Updated 2019-05-11: This post makes for an entertaining read (in my misguided opinion) but if you're looking for a technical solution to your problem, you should probably check out its more recent version.

So you've bought an eBook on, say, BooksOnBoard.

And you were told it was in PDF format.

Except that it was an Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) version of a PDF, which means that you actually received/downloaded a .acsm file and that you can only open it with ADE. Once you do that, ADE generates a PDF file, which it hides under "My Digital Editions" on my computer, and that .pdf is locked with DRMs and you cannot import it on your eBook reader. If you try to open it with anything that isn't ADE, it requires a password, which you don't have, because it's fucking embedded in ADE. As far as I understand it.

So you're starting to get a little bit pissed off at DRMs. And head off to the Internets again (not that you'd ever left the Internets, but, well).

Here's what Friday (that is to say, yesterday) looked like for me:

6:00 The problem of waking up to a classical music radio station is that sometimes they wake you up with trumpets. In the middle of the night. Still beats the time (back when I lived in France) when I was woken up by the voice of Jean-Marie Le Pen (leader of the French extreme-right). I still shudder at the though of it.

6:10 Get up. Put water to boil. Put clothes on. Wash face. Make coffee. Breakfast.

6:30 Suddenly realize the bus comes in five minutes. Run around the apartment packing my bag with my left hand while brushing my teeth with the right one.

I'm doing fine, running around doing all sorts of cultural stuff and singing songs and making a fool of myself and so forth. I'm going along well enough with people that there's always someone I can talk or laugh with. My German has dramatically improved, more than I was expecting actually, but I'm started to get fed up with my classes. Which is probably also why I'm so excited to soon go back to science — aside from, well, science being made of awesome and shiny unicorns, and also what I've trained for for my entire life. That said, I eat poorly, spend way too much time sitting on my ass, run mostly on sugar and caffeine, and clearly don't get nearly enough sleep, so it's also time that I go back to the real life. Please don't point out that I generally spend way too much time sitting on my ass, eating poorly and not getting enough sleep in real life as well. I have Plans.

But I don't have much to talk about. Well, I do, but mostly about a topic I don't want to talk about (because it's painful, and because they're no way I can write about it without offending people I have no desire to offend). I realize it sounds like a cheap teaser, but I'm afraid it actually is a genuine impasse. However half-assed it sounds (and however much my spell-checker insists there's no such word as "half-assed"), it's nevertheless the reason why I haven't been writing lately.

So, yeah, you know. Meep.

The first of my two months of German classes has ended. The last day was a sad affair (most students stay only for a month); gloomy, antsy, overtired, somewhat teary-eyed, and with what I can only call a certain dampness to it. The weather was gray and humid. Our goodbyes were quiet and there was none of the rolls of laughter one could usually hear pouring into the corridor when more than four people are gathered in the kitchen from my housing unit. There were hugs and exchanged gifts and pressed hands and promises to keep in touch and try to visit one another — we're not fool enough not to realize how hard these promises can be to hold when some live in South America and others in Australia.

All that to say I had a great time and met people I truly get along really well with. (Also, my German has improved ten-folds and I'm well on my way to my 2004 level.)

List of the skills acquired or perfected during the last five years that I put to use here during my intensive German classes:

• ability to speak English fluently;
• ability to cook;
• ability to take decent pictures;
• ability to sing along with a good number of Belle and Sebastian songs;
• ability to talk about beers / wines / vodkas like I really cared about anything else besides whether or not I like them;
• ability to plan a trip;
• ability to dance;

List of the skills acquired or perfected during the last five years that nobody gives a shit about:

• ability to give a scientific presentation;
• ability to do science;
• ability to use a computer and know what I'm doing with it;
• ability to write a fucking PhD dissertation.

List of the skills I've had for over ten years and that impress the most people:

• ability to speak French fluently;
• ability to pronounce "an en in on un" in French;
• ability to book train tickets and take the train without it turning into a nightmare;
• ability to wander around a medium-sized city (called, in that context, "big city") without panicking / losing myself / getting robed / noticing anything unusual about the situation;
• ability to know where the car is parked and remember where the post office is;
• being French.

