Entre mondialisation et regionalisme...

Le monde ne fait qu'un... c'est bien connu, on nous le repete depuis des annees maintenant et j'avais meme fini par le croire, vivant dans un autre pays entoure de nationalites exotiques.

Libre circulation des personnes et des marchandises... libre de ramener mes biscuits preferes (ahhh... les Mikado!) dans mes valises, libre de ne pas les declarer a la douane et libre de les partager avec mes amis de la mondialisation...

Mais alors bizarrement, la libre circulation des marchandises s'arrete aux Mikado!
J'ai une faiblesse dans la vie (depuis l'arret de la cigarette), c'est la musique francaise... je l'avoue, j'aime ma culture et j'aime ma langue.
J'aime la sincerite des paroles francophones et la profondeur de certains textes (...), donc j'ecoute francais, j'achete francais... ou pas!

A l'ere de la mondialisation je trouve ca abherant de ne pas pouvoir acheter des produits immateriels au-dela des frontieres de l'hexagone (pas essaye dans les DOM TOM ceci dit!).

Petits exemples de frustration du samedi matin:

On est samedi, il pleut (etonnant en Ecosse!), rien envie de faire... hop, je fais le tour des nouveautes et des classiques.
Tiens... j'ecoutais le premier album de Rike cette semaine et pour la enieme fois je m'enervais du fait que quand j'ai passe mon album en MP3 avant de venir vivre a l'etranger, la derniere chanson (A mes Sinse) a eu un probleme.
Moi, honnete (si si!), je me dis... allez, j'avais achete l'album mais c'est pas grave, je vais racheter cette chanson en version digital pour completer un des meilleurs premiers albums que j'ai ecoute.
Que nenni! iTunes ne propose pas le premier album, la Fnac ne le propose pas en telechargement et je me suis fait jeter d'Amazon pour des restrictions geographiques... les gars, ce sont des produits immateriels, on s'en tamponne des restrictions geographiques!

Bref... je m'ennerve pas, je me dis que je reprendrais l'album la prochaine fois que je repasse en France!

Deuxieme exemple... hier dans l'avion qui me ramenait d'Angleterre en Ecosse, j'ai ecoute le podcast du Fou du roi (Stephane Bern sur France Inter). L'emission du 30 novembre proposait une programmation musicale des plus interessantes... Ben l'Oncle Soul est venu chanter le titre Soul Man, de la bonne soul a la francaise, a ecouter et acheter!
Ah bah oui tiens... sauf que non! Le lien propose mene sur iTunes... je ne critiquerai pas iTunes dans ce billet, j'ai deja fait part de mon mecontentement (peut-on dire dire haine vicerale?) pour cette dictature ce logiciel. La je trouve l'album 6 titres a 4.95 euros... oh joie, je m'empresse de l'ajouter a mon panier et je me delecte deja de pouvoir decouvrir plus avant cet artiste... mais non, car je n'habite pas notre Douce France et iTunes ne me laissera pas outre passer la limite geographique pas palpable (la meme qui nous a sauve de Tchernobyl ceci dit... elle a du bon!)... et bam il me redirige vers le magasin UK et Leona Lewis ou Susan Boyle...

Bref... au moins j'ai reussi a racheter la derniere chanson de l'album Debout les yeux ouverts de Sinsemilia, Tout le bonheur du monde, qui elle aussi avait souffert lors de son passage en MP3 (depuis j'ai egalement change de lecteur de CD!)
En passant j'ai egalement trouve l'album La chance de Anis (de 2005) a £5.99 sur iTunes, comme quoi les frontieres ca s'ouvre des fois!

P.S. Les accents non plus ne traversent pas les frontieres! ;-)

Capture d'ecran sur iPhone

Parce que c'est utile, parce que c'est cool et parce que je viens de l'apprendre... La capture d'ecran sur iPhone!
Pour ce faire, il vous faut:
- un iPhone
- un index
- un autre index

Il existe des variantes de cette technique ou un pouce est utilise... Notez qu'il n'existe pas de variante au niveau de l'iPhone, ainsi n'essayez pas avec votre ecran de PC au risque de passer pour un gros nul!

Donc, je disais, pour faire une capture d'ecran, on reste appuye sur le bouton 'power' situe sur le dessus de l'appareil, et simultanement, en meme temps et pas apres, on appuie sur 'home', on peut meme dire 'maison' mais ca veut rien dire... Bref l'unique bouton sur le devant de l'appareil, rond avec une forme carre (pas facile a comprendre hein!)

