! If anyone ever wondered, if anyone cares at all, here's a funny pic I took of myself one year ago the only place I could take one because there is a giant mirror: in the bathroom.

So you get two things for the price of...nothing! Me AND my bathroom as it was a year ago ;) I don't think I changed that much except for one thing, I think I'm in better shape right now as I've been doing many sports since but apart from that...that's basically myself, nude, on the internet. Nahhhhhh you'd like that eh perverts!! I'll keep my clothes on thank you.

Alright so there you go, but don't count on seeing more pictures of me as I don't like to be photographed.

Greatest ride ever

2007-02-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah!

As expected, last night has been the greatest snowboarding ride ever. So much snow!! There was something like 2 feet of fresh powder and it kept snowing all night long while we were there. Awesome. This doesn't happen often I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Here are some, rather ugly, pictures I took not long before we left. I had only my cell phone with me and the camera is not that good. On top of it all, my battery was going to die on me so I could only take a handful pictures. You can't really appreciate it on those shoots but trust me there was a LOT of snow really.

Valentine's day tomorrow!

2007-02-13T19:11:00.000-05:00

Get ready boys and girls cause tomorrow is the boys' nightmare day and the girls' happiest day of their lives. At least for a majority of females... some are more down to earth, but it's not for everyone to be that gifted ;)

I talked about that with some friends at work and it's always funny to see the distress in their eyes like...crap what am I gonna do this year? Like oh no not again, not right now please, I don't want to go through this again! WHYYYYYYYYYYY PLEASE WHYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyy... ;) hehehe, well actually it's not THAT bad, but I still find it funny.

Anyhow, this year will be the first that I won't really have to celebrate this...why? well it's complicated, I may explain it later on but let's just say I don't really have any obligations right now and I like it that way. But then I'm pretty lucky :) On top of that, tomorrow there's gonna be a snow storm here in Quebec City so what does it means? It means I'm going snowboarding baby!! Oh yeah :) This will probably be the best ride of the winter, I'm not gonna miss it. It actually feels like that big wave surfers are constantly waiting for, but for me, this is it. This will be the only snow storm there has been over here since the beginning of the winter.

For those of you who can't...well...happy valentine's day :P

Aside from that, it's been more than a month since I've lost my watch and I couldn't be happier without. It seems that when you wear one, it's hard not to look at it often like "hmm alright so how much time do I have left? Am I gonna be late? Oh no! Only that much time remaining!" etc... etc... now that I've freed myself from it (yeah...like I did lose it purposefully o_O) I think I am way more relaxed... I don't worry much about the time anymore and besides you can find it almost everywhere in our society. In your car, on your computer at work or at home, on the wall of many buildings, on electronic road signs...we are constantly reminded about the time so why wear a watch? I don't know... it looks good but apart from that it's not as useful as I first thought it was.

Snowboarding some more!

2007-02-07T23:06:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, Frank is back with new mad snowboarding skillzzzz! It's been great tonight, everything was perfect, not too much ice. It was still hard as hell but at least there was some snow on the surface which could be carved and rode like a poney....wtf?... alright I'm just saying some BS as usual ;)

I still love my board though, it handles great at high speed and it's not too bad on ice either since it's stiff enough to handle the pressure.

But then something weird happened tonight, not THAT weird but somehow I think I saw one of my ex-girlfriend's sister. I'm not quite sure though as we looked at each other for a while but nobody said anything...and it was kinda hard to tell with the coats and accessories put on but still she looked a lot like her. And on top of it all, she actually seemed relaxed and maybe even nice to talk to which she hasn't been in the past as she was struggling with many problems in her life. Anyhow...it stayed that way and I think it was for the best anyway, or so I keep telling me ;) Bah, the farther I stay from her crazy family the better it is I guess. I just don't want to go nuts again......ahhh women... ;)

That was my evening...a nice one actually, I'm back to snowboarding again after a short 2 weeks break of job overtime and other stuff. Did I mention I liked snowboarding? Nah I really do I swear. That's the best sport there is beside biking ;)

First drawing

2007-02-03T01:53:00.000-05:00

Yeah,

tonight I was just bored...so bored like never before. Don't know why, those things happen eh? So while I talked with a friend of mine about not being too good anymore artistically speaking because my job doesn't require much artistic skills at all but rather logical thinking... I thought..meh, why not start drawing things just for fun?

So I took the first piece of paper I found on my desk, which was an enveloppe from my cable company's bill and I took the first pencil I found which was a CD/DVD marker and I drew something... here's what came out of it in all its glory for a 5 min drawing: (yeah the lighting is bad I took it with my digital camera...don't have a scanner)

And that is just the beginning my friends!

Fox News gets owned by Clinton

2007-01-28T22:52:00.000-05:00

Nothing more to say, it's all in there for your viewing pleasure ;)

I wish though that presidents or prime ministers or whatever they're called, would be that honest and that provocative. I mean, it just cannot be any clearer after the "interview" ;) It just goes straight to the facts and hits the bad interviewer right in the face.

Amazing snowboard descent

2007-01-14T15:19:00.000-05:00

Simply amazing, this pike is very steep and even then it doesn't always look steep on film. This was filmed in Alaska and is part of a snowboard video called "First Descent" featuring Shaun White and others.

