Photoshop does some magic!

I was recently told that Photoshop CS3 can automate photomerge. It uses a set of photos of your choice and merge them to generate a all-in-one. This enables you to create beautiful panoramas.

The level of details you can get from the result is amazing but at the other hand the file becomes very big (12353 x 2326 pixels).

PS: I work in the IBM (yet to be CBA) building in the middle.

End of the story

I just sold my bike. A love story with a sad end.

I remember going down the road through the Shire's Royal National Park, enjoying every corner in the bush with my 2 mates in the wing mirror. Stopping at Stanwell Park to watch para-gliders taking off and have an ice cream. Enjoying schnitzels and beers (moderately of course) on the terrace of the Scarborough pub (Google map). Ahhhhh, good days are over. For a couple of years at least.

For those you haven't seen it, it's a beautiful Suzuki SV650S. I filmed it once, for posterity.

Suz, i will never forget you.

Will Technology drive us all insane?

I think the recent technologies are really fascinating, they evolve so quickly they're quite entertaining in the way there's always something to learn about. But at the same time, i can find it a bit hard to catch up with all of them and understand what each one can offer me better than the next one.

People of my kind - some say the geeks - have seen the emergence of a restless social online population, using Twitter over the world to join the biggest community online ever. Everybody without discrimination is connected every day to communicate with each other about pretty much anything. The popularity of this new channel already led over people's privacy. 'Lifestreaming' became part of their lifestyle. "Everybody's lets everybody else know what they've been up to, no matter what it it". And i have to admit to be honest that I became myself one of them... Believe it or not, Lance Amstrong and of Shaquille O'Neal are my 'friends' and I can know what they're up to everyday... Blogging is already too slow requiring too much content. Twitter is preferred because its format enables quicker communications. Consumers changed their way of communicating and prefer quick messaging to long blog posts. They talk about updates rather than messages. A good article in SMH showcased well, why technology has been driving consumers' behaviors, which leads to the question: will technology ever be at its edge?

It is scary to imagine that technology might never be at its edge. It implies that people will always be changing the way they communicate to each other, the way they behave and the way they live, to an extent...

HDR photography


HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed.

A very good website that will convince you that it is indeed a great art is Stuck in Customs. They're frequently updating their website, and they provide the best HDR photos online to download.

French film festival - 2009





Once again, the Alliance Francaise is sponsoring a new edition of the Australian French film festival. 2009 is a special cru because this is the 20th edition of the festival.

Obviously I'm very delighted to enjoy more new French masterpieces. Many good shows are scheduled for this new season with 35 movies broadcasted over (only) 15 days.

Working myself from Monday to Friday like most of the people, I certainly know how hard it is to find time to do everything we'd like to. The question is therefore: what are movies you don't want to miss out this year?

I just find an answer for myself and I finished my list of "movies not to miss this year".

On the top of it for the big fans like me, there are also a few other movies that I'd recommend eventhough they're more alternive:

Avis aux amateurs, you can book tickets at this url. We see you there.

Redesigning the Corporate Intranet

My last piece of work for the Bank was to redesign its Corporate Intranet, and improving its IA (Information Architecture). The business case which drove this project established 2 KPIs around usability and findability for the company's most popular channel which counts more than 15,000 pages and 40,000 users.

I first thought that it was a large project but the challenge was just exciting enough to take it on. I was confident I had enough experience in web design that I could consider it as a traditional exercise with established steps that I was already familiar with. Furthermore, I had guarantees from the executive level that there was a decent budget allocated.

We decided to engage an external agency called Step Two design - see clients list - to assist me through the project and we contracted a senior consultant who would mentor me while I'd proceed in 4 steps:

  1. Content inventory and search reports analysis;
  2. Card sorting;
  3. IA testings (Card-based classification evaluation);
  4. and wireframe testings.

My role during these usability exercises was to organize, to facilitate and sometimes to conduct them. The hardest challenge I faced was to find a good representation of all users and to have a goo diversity of profiles. The results could only be as good as I could get a good breathe of the company. I needed people with different roles, business units, locations (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) and experience. I certainly spend a lot of time on this considering that I was working in such a big company but at the end I believe that our results now are accurate.

