Xavier’s blog

Non seulement je suis revenu en Belgique, mais en plus je suis revenu à la langue française et, plus important encore, au KotAstro (Kot-à-projet de Louvain-la-Neuve).
Et dès demain (lundi 19 mars), c’est notre grande exposition. Et ce toute la semaine durant (jusque samedi 24) de 9h à 18h au forum des Halles (à l’entrée de la gare de Louvain-la-Neuve).
Vous êtes tous les bienvenus (l’entrée est gratuite!)

Affiche de l’expo

Tags: kotastro, lln, soleil

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Since I’ve lost my glasses in Toronto last week, I have to buy new ones.
But I really can’t decide. It’s so difficult to choose. Moreover I’m colorblind which really doesn’t help.

So, I will be very grateful to you if you could help me choose between my different possibilities.
To do so, just go on http://www.helpmechoosebetween.com

Technorati Tags: geek, hype, web2.0

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The Queen’s entrepreneurship Competition is over now.
And with a bit of disappointment, we come empty hands back home.

The award ceremony. As you can see, it was really a jetset like event

Everything had started so well though. On Friday, the first round of the competition, there were two pools of 8. And we finished first of our pool. So we were selected to participate to the final on Saturday with five other teams.

As most of the selected teams, we didn’t party Friday night. Instead, we came back at the hotel to tweak our prototype.
We eventually finished it and we couldn’t wait to show it to the panel of judge.

We did the same keynote then the day before. We just added the presentation of the prototype and the audience was thrilled.
The audience, except the jury.
Their very first question was: “Hummm… I’m sorry but I don’t think I’ve understood very well. What’s the product you are selling?”.
Which is the worst question ever you can get receive after a 20-mn keynote about your business plan.

The think is that that jury was less Web 2.0 oriented and they didn’t get the opportunity.
The pain has we have described it (the fact that 40M people do have a webcam but they just can do one application with them), didn’t sound to them as it did with the previous jury.
Most of them probably don’t have a webcam at home.

The presentation room for the final (Saturday morning)

So we should have presented it other way. With a security point of view only. So, it’s definitely our fault.
And that’s the reason why we are really disappointed.
Especially when we see the reaction of the public (majority of university students). They were all thrilled about our idea.
Even one was almost asking us an autograph since he was so convinced we were going to be the next YouTUBE. And many asked us my blog’s address to keep in touch with the next steps of our project.

But still, we really learned A LOT during this weekend.
It really worth it to be there and to get the comments on our business plan by the most famous business man of Canada (the CEO of Westjet, CEO of Coca-Cola Canada, and many others as famous).

Technorati Tags: business plan, Queen’s, QEC

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The trip back home passed almost flawlessly…
So we left Ngozi at 8 am this Friday (yesterday). I had to go for one last time to the university to say bye to all but Apollinaire didn’t have the time for that short way around.
I was a bit angry with that since I thought it was a bit unflexible from Apollinaire’s part, and second, I had promised to Bénédicte to see her at the university because she had to give some letters to post from Europe.
And moreover, I didn’t say bye to the others… so it was a bit bitter to leave everybody this way.

The beach of the Tanganyika lake, and the plane from Bujumbura

Technorati Tags: burundi, ngozi

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Like the previous post, this one also aims at showing the matter we saw during the three-week intensive course of database 1.
That way, the next teacher coming from Madrid or whatsoever may know from where will he have to start.

Technorati Tags: burundi, database, ngozi, tedeco

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That post’s aim is to show the matter we saw during the three-week intensive course of database 1.
That way, the next teacher coming from Madrid or whatsoever may know from where will he have to start.

Technorati Tags: burundi, ngozi, database, tedeco

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As you might imagine, this post is not going to be a charm.
Thanks to the new EU law, I just missed my connection and I have to wait for the next flight to Madrid. Fortunately, I just have to wait one hour.
But what if there wasn’t any place available in that one?

How long will people accept any law for some obscure security reasons just like sheep?
How many planes have blown up because a passenger had liquid in his hand luggage?
How many planes have crashed because a passenger had hidden explosive in a white liquid in a baby milk mug?
But you can still take a plane with polium120 as long as you take less than 100ml. Which is more than enough to kill hundreds of persons.
Worst, I took the plane with 3 batteries within those two were defect and had a high risk of explosion!!! (see my post about my 3 batteries to know more about those).

So don’t tell me it is for security reasons all this shit in the european airports.
It’s just a lobbying to put pressure on people and to let them know that the terrorist threat is always present and that to have to let our parlements vote laws that restrict even more and more our freedom.
And by the way, it’s also a very good law to hide an increase in the airport taxes. Since now you have to pay 2 euros if you are just a bit thirsty.
Duty free should be very happy of this.

2£ for one Coca-Cola… thank you!

I remember when that law was voted by the european parliament. I was in Madrid and I was terrified to see in the newspaper that in overall, people agreed. The main argument was “if it is for our security…”. These people probably never entered an airport.

I beg your courage to stand against such stupid laws that doesn’t serve any democratic interest.
If you do not agree with me, watch out to avoid bringing any liquid if you want to jump in my car. Unless you show me the evidence it’s more dangerous to have liquids in a plane than in a car. But I’m really not convinced.
(P.S: Don’t worry, from now on I will always have bottles of water in my car for selling at 5 euros each, just in case you may be thirsty).

Technorati Tags: heathrow, liquid, security, tedeco

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I didn’t take the time to write new post quite often this week.
The truth is I was quite busy.

As every Monday, my student had to pass a test.
I’m definitely an exigent teacher. Although I should adapt me to the local level, I didn’t lower my exigencies.
I always want to ask my students clever questions that make them thinking.
For me, there is nothing more stupid to ask things they have as it is in their notes.
It’s like asking a copy and paste of a Word document. Even a no-brainer can do that.

But it turns out that this kind of question perturb a lot of students. They are definitely not used to it over here.
When they previously had a programmation course, they just add to change a few lines of a code proposed by the teacher. They were always directed to the answer the prof was expecting.

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Today, it was my very last class. So I asked my student to evaluate me. Since it was my very first time I gave course, I wanted
I gave them 11 statements they had to rate from 1 (I fully disagree) to 5 (I fully agree).

1) The course is structured
2) The explanations were clear
3) The teacher answer to my questions
4) The tests are concordant with the matter we saw during the class
5) The tests are easy
6) In average, I spent X hours to study for each test
7) The content of the course is coherent (the order and the goal of the different themes )
8) The class is boring
9) According to me, the class was too slow (1) or too fast (5)
10) The teacher can get the attention of the audience
11) In overall, I would rate the course X/10 and the teacher Y/10
They had to answer on a blank page without putting their names. It was anonymous (in order to have real critics).
And I promised I won’t have a look at the results before being in the plane.

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This Saturday I was invited to a traditional ceremony which officializes the engagement between the fiancés, called “la dote”.
The family of the man have to pay money to the family of the jill to get their “cow” (that’s really how they call it!).
It was very nice to participate to such a traditional party. I have recorded many videos. I will share them once I’ll be back in Europe (remember that the Internet connection is very bad here).

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