Snowboard buying guide

2007-01-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to share what I've learned and read if you're into buying a new snowboard.

There are 3 kinds of snowboard:

Freestyle: If you want to play a lot in the snowpark on the rails and jumps, you probably wants a freestyle snowboard as it is more flexible so it helps taking off and landing smoothly. On the other hand, this board will be less stable at high speed as it will tend to shake a lot as it is too soft. This board uses soft boots.
Freeride: If you mainly wanna cruise around, go into the wood and go relativly fast, you want a freeride board as it got a harder flex. This board uses soft boots.
Carving: If you just wanna carve hard and go fast, this board is for you. But then don't expect to go anywhere else then on groomed trails as this board is very hard and doesn't forgive much. This board uses hard boots such as alpin skiing boots.

Next step, choose a board based on your height and weight. The more you weight, the more you will want to pick a board with a harder flex. As for your height, the taller you are, the taller your board should be. It seems there isn't any perfect combinaison though, you must find what's best for you. Keep in mind that a tall board will help be more stable at high speed, but it will probably have a greater turn radius also. It won't be as manoeuverable as a smaller board.

Another thing to watch for is the width of the board in the middle. Most boards seems to be made for size 10 or less as this seems to be the most common denominator. So if you got bigger feet, try to choose a board that is made especially for that. Most companies offer wide versions of their boards and it helps a lot as you don't want your toes to hit the ground while you turn or else you'll lose any grip you have as it's hard to carve with your boots ;)

Personnaly, here's what I picked:
Height: 6'2''
Weight: 210 lbs
Foot size: 10 and a half

So I chose a board that was wide, had a somewhat hard flex (but not TOO much) and was tall enough for me. The winner is?

Rossignol One, size 161+ ( + means wide )

Auto industry adapting gradually

2007-01-05T13:41:00.000-05:00

Now that's encouraging, it seems car companies are starting to look at serious alternatives to standard petrol derived gaz.

Is the auto industry taking the green road?

In terms of emission standards, especially for automobiles, California is always one step ahead of all the other U.S. states and, obviously, the rest of the continent. At the L.A. Auto Show, it was all too evident. Manufacturers want to show the whole world that they are pioneers in thegreen movement. In 2006, General Motors and all its divisions united their efforts in order to present an impressive host of eco-friendly vehicles.

But it seems though the problem with hydrogen is that even though it produces water when it is used to produce energy, it is hard to produce this hydrogen itself. We are somewhat forced back to using petrol, nuclear power plants or hydro-eletricity in order to extract this hydrogen. Maybe the key is there though. Maybe there's a way we haven't uncovered yet as to how we can easily produce hydrogen as this element is so easily found on earth, yet it seems it is always combined as it is unstable stand alone.

Quick and dirty

2007-01-04T23:22:00.000-05:00

Aww, quick and dirty? yeah this post is. Why? Dunno.

Just wanted to talk about what's going on here in Quebec city, about the temperature mainly ;) It's strange, I went snowboarding this evening from 18h to 22h (because it's cheaper and there are less people also = more fun ;)) it was all fun and all...but it felt like spring! We are in january and the temperature was around 4 or 5 degrees Celcius in the evening! It's nice, but not so much for the snow as it was probably melting...and we need more snow, not more rain.

It seems to me that global warming has indeed started and is somewhat here to last also. What I fear is that this thing is probably irreversible... I mean, even if we stop right now emitting CO2 and NOx gaz, there will still be a good amount of them present in the atmosphere so the warming we are seeing now is probably gonna amplify anyway. I know the oceans can absorb (or emit?) some of those gaz but I'm not too sure if everything would eventually stabilize and be restored back to a level it was before.

The very long term futur doesn't seem too bright... just like the dinosaurs, maybe we will someday vanish from the surface of the earth entirely as a specie, but then, it'll be somewhat our own fault. Maybe we're not that much more intelligent then those prehistoric species back then ;) At least we can think they at least did nothing wrong that killed them all unlike us.

Now, let's see if Stephen Harper does anything concrete about this.......... hahaha...yeah right.

The 10th Dimension for dummies

2006-12-30T20:42:00.000-05:00

Yes finally!

I've been waiting for this to happen all my life... an explication for the tenth dimension!! Seriously, it is worth it to check it out ;) The video explains all the possible dimensions and it's the first time I see something this well done in order to explain such things.

have a look here

if it doesn't work, here's the official homepage by the guy who wrote a book about it

http://www.tenthdimension.com/

What's great about it is that the theory for lower dimensions seems to apply for higher dimensions. For example, if you fold the 2nd dimension into a 3rd dimension, you can travel on the 2nd dimension instanteously anywhere. So by folding the 3rd dimension...who knows what we could do! ;)

I'll leave you on this simple tought

I will follow you into the dark

2006-12-29T15:06:00.000-05:00

Nice song, fun and easy to play as well. Here's the best guitar tab I could find. There are only the chords but it's enough, you can easily improvise the picking afterwards and find what sounds the best. It doesn't have to be perfect you know, else it loses its soul.

So here are the Guitar Tabs

"If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied,
illuminate the noes on their vacancy signs.
If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
then I'll follow you into the dark"

Lost my watch!

