Patchou's Cabana

Merry Christmas everybody . 

Edit from January 3rd:
…and a Happy New Year 2010!

One of the reasons why I wanted to start this blog in the first place was to write about my past projects. Among these projects, one in particular stands out: Messenger Plus!. Most of the people who now know me online found my name through this software and since its creation in 2001, so many things happened… I think it was worth spending some time reflecting on this and writing about the experience.

The Projects section of this site now includes the finalised essay I wrote about my experience with the software and its community of people. If you’re interested or have some time to kill, you can now go ahead and read it.

I just went to see the new Disney movie: The Princess and the Frog. First, I have to say that being a huge fan of old 2D animated classics from the company, I had huge expectations for this one and I’ve been waiting for it for the past 2 years. And well, let me tell you: this movie is wonderful!

As I try not to read about movies before watching them (to avoid spoilers), I was not sure what to expect but I was certainly wondering if old ingredients like music would be part of the mix, especially after reading lots of idiotic comments in the past about that subject. Right from the start, music is there alright, with very jazzy, rhythmic songs from beginning to end. The story is sweet, the characters are great, humour is old fashioned, and everything is put together in a wonderful package. It may not be as funny as Aladdin or as epic as The Lion King but that’s also what makes this movie great: it’s new, it’s unique, and it has its own theme.

Congratulations to Disney for giving us this piece of work. Thanks to you, I felt I was 15 again .

Finally, Google has listened to their users and released a new “opt-out” feature. This new option ensures that none of your private data ends-up in a database for years and Google has been very thorough while implementing that new feature. Congrats to them for that! let’s hope more companies will follow in their footsteps.

For more information, see news video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY

Tonight, I’ll have the pleasure to go see the geeky concert of the year in Montreal: Star Wars at the Bell Centre. It is supposed to be a show with live musicians playing the best music taken from the 6 movies, with giant screens and lighting effects. John Williams himself worked on this project along with Lucasfilm. The show is still touring in North America so if you’re a fan of Star Wars, you should check out their future dates.

It’s nice to see that the Final Fantasy concerts organised in Los Angeles by Square Enix a couple of years ago paved the way to more musical shows of this kind. Let’s hope this trend will continue .