May 2009
23 posts
1 tag
Finally, a day in Paris
My wife and I finally got a chance to experience Paris in leisurely style yesterday. We started in Île Saint-Louis around lunch time and had a very nice meal with a great view of the back of Notre-Dame and a pleasant breeze off the Seine.
After our meal and some coffee we strolled the island while enjoying some ice cream and sorbet, supposedly the best in Paris. We bought some gifts for folks...
1 tag
Willy Wonka's Nespresso Factory
My most surreal experience this trip was my trip to the Nespresso store yesterday.
When I came up from the Metro I was greeted by the old Opera house, which is gorgeous. I didn’t have the exact address with me, so I checked my iPhone for an available Wi-Fi network. I was able to connect to one called “Google-Guest” and find the store in the maps app.
The store itself was like...
1 tag
Symfony in Concert gets a little attention
I’m happy to report symfony in concert got a little attention yesterday. I sat down with a designer here at Sensio and discussed the forthcoming microsite: something clean that can be built quickly. I think it’s a challenging design because the site is targeted toward two disparate audiences: developers and social organizations. Preparations for symfony live have taken the front seat...
1 tag
Ten Days In
Today will be my tenth day in Paris. I’m on the bus now, headed to lovely Clichy and thinking about how unprepared I was for this sort of trip. It’s challenging to be “a stranger in a foreign land,” but of course I would have been naive to expect anything different. I don’t speak the language, for goodness sake!
Living in a big city is also an adjustment. I’ve...
1 tag
1 tag
Interactive timetable for the Paris Metro in... →
1 tag
Using my iPhone internationally
No, I didn’t unlock my iPhone. Rather I’ve locked it down with a few key settings that allow me to continue my multitouch love affair without paying AT&T through the nose.
The first thing I did upon departing for France was confirm the international data roaming option was switched to off (I think this setting was patched in by Apple after people starting getting upset by...
1 tag
Jet lag complete
I guess one more post on the jet lag tag wouldn’t hurt, but only to report we finally seem to have fully adjusted. Last night was the third night we all slept straight through (although I was up a bit late working). That means it took my two year old six nights to adjust to a nine hour change, my three year old five nights. Looking back on it that actually seems pretty good :)
1 tag
Pedestrian injuries
I’ve seen at least a dozen young people walking around with crutches and one woman being placed on a stretcher after being hit by a car today. Is this just city life or some kind of epidemic?
1 tag
Waiting for the Metro, thinking about Forms
I’m below Paris waiting for the 13 and thought I might take advantage of this time to post here…
Things are good! My first days at Sensio have gone well, although I’ve been bailing around lunchtime to catch up on sleep. Fabien and I have been working on that-which-cannot-be-revealed and discussing bits of symfony, components and the like.
I recently introduced the...
1 tag
Le Bistral
My wife and I just returned from a delicious meal at a neighborhood bistro. I had veal liver and she had duck tenderloin. It was extraordinary. I think the joint is called Le Bistral (on Rue de Moines).
My wife doesn’t think we can do any better but I find that hard to believe. The food was out of this world, but this is Paris, you know?
1 tag
Symfony Components →
Symfony just put the PHP world on notice.
1 tag
Saturday morning
Hopefully this will be my last post on the jet lag tag. It’s Saturday morning, our 4th in Paris, and everyone is still sleeping. My son was up at around 3am again, but after a few hours he eventually fell back asleep. That’s real progress.
I, meanwhile, am watching A Bug’s Life on my iPhone, retweeting the new symfony components site, and waiting for the bakery across the...
2 tags
Day 3? 4? Maybe 2?
The kids were up early again this morning. I think it was 3-something when I glanced at my watch. Recovering from jet lag is definitely a multi-day ordeal.
Once this half of the world wakes up I’ll be heading into Sensio and hopefully resolving our mobile phone concerns. I think we’ll all feel a bit more comfortable venturing out into the city once we have phones, especially when the...
1 tag
1 tag
Jet lag report
It’s 5:40 now, my wife and I are wide awake, but the kids are both sound asleep. Our downstairs neighbors are probably just as happy as we are.
1 tag
A forray into French healthcare
Before coming, everything I knew about French healthcare I learned from Michael Moore. That is to say, I didn’t know much, but I liked what i did. Today I learned a bit more from personal experience and have only good things to say.
My 2 year old son has had mild asthma in the past, which we have an inhaler for back home. We neglected to bring it, of course, and in the course of dealing...
1 tag
3am. Kids awake. Must blog.
Well, it’s around 3am here in Paris, 6pm back home. I think I should learn how to apologize and say “jet lag” in French, should we meet our downstairs neighbors tomorrow…
Surprisingly, none of us did any research on helping kids get through jet lag. I just now read one article online that suggests you “take the first two days off.” We’ll probably end up...
Un baguette
My wife tells me I have to blog about how I bought a baguette in Paris today. I’m so bloody exhausted I can’t say much else. More tomorrow.
1 tag
Airport rules
My family in California may be interested to know I just introduced “airport rules” to the kids, to be invoked any time they need to choose one adult to stick close to. (I’d have said “camping rules” but we haven’t been yet!)
2 tags
Tumblin along
I’m happy to announce my new blog!
I’ll post here throughout my trip to France, which starts tomorrow and spans six weeks. After that, who knows. Expect my posts to touch on any number of things, including web development, travelling & parenting. Hopefully I won’t try to be clever, but rather share things you might find interesting.
At the outset I’d like to thank...
