Everybody's Weird

The bio/about me page is online. I’ve been postponing to « design » this one for ages, but now I’m really satisfied with the way it looks.

A small Xmas wish-list, in French. May be updated in the coming days (as ideas will come). It’s a pity that amazon.fr doesn’t make this service available (as the US or the .co.uk sites do), so this is a list in the good old not-linked way.
Ma liste pour Noël
Michel Houllebecq, Lanzarote (livre)
Bebel Gilberto, Tempo Tango (musique brésilienne)
Chemise / Cravate (sobre svp)
Une montre (pas trop chère !)
Tori Amos, Under the Pink (CD)
Elliott Smith, X/O (CD)
…mais j’aime aussi être surpris 🙂

The mixtape covers page has been updated.

Friend-o-thon – If you find this guy hot, let me know (this is an emergency) :

Your gestures of kindness move me

As Charles Darwin (1871) sagely noted over a century ago, « ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge »

And now, this hypothesis has been scientifically confirmed by psychologists. Very nice research article.

Ever felt like murdering your cat after one of its walk on your keyboard ruined your work ? PawSense is the solution to your problems : this is the first software that detects cat walking on the keyboard and locks your workstation. Did you thought your job was useless ?
[last two links are 2000 IG NobelPrize Winners, from the Annals of Improbable Research.]

I’ve found the first relevant French-speaking weblog : Emmanuelle.net is run by a young and brilliant journalist from Libération (living in California !) and mainly focused on new technology. It’s nice, and i’ll keep visiting it.

ESCOM rules !
Congratulations to Thibault, Dominique and Jérémy for their unbelievable achievement : the folks WON the 6th « Défi Expérimental Laboscope ». This is a contest for chemistry students, with practical experiments, where the best schools from France compete. I’ve been brilliantly eliminated during the first turns two years in a row, so I bow to your greater talent !!

A big thank you to all the people who’ve been coming since a few days. And for you that are just looking for info about the Aiwa MM-VX100 MP3 player, the manufacturer website is www.aiwa.co.jp/eu/vx. Sorry for the detour.

Today : dicks and boobs. Lucky you.
>Did you ever wondered if it is possible to do that with your « Johnson » ? And… well… there’s a website and a mailing list.
>It seems to me that plastic surgery has been invented just to let you roll your mouse over the picture. The best achievement so far in the noble art of medicine, sure.

From now, you can come here thanks to this new redirection : manur.isfuckingcool.com. A fucking pop-up appears, so you’d better use www.manur.com anyway. I just thought it may be fucking fun.

Halo 33 is a nice weblog I like to read.

Now, those links are french :

• Obispo, plagieur !!
• Venant aussi des Inrocks : leur papier sur l’abum live de Venus. Si vous ne vous l’êtes pas encore procuré, voilà de quoi vous faire sentir tout bête.
• Les Inrocks suite et fin : NON à la pub ! Respectez nos cerveaux !
• Et enfin, la meilleure nouvelle depuis longtemps : Marcos et le nouveau président méxicain V. Fox vont entamer des discussions. Ya Basta ! A ton étoile…

Tonight I long for innocence…

Last Friday : Conversation with the guy in charge of computers maintenance at the new job this morning :
me: I have this problem with my new computer : when I listen to an audio CD, its plays at a somewhat slower speed than the normal, ruining the music. [much like a slow pitch on a turntable..]
guy: you mean, it goes like this : « meowowowii » [he makes the sound of a slow-pitched record on a turntable]
me: yes!
guy: hum…
me: …
guy: I don’t have any solution to this problem. Feel free to download a new driver at your-computer-brand-name dot com. [he LEAVES !]

Thanks, man, you’re a real prince.

(this exact same day, i missed half of Grandaddy’s show. just great.)

hopeful silence.

Forgotten Cambodia. A good easy-to-read article that says it all.

just a rat in a cage (again and again)
Getting off the subway station this morning, i had the most disturbing encounter. There were three or four retired senior citizens from Attac, the most important pro-Tobin tax and -alternative ways of living organisation in Europe. They were giving away leaflets.
In our times, your life is drawn for you from the start. From 0 to 22, distract yourself (don’t ever forget to drink Coca-Cola, wear Nike and listen Sony), and learn to be productive. From 23 to 65, you’re really useful. Give everything to economics and trade (don’t ever forget to make children). After 65, you’re useless, that’s all. If you were gregarious enough to invest lots of money in a bank, you’ve got the right to travel in sunburnt places, but please don’t deal with business and society matters anymore. You fully deserved your right to be mute and watch stupid TV shows.
As I was seeing the retired senior citizens distributing leaflets at the exit of the subway station, I was thinking to myself : those people are much more useful to the society and to any of us than the 20.000 of us executives in this business district together.

See what brings a bad working environment, you bosses : anarchists.

At least !
Okay, guys, I won’t say it twice, so open your ears and listen well:

You probably already knew that I’ve been bearing the nickname of « Manur » for quite a while (10+ years!), because Emmanuel often becomes Manu, and the ‘r’ make it sound like « Ben-Hur ». I still keep it ’cause it’s hardly taken as a login (much less than my first name), and lots of my friends are used to it.
Anyway, from now you can visit this page by simply typing manur.org in the location bar. I guess it’s a huge improvement with respect to the actual url :), so feel free to update your bookmarks and/or keep it in mind : it’s easy.
Technical remark : this is a mere redirection, so eventually you’ll end up at the exact same place than before (it’s a pity for bookmarking, i just understand…).
And by e-mailing me to the new address manur@manur.org, your messages will end up to my regular e-mail account, too. Isn’t technology great ?

Pictures of our september trip to Greece
My God, I want to go back there !.. The weather was so perfect, people so nice, time so fulfilling…
We made our way to two different islands of the Cyclades: Santorini and Paros. The first one is particularily famous for its volcano, in the middle of the crescent-shaped bay. One can even take little boats and go there, ON the volcano.
Surprisingly, we enjoyed Paros even more than Santorini, precisely because sightseeing spots are modest, not overcrowded, and much more typical of what we think is Greek life. The two main cities of the island are Naoussa, a very picturesque village of fishermen and sailors, and Parikia, the « capital », a very lovely and moderately sized resort.
Last but not least : wonderful sunsets !
<- And, oh, that's me re-reading The Catcher in the Rye on our hotel room’s balcony…