1. Turn the beeping sounds of your camera off. It's useless, it's annoying (especially when there are thirty beeping cameras in the same touristic place), and it's a dead give away when you try to take pictures in places where it's forbidden.

2. You have two hands (generally). Hold the camera with both hands. It's amazing how much more stable it is.

3. You might not be aware of it, but your compact digital camera has an autofocus. Press half-way to focus, then all the way to take the picture.

4. Learn when you might need your flash and when there's no chance in hell it's useful. Of course you run out of battery, you've spend the entire day shooting at faraway landscapes with the flash on.

5. If you've failed to apply points 2 and 3, please refrain from uploading a bash of 170 mostly blurry and out-of-focus pictures to Facebook.

6. No, I don't want you to take a blurry, out-of-focus picture of me in front of the breath-taking landscape / historical monument. On the other hand, it would be great if you could get out of the way so that I can try to make a decent picture out of it.

This post was brought to you by repeated and close proximity with people who don't seem to be able to know whether their camera is up or down, and the misplaced sense of superiority I derive from having a vague idea of what ISO is.

Reverb10 is now offering "one tool each day to help you plan your year ahead".

So far we've had "How to create your personal manifesto", "Soul biographies: thoughts become things", "MicroMOVEment Support Sheets" and "The Next Step After Vision". This is all self-flattering, time-consuming, utter bullshit, if you want my informed opinion. Well, not so informed, as I couldn't bear reading through any of the entire articles.

For example, I read just enough of the "MicroMOVEment" thingie to learn it is about breaking down big, seemingly unconquerable tasks in more manageable sub-units. OH SUCH AN INCREDIBLE REVOLUTION STOP THE PRESSES.

I didn't even have the courage to click on the "Next Step After Vision" link. I'm pretty sure it's action, though.

I think I've had it with Reverb10.

And in any case I'm running a bit out of time as tomorrow the mom and I are hitting the road to Germany, with my boxes an' stuff in the boot (take that, American English) of the car, on the way to the lovely flat (take that again, American English) I have found last week. So I am a bit busy. With such things as mapping the trip, booking a hotel halfway there and back, purchasing train tickets^[1] for when I return there by train next Monday, and packing my crap into the proper suitcases.

So off I am, waving to you frantically with my little tiny hand, and wishing you a very happy 2011 indeed.

Apparently I stopped worrying about reverb10 when I climbed in the train for Paris. Go figure. So, what did we miss?

Day 12. Body integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?

I...

I just laughed so hard I might have split a rib. How's that for mind-body integration?

I know I'm not always getting along well with my body. Nevertheless, I tend to consider myself as a whole. My mind and my body have to be integrated because my body is my mind's one and only interface with the world. When I'm dancing, but also when I'm eating, walking, sleeping, breathing, or sitting at my computer typing bad answers to nonsensical questions.

Day 11. What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

Yeah, right.

It should come at no surprise at this point that this prompt, like its ten elder brothers but the first one, irritates the fuck out of me. I can already see the responses. Some of them will be New-Year-Resolution style. Cigarettes, fat, chocolate, stress, clutter, procrastination, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, petty arguments, compulsive shopping, debt. Others will be more in the Miss-USA vein, like so many Facebook avatar memes. World hunger, wars, conflicts, pollution, cancer, dying polar bears, abused children, beaten wives, abandoned pets, corrupt politicians, oil spills.

Gah! Was this thing really supposed to be so sappy?

(I just had a look at what people wrote, using Twitter's search, and they're either snarky of as new-year-resolutionerish or miss-usa-ey as I feared.)

Call me resistant to self-help and self-improvement, but I find it so patronizing to assume that people have as many as eleven non-trivial things they not only need to eliminate but also can eliminate. The "can" part prevents me from drawing wishful, pointless lists including pain, right-wing fucknuttery, and perfectionism-induced freak-outs.

Or maybe I shouldn't assume anything about the triviality of the things and go on and list objects, but: I have weeded out of my life all objects that needed to go when moving out from California.