2006-12-28T20:17:00.000-05:00

Holy crap.

I just lost my watch :( Went snowboarding today and somehow I managed to lose it. Don't know what happenned, the bracelet doesn't even open itself fully it just loosen up a bit when I detach it (which I never do anyway). I had this watch for like 4 or 5 years now... it's sad. I was beginning to get all sentimental with it. I've been through many things in my life and where was this watch? always on my arm...it followed me everywhere I went...it was loyal, quiet, beautiful...but today...it left. Left to pursue its destiny...which I think is not a good one as it probably lies under 1 foot of snow.

This is a sad day I tell you.

Death Cab For Cutie

2006-12-28T14:14:00.000-05:00

A not so new band, surfing on the EMO wave. But what a band. I happenned to rediscover them recently as I was probably in a EMO kind of mood who knows ;) Anyhow, they are amazing. Great songs, great lyrics, they are simply natural and simple.

I put a link to their official web site in the links section to your right if you want to have a look at what they do and who they are. You won't regret it. I admit that it took me quite a while to learn to like their songs as they are not so easily grasped. Once you're in though, it's a one way trip to their world. It's hard to go back.

Here are some of the songs I like if you want to have a look at their videos also you can find many on YouTube

I will follow you into the dark
Soul meets body
Summer Skin
Someday you will be loved

Amped 3

2006-12-27T23:38:00.000-05:00

I've been playing somewhat a lot of Amped 3 lately so I thought I might give a brief review of the game for the Xbox 360 even though it isn't all that new.

To be fair, I wasn't expecting anything from this game since the first Xbox version didn't quite let me wanting for more. On the contrary, I remember playing "Cool Boarder" at a friend's place back then on the PS1 and had much more fun with it. Having said that, I found Amped 3 to be actually quite good!

Yes, I like the game. You may feel desoriented at first since there isn't really a linear path to it. What you basically do is you show off your mad snowboarding skillz to photographs and other people while doing awesome tricks and stunts. There's quite a wide variety of terrains and mountains to play on once you complete all the "quests" and challenges.

The graphics are OK. They aren't the best in the industry, but I like the visual style they used. Somewhat old school, retro and funky. You can see very far ahead as the terrain is dynamically refined while you move around. I can tell you they implemented this quite well as anything this dynamic isn't very hardware friendly when it comes down to programming and performances you want to get out of the box.

The music choice is OK also. It could have been a little bit better maybe but then maybe it's only a personnal preference. It fits the snowboarding theme very well though.

As for the gameplay itself, it can get very repetitive, but then I didn't expect it to be otherwise since this is a sport game after all. They did manage though to make enough "on the side" stuff to keep it somewhat varied. What I like the most I guess is that you can just pick this game, drop at the top of a mountain and go down and fly doing big airs and rails and not care about anything else.

Overall, I'd give this game a B+ grade.

Navigation bar is back

2006-12-27T23:00:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I just put it back on, cause there's a way to hide it with some "clever" CSS "hacking". I figured many people came here by clicking on the "Next Blog" button and so were probably stuck on my page afterwards ;) Wasn't all that fair...so I put it back, but with the black style which doesn't seem to show it all that much which is kinda nice. I also figured a way to hide the ugly black line under it and I blended the whole page background color with it so it doesn't look like a freakin' bar anymore ;)

Updates and new design

2006-12-27T19:28:00.000-05:00

Got tired of the old one and got tired of having to maintain it. This time I just used a regular blogspot theme instead of making an entirely new one. I tweaked it a little but not much, didn't want to waste time on that.

Back to the roots, back to my own personnal blog after a racing related video fest. Been busy with Christmas, seeing my family and friends. It was nice this year, except for a few things, but nothing's perfect. I wish that I could have seen my older sister this Christmas but she moved "permanently" in France 2 months ago. The plane tickets would have cost too much anyway so I'll probably go and see her either this summer or next winter... next winter sounds like a good idea :)

Did I mention I was back into snowboarding? Hehe, yup, can't wait to go in the Alpes so going there next winter will probably be a good move :D The canadian Rockies will have to wait. Anyway, it may sounds a bit silly, but since one of my ex girlfriends moved in Alberta, I'm not hard pressed to go there. I know there isn't a single chance that I'll even see her because she doesn't even ski or snowboard and she's in Edmonton which is nowhere near the mountains anyway (4 hours or so road trip). I'll let her in her gaz fields.

Thank you Bush, thank you Stephen Harper, thanks to all of you as--oles, we're beggining to have warmer winters. But wait...warmer winters? shouldn't it be just great? NO!!! We need the snow!! We need the cold! (seriously) Here in Quebec it's been the first time we had a green Christmas this year...not enough snow on the ground. Didn't feel like Christmas much. Those aren't the primary reasons though why global warming is a bad thing ;)

It seems though this is a delicate subject. People aren't willing to sacrifice anything for the well being of us all. We don't see much into the future. Money is driving our lives...money, money, money...nothing else...ahh wait, yeah love and/or sex is as well but that's another matter ;) I know I have my faults too in this also. I could and maybe should have bought a more fuel efficient car instead of a "sport" car... and yeah it's hard when you like something to let it go. Do what I say but don't do as I do ;)

On a more positive note, I'll go snowboarding tomorrow morning :) I usually go to Stoneham, a well known ski moutain near Quebec city that has lots of rails and jumps. I put some links for the major ski/snow mountains around here like the Mont Ste-Anne, Stoneham, Massif de la petite riviere and Mont Tremblant (near Montreal). Although my experience is limited to Quebec's province and Vermont (USA) when it comes to alpin skiing / snowboarding I can say those are real nice destinations.

