Alain Fontaine’s Jabberbox

The luxembourgish STATEC is the Service central de la statistique et des études économiques or, in english, the central service for statistics and economic research, in Luxembourg. It is a governmental institution, so the taxpayers basically pay for it.

Today I was positively surprised by their service. For a project we have at VAlain (www.wishlist.lu) , I needed some statistical information about births and weddings in Luxembourg, by geographical region. We simply sent them an E-mail with our requirements, and shortly afterward we received a custom made Exel sheet with the requested data.

Next time I’ll pay my taxes, I’ll remember this and bluntly imagine that the money I pay, only serves the STATEC

Also check http://www.statistiques.public.lu

My 4 year old Golden Retriever also loves Firefox. He even looks like the logo when he sleeps!

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You know that Lotus builds nice, light, fast cars. What is “fast” ? Here’s a small illustration of how fast it can feel if you’re driving behind one.

Ej2 VS Elise elise, auf und davon! – MyVideo

Okay, this is not very academic. But still..

Two days ago, a long-not-seen-anymore friend touched base on FaceBook again: Joaquim Homrighausen, or JoHo for the connaisseurs

Joaquim’s blog has some nice articles related to old Fidonet technology, like this one http://www.joho.se/index.php?/archives/329-The-JAM-Message-Base-Format;-part-of-my-history…html

Fidonet times were great times. For those of you who don’t know, Fidonet was basically a message and file exchange network based on scheduled dial-on-demand POTS communications. POTS ? Plain Old Telephone System. Yes! Modems! Bauds, US Robotics Courier’s, Z-Modem, you name them, we got them…

They were fun times, when a couple of young blokes got together regularly on Fidonet meetings to discuss their latest “online” findings, and working out better deals to get their Echomail and Netmail. And of course talk about the best place to have some beers and pizza.

I seriously consider organising a big Luxembourg Fidonet party one of these days, with all of the old faces. I’m still in touch with some of them here in Luxembourg, and I’m sure that it would’nt be too hard to get a couple dozen together for the century’s biggest Fidonet meeting… well, FidoDead meeting, right

Find out more about Fidonet on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidonet