The Saint Jean Beach, as usual with beautiful colors. Lots of families are coming here, as the beach is quite protected from the swell and the biggest waves.
And a short video taken from this beach!
Labels: beach, nature, picture, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, travel, video
We had our first snorkeling session on last Wednesday but the vision was not ideal under water, as there is still a quite strong swell. Anyway, I saw my first sea-turtle in Saint Jean Bay, exactly at the same place as last year, just after the white boat in the middle of the picture below!
Bottom is at about 3-4m there. Sea-turtle was about motionless and eating some underwater herbs. The turtle was about 80cm long. It is also the first time that I see a pilot fish on top of the turtle shell!
I have quite massively adjusted the pictures (contrast, color and saturation). The pictures are a bit pixelated but still from far better as I have thought!
Camera: Canon IXUS 700 with a Canon waterproof case (WP-DC70).
Bigger resolution available on smugmug, just click on the pictures!
Labels: beach, nature, picture, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, snorkeling, travel
On last Tuesday, Saint Barth was celebrating its Carnaval. Funny to participate to a carnival with such kind of temperature and scenery!
There is also a flickr dedicated photostream here.
Labels: picture, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, travel
Some fantastic panoramic views from the terrace of our (rented) villa in Saint Barth. These panoramic pictures are based on 5 to 7 pictures and are stitched with The Panorama Factory (v3.4).
Be careful, the original versions are quite big:
Not so bad, as I didn’t use any tripod…
Labels: beach, nature, picture, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, travel
Yesterday, before the Saint Barth carnaval, a good time at the Shell Beach.
Labels: beach, nature, picture, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, travel, video
TechHeadBrothers and Innoveo are now well represented in Saint Barth ;-)
What about opening a subsidiary there for both?
Labels: blog, business, communication, innoveo, saint barth, saint barts, travel
Short video message, taken from the Gouverneur beach (sorry for my “French” accent ;-).
Labels: beach, communication, nature, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, travel, video
First news from St Barth!
…was quite long this time ;-) We first took a flight from the EuroAirport to Paris-Orly, then from Paris to Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe (about 7.5 hours and 6’800 km). Flight on time, quite good, only about 1/3 of the plane was full, as there are some heavy strikes in Guadeloupe since weeks now. When we arrived in Guadeloupe, we were “informed” (in the French West Indies, the proactive information has another definition as in the rest of the world, i.e. you *have* to get information by yourself, customer or not, it doesn’t matter!) that our direct flight from Pointe-à-Pitre to Saint Barth was canceled and that we have to take a flight to Saint Martin and then, from there, to take a boat to Saint Barth. This cancelation was clearly due to the strikes.
Actually, it was funny because we had flight-tickets with Air Caraibes, which has delegated our “canceled” flight to Air Antilles Express. After a while, Air Antilles didn’t have any plane left, so they had to delegate themselves to … Air Guyane Express! The flight was very nice (some pictures below), the landing extremely tough (lots of wind and turbulences). On the other side, we have discovered the second (super small) airport of Saint Martin, Grand-Case…
After that, we had to take the so-called Voyageur (high-speed boat) to Saint Barth. The trip takes about 1.5 hours, but this time, the sea was really awful, with a very strong lateral swell. A nightmare, specially for my wife and my son, who were both sick during the whole trip.
All in all, and as usual, I must say that the service and the people from Air Caraibes were just *extremely* bad. And I am not talking about customer-orientation, just about the minimum level of politeness we should all have among human-beings… These Air Caraibes employees just deserve … nothing! On the other side, the Air Antilles Express people were informative, polite and have really tried to find a solution for everybody. Our detour through Saint Martin was properly organized, we had to pay nothing, and we had also the full excuses from the company. Well done!
Anyway, we arrived at St Barth “by night”, in the harbor instead the airport, with about 4 hours delay, which is definitely not catastrophic ;-) We had also the chance to see some great sailboats before entering the harbor, illuminating in a fantastic way! Great experience.
We had the chance to have a marvelous sunset before landing at Saint Martin.
And a good view on Saint Martin before landing.
…is really cool, with a nice swimming-pool and fantastic views on the ocean!
The back-side of the villa, which is called “L’Abricotier”:
And the main terrace with the “infinity” swimming-pool, and the view on the Lorient beach, Saint Jean Bay and the airport, plus the Anse des Cayes in the background:
This morning, we were at the Gouverneur beach, one of our preferred. Fantastic colors, and the ocean and its waves were quite … interesting for having fun with my son ;-)
The weather is typical for Saint Barth at this time: 28°C during the day with a very strong sun, 23°C during the night, 26°C in the ocean. Some sudden rains this afternoon, but during perhaps 10 minutes.
