C’est avec joie que j’ai utilisé mon ample temps libre pour traduire en français le billet que notre CEO Jeff Jaffe a publié la semaine dernière à l’occasion de la sortie controversée de ‘Encrypted Media Extensions‘ (EME) en première version de travail publique, par le groupe de travail HTML.

J’ai hébergé cette traduction sur mon site:

Perspectives sur Encrypted Media Extensions (Extensions pour médias chiffrés) qui atteint le statut de première version de travail publique

Je fais de la traduction en amateur et j’ai eu bien du mal à traduire certains termes que j’emploie tous les jours en anglais. Vos suggestions d’amélioration sont attendues avec anticipation (ici, via le blog).

Quant aux commentaires sur le fond, c’est directement sur le Blog du W3C que je vous invite à les laisser (attention, la lingua franca du Blog du W3C est l’anglais.)

Au plaisir de vous lire !

Coralie

Il y a quarante-neuf ans bientôt donc, un étudiant en médecine, appelons-le le lecteur aristocrate, qui bien qu’il ne sait pas s’il y appartient, affirme être persuadé qu’il faut une aristocratie de lecteurs. Interrogé sur le livre de poche, il déclare en penser beaucoup de mal. Je cite :

“Parce que ça a fait lire un tas de gens qui n’avaient pas besoin de lire, finalement, qui n’avaient jamais ressenti le besoin de lire. On les a amené là, avant ils lisaient Nous Deux ou La vie en fleurs, et d’un seul coup ils se sont retrouvés avec Sartre dans les mains. Ce qui leur a donné une espèce de prétention intellectuelle qu’ils n’avaient pas. C’est à dire qu’avant les gens étaient humbles, finalement, devant la littérature, alors que maintenant ils se permettent de la prendre de haut. Les gens ont acquis le droit de mépris maintenant. Ce qu’ils n’avaient pas avant.”

Ce que ça m’inspire  ?

Petit un, je chantonne Ah ! ça ira, ça ira, ça ira ! Les aristocrates à la lanterne !
Petit deux, je me demande si tous les gens parlaient comme ça à l’époque.
Petit trois, sait-on jamais, comme mon père était également étudiant en médecine à peu près à cette époque, je sais de quoi je vais lui parler à la prochaine occasion pour qu’on rigole un coup.
Et petit quatre, je tracerais bien volontiers un parallèle entre l’aristocratie de lecteurs telle que décrite par l’étudiant il y a 49 ans et l’aristocratie d’internautes.

Au risque de sembler élitiste ou de ne pas voir un défaut que j’ai moi-même –moi qui gribouille sur l’internet de temps à autre– quand je vois ce qui se tweet, ce qui se facebook, ce qui s’instagram, etc., j’ai du mal à séparer le bon grain de l’ivraie, et j’aspire à une modération sévère chez ceux qui inondent le Web de tout ce qui leur passe par la tête.

@ICRC: Our role as a “neutral intermediary” is at the heart of #humanitarian action. Our director of operations explains: [link]

Original Message:

Our role as a "neutral intermediary" is at the heart of #humanitarian action. Our director of operations explains: goo.gl/cJTGH—
ICRC in English (@ICRC) March 30, 2013

The main part of their micro-post, “neutral intermediary” is at the heart of #humanitarian action, particularly resonated with me for several reasons, that I want to attempt to articulate in this post of what I did at one point as a hobby and how, in a way, some choices, people and events led me back to it.

My years with the French Red Cross

In my late teenage years I enrolled at the French Red Cross and during several years –until I started university– I participated in social, medical, training, fund-raising and first aid actions. It occupied my weekends, almost all my holiday time and several week evenings. I was very committed. I came to the Red Cross spurred by my twin brother who had recently became involved. It sounded useful and fun.

It was indeed useful and fun. Even sorting clothes was fun. It was daunting; several piles of garments and shoes, tall as dunes, dumped in the vast depot next to the offices, that we had to plough through during hours. But at the end of the day (that is, late at night) we felt we had accomplished a useful action. Clothes and shoes, categorised and packed, were ready to be picked and handed off somewhere else. My friends and I would find a bar open till late fir coffee and drinks, sometimes a game of cards, but mostly bonding.

