Regardless, I have high expectations for the year to come and really think that 2009 will be great. So, I’m just starting with a little bump on the road but that won’t be enough to really affect my mood which is definitely pretty good overall. I spent a very nice evening with my friends at Shanna’s and Thierry’s and I hope you all had nice celebrations for this change of year.

I really wish the best in the world to everyone out there for 2009 and I decided to do so via a short “magic video”, I hope you’ll like it !

Best,

Goulven 

In case my metaphor isn’t very explicit (it probably isn’t actually), I, once again, had in mind a major update and stopped updating my blog because I planned to update everything all at once. Of course, I couldn’t find the time to make my fantastic ground breaking update ‘de la morte’ and my blog remained dead for several month… I guess I suck but I’ll try to quit this nasty habit in 2009.

I also have to say that it touched me to get some comments about my blog not being updated. It means that some people really read it so I really should take a better care of it! So, I think the first thing I should do now is to give you the latest news about my situation in Utrecht because… well, some important things are going on actually.

First, I’m nearing the end of my Ph-D and things seems to go quite ok although I have a few busy month ahead obviously. I could use this as an excuse for not updating my website but I’ll save it for later. ^^

Secondly, I finally decided what I will do next! I took a long time to weight all the options because I’m fully aware that I was fortunate to be in a position to actually chose my next job among several very interesting positions. I guess it’s ok to be lucky as long as you don’t act like it’s matter of a fact due. After seriously considering a jump into the private world, I decided to remain among my academic peers for now. I don’t want to say to much right now because nothing is signed but my future appears to be in Utrecht for for 3 more years and I will work with someone I already worked with before. I think this should give enough information for those who can to read in between the lines.

Now, the plan for 2009, as far as I’m concerned is to finish my thesis as fast as I can (say, before May), spend one month of well deserved holidays in Brittany with my friends and family and, in June, start my new job! What about the defense then? Well, I guess it will have to wait until September but I swear that it will be a hell of a party you don’t want to miss!

I’ll tell you more later… seriously, I will!

This video was shot during the Japan Expo 2008 in Paris. I still have 2 or 3 more videos to take care of and I’ll make a post dedicated to that with all the name of the people I “tricked” there and links to their art websites or blogs. For the time being, that just a small sign that I didn’t forget about that and I also intend to make a sort of ‘best-of’ video out of the 12 I have.For the time being, I’m still struggling with my lay out, in particular for the blog. So, while I’m trying to fix my css sheet, I don’t do many other things for the website. However, I’ll hopefully come back to you soon with some new pages and several small updates. I also might have some news music wise soon so, stay tuned!

Edit: After several trie, it never worked the way I expected so I’m just putting the link instead of the embedded video… I really have to sort things out with wordpress!

This week-end, I was in Lorraine (in the East of France where, oddly enough, I never went before). I was invited by an old friend of mine… Such an old friend in fact that we’ve been knowing each other for all of our lives! I was born on the 1st of May 1978 and he was born on the 4th in the same hospital. We almost grew up together because our parents were close friends and were very close until we were 20 or so. At this point studies brought us on different paths but we still kept in touch and last Saturday I was invited to his wedding.

I don’t want to get overly emotional because that’s not the point of this blog but I was very touched and extremely happy to be there. I met again all his family including his Sister who used to play with us when we were kids and whom I didn’t talk to in 10 years or so. His parents were very nice as usual and treated us like family (my parents and sister were also there). It’s one of these sweet and so rare feeling of finding something again untouched ages after you left it. The bounds were still there and I was feeling just as well with them as were I was 4 and Tanguy and I were learning how to bike together.

Of course, time went by and I also realized how far I am from Tanguy’s life now. Actually, I never even met the bride before the wedding! But she, and all her family were really nice and welcoming. I got to meet many colleagues and friends of Tangy and it was a funny for me to catch up with some of the things he did over the last decade.

I don’t really know what to add but, in all honesty, although I’m not usually a big fan of weddings, I can’t thank you both enough for inviting me. I wish you the best of course and I had greetings also to Lena, Gerard and Marie-Pierre because it’s just been too long since the last time we met, to Sam for contacting me about the “wedding surprise”, to Davy so that he doesn’t freak out again because I forgot him and to everyone!

PS: If can understand French and you’re curious about the “wedding surprise”, just have a look at this video (careful, it’s 27Mo and not compressed) http://www.volguen.com/divers/Tanguy.AVI

I hope I managed to properly insert this blog into my website (and here, let me thank Mischiev for a very insightful chat about the matter). Let me know what you think about it and if you see a bug somewhere (actually, I can already see a few but I’ll fix that later, I’m tired now…). There’s still some work to be done on the design but it will be for the next update hopefully. I’m also a little concerned about the alternative layout selection because it’s a feature I used to have and I’m not quite sure yet about the proper way to implement this with this new blog system… if there’s even a way, that it.
Since I never manage to throw anything away, I decided to keep all the previous “blog” entries written with my previous system on the page named “archive”. It’s a sort of history of the website (2 years old actually), so feel free to read it if you like. I’m still in the process of setting up the whole thing so if you have any suggestion, advice or request (such as a link exchange for instance), let me now because it’s the perfect time!