Click on the different pictures to see the full-sized versions!
More to come when I will have time again!
Labels: beach, blog, nature, private, saint barth, saint barts, smugmug, travel, video
The new version of Twhirl is out after a good organized and dynamic private beta phase. You can download it here.
This version is very stable, no problem to attend on this side.
I’m quite a fan for a while of Twhirl as a Twitter client. Now, it allows also to broadcast your messages to Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. through the ping.fm service.
By the way, do you know this ping.fm service? Really great! It allows to publish centrally and to push your messages to the different “status” services of the main social networking websites. Worth a try, it’s free!
Below, some information about Twhirl.
Actually, I’m using Twhirl as micro-blogging client, without being a seesmic user ;-)
Have a look also at the video from Loic, showing how Twhirl is working.
Labels: blog, communication, open source, ping.fm, seesmic, software, teamseesmic, twitter
Some of the fantastic sunsets we have seen last year, from the villa Ella.
In about 10 days, we will there again, so I don’t know if I will publish new ones or not till then ;-)
Let’s see!
As usual, you should have a look at the high-res version here.
Labels: beach, nature, picture, private, saint barth, saint barth 2008, saint barts, st barth 2008, travel, video
via 451 CAOS Theory
It seems that SUN will not communicate on that, but Marten Mickos, the former MySql CEO, is leaving SUN, after about 1 year... I remember one of my post in February 2008 with some explanations about the “why” of this merge, directly from Marten. Outch. Something didn’t work as planed there.
Some more information below.
I just got news that Marten Mickos, former MySQL CEO, is to depart Sun amid a reorganisation of its infrastructure and database business units. Don’t expect an announcement from Sun on this, but the news is confirmed.
[…] Marten will be transitioning out of Sun by the end of the company’s (current) third quarter.
Marten’s departure is a big loss for Sun and follows quickly after the departures of Monty Widenius and David Axmark.
[…] Matt Asay is right, Marten’s departure “is likely to lead to an exodus among MySQL’s deep talent pool”. This needn’t be a complete disaster - the same thing happened at JBoss and Red Hat has recovered from that, but this is going to be a serious test for Sun’s ability to maximize on the potential of MySQL and its other open source assets.
Matt also writes that “Mickos was the backbone of MySQL’s rising revenues, as an open-source pragmatist and visionary. He was the face of MySQL, but also of the rising open-source industry.” This is true, and for that reason I hope it’s not too long before we see him taking charge at another vendor.
Good luck to Marten, hope to see him asap in a new role!
Labels: blog, business, communication, entrepreneurship, leadership, open source, software, strategy
via Judith Hurwitz
Judith is discussing the difference between a good and a great software company.
Interesting insights!
1. Great companies start with a predictable business model and turn the model upside down. They look three years ahead and experiment with innovation. They have to have a combination of intuition, risk, and innovation. These companies are willing to take enough risk to win big but smart enough to know the difference between great opportunities and pipe dreams.
2. Great companies find new areas to position themselves for leadership. This is very tough to pull off. The area has to be important enough for the market to pay attention to but not too big that they look silly. Great companies never try to take a big existing market with established leaders and try to claim primacy.
3. Great companies build great relationships. Management at these companies builds an ecosystem of influencers including great customers who will talk about the value, press, analysts, and partners who together help the company create a persona of innovation and greatness while the company is still building.
Great software companies are complicated to build. The software business a complicated and brutal with lots of failures at every turn. […] It isn’t easy. Great software companies are even more difficult and scary to build.
Labels: business, entrepreneurship, leadership, software, strategy
Yes, today is my birthday. 37 years old.
Thanks to Laurent and Mathieu for their wishes via Twitter.
And thanks to Stephen, Thomas, Patrick, Robert, Géraldine for their nice words via Facebook.
And thanks to all my friends and colleagues who have sent me a mail, as Martine, Doris, Bruno, Manu, Olivier, Andreas, Salah.
And thanks to all, my friends and family, who has contacted me per telephone today.
And thanks to my wife and son, Laurence and Julien, for their surprise this morning :-)
Special thanks to Martinique for her Frangipani (picture taken in Senegal).
And to the Xing team for their virtual birthday cake ;-)
From an Innoveo CI/CD point of view, Andreas (our designer) won the price ;-)
A year more, but thanks to everybody, a nice and brilliant day!
PS: yesterday evening, we had a cool dinner at “La Table de Louise”. Very nice local, very friendly and professional service, great food, and … 3 birthdays to celebrate the same evening at 3 different tables :-)
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