I met all kinds of people, from all walks of life, most of them interesting, some of them inspiring –students like me, nurses, police officers, business people, house wives, etc. I learned to give first aid, to man the radio, to drive the ambulance (in particular to park it), to lead a team of first-aid workers, to cook for a crowd, to identify priorities, and to put things into perspective. I saw, heard, and experienced things that made me fully aware how lucky I was, and what a fine life mine was.

I don’t know if I was particularly gifted or actually good at it (I felt I was good), but my satisfaction was such that I wanted to make this my job. There even was a school I thought I might attend, Bioforce, which “specialises in ‘support functions’ (logistics, project coordination, administration and finance, human resources…) and in the field of water supply and sanitation.”

I didn’t go. I went to a local university instead, embarking on a different path. A few years later I looked for a job. I was a temp for a while. I worked as a clerk in a British law office, although I tried very hard to wiggle out of this, as soon as I saw the place and realised the work conditions were going to be terrible. I passed the one interview I wanted to fail. Thankfully it was a short mission.

Discovering the world of a Research Lab

I got my next job by luck. A friend of mine, whom I had met while studying in Edinburgh, let me know she knew someone whose mother worked with someone who needed a temp for a semester. Two actually. And my friend was on the market too so it was perfect. We both interviewed on the same day. We had been pre-assigned a position but after interviewing they changed their mind and swapped. She joined the administrative and legal department at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, I joined a research project as administrative aid.

My years of volunteering and charity work were far behind me. The researchers I met were committed and inspiring people. Most wore shoes but many didn’t. Most people appeared to not see the people around them, absorbed as they were. All had pens in the breast pocket of their shirt, when they wore them, or the pocket of their shorts. Most carried laptops. There were whiteboards everywhere and I had no idea what the colourful scribblings and equations meant.

In that INRIA research project, I learned to type on a qwerty keyboard, to use e-mail on exmh, to print from a unix terminal, to get geek humour. I also learned LateX just for fun. When the end of my mission was near I wrote a fictitious humorous report, in LateX, featuring some of the people that crowded our floor. A thirty or so page report that I gave to the two project managers and a researcher I was particularly fond of, nice and kind as he was. In exchange (not really), I was congratulated by the Director of the institute, and the project managers each gave me the bestest recommendation letters ever. I was on the dole for five months afterwards. My great letters, for all the power that I thought they wielded, didn’t get me my next job.

Joining the W3C

Lucky again, someone who knew me was asked to tell me that the World Wide Web Consortium needed an administrative aid and that I should apply. The W3C was hosted at INRIA Sophia Antipolis and oddly enough people there seemed to remember me and speak highly of me! I interviewed and was hired. That was 14 years ago.

What we do at W3C is basically convening the people who make the Web and the people who consume the Web, around a neutral table. The staff (there are between 60 and 70 of us, mostly technical, located throughout the world) is involved to help the Web stakeholders converge. From that collaboration, web standards are born, refined, and perfected.

At W3C, I met the most incredible colleagues and co-workers, the most inspiring people, the most dedicated folks, bright, clever, helpful, friendly, reliable and supportive. Working with them, doing our job, doing *this* job, is fulfilling and gratifying.

It’s been a while so I have learned so much that it is difficult to grasp and synthesise. The one easy thing that comes to mind is NOT that I learned HTML or CSS (however, some of that I did learn), it is that I learnt to pack lightly, pragmatically and efficiently for trips abroad. We used to travel a lot. We still travel but not as much. I visited a big city for the first time during a W3C trip to a WWW conference. It was in Toronto. Then Boston, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Hawaii, Western Europe, Montreal etc. I now pack in twenty minutes and travel with my purse, one carry-on and a laptop bag. For short trips, the carry-on is a small backpack.