Back to snowboarding

2006-12-17T20:33:00.000-05:00

Yes, back to snowboarding after all those years. Been skiing a lot and decided I needed some more challenges right now...so...BACK TO SNOWBOADING baby! It's been something like 10 years since I rode a board, but it's not something you seem to forget. It's all coming back nice and fast ;)

Just got myself a 2007 Rossignol One snowboard and from what I've tried, it seems pretty good. Got just enough flex, but then not too much so high speed carving won't be much of a problem.

Big Air competitions

2006-10-31T23:49:00.000-05:00

Winter's coming! ...along with some BIG AIR competitions!
Here are some videos from the US OPEN competition. The camera position doesn't do the jumps justice as you can't see the lenght and the height properly but it's still awesome nonetheless

Ski

Oakley Moutain Biking video

2006-10-31T18:33:00.000-05:00

I want to ride my bike again! Stupid freezing rain... oh, well anyway, enjoy this clip

Too much crap on the web

2006-10-30T22:40:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I'm sorry to say it's not so easy finding good racing related videos on the web. I just don't want to post uninteresting stuff and most of them are so... it'll take a while maybe before I'll post any new video. I promise though that the next ones WILL be great, awesome, jaw-dropping, head exploding, brainwashing (?) :)

On a side note...don't watch too many racing videos. I got 2 tickets in 2 weeks lol. That ain't good...that ain't good. Ah but yeah, one was a parking ticket so totally unrelated :P Anyway, here's a tip: Just make sure you don't watch those videos before driving your car or bike. One cost me 150$ and I lost like 3 points on my permit. The parking ticket was much cheaper fortunatly, only 42$...but still.

One thing's bad is that I had already lost 2 points on my permit with a speeding ticket a year back so now I'll probably have to shell even more money when I'll pay for my licences next year... we'll see. I may sound totally irresponsible on the road but...I NEVER EVER had ANY ACCIDENT in 8 years. Not a single one. And I'm not planning on having any until I get my motorbike heheh, just kidding.

cya next time

Isle of Mann revisited

2006-10-28T00:45:00.000-04:00

Dirt bike aerial ballet

2006-10-25T22:53:00.000-04:00

Let them fly!

NYC Bike messenger race

2006-10-25T20:01:00.000-04:00

One crazy bike race, but probably the most fun as well ;)

Rally, subaru impreza

2006-10-18T22:36:00.000-04:00

Wanna see how it feels to be in a rally race car? There ya go.

Ghost Rider

2006-10-18T20:33:00.000-04:00

A classic. A guy in Europe called Ghost Rider races on his motor bike on public roads.

Dutch Border

Taunting the Police

Turbo

Isle of Mann

2006-10-17T19:24:00.000-04:00

THE craziest race around the world. Going 200 MPH on street roads around an island.

Overview of the race And one lap captured on a mounted camera

Now THAT's some racing ;)

Motorbike

2006-10-11T20:15:00.000-04:00

Next step in life... the motorbike.

It's been almost 2 years... two years thinking about getting myself a sport bike like I always wanted. Just last weekend, I went to Montreal because my sister was getting maried (!), and while I was walking at the Mont St-Bruno along with my other older sister, it all became clear. I want a motorbike badly :) I was seeing myself on a trip accros Canada on a nice sport bike.

Am I visionnary? yeah probably, at least that's what I keep telling myself in order to stay focused on my crazy ideas... I just feel like it's the right time also to do that in my life. I don't have kids, no house to pay...and most of all, I don't have a crazy girlfriend scared to death at the sound of the word "motorcycle".

Unfortunatly, Quebec's government isn't beeing too sweet to me since the cost for owning a motorbike is going to rise from 300$ per year to something like 1300$ for a sport bike of more than 401 cc....which means virtually EVERY sport bike there is... that's a lot of money. Not to mention the cost of the insurances for that, it's pretty ugly.

Anyway, I plan on taking the required courses and get my "riding" license next spring. It takes a while in order to be able to ride alone here in Quebec, so in 2 years I'll have the right to do as I please so I'll see then what I'll do.

this is an ongoing project... more to come later this year.

Where am I?

2006-08-03T21:02:00.000-04:00

Oh right...I'm here.

Heh..not much updates "recently" ;) Been somewhat like 3 months since I posted on this blog. I noticed no one is still reading this. Oh well, maybe some will come back since I plan to go and update it more often from now on.

