fplanque: off topic

Ok, so I'm back to France... and guess what: I'm actually seeing the light of day!!

When I flew back from California last October I had the hardest time ever to sync back to European time. This time... it might be smoother...

There is a 9 hour time difference between California and France. That means that when you normally wake up at 10 am California time, it is already 7 pm France time. So when you fly over this way, you tend to wake up in the evening... stay up all night... and finally feel sleepy in the morning. Do that in the winter when the days are shorter and the nights longer... and you literally won't get to see the light of day for weeks! Guaranteed ending up somehow depressed...

This time I tried to prepare real hard for the trip back home. I would go to sleep really early for the last few days in California, then get up every morning around 5 am (2 pm French timezone).

So I planned I would keep that rhythm when coming back: wake up at 2pm and manage it from there...

Of course it didn't go as planned! Does it ever anyway?

I couldn't sleep for the whole overnight flight. T'was actually the most turbulent flight I think I ever experienced. We landed at sth like 11 am yesterday and I got home at something like 1pm. Had to stack up the fridge first ad basically got to sleep around 6 pm, just when daylight would start to fade a little...

I woke up several times during the night but fell asleep again shortly thereafter, until 6am when I just couldn't sleep any longer. Luckily the day would dawn around 6:30 and I'm now feeling almost okay.

Of course I always talk about jet lag on planes and nobody seems to have ever cracked it really... However, I just felt so bad last time that I keep thinking there's room for improvement, at least for myself.

So far, this time seems to good to be true. But on the other hand there's one thing that makes it a lot easier: summer time! Days are long enough to make it easy to wake up at some point when it's *not* dark outside. And daylight helps, really, a lot!

Anyway, we'll see how it goes in the next few days...

Let's get to work!!

I just bought this cool gadget app for $19.95: EarthDesk.

I may have bought it only because it looks cool, or only because it gives you a sense of global awareness. But the real reason is, I guess, because it's 100 times more effective than having a series of clocks on your wall or on your desktop!

I'm in contact with quite a few development and business partners around the globe (+ special thought for the evoTeam members! ) and I'm constantly looking at clocks to know what time of day it is in their region.

Now I'm just gonna look at my desktop and get a sense of global time much quicker! It really makes a difference!

Besides showing day & night (with city lights), EarthDesk also does "real time" updating of clouds as well as real moonlight rendering. And you can choose from a dozen different map projections, set your viewpoint where you want... The only thing missing is being able to drag your desktop earth around as if it was Google Earth

Note: rectangular maps look best on widescreen monitors (Even with a multiscreen span, you won't match it). Also I very much prefer the "feel" of the Mac version... and it's really hard to tell why, since the look is pretty much the same. I bought a license for the Mac... I'm still unsure as to whether I should buy one for Windows or not...