I can say that I have learned various jobs within our organisation. I started as administrative aid, I organised meetings, I ordered stationary, managed hirings and interns, I wrote internal policies,
then managed the local office. I joined the Communications team and wear several hats. From secretary of the Board, translation community monitor, blog master, to Community Manager. I gather the press clippings, I send transition announcements to our Members when a technology progresses from one state to the other, ultimately reaching that of Standard. I write to our Web site, which I occasionally break so I sweat a bit and eventually fix it. I do other internal comm things too.

A couple years ago I had a skills assessment. I was at a point in time I wanted to focus on what I was good at, and what it was that I was skilled for. The exercise was interesting and useful. I was told my area of interest revolves around humanitarian activities and care giving. And that I have more than one string to my bow. No surprise, really, but it was reinforcement that I was in my field.

My job is a passion. It may not be the humanitarian field action I dreamt of as a young woman, but many in our trade liken our job to humanitarian work. And indeed, we are a “neutral intermediary” at the heart of making free and open Web standards.

[...] there was an f-bomb in every sentence. It was effing this and effing that and what the ef here and there and everywhere. [...]

Until that time, it had never occurred to me that the adjective ‘effing’ took its origin from the f-word, ‘fucking’. But now that I do, it makes sense completely.

I may even use it, now that I understand –and own it, in a way. That will add an extra middle-strength layer to how I convey a feeling or state of mind, still keeping the f-word as last resort.

By the way, Uncle Bob’s article is one that I recommend; he shares how women in tech have thus far lived in perpetual inconsequence, mostly having no status, no respect, and no voice in their world.

Among the several pieces I read on the topic, and judging by the reactions from peeps I follow on Twitter, it appears people care for syndication, and I take comfort in it.

Here are three quotes from an article that I particularly relate to:

Why RSS still matters
Think that Twitter can replace RSS? Think again
By Dieter Bohn on March 14, 2013 05:11 pm

First and foremost, Twitter is not an open web standard, it’s a service from a private company that once offered a relatively open API but now does not. Depending on a single company’s largess when it comes to creating an open and viable third-party app ecosystem is a fool’s game.

Trying to get caught up on more than a day or so of Tweets is virtually impossible for anybody who follows more than a few dozen active users — you simply can’t comprehensively take in the full stream. With RSS, on the other hand, you can scan through headlines and save them (or, yes, share them) and it’s possible to do so after a few days off the internet.

More innovation and competition in the RSS space sounds like a bright future for news junkies, but that will only happen if there’s a market for it.

The full piece is at http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/14/4105006/why-rss-still-matters

According to the fortune cookie I got last night at Chef Chu’s, I will make a name for myself in the field of entertainment.

Well, well.
I’ll admit my first reaction was that I had gotten the cookie meant for Ian, my co-worker (and boss), who wasn’t at the meeting this time.
As far as I’m concerned, that fortune is highly unlikely, to say the least.

However, it opens a world of possibilities if one appends “between the sheets“, as I learned from my colleague Ann.

L’œil de Musashi se posa par hasard sur l’extrémité coupée de la tige de la pivoine. Il inclina la tête, surpris, mais sans comprendre ce qui avait attiré son attention.
[...]

– Sais-tu qui a coupé cette fleur ?
– Non. On me l’a donnée.
– Qui ça ?
– Une personne du château.
– L’un des samouraïs ?
– Non, c’était une jeune femme.
– Hum… Alors, tu crois que la fleur vient du château ?
– Oui, elle me l’a dit.

[...]

Les vingt centimètres du morceau de tige fascinaient Musashi beaucoup plus que la fleur de l’alcôve. Il était sûr que la première entaille n’avait été fait ni avec des ciseaux ni avec un couteau. Le tiges de pivoine étant souples et tendres, elle ne pouvait avoir été faite qu’avec un sabre, et seul un coup résolu pouvait avoir tranché aussi net. Quiconque avait fait cela n’était pas un être ordinaire. Lui-même avait eu beau tenter de reproduire l’entaille avec son propre sabre, en comparent les deux extrémités il se rendait compte aussitôt que la sienne était inférieure, et de loin.