I've been kinda busy elsewhere. Mostly doing sports and other outdoor activities, trying new stuff..meeting women ;) It's been a great summer so far, really enjoying it. Talking about sports, I've been doing somewhat a lot of biking because I live near a very neat bike trail. I think I already talked about it a while back... anyway, I sometimes find it funny because I only have a moutain bike but not a road bike like the one they use on the "Tour de France". What's funny about that is that many people got race bikes and they got all the outfit and everything, but humbly ;), I can race most of them on my bike even though it's half as fast. Been training a lot and it's now paying off ;) Always fun to go and pass everybody on my way...feels like I'm driving my car, but at least I got the reward of being myself faster than everybody on the road instead of cheating with a faster car and being crazy.

Ok those are probably macho stuff but eh...don't tell me it's not fun or you'll be lying to yourself ;)

Aside from that, I started playing my guitar again and wow, can't stop playing it since then. I've got a Godin eletric guitar and I feel it is quite nice...but once I played a Gibson Les Paul guitar that my cousin bought and I can't stop thinking about it. The feel of it is so nice, as is the sound... must. have. a. les. paul. guitar....but dang..they aren't cheap :( You got to shell something like 1500$ or 2000$ for a good one. So I think I'll stick with my Godin until I REALLY need another one.

Because I know anyway where this cash will go, to a brand new Snowboard. Oh yeah baby, this winter I'm back to snowboarding :) I need some new challenges, been skiing a lot, snowboard-ed a little when I was something like 14 or 15...11 years later...back to snowboarding!!! But don't get me wrong, I still LOVE skiing as it always been a passion of mine...but like I said, I feel like taking more challenges, to keep life entertaining. If it's too easy it's boring right? If it's too easy you don't learn, you don't grow up, you just stay where you are, in your own confort zone until one day everything blows up in your face BOOM! And now you gotta get back on your feet and learn how to live again. Challenges keeps you one step ahead of life :P I mean it.

that's it for today! until next day!

cya

Pong, with a vengeance!

2006-05-23T19:38:00.000-04:00

Woah, just found out a very cool game of pong that uses fluid dynamics :) Visually it is incredible, and gameplay wise it is awesome, it's a nice twist of the old atari game.

You can try it out at

www.plasmapong.com

try to beat level 17 :) That's my current high score, will probably do better so watch out.

Long time no see

2006-05-20T15:41:00.000-04:00

Yeah it's been a while since I posted here, I kinda lost interest. Been busy elsewhere :) Anyway just wanted to share a precious moment I just had today.

For a month or so, I thought my answering machine was broken and I couldn't find how it happenned nor what was the problem. I verified the phone jack in the wall and all that...but still couldn't see anything wrong... so a month passed and I kept rushing to the phone everytime it rang. I thought mmm maybe I should buy another one, but then I wasn't so much in a hurry since I had 2 phones that worked mostly OK.

but then, today, I wanted to play guitar so I moved my amp in the living room near the phone as I wanted to plug it in the same plug. So I moved the furniture that was in front of the plug and heard a "clunk" sound as if something fell to the ground. As I looked, I noticed it was a big black eletric plug with a transformer. I thought, oh, I just unplugged the light....but then wait...this ain't the light's plug...this is the phone plug o_O

So hmm...I plugged it back and tadam! the lights on my phone came back to life along with my answering machine....so...wasted a month with an unplugged phone that was working on its internal battery :D It seems the answering machine part of the phone didn't bother to work on a battery probably because it takes too much juice. So.....hehe that was it. I feel kind of dumb now not having checked this out in a whole month.

Anyway, I don't have to tell you how I laughed when I found this out... the moral of this story: Do not ever take anyhting for granted :)

New Tomb Raider game

2006-04-15T18:56:00.000-04:00

Just tried the new Tomb Raider game "Tomb Raider : Legend" and woah this one is really nice after the crappy sequel they brought us two years ago. It is much more dynamic and fluid, Lara's movement are just way better and really tweaked to the bone (or the boobs?) Yeah...they even incorporated some real-time dynamic boob bounce, those are some physic calculation that aren't wasted I tell you ;)

Ran very well on my NVIDIA 6600 GT with everything maxed in 1024 x 768. Nice game, but I must say the combats are not that good. Haven't played the full game though, only the demo so I won't do a full review as it probably won't reflect the whole game at all. The demo had great music and sounds though, it looked very well polished.

If anyone wants to try it out, I suggest FileFront for downloading demos, fast, reliable and you mostly never have to wait or create an account/signup to download anything.

www.filefront.com

Bike time!

2006-04-15T18:45:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah, finally mostly all the snow has melted so we can now enjoy some cool bike time everywhere :) One nice place to go for moutain biking is the Mont Ste-Anne about 1 hour from Quebec City. You'll probably see me there quite often this summer, or on the Transcanadian Bike Highway ( or whatever you call that ;)). This thing was a old train track that has been removed and paved to build the nicest bike track I've seen. It is really transcanadian as you can go from one ocean to the other if you wish...never stop...it'll probably take you quite a while though but the point is you can do it if you like ;)

Never stop exploring.

GDC Part 2 or...old news?

2006-04-10T20:50:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I guess I'm a little late to talk about the GDC since it's been 2 weeks since then. So I guess I'll just skip the blabla of the conferences. It was nice in general, but some conferences were pretty useless... and some were basically the same we saw at the Montreal's Game Summit.

So to sums it up: bad food, great hotel, nice and clean city, lots of important names from the game industry, lots of speeches and then some useless ones.

