I moved to the USA from Paris in January of 2000. I was lucky then to settle in Boston, a very welcoming town for foreigners and especially Europeans. There, I met a few french people and had a solid group of friends to turn to when I wanted to speak or hear french. The .com bubble burst and pretty much all of them were sent back home even though they were in the middle of getting a green card (I had one by then and got to stay).

While they are many opportunities to immerse myself in french culture in Boston (french library, french movie festival, …), I simply found myself listening to a lot of french music. I go back to France to visit with my parents roughly every six months so I usually load up on new french CDs.

Since I got my iPod, I bought quite a few songs on the iTunes USA store. Since then, also, the french iTunes store opened with galore of french rock, reggae and rap (Hah !).

But it seems I can’t use both. If I try to buy something with my US based .mac account on the French iTunes stores, it sends me back to the US store (where that music is not available). Now of course, I could create a french based account with a french credit card (I still have one) but from what I understand I couldn’t have both sets of songs in my iPod, I’d have to choose one or the other. How is that ‘Play Fair’ ?

Dear Lazyweb, help ?

Like

Unlike

We’re looking for a flash developer at BzzAgent to help us build a medium sized flash application for the upcoming new version of our web site. Note that we’re not looking for a flash designer but a real action script developer who’s familiar with geo-mapping, XML & vector graphics. Let me know.

On a side note, I also re-skinned my photo gallery and added a few photos:

• 

  Unsorted 2006

• 

  Faces

Like

Unlike

More after the jump. Local man claims they might be responsible for as much as .0000534% of global warming.

Like

Unlike

With a new layout (the previous one had gotten messy and ugly), come some decent photos of a recent Red Sox game.

Like

Unlike

Full disclosure: I am not bzzing you. You’re not signing up for a BzzCampaign, though maybe it should be one. I am not a democrat or a republican. I am a resident alien, so while I do pay taxes, I cannot vote here. I rarely drive, and when I do, it’s in a car which gets 20 MPG on average. I bike to work, I recycle, but I’m no angel.

Yesterday, I went to see An Inconvenient Truth. Maybe you haven’t heard of it. It’s Al Gore’s documentary on global warming. So what, right? Global warming, blah blah blah. I didn’t want to go see it. I was coerced into it by someone who very much wanted to see it. I put up a fight. I made fun of Al Gore and of democrats. My friend brought up www.rottentomatoes.com (a website that compiles dozens of reviews and rates movies based on all of those reviews) and how An Inconvenient Truth scored over 90% on the “tomato meter,” a very high score. Whatever. I really wanted to go see A Scanner Darkly or the new Pirates of the Caribbean. I saw Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and found it to be mostly spin. I didn’t want to go see yet another propaganda “documentary.” In the end, though, I caved. I didn’t want to argue. I wanted to be nice.

I won’t go into detail about the movie, because while it’s not the most entertaining thing I’ve ever seen, it’s important, even necessary, to go and see it. Ignore the presenter, Al Gore, if you don’t like him. Pretend it’s someone else talking. Get the facts. The facts will frighten you. It will make you want to do something about it and it’s simply necessary.

You owe it to yourself and the people around you (your children, perhaps?), now and in the future. Don’t let it become a bicoastal phenomenon. Whatever your political affiliation, whatever your religious beliefs, wherever you live figure out where it’s playing and just go see it. Once you’ve seen it, start trying to make some, any, small difference. Please.

Do us all a favor.

Like

Unlike