Wednesday, February 28, 2007

It's moving, man !

Last sunday - the 25th for the record -, I moved with girlfriend to a gorgeous new flat in Herne Hill.

Moving in France cost a fortune from what I remember it's not less than 1000 Euro. But here in London the market is different.

Hiring 2 men and a van for the move cost 70 quid for 2 hours. And that was it. The van was quite big, and almost full, we add to stop at 2 places, only 70 quid ! Not worth the trouble of doing that by yourself.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Merci ibuprofen

Cette non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug est tres utile pour lutter contre le hang over ! Ca t'apprendra a vouloir tester toutes les bierres du comptoir me dit mon hemisphere central ... Bon enfin c'etait la republique des blogs, je n'ai rien fait d'humiliant ce qui m'evitera de finir sur youtube. Et la proprietaire du pub avec qui j'ai discute apres est tres sympa.

Merci a ceux qui sont venus !

Monday, February 19, 2007

Oyster Glitch

The oyster is a fantastic way of paying for the london transports. It adapts the fare on one day to what is cheapest for you. You can have weekly, monthly, quaterly ... cards for any zone and then ponctually extends your subscription to another zone. It's great and most of the time it works fine.

But this morning... It did not really.

Nowaday you can't use the oyster pre-pay on all the transport system. It's accepted on all the tube/dlr and the buses but only on some overground station - and to be useful you need both end and start point to accept it -. But the train companies are eventually moving to a full oyster pre-pay support, to do that they've got to put oyster born to go through. At Blackfriars there is some but you don't have to touch in to go through, as you would imagine, nobody touch their oyster. That's fine for a weekly card, but not for prepaid. So they decide to first do some random control, and this morning they put one small girl in charge of dealing with the crowd of potential commuters-criminals.

I bought a quaterly card, it's valid until May, so like somebody who is proud of not being part of the no-paying scum I present my oyster at the mouth of the magnetic reader. Ready to continue my journey (10 minutes walk), this Oyster Frauding Patrol Control girl stop, and start to speak to me. She told me that I did not touch in at the start ? Why should I care I've got a quaterly card ? But that's not what the buggos reader told her ... After being quite convincing, or maybe she was afraid of me, she let me go. She was quite cluless though, and did not know how to deal with that. They don't have a backup reader, and she anyway don't understand how it works. She probably had a 5 minutes training, from which she just remember the butt of the instructor... anyway ... I want downstair to the assitant point.

A friendly guy checkout my card and say that everything was fine, I've got my subscription. He gave me a receipt with a lot of info. And what you can see on the receipt is that also I've got a valid zone 1-2 card, the stupid system decide to mark a pre-pay entry ! So I went up flash that at the Frauding Is a Crime Unit, Which did not what to do or to say except Oh.. That's not what magnetic god tell me ...

I touch out - still got to check they're not gonna take money out of my card for that - and went.

So if you are on the card, or pre-pay be careful and check regulary that you are not billed for what should not be.

NB: I do understand as a IT guy that complex system got bug, also I don't understand how the you've got a subscription then do nothing code can be bogus (synchronization, multiple process, dirty data ...)
NB: I do also appreciate how good the Oyster is, in Paris you don't have this flexibility, at least 2 years ago.

PS: the fact of making you pay a maximum fee if you forget to touch, is it not a bit against the innocent until proven guilty principle ?

République des blogs ) 3 ( Londres

Mardi 20 mars, demain donc aura lieu la 3eme Republique des blogs a Londres. Francophone vivant ou de passage a Londres, tu souhaites rencontrer les blogueurs expatries, viens nous rejoindres demain soir dans un pub du cote de Victoria a partir de 19h pour parler et/ou boire un verre.

Malheureusement Francois, d'Un Swissroll, ne pourras pas etre la ce mardi, mais viendez nombreux, quand meme !!

J'offres une pinte de Guinness au premier qui me dit qu'il est venu grace a mon blog :)

Let's play a wii game

I collected my wii on saturday morning. On Saturday evening I was able to feel the first syptoms of excessive playing. If I was not fit - Shut up you know who :) - I probably would not be able to move and would have to crawl to work !

I had 4 extra games with the Bundle so let's do a quick rating of them :

* Rayman Raving Rabbids : Brillant, the dancing games is great fun. And the4 physical games are really physical ... I can still feel it in my arm ...

* Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz : did not play much. looks a bit .. boring. Looks like a waste of money.

* The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess : good, but now I'm blocked try to do a stab in front of children ...

* WarioWare, Smooth Moves : Weird ... Did not get it ...

The Wii is good, wii sport and ray man are great party fun. Zelda is a good single player.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Nice precision

Man dies after new gun killing. Nice to know he was dead, friend of mine survived after being killed.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Bloc Party at the Brixton Academy

The 19th and 20th of April. tickets available here.

Got mine.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Lovely South London

3 killed by murder in south London.

Useless Opening Post Office Time

Brixton Main Post Office 250 Ferndale Rd, SW9
Open: Mon - Fri 9am - 5.30pm, Sat 9am - 12pm
phone 0845 722 3344


Why ?
Are the main client of the Post Office unemployed ?
Or is it the lack of competition ?
Is this lack of competition the result of some regulation ?