March has been a month out, the experiement I’d like to continue during coming years. It’s surely a bit tiring, spending only 10 days out of 30 at a place called “home”, but things to see are so infinites that I could have spent these 10 days out to another place to discover/enjoy new things.

First in Spain, to burn a perfectly ‘lucky’ christmas gift, and to visit David&Maria from Las Indias. 10 days of pure blossom, confronting ideas with freakies living in the same strange world, one foot in reality, one foot in virtuality. Meeting David&Sarah from San Fransisco, ad discover with them inner-Spain, small corners of a country unavailable to common tourists. That have been a great time to start this new travel, joining a new team to continue on the trip, and getting to understand this “Feel Happy” philosophy.

The time to wash my clothes back to Toulouse, and time to take another train to Lyon to visit Fred. Now it’s time to learn how to live in a new lifestyle: meeting people during the day, leaving them to sleep at night while working, and having breakfast with them in the morning before to go to sleep while they work during the day. Feeling great, until the nights where you’ve drink so much that you’re not able to do anything useful in the night when everybody else is sleeping And as typical after meeting Fred, I’m back from Lyon with a lot of life’s lessons to put my theeth on, things are going forward.

Movies

The Fountain: this movie has been so ravaging that it shadows all other movies watched during this month. I couldn’t recommend it due to particular conditions while watching it, and it would be this kind of movie I’ll respect without being able to watch it again in the same conditions.
(click to view trailer)

Music

Artists of the month:

• Clint Mansell: music from The Fountain
• Syrano: French street music
• Macka B: long lost reggae, good souvenirs from London
• Death Cab for Cuties: independant music, in the backpack from Madrid

Radio this month, Seattle centric:

• KEXP
• KGRG

Books

• Louves de Mer: first book I’ve found about XVI’s century pirates, and as all novels I love, main characters are women. The story of 2 women evolving in a man world, finding their way to the top. Love, passion, strange feelings in disguise when people have to trust their hearth to discover the truth below the appearance.
• Nous les Dieux by B. Weber: to read
• Ravage by R. Barjavel: to read

Life

Berlin
I’ve been looking for Chris birthday all january, and heard about it using IM and phone. After spending most of my time thinking about Berlin, and looking for new projects to get myself closer to it, David - from lasindias.com and feevy.com - offered me a weekend there after a long sleep-tight week.
Jumps and smiles, which wouldn’t leave me for days. The plane was 13 hours late and my backpack lost in Amsterdam airport for another night, I don’t care, I was there again. To be honest, I’ve been spending the week before the travel to fear another “leaving-Berlin” feeling like at the beginning of 2007. It strangely didn’t happened this way, I don’t know why and I don’t care.

Threadless: The biggest order yet
16 t-shirts in one order, it’s becoming big and international with new members from Berlin. The group-ordering website has taken a pause, and I hope to start on it again during march, at least to have some basic stuff to play with.

Fred: back to France
On a “are you lucky?” phone call, I finally got some news from Fred, who is back to Lyon until end of march. Long sleepless night at the phone

Music

One of the hardest thing to write about is music, let’s get some exercice:

Ane Brun

Rilo Kiley

RJD2

Movies

23

Books

The Hero and the Crown
I was probably only at the half of the book when I wrote about it in january, now it’s finished and back to its owner. I found the best paragraph ever on page 194, maybe it was fitting perfectly my mood at the time.

Créateurs de mondes, Andreu Solé
This book has been on my desk since Piotr has return it. I’m just looking at it now, because I already know what is inside, and I’ll understand it better if I just think about it.

Le Petit Prince
I was thinking about creating a comfort-zone where I would put all kind of nice things inside, to get fresh odors from home, and feel warmer sometimes during my next trips. Le Petit Prince would have a place in this box.

Life

Sleep log: at last I can have a quick-view on my sleep pattern, which was somtimes really un-regulated this last month. Simple method to do it, every morning on the monthly calendar inside my moleskine agenda, I color a little grey bar inside the day cell.

Freelance launching: would it be done at last? I’ve been procastinating the legal registration process during all the month, finding perfect excuses with my willing to live abroad in the coming year.

German courses: could have been done before, but not without this christmas super-motivation-boots to go living in Berlin next summer. At the rate of one hour a day, which is really hard to maintain, I could be ready with some basic skills at the right time. Current level: basic understanding when reading a text.

Hand-crafting projects: I always need to do something from my hand: code and crafts. After origami last month that occupied some sleepless nights, time for duct-tape skills. Not really fond of it, I’m now looking some something a little bit more geekier like a vibrobot (solar powered).

Movies

Some people come to this blog just because of movie listing already existing in previous posts.

Thumbsucker: the typical kind of movie I really like: unknow actors, american style, sub-urban life with people having everyday-lik problems.

Herr Lehmann: just to know a little bit more about life before the berlin wall collapsed. Funny to retrieve some scene I’ve been visiting last month, hearing about some neighborhood. But I haven’t understand anything about hte recurring ‘electrolyte’ joke during the movie, if someone can help?

Cashback: everyday-life in another country: UK, a student taking a small job in a Sainsbury’s supermarket, navigating in thoughts during his sleepless hours. Good fun, and lots of nice reflexion about love.
This movie was a short first, released in 2004. If you have 15 minutes free, you can watch it on YouTube.

Prête-moi ta main: I usually do not go to watch this kind of comedian french movie, probably because of some cheesy memories from the 90’s. I feared a bit for this one, but I was really full of laught during the movie Lots of french clichés, with Alain Chabat as fun as he can be, and the mysteriously attractive Charlotte Gainsburg.

Music

Joshua Rabin: listened more than once during first weeks of January, begin to stop the addiction after getting ot the fact that it was really sticking on my mood. A music for to remember this month feelings.

Regina Spektor: send by Bertrand, a nice female vocalist with some great games in her songs.

Wax Tailor: discovered by Chris on her berlin-radio, they really sounds like The Avalanches with some tv/movie voice mixed inside electonic music.
You can listen their whole album on their website: http://www.waxtailor.com/

Reading

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, Chris favorite book. A witch-daughter not at her place in a Royal court, finding her way in the art of dragon-slaying. Always nice to know how to manage draong affaire!

The Pursuit of Emptiness by John Perry Barlow. The kind of text I’d like to read every few month to get back on rails about my life. Some really powerful quotes inside, just to ridiculize most of our westerners’ way of life.

The Virgin Suicide experiment

For a few months, or probably a few year, I always wanted to virtualize a scene from The Virgin Suicide movie. In this scene, friends are phoning using music lyrics to make the conversation, with really great soundtracks. The idea I have is to do the same using mp3 and a kind of music chat room.

This morning, we tried to experiment with Sylvain it using CampFire from 37Signals as a music chat room and putting mp3 files inside this room. Well, this didn’t really work, as mp3 handling was really not working, and it was probably too easy to communicate directly to the other personn, not respecting the basic concept rule of speaking only with soundtrack.

A new idea for social audio

But a nice idea came from experiment: would it be possible to have a kind of audio social network? It would be like all these widgets for MySpace, or Pandora intelligent player, it’ll more be like a kind of radio where your friends are putting music inside, and you can just listen to your friend selection. A group interaction could create a kind of music timetable, with special music sessions at a certain hour, music getting random at the other time of the day.

I won’t implement this idea, it’s really a big job to do and it would need few months of dedicated time, but it’s really expected to work if nicely done.