How do I rate it? B+

The most interesting conference I guess was unsurprisingly Nintendo's. I wish they would have showed us more of the Revolution though...bah, needs to wait for the E3. Just saw some pictures from a game that will be on the Revolution and I must say I'm really impressed. It looks really good, if not on par with what we can find on "Next Gen" consoles for now so I wouldn't be surprise if Nintendo made the right move and have a cheaper console for everyone with every budget size to enjoy. AND DID I MENTION I CAN'T WAIT TO TRY THE CONTROLLER? ;)

sorry for the caps but...this console truly feels like a revolution...a breath of fresh air in the now somewhat dull console market. I'm not really impressed anymore by cool graphics or even physic...I want some real and fun gameplay. Just like Oblivion :) I wouldn't care if the graphics weren't that good, at least the gameplay is there, I love it when I can explore a world...did I mention I have a Indiana Jones in me? ;)

Anyway, I'm not quite a Nintendo fanboy, but I beleive in great games (and not great money making sequels of sequels with better graphics.....boring) and I think they are in the right path. Let's see what they do.

that's it for today, gonna watch 24! ;)

If anyone really wants to hear about the GDC drop me a comment or else I won't mention it again.

GDC Summary - Part 1

2006-03-26T16:59:00.000-05:00

Just came back from San Jose, California where we attended the 2006 Game Developper Conferences. Pretty long trip...takes a full day back and forth and 3 planes on each trip, but anyway it was worth while.

First plane was from Quebec to Toronto, then Toronto to Las Vegas and then a last one from Las Vegas to San Jose. Unfortunatly (or fortunatly), Quebec's plane was late and so we missed our flight in Toronto. So they booked us on another flight going directly to San Fransisco which is a lot closer to San Jose than Las Vegas and from there we took a shuttle up to San Jose. I sais fortunatly because it allowed us to skip one plane trip. That hasn't been the case when we came back though and eh...I had to see Vegas anyway.

I must say I was kinda deceived from what I saw of Las Vegas...it's basically just one big street where all the big huge casinos and stuff are and the rest is kinda boring. The moutains around though were really awesome, I wish we could have gone hiking over there :) Someday...someday...I will make a road trip down there and see the grand canyon, the desert.

here are some pictures of when we came back in Las Vegas:

As for San Jose, it's been great, the temperature and all. Sunny all day and hot enough to use the outdoor hotel pool and spa every evening :) We where at the Doubletree hotel and it was awesome, the beds, the breakfast...and of course the heated outdoor pool and the spa ;) Did I talk about the pool and the spa? Oh yeah I think I did.

Apart from the hotel, the city itself is quite boring unfortunatly...lots and lots of not so good restaurants, lots of office buildings...and that's mostly it. Lots of space though and clean. It is quite nice looking...but...no content, at least from what I saw, proove me wrong if you wish ;)

One thing I don't quite like when I go the the states is the food. I always feel like I'm always over-eating fat stuff and taking weight. It's hard to have a balanced diet over there except by going yourself to the supermarket and cooking your own meals but we just couldn't.

Stay tuned for Part 2 which will deal more about the conferences themselves

GDC, here we come!

2006-03-11T22:50:00.000-05:00

Game Developper Conference (GDC) is a huge event each year for game developpers around the world. This year it is held in San Jose, California.

Going there next week, I think it'll be great, there are so many interesting conferences...yet not enough time to see them all :/ For example, here are the programming related sessions, for a total of 88... I mean..wow!

Programming sessions

And then I'm not even talking about game design, art, management, etc.... so many things to see. It'll be fun, that I'm pretty sure ;)

Talking about programming...strange enough, this is kinda my job o_O I've tried Visual Studio 2005 today and I must say thumbs up for the STL debugger. You can now see every elements in a vector, a list, etc...and probably much more but haven't had too much time to check this out. But from what I've seen it is awesome for anyone who uses the STL. I've been waiting for this a long time, for this thing only Visual Studio 2005 is worth buying. Aside from that there is also a nice colored border now in your code that tells you what you modified since your last save. Intellisense seems to work better now also, but I kinda miss Visual Assist anyway with its word completion and everything else that made life easier.

Wow...speeding ticket in a 25mph zone

2006-02-18T00:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I didn't tell on my last post but my friend who was driving got a speeding ticket just across the border approximatly 200 feets past it. It was so ridiculous... the speed changed from 40mph to 25mph quickly and we were looking where to go next so we didn't pay close attention to it cause here in Canada you probably won't get anything at all or maybe a warning (of course this probably doesn't apply in a school zone).