Et voila... On obtient une capture d'ecran automatiquement sauvegardee dans l'album.

Meme que pour prouver ce que j'avance... Voila la capture de ce que j'avance!

-- Post From My iPhone

iPhone rox, iTunes sux!

I finally joined the rank of those who have succumbed to the temptation of this society of consumption and sold my soul to Apple…
Ok, enough with the drama, I’ve bought an iPhone!

I’m not new to these wee crazy things and have already flushed a photo 20GO a few years back (yes… I managed to drop it in the toilets, guess what… it’s not waterproof!), and successfully managed to own up to this day a video 30GO iPod and a 8GO iPod Touch (for sale!).

When I visited my brother who had already sold his soul a few months ago, I was very impressed but didn’t really need one (not that I do now, mind you, I’m just weaker!).
Now that I’m travelling to London every week, I must admit that these long nights on my own in the hotel room are quite boring without the Internet (damn credit crunch, the company won’t pay for the Internet!)… Which was enough of a reason for me to run to the store and buy one!

I’ve had it for 2 days now so can’t really say much about it, except that it’s all I loved about the iPod Touch and then some more, a lot more!

However, I hate iTunes, always have, always will!

I found this neat freeware that at least allows you to download your music from your iPhone onto your PC (this is taking intellectual property defence way too far, all I want to do is download my legally obtained music onto my computer to listen to it at work, not impoverish the World’s culture for cryin’ out loud!).

Anyway, check this out, it does what it could say on the tin, no installation required!

SharePod: http://www.getsharepod.com/

However, this doesn’t help for ringtones!

See, the main difference between an iPod Touch and an iPhone is the phone feature, I know, took me a while too to figure this out.

2 days after having bought the iPhone, I decided to look into the ringtones (nobody have my number just yet… not even me, so no rush!).

I found this overly cool and straightforward way of creating your own ringtones from your own legally obtained music in iTunes.

This is just the greatest thing ever, so easy to do!

So, I now have my favourite part of the Jeff Buckley rendition of Hallelujah, how cool!
Well… not so cool since I can’t get it on my iPhone!

See, the iPhone is a pretty damn good device for people on the go, except that iTunes is like the most retarded piece of software ever created!

It won’t let you do anything if you try to use to sync with a computer (guess what Apple? People on the go tend to have more than 1 computer since… well yeah, since they move!). Scratch that, it will let you erase your music!
I’ve just managed to lose my music up to the letter L… of course I won’t fly back home until Thursday night so I’m stuck with my music from L to Z… I even lost Lilly Allen… won’t even be able to play F**k You!

Anyway… Now I’ve lost half of my music and still don’t have my ringtone on my iPhone… but since even I don’t know my phone number I guess it doesn’t matter so much!

Welcome to the geeky side of the force!

Cinnabon... 6 years later!

Ever since I discovered these amazing Cinnabon Rolls back when I was living in Southampton, on the South coast of England, I have been desperate to have them again!

When I moved to Scotland, I was very hopeful they would have a franchise and eventually ended up writing to the company through their website.As it turned out, they didn't have one in Scotland... it took me a while to recover but eventually I started feeling better...

And then I got offered this assignment in London for a few months... and honestly, after the obvious things going through your mind like what's the job description? What will be paid for and do you think I'll be able to see the Queen, I thought of finally being able to eat a Cinnabon!

I arrived on Monday morning and left it to the Wednesday to go on my Cinnabon hunt which led me to Picadilly Circus.They now have these Chocolate Cinnabon that I had never tried before...

so I took one of those and a normal one (minis... I'm on a diet! ;-) ) and went back to the hotel.Except that, of course, I got lost (managed to find Buckingham Palace AND Downing Street but not my hotel!) and it took me quite a while to get there!

In the end, by the time I was back in my hotel room, it was cold. Any reasonable person would have waited until the following day, brought it at work and would have micro waved it... but I'm not reasonable!

I stopped for a moment and thought... what would MacGyver do? And then I spotted the two objects that would allow me to finally have a Cinnabon 6 years later... a hair dryer and a tea spoon!!

Blow drying the frosting on a Cinnabon might appear weird to most of you, but to all Cinnabon connoisseurs out there, I know you understand the despair I was in and why I had to do it!And you know what... it worked very well and this new Chocolate version is very tasty! I had the normal one this morning for breakfast and it happens that I need to go back to Picadilly Circus tonight to go see a movie... I see another very sweet breakfast in the very near future!