Remember Lacuna Coil?

Talked about them in that post.

They're regulars when party-crashers invite themselves in my life. Which feels a bit like they just did. Until now, I was running pedal to the metal, knowing full well that I could get any job I set my eyes on. Dream on, mate. You're no better than anyone else. Failure is also part of your life. And suddenly, life feels a lot lonelier.

On the positive side, my dad's surgery went well this morning and he's recovering at home. Underneath that positive feeling, there's the nagging sentiment that my parents are aging, it was tough hearing his diminished voice on the phone. Parents aren't invincible, I haven't accepted it yet.

I want to drink my troubles away.

I miss the evenings we'd spend where I lived as a student, a cheap meal, a couple of beers and Pink Floyd on the stereo, talking about important things, planes, cars & girls. I felt part of a group. That group has dissolved, and the groups I've joined since then aren't as consistent, too many differences between individuals. One exception of course, the blogosphere, but we're still a long way from lying on the carpet, listening to Matmatah or Dire Straits and sharing memories of days spent at the airfield.

Shit, I miss people...

ouch

"Someone else has been selected for this position".
Ouch, I didn't want to hear that. Another department was interested by my resume, but I screwed the interview.
With some chance, other departments will also be interested. And I haven't heard back from Eurocopter, which isn't bad news but isn't good news either.
...

goofing around

Posted under Linux...
Yup, I've made it, I've turned into an ubergeek, and nothing can make me come back.This screenshot from my computer is:

• Internet Explorer 6, running on Linux.

I need to install Windows Media Player now, but am not in a hurry.

I've done some progress on the robot simulator on linux, but I haven't touched my little rectangles on Matlab since the video in the previous post.

Movies-wise, I've seen V for Vendetta and Ice Age 2. I didn't like V at all, it's useless and barely entertaining.
On the contrary, I've appreciated Ice Age. It doesn't intend to be politically charged, even though talking about global warming is certainly not a coincidence. I thought most characters were either thin or too silly/stupid to be really funny, but that squirrel and its nut, man, that was gooood. It really added something else.

And on the driving side, I've had my 2 first hours of theory today, learning how a car works (duh), and what are the buttons around the wheel and the stuff under the hood/bonnet.
Tomorrow are the 2 next hours, where I'm supposed to learn trajectories and the driving wheel handling. That part will require time, I can feel it...
Then there's going to be 2 more hours to learn pedal work and gear changing. And finally, I'll get to kill pedestrians and cyclists, mwahahahahahah :-D

Quelles sont vos pretentions salariales?

Thursday over, I've already had 3 interviews this week and I'm having the fourth tomorrow.

The one on tuesday (Eurocopter, Marignane) went wayyyyyy to well for me. The job would be awesome (core calculations on all main rotors of the Eurocopter helicopters, with expertise in performance, mechanical loads and acoustics), I'd be trained for 300 hours in the first year, and well, I'd be working on the main element of helicopters.
The whole trip wasn't quite as interesting, the inner marseille, between the Gare St Charles, the Cannebiere and the port is the last place I want to visit again. Filthy, overcrowded, and a place you don't feel comfortable walking through in suit and tie. You kinda feel like an alien, and a few times like a source of easy income. Blah. Overall, I spent almost 150 euros for this trip, but it may be worth it. And, Kala, next time, I'll organise myself a bit better so we can meet up somewhere!!

Wednesday was a tough one. I was awoken by my cellphone at 10:30 am, scheduled an interview at 14:00, and got ready as fast as I could. The interview didn't go too well, but the job wasn't in my field anyway.

And today was the worst interview I've had since I've started looking in January. I should have visited the company before, but after mucho problems cancelled a previous interview. So I went back and met one of the department bosses. He started by presenting the company, which operates outside of my usual scope and is known for a financial scandal from a few years back. That guy probably missed his opportunity as a TV news anchor, that same detachment of every word, slow pronunciation and exagerated tone, plus the gaze. Blank. Text learnt by heart, no possibility to interact.
Then I presented myself, got interrupted a few times, attacked on the fact that I wasn't a pilot. "Students can have good discounts and you should have done it". Yeah, well, I spent close to 90 000 euros of my parents money to get an education, so cut the crap. Plus, I don't really feel the need for piloting.
When he got in the end that I wasn't the person he saw through my resume, I got the blame for choosing the internships and jobs I got. I was sure he was the one who called me for an interview, not the opposite.

Then came the Question. Quelles sont vos pretentions salariales?
The quick answer is 28-30 kE, market value, negotiable.
The long answer is it's not up to me anyway, I'm a junior engineer, your firm has grids to decide how much you can pay me, and there's nothing I can do about it. So don't ask like you care.
As far as I was concerned, I didn't much care what he thought anymore. And yes, I know all firms ask that or "Quelles sont vos exigences salariales?", and I reply pretty much the same thing every time, "28-30, negotiable, and your grids will tell you how much you can pay me".

We finally reached part 3 of the interview, and the discussion went approximately like this:

Him: What do you expect from this interview?
Me: Get to know your firm in more detail, which I did in part 1 of the interview and discuss possible missions you may have that would suit my profile.
Him: Let me rephrase, my goal in this interview is to start a contact with you and see if we could extend our collaboration through a second interview with a service manager and then through a third interview where we would finally propose you a mission.

Please, sir, can I go? You don't give a damn what I think, we're not discussing, you're interrogating me instead, and you have nothing interesting for me... The rest of the interview kept at the same aggressive and unconstructive level.
When he finally released me from this inferno, I removed the business suit, exchanged the glasses for sunglasses, rolled my sleeves and cycled back like I was on holidays :-)

I'm a blunt guy, I'm not a diplomat, I'm here to do a job, and I'll only make ronds de jambe up to a point. Gimme me a mission and I'll tell you if I can do it or not, invite me to talk and face my indifference.

Manny's portraits

I wanted to write a lyrical post, but... here's the picture anyway:
A portrait

I just love the work by this photographer: Manny's page

Interview, marseille, linux, robots

Hey all :-)

I've got my schedule for monday-tuesday.
I'll be arriving slightly before 5pm in Marseille on monday.
Anyone knows a nice and acceptably cheap resto over there? I wanted to arrive later, but that was the only train with available seats.
If I don't forget to reserve a room, the hotel is situated less thana kilometer away from the airport. My interview is at 10 am, running till noon (I'll see HR and the technical guy one after the other).
So at noon, they'll free me. I may try to visit the factories in the afternoon but I'm not sure I'll manage.
My train back to Toulouse is at 19:30, so I'll probably spend the day in Marseille. Again, does anyone know what I could do for the afternoon?

I have reinstalled linux on my machine last week, so I can tinker with it a bit more and hopefully, I can get a few interesting pieces of software to work. I've chosen the Ubuntu flavour that "everyone" talks about. It's definitely easier to use than the Fedora Core 3 I tested last year. But it's still nowhere near ready for the casual Windows user.
Even though there's not much software to install compared to Windows(most is preinstalled), installing additional stuff is still a pain. Point-and-click beats command line anyday. When you can point-and-click... I've been trying to compile and run a robot simulator for 3 days now, and that's not fun at all...

Until I found a Pyro/Knoppix Live-CD that I'll try as soon as it's burned. Of course, to burn it, you'll need a CD-R drive (check), an empty CD-R (check) and the software to do it, which is where the problem is: "I can't find the damn software and I can't find where to get it". Until I fall back on the Ubuntu documentation: Right click on the .iso and select Write to Disc... (about 3/4 of the way down the menu) and follow the instructions.
Duh, who would have thought it'd be already there... I'm still a windows user, and a Tux noob, alright.

I'll tell you more when I've tested this LiveCD. Until now check Gazebo. The videos at the end are awesome.

choose your own title

Job hunting is coming along, I've got my third interview for the black box analysis sometime this week or the next one. It will be scheduled by my employer and the customer and told to me afterwards. This interview should be fairly routine and there's little risk they'd refuse me.
I was also contacted for a first interview by Eurocopter Marignane. I had replied to a job offer to work on the main rotor design but the offer had disappeared from the net after a few days and I thought they had found someone. Turns out they haven't yet or a new position was opened. I'll meet them next tuesday from 10 AM to noon. No train that early in the morning means I'll take one the day before and sleep at a cheap hotel in the area. The job could be brilliant too, I'm so fascinated by helicopters :-D But I'm not sure I wanna move anywhere at the moment.

Been going back to the movies in the last 2 weeks:
+La Planete Blanche, on the wilderness around the North Pole, with very impressive pictures
+Truman Capote, I didn't know the guy and I should have remained ignorant. jerk
+Romanzo Criminale, the story of a group of friends in Italy in the 70's who turned into a fearless criminal organisation. Not as interesting as I thought it would be.
+Renaissance, black and white animation movie set in Paris in 2020 or 2050. Long, boring, not much of a story, and a mechanical feel in the animation that doesn't help. Lip synch doesn't help. Only saved (barely) by the fact that I know someone who worked on it :p she even has her name in the credits :D

I've spent the week end in Paris, arriving there on friday night, and coming back on sunday night. On my way to my friends' flat, I met them going in the opposite direction. So we went to the movies, missed the start time and spent the evening in an irish pub. I had my first pint of cider in a loooong time, then my second.
The next day I spent in the city, going to the Fnac to look for books. I bought 2 Clive Cussler and I found Porco Rosso, in 2 DVDs :D :D :D :D. My all time favourite animation movie, dubbed in french because Jean Reno is just awesome. The history of an italian pilot who turned into a pig between WW1 and WW2 flying in his red Marchetti seaplane. It's all nostalgic and sad and full of hope in the same time.
Saturday night was the birthday party of the friends who invited me. Great evening, twice more food than what was needed as usual, and people I hadn't seen in a long time. Great moment altogether.
And we spent sunday doing nothing until I fled to catch my return train.

That's about it, I almost finished the first Cussler in the train and am back waiting for job news...

new vid

Programmed in less than 1 hour 2 days ago.

The principle:
If the robot sees more light red than dark red, it turns left;
If the robot sees more dark red than light red, it turns right;
The bigger the difference in pixel number of each colour, the slower it goes.

Here it is

It's now coded in WMV, and it probably will remain like that, until someone can show me a point and click software to encode raw AVI files into either AVI or MPG files readable by WMP (and if possible iTunes/QT at the same time).

video problems

I've made 1 new version of the vid from yesterday. Tell me if it works or not.
If it doesn't, I'll do some research on the internet on how to encode them for WMP, cuz matlab won't do it.

Video1 Cinepak

Other news:
Passed my code, rode 20 kilometers, waited for ages, spent 25 minutes in a dark room, and pedaled back 15 kilometers. But the result is: I don't need to worry about it anymore. It's been easier than I thought, except for 2 odd questions.

Tomorrow=day of THE job interview, so I'm off to do some reading on black boxes and then am off to bed. So tired...

Tadaaa!!!! Version2

Actually, I rushed it out yesterday night.
Although the picture was real, it was only the result of a proof-of-concept. So I went back to it right after I posted and kept coding until I arrived to something that looks better. That happened around 6:30 AM this morning. At that point, most of the basics was done. There was some more work to do to present it to the wide world (anyone who doesn't have matlab, that is).

What I managed is to animate that scripted picture. Here's the animation (it's a video, you'll have to download it but it's very light): Video1 . Save it to your computer and drop a comment if you can't see it (WMP doesn't work anymore on my PC so I couldn't try it, VLC doesn't work but MediaPlayerClassic worked fine).

It's actually a simplistic simulation of a robot (that's the black rectangle). The code is right here: (yup the code is the picture). It takes the inputs of the movement (the speed and the turn of the "driving wheel"), it makes a little math to find the path the robot takes and then it makes some more computation to display it on my screen.
Then there's a script that takes the display from my screen and transforms it into a nice movie that I can upload to the net and brag about for years to come.


That took me about 3 weeks to go through, most of the hard work being done on the display and the movie making. In the time it took me to do it I learnt a lot about torture devices called Graphical Elements Handles and Level 2 M-file S-Functions which is the most powerful and least documented feature of matlab, of course. But now, I can say I know.

That was the tedious and painful work. Now comes the creative part of it. I've designed the simulation so that the robot can sense its environment. It can see the colour of the world under it and somewhat around it. And it's pretty easy (I hope) to design a "brain" with commands such as:
- if you see yellow in front of you, turn left and slow down
- if you see red on your side, stop, reverse and turn in the opposite direction
- ...

That brain is the real reason of my robot simulation. I will be able to tinker with it very easily and test things out. One of the first things I'll try is the line-following robot. It's a simple robot that follows a line marked on the floor. Then I'll try to model more complex behaviours, light-hungry robots, explorers, robots that have a memory of their world... What I'd like to obtain in the end is a robot that could mimic curiosity.
Another very interesting area of research is the behaviour of swarms of robots. But that will come at a later date. And yes, of course, I'll probably buy a real robot with a little processor and sensors to let loose in my room. A robot with tracks, like caterpillars or a robot with 6 legs like an insect? Tough choice...

Tadaaa!!!! (very proud of myself)

Took me weeks to obtain that picture!!!
And I'll need a few more nights of work to make it worth anything.

Yes, you can try finding what it is, and
No, I'm not mad yet, or at least not more than the average in the family.