So anyway, the bastard gave us a 150$ US ticket because we were driving something like 20mph past the "speed limit" of 25mph....if we can call that SPEED at all! Come on yankees, can't you drive anything else than some big slow trucks? But the worst thing is, there's a warning on Jay Peak's web site stating how to avoid this exact thing because it seems the police down there needs a lot of money in order to buy their super-equipped under-cover black 4x4 with internal lights.

here's what they say, which is exactly what we didn't do duh..:

Once you've crossed the border, pay close attention to speed limit signs - especially coming through North Troy (the town just after the Highwater border). Once you enter the United State the speed limit is to 40mph (about 60km/hr) and then drops to 25mph (40km/hr) through the town. There are often speed traps in the 25mph zone, especially at the corner of the 243 (road from the border) and 101 (the first right hand turn after the border).

http://jaypeakresort.com/page.asp?intNodeID=16237

so this is fuc******* ridiculous.

anyway, I'm glad I wasn't driving, cause I can't say that I care a lot about speed limits :/ I just use my head and my driving experience, at least I think I know what I'm doing o_O Just the night before I did Quebec -> Montreal in a record time in my Mitsubishi :) The timing was perfect, late at night, no traffic, -20 outside so no cop to be seen anywhere doing radar... just perfect, drove at 160 - 180 km/h nearly all the way, actually slowing down to 140 to pass other cars or vans ;)

I love this car, it's very predictible the way it handles, but it needs good tires which I bought especially to make sure it is stable at high speed on icy roads. They aren't too good on snow but I have yet to find some good tires that can do both ice and snow well enough.

Just a nice picture to spice this up a bit (ok, I stole it from www.auto123.com I apologize, the original author is Justin Pritchard)

doesn't it look good at night? ;) Not to mention the tail lights! woah...

Jay Peak baby!

2006-02-14T23:25:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I went to Jay Peak for the first time, just south of the US frontier in the state of Vermont. It was great, it was a nice weekend road trip to Montreal and Jay (little village down the "Peak of Jay" or Jay Peak ;))

But to be honest, I thought it would have been better. The moutain itself is not as high as it looks and it was somewhat icy near the end of the day because there wasn't a lot of fresh snow on the ground. But then, there are many trails that go down the woods so it made up for the bad things ;)

And boy is the view real nice up there once you get to the top you could see miles away because there were no clouds around, sunny all the way, no fog, nothing, clear as....a...clear as a clear blue sky? Yeah! Too bad I didn;t bring my camera down there cause that would have made some very nice pictures.

Just in case you want to know what it looks like, have a look at:

http://www.jaypeakresort.com/

How to use your WD40

2006-02-04T15:49:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, sweet stuff.

2000 ways to use WD40
http://www.twbc.org/wd40.htm

[- WD40 -] has been my nickname for a long long time, back when I was something like 14 or so. Everyone kept asking me, why the hell did you pick that up? Well, I will tell you once and for all since people are *still* asking me the same question over and over again after nearly 10 years.

It's quite simple actually, there is nothing awesome or extraordinary about it.... but, it meant something to me back when I was 10 and a friend of mine and I used a WD40 can to spray...uh... fire (using a lighter), on the wines growing on his parents' house. Were you out of your mind I hear you say? well...yeah. But moments like those you remember, others you don't, simply because they were out of the ordinary.

Now that's it. That's all there is to know about my nickname, sadly.

Fortunatly, there are other ways to use your can of WD40 which is lying somewhere in the garage. So browse this list and spray the stuff! You won't regret it...... or will you?

Whew we made it

2006-02-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, we did it. Our project is complete in its current state so this means back to regular work hours :) Don't you hear it? yeah this subtle sound...that's the sound of relief and happiness... o_O

We had our annual company meeting today in a nice "chalet" (French words sound cool in English don't they? ;)) and we are seriously kicking some asses compared to others in the video game industry. We had a great year and the year to come is going to be even more awesome, lot of stuff happenning, it's a great moment to be working over there at Beenox (an Activision studio) .

Unfortunatly, I can't talk much about what we're doing and all that because of NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) stuff... this kinda sucks but you got to follow the rules and this industry is very secretive about everything. That can help release new hit technology or games but in a way I don't quite like it anyway as knowledge should be shared amond developpers, artists, designers, animators..etc... I think it would just help everyone... but then big money is involved and people are scared of losing their investment and time.

I wonder what we could do without money...hm...nothing...but then...everything ;) Money can help, but it too can raise some serious and illogical fences between you and what should be the best thing you should do. Ahhhh....politic...isn't that a great exemple.

that's it for today, i'm off to sleep or relax or anything else.

see ya soon for another adventure of Frank's life

Work work work...

2006-01-28T20:57:00.000-05:00

Haven't done much in the past two weeks except work on a project at work. It's been a little more than 2 weeks and I haven't had a single day off... but then enough rants... it's worth it for now since a lot of people are waiting for us to complete our stuff so it will help them tremendously, or so I hope o_O

Anyway, this is mostly why I haven't updated my blog recently..been very busy. Aside from that, I went skiing again last wednesday and it was awesome. There have been a lot of snow around here recently and the ski jumps ( dunno the word in english but we call them "pyramids" in French) were just great. This winter they made them very big and high so you can catch a lot of air and the landing is quite smooth. Great time we had. Hope i'll be going again this week.

Talking about sports, I started a badminton league last automn and it was great we were able to rent a whole school gym in order to play. But I can tell you it's fucking hard to rent one as you got to have contacts and all...or else you get what remains after the friends of friends of friends have gotten what they wanted.... anyway, we were lucky this time again another group cancelled so we got their place so we'll be playing badminton again this winter/spring for a while.

On top of that, another guy at work started a volleyball league so I'll be quite busy sport wise, but it's for the best :) Working too much and eating crap while doing it doesn't help... and when you're tired it's not always motivating to start cooking some healthy meals.