[...]

Otsū rendit compte de sa mission à Sekishūsai.

– Le fils Yoshioka a-t-il pris en mail la pivoine pour la regarder ? demanda-t-il.
– Oui. Quand il a lu la lettre.
– Et alors ?
– Il s’est contenté de me la rendre.
– Il n’a pas regardé la tige ?
– Pas que je sache.
– Il ne l’a pas examinée ? Il n’en a rien dit ?
– Non.
– J’ai bien fait de refuser de le rencontrer. Il ne le mérite pas. La maison de Yoshioka aurait mieux fait de finir avec Kempō

[...]

Musashi fit porter par Jotarō une lettre aux gens de Yagyū, ainsi que la tige.

« Curieuse lettre », se disait Kizaemon. Il considéra de nouveau la tige de pivoine, examinant avec attention les deux extrémités, mais sans pouvoir discerner si une extrémité était différait de l’autre.

[...]

– Si ce que dit la lettre est vrai, déclara Kizaemon, et s’il a vraiment pu discerner que cette tige avait été coupée par un expert, alors il doit savoir quelque chose que nous ne savons pas. Le vieux maitre l’a coupée lui-même, et apparemment cela saute aux yeux de quelqu’un dont les yeux voient véritablement.

Kizaemon demanda l’avis de trois autres au dōjō; aucun ne sut distinguer une extrémité de l’autre. C’était décidé, ils souhaitaient rencontrer ce « Shimmen Musashi », signataire de la lettre à l’écriture ayant du caractère, qui pourrait tout à fait être le Miyamoto Musashi qui avait aidé les prêtres du Hōzōin à tuer toute cette racaille, dans la plaine de Hannya.

Le décor lui-même combattait la laideur. Les montagnes de la chaîne Kasagi n’étaient pas d’une beauté moins saisissante à la tombée du jour qu’au lever du soleil ; l’eau était pure et claire — idéale, disait-on, pour faire le thé. Les fleurs de prunier de Tsukigase étaient proches, et les rossignols chantaient de la saison de la fonte des neiges à celle des orages ; leurs sonorités de cristal étaient aussi limpides que les eaux montagnardes.

[...]

– C’est stupéfiant, disait Musashi dont les yeux erraient sur les récoltes champêtres et les paysans qui s’adonnaient à leurs travaux. Stupéfiant, répéta-t-il plusieurs fois.

[... Après quelques explications de Musashi, Jōtarō reprend.]

– En tout cas, vous n’êtes pas venu ici pour admirer le paysage. N’allez-vous pas combattre les samouraïs de la maison de Yagyū ?

– Dans l’art de la guerre, combattre n’est pas tout. Les hommes qui le croient, qui se contentent de nourriture à manger et d’un endroit pour dormir, ne sont que des vagabonds. Un étudiant sérieux se soucie beaucoup plus de former son âme et de discipliner son esprit que d’acquérir des talents martiaux. Il doit apprendre toutes sortes de choses : la géographie, l’irrigation, les sentiments de la population, ses us et coutume, ses rapports avec le seigneur du pays. Il veut savoir ce qui se passe à l’intérieur du château, et non point seulement ce qui se passe à l’extérieur. Il veut, essentiellement, aller partout où il pleut, et apprendre tout ce qu’il peut.

Je lis La pierre et le sabre, d’Eiji Yoshikawa, un récit initiatique de la vie d’un personnage historique réel, dans le Japon du XVIIe siècle. Celui de Musashi, l’inventeur de la voie des deux sabres. Je me régale. Je l’avais lu adolescente, et je le redécouvre, je le savoure.

L’extrait plus haut illustre tellement bien Miyamoto Musashi, le samouraï en quête de raffinement, de perfection, et de son humanité. Au gré de ses voyages, il observe, se réjouit, il découvre, il tire des enseignements. Et lorsqu’il se bat, c’est à l’instinct, avec une violence implacable et une précision inouïe.