I was also in charge the analysis all along the project, and my objective was to develop a new design that would meet better user needs and improve the usability. We established a modular model that organizes all the content within a common structure. The Corporate content is organized in 1 giant site called the group site and is placed at the center of all the online information. It has a specific IA that assists users to find its immediate content (group wide content), and it has a design that links better to all the other resources available online. Then around the group site, there are as many micro-sites as there are business units and communities of practice. The fashion of the Intranet is actually similar to the universe with planets around the Sun.
Step Two published a post ad-hock to describe a bit more our analysis. I invite you to visit their findings at this url.

Sel et Poivre


Oui, ca fait tres longtemps que je n'ai pas mis a jour mon blog. J'assume c'est entierement de ma faute. Je vais tacher de rectifier le tir car il semble que beaucoup de personnes s'impatientent.
Donc la derniere fois, j'etais a Cairns et je vivais comme un gitan. En fait, cela n'aura pas dure longtemps car les proprios ne pouvaient pas me garder etant donne qu'il avait planifie un petit voyage dans le Victoria, du cote de Melbourne. Pour etre honnete, je dois dire que je serais bien reste un peu car non seulement Catya, la matriarche et chef cuistot nous concocter des petits plats a vous reveiller les morts et Yann, le patriarche m'apprenait pas mal de choses. Mais voila, il fallait partir.
J'ai donc decide pour ma part de revenir a Sydney, de prendre l'avion pour faire Cairns-Sydney direct en 3 heures et de retourner a la civilisation pour essayer de me faire ma petite place.
Les 15 premiers jours ont ete tranquilles, du genre backpacking, promenades de sante, jogging, basket, lecture et rencontres plus ou moins agreables, voire charmantes. Je passe. Le reste du temps, j'ai cherche du boulot. Je vous assure qu'on ne se rend pas toujours compte de la chance que l'on a de travailler. C'est chiant, il y a des hauts et il y a des bas, il y la routine, mais je vous garantie que c'est une chance que de pouvoir travailler. Pour ma part, comment aurais-je pu rester en Australie sans boulot ? je ne suis pas rentier (je le pardonnerais jamais a mes parents d'ailleurs) et l'argent si durement et si longuement gagne est si vite depense. Le pire aurait ete de de voir revenir en France completement fauche. Le moral et l'ego en aurait pris un coup.
J'ai donc cherche du boulot. Tout d'abord, par Internet pour trouver du boulot dans ma branche, en informatique. A ce jour, je recense 420 candidatures dans ma boite mail, qui donne 15 reponses par mail et 30 par telephone. C'est une bonne moyenne, non ? comme en France je dirais. Et puis, il y a le porte a porte. Alors attention, c'est le top. Tout ceux que j'ai rencontre ici l'on fait... En gros, il suffit de se promener avec son CV, sa tchatche et sa motivation dans les rues de Sydney pour tenter sa chance partout. Restaurants, bars, boutiques en tout genre, etc... apres c'est celui qui est le plus ruse, le plus connu, le plus habile, le plus rapide et qui saura seduire les employeurs qui rentrera avec un boulot en poche. Les meilleurs arrivent meme a creer le besoin de se faire embaucher. C'est tres fort ! et totalement nouveau pour moi. En fait, il y aussi une part de chance indispensable je pense. Il faut etre au bon endroit au bon moment avec les bonnes personnes. Heureusement qu'ici il y a du moouvement, ca rend les gens sympas, ouverts et a l'ecoute en general.
Pour ma part, je n'ai pas trouve le boulot. On me l'a servi sur un plateau. Merci Virginie, sur ce coup la, je t'en dois une belle. Il s'agissait de bosser en cuisine.
_ "Allo, Antony, tu fais quoi la ?"
_ "Je me reveille merci, et toi Virginie qu'est ce qui me vaut le plaisir"
_ "Tu cherches un boulot tu m'as dit ?"
_ "Je cherche tant que je ne trouve pas"
_ "Ici ils cherchent quelqu'un, tu sais cuisiner ?"
_ "euh......... ouais ouais" (demande a mes copains en France tu verras)
_ "si tu veux bosser c'est maintenant"
_ "ok j'arrive"
Une heure plus tard, je rencontre le chef, il me demande quelle est mon experience. Je lui reponds directement dans les yeux que je n'en ai pas mais que s'il me mets a l'essai, il se rendra compte que j'apprends vite. Et finalement, tout s'est bien passe. Il y a des jours comme ca... ou on a bien raison de se lever !