Today was my last "poutine" (our stupid "national meal") I swear... can't eat anymore or I'll just throw up.

what a great way to finish a post ;)

So you wanna ...? and How to ...?

2006-01-20T23:18:00.000-05:00

From a previous comment about how to cure my lack of sleepiness at night (o_O), I thought I'd post the link here so anyone can use it. If you ever want to do anything in life...and I mean anything... and you don't know where to start or how to handle situations, etc... I now got 2 web sites for you so you too can be a know-it-all dude:

So You Wanna
http://www.soyouwanna.com/

Wiki How
http://wiki.ehow.com/

those are precious links, don't lose them, you never know when they'll come in handy ;) Also, if you happen to know how to do something in life, being turning a light switch on and off or opening a door with your left big toe, you can contribute to those sites so anyone can profit from your "leet" experience.

enjoy

Nothing new for a while

2006-01-18T23:23:00.000-05:00

There it goes... can't update the site very much recently, I've been busy at work we need to get some things done pretty quick and it's taking a lot of time.

Aside from that, the weather is still awfull around here. Raining again, with some snow/ice ...large pools of water are running free on the streets because all the snow is melting and then the day after everything is hard frozen. Now that's one bad thing for this ski season.

I just found out I was on Google for the first time today! Yeah...search "francois hamel blog" and you will end up on this page. That's so cool I can't beleive my eyes... (yeah right). Anyway, I'm pretty tired now so I'm gonna get some sleep...haven't slept much for the past few days. If anyone has a recipe for sleeping anytime, anywhere, please tell me I think I could use some advices right now.

Because I couldn't sleep I even watched an Iraquis made movie almost entirely...it wasn't too bad but then it reminded me of our old Canadian movies (which most of them sucked big time :))

European Trip 2005

2006-01-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

I just stumbled upon some pictures I took in Spain and France last summer. Really, it was an amazing trip, sunny...33 degree celcius... everyday... for 2 weeks without much humidity. It's been perfect. The sun, the moutains, the beaches, the cities...we went everywhere on the south coast of France and the east coast of Spain. Here are some of the pictures I'm talking about...if they don't make you want to go there, I don't know what else will!

click on the pictures for a larger version

France

The first picture on the left was taken at the city of Foix when we were travelling down from Toulouse to Barcelona. We rent a car and it was fun driving in the moutains and the tiny little roads out there in France. It's really different from around here, most cars are small, you don't see a lot of SUVs simply because there isn't much space for them in the cities. It's hard enough not to hit a car, a wall or a pedestrian in those streets with a small car, with a big one you're almost garanteed to rise your insurance rates if you know what I mean ;)

As for the second picture, it was taken when we came back from Spain in a nice little village close to the border. It was very nice but we didn't stay there very long we were heading towards Frejus and St-Raphael which are near the well known city of Nice.

Spain

Site redesign

2006-01-14T12:25:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, I got more space for my usefull thoughts now so you'll be able to enjoy more and more and more and more and more....of me o_O

Unfortunatly it comes at a price, Internet Explorer just can't display my stuff properly so I suggest you use any other browsers as most of them do (Firefox, Netscape, Opera...pick yours, but just don't pick IE cause it's been broken for a long....long...long while)

I will probably tweak it a little over the next few days/weeks until it is perfect so the layout /color scheme may change often

Alanis Morisette Jr?

2006-01-14T02:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I saw an awesone girl at a bar, but it was no ordinary girl. In fact, she was playing with her band on stage. This girl has a lot of potential I tell you, she reminds me a lot of Alanis Morisette. She basically got the same voice and attitude, I really think she could go way further with her carreer.

If you want to help her out, visit her web site at http://www.pascalepicard.com and while you're at it you can listen to some of her songs while browsing it you probably won't be dissapointed.

oh and btw, she's from Quebec City! Nice to see some great bands coming from around here...like breathing some fresh air for once.

Rain in January!

2006-01-14T00:12:00.000-05:00

WTF! I mean...WTF! It's raining again this winter right in the middle of January here in Quebec City. Last winter was so bad for skiing/snowboarding conditions, I guess this year is looking to be the same. Global warming is just a thing to scare people for no reasons? hmmmmmm I think NOT! Give me my snow back you SUVs!

Let's hope it gets better and fast...as for now, let's just feast ourselves with some nice picture of what we could be doing.

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...but don't let it rain!

Francois Hamel on the web!

2006-01-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

Why all the fuss? well for nothing really, this mainly serves as a search engine trap ;) Just want to help my name being linked to this blog. This is the oldest post I made, please have a look at the most recent ones. Thank you.

Francois Hamel is here.

This is a place holder for my title image

Here I am!

On the web and proud to be part of the whole community. I'd like to thank my parents, because without them I wouldn't be here today, wherever I am. I'd like to thank also Steven Spieldberg for making such insipiring movies as the Indiana Jones Trilogy! Oh yeah... good movies they are. Indy's been a role model for me all these years and will be for the years to come as I've yet to discover the mysterious sides of life.

Yes, Francois Hamel is on the web.

The main title for my blog was inspired by another movie actually which is The Life Of Bryan by Monty Pithons. Haven't seen it actually o_O, but I promise I will!