Sur la plaine de Hannya dix jours auparavant, Musashi avait tué une douzaine de rōnins en moins de temps qu’il n’a fallu à un observateur du combat de respirer vingt fois. J’ai compté, ça me prend une minute et vingt-deux secondes pour respirer vingt fois. Balaise.

Et là, au pied du mont Kasagi, il est fasciné que les arbres des forêts sont nombreux et vieux, que les champs sont verts et que les paysans ne regardent pas d’un œil envieux les voyageurs richement vêtus.

Blogging on my website

Like I said, I initially wanted to host a WordPress powered blog on koalie.net, but I learned that some of the constraints on the machine where my website lives include a requirement for limited (i.e. no-no!) database server installation and maintenance, as well as limited exposure in terms of services. M’kay.

Static blogging

Static blogging, why not? Since my website is already static, I may as well consider a static site generator approach. I had all my posts stored neatly in directories of years and months. Only the comments were missing. Presented with a couple of suggestions (Nikola, Pelican), I soon became hopeful that at some point, even koalie.net in full might be generated. Woo! Crazy. After years of building my RSS feed by hand, that would be a pleasant change!

Several attempts with Nikola

Hmmm… Maybe I didn’t pick the right one for me between the two generators. I chose Nikola because Tim van der Linden wrote a thorough tutorial that complemented nicely the Nikola handbook. I followed every step. Three times. It sucked most of Saturday and Sunday, well into each night. I tapped into Vlad’s brain and knowledge whenever I was too stuck. Thanks, Vlad.

I was at times enjoying discovering this whole new thing, and at other times I was really clueless about the whole infrastructure. I tried to rethink and adapt my future work flow without seeing a clear path. Maybe it would have been exactly the same had I chosen to try Pelican instead. Maybe I’m too old, or maybe I lost some of that characteristic geek nature.

At some point I realised the output.xml file that myobackup had generated wasn’t working in Nikola. It was missing the links to the posts, and the program’s import_wordpress function was stuck there.

From My Opera to WordPress.com via output.xml

WordPress.com took the content of output.xml that myobackup had generated and imported successfully. Less than a half-hour later I had exported from WordPress.com a nice, long and full contemplationsinmarkup.wordpress.2013-02-24.xml file.

Back to Nikola, and away

Nikola did just fine with the newest xml file. That milestone reached, I tinkered a while with theming and customisation. There again, I found the numerous directories daunting. I soon resolved, grudgingly, to use one of the available themes as is, without customisation, for the sake of my own sanity. I took a break and pouted away from the computer.

But I kept coming back to the promise of one integrated way to generate koalie.net, including my blog. So I tried harder and re-read the tutorial and the handbook, played further in the virtual environment I had set up.

At this point I was pretty frustrated with myself, to the point that it made me shed tears. I was disappointed. In truth, I was unable to sort things out, let alone make them work.

I nuked all directories.

Sticking with WordPress.com. For now.

I licked my proverbial wounds and then curated the content I had fed into WordPress.com hours before.

119 posts had tags but weren’t filed under any category. There aren’t categories in My Opera as far as I know. Also, a handful of posts used to have images that hadn’t been imported. That took a great while to transfer the 152 files in question, add a description for each, and insert them where they belonged.

Yet, I actually took pleasure in the otherwise boring manual tasks that were involved. I got to re-discover past entries I had totally forgotten. I got to look again at the photo blog of our vacation in Costa Rica last year. I generally got to recall memories attached to events recounted. So, at the end of that experience, there was smiling again, and comfort.

In the future I may try again to install and use a static site generator, be that Nikola, Pelican, or Jekyll/Octopress. In the meantime, I’ll stick a bit with WordPress.com.

screen shot of My Opera blog

And I move its content to wordpress.com on Sunday. Here is a screen shot of the blog home page after import and some tweaking:

Screen shot of WordPress blog

On My Opera, the blog received 35872 visits. Some posts got comments, I can’t easily find out how many. All these were not imported, unfortunately. I will miss them from my records. So, I will remember that some people frequently left a note, or the occasional visitor did.

I am using the WordPress Bueno theme which I’m very fond of.